Blood in the Streets by Dion Baia

Author:Dion Baia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

Frank made it to Rudy’s bar where the funeral reception was being held. It had degenerated into a long drinking session for family and friends, inevitably progressing into the evening. Everyone was still in their suits except Frank, who’d changed because he didn’t want to scare anyone and arrive covered in someone else’s dried blood. He’d been stuck at the scene all day, trying to get everything under control. He was debriefed by Lieutenant Warner and had a lot of paperwork ahead of him. Upon making entry into the shooter’s residence, they found newspaper clippings plastered all over the walls of his small room, about Vietnam, New Haven’s Urban Renewal, the recent shooting up at East Rock, a map circling various night spots that were quite popular on the city scene, and pictures of male models and male Hollywood stars in various stages of undress or completely nude. Connecting all these pictures, articles, and the map of downtown were various hand-drawn lines and barely-legible scribbles in what appeared to be hot-red lipstick. Very perplexing to say the least, especially since the suspect supposedly hadn’t been at the residence for weeks.

Frank snuck away when the lab and photography guys asked to have the room cleared so they could to get started.

He sat alone in the bar, though at the same long wooden table as the Wallace family. He drank heavily, a beer and a shot with another two on order, and was lost in the bottom of his glass, staring with no real interest at all the names that had been carved into the bar’s wood benches and panels by decades of Yalies going back to 1934 when the place was established.

Across the bar, sat a rather drunk elderly man who was trying to get the attention of the small, scattered crowd. “Seamus is gonna play,” he slurred. “Everyone, let’s hear Seamus play...”

Another older man whose face was flush-red from the drink, Seamus, looked like he’d just walked off an Irish country lane in his red checkered button-down shirt and gray cardigan. Everyone turned to him as he prepared his fiddle. He tested the bow against the strings, then began a passionate, sorrowful version of Nearer My God to Thee. The entire bar fell silent, stopping their conversations to listen, taking in every tearful note.

Frank stared off into space, his face blank. Chris Wallace, his arm around his grief-stricken wife, looked over to his friend, and only then realized that Frank was drinking alcohol. He made this observation but decided to say nothing. It wasn’t the place or the time.

Frank had only just gotten back from the rear of the bar where he’d collapsed into a booth and phoned his old friend and sponsor, Vincent Channing. The conversation kept replaying over and over in his head, Frank second-guessing every answer he’d made to Vince. He politely tried yet again to make another excuse about why he couldn’t meet up at Lime Rock tomorrow as planned and race. He knew by the silence on the line that Vince saw right through the excuses.

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