The Red Storm by Grant Bywaters

Author:Grant Bywaters
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466885073
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER 10

Johnnie Ranalli’s last will and testament stated that his remains were to be placed in the burial spot he had purchased in St. Louis Cemetery Number Two. This caused contention among certain citizens.

“How can that man be put in the same area as someone like Henriette DeLille, who spent her life helping the sick and dying?” one outraged woman told reporters. But the complaints fell on deaf ears, and Ranalli was laid to rest in an ornate tomb. There were rumors that the previous occupant had been put into a burial bag and pushed to the back of the vault to make room for Ranalli.

The morning following the funeral, I met up with Brawley at his house on the high grounds of the Irish Channel. The area got its name from the sizeable number of Irish workers that were brought in to help build the New Basin Canal. Upon the canal’s completion, the Irish workers had firmly planted their roots in tight-knit neighborhoods in the area. Many of them now worked as longshoremen, laborers, and cops.

Brawley’s house, a one-and-a-half-story raised center-hall cottage, sat on Sixth Street. As I pulled up to the house, I could see him sitting on the front porch swing. He had a single-action twelve-gauge shotgun that had about a foot cut off from the barrel propped on his knee.

“The princess said she saw a couple bad customers rolling by in a dark car. Said she’s getting pre-Revolution flashbacks, so I reckon I’d rather sit out here and make her happy. Better than being in there while she’s going batty.”

“That’s reasonable,” I said. “But that’s a nasty piece of hardware you got there.”

“Don’t I know it. The damn Germans had a diplomatic protest against these things. Said they were prohibited by the laws of war.” Brawley laughed. “They just got tired of their jerry men walking into a trench and having their faces being spread across the Rhineland.”

“Is that what you’re hoping to do here?” I asked.

“Naw, it’s all for show to please the princess, but I don’t think the neighbors are likin’ it much. It’s okay, though, we are thinking of moving out of this area anyway.”

“Why?”

Brawley shrugged. “I figure it’s that I’m getting on the princess’s backside, telling her she ain’t living in Russia no more, and yet here I am living in an area that’s pretending it’s Ireland. We got pubs every damn block, and some fool walking around playing the bagpipes and wearing a kilt.”

“Ain’t that a Scottish thing?” I asked.

“These guys here don’t know the difference.” Brawley pulled a brass double-aught buckshot shell out his pocket and jammed it into the gun. “Then there’s this Irish parade every year. They always send me invitations to participate, but you ain’t gonna see me dressing up as some leprechaun and dancing like a giddy little girl.”

“That would be an interesting sight to see,” I said.

“It ain’t happening,” he said. “I don’t even know what the point of the parade is. If Ireland was so great, why don’t they go back?”

He tossed a nine-by-fourteen-inch legal folder at me.

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