The Intruder (1996) by Blauner Peter

Author:Blauner, Peter [Blauner, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
Published: 1996-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

35

Philip is stuck in a line of cars outside the Midtown Tunnel. A matchstick-thin homeless guy with a mop of wild filthy hair stumbles up with a squeegee and offers to wash his windshield.

“Get the fuck away from me, ya hairy puke.” Philip reaches for the aluminum bat still in the backseat.

The bum backs away, as if he’d somehow divined Philip’s history just by looking at his face.

The light changes and Philip drives on fuming into the long tunnel under the river. Bums. Niggers. Spies. Faggots. Jews. Women. He truly hates this fucking city.

For a few minutes tonight, he thought he might finally be able to conquer it. If only he could have worked things out with this lawyer Schiff and the contracts, whole new vistas could have opened up. From the school asbestos deal, he could have moved on to bigger projects: more school construction, bridges, roads, civic centers, and then on into the private sector. He’d pictured himself subcontracting superstores for Bob Berger, hotels, skyscrapers. The day would come when he’d be able to stand on a rooftop, look out at the horizon, and calculate the amount of money he’s owed for each building on the skyline. He would become ... a player.

Instead of just being a meatball collecting debts for his ungrateful uncle.

Emerging from the tunnel and heading out onto the Long Island Expressway, he turns on the radio and starts punching through stations. He’s meant for better things, he decides, but the odds in life have always been stacked against him. He’s never gotten the respect he’s deserved. Not from the college loan officers, giving all the breaks to the nigs and spics after he got his discharge from the army. Not from the guards and the other shit birds on his cell block when he went away. Not from Carmine, and especially not from his wife and kids.

“Make way for the homo superior!” a song on the radio bleats.

Philip punches in another station, still not exactly sure what he wants. He drives past the old World’s Fair grounds and a plane from Kennedy roars overhead, a red streak through the night. Why has he always felt so trapped and held down? He’s never been sure why he got married in the first place. The dirty little secret is that the first time he really felt turned on as a teenager was seeing Little Joe stripped to the waist and getting whipped over a wagon wheel on Bonanza.

That certainly didn’t make him a faggot, but it could be that he’s just one of those guys who never should have gotten hitched in the first place. Instead he let his uncle and his mother pressure him into marrying Nita, a mousy little girl from the old neighborhood with stringy hair and thick glasses. Of course, he could never really make it with her. In bed, it was like trying to put a wet noodle through a keyhole.

When she’d ask him what was the matter, it got him furious.

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