Broken Bottles


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Broken Bottles
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Broken Bottles
 Anthony Koranda
 
 
 Tortoise Books
 Chicago
 
 
 FIRST EDITION, APRIL, 2023
 Copyright © 2023 by Anthony Koranda
 
 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention 
 
 Published in the United States by Tortoise Books 
 www.tortoisebooks.com 
 
 ASIN: B0BFMGZT27
 ISBN-13: 978-1-948954-73-0
 
 This book is a work of fiction. All characters, scenes and situations are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
 
 Cover Design: Gerald Brennan
 
 Tortoise Books Logo Copyright ©2023 by Tortoise Books. Original artwork by Rachele O’Hare.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 For my wife
 
 Contents
 Roger
 St. Jude
 Caravan
 Rat King
 Heartbeat
 Harbor
 Piano Thief
 Mother
 Shannon
 Marathon
 Al Pastor
 Warren Park
 Advocate
 Farah
 Confession
 
 
 
 
 
 Roger
 As far as I was concerned, Roger was my father, even if he refused to admit anything close to paternity. He never said it to me directly, but I laid awake at night, listening to him and my mother have the same argument in the living room, Roger’s voice pushing through the door.
 “He looks nothing like me,” Roger said with a rattle in his throat, gruff from years of smoking.
 “What do you mean?” my mother said. “We fucked exactly nine months before he was born.” I heard the flick of her lighter, hissing butane, smelled the airy smoke of a light cigarette wafting through the crack in my door.
 “Bullshit,” Roger said. “I was on a fucking minesweeper so deep in the Persian Gulf we couldn’t even get skin mags delivered, much less knock you up,” he said, and I imagined the tan skin of his face, marked with creases, folding like old leather. His graying mustache twitching like it always did when he got angry. I closed my eyes, imagined him standing over my mother, both palms flat on the table, arms stiff, his navy tattoos fading from all the time spent in the sun on construction sites.
 “What do you want me to tell you?” my mother said. “You’re the only one I fucked so it’s gotta be yours.”
 I shifted my body, turned to the wall, studied the Garfield calendar hanging above my bed, the one Roger bought me last New Year’s. It was two weeks until my tenth birthday. I pulled the pillow over my head, smelled the heat of my breath, and thought about what it would be like if Roger wanted me, admitted he was my father. I breathed deep, heavy and hot into the old fabric. I wouldn’t call him Roger anymore, or ‘Sir’ when he got really pissed. One day, I would just call him dad.
 
 
 
 
 
 St. Jude
 Detective Knapczyk worked on the gang and drug task force. Roger liked him because he was Polish and fat and jolly, a beard as thick as shag carpet covering his face. He also said it was a good idea to have a friend who’s a cop, that you never know when you may need a favor.
 Knapczyk drove around the neighborhood in an unmarked silver Caprice, handing out his card to the guys on Sunnyside or Wilson or Leland. “Call me,” he told them. “Let’s stop the killing around here,” and they’d crumple the card in their fists and drop it in the gutter as Knapczyk waddled back to his car, slumped into the driver’s seat so heavy his girth squeaked the shocks.
 Knapczyk lived on 31st Street, a long way from home. All his neighbors were cops and firemen. Roger always said he didn’t know how Knapczyk got the money for such a big house on a policeman’s salary. “He’s got his hand in somebody’s pocket,” Roger said. I was never sure whose pocket it was.
 I sat in the dining room at Knapczyk’s house, the sun pouring in from bay windows that faced the street, huge oak table stretching from one wall to the other. Roger always insisted taking the furthest seat at one end of the table, Knapczyk on the other end. “The king’s seat,” Roger called it. They were so far apart they had to yell at each other to have a conversation. I don’t think Knapczyk could hear half of what Roger was saying. He just smiled and laughed and blew clouds of smoke from the Marlboro Red that always hung from his lips.
 I sat in the middle of the table, my back to the bay windows, smoke pushing in from both sides. In the DARE program at school a couple weeks before, someone came in and showed our class pictures of a smoker’s lungs, old and shriveled, like a beat-up rubber balloon that lost its air. I thought of what the smoke was doing to my lungs as Roger and Knapczyk puffed away.
 On the wall across the table, there was a portrait that was supposed to look like the Last Supper, but in place of Jesus and Paul and Judas and the others, there were all these men in pinstripe suits. I was old enough to recognize Don Corleone from The Godfather sitting in place of Jesus, but I wasn’t quite sure of the others.
 “Who’s in the photo?” I asked Knapczyk when there was lull in their shouting.
 “It’s not a photo,” Knapczyk said, taking another drag. “It’s a painting. I paid a lot of money for it because it’s a painting. Not a photo.”
 “Oh,” I said, looking back to Roger who was now studying the painting with his head cocked to the side. “So who’s in the painting?”
 “Gangsters,” Knapczyk said.
 “From the movies, right?”
 “That’s right, kid.”
 “I thought you were a cop?” I asked.
 “I am a cop,” Knapczyk