cold water flat

It was a long time ago, maybe the winter of 1958, but Mickey Mc Finnigan still remembered it well. How could anyone forget something like that? He was just a kid at the time, but still it was a horrific scene. He lived in New York City, in a cold-water flat on the west side. The apartment was on the second floor, and they had to share the john, which was in the hall with the people in the next-door apartment. A motorcycle cop lived just under his family in the apartment below, and he remembered thinking how in winter this poor bastard must freeze his ass off all night long. Mickey’s old man was a cop as well, typical Irishmen. He came from a large family, lots of brothers and sisters, if I told you how many, you would not believe me anyway, so let’s just say big family. Anyway, let me get back to the story; Mickey came home from school this one afternoon, walking the two blocks with his sister, who was a year older than he was! He was the youngest child, and they called him baby, which he hated because he was like ten years old. No one was home on this particular day, which was not very unusual at all.Mickey and his sister climbed the stairs gingerly, mindful that the motorcycle cop tried to sleep in the daytime, and they always were being” chewed out” for making what they called, too much “god dammed noise.” They went into their apartment, and his sister started in on her homework. Mickey liked to wait because sometimes he could get her to do his work as well. Now they were sitting at the kitchen table, and they heard this loud explosion, a roar, a gun report? Mickey ran out to the hall. Nothing amiss, so he took the stairs. And jumped down two, three, stairs at a time! He rushed to the back of the hall where the basement stairs were located. He wanted to see if maybe the furnace had blown up. He noticed the door to the first floor bathroom was closed, but ajar. He could see light coming through the crack on the latch side of the jamb, and he slowly walked over to it and with a sense of foreboding he nudged the door with the tip of his sneaker and slowly opened the door. The scene was gory, there sitting on the toilet was the motorcycle cop, his brain matter, skull fragments, and blood painted the wall behind the stool. His pants were down around his ankles, and his wallet was spread open on the floor displaying his badge and the edge of some crisp bills in the billfold and of course the gun he used, a 38 police special, were on the floor. Mickey remembered thinking, Jesus you could have pulled your pants up first? Without touching the wallet, Mickey pinched the money and jerked it out of the wallet. He removed all twenty-four dollars in cash. He backed out of the small room, closed the door with his foot, and ran back up the stairs, two, three steps at a time, making way too much ”god dammed noise”. Mickey sat at the kitchen table and did his homework. Twenty-four dollars was a lot of money back then! I heard the news that Mickey passed away today, and I remembered the last time I saw him. I had bumped into him in a saloon in the city, about a year ago, and that was when he told me that story. He said he felt bad about it all his life, and then he gave me twenty four dollars. You see: That motorcycle cop was my Father.