Shamrock Alley by Ronald Damien Malfi

Pop.”
    “On the job …”
    “Yes.”
    “Ahhh. You don’t look so well. You look too tired. I can tell you’re not sleeping. Sleep’s important. You work crazy hours. It’s not healthy. You should sleep more.”
    “I’ve been busy at work,” John told him. Then regretted it.
    “But you should spend time at home.
That’s
important.”
    John set the watch back on the night table. “Katie’s been complaining to you about me now?” he half joked.
    “She sneaks me in your dinners when you don’t come home to eat them. So keep it up then. She’s a good cook.” The old man smiled, the thin skin at the corners of his eyes split and fissured.
    Staring at the crucifix on the night table, John could feel his father’s eyes on him. The morphine hadn’t numbed all the old man’s senses. Again, he felt like a child beneath the storm-cloud parasol that was his father’s shadow.
    “The baby will be here soon,” said his father. There was a certain gravity to his tone now. “You need to think about what you’re going to do.” After a hesitation, he added, “With your job.”
    “Pop,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck while he craned his head back. “We’ve been through this …”
    “What you do … it’s no way to raise a kid.”
    “You did it.”
    “You can do better than me.”
    “My job’s got nothing to do with who I am at home,” he said.
    Silence fell on the room. John stood there seemingly forever, not saying a word, feeling like the incapable little boy he’d always felt before his father.
    “You don’t have to come here,” his father said after a while, and with so much of his old self that his voice chilled John, “if you’re too busy. I understand. These doctors and nurses, they’re good here. They keep an eye on me. You don’t have to come when you’re too busy.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “You know what I mean. You’ve got things you need to worry about instead of worrying about some old fool in this damn place.”
    “Stop it.”
    “I just want you to know I understand.”
    “Don’t be that way. There’s nothing to understand,” he said. “I wanted to see how you were feeling.”
    “How I’m feeling …” The old man chuckled and wheezed while fanning one skeletal hand above his head, as if to say,
You see these wires, these machines? That, my only son, is how I’m feeling
.
    John sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets, took a step away from the bed. “Is there anything I can get you before I go?”
    His father watched him with sober eyes. Once, those eyes had been dark brown, almost black. Now they were dull gray, like ash, and seemingly too close together on his face.
    “You wound the watch?” the old man asked.
    “It’s wound.”
    “Then no,” he said, “there’s nothing I need.”
    Later, out in the hallway, John found himself staring out the window through the slits in the blinds. The day had cooled, and the sun had settled behind a stand of buildings off to the west.
    He stood, unmoving, for a long time.

CHAPTER FIVE
    D ETECTIVE S ERGEANT D ENNIS G LUMLY OF THE N EW York Police Department was nearly killed twice on his way to Pier 76. First, his sedan blew a flat on West 34 th Street and as he stepped out of the vehicle to inspect the damage, a taxicab nearly split him in two, swerving at the last possible moment and sparing his life. The wind from the speeding cab caused his jacket to billow and his equilibrium to fail him, sending him reeling back against the hood of his sedan. Taking slow, labored breaths, the detective sergeant righted himself and, knowing very well there was no spare in the sedan’s trunk, cursed once under his breath before hailing a cab.
    A few minutes later, as the cabdriver was preparing to park off Twelfth Avenue, a rust-colored van slammed into the back of the taxicab, sending Glumly’s teeth rattling in his head and causing him to bang his knee smartly against the plastic knob of the manual window