Shamrock Alley by Ronald Damien Malfi Page A

roller. The sudden reek of burnt rubber and oil penetrated the cab. Glumly heard the hiss of radiator steam.
    “Jesus
Christ,” he
breathed, startled, his mind unable to come up with anything else.
    The driver was less confounded. “Sons of bitch!” he shouted out his window.
    Dennis Glumly was fifty-one and in good shape. He exercised regularly, ate properly, and took a dump twice a day with the devotion and punctuality of a devout religious fanatic attending Sunday mass. From the cab, he sprinted across the street and headed in the direction of the Hudson River. A native of the city, he barely registered the amphibious, musty stink of the river, and he hurried up to the inland walkway leading toward the piers at a constant runner’s pace, his breathing unaffected.
    Pier 76 functioned primarily as the city’s car tow-away pound. Recently, the city had been discussing the relocation of the pound to a more accessible midtown location to make room for the growing string of high-profile condominiums that had begun creeping up the coast several years ago. As a child, Glumly had exhibited a proclivity for all things large and mechanical, and would spend hours at the piers watching the great ships maneuver in and out of the ports, their hulls dull and iron pitted with protruding bolts as big as a grown man’s fist, their wakes white and crisp and frothy. He would try and creep as close as possible to the piers, the pungent stink of fish tremendous in the air, before someone saw him and shouted at him to leave before he got hurt or killed. In all this time, the piers had changed, as had the entire West Side Highway, though there remained an air of nostalgia for him. He was aware of the feeling even now, as an adult and as a cop, searching no longer for great ships and seagoing vessels but for a severed human head.
    Brice was the name of the fellow working at the pound who’d discovered the head, roughly thirty minutes ago. A uniformed officer was with him now, as well as a collection of motley roustabouts in soiled overalls and scarves tucked into the collars of their flannel work shirts. A pound attendant in his mid-thirties, James Brice was clear-eyed and lucid, with a rugged complexion, surprisingly nice teeth, and sideburns that dipped down like twin hockey sticks at the lines of his jaw. In another life, Glumly supposed Brice could have been considered movie-star handsome, though after he’d worked so long on the river, the bitter sea air had managed to harden and manipulate his features.
    To his cohorts, James Brice spoke of the severed head with great fanfare. “I seen a man dead once, but heads that’s on a body don’t look the same as heads that’s off a body. This one just had some
look
, my God, and I tell you what—whatever the hell’s in that river took with it whatever it wanted. Eyes, lips, nose. Gone. Almost didn’t look like no head at all, not until I hoisted it up onto the docks to see what the hell it was. But, man, you can’t mistake no goddamn head.”
    “You think the body’s down there, too, Brice?” one of the workers asked him.
    “Hell,” said Brice, “could be
anything
down there—you know what I’m saying? I mean, who even says this is the last head I’ll pull outta there? Couple fishin’ lines, we maybe pull a whole buncha heads out.”
    Some men laughed.
    The head in question was wrapped in a section of tarpaulin on the floor of the pound’s main office. A sallow-looking man named Kroger, introduced to Glumly as the fellow in charge of the pound, stood toward the back of the office, as far away from the misshapen lump on the floor as he could get. Unlike the enthusiasts who had migrated toward James Brice—and Brice himself, for that matter—Kroger looked on the verge of collapse. With his right hand, he supported himself against the office wall, while his left hand fidgeted jerkily with a leather strap that hung from his belt loop. His skin was the color of uncooked fish,