Samaritan by Richard Price Read Free Book Online Page A

this, this Stubby, he was one of those angry shrimps who go into the Golden Gloves; mean pissed-off midgets, just want to punch out the world because they’re so short. You know, the worst kind of bullies . . .
    “And to be honest, Jackie might
not
have been his. His mother, my great-aunt, I don’t know, she was kind of there, not there,
did
have boyfriends, eventually flew the coop, so . . .”
    Ray checked on Bondo, who seemed to be holding herself off.
    “In any event, by the time Jackie was your age, younger even, he was a severely abused child, you know, psychologically.
    “And, my grandmother, Jackie’s mother’s sister, her name was Ceil, she told me that when Jackie was little she’d hear him down in the street calling up, ‘Aunt Ceil, Aunt Ceil,’ you know, down there by himself, this was on Tonawanda Avenue back in the early fifties, my whole family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, they all lived in three, four different walk-ups on Tonawanda . . . Anyways, my grandmother, later on she’d tell me, ‘Ray, I’m ashamed of myself to the day I die but whenever I’d hear Jackie down there calling up to me, I’d never go to the window, I’d never invite him to come up because I was afraid of Stubby.’”
    “Guy’s like five-three?” Rashaad reared back in disdain.
    “I know, but sometimes rage has a way of blowing people up.”
    “Five-three.” Rashaad shot a quick glance at Felicia.
    “Anyways, Jackie, by the time he was thirteen, was pretty much an alley cat, a street kid, and by the time he was fifteen? He was shooting heroin.”
    Mrs. Bondo shifted like a mountain, exhaled heavily through her nose, and Ray froze: what the hell he was doing, telling this story—trying to establish his down credentials? Get over as an honorary hard-knock homie? But he was hip-deep in it, and thinking it would be pointless to stop right now, he forged on.
    “To tell you the truth, I never really knew my cousin Jackie, there was too much of an age difference, but what I
think
I remember, was a very sweet guy, very friendly, kind of gabby, and big.
Huge.
I’m talking six-four, well over two hundred pounds, plus he was a weight lifter. I mean, from what I was told, if you didn’t know that he was a drug addict, you could never have guessed it.”
    Ray faltered again, trying to figure out how to race through the rest; couldn’t, and decided to continue at the pace he needed despite his fear of getting panned or reproached.
    “Anyways, by the time Jackie was in his mid-twenties, he’d been struggling with his addiction close to ten years. His mom had split when he was sixteen, so it was just him, his brother Benny and Stubby. And, he’d be out there in the street running with the wolves—ripping people off, getting high, arrested, going to jail, ripping people off, getting high, arrested, going to jail . . . And, the closest thing he had to a guardian angel, a friend, a father figure back then was this guy who lived down the street, Jack Zullo, who was a highly decorated and highly connected Dempsy detective. And unlike everybody in my hear-no-evil, see-no-evil family, Jack Zullo had seen and heard it all, every type of grief and human misery out there, and he always felt sorry for Jackie, hated Stubby and did what he could to help my cousin out, which pretty much boiled down to fixing it so that he would skate now and then when he came before a judge. Now, you have to remember that this was the early 1960s, and at that time, rehab, therapy, any kind of positive-oriented drug treatment was pretty much unheard of in this city. Basically drug addicts were seen as evil degenerate criminals.”
    “They are,” Rashaad said imperiously, some of the other kids sucking wind, checking out Ray to see if he’d take that as an affront; but he was too busy racing the anxiety clock.
    “Anyways, this cop did what he could until he ran into some trouble himself, legal trouble.” Ray edited out the nine