I am asked ten times daily, it seems, what I am writing, and how this writing is going, and when this writing may be read. For both the eager and the merely curious, I give you the prologue to my newest novel, although the rest will be made available in the orthodox alpha-to-omega format for which we will all have to wait. There are, however, 130 scrubbed and polished pages more, and I spend between four and five hours daily ensuring that the tale be told as soon as possible, so abide, and do enjoy this with my happy, happy blessing.
The Day Daddio Died
PROLOGUE-
I do not know what they do to Daddio in the old warehouse, or how much they put him through before using him all up, but I know that afterward he is not as pretty as a tomato that someone is stepping on, and to tell the truth is much less pretty than same. I also know that he is in there under the indelicate ministrations of these importuning Fellas for days, plural, although probably most of the expert work on him occurs just before the grand finale, which finale is known to one and all and needs no expressing.
What does need expressing very much, however, is that it is nobody if it is not old Daddio himself at the first who is collecting the Cats against Rocky Carmichael, Dudley One-Gun McDunn, and the rest of the Fellas, and that furthermore he is the most benevolent gee I know for many hard years, and since so few individuals are ever remembering anything about him but the day he dies, please excuse that I do not begin the beginning without a short anecdote regarding Daddio’s character, after which I invite you to stay for the show or go as you please.
On this occasion I am with Daddio and Charlie Smooth enjoying coffee and cigarettes, sitting around Jinx’s newsstand doing nothing at all but a whole lot of nothing, when this Fella carrying a briefcase ambles by without so much as a what-do-you-hear, what-do-you-say. Naturally, this omission we consider uncouth, but Fellas are taking time to chat nine times out of never anyhow, being generally very interested in themselves, and besides there are hardly ever any Fellas around the feline parts of The City since being this far from downtown is often unhealthful for them, and especially when they are carrying their briefcases.
The reason for our prejudice against briefcases is that Fellas are typically carrying their business in them, which business may be burglary, kidnapping, extortion, or any such activity as the law condones when a Fella is having his briefcase in order. We Cats, therefore, take interest more than somewhat in any Fella on a midday stroll who seems to have business on his mind, and as anybody who knows a Fella can tell you, if ever a Fella is having anything on his mind, it is his business.
Well right away Charlie Smooth volunteers to conduct the usual diplomacy, but Daddio tells him no, and says he wants to see what sort of mischief is in this Fella’s briefcase, and for which hapless Cat or dweeb such heartache is intended besides. Furthermore, it is many weeks since he is having any lively conversation with a Fella, so it is doing him good. Daddio is a very enthusiastic conversationalist in these days.
Now you may think that it is a hundred-to-one that a Fella will notice such a character as Daddio hanging around Jinx’s newsstand and jawing with other prominent Cats such as the Smooth and myself, but remember that this is a very long time ago that I am talking about when we are no more prominent than a healthy thumb, so Daddio is able to tail the Fella for several blocks before the suit hears Daddio’s wallet chain jangling, decides that it jangles behind him for too long, and takes it on the lam down an alley before Daddio can catch up.
It is some time before Daddio finds this individual. He finds him having a conversation on the dingy stoop of one of the apartment buildings on the outskirts of town, where the local Cats and dweebs are having trouble with potatoes for their rent more than somewhat, and Daddio hides behind some aluminum garbage cans to eavesdrop. The Fella speaks with the sterile etiquette Fellas are always using whenever they are about to do something terrible to somebody, while the somebody of the hour, a mother-of-six sort of broad with misleading wrinkles that result perhaps from being the mother of six, clasps her hands together and implores the Fella to come back tomorrow, and stares with horror at the briefcase that rests on her stoop against the Fella’s leg. The Fella patiently explains to her the policies of doom while she wrings her hands. This goes on and on, until at last the Fella picks up his briefcase and commences to open it on her.
Now this is no such broad as Daddio is ever knowing in his young life, and for all he knows she is an addict, or a maniac, or any one of the multifarious colors of a modern miscreant, but it seems he hears enough of their discussion to decide he will put his person between the horrors in that briefcase and their would-be victim, because my old friend outs from behind the garbage and yells wait as the dame commences to wail, and the Fella turns to look, his finger on the trigger of the latch of his briefcase, and who does he see standing there but tall, skinny Daddio, not a day over nineteen.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Daddio.
But the Fella only smiles and says, “It’s all here in black and white, Cat.”
Daddio can see the Fella intends to spring the latch, so he makes a grab for him, but the Fella jumps off the stoop and splits down the street back into The City while the broad shrieks, and Daddio beats it for all he is worth, really breaks in his sneakers to cop the Fella and give him what-for.
The better part of a mile later, Daddio is dismayed that it takes him so long to catch up with the Fella, because as anyone can tell you, running from a Cat on damp pavement in loafers is not a little difficult, and quite some, but he is much more dismayed to catch up when the Fella surprises him around a corner and busts his noggin very nicely with the edge of the briefcase, knocking him into the street and out of one sneaker. Well what does this Fella do but haul off and take this sneaker, just in case Daddio should feel indignant at the way the Fella busts his noggin for him and wishes to return the favor, which of course, Daddio does very much, and one and all deem this sneaker caper very unprofessional.
The Fella is a memory, though, and Daddio spends the afternoon asking dweebs on the street whether they are seeing any Fellas running around with briefcases, to which these dweebs reply that lately there are more of them every day, but that they are as alike to one another as the bricks in the walls and very hard to tell apart, and anyone can see that Daddio is never finding his man. Then it occurs to him that the Fella is almost certainly returning to the broken-down broad, where there is now no one but no one to accost him. So with only a sock on his foot Daddio makes his way back to the outskirts just as quickly as a Cat missing a sneaker can make it anyplace, which is not so very quickly, and which involves broken glass besides.
Daddio gets there, though, and finds the door to the apartment open, the Fella long gone. In fact, Daddio finds that almost everything in the joint is long gone. The glass in the only window is long gone, and the boards in the floor are long gone, and the mortar between the bricks in the walls is crumbling and spare. He spies a hunk of moldy bread on a table in the corner of the room though, but even this pitiful lunch is no use, because taking up the rest of the floorspace are two blankets, and on these blankets are many papers with signatures on them, and on these papers beside an empty medicine bottle are the blue bodies of the broken-down broad and her tyke, not gone very long, but still long gone.
Later Daddio mentions that it is not being a mother of six what carves all these wrinkles into her forehead, but the trouble of feeding only one, and I watch him consider nightmares behind his eyes as he posits this notion.
Now of course this is a regrettable tale, to be sure, and I for one do not know how bad a day a broad must have before she is using up her one and only ever-loving, and herself to boot, but this is only a window on what is happening to Cats and Fellas, broads and dames alike before the day Daddio dies, and I can tell you that if this scenery presents just such a view of nature as you are likely to appreciate, then you are in luck, as there is plenty more where it is coming from.
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