Grief Street

know.”
    “A leper laughing his head off.”
    Harry Darcy sighed and thought again about the small revolver riding his hip. Lucky for Kowalski, a trim gentleman of about sixty years wearing a navy blazer, bow tie, buck shoes, and a cloud of cotton white hair took his place up front at a lectern.
    The white-haired gent pulled some papers from a briefcase and smoothed them out on the lectern. Then he took a pair of black horn-rims from his blazer pocket, put them on his suntanned face, and surveyed his bleary-eyed class. He shook his head, after which he turned around to a blackboard on the wall and chalked up the lesson of the day:
    MANNERS ARE WHAT WE USE TO GET WHAT WE WANT WITHOUT APPEARING TO BE SWINE.
    “Freaking beautyful,” Kowalski said in a brushy laugh-snarl-whisper, audible enough to reach the front of the room. “The professor there, he must of took a wrong turn somewheres on his way to poetry class at some rich girls’ college up in Vermont.”
    Fump, fump, fump. The professor whacked a microphone clipped to the plywood lectern. “Testing... testing.” Then he did it again. Fump, fump, fump. Darcy felt explosions inside his head. So did many other queasers in the crowd. Sound test completed, the professor looked out over the crowd of aching heads to Kowalski. “Do you wish to address the class, my good sir?”
    “Hey...!” King Kong Kowalski on the defensive. “I ain’t your good nothing.”
    “No?” The professor smiled. “Do you mean to say you’re good for nothing?”
    “What’s the freaking—?”
    “Incidentally, my name is Thornton. You can call me Mr. Thornton.”
    “You can kiss my hairy butt!”
    “For the benefit of those without your own knowledge of such intimacy, sir, do tell: why on earth should one gentleman wish to place his lips against another gentleman’s hirsute buttocks?”
    The mood of the class brightened. Sullen queasers and otherwise unwilling students of charm school changed heart, Harry Darcy included. Here suddenly—for a change, and what a change—was a joke at the expense of Kowalski. Here stood Professor Thornton, waiting for an answer, as cool and controlled as an undertaker’s handshake. And over there sat lobster-faced King Kong Kowalski, that legendary mass of distemper, sputtering and jabbing an impotent finger in the air.
    The more Kowalski jabbed and sputtered, the more mirth be provoked. Quiet laughs at first, the kind that noses make.
    Then in waves the laughs grew loud and helpless and wide-mouthed enough to see back teeth.
    Darcy leaned toward Kowalski and smirked. “So that’s it, King Kong? You got a shine for the boys? I never figured you to be with a woman, but—”
    “Shut your trap,” Kowalski interrupted, all rage and tremble. Laughing faces from the row in front agitated him all the more. “Don’t be calling me that name, Darcy. And don’t talking about my woman.”
    “What woman would that be, King Kong?”
    “Freaking smart-ass, I’m warning you.”
    “You are?” Darcy stood up, raising his voice to address Thornton. “You got King Kong Kowalski here so upset he’s making threats.”
    “Is that so?” Thornton stepped around from behind the lectern, his eyes still on Kowalski, whose name he finally knew. “Threats are impolite, Mr. Kowalski. They are also unintelligent. Perhaps this is why you’ve been tagged with the gorilla sobriquet.”
    The class stamped feet and roared happily. Kowalski jabbed and sputtered. Darcy took his chair again, the storm in his head lifted courtesy of the fat sergeant’s discomfort.
    “Come, Mr. Kowalski, speak up,” Thornton said as the men quieted. “You seem to have so very much on your mind.”
    Silence from Kowalski, who decided to ignore the professor. Instead, he trained the heat of a malignant glare on Darcy—a glare known to Neil Hockaday, the rat cop responsible for the humiliation of his being at charm school, and to perpetrators Kowalski deemed worthy of dickprinting.
    “As our colleague Mr. King Kong Kowalski is temporarily at a loss for words,” Thornton continued evenly, “might any of you other gentlemen explain what we’ve learned from this contretemps?”
    There was dull mumbling around the room. What’s contretemps?... Hell if I know... What’s sobriquet? But nobody raised his hand.
    Thornton stepped to the blackboard. He tapped fingers to the slogan he had chalked up and explained, “I wanted our disagreeable colleague to be quiet, yes? Accordingly,