Write me a Letter

hostility, because way back in the olden and supposedly golden days when we were kids, back when the Dodgers played in a stadium that hadn’t been designer-decorated in fetching pastels, when the crunch came, he chickened out, while I, for once, did not.
    The tale of woe is briefly told. Tony imbibed an alcoholic beverage, stole a car, then went a-joyriding, unfortunately knocking over an elderly female pedestrian en merry route. For reasons I will not go into at this time, I took the can for him and did a couple years subsequently in a charming juvenile detention center in glorious upstate Illinois . So: if one accepts the far-from-highfalutin proposition that a longstanding guilt complex might just conceivably produce hostile behavior as a pathetic cover-up, the rest is silence.
    So, from the first phone booth I found that hadn’t been razed to the ground, I called the Downtown Station and in a moment of forgetfulness asked the lady cop at the switchboard for Sneezy, instead of using his official name and rank. She laughed, but knew who I meant all right, and put me through.
    ”Yeah?” he barked into the phone.
    ”Want a picture of Andrew Jackson for your very own?” I asked him.
    ”Who doesn’t?” he said. ”What do you want, Daniel, and whatever it is, why don’t you bother someone else about it once in a while, like your brother?”
    ”Because he’s my brother,” I said. ”Didn’t you ever have a brother?”
    ”No,” he said. ”My family was so poor we could only afford a dog once a week.”
    ”William Gince,” I said, spelling out the last name. ”LKA in Lynwood Gardens. See if he’s got a sheet for me, will you, Sneezy, there’s a good chap, and that twenty is as good as in your hot little hand right now.” He hemmed and hawed awhile but I knew he’d do it eventually because Sneezy hated felons and therefore was partial to folks that got them their just deserts, even lowlife private types like me. Also, he adored money, because he had one of mankind’s most expensive habits—listening to wedding bells.
    The line went dead. I waited. After thirty seconds or so he came back on and said, ”No form under that name. You owe me,” then he hung up.
    ”Adios,” I said. Then I said, ”Damn!” and hung up, too.
    I made an entry in my memo pad: ”Expenses: For Info. Received, $25.00. Phone, .25.” Then I strolled back to my car, put the top down, and leisurely made my way via the Long Beach freeway south to Lynwood , or at least as leisurely as one can on a California freeway, which is hair-raising. I defreewayed at Century, by mistake, asked someone, then drove around for a bit, then found Lynwood Gardens more or less accidentally, then proceeded along it to the number I was looking for, 947 ½ . Fractions mean as little in L.A. as they did to me in school; 947 ½ turned out to be an apartment building twice as big as the one at 947, which might tell you something about real estate in this part of the world. Then again it might be completely meaningless, like real estate in this part of the world.
    I parked down the street aways out of view of 947 ½ and had a brief ponder. I prefer pondering in dimly lit establishments that have signs in front of them that flash on and off like Fats’ but that say cocktails instead, but I can ponder in other locations if I put my mind to it. My problem was I wanted to put the wind up William’s mother, or sister, or both, slightly. Not too much, not too little. I came to the honest conclusion that if I, V. Daniel, put in a personal appearance, there was no chance Mom or Sis or both would be scared only slightly; even, say, in parson’s garb, reciting Proverbs IV:2 in a hushed voice, I’m hardly a reassuring sight. There’s my size, of course, and then there’s no denying Time had left its brutal traces on my once fair-complected visage, someone else a couple of scars, and several someone elses a broken nose.
    So, although reluctant as a small boy being dragged in the direction of soap and hot water, I decided it looked like a job for punk power, or ex-punk power, yet again. OK, I’ll give you that the lamebrain was useful from time to time, but how much suffering can a guy take, even in the course of justice? I did amble back to 947 V2 to check if there was a listing for Gince in the register of tenants beside the intercom-buzzer affair; there was. On the way back to my side of town I stopped at a hamburger stand for two chili dogs and a root