The Vultures. Mark Hannon
kid, bowling balls for shooting excellent on the pistol qualifications. Part of the latest union contract,” he said, smiling as he left the stairwell.
Listening to the pow-pow-pow coming from the range, Pat opened the metal fire door and matched smiles with Marty “Fatboy” Meegan as he entered.
“Well, Marshal Patrick Brogan. I heard you turned in your badge,” the gray haired Meegan said, reaching over the desk to shake hands.
“Yup pardner, I figger it’s time to leave the streets of Dodge to the young lawmen,” Pat said, nodding towards the gun range where the shots continued to bang away. “But I still gotta qualify for the County Investigator’s job.”
“I wouldda been gone myself, Pat, if they hadn’t got me this cush job,” Meegan said as he put the target sheets in front of Pat.
“It’s like they say, Meegs. Some men are qualified for the job, others are born in South Buffalo.”
“Hah! Jealous!” Meegan answered, “By the way, what’ll you be carrying in the DA’s office?”
“The Detective Special.”
“Not as accurate as the 4 inch, but hell, you won’t need it there.”
Pat nodded, picking up the paper targets. The two veterans shook hands again.
“Keep ‘em straight, Lt. Meegan.”
“Show ‘em how it’s done, Patrick. Deputy Zelinski’ll be running the shoot,” he said, introducing him to a young Erie County Sheriff’s Deputy in a black turtleneck and a badge attached to his belt.
They walked to the shooting alley, and once the deputy had inspected his weapons, he loaded the .38 special and placed it in the holster.
Pat asked, “I guess we’ll have to do the S.R.T. Test first?”
The deputy shook his head. “Nope, no Slow, Rapid and Timed Test.”
“Just the Practical Pistol Course? Barricade? Left and right hand?”
“Nope, not that either for your job. Here’s the qualifying test for your position: put six shots on the silhouette at 7 ½ feet, reload, repeat. Do the same with the detective special and you qualify.
“Seven and a half feet? No distance shooting?” Pat asked. “The last time I qualified with the police special we started at 7 yards and worked out way up to 50 yards.”
“I heard you would score 280 or better out of 300 on the P.P.C. test,” the deputy commented.
“Yeah, I did. Now it’s all at close range, huh?”
“They did some studies. FBI, New York, LA. Says most shoot-outs happen up close and in low light conditions – gotta be ready, shoot, reload, shoot.”
“Sounds right.” Pat said.
“We’ll do the police special first, but we can leave the lights all the way up,” Zelinski said, as the target whizzed up in front of the booth. Pat took a deep breath, settled his feet in the combat position, slowly let his breath out and squeezed off the six rounds. While he reloaded, he noticed they all hit the ten ring. He fired another six rounds, again all in the ten ring. I wish they were the commie bastards who set that mine, he thought.
He repeated the procedure with the snub-nosed revolver, but this time two rounds missed the ten ring, one hitting the Bar X ring and the other landing in the 9 ring.
“Good shooting. You qualify,” the young deputy said as he filled out the paperwork.
“I had good teachers,” Pat said, thinking about the noise and shouting of the instructors at Fort Dix. He also thought about the adrenalin pumping through his system when he fired at real people, Krauts in Europe who were trying to kill him with everything from grenades to machine guns and where a fraction of a second, a single misfired round meant death. “Yeah, good teachers,” he said, thinking of the bloodied bodies of those a shade too slow, and his son, far away in a hospital.
He put the pistols away in their cases and put the remaining bullets in the bowling bag with them. Clean the pieces when I get home. Reload them, put them in the holsters and forget about it, he thought.
As he walked up the steps, Pat looked at his watch. Hell, it’s early, he thought. I’ll just head over to County Hall and hand in my qualifications. Walking outside, he saw a patrolman looking at his car and pulling out his ticket book.
“Don’t waste the paper, young man.” The blue shirt looked up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, lieutenant. I didn’t recognize your car.”
“No problem, officer. I’m riding off into the sunset anyway.”
The patrolman touched the brim of his cap and smiled. Pat started the car up. As he backed out, he thought how he’d miss the respect, the camaraderie and the friends over here. Time to move on, he thought as he drove. Take the pension, make another salary to help pay for Tommy’s college and... the ache came into his stomach and forehead as he thought again about his shattered Rory. What can we do, what can we do? What can money do for my boy?
The car behind him blew his horn when the light changed. Pat clenched the steering wheel and drove. He pulled into a deputy’s spot behind the county court house and grabbed the paperwork. He spotted a gray uniformed sheriff’s deputy coming out of the county hall and waved him over.
“What’s up, pal?”
“My name’s Pat Brogan,” he said, putting out his hand. “New Investigator in the DA’s office. Ok if I park here?”
“Hey, you’re the sheriff’s old partner in the city, right?” he said, gripping Pat’s hand. “Welcome aboard. I’m Rocco Buscaglia, work outta the jail. Don’t worry about the parking, boss. Just tell ‘em at the desk, and it’ll be fine.”
Pat nodded, relieved at the easy transition. It was just as easy in the Hall where he got his parking pass, met the lieutenant on duty and turned in his shooting qualifications to the bureau chief’s secretary.
That’s done, he thought as he drove home. Just keep the detective special on my hip and lock the rest of this stuff up.
9.
HR looked out the storefront window of College A at St. Joseph’s School across Main Street at dismissal time. As nuns and lay teachers stood watch, the patrol boys with their white and orange belts dispersed and took up their posts while a few parents gathered at the end of the driveway on Main Street to meet the littlest ones. Children streamed from the school in orderly lines carrying book-bags and lunch boxes, their breath visible on the cold day. When they hit the street, shouts of joy erupted and the kids scattered running or waited for friends behind them.
Tom watched too. He remembered hoping to arrive on the sidewalk in front of the school just at the right time to meet up with a girl named Linda, perhaps to exchange a greeting that might lead to walking home with her in that incipient mating ritual.
“The Catholic Church is probably the biggest institution of fascist indoctrination in Buffalo,” HR said, standing just behind Tom. “Look at those kids. All in nice lines, learning to conform. Learning imperialism – they teach those kids Columbus discovered America, the annexation of the Southwest and the massacre of Indians as Manifest Destiny, and overrunning the Philippines as liberating the Filipino people. It’s really going to take something to wake these people up to it – direct action against the ruling class to show them the powers that be are using every facet of society to keep power and make money, waging war on the Vietnamese people to do it.”
Tom thought about Rory’s letter—so we set the cache and a bunch of hooches on fire and left. HR stepped a little closer to Tom and lowered his voice.
“We trashed the room where Dupont was doing recruiting over in Lockwood Library last night. They’ve got the contract from the Defense Department to make napalm. Shit, all they say on the news is ‘vandals attack library