Walking towards the entrance to Wendy’s, Sergeant George Clark stopped and turned when he heard Inspector Kevin Conroy call out, “Hey, George, get me a vanilla shake with that. Ok?”
Clark smiled as he took a few steps back towards the car. “I was going to get you one anyway.”
Conroy smiled, knowing that his driver knew him like a book. A few seconds later, the police radio crackled, “10-13, shooting in progress at 39th and Queens Boulevard …”
Conroy bolted from the car and ran into Wendy’s. “Cancel that, George, we’ve got a 10-13. There’s a shooting down the boulevard at 39th Street.”
As they ran back to the car, Clark asked, “What do we have, Inspector?”
“Let’s get to 39th Street and find out.”
With the siren blaring and the red light flashing they raced out of the Wendy’s parking lot on 45th Street and crossed Queens Boulevard under the ‘7’ train elevated line and turned left heading west down the boulevard towards 39th Street.
As the car came to 40th Street Conroy ordered Clark to cut the siren and the flashing red light and to slow down. Approaching the corner of 39th Street, Conroy saw the body on the sidewalk. “Jesus, someone’s down.”
It was a recurring dream, less frequent as time passed, but still disturbing as he struggled with the details of that fateful night.

As he opened his eyes, a throbbing head from another wasted night greeted Kevin Conroy. Just opening his eyes brought on pain as did the slightest movement of his head. He winced and grimaced as he struggled to prop himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed. Scratching the dry skin on his arms, he slowly surveyed the room. A slight smile formed when he recognized that he had made it home again.
Kevin began to clear his throat, swallowing the sour taste lingering from last night’s swill. Where he had been and what he had done would gradually come to him once he made his way to the bathroom. He picked at the crusted fluid in the corner of his eyes and coughed again bringing up bile and phlegm that he spit into an old tissue sitting on the night table. Then, running his hands up and down the side of his face he began to take deep breaths to get himself going. He belched up the sour taste of yesterday’s mistakes and shook his head to clear his thoughts
He grabbed his box of Newport’s from the night table, picked out a cigarette and lit it with his old Zippo, which had etched into it the Marine Corps emblem on one side and the Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison patch on the other. Inhaling the mentholated smoke soothed him as he struggled to the bathroom and stood in front of the toilet. What do they call this he thought? Yeah, a Mexican breakfast – a piss and a cigarette. He finished this essential morning function and looked at himself in the mirror. The hair was still brown. Many of his freckles had faded away. His chin was still taut, but there were a few lines on his forehead, and a perceptible spider web of lines was beginning to spread out from the corners of his blue eyes. He had lost some weight, but his six foot three body was still solid. He had inherited a solid muscular structure from his father and though he had never lifted weights, Kevin still had a well defined body.
He turned on the bath water waiting for the hot and cold to reach the right temperature before he twisted the shower knob. Pulling the curtain shut he relaxed as the warm shower washed over his pulsating head. Gradually, the pain eased. He doused his head with shampoo and worked it into his mottled hair. As the water rinsed the suds from his head and body the memories of the previous night began to come into focus. A focus that he regretted making as the picture was not usually pleasant the morning after. Richard “Red” Hilliard, the owner of his favorite haunt, the Garden Grill, had told him that he was on the same track as his father - the only difference was that Kevin’s train seemed to be moving faster. More and more people, mostly service people in bars and restaurants, were telling him to come to grips with his problem. It was bothering him – he understood the message. What to do and how to go about dealing with it was always put on hold as he started another day.
Yesterday had started out as previous days had, and as this one would. He would slowly emerge from a mental fog as his brain cells gradually began to re-connect after the electrical current detoured around the cells destroyed by alcohol.
How did I get this way? Why? What’s wrong with me? Do I need help? Questions asked every day, but never answered – avoided out of fear – fear of the truth, whatever that was, he did not want to know. Proud and stubborn, he never went to the heart of the matter – never asked the necessary questions – never sought professional help or advice.
He opened the refrigerator door. Hard to suffer from MRB (male refrigerator blindness) in this case as there were few objects in the refrigerator or the ice box as Kevin’s mother and father had called it. He had his choice between a can of Heineken and a can of V-8 Juice. He chose the V-8, shook the can a few times, opened it, and drank the juice from the can. He took a deep breath, thinking how good it had tasted. It did not have the effect of taming the buzz that the Heineken would have, but he began to feel better. He cinched the loose cotton belt on his fading terry cloth robe and sat down in a side chair in the living room. He manipulated the remote control and clicked on the 12 o’clock news to catch up on local and world events, which were dominated by civil unrest along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa and the pitiful downfall of Charlie Sheen from booze and drugs.