Interrogation

Are we alone in this? 6:00 P.M., September 12, Trevor and Madison Eddie Lambrusco pressed down on the brake and steered Siddell Carting Truck 12 over to the curb. Five metal garbage cans stood in a sloppy line at the edge of the street. All were swollen with the day's refuse, but Terry Siddell, Eddie's shift partner for the night, made no effort to deal with them. "Well, you getting out or not, Terry?" Eddie asked. Siddell didn't move, but that didn't surprise Eddie. Siddell wasn't used to taking orders. Eddie was used to nothing else. Except when he was with his daughter, Laurie, saw himself reflected in her adoring gaze and suddenly felt like a man again. He thought of Laurie now, the way her eyes had followed him out the door of her room that morning. Don't go, Daddy. Any man would do anything for such a sweet kid, Eddie thought. Anything he had to do to make her happy. And yet he'd not been able to stay with her. He knew that other fathers would be with their kids tonight, all curled up on the family sofa, watching Sid Caesar or Uncle Miltie. But not Eddie Lambrusco. Old Man Siddell would never have given him the night off just because his daughter was sick. With that bitter recognition, Eddie returned his thoughts to the job at hand. "Look, Terry, we got a full twelve-hour shift," Eddie said, making sure that the raw hostility he felt for Terry Siddell didn't show. Siddell peered morosely into the night. "Twelve hours," he griped. "Twelve fucking hours." It wasn't just the hours, Eddie knew. It was that Terry had to spend them with a guy like Eddie, a little guy, going nowhere, without power or influence, a guy who could never make Siddell pay for anything he did, which Eddie yearned to do . . . just once. "Nobody likes a twelve-hour shift," Eddie said. Again he thought of Laurie. Her sickness. Her fever. The way she'd vomited through the night. Then his mind shifted to her mother, snatched from the secretarial pool, screwed, and tossed aside. He'd scooped something out of her, the guy who did that, so that she'd collapsed from the inside, abandoned her husband and daughter, leaving nothing behind but the lingering smell of her afternoon gin. The terrible loss that had been inflicted upon his life abruptly swept down upon Eddie Lambrusco, a grown man who couldn't hold on to a wife or stay home with a sick daughter or say "Go fuck yourself" to anyone at all, not even the little punk who sat whining at his side. "So, you getting out?" he asked. "Okay, okay," Siddell answered sourly. He grasped the door handle, jerked it up, and pulled himself out of the truck, leaving the door open behind him. "Fucking wimp," Eddie growled under his breath. He leaned over and violently jerked the door closed, imagining Siddell's right hand smashed by the impact, screaming for him to open the door, release him, gazing in horror at his mangled fingers when he did. The only problem was that such vengeful fantasies were brief, and in their wake Eddie felt only smaller and more powerless. In the wide rearview mirror, he watched as Siddell lumbered toward the bulging cans. Christ, he thought, what a lousy break. A twelve-hour run ahead of him, every second of it with a rich kid who'd be his boss in five years, another jerk he'd have to answer to. He imagined Terry Siddell behind a big desk, dressed in a suit and tie, pinkie ring on his finger, puffing a big cigar as he handed him the pink slip. Sorry, Eddie, but we just can't keep you on. In the old days he'd been partnered with Charlie Sweeney, and the two of them had laughed the night away. If Eddie hadn't lost his job with the city, they'd have still been partners, gotten the work done, cleaned up the whole area around police headquarters, the park, Briarwood, where the big Dumpsters bulged withCook, Thomas H. is the author of 'Interrogation' with ISBN 9780553800951 and ISBN 0553800957.