Free On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery by Tom Schreck

assistance just like the clientele at the Crawford clinic, and they had a lot of the same issues. The difference was that somehow they had an attitude that they were above people who lived in the ghettos. I could never figure out if it was a notion of racial superiority or the fact that their forefathers, however scummy they were, lived on the same land for generations. Just the same, between our two clinics you could cast the Jerry Springer show and still have enough characters for half a year of Montel .
    Bringing Bowerman in was supposed to give the committee an element of an impartial, unbiased view. I highly doubted that had any chance of occurring because Claudia wouldn’t risk it. Bowerman and Claudia were acquaintances, if not friends, and they were both part of that sorority of angry, unattractive female social workers. Bowerman was a tall, mean-looking woman who resembled Katherine Harris, that scary-looking woman who was counting or not counting, I forget which, Al Gore’s hanging chads. Bowerman looked like Harris’s less attractive older sister with frizzy dishwater-brown hair, cut in a misshapen bob. I didn’t know her well and only met her a couple of times, but it was enough to draw the conclusion that I didn’t like her.
    I was the last one to make it into the conference room for the meeting. Monique sat with a chair between her and Espidera. Monique, without saying anything, could show more disdain for a person than most people could by spitting. The thing was, Monique never did anything to put herself in a compromised position. I also believe spending her life as a member of three minority groups gave her the capacity to read people and to some extent know how to protect herself. Some people in the same position get aggressive, some get subservient, but Monique got quiet and thoughtful. She exuded confidence, and at five feet four inches and no more than 130 pounds, she gave off an air of being, if necessary, very dangerous.
    The only chair left meant I got to sit next to my best friend, LT.
    “Hey Duff,” he said. “What’s happening?” He threw a few shadow boxing combinations, trying to impress me. They were poorly thrown.
    “Good morning, everyone,” Claudia was getting the meeting started. “Thank you for coming. The purpose of this committee is for us, as an agency, to examine where we are at risk in regard to regulatory standards.”
    She was at the head of the table and fortunately, I was four seats away from her, which meant I could doodle and have it look like I was taking notes.
    Claudia cleared her throat.
    “The New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse clearly states …”
    I figured she was good for twenty minutes before anyone else got a chance to speak. If I could occasionally look up, make eye contact, and nod, she wouldn’t have any idea what I was thinking about or writing down. During these types of meetings, I usually take the time to write my all-time list of boxing’s best pound-for-pound fighters. By the way, Willie Pep gets my number one spot and Ali isn’t even in the top five. I’ve also tried to relive every sexual episode I’ve ever had, but that never got me through more than a few minutes. Sometimes, I simply resorted to my Salvador Dali–type pencil drawings. Hippopotamuses were my favorite.
    Claudia was going strong.
    “… The essential feature of the new regulations is the importance of the quarterly treatment plan updates, which must be signed by the client, the primary counselor, and the supervisor on or before the seventh visit for those in nonintensive programs, the third visit for those in intensive programs, and on the second visit for those in day treatment …”
    That was as interesting as it got. I was on to my fifth hippo and I just couldn’t get the ears the way I liked them. The trick was to make the ears ridiculously tiny against the round fat of the hippo’s body. The perfectionism of my art often tortured me.
    I looked