Free Old School by Daniel B. O'Shea Page A

everybody else in that stretch Hummer party wagon?”
    “How much?”
    “Hey, Lou, I didn’t ask for nothin’.”
    “I’m offering. How much?”
    “I dunno. Couple hundred?”
    “I tell you what, you do me a favor, I’ll front you the two hundred.”
    T-Bone looking a little suspicious now on account of Lou usually gave him a little shit about the money.
    “What do I gotta do?”
    “Just bring me some stuff I need from the house.” DeGatano had signed the house over to T-bone’s dad when he moved into this dump.
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “You know the attic? You go up that trap-door in the closet in that third bedroom?”
    “Yeah.”
    “There’s some old carpet remnants up there, off to the right. Under those, between a couple of the floor joists, there’s a metal lock box. Bring me the box, you get the two hundred. And don’t say nothin’ to your old man about it.”
     
     
    ***
     
     
    “Jesus, Lou DeGatano. I would have bet dead by now.” Nancy Johnson hadn’t heard from DeGatano since he retired.
    “And I’m a little shocked you’re still at the paper, all the layoffs and everything. I heard journalism was dead.”
    “It’s dying. But what the hell, it’ll last until I retire, so what do I care.”
    “So, you wanna buy me lunch?”
    “We don’t buy people lunch any more Lou. I haven’t had an expense account since 1995.”
    “You got a credit card though, right?”
    “Yeah, but that would make it a date. At your age, I doubt you can make that worth my while.”
    “It’s about the Hangman.”
    A long pause on the other end. “You got kind of a rep on that, you know that, right?”
    “And you still gotta sell papers.”
    DeGatano heard a long exhale through the phone.
    “OK, a cheap lunch. Where do you want to meet?”
    “You’re gonna have to pick me up. I ain’t driving no more.”
    “Pick you up where?”
    “Sunnybrook.”
    Another pause. “Ah geeze, really? Okay. Give me half an hour.”
    “It’ll take me that long to walk to the door,” DeGatano said.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    Johnson pulled up in a year-old Lexus, DeGatano waiting on the bench just inside the main door, the oxygen tank he needed for any kind of road trip strapped into its wheeled aluminum carrier, the clear tube looped around his ears, DeGatano snorting the O2 like it was coke.
    Johnson walked up to the door. Her hair was full gray now, cut short. Hell, for all DeGatano knew it had been gray then, but she’d stopped dying it at any rate. Johnson had always been skinny, just a shade over five feet, and she was still thin, but it was trending toward that bony old-lady thin now, not that pixie look like she used to have. DeGatano had been a sucker for that pixie look. Big enough sucker that he and Johnson had had a little thing thirty-five years back, right around the tail end of his first marriage. But who was he to be thinking she looked older. She was walking across the parking lot on her own power, making good time, wasn’t towing any oxygen with her, either.
    She opened the door, pulled up when she saw him on the bench.
    “God, Lou. You sure you’re up to this?”
    “I ain’t up to shit anymore, truth be told. Just pull the car up closer to the door, okay?”
    She walked back to the Lexus, wheeled it right up to the doorway, Lou taking the time to shove himself up to his feet, walk out to the curb. Only half as far as it was from his day-room chair to the can, and he had the O2 on, so he wasn’t panting too bad when she stepped around and opened the door for him, helped him into the seat, got his oxygen rig between his legs so he wouldn’t drop dead on the way to lunch.
    “Nice ride,” Lou said as they wheeled out of the lot out onto Lake Street. “You win the lottery or something?”
    “Kind of,” she said. “Harrison? The publisher?”
    “Yeah?”
    “He and I got hitched back in ’97.”
    “Thought I heard he died.”
    “He did, in ’99.”
    DeGatano quiet for a second. “Am I