Free Father's Day by Keith Gilman

detail?”
    “You didn’t ask. And Lou, I was just wondering. When were you going to get around to asking if we’ve made any progress on your mother’s murder?”
    “Have you?”
    “No.”
    Lou sat in his car while Mitch pulled away. He rolled down the window and lit one of those cigars from Mitch’s office. The smoke was heavy and hung in the air. The cigar had the aroma of smoked wood and the sharp, full-bodied taste of strong Nicaraguan tobacco. He rolled the cigar in his mouth, taking long drags, pulling the smoke in. Mitch’s words had cut him. Sarah’s words had poured salt into the wounds. It was what she’d said about Sam Blackwell. Vince’s money was like a virus in the water supply. Everyone who had filled their cup from that well was contaminated, including Sam Blackwell. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Everybody seemed to be on the payroll. Maybe that was the difference between them, Sam’s inability to resist temptation. But were they really that different?
    Sam had come to Overbrook about a year after Lou, another South Philly transplant. Sam’s mom was divorced, as Lou’s had been, and he’d moved in with his grandparents on Meridian Avenue, just two doors down.
    Lou’s mother had met and married a man, ten years older than she was, a cop and a Jew, who’d bought a house there and moved into it with his young wife and her son. There weren’t many Jews left on the force in those days. They were the last of a dying breed, first-generation Americans raised by the veterans of World War II.
    The Klein family history was a simple one. Lou’s grandfather had lived in a village called Bernsk in Lithuania. He’d joined the Russian cavalry and fought the Germans in World War I, often with nothing more than a sword after the ammunitionhad run out. He’d defended his village from bandits that rode in on horse back from the eastern provinces. He’d smuggled his family out on a merchant ship with the help of his wife’s brother, who was able to bribe the ship’s captain. Once in America, he’d joined the United States military and went back to Europe to fight the Germans again, this time in France and Italy. He’d gone back with one thing in mind—he needed to finish the job he’d started.
    He’d spent his entire life fighting, but in the years to come, the grandchildren of these men would be going to college, becoming doctors and lawyers, running away from the crime in the cities as their parents had fled the violence of Europe. They were moving up and out. Cops had become strictly working class. Nobody wanted to get their hands dirty anymore.
    Overbrook wasn’t the easiest place to get along in. Lou saw himself as an outsider, the product of an Italian mother and a Jewish stepfather. The mixture of languages and aromas floated down the slate sidewalk like ghosts from another world, a world where being half-Jewish or half-Italian meant you were a whole lot of nothing. He’d never be accepted by either side. So, he’d started hanging with the black kids whose families were moving into the neighborhood in droves, filling up the schools where enrollment was down, bringing a new energy to the playground. Lou ended up spending most of his time on the basketball court, where he earned acceptance and respect. He still had the jumpshot to prove it.
    Lou didn’t know what to expect from the new kid on the block. They had a lot in common but why would it make a difference. If Sam had felt sorry for him, Lou wouldn’t have wanted his friendship. If he’d challenged him, Lou would have fought back. But it was more like Sam felt sorry for himself and that did make a difference.
    They’d become friends, inseparable at a time when not havinga friend willing to back you up could mean the difference between a punch in the face and a total beat-down. They’d played on the football team through high school. They’d swim together at Cobbs Creek, occupying their summer days crashing into the cold water,