Kockroach Read Free Page B

twins from the schoolyard, all gristle and snarl. They hoped the name it would sting, but I took it as a badge of honor and wear it proudly still. Mite. That’s what you can call me.

    You eating them shrimp?

    Boss says I should stroll on over to the hotel, introduce myself, hand over the envelope what you’re waiting for. It’s all in there, everything I dug up on that son of a bitch Harrington what thought it was a brainy idea to run against the Boss. But I figured, whilst I’m at it, I’d also tell you a little something about the Boss hisself for that blab sheet you’re writing for. Do you want to hear the real story, missy, the truth about the millionaire candidate for the U.S. Senate and his soon-to-be bride? The truth according to Mite?

    Don’t be so quick in saying yes, you might not like what you hear. It’s my story and I don’t like it one stinking bit.

    Am I talking too fast for you? What was you, buried in the society pages afore they tapped you for this exposé? All parties and hemlines and Joes in bad toups trying not to stareat them flush society tits? Hey, what’s the difference between a Times Square whore and a society dame? Beats me.

    But what I gots here for you is a story what could pull you out of the society racket and put you smack on the front page. A story of the rise and the fall and the resurrection. A story of a man searching for his place in an outsized world and finding nothing but a hole in his heart in which to fall. A story what will murder the Boss’s chances for the Senate.

    But the Boss’s Senate run ain’t all I’ll be killing. Consider this my suicide note, because after this gets out I’m as good as gone too. But what the hell, I’m in the mood to bump my gums. And I gots my reasons for spilling. Alls I ask is that you write it straight.

    So go ahead, missy, and fire up the reel-to-reel. I’m ready to begin.

    They call me Mite, as in Mighty Mite, on account of my size.

     

    I was born in Philly, same as the nation, Philadelphia, a city of alleyways and wild dogs. Nights, from the edges of Fairmount Park, you can hear them in the woods, the wild dogs, howling. Once, them Thomasson twins tied a string of wieners around my neck and dragged me into the dark depths of the park. A couple of cutups they was, them Thomasson twins, and when I peed my pants they held their sides and bent over as the laughter, it kicked the snot from their noses. I didn’t fight back, didn’t bust them boys, big as they was, in the snouts. Instead I ran away, pulling them wieners off my neckas I went—not throwing them away, mind you, in them days meat was meat—but I sure as hell ran. I suppose it was my heritage kicking in. We Pimelias, we’re runners.

    My father was a runner too, Tommy Pimelia, a running star in high school, what spent his afternoons burning up the cinders on the four-forty track. He was a miler then, but I guess he moved on up to the marathon because he took off long ago and best as I can tell he’s still going. I often imagine what he would have been had he hung up them spikes. He might have grown fat, worn cardigans, affected a pipe, he might have called me sonny boy and tiger, had catches with me in the park, brought home toys in big white boxes. But all that hooey was my dream, not his. I was barely old enough to remember him afore he ran away from me. By then he could look at his son standing in the crib, his head still not reaching the top bar, and see him for what he was.

    It’s not like he was no giant hisself, the son of a bitch.

    My mother was like a ghost in my life after my father left, always present and yet not really there. I can see her still, sitting at the kitchen table, thin elbows on the Formica, straggly blond hair falling limply across her face. Her tattered housecoat is belted around her waist. The veins in her ankles pulse slowly. Fluffs of cotton pill off them dirty blue slippers on her feets. She brushes the hair off her eyes and