Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy Read Free Page A

was working ten-hour shifts,
six days a week to catch up; they hadn’t seen much of each other
the past week which was unusual. Jimmy remarked he had been having
some trouble at work with a loudmouth “Mick” from up on the North
Side.
    “You know me, Clay, I pretty much get along
with everybody. But this guy has been going out of his way to be an
asshole. We’ve had several minor run ins and then this moron tries
to intimidate me in front of the other guys.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Yesterday he’d been putting the shit on for
me all morning, so during lunch break we got into it and I knocked
him on his ass in front of the whole crew.”
    Clay started laughing, “Damn it Jimmy, I
leave you alone for a little while and look what happens. What am I
going to do with you?”
    They both laughed and Clay continued, “Do you
think it’s over? Will he back off?”
    “Yeah, it’s over. The guy hasn’t got the guts
to push it, he’s just a loudmouth.”
    They made their way back to the big round oak
table with claw feet near the back wall. Tony and a couple of the
Sunday regulars were playing a friendly game of poker. The games at
this table were for the dollar a hand crowd and were mostly
attended by men who liked the game, but didn’t have the money for
the games held upstairs.
    Clay hung around until five thirty and then
left. Later he would cling to the memory of that casual afternoon
conversation with Jimmy.
    The next day he bought a morning paper on his
way to work. An article reported the death of a patron of the bar
he had stopped at the previous Saturday night. The account gave the
man’s name and a short paragraph of the known details. It also
stated the police had no suspects and no immediate leads. He read
the notice for the man’s burial in the obituary section and learned
his attacker was unmarried and had few close relatives. At the job
site he tossed the paper in a trash container, brassed in for work,
and vowed to put the episode behind him and not mention it to
anyone.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    N ineteen days later
on Friday, June 12, 1970 shortly after six o’clock in the evening,
Clay received a phone call from a Giliano relative relaying some
shocking news; Jimmy had died late in the afternoon in an accident
at work. Clay told his parents what had happened and went directly
to Tony’s house. It was the worst night of his life; worse even
than his incident with the drunk just three weeks previously.
    Tony owned a large three story yellow brick
home with a clay tile roof. Built in the thirties, the house was in
one of the best neighborhoods south west of Chicago. The house sat
on a large estate size lot with a tall wrought iron fence
surrounding the entire three acres of beautifully manicured
landscaping. A stone guardhouse behind the huge double entrance
gate was manned to keep media and gawkers away. The circular
driveway was full of cars when Clay arrived, so he parked on the
street and walked up the winding concrete drive to the house.
    Losing his best friend was hard, but sharing
the grief of his loss with Tony and his wife Anna was the most
upsetting event of his young life. They had both always been like a
second set of parents to him. From the time Jimmy and he had met
they had been inseparable and Anna had treated Clay as if he was
another son instead of just a friend. She bandaged their cuts and
kissed their bruises, and didn’t tell Tony about many of the things
they did. Tony would have yelled at both of them and probably would
have punished Jimmy for doing a lot of the actions they got by
with. And again she was the strong one, consoling both Tony and
Clay, even though he knew she had to be suffering even more than
they were. Relatives of both parents were at the house; Clay knew
he must have talked to most of them, but later didn’t remember much
of what was said.
    When Anna left the room Clay learned details
of the accident. Jimmy’s crew was working on a multi story