Here I go again
Gleason doesn’t even allow me to sit.
He just tells me I’m fired and I should pack up my stuff.
Twelve years on the Scranton beat and I’m on the street again with only my old reporter’s notebook for company.
Four-thirty in the afternoon is a bad time for anything.
Even Gus’ place where I scribble notes between drinks doesn’t get interesting until half passed five.
Still, with no place better to go, I go there, looking forward more for the alcohol than the society.
I always need a drink, a habit I took up during my troubled days in New York and never lost.
Bad times always make me remember New York.
So I order a double, drain it, and order another, drawing a note of sympathy from Gus who buys my third double for me.
He knows there will be a fourth.
Maybe that’s the trouble.
You don’t take on the state’s top cop sober, calling him corrupt, even if you have the proof.
Top cops got ways of getting even, as Gleason proved when he shoved six months of misinformation under my nose.
Gangster, okay.
The worst you can get from them is a bullet.
A cop makes you look foolish, shapes a lie to make you look crazy, and maybe even get you napped on a bad rap -- like in New York.
Most people learn from their mistakes, and considering I survived New York to get revived in Scranton, I guess I didn’t.
People like me carry around a fatal flaw.
We can’t keep our mouths shut even to stay alive.
So when I see a bad cop here, I rat on him in print.
I can’t help it.
Which is why when I order the fourth double from Gus I tell him to keep them coming.
Wrong is wrong, gangster or cop.
The mistake is telling people about it.
After a few more drinks I start thinking about Oshkosh and wonder if anyone needs a reporter there..