February 15, 1961
Five stories of slate gray stooped over Alexei Markovic as he scratched out an aimless paragraph in his notebook. Even a street away, peeling pink walls and streamer chandeliers would not save him if that warehouse decided to finish crumbling down.
J. P. Bulletproof Bennington. Aimless paragraphs, felt frowns, all when Alexei wanted to shout or mutter. But he couldn't—not now. 'Tom, meet Jerry,' he thought. Codes pleased him. 'Just you wait, you hellion.'
Shannon Grocer and Creamery—or that old Shannon soda stop, as everybody called it—seemed leagues long. Good place to work in relative privacy. Like a scratched and cloudy prism, it gleamed despite its age. In back the jukebox whispered, softening the cobwebs pinning it to a swinging door. Seats peppered the left side, the rest of the bar the right, with a narrow passage beyond leading to the kitchen. On the back wall out of the light lay several shallow shelves with goods on them.
At the front stood a customer who fidgeted, half in and half out of the building. Crisp air blew through the door he could not decide to close. Just right of the warehouse, a buckeye soughed as its dead leaves flickered to the ground. Several of them swept across the gray behemoth as the sky breathed wind, giving the place an impression of waking.
Despite all efforts to buy and raze the warehouse, the Shannons had to settle for being across the street from an eyesore. Their small pile of money just couldn't devour it.
According to stories, it had not always been a bad place. Less than twenty years ago it had been a factory, swarmed by Rosies churning out boat and tank parts like Alexei's mother had done in Chicago in the years following their emigration. But big buildings were difficult to maintain, and Alexei could not see the history his parents lived. Time welded the cracks as the midafternoon sun bronzed over postwar saplings that were ripening into spring.
He no longer feared the warehouse, yet just as it failed to shrink, he had not failed to grow. He hated it no less than when he was half height. Now 5'11, he glowered at it, daring it to fall.
The customer, finally choosing to proceed, closed the door too loudly and strode in with manufactured confidence.
Shannon's had been all but empty for the past decade. Only Conor Shannon frequented it now, loyal to his ever-busy father. The skinny young man had a face of Irish imagining, long, amply freckled, and capped with curly black hair. Other end, a square chin no right hook could bruise. One ear cocked towards the jukebox. His tilted head and strained gaze expressed effort.
Noting the very visible position of Conor's other ear, Alexei refrained from muttering his thoughts aloud. He, too, listened for the jukebox.
"Can I believe the magic of your sighs?" The Shirelles crooned. "Will you still love me tomorrow?"
Once the last of the leaves had dispersed outside, Alexei finally glanced down at what he had written.
J. P. B. surveillance: dead end…
That was as far as he got. From a few seats down, Conor looked at him. His small yellow eyes, lacking the sheen that could mark them amber, flared at the initials. Grease smeared the inch or so of skin beneath his jaw. Clearly he had gotten lucky with some girl who worked at the auto shop across the lot.
Ignoring him, Alexei pressed a hand over the rest of the paragraph and sipped all the way to the bottom of the soda. Remnant liquid rattled in his straw.
How annoying to be a year older, an inch shorter.
At last Conor jerked his head up and down and left it low. After a moment, his eyes drifted to his father and the customer—the dawdler—whom he was currently seducing.
Tall, burly Michael Shannon plunked his elbows on the counter. Years of River Heights had softened his brogue, which only came out on the r's. Snaps of conversation wafted to Alexei's ears, coalescing with the Shirelles.
"—worth much more than the ten-cent difference in terms of quality," Michael was saying. "The city milk is homogenized. We're as is. Pasteurize it, then leave it the hell alone."
"So, you mean, city milk has more work put into it, and costs less?" the customer snarked in return.
"No. Everything takes longer when done by hand, my friend. Leave a glass of city milk sitting on the counter? Nothing happens. Leave our milk on the counter? You got a nice shelf of cream sitting on top when you come back for it."
The customer twitched. "Sir. You are barking up the wrong tree. I'm lactose intolerant. This is for my wife."
Michael's features curled into a sympathetic face, each part immaculately in tune with the rest. Steepled eyebrows, softened eyes, outturned lips, and a sigh loud enough to be heard, soft enough to be ignored should anyone not desire the pity.
"What a shame," he said. "No reason you lactose intolerant folks can't have cream in your coffee. None but lack of creativity."
"Well, they sure as heck aren't doing anything about it in Chicago," said the customer, crossing his arms.
"Chicago." A glint passed in Michael's eyes. He lowered them to hide it. Alexei had seen, but there was no way the customer had—he was glaring at the ground now.
River Heights mostly got the Cleveland crowd.
"What a shame," Michael repeated, just the other side of talking to himself. "We draw circles while the richer cities are still drawing lines."
Alexei decided he must have been in theatre at some point. He drew a star in his notebook, a reminder to tell Berto about it between his histrionic gestures. His pals wanted in on his cases. He gave scraps of the peripherals, all he could manage amidst safety and confidentiality concerns.
"Cities make the cream but we make the crop, yeah?" Conor provided with a chuckle.
His father pivoted to glare at him. "Cities are fine, Conor. We do things different here, but not always better. Although with milk…" he re-engaged the customer, and all words flew out Alexei's other ear.
With great reluctance Alexei slid into sympathy, albeit one guarded. Conor had once been his schoolmate. Raising his empty soda glass, Alexei summoned a smile and said, "One more, please, when you get the chance."
Michael spared him but a glance and nod, never leaving the subject of dairy.
Conor jerked his head at Alexei again. "Alexei," he acknowledged.
"Conor," Alexei scratched his elbow. "What have you been doing since school?"
"This and that. Hands stuff. Bet you don't get yours roughed up with flowers," he added with a mutter, glancing away.
"My mom doesn't need me so much anymore. Tells me to go out and make something of myself." And he has, he knew. Ten years of uninterrupted detective work told him so.
"Yeah, well, that you can do. Chirking up the ankle biters. At least you graduated."
The customer suddenly threw up his hands and spun around, leaving without further discussion. Michael watched the back of his head, his expression cutting between primal anger and despair. These he curbed with stealth, squaring his shoulders and coughing to cover a stomach growl.
"I… I didn't know you knew," Alexei said to Conor.
With a flourish of his hand and a sigh, Conor finally looked at him. "Of course I know. I keep track of you brains. Maggie's gonna graduate."
"Here." Michael Shannon placed a full ice cream soda in front of Alexei, speaking softly after the customer has gone. "Will that be all, lad?"
"Yes." Noting a crack in his voice, Alexei cleared his throat. "Thank you."
"Conor, don't go mentioning that fool sister of yours. She'll do only what she puts her mind to, nothing more. Look there." Michael jabbed his elbow towards a picture on the wall, unframed, with curled corners. "Does that look like a girl who'll listen to good sense?"
Brogue back. Odd. River Heights was not kind to immigrants, although it did not mind Irishmen so much. Potatoes part of meat and potatoes, Alexei reckoned. He scanned the picture, noting the street black thick-as-cabbage hair—not unlike his own—rounded face, eyes pale in the monochromatic coloring, holding her skirt hem between thumb and index finger and grimacing. The picture must have been relatively recent, judging by what River Heightsians said about her now.
"She's but a few months out, Dad."
"A few months is nothing," Michael argued. "Half a year before his time, Joyce was a healthy man. Pitiful, watching her stagger along and give herself airs."
Turning his attention to his dirt-ringed fingernails, Alexei tried to remember where he had heard it before, 'give herself airs.' Some townie, no doubt. Maggie Shannon was the least and most popular girl in River Heights. She would habitually walk around wearing something her family could not afford. But no one could catch her.
Alexei forced their conversation out of mind and trained his ears on the jukebox, knowing that he would not listen if he could not hear. The poking-in-others'-business part of sleuthing did not come easily to him. In fact, he still remembered his mother swatting him on the head when he looked too long at someone. "Do not stare," she would say, English fluent but not yet colloquial. Still not colloquial, come to think of it. Maybe never would be. Markovics failed to acknowledge abbreviations or halfway points.
He needed to focus, anyway. Life had handed him his biggest case yet, packaged up in one seedy "J. P. B."
J. P. Bennington was a businessman… a successful one, unlike Michael Shannon. His successes always seemed to come at the expense of other things, and often other people.
So, when Bennington made politics a part of his "business," Alexei knew he had to take him down. For his own peace of mind, if not for others.
Drinking his soda quickly, Alexei slapped two quarters onto the counter. Then, waving a hand through his pompadour, he walked outside and faced down the old grizzled warehouse across the street. With his height and distance, its roof still blocked out the sky.
He huffed air through his nose and cut across the parking lot, not pausing until he had reached the end of the block where the road went diagonal to the cobbled bridge. From there it was nine blocks to the next diagonal, which hemmed his backyard. Sapling-sprinkled lots comprised the outskirts of town where he lived, sprawling where the south blocks crunched squat.
North River Heights was too pure, too open, for the likes of J. P. Bennington. And Alexei wasn't prepared to leave him out of mind, so he stayed, toeing the bridge and feeling the air cool under a cloud.
Bennington had attended law school at NYU. After two years he had left, citing a "changing mind" (couldn't cut it) as his father bought him a slot at Loyola. There he matriculated with average grades.
From there, he had been unable to snag hold of a firm in Chicago. Then Columbus. Then, for a long time, River Heights, too, Alexei thought with smug satisfaction. Instead Bennington had operated casinos in hotel basements and a roller rink next to the Markovic curio and flower shop. A modest income to augment the Bennington family fortune. Eventually, for yet more money, he "taught" local law students and couched them in a firm that never acted on his legal advice, just took it and filed it in a cabinet with a shredder inside.
Or so Alexei liked to think.
As unpaid interns, his "students" benefited from little more than stationary presence within his gravitational pull. But his gravitational pull was great, and a judicious young man named Carson Drew had graduated early and transcended the unsung ranks to practice law at Bennington's firm, rising above his fellows without stepping on them.
The interns were less than inspired. Couldn't blame them. Starving souls had sharper eyes and quicker tongues, Alexei had thought. But they wouldn't talk to him, or at least wouldn't speak, as Bennington's miasma continued to spread.
Nobody had taken him seriously as a lawyer. Yet when he announced his entrance into politics, frightened townies fell over themselves placating him. Supplicating him, sacrificing to him like some ancient god. He owns damned casinos, they probably were thinking. Let him have this.
But Alexei would not let him have this. Not while he had the power to stop it.
Leaning against the bridge post, Alexei pulled his notebook from under his arm, reading back the entire paragraph he'd jotted in the store.
J. P. B. surveillance: dead end. Plane crash killed top American figure skaters. Mom devastated. Get something extra nice for her birthday in three weeks. Hope next Games aren't televised.
He cringed. Too late to change plans now. But at some point he had to get to Mabel's. Get something befitting the Magnificent Mrs. Markovic. A rare smile sprang past his lips.
It would wait. J. P. Bennington, despite all appearances, was not a stupid man. But Alexei would fix it, run him out to Lake Erie, even if it took this parasite town a generation to recover.
This fic has been on my radar since ASH was released in 2011, but I'm glad I waited until now to pursue it. Thanks to extensive writing projects and workshopping, my writing has matured. Areas I've targeted include stronger location descriptions, transitions, and dialogue tags.
Swear I didn't intend for Maggie to be a Shannon—so cliché. While scrounging for titles amidst period songs, I discovered that Del Shannon's "Runaway" was released in early 1961. This resulted in an inside joke between Alexei and Maggie, one that makes more sense if she's Shannon.
Two Joyce references 'cos I love Joyce. "Tall, burly Michael Shannon" is meant to be an antithesis of "stately, plump Buck Mulligan," and Shannon later mentions Joyce's death.
Figure skating has recently piqued my interest. When I bridged the connection between Sabena and this story's setting, it made me really think about what Americans felt and thought at the time. The crash happened at approximately 4 A.M. Eastern Time. New York Times was reporting it the day it happened, and I don't doubt other papers followed suit so Alexei could plausibly know about it at midafternoon. While there weren't any Olympics in 1961 (the American team had been heading to Worlds, which was subsequently cancelled), the tragedy influenced the Americans' contribution to the 1964 Winter Olympics, which indeed appear to not to have been televised.
"Magnificent Mrs. Markovic" spins both on "Magnificent Markovic" and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which by all accounts is a magnificent show. xD
This will be a seven-shot. You've played ASH; you know it ain't gonna end pretty. Greek tragedy influences the plot arc. Since I just can't yank myself out of the myths, the specific overarching motif here is House of Atreus. Later you'll see why/how.
Oh. And I don't own River Heights or Alexei or Maggie or other characters. Like Rosie the Riveter. Or the ever-delightful Tom and Jerry!