Justice

"Can you tell me what's wrong with me?" I really wanted to hear her answer.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Mike!" Lila said. "It isn't you. I haven't dated anybody!" she protested.

"Then I have to ask, are you a lesbian? Is that why you won't go out with me?"

Lila blushed from my question and answered, "No, Mike, I'm not a lesbian! There are just some things that are going on in my life right now that keep me from dating. I would love to go on a date with you, but now isn't a good time!"

"Then, I have to know Lila, why not?" I demanded.

"Mike, I... I..." She turned away from me, "I work at Fitzgerald's."

I shook my head at her response. Okay, so she worked for a competitor of my dad. I had never spotted her there, or at my dad's place for that matter, but I didn't see that as being insurmountable.

"Lila, I don't care. All I want to do is just go out on a simple date and enjoy spending time with you." I looked deeply into her eyes. I saw relief on her face.

"Are you sure, Mike? Are you sure it isn't going to cause you any problems?" she asked.

"No, Lila, I don't care. Just let me take you on a date. If for whatever reason you decide after that, that you don't want me around you, then okay. But at least I'll know I gave my best shot to the prettiest girl in school."

That Saturday, I showed up at her place in casual wear. I didn't want to build up any undue pressure or unrealistic expectations by going to some expensive French restaurant. I took her to the zoo; we strolled around watching the animals. I bought her a brat at a hot dog vendor, and we continued our tour while eating and talking.

As the afternoon faded into the evening, we went to the park adjacent to the zoo and sat on the ground while a troupe performed a play in the city's Shakespeare in the Park program. We laughed at the mad antics of "A Midsummer Night Dream."

As I drove her home, I was fascinated by the animation she exhibited, raving about the show. We were walking up to her door, hand in hand. Out of the blue, she said, "You know, if I ever get a dog, it's going to be a French Mastiff and I'm going to name him Oberon."

"Where did that come from?" I laughed.

She wistfully looked into space, "Growing up, the only friend I had was the neighbor's dog. He was a French Mastiff and I wished he was mine. I never had to worry whether he loved me. As for the name, to commemorate tonight as being the only other time I have been truly happy," she proclaimed. She turned to hug me and said, "Thank you, Mike. I had a wonderful time tonight!" She gazed at me in expectation.

I lowered for a kiss and she closed her eyes. When our lips met, it was as if for the first time in my life things fell into place in the universe. I had no idea how long we stood there. When we broke the kiss, I think both of us were stunned and breathless.

"Wow" she softly whispered.

Not being a fool, I struck. "Lila, how about going out with me next weekend, they're playing Romeo and Juliet."

"Mike, let me have a couple of days to decide. There are some things I need to do," she replied. With that, she leaned in for another goodnight kiss before I could object. As I stumbled back to the car totally enthralled by this wonderful woman, I began planning for our third date. Fate would not be so cruel to stop me from seeing her.

Monday afternoon, she called, "Hi Mike, if you still want to take me out this weekend, I'd love to go. I need to let you know that I've quit my job at Fitzgerald's. I've taken a paying internship at a tech company I'm hoping to get a job offer from after graduation. I'm going to have to tighten my purse strings even tighter to survive, but I'll manage."

From the second date, we moved to our third and then our fourth and so on until we were basically shacking up together at my place. I finally convinced her to drop her lease and move in with me as a money saving proposition. We instantly adapted into our newly found status as roommates, best friends, and lovers.

I took her home to meet my parents during Christmas and they fell in love with her from the start. She instinctively began bonding with both of them and with no hesitation called them Mom and Dad. My Uncle Jack and Aunt Kate were no different as they adopted her, as well. When we left to go back to school my dad walked us out to the car; out of listening range he said, "Boy, don't fuck this up." Probably the best advice he'd ever given me.

At graduation, we both walked across the stage for our diplomas. We both had accepted good job offers in our respective fields. I proposed to her in front of my parents and she enthusiastically accepted. We started saving up our nest egg and planned a wedding for a year off, to get vacation time accrued and start looking for a place with a fenced in yard that we could get in our price range that would allow us to get Lila her puppy.

And now, it was all falling to shit, I thought sourly.

I felt his presence behind me as he saddled the seat beside me. "Hey, Son, how are you feeling?" my dad softly enquired. His solicitous tone told me everything I needed to know. Lila had already reached out to my parents and had told them what had transpired. It was interesting that I wasn't worried about Lila gilding the truth to put her in a better frame of light. No, she would have divulged the truth, warts and all.

I paused before answering my dad, "I don't really know, Dad. I don't know how to begin to explain how I'm feeling. I guess, I'm still in shock in a way. It's like I just woke up in some Bizzaro world existence."

My Dad nodded his head at my explanation. He looked straight ahead into the large mirror affixed behind the wall of the bar, staring at our reflections. "Your mom is worried about you; she and Lila have been going around town trying to find you. You didn't help matters turning off your phone. Your Uncle Jack gave me a call when you showed up here at the bar. I gave them a call, they'll be here in about half an hour."

"What should I do, Dad?" The poignant weighed question was out there now. Here I was all grown up, self- reliant, ready to take on the world and I was reduced to running to my father hoping he could fix my problem.

"This is your call, Mike. You've got to decide how you're going to handle this. You know that I don't think you can find a better girl than Lila. The way you two are around each other, it's so obvious that y'all were meant for each other." Dad continued looking at our reflections, trying to gauge my reaction.

"So, you think I was meant to be with a stripper, Dad? How is that going to work out, Dad? You really think Mom is going to be comfortable being around Lila when we attend church, or when there's a family reunion? How about when our kid gets up in school for Show and Tell and tells the class that Mom is a stripper!" I bitterly lashed out in reaction to the unjustness of it all.

"Son, people do things, right or wrong, for any number of reasons. From what, Lila has revealed about her life to me and your Mom, we know she had to make some hard choices. People adapt, Mike. You can't judge a person's entire existence from a single snapshot of their life. You've got to take that into account for the entire story. Lila deserves that, Mike. You deserve that."

I burst out laughing. "I deserve a lot of things, Dad, but I don't deserve a wife that thousands, hell, maybe hundreds of thousands of guys that have seen naked! That jammed a Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant, or Franklin into the crotch of her G-string! That touched her, or..."

I had to pause as once again the unthinkable presented itself. Could Lila have resisted all that temptation? In my heart, I knew she had, but my mind was thinking other things. My stomach churned at the thought of total strangers manhandling my woman like a side of beef.

I continued, "How do I ever get past the fact that the woman I married isn't who I thought she'd be?" I asked, not really expecting an answer to my rhetorical question.

"Mike, you weren't a virgin when you first dating Lila and I doubt that she was either," Dad commented. "Now, you say you're upset that a lot of guys have seen Lila naked. That didn't stop you from sneaking in issues of Playboy magazines underneath your bed when you were a kid growing up or watching porn on pay for view TV on our cable. What, you didn't think we knew about that?" Dad laughed.

"The point is, all those women were somebody's daughter, sister, cousin, girlfriend, or whatever. That didn't stop you from objectifying those girls. Being married won't stop you from turning around and looking at a pretty woman now. Truth be told, I doubt Lila will stop looking at handsome men when given the chance. That's just human nature, and you'll never change that. What you do change is how you chose to respond."

"The two of you have made a commitment to each other. Before you discovered this, Mike, did you have any doubts about Lila loving you?"

"No, Dad," I replied.

"Do you think that she loves you any less after you found out?" He asked.

I sighed, "No, Dad. It's just I still don't know how I can rationalize this. How I can accept someone that's done something like that in my life?" I sadly replied.

We sat there for a few minutes without speaking, both of us just weighing our conversation and thinking about what we'd spoken. Dad sighed and motioned at my now lukewarm beer. "You going to drink that?"

"Get Jack to pour you one, this is warm," I warned him.

He reached over, took a long sip and gave an appreciative gasp after he swallowed.

"It's still better than that hot horsepiss '33' beer we used to get in 'Nam," he said.

Dad seldom talked about his experiences in Vietnam. All I knew was that he served a tour, got wounded, was awarded a Silver Star for valor and a Purple Heart for his wound, so the rare times he decided to be talkative about his time there, I would sit and listen, even if it was about Vietnamese beer.

He was in deep thought, "I was just a kid, joined the Corps, shipped around the world just in time for the Tet Offense, scared shitless." He took another sip of beer.

"My Vietnam wasn't jungles; we had to go retake the City of Hue from Charlie. Charlie was one tough motherfucker when it came to urban warfare. I was in the 1^st Marines, armed with a BAR, tasked with providing covering fire while we advanced street by street. Charlie didn't appreciate that and I drew a lot of fire back from him.

"After a firefight at some godforsaken street, we'd catch a breath, fire up a smoke, drink a hot bottle of that fucking 33 beer, and try to ignore seeing our buddies wounded or killed before our eyes.

"That Soviet SKS rifle that's hanging up in my den, son of a bitch shot me with that before I unloaded a full clip from my BAR into him. Shot him to rags. We ran into each other at a blind corner, our rifle barrels were almost touching."

"They kept trying to take that away from me while I was in the ward convalescing. Then, I got shipped back into the world. Came home and flipped a coin whether to take a job as a postman or a police officer. To this day, I don't know if I won or lost that toss." Dad shook his head as he finished his reflection.

"Well, Dad considering you met Mom then, I have to say you won that toss," I interjected.

At that, he brightened up, "Yeah, you are right. I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't met her."

For some reason, a light came into my dad's eyes. I watched as he finished the last of the mug and motioned Uncle Jack to replenish a mug for both of us. Jack placed the mugs down and ambled away.

"I never told you about how it came to pass that we wound up owning Genero's." He quipped while taking his first sip.

Now I was intrigued to find out how a couple of police officers and their wives managed to own a bar. In the past, all I was told was that I was too young to hear about that. Now the time had come to find out.

Dad started, "You ever wonder how come a couple of Irish cops managed to own a bar named Genero's?"

I always had. It never made any sense to me since I never knew anybody by that name. I often wondered why they didn't just rename the bar, Crowder's. I waited for his answer.

"Genero's was a mob bar." Dad announced.

"You bought a bar from the mob?" I was aghast at the revelation.

"Just listen to my story," dad replied.

"Not only was Genero's a bar operated by the mob, it was a strip club. The dance floor is the last remnant of the original raised floor," Dad commented. "Not only was it a dive, but it served as a money-laundering operation for the Calpera Family.

"They also ran loan sharking, bookmaking, narcotics, prostitution, and anything else to make a dishonest buck. Yeah, this place was a real hellhole, back then. You could count on at least one unsuspecting tourist getting beaten and mugged every night, or picking up a junkie corpse that OD'd in the alley.

"Sal Genero was the front man for the Calpera Family and that's why the bar was named for him, owned and operated by him, and he had a psychopathic hitman named Tony Molteri that served as the muscle for the operation.

"Genero was a short, squat, greasy little weasel of a man; he wouldn't do anything unless your back was turned to him and he had a clear advantage. Molteri was just fucking evil. He was rumored to have been involved in 26 gangland hits when I first met him."

Dad took a sip of his beer and continued, "Molteri had a bad habit of getting the strippers hooked on heroin and then he started tricking them out when they started losing their looks. If they didn't make their quota, he'd beat the shit out of them and shove them back on the streets after he'd rape them.

"Kept the girls terrified and quiet about any idea of testifying against him. Just think of starting every day in the hole to support a $100 a day junk habit and compound it by going out and tricking for another $200, rain or shine." Dad shook his head remembering the inequities of it.

"Their main money maker was the gambling and loansharking. Gamblers would get behind in paying their losses; desperate people would be forced to take out a loan, and the vigorish would eat them alive as they scrambled to make their weekly payments, and never getting ahead to pay out the principal of the loans.

"Genero would provide a warning and then sic Molteri on the erring defaulters. If they were lucky, only an arm or leg would be broken. Then Genero would come back to them and comment what a pretty wife or daughter the guy would have, and then look over at Molteri. The gleam on that monster's face kept those guys in line until it came time to do a 'bustout' on the business owners.

"They had a real streamlined approach. The business owners would come to the Genero's office at the bar. They would be threatened or persuaded to sign over a warranty deed on their business property. They'd sign off on a warranty deed form that had a blank insert for penning in their property description. Believe it or not, Tony Molteri was listed as a public notary, so he would notarize all the deeds signed over, making Sal Genero the property owner.

"Then, Genero and Molteri would go on shopping sprees using the original owners' credit accounts, maxing out their limits. The assets would be taken out the back door and the hapless original business owners would have to file bankruptcy. They'd leave their victims stone broke.

"Those bastards would've stolen the pennies off a corpse's eyes if they could get away with it," Dad said, taking a small sip of his beer. "Which is where I can into play.

"I had graduated from the Police Academy after leaving the Marines. I was a rookie cop, full of piss and vinegar ready to take on the world. I was dating this cute nurse named Mary that wouldn't let me get past first base unless I gave her a ring."

The rueful smile on my Dad's face was amused, thinking how my mom protected her virtue until my dad had made a lifelong commitment to her. Thinking how adamant Mom could be on any given issue, I could only imagine how it must have frustrated my Dad.

"I mean, I was lucky to get a kiss after a date sometimes, after I tried to cop a feel from her! Talk about the bruised ribs I'd have from her elbows." Dad smiled.

"Hey, Dad, this comes under the heading of too much information. I really don't need to imagine my Mom and Dad getting it on!" I commented quickly, hoping to derail this train of topic.

"Well, it's important you know what happened back then,' Dad said. "A lot of things transpired that you have no knowledge of.

"Anyway, back to my story. I'm a rookie cop so I'm in line for any shit details that come down the pike, and the Police Chief came up with a doozy. The police precinct I was assigned to covered the business district where Genero's was located. They came up with the bright idea to start foot patrols for the area to circumvent criminal activities. Being a lowly rookie with no seniority, I was assigned to the solo graveyard shifts when all kinds of shit would fly. I had to do a lot of growing up real quick." Dad paused to take another sip as he continued his reflections.

"So, I traded one combat zone for another, as I went out every night to serve and protect. That really didn't help on the social front, as I was lucky if my days off would coincide with Mary's, which would increase my frustrations with getting anywhere with her," Dad complained, as he took another sip and motioned at me to join him in drinking. I took a sip as I waited to fall deeper into my dad's story.

"That went on for a couple of years. I had been able to move the open illicit activities back into Genero's instead of them operating openly on the sidewalks. As I made my rounds, these thugs congregating outside would shut up as I approached. I'd walk through them pretending to pay them no heed. As I passed them, the hairs on my neck would stand out just anticipating them harming me, but I had to show no fear.

"One of the ways I adapted was I would show interest in the strippers dancing in front of this big plate glass storefront window."

Dad motioned to the window located in the front of the bar that now served as a source of ambiance for the patrons of the bar.

"After I got my small bit of free titillation, I'd focus on the reflections of the thugs to make sure they weren't creeping up on me," he explained.

"Dad," I interrupted, "How did they get away with having open to the street stripping back then? If they were visible to the street, couldn't you arrest them?"

"Back then, it was legal. Wasn't like any Godfearing family would be strolling through there at that time of night. The Calpera Family had enough votes in the City Council and enough high octane legal representation that it wasn't worth picking a battle I couldn't win," Dad told me. "I would have to be satisfied with keeping Genero and Molteri on a short leash. And man, did they squawk! The precinct captain said he knew I was doing a good job just from hearing their complaints!

"As I was saying, this continued on until one night I saw the thugs huddling close together near the front door. It was close to the 3 am closing time. They didn't notice me approaching them. When I got close enough, I noticed a beautiful blonde, long legged, built in all the right places; cowering wide-eyed from them."

"What the hell is going on?" I demanded to know. All the rats started scurrying away as I moved to her. She instinctively gripped my arm for support and I saw relief in her eyes as she spotted my uniform.

"Are you okay, Miss?" I asked as she shook from nerves at the recent problem.

"'I am now, Officer'." She nervously whispered in the most fetching Southern drawl I ever heard. "'Please, just give me a minute to catch my breath'.