By Ed Staskus
Tommy Monk’s alarm clock sat on the nightstand next to his bed, but except for Saturdays and Sundays he never set it. When 5:30 in the morning happened on weekdays he knew his father would be coming through the door shaking him and making him get up. There was no turning back time those mornings. His father was more commanding than his Westclox Baby Ben.
It was Sunday, the morning of July 6, 1975, and since it was, Tommy had set his alarm the night before. His father always slept in on weekends, snoring his head off, and reading the newspaper the rest of the morning, catching up on that week’s news. His mother was up at the crack of dawn on weekends making meat pies and casseroles for the family for the rest of the week. She kept a cup of coffee and a slice of flaky pirukas near to hand while she worked.
His mother was from Estonia. She grew up on a family farm. His father was from Finland. He grew up in a city. They met and married in Finland after she fled Estonia and the Russians. She slipped through the Iron Curtain in a stolen rowboat, making her way across the Baltic Sea. When they were awarded green cards after a new American immigration law came into effect in 1964, they emigrated to the United States, to Lakewood, Ohio. Tommy was a two-year-old toddler when he was followed by a brother and soon after that by a sister. His father changed their family name from Muukkonen to Monk when he went to work as a bookkeeper for TRW. He was still working for TRW, except he had moved up the ladder to accountant and gotten a raise. When he did, he bought a Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon. He kept it at the front of the driveway for a week so all the neighbors could see it.
“You’re the best dad ever,” his children said a month later when they were driving to Pymatuning State Park in their new car for camping and campfires. Tommy and his brother sat in the rear-facing seat telling each other scary stories about mad dog bank robbers on the run. Their sister had the middle bench seat to herself. She liked it that way since she considered both her brothers to be nitwits. Her father was the strong silent type. Only her mother was worth talking to.
Tommy was called Tommy by everybody except his mother and father and his friends. His mother called him Tomas. His father called him Bud. His friends called him Tommy One Shoe because one day, getting on the CTS bus that took him to grade school at the West Park Lutheran School, he discovered he was only wearing one shoe. It was too late to get off the bus and go home for the other one. He spent the rest of the day limping to class, to lunch, back to class, and back home. When he got home there was a hole in his shoeless sock. A blister was peeking through the hole. The next day at school he found out he was the One Shoe boy.
After Tommy got the alarm clock calmed down, got dressed, and got himself to the garage, he started inserting the front page and sports page sections into the Sunday edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He had already gotten the comics and classifieds and the rest of the newspaper on Friday when his route manager tossed the bundles out the back of his truck onto their driveway. He put those parts together on Saturday afternoon, after which he went collecting payments.
He collected the week’s payments once a week. Most people left them in an envelope under their doormat or taped to the front door. Some old folks liked handing it to him personally and liked hearing him say thank you. He kept the money in a cigar box in his mother’s dining room cabinet. The route manager stopped by every Monday morning, counted the money, and left him a receipt. Tommy lost the receipts as soon as possible. He worked hard but wasn’t a bean counter like his father. He delivered the newspapers seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, on foot, as fast as he could. The houses in his neighborhood were close together, which was helpful. He had to be done in time to catch the bus to school.
His paper route was all of Ethel Ave. between Clifton Blvd. and Detroit Ave. There were ninety seven houses on his route. He lived on the lake end of the street, making his life easier than it might have been. He walked a loop, first north to Clifton Blvd., then south to Detroit Ave., and finally north again. He crossed the Conrail tracks twice. When he was done with the next-to-last newspaper he was back at home, back where he had started. His dad’s newspaper was the only one he white glove delivered. The rest got delivered flying from his hand to a front porch. He never looked behind him to see whether anything unpredictable had happened, like a paper rolling off a porch in a rainstorm or being torn apart by a dog.
Monday through Saturday he stuffed the newspapers into his shoulder bag. Every time he threw one on a porch the bag got a little lighter. He left it in the garage on Sundays. The paper was too big that day to carry. He pulled a Radio Flyer with removable side panels on Sundays. The panels kept the stacks of newspaper in place. The wheels were old rubber. They were slick as baloney skins. They gripped the sidewalk well enough three seasons out of the year. They slid every which way in snow and ice.
The last house on the northeast corner of Ethel Ave. and Clifton Blvd. was one of the first houses on his route. It was a two-story brick home with a detached garage to the side, unlike all the others on the street whose garages were in the back. The front door of the dwelling faced Clifton Blvd. The driveway was a short slab of concrete. Lorcan Sullivan lived in the house with a good-looking woman nobody ever saw. Lorcan had been born and grew up in Lakewood after his mother married an American soldier in the 50th Field Artillery Battalion. The newlyweds left Belfast to raise a family in the United States the minute World War Two ended. Lorcan’s neighbors always wondered what he did for a living once he was grown up. He only ever said he was in business.
Tommy knew to throw the paper at the base of the house’s back door, which he could do without even trying. That Sunday, however, he didn’t have to throw the paper. Lorcan Sullivan came out the back door as Tommy was rolling up with his Radio Flyer. The man unlocked his car and got in. He never parked in the garage. He always parked in the driveway, the nose of the car facing the street. The car was an Imperial LeBaron, the heaviest and most expensive car in the Chrysler line-up.
“Hey kid, over here,” Lorcan called out, waving for him to bring the paper to him. Tommy knew the man’s name. He didn’t know everybody’s names on his route, but he knew who the man in the black pinstripe suit was. He gave him better tips than anybody else. There was always an extra dollar in the envelope inside the back screen door. That was for Tommy being his neighbor’s unofficial look-out on the street.
“You ever see anybody funny hanging around, you tell me right away.”
“What do you mean funny?”
“Funny like they look like they don’t live around here. It will be a man, probably one man, sitting in a car looking like he’s just doing nothing. He might be wearing an old-fashioned kind of hat. He might be pretending to be reading the paper. He’ll be oily and dark-skinned, for sure, like a Dago.”
“All right, I’m on it, “Tommy said.
“You’re on the mark, kid.”
He hadn’t spotted anybody suspicious the whole year nor the year before. Ethel Ave. was a quiet street. Their mid-town neighborhood was a quiet neighborhood. Lakewood was a quiet suburb, not like the big city, where bad things happened day in and day out. He handed Lorcan Sullivan his copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The front page was full of the yesterday’s bad news.
Tommy walked to the crosswalk, crossed the street, and turned left. It was getting on 6:30, a half-hour after sunrise. It wasn’t light, yet, but it wasn’t dark, either. A man and a woman pushing a sleeping baby in a stroller went by on their way to Lakewood Park. Lake Erie was only two blocks away. He was just about to throw a newspaper at the first house on the corner, the first house starting up the west side of Ethel Ave., when a thunderclap knocked him down. He fell face first, barely able to break his fall with his hands. When he landed he cupped them over the back of his head. He did it without thinking. Something landed with a thud beside him. The noise of the explosion became an intense silence. He stayed on the ground for a minute.
He couldn’t hear anything except for his ears ringing. He looked back across the street. The Chrysler LeBaron was a fireball. He stood up, unsteady, staying where he was. People were looking out their windows. His hearing came back. A dog was barking like a nut case. A fat man in a bathrobe ran out of a white house. “Don’t move, stay there,” he shouted, gesturing with his hands, inching toward the fireball before turning around and coming back. They both stayed on their side of the street watching the flames and smoke. It wasn’t a few minutes before they heard sirens coming from two different directions.
Tommy looked down at what had landed beside him. It was a hand. There was a silver ring on the pinkie finger. It was Lorcan Sullivan’s hand. The hand was a charred fist clutching a part of the newspaper. The paper was smoking, tiny flames licking at the edges trying to become bigger flames. It was a section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a section called ‘The Spotlight.’ The headline of the full-page lead feature jumped out in king-size block letters. It said “BOMBING BUSINESS BOOMING HERE.”
Tommy Monk’s alarm clock sat on the nightstand next to his bed, but except for Saturdays and Sundays he never set it. When 5:30 in the morning happened on weekdays he knew his father would be coming through the door shaking him and making him get up. There was no turning back time those mornings. His father was more commanding than his Westclox Baby Ben.
It was Sunday, the morning of July 6, 1975, and since it was, Tommy had set his alarm the night before. His father always slept in on weekends, snoring his head off, and reading the newspaper the rest of the morning, catching up on that week’s news. His mother was up at the crack of dawn on weekends making meat pies and casseroles for the family for the rest of the week. She kept a cup of coffee and a slice of flaky pirukas near to hand while she worked.
His mother was from Estonia. She grew up on a family farm. His father was from Finland. He grew up in a city. They met and married in Finland after she fled Estonia and the Russians. She slipped through the Iron Curtain in a stolen rowboat, making her way across the Baltic Sea. When they were awarded green cards after a new American immigration law came into effect in 1964, they emigrated to the United States, to Lakewood, Ohio. Tommy was a two-year-old toddler when he was followed by a brother and soon after that by a sister. His father changed their family name from Muukkonen to Monk when he went to work as a bookkeeper for TRW. He was still working for TRW, except he had moved up the ladder to accountant and gotten a raise. When he did, he bought a Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon. He kept it at the front of the driveway for a week so all the neighbors could see it.
“You’re the best dad ever,” his children said a month later when they were driving to Pymatuning State Park in their new car for camping and campfires. Tommy and his brother sat in the rear-facing seat telling each other scary stories about mad dog bank robbers on the run. Their sister had the middle bench seat to herself. She liked it that way since she considered both her brothers to be nitwits. Her father was the strong silent type. Only her mother was worth talking to.
Tommy was called Tommy by everybody except his mother and father and his friends. His mother called him Tomas. His father called him Bud. His friends called him Tommy One Shoe because one day, getting on the CTS bus that took him to grade school at the West Park Lutheran School, he discovered he was only wearing one shoe. It was too late to get off the bus and go home for the other one. He spent the rest of the day limping to class, to lunch, back to class, and back home. When he got home there was a hole in his shoeless sock. A blister was peeking through the hole. The next day at school he found out he was the One Shoe boy.
After Tommy got the alarm clock calmed down, got dressed, and got himself to the garage, he started inserting the front page and sports page sections into the Sunday edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He had already gotten the comics and classifieds and the rest of the newspaper on Friday when his route manager tossed the bundles out the back of his truck onto their driveway. He put those parts together on Saturday afternoon, after which he went collecting payments.
He collected the week’s payments once a week. Most people left them in an envelope under their doormat or taped to the front door. Some old folks liked handing it to him personally and liked hearing him say thank you. He kept the money in a cigar box in his mother’s dining room cabinet. The route manager stopped by every Monday morning, counted the money, and left him a receipt. Tommy lost the receipts as soon as possible. He worked hard but wasn’t a bean counter like his father. He delivered the newspapers seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, on foot, as fast as he could. The houses in his neighborhood were close together, which was helpful. He had to be done in time to catch the bus to school.
His paper route was all of Ethel Ave. between Clifton Blvd. and Detroit Ave. There were ninety seven houses on his route. He lived on the lake end of the street, making his life easier than it might have been. He walked a loop, first north to Clifton Blvd., then south to Detroit Ave., and finally north again. He crossed the Conrail tracks twice. When he was done with the next-to-last newspaper he was back at home, back where he had started. His dad’s newspaper was the only one he white glove delivered. The rest got delivered flying from his hand to a front porch. He never looked behind him to see whether anything unpredictable had happened, like a paper rolling off a porch in a rainstorm or being torn apart by a dog.
Monday through Saturday he stuffed the newspapers into his shoulder bag. Every time he threw one on a porch the bag got a little lighter. He left it in the garage on Sundays. The paper was too big that day to carry. He pulled a Radio Flyer with removable side panels on Sundays. The panels kept the stacks of newspaper in place. The wheels were old rubber. They were slick as baloney skins. They gripped the sidewalk well enough three seasons out of the year. They slid every which way in snow and ice.
The last house on the northeast corner of Ethel Ave. and Clifton Blvd. was one of the first houses on his route. It was a two-story brick home with a detached garage to the side, unlike all the others on the street whose garages were in the back. The front door of the dwelling faced Clifton Blvd. The driveway was a short slab of concrete. Lorcan Sullivan lived in the house with a good-looking woman nobody ever saw. Lorcan had been born and grew up in Lakewood after his mother married an American soldier in the 50th Field Artillery Battalion. The newlyweds left Belfast to raise a family in the United States the minute World War Two ended. Lorcan’s neighbors always wondered what he did for a living once he was grown up. He only ever said he was in business.
Tommy knew to throw the paper at the base of the house’s back door, which he could do without even trying. That Sunday, however, he didn’t have to throw the paper. Lorcan Sullivan came out the back door as Tommy was rolling up with his Radio Flyer. The man unlocked his car and got in. He never parked in the garage. He always parked in the driveway, the nose of the car facing the street. The car was an Imperial LeBaron, the heaviest and most expensive car in the Chrysler line-up.
“Hey kid, over here,” Lorcan called out, waving for him to bring the paper to him. Tommy knew the man’s name. He didn’t know everybody’s names on his route, but he knew who the man in the black pinstripe suit was. He gave him better tips than anybody else. There was always an extra dollar in the envelope inside the back screen door. That was for Tommy being his neighbor’s unofficial look-out on the street.
“You ever see anybody funny hanging around, you tell me right away.”
“What do you mean funny?”
“Funny like they look like they don’t live around here. It will be a man, probably one man, sitting in a car looking like he’s just doing nothing. He might be smoking, pretending to be reading the paper, something like that. He’ll be oily for sure, like a Dago.”
“All right, I’m on it, “Tommy said.
“Do right by me, kid, and there’ll be something in it for you.”
He hadn’t spotted anybody suspicious the whole year nor the year before. Ethel Ave. was a quiet street. Their mid-town neighborhood was a quiet neighborhood. Lakewood was a quiet suburb, not like the big city, where bad things happened day in and day out. He handed Lorcan Sullivan his copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The front page was full of yesterday’s bad news.
Tommy walked to the crosswalk, crossed the street, and turned left. It was getting on 6:30, a half-hour after sunrise. It wasn’t light, yet, but it wasn’t dark, either. A man and a woman pushing a sleeping baby in a stroller went by on their way to Lakewood Park. Lake Erie was only two blocks away. He was just about to throw a newspaper at the first house on the corner, the first house starting up the west side of Ethel Ave., when a thunderclap knocked him down. He fell face first, barely able to break his fall with his hands. When he landed he cupped them over the back of his head. He did it without thinking. Something landed with a thud beside him. The noise of the explosion became an intense silence. He stayed on the ground for a minute.
He couldn’t hear anything except for his ears ringing. He looked back across the street. The Chrysler LeBaron was a fireball. He stood up, unsteady, staying where he was. People were looking out their windows. His hearing came back. A dog was barking like a nut case. A fat man in a bathrobe ran out of a white house. “Don’t move, stay there,” he shouted, gesturing with his hands, inching toward the fireball before turning around and coming back. They both stayed on their side of the street watching the flames and smoke. It wasn’t a few minutes before they heard sirens coming from two different directions.
Tommy looked down at what had landed beside him. It was a hand. There was a silver ring on the pinkie finger. It was Lorcan Sullivan’s hand. The hand was a charred fist clutching a part of the newspaper. The paper was smoking, tiny flames licking at the edges trying to become bigger flames. It was a section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a section called ‘The Spotlight.’ The headline of the full-page lead feature jumped out in king-size block letters. It said “BOMBING BUSINESS BOOMING HERE.”
Excerpted from the crime novel “Bomb City.”
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.
“Bomb City” by Ed Staskus
“A police procedural when the Rust Belt was a mean street.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books
Cleveland, Ohio 1975. The John Scalish Crime Family and Danny Greene’s Irish Mob are at war. Car bombs are the weapon of choice. Two police detectives are assigned to find the bomb makers. It gets personal.
A Crying of Lot 49 Publication
147 Stanley Street 