BACKGROUND MUSIC
Two Months After the Death of Tony DiFabio Part #1 of 2
Hannigan Butler awoke to the glare of sunshine tearing through the linen sheet nailed across the bedroom window. His head pounded from the night before. Nausea coursed through his chest as he seated himself on the edge of the bed. His girlfriend Wendy was face down on the mattress, a blanket partly draped over her naked ass, stopping just short of her greasy blonde hair.
Hannigan stumbled into the bathroom, clad only in black dress socks. He needed to vomit, which he did, over and over until the dry heaves took hold. After a few minutes he was able to stand and lean against the bathroom sink and to stare into the mirror above it.
The whites of his eyes were crimson from the blood vessels ruptured during his morning ritual of vomiting and fainting. Most often he would crawl back into bed, a wastebasket placed alongside the headboard for assurances sake. He always checked the remains of his fountain of bile for blood, a sure sign of esophageal ruptures, which would be the harbinger of death. The jaundice was starting to return. Unnoticeable to most, but he could see the telltale signs in his eyes, when not bloodshot from the dry heaves, and his nail beds. It had always dissipated after a few weeks of sobriety, fluids, and healthy meals, but Hannigan was unsure if he had a few weeks left, let alone a few weeks to spare.
Sobriety was always on the to-do list, maybe a stay at a rehab center, maybe just rock-hard determination and unflappable will, and ironically, maybe a miracle. He had been investigating and debunking miracles for the past five years, but now it seemed a miracle would be the only thing to save his life from the endless cycle of addictions and the miseries they ushered forth. He never met a drug or an alcohol he didn’t fall in love with, along with the nearest enabler who now slept beside him.
Today was different. In order to be paid for his latest investigation into what many believed was a case of spontaneous human combustion, Hannigan would need to visit Sister Jude at the St. Vincent Hospice Center. And in order to do so, he would need to display a demeanor of self confidence, and the aura of competence. A tall order for the wretch he had become.
He was in desperate need of money. Since Wendy had been fired from the bar, he could no longer drink for free thanks to her bartending and careful work at the cash register. She was a master at short-changing drunks and selling them unfulfilled promises of sexual gratification. She was a charlatan, a grifter, and a talented thief and pickpocket. But that all ended when her boss, Charlie Cossack, announced her employment was over, and she was forbidden to ever darken the doorway of the Bar & Grill again.
Whenever high or drunk, or both, Hannigan felt invincible. When he sobered up after a binge, the insecurities arrived along with a peculiar paranoia. He was convinced others could sense his fear and confusion, they could sense his apprehensions by taste or smell, he was sure he carried that aroma. It was the only explanation for complete strangers to confront him with their accusations, their confessions, their observations about him.
Two days prior, Hannigan had phoned the Bishop’s office about payment for his investigation into a fire at a skilled nursing facility. If he wanted his money he was informed he would need to pick it up in person. Many in the community had attributed the fire to a miracle, the arrival of the Holy Spirit, triggered by a white cardinal that had been making appearances at the windowsill of the victim. The locals wanted to believe the fire was divine, and the bird’s arrival and its persistence in visiting the comatose patient’s room was a prophecy.
Although a rarity, the appearance of an albino bird, or any other creature lacking skin pigmentation, was not unique in Hannigan’s mind. As often was the case, the locals created their own lore about the fire and the bird. A group of believers would meet in the courtyard of the facility to offer prayers for their sick and loved ones, and any events that followed were attributed to miracles generated by a comatose man named Alvin Bean. They truly believed the bird to be a sign of hope and charity, delivered to them by the shell of a poor human being, bed-ridden and unconscious for months after being struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle.
The Fire Marshal’s Office ruled the cause of the fire as undetermined after the State Police Lab could not definitively state that the damage to the motor powering the victim’s bed was from an external or internal source. Hannigan’s own investigation stated that although the cause could not be proven to a scientific certainty, it was inconceivable that the victim had spontaneously ignited. In reality, Hannigan was hoping he could be paid as an expert witness if subrogation arose between the bed manufacturer and the nursing facility. It could be a great payday. A great payday if he was alive to enjoy it.
But then the wrench thrown into the gears. Tony DiFabio, a maintenance man at the nursing facility, and the last person to have seen the victim alive, died under mysterious circumstances as well. When Hannigan arrived at Mr. DiFabio’s apartment to interview him, he found the apartment door ajar. He peeked in and saw Mr. DiFabio standing and staring out the window adjacent to the efficiency kitchen. He was dressed in boxer shorts and a t-shirt, his complexion an eerie blue, and his eyes were wide open but covered in a milky glaze. He didn’t respond to Hannigan’s knocks at the door, or his voice, so Hannigan stepped in, hoping not to frighten Tony, who might be hard of hearing. When Hannigan tapped him on the shoulder, he didn’t move. He was cold and lifeless, but it appeared he had died while standing up, with wooden Rosary Beads wrapped around his disfigured right hand.
Hannigan dialed 911 from the wall phone in the kitchen.
“I’m not sure if this guy is alive or dead, but someone needs to check this out.”
When the ambulance crew arrived, they stood in awe before arguing about how to remove Mr. DiFabio from the apartment and down the long, narrow stairwell.
“We’re gonna snap this guy in half, and after all this might be a crime scene, not an unattended death.”
“We shouldn’t be removing dead people anyway,” the other medic chimed in.
The crew leader decided upon caution, but asked Hannigan to remain with them while they reached out to the coroner’s office.
Noah Gregory, a Fire Marshal, responded to the scene in the minutes before the coroner arrived. Hannigan had spoken to Captain Gregory about interviewing Tony a few days prior to his gruesome discovery.
One of the medics acknowledged the Captain’s arrival.
“Captain, we’re waiting for the coroner, this is just too plain weird for us to move this guy.”
“Yeah, I heard it come over the radio,” replied Noah, “thought I’d check it out — you just can’t make this stuff up, can you?”
Noah and Hannigan made eye contact. The corpse remained standing as the medics argued about their next course of action.
The coroner arrived and asked the medics to transport the deceased to the hospital morgue for an autopsy to determine the cause of death. There were no apparent signs of foul play or suicide. It was an ugly and clumsy scene as the medics decided to carry Mr. DiFabio down the stairs, a stretcher or backboard wouldn’t fit in the stairwell, and bending this mannequin of a corpse to fit in a chair for removal was beyond acceptable.
Hannigan and Noah turned their heads, unable to watch this chaos cloaked in comedy. It’s a human defense to find humor in grotesque tragedy, a defense mechanism familiar to both Noah and Hannigan.
In the weeks that followed, the spiral of addiction did its best to consume Hannigan. When the alcohol wasn’t working, he snorted enough cocaine to down a grizzly bear. And in the process, a gusher of a nosebleed soiled his only clean dress shirt.
He’d need to buy another before meeting Sister Jude to pick up his check. He crawled out of bed again and donned pants and shoes along with a nylon wind breaker. His vehicle stopped running a day ago, a dead battery which he could not afford, so it would be a long walk to J.C. Penney’s and then to the hospice center. He rifled through Wendy’s purse and found a couple five-dollar bills. She’d been holding out again as usual. He donned his sunglasses from the shelving next to the door and decided it would be a good idea to eat before starting his journey, the pizza joint across the street would have to do.