Chapter Six: Back to the office

Manns needs to make sense of all he has learned...will he be able to do it in time?

'All I remember was getting in that kid's mustang and driving off into the night. I popped some vicodine and gulped them down with my trusty flask of whisky. I was stinking, wet, and full of vivid images of the cruel mistress that was death. She had it in for me that one. An eternal witness to the cruelty this city had to offer.Why was I the chosen scapegoat to endure allof this crap? still, I managed to regain composure and drove off like a formula one racer. The rain didn't stop its intense punishment, and everything and everyone in New Harmony was subject to the stubborn drops from heaven. I went deep into the Irish neighbourhood I called home, Cork town, the headquarters of the city's inner most dangerous thugs that side of New Harmony.

 But at least I was home. I parked the kid's car under a street lamp, and gazed at the flooded passages. The night was grey and silent. I needed a moment to catch my breath, because it seemed to have run away at a record distance. Multiple details ran through my mind like a dog in a butcher shop, and I knew I didn't have much time to make sense of them. The Tomassinmo's would be making contact with Rojas anytime now, that b*****d. He would tell them everything. How he saw me get away with a dress I didin't even have. How I would bring the entire family down if I wasn' t Whacked, like a simple street mutt. My name wouldn't mean anything around the city anymore, street cred wasn't worth a pack of cigarettes in the joint when it came to crossing the big families in New Harmony. I inhaled and exhaled, my nervous system pleaded for a puff of nicotine, the sweet release of tension that the long white sticks of vice would give me. The pretty maidens in white.

 With the booze and the pills, the tension and blood loss, I couldn't afford to light them, even though I wanted to. I slipped out of the widowed vehicle. My feet moist with the feel of mud. dirt and blood fused into an extraoridnarily disgusting ooze I felt trickle down my leg. I wanted to walk quickly across the street and enter my office but I couldn't. The adrenaline was wearing off. I keep bleeding and bleeding. My legs felt weak. A part of me knew the second the cringe worthy pain invaded my brain when I had jumped off the second floor in Belvedere, that I must've at least sprained something. No one could help me in my hour of need. 

I was at the mercy of the dark, vacant she devil that was New Harmony. I couldn't keep moving, no matter how much pain killers I had taken in the car. I was soaking. My thoughts ran to my brother, to my past life. I didn't know if I would croak, but it sure felt like it. I see some figures in the distance. They look familiar. They could either be the greatest blessing sent by the lord and the saints themselves, or an Italian gunman on his way to finish the job. Either way, I await anxious as my eyes begin to close by themselves, because either way, I would be out of the moist, pouring weather.