BULLDOG O'HARA

 

VERSUS

 

THE ADOLESCENT CRIMEBUSTER

 

 

James J. Yellen

 

 

            It was a Saturday morning as I stood in line at my local post office waiting to mail out several large packages. I had gotten there as early as possible hoping to beat the inevitable mass of humanity using Saturday morning to complete their procrastinated errands. But as I emerged from the revolving doors and entered the cloistered confines of my town's postal memorial to the days of F.D.R. and the W.P.A., I found no less than a dozen assorted patrons strung out in front of the lone open window. Each individual stood clutching his string-tied bundle or pregnant brown envelope, waiting to send it off to some far off destination. I let out a deep sigh of frustration and fell in line behind the last person, barely beating out an overweight gray-haired woman with a fistful of letters each stamped REGISTERED. I smiled to myself proudly for squeezing in front of her. She was good for at least twenty minutes at the window.

 

        I impatiently shifted from foot to foot as the queue moved forward with the same imperceptibility as the hour hand on a clock. I was bored. My eyes were searching the room desperately for some way in which to occupy my brain, when they suddenly locked onto something. Across the room on the far wall in bold, black, official-looking letters I saw the word WANTED. Below it was a photograph. But instead of showing the burly, scowling face one expects to see on a WANTED poster this photo was of a smiling, plump, gray-haired old lady. The words beneath read: WANTED BY THE FBI FOR KIDNAPPING, EXTORTION AND MURDER.

 

My mind reeled. That old gal is probably somebody's grandmother and she's wanted by the FBI. Wanted criminals aren't what they used to be, I thought to myself. It was then that I slowly began to realize why my eyes had been attracted to that poster in the first place. WANTED. There was a time in my life when that one word made me a hero among my peers.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

        It all started on a bleak, gray morning in my hometown, Athenia, a bleak, gray industrial city in Northern New Jersey. A cold brisk north wind howled down from the headwaters of the Passaic River in the Kittatiny Mountains and whirled through the street blowing the frigid November rain into the faces of three bundled figure. Duke, Boz and I were making our way to another eventful day of education at Public School Number Thirteen.

 

        Our route to school, Van Houten Avenue, was unlike any other street that sixth grades students plodded along on their way to school. Van Houten Avenue was crowded with taverns. They were so numerous in fact that many times it was openly boasted that this street had actually at one time appeared in Ripley's Believe It or Not as "The American street with the most taverns per mile." And this is where the action was. Even at the unlikely hour of eight in the morning these neighborhood watering holes did a land-office business as workers from the local defense plant arriving for the day shift, or leaving the midnight shift crowded elbow to elbow to lift a few fingers of cheer and lay down their daily wagers on the horses or numbers.

 

        And each day and untold number of school kids with runny noses, like me, would march past the neon-lit doorways of these dreary booze dens on their way to and from school. While kids in other parts of the country would occupy their otherwise idle time by kicking Campbell soup cans, kids in Athenia kicked cans marked Rheingold or Ballantine. While other kids in other places collected bottle caps from Nehi or Royal Crown, my entire collection consisted of the likes of Schlitz and Schaefer. Van Houten Avenue was a street unlike any other. Anything could happen there, and it frequently did.

 

        As would often happen as we reluctantly trudged along like robots on our way to our day's education, the subject of conversation turned to the previous night's radio programming.

 

        Duke and Boz excitedly compared the latest adventures of their respective favorite radio heroes, the Shadow and the Green Hornet. I liked those shows too, but they weren't among my favorites. So I patiently listened to my schoolmates for three of four blocks and when the conversation ebbed I took advantage of the lull and interjected, "Did you guys hear Gangbusters?"

 

        Now there was a radio show with guts! Wailing sirens, blazing machine guns, marching convicts. Gangbusters had it all. It was a radio show a kid could sink his teeth into. This was the stuff that made a kid's life worth living. A kid could always count on a murder or two on a Gangbusters show.

 

        But the one thing above all else that made this show relevant to a twelve year old was involvement. Gangbusters made every kid who listened to it a crimebuster because at the end of each show they would broadcast their "Nationwide Clues" a detailed description of that week's wanted criminal.

 

        After the Gangbusters story was over, with the blood mopped up and the bad guys properly incarcerated, I would eagerly slide to the edge of my bed, turn up the volume on my table model Emerson radio with genuine Bakelite case, and wait for the clues. In my mind I pictured police officers all over the United States in front of their radios frantically copying down the description as it came over the airwaves. For a brief moment I was one of them. I was on the side of law and order. I was a crimebuster!

 

        "Did you hear the clues?" Boz asked.

 

        Infidel! What a silly question. Hear them? I had them memorized! I held my nose between my fingers in an attempt to add that unmistakable nasal quality to my voice that radio always associated with voices heard over the police band, and I recited for my friends' enlightenment last night's clues:

 

        ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS! Be on the alert for a convicted murderer. Patrick O'Hara, alias Bulldog O'Hara, five feet one inch tall, weight two hundred and thirty pounds, red hair, and red complexion. May seek work as a riveter, house painter, or barber. This fugitive has a six-inch oblique scar over left eyebrow.  Has tattoo of red and blue bulldog head on right forearm. Is interested in crossword puzzles and astrology. O'Hara reportedly carries a snub-nosed revolver in coat pocket. Consider him dangerous! If you should see this man, notify your local police, the FBI, or Gangbusters AT ONCE!

 

        "Jeeze! He sounds like a mean one," Duke said.

 

        "You bet he's mean." Then I sagely added, "He might be right here in one of these bars right now."

 

        Duke whistled under his breath, "Imagine that."

 

        As I looked up through the falling moisture I saw that we had arrived in the vicinity of our destination. But before crossing Van Houten Avenue and going into school, we made our daily stop at Nick's Sweete Shoppe, the local candy store and luncheonette.

 

        Inside the store I stood in front of the candy counter with my nickel clutched in my sweaty fist trying to decide which tooth-rotter I was going to invest in this time. It was a difficult decision for a kid.

 

        "Come on Herb, make up your mind." Duke called from the doorway. My two friends had quickly made their usual purchases and were ready to leave.

 

        "Let's go. We're going to be late." Boz added.

 

        "Hey you kids," Nick the owner shouted from his position at the grill, "Go out or come in. And shut the door."

 

        "I said shut the door!" Nick repeated even more loudly then before.

 

        "You guys go ahead," I answered them. "I didn't decide yet."

 

        Shrugging their shoulders in frustration over my vacillation, the duo clamored out of the door.

 

        I had narrowed down my choice to either a package of Twinkies or a box of Goobers, and only after a great deal of deliberation and mental anguish did I finally settle for the Goobers. But as I reached across the lunch counter to give Nick my nickel, I noticed something about the man sitting on the stool next to me.

 

        He was by no means average looking. He was extremely short and very overweight.

 

        "Five feet one inch tall. Weight two hundred thirty pounds."

 

        A mere coincidence, I thought to myself. There are lots of short, fat men around. Mr. Schweitzer, our principal, was short and fat in fact.

 

        But then I noticed that he had the New York Daily Mirror open on the counter in front of him and he was doing the crossword puzzle.

 

        "Is interested in crossword puzzles."

 

        Could it be? No, I was letting my imagination run away. Lots of people did crossword puzzles. My mother did crossword puzzles all the time and I never heard her description on Gangbusters.

 

        Then I saw it. It had been there the whole time but I hadn't noticed it before. There, on the back of the man's arm, just above his wrist...a red and blue tattoo of a BULLDOG'S HEAD!

 

        IT'S HIM! IT'S BULLDOG O'HARA!

 

        I spun around and dashed out of that candy store so fast that my wake raised dust that hadn't been disturbed in thirty years. My mind raced, wondering what I should do. Where is there an FBI office around here? How does a person get in touch with Gangbusters? Neither of those options seemed possible. That's when it dawned on me...the local police! We had local police right here on Van Houten Avenue! So I ran to the man in the blue uniform who guarded our school crosswalk. He would know what to do. He was our "local police."

 

        "Slow down." Joe the cop said as I skidded to a breathless halt in front of him. "You still have a couple of minutes. You're not late for school yet."

 

        "It's him Joe!" I shouted frantically. "It's him! He's in Nick's!"

 

        "Who? Who are you talking about?"

 

        “Bulldog O’Hara!” I shouted desperately.

 

        Joe gave me a puzzled look. “Bulldog? What are you talking about, kid?”

 

        "Bulldog O'Hara! The killer! You know...from Gangbusters!" I shouted gesticulating maniacally toward Nick's store.

 

        "Oh, for crying out loud! Gangbusters again!”

 

Joe pushed back the back of his cop hat and rolled his eyes to the sky. “It's the same thing every Tuesday morning. Every kid thinks he sees the criminal described on Gangbusters! Get yourself to school. I don't know what's happening to you kids today. All you do is sit around and listen to the radio. I'd hate to be around to see what happens when you're running this country. Come on now, off to school."

 

        Dumb flatfoot! I rushed into school, anxious to share with Duke and Boz what I had seen. I cornered them in the cloakroom and discreetly whispered my news to them.

 

        "There he was, big as life. Right there in Nick's. He was doing a crossword puzzle just like they said."

 

        Both of my friends were visibly shaken by my news.

 

        "I gotta tell somebody. Joe the cop won't listen to me."

 

        "Tell somebody?" Boz said. "Are you crazy? You can't tell anybody. Do you know what will happen if you tell somebody?"

 

        "They'll catch him and lock him up." I answered naively.

 

        "Yea. But what if he escapes? Who do you thin he's going to come after?"

 

        "Who?"

 

        "He’s going to go after the guy who put the finger on him. The guy who sent him up. You, dummy, that's who!"

 

        I looked at Boz and he made a slashing gesture across his throat with his finger. I knew exactly what he meant. My mouth went dry and my tongue swelled. The taste of fear was not pleasant. My knees threatened to buckle under me and I clung to the coat hanger for support.

 

        "That's why we have to keep this thing quiet." Boz whispered.

 

        That night I had a hard time sleeping. I wondered if Bulldog had seen me. Did he see the look of recognition on my face? Did he know that I knew? Would he be waiting for me tomorrow with his hand shoved deep into this coat pocket and his itchy trigger finger nervously caressing his snub-nosed revolver concealed there? Was he lurking outside my bedroom window right now, waiting for me to fall asleep so that he could sneak in and rub me out? It was a long night of tossing and turning.

 

        The next morning I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed. I tried desperately to detect some small symptom that would keep me home from school, but I couldn't even come up with a toothache.

 

        As I slumped into my chair at the breakfast table, my father was just beginning his plunge into the morning newspaper. I mindlessly gulped my orange juice, swallowing pits and all, and was just about to dig into my bowl of Kix when I heard my father say, "Hey, look at this. They caught some big time wanted murderer right here in town."

 

        My stomach did a somersault. Can it be? If it was, my short but adventurous life was over.

 

        "Let me see!" I shouted snatching the paper out of my father's hands. He was too stunned to react to my rudeness.

 

        Sure enough, there it was. Right there on the front page, as big as life.

 

        "WANTED MURDERER CAPTURED. Patrick O'Hara, alias Bulldog O'Hara, wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for murder was captured and taken into custody yesterday in a Van Houten Avenue luncheonette by local police. The arresting officer, Patrolman Joseph Smolinski who is the crossing guard at Public School Number Thirteen said that he was acting on an anonymous tip when he entered Nick's Sweete Shoppe and spotted O'Hara."

 

        AN ANONYMOUS TIP! I'm safe! I slumped back in my chair in a lump of relief.

 

        Joe the cop wasn't at his usual post that day, but everyone at school was buzzing about the big arrest. Even the teachers were seen gathered in small groups peeking furtively out of the school window in the direction of Nick's store.

 

         But Duke, Boz and I kept our lips sealed. Until this day, we were the only three who knew the identity of the anonymous tipper who put the finger of Bulldog O'Hara.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

        Suddenly I was awakened from my thoughts of the past by a voice. "You're next Buddy. Do you want to mail those packages or not?" I was the voice of the postal clerk.

 

        I placed my boxes onto the counter. "Special Delivery, third class, certified please." I said.

 

        "I'll have to look this one up in the book," the clerk mumbled as he pulled the packages toward him

 

        The gray haired old lady behind me sighed a heavy sign of impatient annoyance and shuffled her feet nervously. I turned to her to apologize for the delay, but was immediately struck by a mysterious feeling of deja vu. Something inside told me that I had seen that face before, very recently. I cautiously allowed my eyes to wander to the WANTED poster on the wall and then back to the face behind me. The resemblance was remarkable. I couldn't believe it! It was happening to me again. I did my best to remain calm and unruffled while the postal clerk completed my transaction, but all the time I nervously eyed the exit. My feet were itchy. They wanted to bolt and run to the local police to report my discovery.

 

        I pocketed my change and took two slow, deliberate steps away from the window. I didn't want to give away my intentions by moving too fast. That's when I heard the clerk say in a loud, clear voice, "Good morning Sister Maria. Sending off more donations to the Missions?"

 

        "That's right, Mr. Hotchkiss." The little old lady said. "Those poor unfortunate people need all the help they can get."

 

        I took one last glance at that WANTED poster and was not disappointed by the thought that being a hero once in a lifetime was more then enough for anybody, especially me. So I shuffled out of the post office door and back into the cold, gray drizzle of Van Houten Avenue where turned into the first tavern I came to for a little something to settle my nerves.