They Call Me Mr. M

Ara Mgrdichian

BY ARA MGRDICHIAN

Mr. Wild is clean-shaven and smiling. He’s got a 10,000-mile gaze, and you cannot see the bottom of his pale, blue-gray. He’s gotten just a little pudgy, but he’s still tall and he’s still strong and he doesn’t smoke and he can definitely kill with a smile.

He did three years in the Nam.
Boyle Heights Irish-Jew, American, love child.

Brutal sensitivity.

In the early days, at the high school, before drive-bys and gun toting kids cracked-up and gloating were the norm, he walked straight up to the van parked outside the school where those older kids from somewhere else were waiting inside with the shotgun and the sticks.

Wild Bill walked right up, smiling and opened the side door, looked into the frightened, angry eyes of the alpha male and took the shotgun out of his hands and ran them out of his town, tails between their shaking legs.

Now, Wild Bill and I are dressed in suits, milling about the cafeteria where all the immigrant children are all cliqued up and brooding. Bill and I are herding, we’re gathering Hum-Intel and sniffing scents, making sure it’s all in the box.

No war, the big dogs are here.

School

Smaller children are sent by the too cool headmen, the older kids, the ones with ties to quasi-criminals on the outside”“little munchkins, nice guy baby smiles and tradecraft of the imminent fool. These are sent to nip at my heels.

Flush hounds, stalking-horses.
Ponies.

The bolder ones almost nuzzle, coming in close to Papa Bear. They look, they view. It’s surveillance, baby boy style, but still surveillance and they try to lift the hem of my suit coat. They want to “accidentally,”