“Those bastards” being the Bulletin’s management.
O’Hara was told that they were not paying him his due. Mickey listened to his buddy, especially when Bolinski offered to represent him as a small token of appreciation—“I can never adequately repay you”—for taking the fall at West Catholic High.
“If you’d ratted me out to Dooley the Drooler as your fellow numbers runner,” Casimir said, “I’d have been out on my ass, too. There’d have been no ‘The Bull’ Bolinski, no all-American trophy, no scholarship to Notre Dame, no caree
r with the Green Bay Packers. And without the cushion from the Packers, both the pay and off-season time, I’d probably never have considered law school, and certainly not become a sports agent after retirement.”
And as an agent, The Bull proved every bit as effective off the field as he’d been on it.
Players liked The Bull personally, but the athletes really liked what he could do for them financially. And The Bull wound up making more money by repping the sports world’s top players—football, basketball, golf, et cetera—than he had earned actually playing the game.
Negotiating Mickey O’Hara’s new contract with the Bulletin had been no challenge compared to the high-pressure worlds of sports and product endorsements.
And as happy as O’Hara had been with his new benefits—from more pay and holiday time to a new lease car every year—The Bull showed his brilliance by including an exit clause in the contract. It was brilliant because the Bulletin signed off on it, and because everyone believed Mickey, happy with the contract terms, would write for the paper forever.
Everyone including Mickey.
But then came the newsroom brawl, in which Mickey punched the city editor. Roscoe G. Kennedy was no great fan of O’Hara—though he did grudgingly admit that Mickey could be a helluva writer despite not having attended the glorified University of Missouri School of Journalism, as Kennedy had. And there was no question that Kennedy resented the money and perks that the unschooled O’Hara enjoyed thanks to his buddy, The Bull, squeezing the newspaper management.
Kennedy thought that Mickey O’Hara had become a prima donna in his expensively furnished office, someone who had the audacity to demand more space in the newspaper for his articles and photographs than the boss—J-school grad Kennedy—felt he deserved.
O’Hara, who’d been at the Italian restaurant La Famiglia the night that Matt Payne put down the two robbers who’d beaten up a couple in the parking lot, had written a long article for Page 1A. He’d also delivered the photograph he’d taken of Payne in his tuxedo standing over one robber lying on the ground. Payne had his cell phone in his left hand and his Colt .45 Officer’s Model in his right.
What had set Mickey O’Hara off—and it happened in the presence of The Bull and his wife, Antoinette Bolinski—was Kennedy wanting to put a smart-ass headline on the photograph: MAIN LINE WYATT EARP 2, BAD GUYS O IN SHOOT-OUT AT THE LA FAMIGLIA CORRAL. Kennedy justified it by saying that Payne looked like a goddamn gunslinger who obviously liked shooting people.
O’Hara put up his dukes, then dodged Kennedy’s swinging fists, putting him down with a left punch to the nose followed by a right jab to the abdomen. Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., then grabbed his client and—with Kennedy disparaging O’Hara before the entire newsroom staff, then declaring him fired—dragged him out of the city room, never to return.
The Bull that day pulled out O’Hara’s contract—the signatures barely dry—and easily negotiated with the Bulletin management a thirty-day cooling-off period with pay for Mickey, plus public apologies from Kennedy for the city editor’s treatment of a Pulitzer Prize winner before newsroom colleagues.
O’Hara decided to use his downtime to research a book on Fort Festung—a despicable shit from Philly who had been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and stuffing her body in a steamer trunk, where she’d been found mummified.
Mickey convinced Matt to accompany him to France in hopes of finding the fugitive—if only for a current photograph for the book.
And, toward the end of their time in France, they finally tracked down the arrogant Festung, long-haired and goateed, living comfortably on wine and cheese with a new girlfriend in a French village.
Mickey got his photograph—and it was of Philadelphia Police Department Sergeant Matthew M. Payne collaring the fugitive.
And only weeks after their return to Philadelphia, Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., ever diligent in delivering for his clients, presented Michael J. O’Hara with the contract for his new position as chief executive officer and publisher of CrimeFreePhilly.com.
Mickey, after signing the contract in mid-September, called Matt’s cell and told Matt to meet him at Liberties Bar for some good news.
As O’Hara slid in the booth across the table from Payne, he said, “You may kiss my ring, Matty, as I’m now a triple-dipper. Say, ‘Congrats, Mick.’”
Matt looked at the blue T-shirt Mickey wore. In white, it bore a representation of a pair of dangling handcuffs and lettering that read MAKE HIS DAY: KISS A COP AT CRIMEFREEPHILLY.COM.
“Okay, congrats. But what the hell is a triple-dipper? And what the hell’s up with that shirt?”
Mickey’s animated face lit up and he said: “Two weeks ago, The Bull told the Bulletin’s management that his client—me—was unhappy with the tepid apology, et cetera, of their city editor, and that at the expiration of the thirty-day cooling-off period, I planned immediately to execute the exit clause of my employment contract. That happened the following day, and triggered a lump payment equal to a month’s pay for every year that I’d been employed by the newspaper, dating back to when I threw the rag from my bike in West Philly. So that’s one deep dip into the moneymaking machine. And I just got the check, less The Bull’s five percent commission, for the publisher’s acceptance of my book on Fort Festung. That check makes for a double-dip.”
“And the third?”
He pointed to his shirt and said, “I’m now running CrimeFreePhilly! I have a five-year contract, renewable annually, which means every year I know if I have another five to go. If I ever get canned, I walk with the equivalent of four years’ pay. And I have stock options that vest if certain goals are accomplished, which gives me both incentive and a nice nest egg on top of what I walked away with from the Bulletin. Thus making me a triple-dipper.”
“Impressive. But aren’t you going to miss newspapers?”
Mickey shook his head. “Hell no, Matty. Forget that. Haven’t you been paying attention? Newspapers are deader than a double-crossing gangbanger in South Philly. Just like the TV nightly news killed afternoon papers, there’s this thing now called the World Wide Web that’s killing all newspapers. You really should try to keep up.”
Payne flashed him the middle finger of his right hand, then changed to his index finger and pointed at the T-shirt.