{"id":320,"date":"2012-01-31T06:07:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T06:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/?p=320"},"modified":"2024-09-22T17:04:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T17:04:29","slug":"all-i-need-is-a-day-by-liam-sweeny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/all-i-need-is-a-day-by-liam-sweeny\/","title":{"rendered":"All I Need Is A Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief O’Malley and Detective Sorelli stood in the dark, stale booth behind the one-way mirror. The booth still smelled like cigarettes from back in the days when you could smoke in it. The interrogation room was wired, the tape recorder on ‘pause.’ Jimmy sat back and took his earphone off, letting out a breath of Taco Bell.
\n+++++<\/span>“We only got a day with him to talk,” the Chief grunted through the hoarse voice of the guy that put ALL of that smell in the air. “He’s been here long enough. He won’t lawyer up, but if we start asking the wrong questions, he might. We gotta’ get him to talk. He could bring down Richie Rich.”
\n+++++<\/span>Richie Rich was engaged in everything, his fingers in many pies – hell, the whole damn bakery, from jacking freighters to fake IDs to the global sex trade. He got the nickname for the way he flaunted his ill-gotten gains; mansions, yachts, sports-cars; he even had diamond collars on his five Rottweilers.
\n+++++<\/span>“What’s he lookin’ at now?” Sorelli said.
\n+++++<\/span>“Just on what we have him on, at most, a year.” The Chief said.
\n+++++<\/span>“OK, I can do it off that.”
\n+++++<\/span>“Where the hell were you yesterday?” asked the Chief.
\n+++++<\/span>“You could say I was sealin’ the deal…”
\n+++++<\/span>“Is that why you got a shiner?” Sorelli touched his sore eye.
\n+++++<\/span>“Nah, I was fucking the cleaning lady and I slipped on the floor wax.”
\n+++++<\/span>“Smart-ass.” Chief chuckled. “Go in there. Seal the deal…”
\n+++++<\/span>Sorelli hopped out of the booth and walked into the interrogation room, his game face on, cold as a rock in Antarctica. Joey Sips’ sat in the hard steel chair, his cuffed hands covered in tattoos, long goatee and bald-head rolling back and forth on his head. Sorelli’d uncuff him, but Joey’d lunge. Sorelli’d shoot, and no one would get Richie Rich.
\n+++++<\/span>“Joe…” He said, just standing there with his hands in his pockets. “You know what we really want…”
\n+++++<\/span>“Ya’ ain’t gettin nothin’ from me, pig” Joey leaned back, as best he could, and smiled.
\n+++++<\/span>“We have enough to put you away for a year…”
\n+++++<\/span>“Shit, and that’s all you got to threaten me with, bitch!?” Joey said laughing. “I did three years in Attica, motherfucker… I’ll do a year in the county standin’ on my head!”
\n+++++<\/span>“If you want to…” Sorelli said, still calm. “You were a real bully in Attica, weren’t you…”
\n+++++<\/span>“I got by…”
\n+++++<\/span>Sorelli laughed. “You tortured the fuck outta that kid, Ian… what’s his name… Ian Braun?”
\n+++++<\/span>Joey took a deep breath. “Little punk. Hell yeah I did!” He was proud of himself.
\n+++++<\/span>“I just went down to Attica yesterday, know a couple guards there, ya’ know?” Sorelli said, “And I was reading your prison file. All the times you put that kid in the infirmary. Word was that you fucked him\u2026 and fucked his woman when you got out… that true?”
\n+++++<\/span>“I ain’t fuck[ed] him\u2026 and that other thing wasn’t on my file!”
\n+++++<\/span>“Oh, no… Ian told me that.” Sorelli commented, never losing his calm.
\n+++++<\/span>“Fuck that punk.”
\n+++++<\/span>“On that thought, hold on…” Sorelli left the room, back into the booth. He could see Joey twitchin’ with his fingers like an audience member waiting for the punch-line. The Chief leaned over as Sorelli pulled an 8 x 10 from his laptop case.
\n+++++<\/span>“You better be going somewhere with this…” Chief said.
\n+++++<\/span>“That’s where I was yesterday.” Sorelli replied. “And I am.” He walked out of the booth and back into the interrogation room. He flapped the photo before tossing it on the table.
\n+++++<\/span>“Five years can change a man…” Sorelli said. “After you did that to him\u2026 and his old lady, Ian felt like he needed protection. So he joined up with the Aryan Brotherhood. That was five years ago. They made him hit the weights, push-ups, sit-ups, taught him how to fight…”
\n+++++<\/span>“He didn’t even want to be seen talking to me on the field. I had to get him in administration after he ordered a riot… In Sing Sing.”
\n+++++<\/span>“Thought he was in Attica…” Joey said.
\n+++++<\/span>“We’ll he runs the AB for the whole New York prison system now.” Sorelli said. “He turned out to be a good leader, good recruiter. And he wanted you to know why he flipped you the finger in this picture…”
\n+++++<\/span>Joey was rattled now. “Why?”
\n+++++<\/span>“‘Cause that’s what he’s gonna’ have someone do to you every day you wind up in his prisons.”
\n+++++<\/span>Sorelli let it sink in. Joey stared at the photo. Ian was a muscle-bound, tattoo’d ball of rage and hatred, and he had Joey to thank for it. He’d killed three people in Attica, and Lord knows how many deaths led a line of blood back to his kites and code words on the yard.
\n+++++<\/span>“But I’m going to the county…” Joey said blankly.
\n+++++<\/span>“Well… maybe.” Sorelli said.
\n+++++<\/span>“Maybe!?”
\n+++++<\/span>“One year is a county bid,” Sorelli said, “But if we tell the ADA we want him to recommend one year and one day, well, you know where you do that time…”
\n+++++<\/span>“Excuse me… I’ll be right back.” Once again Sorelli went into the booth. The Chief’s jaw was as slack as Joey’s. Joey was gonna’ spill as soon as Sorelli walked back in there; they all knew it, even Jimmy.
\n+++++<\/span>“Sonofabitch!” He said, slapping Sorelli on the shoulder.
\n+++++<\/span>“Chief, can you call ADA Rockwell?” Sorelli asked. “He’ll be prosecuting. Ask him for some help with a sentencing recommendation before I go in… We can let Joey stew for an hour…”
\n+++++<\/span>“What do I ask him to add?”
\n+++++<\/span>Sorelli smirked.
\n+++++<\/span>“All I need is a day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We only got a day with him to talk,” the Chief grunted through the hoarse voice of the guy that put ALL of that smell in the air. “He’s been here long enough. He won’t lawyer up, but if we start asking the wrong questions, he might. We gotta’ get him to talk. He could bring down Richie Rich.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1464,76,1452],"tags":[78,429],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-l","category-liam-sweeny","category-short-story","tag-all-i-need-is-a-day-2","tag-liam-sweeny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Zyqm-5a","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}