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When the wall’s blank, I’m just another subway rider; when it’s been graffitied, I’m a duty cop looking at evidence; when it’s a page of autobiography, it sees me like a mirror, like your cousin from the Bronx; but it ain’t art, and I’m no critic. The taggers call me Ugly Joe or Officer Ugly. They’re clever like that. Can’t even write their own names legible. When they’re bustin my chops, they use stencils and a picture they made from my department ID. It’s a favorite topic for your vandalwriters, my supposable sexual practices: Ugly Joe Blanks Blank sort of genius. But this guy. This guy tells a story I recognize from the neighborhood, one wall at a time, with page numbers. Except we don’t find them numerical over the years we’re chasing him. There are gaps. Now that we snagged a CCTV image—Vic Damone haircut, subway worker’s uniform—I see how he managed it, ladder and a bucket, maybe a clipboard, on what grounds was he reasonably suspicious, my sergeant would ask. Hours it must take. First the primer, gotta let it dry, then a wall of sentences, neat page number, signature you can read, no swear words, no threats. Hardly seems criminal. I’ve been to his schools, his church, his subway stop. He’s born at Montefiore, same as me, page 146. You think he’s an art school kid, but no—steelwork, dockwork, hump and grunt. Dad’s a cop, retired like mine. We know his height at age 15. We know his best girl’s complexion. There’s things we don’t know, like why not on paper, instead of places only I seem to find. Maybe Earsnot, Dybyk335, maybe they know. I’ll ask them, next time I detain them. If [stricken] ever is arrested, it’ll be some rookie doesn’t appreciate the significance.
Original Copyright © February 01, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 31, 2026
His mother regretted him, never wanted him, even tried to terminate him, but, at his most sought-after, he was both the second and the eighth most wanted men in the jurisdiction where he practiced his trade. He will stand trial as just one activist, all his aliases merged, but, until his arrest, he performed as several. Two women died in the recent daytime blast he executed, both of them pregnant with babies who doctors tried in vain to deliver (a detail he calls ironic justice) but whose bodies he refuses to tally as hits. A nurse, surprised by shrapnel during her coffee break, lost one eye and the use of her right arm. Do I look scared to you? she will ask him from the witness stand, left hand raised. His ascent through the ranks of the wanted was ingenious. When he was only tenth most wanted, he earned a number eight spot for an alias by planting stolen ID at the scene of a clinic bombing. Since then, he’s conducted workbench surgeries on his cheekbones and jaw, unremarkable features even before he went into the abortion dissuasion business, now half swollen half erased to further frustrate mug book matching, like challenging parents to select their fetus’s image from a random batch of sonograms. Meanwhile, he’s promoted alternate identities in other towns, with unrecognizable faces and aspects, while agents in pursuit go chasing mustaches he’s since shaved or eyeglasses he stole only to be seen in them once. When he is ultimately apprehended, poking around the remnants of an explosion, then interrogated, identified, identified repeatedly, repeatedly convicted, and slapped around with the name his mother gave him, the law will conspire to keep him alive for life, for all of his sacred lives in fact, to be served concurrently.
Original Copyright © January 24, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 30, 2026
Very Short Novels 