THE FLASH AND THE KID

“Call me The Flash, kid.”

Sure. The name fit. In fact, I knew the first time I met Ezra Garfinkel outside the Three Squares Diner that Ezra wasn’t the kind of guy to be taken for granted. Or to get taken. Not even once. You only had to take a good look at him to know you weren’t going to squeeze an extra nickel, word, or favor that he didn't owe you out of him.

I may be a high school dropout, but that much I knew that first rainy afternoon I ran into The Flash. I wasn’t dressed for the encounter. Seventeen-year-old me, knockabout Lonnie G with my hangdog hair, ripped Wrangler jeans, and the old bomber jacket (my only jacket) with the frayed cuffs. Not so sharp looking next to this tall dude with the Bryl cream-slicked- back hair. You just had to call him The Flash, not Ezra, in that shiny sharkskin suit with a vest, a silk bow tie… and a walking stick, for crissake! And who wears dress shoes and polishes them like that anymore? Where the hell did he find a shoeshine boy in 1992?

Ezra was Flashy and didn’t he know it! He would turn up almost daily at the diner, but where did he come from? Where did he live? Nobody knew. Nobody asked. Sometimes he just poof! seemed to materialize at the corner of Third and Everlawn, and there he was in front of the diner, watching the world go by, whiling away the afternoon, puffing away on that ratty cigar. That was Ezra most Mondays through Sundays, always dressed to the nines, like he was headed to some charismatic church service (if the church had a rouette wheel in the undercroft). I got used to calling him the Flash, no questions asked. And he just called me The Kid, no questions asked.

About that cigar. To complete his throwback gentleman hustler look, Ezra smoked the fattest, stinkiest cigars imaginable. He said they were called Black Dragons. One of the world’s pricest smokes, he said, tucking a thumb under the armhole of his vest and puffing up his chest. They sure were fire-breathers, those stogies. Another mystery– how did The Flash have the cash for those pricey smokes? Nobody knew. Nobody asked.

But where there’s smoke, there's fire, and a pretty good backstory.

Me, my backstory is pretty dull. It’s more like a boring short story. Like I told Ezra, I’m just another latchkey kid, high school dropout, part-time dishwasher, sometime house painter. I can’t hold a candle to the Flash’s origin story, which was pretty colorful, the way he told it. Sometimes I wonder if it was a little too colorful, if you know what I’m saying.

Ezra (according to Ezra) belonged to a legendary Boston family in the distillery business.

But he was adopted. His real parents (according to Ezra) put him in a basket like a sack of potatoes and set him down on the doorstep of the mansion of this rich Boston family and left for parts unknown, knowing the Garfinkels probably wouldn't say “no”. and (according to Ezra), they didn't say no. They took him in and raised him in style. I mean, The Flash even took horseback riding lessons and played water polo!

“What was it like being a rich kid, Ezra?” ” I asked him, imagining ski vacations in the Swiss Alps, tickets to the World Series sitting in the upper boxes, getting into Harvard no questions asked, and a chance of taking the prettiest girls in Beantown to the Boston cotillion!

But The Flash, he just gave me that you-ain’t-heard-nothing -yet grin and straightened his bowtie. . “That was my first life, kid. My first go- around. And not the best one. Nah, not by a long shot.”

“The best one? You mean you had another family, a better one, after that?” I asked.

“No, not a better family. I had another life after I was killed in that train crash in Montenegro, along with the whole family, including the two twin girls and the cocker spaniel George. “ The Flash seemed like he was wiping a tear away that was headed for his goatee.

“That’s horrible, man.”I said. “You were an orphan again!”

“ No, kid. I died, and I came back to life! I started a whole new life. As the second brother in the House of Saud Royal Family in Saudi Arabia. I was a Prince with four wives, four beautiful young wives who fed me grapes and massaged my feet every afternoon on our $650 million yacht.”

“You were reincarnated?“ I guess my mouth was hanging open like a fool by this point. Multiple wives, million-dollar yachts? I had only once been in a speedboat on a cold water lake in Indiana. Flash’s story sounded like a fairy tale come to life!

“ Yeah, I guess that’s what they called it, kid. “That sure was the life. We used gold bricks as doorstops. “ Ezra threw his head back and took a deep pull on his Black Dragon, blowing a cloud of throat-choking black smoke over our heads. “And we lit our cigars with dollar bills, my brothers and me. Hundred-dollar bills.”

Me, poorboy Lonnie G, I’ve never handled a hundred-dollar bill, and I've never spoken to a formerly dead person before.

“But how did you wind up here, Ezra? Here in Spokane. After the yacht and the four wives and the gold brick doorstops?”

Just as we were getting to what I thought would be the good part of the story, , Ezra straightened up, adjusted his bowtie and vest, and looked nervously over his shoulder.

“Oh, oh, got to move along, kid. Here comes trouble.”

Trouble was a world-weary-looking middle-aged man in a crumpled suit with a bum leg (and handcuffs hangin out of his back pocket) who walked up to Ezra and put a heavy hand on his shoulder, as though they had met t before. Maybe more than once.

“ Come on, Harold. You weren’t in your crummy walk-up. This is the second time I've had to come looking for you. Maybe we should review the terms of your parole once more. Who do you think you are, the Prince of Saudi Arabia ? “

“And stop puffing that disgusting Gurkha. If you can't afford a real cigar, and I know you can’t, keep your mouth shut.”

“Officer Mallory,” He said, turning to me and then cocking his thumb toward the Flash.

“You didn’t give this bozo any money, did you, kid? “

I shook my head.

The Flash (Ezra? Harold?) dropped his cigar, crushing it under his heel,

and then turned to follow Malley, gave me a knowing smile

and a princely wink.