Mother Teresa believed that if she could just get some garlic into those leprous friends of her son it would cure their various ailments. After all, it had worked in the old country for most of the men in her family, and there was no reason it shouldn''t work here in Buffalo. Besides, one of them had been hanging around her oldest daughter Maria-Santa, so she felt some urgency to get him cleaned upquickly. As she was considering the intricacies of the situation, Deputy Chief O''Gready appeared at the back door.

Deputy Chief O''Gready had appeared on the scene the night of the boarding house fire. This was shortly after the untimely death of Mother Teresa''s husband Arturo who''d been raking the wet sidewalk just under the mixer when the valve let go, burying him under three yards of fresh concrete. Mother Teresa had gotten used to Arturo''s short, stocky frame, and was fascinated by the tall, blond O''Gready, who resembled nothing more than a Hollywood leading man from one of those Technicolor American movies that romanticized post-war Europe. Mother Teresa knew better about post-war Europe, of course, otherwise she wouldn''t be in Buffalo, but could never quite admit to herself that it had been love at first sight. For his part, Deputy Chief O''Gready had always wanted a dark-haired woman who knew her way around a bud of garlic.

……hey, step in if you want to further the character development, or start a plot line. But we need to be careful. This is distracting from the storyboards for the Whine Country pilot, and I know Leah wants those finished……

The daydream snapped with "sit down stranger, that's not shit on the seat". A voice from the dimness of the bar she knew to be Szickzeegoch, her older brother from over the river in Ontario. "I just came in from the peat bog mine and the mud's still on my feet" - his snakeskin boots rolled off a stool making way for Deputy Chief O'Gready who he jokingly called stranger. Szickzeegoch was no stranger to a Buffalo cell. In her concern for garlic recipes and a flash of Gary Cooper, Mother Teresa had missed Szickzeegoch as he slid into the bar behind the Deputy Chief who seemed equally mezmerized. "Bill!!" she cried as she flew across the warped board floor and wrapped her arms around him. Everybody, even Mother Teresa, called Szickzeegoch "Bill" because few could remember how to pronounce his real name. Correctly done, it sounded like "Zak" with a sort of gutteral hork typical of many eastern European names. His workmates and Teresa herself had resorted to calling him Bill to curb the habit of so many who had resorted to "Mr. S", which he loathed.

"Them skins look good" said Deputy Chief O'Gready as Bill's boots left the stool, allowing the big man to sit down. For many years Bill had lived in a Wainfleet bush trailer. He worked days for The Great Canadian Peat Bog Mine but nights he spent hunting rare Massassauga rattlers with his friend Meeshaw from Ohsweken. Meeshaw could smell rattlers and together they had built up a thriving cross-border trade in snake skins and boots. Nobody knew who actually made the boots but they were good - rumoured to be hand crafted on the Reserve. "Me and Meesh have taken to breedin' em" Bill said. "That way they get huge and the diamonds look like this on the boot" he said while pulling up a jean leg and looking up at his sister who had just noticed that Deputy Chief O'Gready wore a cheap toupee. You would never believe what they like to eat - celery and cheeze whiz." At that point Mother Teresa had an idea.