it isn't a pretty story. true stories seldom are.

it's a story of secrets and lies and minor betrayal going all the way up to the highest seat of power in our fair city.

our story opens one gray pittsburgh morning. the rain is drizzling down, has been drizzling for weeks. i woke early to sneak away for a tryst with my first and dearest love: a cigarette.

xanthippe and i had given them up two and a half years earlier in a heroic and life changing experience: i had gained forty pounds.

but lately, cigarettes had been calling the house and hanging up. cigarettes would suddenly bump into me at the grocery store. i could smell their perfume in restaurants. i had caved. i was weak.

oh, the shame!

soon i was sneaking off for noontime secret meetings, coming back to the office smelling like smoke. it was getting harder and harder to hide. i was headed for trouble, and i knew it.

so early this gray pittsburgh morning, i slipped out of bed without waking the missus and, wearing my pajamas, giant green rubber boots and a raincoat, slipped out the back door into the rain.

to smoke a cigarette.

as you know, smokers are not the smartest people in the whole world. they're the only ones you see milling around aimlessly in all manner of inclement weather. everybody else knows to go back inside.

i should point out here that i wasn't exactly wearing pajamas. i was wearing tattered hand-me-down blue and red checked pajama bottoms and a tshirt with a picture of eric cartman uttering a foul word.

the boots in question:

well, dumb as i am (smoker and all), at least i know that it's better to get out of the rain. so i decided to go hunker under the eaves of my garage, back in the alley.

my smoker's brain was diabolically clever: i could stay slightly drier as i sucked burning poisonous fumes into my lungs plus the garage would shield me from view of the house in case xanthippe were to wake up unexpectedly.

i bounded up the 26 stairs behind my house to the back alley...

ok.

i trudged up the 26 stairs behind my house, huffing and puffing and hacking up disgusting lung pudding as my hands tried in vain to hold the lighter still.

just as i got to the top of the stairs, coughing and barking like a labrador retriever, a gust of wind ripped down the alley and blew my raincoat open.

there in the alley behind my house stood the mayor himself of our great city, hizzonor mayor thomas murphy.

i took a moment to compose myself, wrap the raincoat back around me, and survey the situation.

no, there was no doubt. this was the mayor himself, standing next to my neighbor, harry hayadoan.

harry hayadoan is a retired pittsburgh cop, a police photographer, actually. he knows everybody including, apparently, the mayor.

"hiya, stubby," said harry as he reached out his arm and put a hand on my shoulder. "i wantcha ta meet somebody."

i stuck out my hand and muttered something like, "nice to meet you, sir" and then burst into another fit of coughing.

i have to give him credit. the mayor shook my hand and looked me in the eye. he asked me what i did for a living, where i worked, how long i've lived in the city.

he seemed to listen to my responses. he was instantly likeable.

so there i stood, hair in a dishevelled bed-head rat's nest, sheet-creases across my unshaven face, a picture of a cartoon 8-year-old screaming an obscenity on my tshirt, shaking hands with the mayor of pittsburgh.

he acted like i was wearing a suit with a tom murpy campaign button pinned to the lapel.

i'll tell ya one thing: from now on, the man's got my vote.