by Thomas Laird
‘He wanted me here?’ I asked.
I was looking at Jenkins. He was a tall, lanky man with chestnut brown hair. He must have been in his early forties, I guessed.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you, Michael?’
‘Yeah, Pa. I asked the doctor if you could come with me today.’
‘He wants you to know what’s going on and he wants to hear what you have to say to him about it.’
I looked at the therapist. I’d been in therapy before, as I said, and I thought I knew how these sessions tended to run.
But I was at a loss to begin. I looked at Michael for help, but he just looked back at me as if I were supposed to answer some question he had already posed.
‘Let me see if I can help get us started,’ Jenkins smiled.
He had a notepad, but the ballpoint remained on the coffee table next to his chair.
‘Michael feels as if he doesn’t match up to your expectations of him.’
‘You feel that way?’ I asked my son.
‘Well, yeah. You never seem to be able to tell me if I’m doing okay. You know? You never seem to talk to me and tell me when I’m screwing up, either. You just don’t seem to say much to me at all, and it makes it hard to know ...’
His eyes began to tear up. After all that convincing pep talk I gave myself about how my son wasn’t a weeper. Yet he wasn’t bawling uncontrollably. He was just gaining small globes or droplets in the corners of his eyes.
‘You’re saying I don’t let you know how I feel about you?’
He nodded his head.
‘Michael is having trouble with his self image. Something I’m sure you’ve heard about before, Mr Parisi.’
I wasn’t used to being addressed as a ‘Mister.’
‘You mean like eating disorder self image problems?’
‘I mean the general kind. It’s not just anorexics and eating disorder patients. It’s not always about food — whether you’re overweight or underweight. Michael doubts his self worth because the priest made him feel ashamed.’
‘But he never actually —’
I looked into Jenkins’ eyes.
Then I looked at Michael, whose tears were now streaming down his face.
‘You didn’t tell me what really happened, did you, Michael.’
He shook his head.
‘Tell me what really happened.’
‘Mr Parisi —’
‘Tell me what really happened!’
‘He ... Father Mark made me touch him ... And he ... he did oral sex on me, Pa.’
He dropped his face onto his hands and he began sobbing.
‘And was there anything else, Mike? Did he do anything else?’
‘Mr Parisi —’
‘He said ... He said if I ever told anyone, he’d spread the word around that I was gay and that I had made the move on him, on Father Mark. He told me I’d be humiliated in front of all the guys I knew. At school. At church. Every-where. He was angry because I told him I wasn’t going back to that church. So he made me promise to be quiet. If I didn’t say anything, then he wouldn’t.’
I was numb. I must have sat mute for at least two or three minutes. Michael had stopped his tears. Now he sat stoically next to me. Jenkins stared at his notebook.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you, Pa. I’m sorry.’
I got up and went over to him. I bent down and I hugged him tightly. Then I grabbed hold of his head as he shot an arm around my waist and held me just as firmly.
‘You should’ve told me, Michael. I wouldn’t have been mad at you.’
‘I didn’t want you to think —’
‘I know, Mike. I know.’
Then I sat down again. Jenkins handed my son a box of Kleenex. Michael took two tissues and then handed back the box. He gave his nose a strong blow, and then he palmed the tissue.
‘It’s not just about self-image,’ Jenkins continued. ‘It’s about Michael’s sexual identity, too.’
‘I’m not ... I’m not —’
‘No one ever thought you were, Mike,’ I told him.
‘He told me he would spread it around if I didn’t. He said something like this doesn’t have to be true, you just had to say it to someone and all of a sudden it would be true whether anything had really happened or not. He didn’t give me any choice, Pa. He said he would tell everyone.’
‘It’s okay. I understand. It wasn’t your fault, Michael —’
‘I should’ve done something, Pa. I should’ve hit him in the mouth and run away, but he was a priest. I liked him. And then he threatened to ...’
‘It’s not your fault, partner. It really isn’t your fault. Don’t you believe me?’
He looked at me and nodded very slowly.
‘I’m a Catholic too, Mr Parisi. So we all know about guilt, I assume.’
‘He isn’t guilty of a damned thing. Except being young and helpless and in the presence of a predator, back then.’
‘We know that. All three of us know it. But in Michael’s head he’s taking responsibility for allowing this thing to happen.’
‘Responsibility? It was that son of a bitch with the collar who —’
‘I know, Pa. My head knows that ... but I can’t convince the rest of me that I didn’t let it happen.’
‘Oh Michael. How can you think it for even a second? These guys that I hunt on the job are the causes of the misery they create. Lots of them try to lay the blame on somebody else. They like other people to help carry the load they made. So they cop a plea and say that society made them do it, or mommy didn’t breastfeed them long enough when they were kids. You aren’t responsible. It was him, Michael, and no one else. Don’t you try and grab part of the burden he put together when he did you and all those other young boys. Don’t you carry his weight.’
Jenkins looked down at his blank notepad.
‘I don’t use the goddam things either,’ I told him about the pad. ‘I’m too vain. I think I can remember everything. And the problem is that I do.’
I looked over at my son. Apparently his therapy was just beginning. I tried to stop the racing of my heart and pulse, but I didn’t care about my hypertension at that moment. This wasn’t about me; it was about the young man sitting next to me.
‘You’re going to be all right, Michael. You’re going to be okay. I guarantee it.’
He looked at me as if he’d caught me in a lie. But then his eyes shifted over to his therapist.
*
I wasn’t a drunk. My father took care of that affliction for the Parisi family. I was raised in the house of an alcoholic. He wasn’t an out-of-control drunk, but he had to have his drinks after every shift. My father, Jake, who wasn’t my biological father. My Uncle Nick, Jake’s brother, had impregnated my mother, Eleanor, after it became apparent to my mother that Jake Parisi was shooting blanks. Jake had mumps in his teenaged years, and doctors believed that it could cause sterility.
The picture was much more complex, of course. Nick had been in love with my mother, but he left town to try his hand at the petroleum business in the Southwest during the thirties, but by the time he returned to Chicago, brother Jake had given Eleanor an engagement ring. It fractured any bonds between Jake and Nick, but Nick backed off graciously and let them live their lives. Until the boozing and until it became clear that Jake would father no offspring. Eleanor pleaded her case to Nick, the story went. She wanted to be a mother if she could enjoy nothing else in their marriage, and Nick could supply the seed. It would give my mother some sense of family after being married to an alcoholic homicide detective who wasn’t home much.
Nick gave in, and I was the by-product of my mother’s deal with a not-so-devilish ex-lover. Jake knew I was not his, and there was always a sense of disconnectedness in our relationship.
I couldn’t bring friends home to the house if I knew Jake was there. He wasn’t an abusive drunk, as I said, but I couldn’t bear to think my male friends or any of my girlfriends would see him and smell him
after a three hour session at his favourite saloon owned by The Greek.
Michael couldn’t tell it to me. He had to tell it to a stranger. I always thought of our home as a sanctuary. Things like this simply didn’t happen to us. Especially since I was a policeman. I could protect my children and my wife. I almost lost the Redhead to The Farmer. But I never thought that danger extended to my children. Natalie was a police officer, a Homicide, more recently. She could take care of herself. But I was supposed to build an impenetrable wall for the rest of us. He was twelve when the priest did this to him. He was going to turn sixteen in a few months.
I sat at the bar of Garvin’s alone. It was after my shift had concluded. It was midnight, and I was on the four to twelve. There was only Garvin and me in this west suburban dive of a tavern.
I wasn’t here to get drunk. I wasn’t a rummy, I told myself, and it was a little late in life to start up any new vices. I didn’t really have any vices — except for being a workaholic. The job was the only fix I ever needed. When personal things, traumatic occurrences, happened I went to another case. Another unsolved killing. Another murderer in a world stocked plentifully with murderous thugs. I’d never run out of business. There’d never be a recession or depression in my line of business.
I took out the .44 Bulldog and laid it on the bar. There was no one here to see my weapon unsheathed. Then I took the nine-millimetre out of my holster and laid it next to the snub-nosed .44. Finally I took the switchblade out of my other jacket pocket.
All my weapons were on the bar slab, in a neat, tidy row.
I couldn’t protect my own son. I couldn’t keep him from the evil in this world. It was as if I were as impotent as my two pistols when they were unloaded. It was as if my knife’s blade were broken in two. It was as if, I thought, my maleness had gone south as well. Now I was an old man. The object of derision. The geezer who had his social security cheque snatched away from him when he was en route to the bank for a deposit.
I felt weak. As if the flu were coming on. I felt my forehead, but it wasn’t warmer than usual. I looked at my arsenal, lying there on the bar slab.
A train went by on the tracks just outside Garvin’s, and the whole bar shuddered and rattled as it sped past us. It was past the witching hour on a week night. The next patrons of this tavern wouldn’t be in until 7:30 a.m. or so, when the deadman’s shift was over.
I should have gone home. Natalie would worry if I didn’t check in or if I was late coming home. She could call me now since I had a cellphone. Something I’d fought against for two years. But the damn things had become as much a part of our lives as fast food.
‘Jesus, Jimmy. You expecting a war?’
He shocked me upright. I had been leaning over the bar, looking at my two guns and my one blade.
‘Christ, you scared the hell out of me, old man.’
I put the Nine back in its holster, and the .44 and switch back into my pockets.
‘Something wrong?’ Garvin asked.
He was a short, stocky Irishman. A pug nose that had landed just below his blue Mick eyes marked his continually sour-looking face.
‘Yeah. Something’s wrong.’
But I got up before he found out what it was.
*
Wally Garrity called me on my office phone and asked me to come on over to Computer Services, so I collected Jack Wendkos who had his own tiny cubicle down the hall, and we took the elevator downstairs.
‘Been listening in on some interesting chats,’ Garrity smiled.
These computers were his world, his work, his playground, his domicile.
‘And?’ Jack asked.
‘What do y’all know about vampirism?’ he drawled.
‘Not a thing. I saw a Dracula movie once in high school,’ I told Garrity.
‘This is no movie, Lieutenant. These people are serious. Real serious,’ the computer king said. ‘Someone’s been throwing parties, it seems.’
‘What kind of parties?’ Jack asked.
‘Not the kind with Bud or Miller Lite, I don’t think,’ Garrity replied.
‘Blood ritual?’ I asked.
‘They never say it in those words. But someone’s been doing Black Masses, and apparently they’re using real blood in the ritual.’
‘Any idea where these things are taking place?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘They keep on referring to some place out in the sticks. Maybe on a farm. But they’re being careful because they know about hackers like me,’ Wally grinned.
‘Can you give us a guess where these things are happening?’ I asked.
‘You’ll be the first to know if they give us a scent, Lieutenant.’
We turned to walk out of his office.
‘One thing.’
‘Yeah, Wally,’ I said.
‘These guys aren’t fooling around. I mean it’s not like some high school adventure. They sound more mature, LT. They sound like grown-ups. And for the record, Jimmy, Jack, these folks are scaring the shit out of me.’
He tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.
‘You mean for real?’ Jack asked him.
‘These guys are wrong, Jack. As in evil?’
Jack looked over at me with a lame grin.
‘No shit. These folks come from somewhere other than this planet. I mean, I think I’m going to start wearing my gun to work.’
He blushed just slightly, and then Wally Garrity returned to his station in front of his state-of-the-art computer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Samsa was taunting us with verse from Edgar Allan Poe. He was daring us to nail him before he did victim number three. Jack seemed to be taking it even more personally than I was.
‘We should’ve shot him when he took off from the White Castle,’ my younger partner said. His voice betrayed his anger.
‘You know we don’t take pot-shots at anyone when they’re running down a street or alley unless we’re sure it’s clear. It was dark, Jack. We could’ve burned down some old lady walking her dog.’
He didn’t answer because he knew I was right and he knew he wouldn’t cut loose on a suspect unless the shot was definitely in the clear.
The phone rang. We were sitting in my office, looking for messages about the Goths or the vampire cults that might show up in the personals. We’d come up empty.
Wally Garrity was on the line. He thought he had something for us, finally.
*
‘They’re talking about something special going down tomorrow night,’ Garrity told us. He gestured toward his computer screen where he’d hacked into a chatroom with two of the ordinary chatters.
‘They ain’t talking about sex, Jimmy. They ain’t talking about drugs. They’re talking about something to do with human blood. They even used those words in reference to what’s happening at this gathering tomorrow night.’
‘Do they say where?’ I asked.
‘In fact they do, Lieutenant. Apparently they’re outdoors types. The cold evidently doesn’t phase them. Fisherman’s Slough, way out on the Southwest side. Out in the sticks. No one fishes there anymore. I’ve been out there. It’s more like a lover’s lane.’
We watched them converse — they appeared to be a male and a female. The call names were Gothgirl’77 and Bramlover 12.
‘Bram Stoker wrote Dracula,’ Wally told us.
‘Yeah. I heard the name before,’ I said. ‘He was an Irishman, wasn’t he?’
‘Hell if I know. I don’t read fiction,’ Wally grinned.
‘I know. Computer mags,’ Jack smiled.
Wally blushed because Jack had exposed his reading habits.
‘I’m just not a well-rounded person,’ Garrity shot back at us. Gothgirl’77 was talking once again about the ‘big event’ planned for the next evening. It was February, I remembered. Today was the twelfth, a Thursday. So tomorrow —
‘It’s Friday the thirteenth. How convenient,’ Wally smirked.
‘You think this Bram guy wears a
hockey mask?’ Jack said.
‘Hockey mask? I don’t get it,’ Wally admitted.
‘You don’t watch horror movies either,’ Jack accused the computer geek.
‘No, I don’t. Sorry.’
‘Friday the Thirteenth ... Wally, my man, you gotta get out more often.’
Gothgirl talked about Fisherman’s Slough once more. She asked her friend Bram for directions, and he came up with them.
She told him she’d never partaken of the ‘real thing’ before, and I assumed she wasn’t talking about having a Coca-Cola. She was in a high just thinking about her first time. It was going to be like a sort of communion, but not the kind my church practiced. I looked for a mention of Satanism or devil worship or black Sabbath, but she never used such terms.
I asked Wally if maybe we were hooking on to a wrong number. Could it be possible that these were two kids who’d killed some domestic pet and used the blood for this big assembly of spooks on Friday night?
‘No, Lieutenant. I don’t think so. He said it was human blood. He used those words, just before you and Jack got down here.’
‘Okay. Then we’ll have to crash the party in the woods.’
‘This sounds like that Blair Witch thing,’ Jack said.
‘What?’ Wally asked.
‘Faggeddaboutit,’ Wendkos replied. ‘Keep reading your fucking magazines, Junior.’
Wally blushed and then returned to his video screen.
*
It was still very cold. Spring never really seemed to break through in Chicago until the latter part of April, if it arrived that early.
We had arranged for the County Sheriff’s deputies and the Park District Police to accompany us on this bust. We were out of Chicago proper, so we needed their okay to deploy our own guys in the event of arrests.
We stood behind a small copse, watching the parking lot of Fisherman’s Slough. It was too cold for the lovers to park tonight. It was in the low teens, the radio had told us. The Sheriff’s people and the Park District cops were sitting in the warmth of their patrol vehicles in another lot a half mile away. We couldn’t scare anyone off with copper rides visible by the Slough, so Jack and I and six Chicago uniforms walked the four blocks from where we parked our cars and spread ourselves out in the woods that lay just beyond the parking lot.