His voice flat, he said, “I’m not worried. I saw you on the news last night.”
“I thought you don’t watch TV?”
“Usually I don’t. A co-worker called me to tell me about it.” There was a pause, then, “If you want to meet me, I can do it today at twelve-thirty. Well?”
“Sure, I’d like that.”
“I’ll give you an address then, where we can meet.”
“Okay, sure, let me get a pencil and paper.”
Opening my eyes against the light was agony as a flood of tiny silver daggers emerged and went flying through my eyeballs and into my brain, but I ignored them as best I could and fumbled around the apartment until I found a pencil and some paper to write on, then had Michael give me the address of a coffee shop in Medfield. I knew nothing about Medfield other than that it was a good twenty miles away.
I asked, “Is that where you’re living now?”
“No, but it’s not too far from where I’m working. You should call the police about those phone calls you’re getting.”
“Yeah, I’ll probably do that.”
There was a click then as my son got off the line. I waited until my eyes could focus enough for me to dial, then I made several calls to find out how I could take the bus from Waltham to Medfield. It was going to require two bus transfers, which would leave me in Walpole, and from there I’d have to either walk four miles or take a cab, but I’d be able to get there by twelve-thirty. I made my way into the kitchen area where I poured several large glasses of lukewarm water down my throat, made a mental note that I needed to buy myself a coffee maker, then stumbled back to the bathroom. After stripping off my underwear I stood under the shower until my head started feeling more normal. At one point I tried lifting my right arm. My shoulder was sore as hell, but I was able to lift my arm higher than I could the other day, which was about all I could ask for.
When I got out of the shower I didn’t have much time before I needed to catch the bus to meet my son. Despite how empty my stomach was feeling I didn’t have time to make myself breakfast, so on the way to the bus stop I stopped off at a convenience store and bought a large coffee, a box of chocolate-glazed doughnuts and a newspaper.
I wished I had remembered my baseball cap and sunglasses, but I’d been in too big a rush and had left them back in my apartment. There weren’t a lot of people on the sidewalk, but most of those that were turned my way as I went past them, and from the way their jaws dropped, there was no question that they recognized me. I was in too much of a hurry to care. As it was, I barely caught my bus. There was an empty seat in the back row that I took, and as was common with people who regularly take public transportation, most of the riders already sitting didn’t bother looking up as I walked past them. The few that did didn’t pay enough attention to recognize me.
Once I was seated I wolfed down two doughnuts and half the coffee. It made me feel a little better, my headache more its normal dull ache than the stabbing torturous pain it had been earlier. I reached into my pocket for my bottle of aspirin and realized I’d left that back in the apartment as well. Fuck it, I decided at this point it didn’t matter. I’d be able to make it through the day okay without it.
As much as I was dreading it, I looked at the newspaper. Sure enough, I was back on the front page, and of course they had to prominently display a photo of me taken from the video that had been made. It was a long article which carried over to several pages. I tried reading it but the text blurred too much. I drank the rest of the coffee, sat back and closed my eyes. Ten minutes later I tried again. I had to hold the paper a few inches from my eyes, but this time I was able to focus enough on the print to read it.
The article dredged up all the stuff from the previous weeks, but grudgingly labeled what I did the other day “heroic”, especially after finding out about the arrest records of the two Mueller brothers, who turned out to be fraternal twins. At nineteen they had robbed a liquor store and pistol-whipped the owner and two customers, and each ended up doing a four-year stretch for that. The police were now looking at them for a recent robbery in Watertown where the perps wore ski masks and an employee at the liquor store had been shot and beaten unconscious.
I went through the article carefully. There were quotes from Captain Edmund Gormer, all complimentary to me, and no hint that at any time I’d been a suspect. The paper had to counter all of that with past quotes from my victims’ relatives. I guess it’s easier going from hero to villain than the other way around. Anyway, I got some mild satisfaction from a picture that they included of the Mueller brothers as they were being booked for a host of offenses, both with the same fixed empty gazes in their eyes that you see on every hardened con.
When I was done with the article, I put the paper down and closed my eyes, and tried to remember what Michael looked like. For the life of me, all I could picture was the way he was when he was five years old and I took him to his first Red Sox game. Back then I spent whatever free time I could with him and Allison.
The cab driver recognized me. He was about my age; wispy gray hair framing a square-shaped skull, thick caterpillar eyebrows, rubbery features, near-impossible-to-understand Russian accent. I think he smelled even worse than I did when I first got out of prison. When I entered the cab, he explained away his bad body odor by telling me that he was in the middle of a second straight shift. “Thirteen hours so far in car,” he announced proudly in his thick accent. Soon after we drove off, he started glancing at me through the rear-view mirror, his eyes befuddled under those massive eyebrows.
“You the person on TV,” he said. “One who caught two hoodlums. Beat them up good too.”
I didn’t say anything.
He nodded to himself, sure of his recognition. “I saw you on TV, right before I start driving last night,” he said. I caught the shift in his eyes as he remembered the rest of the story, about what I had done before and all the people I had murdered. He didn’t say anything after that, and I could see the tremor in his hands as he gripped the wheel. Mercifully, it was a short cab ride. When I paid him the fare he avoided eye contact with me, and kept his lips pressed shut when I stiffed him on the tip.
From what I could tell of the little I saw of Medfield it appeared to be a quiet, quaint town. At one point it must’ve been mostly farmland, and still had a country feel to it. The coffee shop I was let out in front of was a modest, brightly yellow-painted Colonial that was probably until recently a family residence, and inside it looked more like an antique store than a coffee shop. Michael sat at a table facing the door, his features tense, his eyes fixed on me as I walked in. He had two cups of coffee in front of him, and he picked both of them up as he came to meet me. Before entering the shop I’d been debating whether to try for an embrace or to offer a handshake when we saw each other, but with both his hands full neither was possible. I followed him outside to an antique-looking cast-iron bench by the side of the building where we could talk without being overheard.
After we both sat on the bench he handed me one of the coffees, and I offered him a doughnut, which he accepted.
“Why’d you do that yesterday?” he asked. “Was it to impress me and Allie? Or were you just trying to get yourself killed?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Michael. When I saw those two men standing outside the liquor store, I knew what they were going to do, and knew how it could turn out, and it just seemed like something I had to do. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or get myself hurt, it was just something that happened.”
He sat quietly digesting what I told him, then said, “You wanted a chance to talk, so go ahead.”
Even without the way he had been anxiously waiting for me inside the store, even without any clear memories of him except as a five-year-old child, I would’ve recognized him from Jenny. As soon as I saw Michael memories flooded back to me of how Jenny used to look. He had so much of my wife’s soft features in his face. On Jenny, they were attractive and added to her femininity,
on him they didn’t look so good. They made him look weak, especially having Jenny’s delicate mouth and slight chin. And with his ill-fitting suit and two days’ stubble he looked shabby. I didn’t mention any of that. Instead I told him it was good to see him.
“So it’s good seeing me, what else do you want?” he demanded with some anger, his eyes hard glass as he looked at me.
“For Chrissakes, Michael. It’s been over fourteen years. Give me a break here. I just want to know how you’ve been.”
He took a long sip of his coffee before saying under his breath, “How do you think I’d be? How do you think anyone would be finding out at nineteen that their emotionally distant father was a cold-blooded psychopath and mass murderer?”
I sat back trying to make sense of this. It was hard to imagine that anyone would let their father’s crimes against total strangers have such an effect on their own life, and it was even harder to imagine that someone with this much weakness and self-pity could have my blood in him. I felt an overwhelming sadness as I looked at Michael and knew that I was responsible for him being like this. He was a quiet kid, always serious-minded, but also good-natured. Physically he took after Jenny so much that I knew I needed to shelter him. That was why when he was four I moved the family to an upper-middle-class neighborhood, and that was why I sent him and Allison to private school. Because of that Michael didn’t develop any toughness growing up and never had to learn how to fight. All of this weakness that I saw in him now was my fault.
“I wish your mom hadn’t told you about what was in my confession,” I said. “She should’ve just told you I was arrested for that extortion racket.”
“And that would’ve been so much better, just thinking that you were a violent criminal? But for your information, Mom didn’t tell us about any of that. FBI agents questioned all of us after you gave your statement. They were the ones who let us know about the people you murdered. I guess they thought it was part of their due diligence in verifying what you told them.”
Jenny had never told me that. I couldn’t help feeling some anger thinking about what the FBI did.
“I’m sorry that’s the way you had to find out about me,” I said.
“And what would’ve been a preferred way?” Michael’s eyes had been fixed on me since we’d been sitting. A weariness dimmed the anger in them and he looked away from me, lowering his stare to the floor.
“To answer your question,” he said, his voice showing the same weariness that had taken over his eyes, “I’ve been in and out of therapy for fourteen years, my marriage dissolved after three years, I have a kid that I’m not allowed to see, and I’m a recovering drug addict. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve gotten any sort of life together. So that’s how I’ve been.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, “I tried to give you a good home. And I made sure there would be enough money for college-”
“You don’t get it,” he said, his voice rising as he interrupted me, his eyes once again meeting mine. “How the fuck can you explain to me what you did?”
“It was a job-”
“Murdering people is a job? That’s how you’re going to explain it to me?”
I felt tongue-tied as I tried to come up with something to tell him. “These weren’t nice people that I took out,” I stammered out. My voice broke on me and I had to stop for a moment to take a sip of my coffee. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, then looked back at Michael and saw how still he had become as he stared back at me. I looked away again, and after clearing my throat, continued.
“They were all in the life,” I half mumbled, half said. “They knew the risks and dangers, just like I did. If I didn’t take them out, Lombard would’ve hired someone else to do it. I was just doing a job, that’s all.”
“You’re going to use the old Nazi excuse, that you were just following orders? That would’ve made Grandma proud, wouldn’t it!”
That was a low blow considering how my mom lost almost all of her family in concentration camps. I tried joking it off, though, telling him there wasn’t a thing I could ever’ve done to have made my mom proud. Michael sat staring at me, unmoved.
“This was so long ago, Michael,” I said. “I was a different person back then, and so much has happened since. But even still, I always cared about you, Allie, Paul and your mother. I never wanted to do anything to hurt any of you. Can’t we move on from all that?”
“So your explanation is that you have no explanation,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“That’s not it,” I said. “I tried the best I could for all of you. There’s got to be a way we can put what I did in the past and talk about other stuff.” I stopped for a moment, still tongue-tied, still feeling like I had a mouth full of marbles, then more to change the subject than anything else, asked him what he did for work.
Michael shook his head, said, “That’s not something I want to tell you.”
He didn’t say this peevishly or with anger, just matter-of-factly, his eyes lost as he stared off into the distance. Awkwardly, I asked him about Allison and Paul, whether he kept in touch with them and if he could tell me how they were. Almost as if he were waking up from a dream, he looked at me and shook his head. “I’m not telling you about them either,” he said.
“Is there anything about your life I can ask you?” I said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He got up to leave, took several steps, then stopped, his lips twisting into an uneasy smile.
“Yeah, there is something I’d like to know,” he said. “After Mom died, how’d you keep getting my phone numbers?”
“I used a service,” I said.
He thought about that, nodded to himself. “Did you get more than just my phone numbers? Like maybe my addresses and pictures of me and my wife and kid?” he asked.
“No, all I could afford was your phone number. Allison’s also.”
“What about Paul’s?”
“I tried, but the service I used couldn’t find him.”
He nodded again, a distant look on his face. “Good for Paul,” he said. He turned his back on me and started to walk away.
“This isn’t healthy for you, Michael,” I called out. “We should talk this through.”
He waved his hand angrily as if swatting at a swarm of gnats, and kept walking. I watched him until he was out of sight and knew I’d never see him again. I wondered briefly if there was any chance I’d ever see Allison or Paul, but accepted that that wasn’t much more than wishful thinking, especially after the way Michael had acted. Of the three of them, he was always the peacemaker, the one who would try to smooth out hard feelings and get people talking again. If he couldn’t forgive me there wasn’t much chance the other two ever would.
I sat for a long moment feeling a weakness in my legs and an emptiness filling up my chest. For a moment it was as if I were drowning in it. Then I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I don’t know what else I could’ve been expecting from him, not with the way he ignored my calls when I was in prison and left those early letters of mine unanswered – the ones I wrote when Jenny was still alive to forward them to him – and not with the way Jenny would change the subject whenever I’d bring up Michael or the other two kids.
I got myself to my feet and decided to walk the four miles to the bus stop. It wasn’t as if I had any place to be, and I figured the walk could help clear my head and maybe loosen some of the stiffness I was feeling in my shoulder. I thought about Michael’s comment about me being “emotionally distant”. I certainly wasn’t when my kids were young. Maybe later there was some truth to that, especially when I started becoming paranoid that they’d be able to smell the stench of death on me. Or maybe it happened later after they became teenagers – maybe that was when I felt like I couldn’t relate to them any longer. I don’t know.
I glanced upwards for a brief moment towards the sun before looking away. Christ, I wished I had worn my baseball cap and sunglasses, especiall
y with the way the sunlight made my skull feel like a vise was being tightened around it. I thought about seeing if anyone inside the coffee shop could spare some aspirin, but decided against doing that, thinking that someone there might’ve overheard part of my conservation with Michael and not feeling up to facing any of those people right then. Instead, I took off on foot to retrace the path that the cab driver had taken.
I waited over an hour for the first bus, then close to another hour for the second one. The day so far had worn me down, and at some point while riding back to Waltham I dozed off. The next thing I was aware of was a presence taking the seat next to me. A familiar voice then asked me for my autograph. I opened my eyes a crack and saw Sophie Duval, a brightness in her eyes and her lips curved into a thin smile while she studied me. Once I realized who she was I turned away quickly to wipe off some drool that I felt running down the side of my mouth, then I told her that I charged more than she could afford.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” she said. “Especially after your heroics from yesterday. That was quite a video they showed on TV.”
“I haven’t had a chance to see it yet,” I lied.
“You should. It’s impressive. Vintage Chuck Norris-type stuff. And best of all, you left the talking heads on TV baffled. They don’t know what to make of you any more.”
Any other beautiful young woman sitting next to me would’ve sat tensed and compact in their seat, making sure there would be no bodily contact with me. Sophie, on the other hand, sat relaxed with her arm and leg lightly touching mine. As I mentioned before, part of her con required her to hint at a vague promise of sex, or at least intimacy.
“It’s a pleasant surprise seeing you on this bus,” I said.
“An even bigger one for me,” she said. “I thought I was seeing things when I walked onboard and saw you back here snoozing away. I would’ve thought reporters would be all over you for interviews.”
“They probably would be if they knew where to find me.” I glanced out the window trying to get some sense of bearing but was unable to recognize where we were. It wasn’t rural like Medfield, but we weren’t in Waltham either, at least not so I could tell. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.
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