by JN Lenz
The next day after school Clyde would return to Largo, he was counting on Bruck to be a creature of habit and return to the same watering hole on the edge of town just as he had a week earlier when Clyde had watched him leave from the bush. Leaving directly from school for Largo Clyde would arrive at the Funeral Home shortly after six; he pulled the old Ford 150 around the back of the Garage.
Since the back gravel lane was seldom used would poke his head out the back living room window to see who was pulling around the back of the garage. By the time Clyde had walked around to the front of the garage Fred was waiting at the top railing of the coach houses staircase waiting to greet Clyde. After the hello’s Fred let Clyde know that he had seen me leave an hour earlier with Lilly, after some small talk the men parted ways as Clyde made his way to the apartment to fix a quick meal before departing for the Duke Bar.
The walk around town thru the brush and rocky landscape surrounding Largo to what was once known as the Queens Hotel would take him just over two hours The Bar sat due east of the Funeral Home as the crow flies clear across on the other side of town, taking the towns roads and sidewalks would shave over forty minutes from the walk but would also mean he would be seen by the residents. The fewer people that knew Clyde was in town the better, at that point in the night only Fred knew Clyde was in town as he had watched him walk into the back of the funeral home.
Before leaving the apartment Clyde made sure to turn a few extra lights on before he snuck out the front door of the Funeral Home so Fred would not see him. Both Clyde and I always turned the apartment lights off when we went out, Fred would notice the lights on and would believe that Clyde was in the apartment all night. From the front door of the Funeral Home Clyde would make his way into the bush just halfway down the block, he would beat his estimate on walking to the Queens Bar by over twenty minutes.
By eight that night Clyde was standing in the same location as the week prior as he searched the row of vehicles for Bruck’s car, looked like Bruck had been getting an early start on the evening as the Chevette sat parked in the identical location to the prior week the last in a series of parking spots; it was here that the parking lot ended with a short grass area butting up to the surrounding bush. Unlike the previous week when he stationed himself and his motor bike across and down the road for tonight Clyde found the darkest crevice within the trees close to the edge of the parking lot and within a dozen feet of Bruck’s car.
The years of hunting from tree stands as a boy, all those hours spent sitting there still as a stone waiting for a deer to cross underneath had trained Clyde well for times such as this. There would be no sleeping tonight by Clyde; he would wait here for hours in silence waiting and watching for his prey. The waiting would last all until after two am the following morning when in a similar fashion to the previous week Bruck was among the final six that on this night literally shut the place down. There would be what looked to be the same two men including the one with the key for the front door which would leave together; one by one the remaining three men departed the parking lot in their pickup trucks again leaving Bruck as the last patron left in the parking lot. Clyde used the opportunity that the last of the pickups pulled out to leave and began squealing his tires as he turned from the gravel of the lot onto the paved country road.
The spinning gravel and screeching tires caused Bruck turn and watch the noisy departing Dodge pickup as it squealed away into the darkness its tail lights disappearing into the distance before Bruck would turn to head back towards his own vehicle. This would be when Clyde using the noise of the departing truck to mask the sound of his approaching steps and bashed the front of Bruck’s forehead in with a solid ash baseball bat. With Clyde standing a good four inches taller than Bruck his forehead aligned with a straight arm swing by Clyde, the first shot dropped Bruck like a stone and he was knocked unconscious immediately.
Reaching down, Clyde removed the keys from Bruck’s pants pockets before grabbing both of his feet and pulled Bruck around to the back of the car, opening the back hatch Clyde would toss him into the back of the car. Removing a pair of tie straps from his cargo pants side pocket Clyde secured Bruck’s wrists and ankles together in case he became conscious before making it out to the dirt road with the tampered guardrail on the Niagara Escarpment.
Jumping into the driver’s seat of the blue Chevette Clyde would start the feeble sounding engine and pull the car out and to the right as he exited the Queens parking lot instead of left and back into town. The powerless Chevette putted its way further from town and deeper into the bush where even the outside lights of the farm and county homes became fewer and fewer.
Soon the little car struggled to gain speed and it made its way to the top of the escarpment road, Clyde would write how he had not planned on the Chevette being so slow heading up the steep twisty road as he had to keep the car in second gear just so it could make it up a couple of the steepest hills. Someone may question how it could possibly have the speed to burst through a guard rail at twenty five miles an hour so Clyde would drive up and past the corner with the altered guardrail and return down the hill.
This would place the Chevette tracks coming down the hill and gaining speed before it jettisoned off the cliff, Clyde would bring the car to a stop forty feet from the corner and the unsecured guard rail . Turning off the ignition Clyde listened and looked for signs of any oncoming vehicles, the night was black and silent as he pulled Bruck from the back truck and pulled him along the side of the car and strapped him into the driver’s seat and clicked the seat belt tight around his waist and shoulder.
Clyde removed the baseball bat from the passenger front seat and smashed the face and forehead of the constable several more times to ensure the cop did not regain consciousness before he propped him into the driver’s seat. Bruck Myers may have already been dead at this point; Clyde would make no attempts to check.
First Clyde ran to the corner of the road to the where the flex beam and its removed nuts met the post which anchored it. Removing the two bolts and the wire that had been gingerly keeping the flex beam in place Clyde placed the bolts in his pocket and threw the end of flex beam Clyde was holding out into the darkness and towards the edge of the cliff as hard as he could. The beam swung out several feet with the long grass which kept the chunk of steel perched out on the six feet of land that ended with the sixty foot sheer drop off the Limestone cliff. Doing the same with the right side section of guard rail Clyde then set his attention to the series of six badly rotted posts which had been holding the steel in place.
Sitting directly in front of the post and pushing it hard with his legs would crack the rotting post in half at the point the post entered the ground, rapidly moving from one post to the next Clyde would snap or push over each of the wooden posts. There now would be nothing to prevent the Chevette from crashing to the solid rock bottom of the Limestone pit, a sixty foot cliff on the way down a larger series of hills.
Running from the rail up to the concealed motor bike and backpack Clyde removed a bottle of Wisers Whiskey, two pieces of wood one with a length of rope attached to it and a pair of leather gloves to place over the Latex gloves he had been wearing since before swinging the bat back at the Queens Bar.
Racing back down to the car Clyde wedged both of Bruck’s arms through the center of the steering wheel to help in keeping the car driving straight when Clyde would send it off the edge of the cliff. The remote gravel road had so far remained desolate; the advantage to being at the top of the hill was Clyde could see the lights of approaching cars for miles in each direction. Removing a small pocket knife from his jacket pocket Clyde cut the tie straps that had kept Bruck’s hands and feet bound together and placed the ties into his pant pocket along with the knife.
It was here, being close to Bruck that Clyde realized he was still alive, his shallow breath could be heard faintly gurgling through the blood that covered the constable’s face. Removing the top from the bottle of Whiskey he had removed from
the nap sack, Clyde pulled back a mouthful himself before dumping the remainder of the bottle in, on and around Bruck. Throwing the glass bottle which was still a quarter full onto the floor of the back of the car without the cap on, the wood with the rope attached had been cut to fit the distance between a depressed brake petal and the driver’s seat, Clyde had visited a local scrap yard and measured the distance of both a depressed brake and gas petal on the Chevette.
Using his right foot while still standing beside the car Clyde depressed the break petal and placed the first piece of wood firmly between the brake and the driver’s seat. Once the wood securing the brake was in place, Clyde would reach across in front of an unconscious Bruck and turn the ignition key and fire the engine to life. Next Clyde would notch the automatic gear lever on the floor into drive, crouching down beside the driver’s seat he would reach past the piece of wood on the break and depress the gas pedal to the floor.
The anemic engine roared to life lurching the car slightly forward as it pushed against the fully depressed brakes, using the second piece of wood Clyde wedged it into place against the fully depressed gas pedal and the base of the driver’s seat. Stepping back a few steps from the driver’s side door, Clyde allowed the attached thin rope to fall in a straight line leading into the floor of the car before pulling hard on the rope releasing the block between the brakes and the driver’s seat.
The revving engine’s scream lessened a few decibels as the car lurched forward, the force of the engine and gravity propelling it towards the opening in the guardrail. The car began to track just slightly to the right and Clyde was worried the car would crash into one of the remaining posts and railing to the right. The car would barely make it through the opening in the guard rail, scrapping the post heavily on the passenger side of the car before it plunged off the side of the cliff.
The driver’s door had remained open as the car disappeared from sight as it drove off the edge of the road; the engine began to race again as the wheels spun freely from the earth as the car raced to the valley below. The momentum from the force of gravity and the gutless engine of the Chevette was enough that the car continued its path, the scrapping metal on the passenger side of the car not enough to stop its trajectory off the side of the limestone cliff.
The tail lights disappeared into the darkness immediately after the sound of the screeching metal from the guardrail ended. The blare of the racing engine quickly melted away for a brief moment of silence, followed by the blast from the impact of steel and glass as the car smashed into the stone, some sixty of feet below the edge of the road. The sound of the impact blasted down the valley, the echoes reverberated up to Clyde as he stood on the edge of the gravel road, the thin rope with the dangling piece of wood still in his hand. The was no Hollywood explosion or fire unless the car caught fire after Clyde had left, he had noticed earlier on the drive up the escarpment that the little car was running out of gas.
Following the last of the echoes from the car smashing to the stone valley floor below had reverberated through the surrounding hills and valleys Clyde would quickly make his way back up the hidden dirt bike. Packing the bat, wood and rope in the back pack, Clyde kicked the bike to life and slowly began to pick his way through the bush and back onto the winding dirt county road. By the time Clyde exited off the last of the dirt roads and onto the first of three paved roads that would lead back to Largo, the low clouds that had begun to build since Clyde drove the little Chevette up onto the top of the escarpment opened up and began to pour rain.
Driving the remainder of the deserted roads on his way back to the town of Largo, Clyde would write in the file how he yelled for joy for miles on end above the buzz of the dirt bike. The rain would help to cover any tracks he may have left on the dirt road. The down pour would be a fitting end to a prefect night for Clyde; this had been the first time since living under the roof his abusive father that he had been the hunted.
“Careful hunting a hunter”
Clyde yelled into the night. Bruck had grossly under estimated Clyde and paid for that mistake with his life. Driving through the pouring rain Clyde made his way back to Largo and the Funeral Home; pulling the bike around to the lane at the back of the garage he would park it in the back shed.
The clock would read almost six in the morning by the time Clyde walked through the door of the apartment that morning, soaking wet. I was still in bed but was already awake having set the alarm early because there was a service that day and Fred and I had a busy day ahead of us. After a shower and a quick cup of coffee Clyde would be out the door to make it back down into the city for his morning classes, I had no idea he had been out on the dirt bike in the rain until later that night when I saw all the wet muddy clothes in the apartment’s laundry room.
When I asked him about it two days later on the Friday when he returned back to Largo from school Clyde would tell me he was out scoping out Turkeys for the fall hunt and had got caught in the rain out in the bush on the dirt bike, he never mentioned one word about Bruck. I remember him arriving back from Toronto that Friday, walking into the Funeral Home while both Fred and I were arranging Bruck’s closed casket for visiting in the front room. As Clyde entered I remember telling him
“Look who got killed in a drunken car accident” pointing to the large color photograph of Bruck Myers in full Police uniform which sat on the top of the casket.
“The funeral cop died?”
“Not so much died, drove his drunken ass off the side of a cliff. Out in the middle of nowhere to boot, lots of speculation why he was out there but no one knows for sure”
“Guess that puts an end to having a man in uniform at our funerals”
“That’s a shame”
“Little harsh on Bruck, he is dead don’t you know. Best show some respect” Fred piped in.
“Whatever, what happened?” Clyde’s tone and response gave nothing away in suggesting he knew the slightest thing about the death of Bruck Myers. This would be the first murder Clyde would keep for me.
“Left his regular drinking hole after closing in no worse a shape than he normally is in by the end of a night of drinking, a passerby found him at the bottom of a cliff the next afternoon. The car missed a sharp corner and he drove straight through the steel guardrail and plunged down a steep cliff, nothing left of him or the car it was total carnage. The first officer on the scene could still smell the alcohol and doc Burrows would drive out and provide the Police with a death certificate right there on the spot, the tow truck they called in bagged the car and the body and winched back up to the road.”
“Yaa, Fred and I had to go out there yesterday afternoon and pick him up from the side of the road after they had pulled him form the car, what a mess the guy was in like pieces. It totally fucking grossed me out, Fred actually did most of the work, I ended up going up there so I could puke a couple of time”
“The kid still has no stomach for this job; you might have to leave him in the office from now on Clyde.”
“Tell me about it, wrong business to be in with a week stomach don’t you think Fred?”
“Fuck off the two of you; he was in pieces for Christ’s sake”
“Hope that’s a leak proof casket, did you put him in a Tupperware container before you stuck him in there?”
“That’s it I’m out of here, you guys are fucking gross. Funeral is on Saturday Clyde, I will leave the two of you to discuss the gory details. I’m out”
“Was it something I said Jack? Ha ha”
“Glad to have you back for the weekend, with any luck we’ll have a shot gun suicide or a dismemberment death to keep you entertained this weekend.
“Anything I can do to be of assistance, you may want to stock up on the gravol buddy”
“Fuck off.”
The following day Bruck would be proud to see the funeral home full of officers in full uniform there to offer their last respects. Several had come as far away as Montreal for the service, why I was not sure since he was
not killed in the line of duty (as far as they all knew anyway). They fittingly gave Bruck a six gun salute at his internment at the Largo cemetery. Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 11
Returning the file number eight back into its original location inside the file box, I could not help but think of how different the past really had been, compared to the way I had perceived it after all these years. Both Clyde and I had contributed equally to our financial success, without question the original murders had saved our financial asses. Beyond those killings I had always prided myself in being the driving force behind our financial achievements, but now after reading the murder file of Bruck Myers and the numerous others I had yet to read, I was not so sure.
The realization of these subsequent murders was slapping me hard in the face, I realized my memories and visions of my past had been so wrong. My memories in fact were nothing more than illusions, certainly not based on fact. Those bold first steps we had taken into the business world, fed equally by my greed and Clyde’s hidden rage.
Reading all of this, knowing the evil which raged within him it still was impossible for me to hate the man. Even though he had lied to me for all these years, Clyde was family to me, a combination of best friend and brother. Nothing I would read here would ever change that.
I remember the weeks and months after those first killings, the two of us empowered and emboldened to take on the world. We entered the business world by chance, a fluke really. Our luck would result in financial success, it’s a dog eat dog world, wasn’t that what they always used to say about the world of business. Guess if that’s the case, we had certainly found our calling. Somehow through all the murders, the pot, and the illegal money, the two of us managed to remain the best of friends.