Witsec

by Pete Earley

  My sister, Anna, had a baby and me and Marie flew out east to visit them. I’d forgotten what big old cities are like. Anna said I should move back east to Philadelphia but I didn’t want to. Marie was doing really good in school and she seemed happy. I liked my job at the courthouse, too. Besides, I had started buying a house. It was old and small but it was mine. I was feeling good about myself, you know? Before, I only did what Sal wanted to do but now, I was doing what me and Marie wanted. When we got back from visiting Anna, someone had burglarized my house. I was pissed. It was like a rape. You felt violated. These bastards took a big jar of pennies from Marie’s room. Stealing from a kid. I was really fuming and then it hit me like a brick in the head: Sal used to be a thief. When he was a teenager, he broke into lots of houses and stole things. I’d never thought about none of those things before. I never thought about the people who he stole from or beat up or whatever. I was ashamed of what he’d done.

  The cops came and had me write this long list of everything stolen and a few days later, they called me. Some neighborhood kids had my stuff. They was trying to pawn it. I went down to the police station and my heart almost stopped. There was this metal box me and Sal kept papers in. I had my birth certificate in there—the one my parents got when I was born—and the real birth certificates for John and Marie, not the new ones the deputies gave us. I had some stories from the newspaper in the box, too, about Sal and Tony and how Sal was testifying. Sal brought them back when we was in South Dakota. I don’t know why I kept those stories but I had ’em in there. The burglars had broken open the box and I could see the birth certificates and articles were still in it. I thought: “Jesus Christ, the police got to be wondering why I got these certificates and articles.” This officer says to me, “Lady, is this here your box of documents?” and I thought about lying but I thought maybe that’s what they wanted me to do, you know, lie about it, so I said, “Yeah, it’s mine,” and he hands it to me. He hadn’t looked inside. I decided to burn them—the articles—when I got home, but I kept the birth certificates. I put them in an envelope in my closet. Jesus, that was a close call.

  I started dating Ted when Marie was about eleven. He had been watching me for several years at the courthouse. He’s a lawyer but he was married back then so he didn’t really say anything besides hello when he saw me. One day this lady who worked with me in the office said Ted’s wife had died. She had a heart attack just like that even though she was young. This lady says to me, “You should help him out with advice,” because everyone thought I was a widow. The next time I see him, I told him how sorry I was about his wife and he says, “Yeah, you know what it’s like,” and we started talking. In a way, I did know because Sal wasn’t dead but he was not in my life anymore.

  Sal was a show-off, really loud, macho, and stupid. Ted was quiet and very, very smart and that really scared me because I only finished high school and I didn’t do good when I was a student. The first time Ted asked me out, I said, “Sorry, I don’t date,” and he says, “Let’s just have coffee, like friends, not people on a date.” I said okay. I remember thinking how kind he was when we talked. No one in Brooklyn I knew dated lawyers. He laughed a lot at my jokes. It was my way of throwing people off. I got a great memory for jokes and I tell jokes whenever I want to change the subject or if I start feeling uncomfortable around people. I started doing that in South Dakota. I used to answer questions by asking people questions back to throw them off. Another thing I did was ask people about their lives. Most people forget to ask about you once they start talking about themselves.

  Me and Ted began going out and I was afraid he’d expect sex right off but he was a perfect gentleman. He wasn’t pushy like Sal and he sent me roses. Sal didn’t send flowers and if he did that, I’d know he’d done something bad. Ted and Marie, they got along really, really good too. She’d wait for him to come over and ask him to help her do homework because I was never any good at helping her. Ted wanted to do lots of things. I think it was because his wife died so young. He said they had talked a lot about what they were going to do when they retired, and she died before they did anything. He decided we all needed to learn how to play golf, Marie too. He belonged to this country club and me and Marie and him went there for lessons. I liked how he wanted Marie with us. Me, I was terrible, but Marie and him were pretty good. I said, “Okay, I’ll drive the cart.” One day Ted says he wants to fly an airplane and he goes out and learns how to do it. He was ten years older than me. He would take me and Marie up on flights. Ted liked flying so he bought a part of an airplane with these other guys. They’d take turns.

  Me and him began flying to Las Vegas on the weekends he got the airplane. We’d go to Caesars Palace because it was the best. Ted played blackjack and I’d hit the slots. One night I was on this machine when I hear: “Angela!” I turned around and there is a man there I knew from the old neighborhood. We’d gone to high school together. He wasn’t in Tony’s crew or nothing but I was terrified. I says, “You got the wrong girl, mister, my name is Irene,” and then I ran up to our room. I told Ted I wanted to go home because I was sick but I really was scared we’d see this guy again. I thought about telling Ted the truth but I was really afraid because I had lied so much to him. He thought I was a widow from South Dakota and I knew he wouldn’t want to be with some gangster’s wife. Ted had big companies for clients. He didn’t do criminal law. He told me he had started out wanting to be a Perry Mason type, proving the cops had the wrong guy, but then he discovered most people who get arrested are guilty. Don’t kid yourself, it ain’t because cops are smart. It’s because criminals are stupid. He says to me once, “Angela, I would really get upset if I got someone off and he went out and hurt or killed someone.” So I knew he’d be tough on me.

  Here was another reason for me to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want Marie to ever know about Sal. I decided not to tell Ted anything, but living with a lie is scary because you become paranoid. Each time the phone rings, each time you go somewhere, each time you are in a restaurant, you’re afraid you’ll bump into someone who knows your secret. I wasn’t afraid of Tony and the mob. That was too many years ago. I was afraid Ted wouldn’t understand and would be embarrassed if people found out who I really was. I was happy with this new life of mine. I didn’t want anything or anyone to change that. It was mine, but it wasn’t mine, if you understand. It was pretend, but I wasn’t really pretending. I knew, too, I knew in my heart, something terrible was going to happen because that is how life is. And it sure as hell did. Sal showed up.

  WEAVING TANGLED WEBS

  I still don’t know how Sal found me and Marie in Phoenix. Maybe some deputy told him. Maybe he found out through my sister, Anna—but she denied it. All I know for sure is one morning I opened the front door and there was Sal standing there. I was glad Marie wasn’t home. She was at summer camp and was gone all week. I was supposed to be going on a trip with Ted. We was leaving later that day. I didn’t want no one to see Sal so I let him into my house and he looks around and says to me, “Nice place you got here.” I got right to the point. I asked him what he wanted from me. He says he wants a cup of coffee and goes and sits down like he lives there. He tells me he just got out of prison. That bitch he ran off with is long gone. He doesn’t know what happened to her. He says her and him got relocated in Milwaukee after they left Rapid City and he started stealing cars and stripping them for parts. He’d gotten pinched and done time. He thought the deputies would save his ass but they didn’t. He said he was in prison under a different name so no one knew about how he’d testified against Tony in Brooklyn. He tells me all these lies about how he spent all his time in prison thinking about me and how good we was together and how he screwed up things with me and how he thinks maybe we need to get back together. I told him there was no way in hell I’d be with him again or let him move in with me and Marie and he says, “Well, you know, we’re still married. I never got a divorce and you never did neither.” I thought, “Oh God, he’
s right.” I couldn’t divorce him because I didn’t know what had happened to him. But I tried not to show anything. I says to him, “Yeah, but we got different names now so those people we were don’t even exist no more.” He reached over like he was going to slap me but he stopped himself. He starts telling me how he is Marie’s daddy no matter what name he is using and he wants to make up for lost time and get to know her. I said, “Oh really? How old is she?” He didn’t know. I said, “When’s her birthday? You never sent her a gift.” He says he didn’t know where we were, and I said, “Well, you sure as hell are sitting here right now, aren’t ya? Guess you could’ve found out earlier if you wanted.” It was weird because I was glad he’d never talked to Marie or sent her stuff, but here I was busting his balls for not doing it.

  He tells me he met this guy in the joint who is giving him a job as a mechanic down in Tucson so he’ll be close enough now to see Marie even if I divorce him, which he knows I’m not going to do because I got a new life here and don’t want anyone to know about my past. I looked at his hands because he says he learned how to fix cars in the joint and I knew he was lying. There wasn’t any grease or oil on them. You ever meet a mechanic who didn’t have grease-stained hands? I knew he didn’t care nothing about Marie, either. He was trying to scare me so I’d give him money. I just came out and asked him how much it was going to cost me to get him to go away, and you know what he says? He says, “Ten grand and your pussy!” I said, “Sal, what the hell are you talking about?” and he tells me he wants to have sex with me, right there, right now. I’m so angry I’m about to explode. All I am thinking about is how much I hate his guts but I know if I don’t handle this just right, he’s going to make my life miserable so I said, “Sal, I’m in my period,” and he says, “Hey. I don’t care, where’s your bedroom?” He took me back to my bedroom. He knew I was lying about my period. I never could lie to Sal very well. I just laid there and didn’t move or say nothing but it didn’t matter to him.

  When he’s done, he says, “So when can you get me the money?” I said it would take me a week and he says, “Okay, I’ll be over tomorrow.” He says he is going to claim his husband’s right and I knew right then I was not going to get him out of my life ever. When he finally left, the phone rang and it was Ted. I told him I couldn’t leave that afternoon on our trip. I forget what excuse I gave him but I told him I’d be ready to go the next day. Then I called the U.S. marshals’ office and asked for the deputy who’d helped me when me and Marie first got to Phoenix. They told me he’d retired but I still remembered his home number and he was furious when I told him what Sal did. I lost it and began crying. He says Sal wasn’t ever supposed to find me. He says I could charge Sal with rape but everybody in Phoenix would know about my past and the mob might come after Sal and me and Marie because it would make the papers. The deputy told me not to pay Sal but I felt trapped, because if I didn’t pay him, he was going to talk to Marie and I didn’t want him talking to her or to Ted. I didn’t know if Ted would understand about how Sal forced me to have sex and all, and I knew Sal was right about us still being married and I didn’t know what Ted would do if he found out about that and our past. Ted thought my husband was dead.

  It was a big mess. No matter what I did, someone I loved was going to get their feelings hurt—either Marie or Ted.

  I asked the deputy to help me, but he said there wasn’t anything he could really do except ask the deputies to relocate me again and maybe hassle Sal when he showed up at my house tomorrow. He said Sal might be violating his parole by being in Arizona and he’d check to see if he could get Sal picked up by the cops when he showed up at my house. I told him I didn’t trust no one but him, especially the cops. I figured they’d tell Ted. Anyway, it was a big, big mess. Finally, I said, “Me and Marie are going to disappear, will you help me?” He asked me to let the deputies help me relocate, but I was just too afraid. I packed up some bags after I hung up the phone and then I looked outside to make sure Sal was gone and then I got in my car and met him [the retired deputy] at this McDonald’s. He begged me to reconsider, but I said, “Nope, this is the best way.” I gave him my house keys and drove to the summer camp and took Marie out. I told her we were moving to California and she thought I was joking. Then she started yelling and crying and throwing a fit and threatening to run away. She says, “What about Ted?” She thought we were going to be a family and he was going to be her father and I started bawling and I said to her, “Honey, it’s time you learned the truth.” But, of course, I lied. I told her that her uncle Sal was in the Mafia and had testified against some gangsters in Brooklyn and now they were after us because of him. She didn’t believe a word of it. I said, “Why do you think I changed our names when we left Rapid City?” and “Why do you think that deputy always was coming around to check on us when we first got to Phoenix?” That got her thinking.

  I told her I loved Ted and wanted to marry him but if I did then the mob would be after him too, so we couldn’t ever contact him again, but she could write him a goodbye letter and mail it before we got to California. She had a notebook from summer camp and she wrote him a letter while I was driving and then we stopped at this gasoline station and bought a stamp and envelope and mailed it to him. We were both just crying and crying. I made her promise never to tell anyone about what was happening. She was scared. I drove all the way to Los Angeles and checked us into a motel. I didn’t know what else to do to get away from Sal. It was so strange, here I was running again, hiding again, only this time it wasn’t from the mob, it was from my own husband.

  CLOSURE

  My deputy friend in Phoenix got Marie’s school records for me and I decided to take a risky step. Sal knew our names in Phoenix and I didn’t want him finding us in California. I knew I could change my name. All I had to do was tell people I had gotten married and changed my last name. The problem was Marie’s school records. I thought a lot about how to do it and came up with this really swell idea. I drove to the school and showed the principal Marie’s original birth certificate—not the one the deputies had made for us after we became witnesses—the one I got when she was born in Brooklyn. It had her real name on it. I told this principal I was moving to L.A. because I was getting a divorce from my second husband. I said Marie was my child from my first husband who was dead. I said Marie never was legally adopted by my second husband but we enrolled her in school under his last name because it was simpler and we didn’t want her to feel like she wasn’t part of the family. I said, “I know it wasn’t right but no one in Phoenix ever checked, so her last name is all wrong on all the school records.” I said, “Now I am getting a divorce so I want to get this cleared up and have Marie’s real name on her records.” I showed this principal her original birth certificate to show what I was saying was the truth. This principal was a man and when he started to ask me questions, I began to cry because I knew it would make him nervous. He changed Marie’s last name on the records, so now her name was really her real last name. I went down and got her a Social Security card under her real last name too. She’d never had one before and I told Marie she was going to use that last name from now on. I didn’t tell her it was her real last name, I just told her she needed to use it. Now, I know it sounds crazy—giving her her real last name back—but I figured Sal would never expect it so she would be safe. The only thing that worried me was Marie’s birth certificate. Because it was real, it had Sal’s name on it as her father and she still thought he was her uncle. Shit, things get complicated when you lie.

  I was glad Marie had her real name back. It was like I was giving her back some of her past even if she didn’t know it. I changed my last name to Smith—Angela Smith—because Smith is so common. I figured that would throw off Sal. I didn’t think me or Marie was in any danger from Tony and his crew. We were about as far as you can get from Brooklyn. My sister had told me Tony was out of prison. I said, “I thought he got life,” and she said a deputy told her life was the same as thirty years.
All Tony had to serve was one-third, and with good behavior he was out in eight years. It really pissed me off. This guy was out walking the streets, free as a bird, and me and Marie are hiding out, looking over my shoulder. I mean, who really was sentenced here?

  I got a job working with a tour packager. My boss bought blocks of tickets from airlines and hotels and put them together as tours. I learned fast and after about a year, I moved to a large travel agency. Marie was doing fine. I mean, it was tough at first. We both missed Ted, but me and Marie had been together and we are closer than most mothers and daughters. I had called the deputy in Phoenix after we got to L.A. and found a place to rent and he arranged for my furniture to be delivered. He had it in storage first, just like he did when he relocated someone. I had him call Anna, too, and tell her about Sal and how me and Marie had to move but he didn’t tell her where and I didn’t call her for a long time because I thought maybe she had told Sal about me and Marie being in Phoenix.