by Brian Hodge
They dragged him along, still stumblebum drunk, to the Kinzie Street Bridge. Looped the protoplasmic rope around his neck and let him drop. The rope broke along with Terrible Tommy O'Connor's neck, but there was no splash.
Back then, we were all invisible. Tommy's ghost is still doing pirouettes in the North Branch of the Chicago River. Justice had been served. I wonder if the reason more of the recent dead are appearing as wraiths is because hell or purgatory is becoming overloaded with souls. That must sound like a trailer for some trashy film like they show nowadays, but I am sincere in believing this. Especially here. So many people on Death Row. Only one execution since 1962.
The executioner back then had my face, I would almost swear. Thing is, I can't even remember what I did that was so evil.
But as they jury, I try to warn the dead about the executioners — a triumvirate now; Father, Son, Holy Ghost, yada yada yada — because it must be that way. It's not like I'm a snitch, thought that might be why I am here. Food for thought. I'm just supposed to do it. I'm compelled.
When Ed Tomczak left the Grimes' sisters to freeze to death back in 1956, I was there to warn him after this aneurysm took him a year later. He scoffed at me, until the three executioners shoved him into the Humboldt Park Lagoon. He screamed innocence of wrongdoing, wanting to know where Heaven was, because it sure wasn't the intersection of California and Division. The invisible Eddie Tomczak froze right quick and the skaters had a nice hill to jump over before the spring thaw.
I watched it all go down, from Roger Park down past The Patch and into the Loop. The woman who allegedly jumped from the 86th floor of the Hancock Building in 1971 wasn't a suicide. Her pimp found himself doing the jumping without a net routine a few years later, his veins still black from the bad shit someone gave him.
For kicks, I stood underneath him, had to move a bit when the ghost body split when it connected with the 34th floor, and was still amazed when the guy's head and chest went right through me, through Michigan Avenue, and on down to Hell. Us sinners are so transparent.
Now there are reports of the ghosts. Keeping in mind that this is the singles' bar district, the Hard Rock Cafe and Excalibur, Club Karloff and Jukebox Saturday Nite, most of the Chicago Avenue cops chalk such reports up to either drunkenness or guys trying to spook their dates so they can slip them the meat. More urban legends, like the escaped mental patient with the hook or the choking Doberman.
People were seeing Speck for nights, but the new generation didn't have a clue as to who he was. In the sodium lights of the parking lot, I could even make out the pock marks on his ugly face.
And he still hadn't a clue.
They came for him last night. The executioners are shape-shifters, I know this from half century ago, when I stared back at my own face.
Maybe Speck saw all the people he had outlived besides the eight nurses. Judge Paschen died in 1973, Joe Matusek in 1987. The latter always swore that he would kill Richard Speck if he were ever released from custody. I'm partial to it being those two that Speck saw at the end of the end. The third one might have been the first cop on the scene, Daniel Kelly, who had dated Gloria Davy. Walked into the townhouse in 1966 to see her naked body, face down on the couch, saliva dripping onto her bra. Kelly was killed in the line of duty in 1973.
I wish I didn't know all these things.
I wish I could go now.
There was a dilemma here. The method of death. In Illinois, execution was now administered by lethal injection. There was no electric chair, and that was the way Speck had to go.
What the Triumvirate pulled off was ingenious. Inside the Rock 'N Roll McDonalds, there is a display. A '57 Thunderbird with two mannequins in the front seat. Speck was a coward to the end; he didn't have his muskrat knife or .38, not that it would have done a lick of good.
He actually cowered in the front seat of that T-Bird when they set him on fire. He burned for a long time and I could see his pock marks widening and was myself mesmerized by the flames inside of his throat, like tiny sparklers on a summer night.
So caught up in it, revolted by Speck's crying like a baby, the tears steaming off him, so completely into it was I that I never saw the Triumvirate leave.
The flames the executioners caused were real; the sprinkler system kicked in soon enough. The Arson Squad is still investigating. I'm the only one who could see him, but Richard Speck is still there between Ken and Barbie in the T-Bird. Fish-mouthed in the ultimate death as he always was in life.
I see on the news that Frank Haid, the Painkiller, hanged himself in his cell at Stateville. Guy killed handicapped men in the name of the Lord. Now he done jerked himself to Jesus.
I can only speculate on what holy flames he might be consumed with.
Chicago:
31 March 1993
The Touch
The man who looked exactly like Rifkin, the crooked lawyer from the old Barney Miller show, scowled at Downs from his table next to the stage. When Downs returned the stare, the fat man stabbed violently at the bridge of his plastic-framed glasses, pushing them farther up his pudgy nose. Both arms of the glasses were held in place by black electrical tape. The fat man sat hunched over in his chair, three empty beer bottles lined up next to the one he was currently working on, his legs wrapped around the stubby chair legs so that his feet were nearly touching. The man looked like a fat seal minus the whiskers.
The house lights dimmed slightly as a new girl stepped onto the stage from behind a battered Peavy amplifier. Downs did not know her name because this was the first time he had come to The Touch. Downs always remembered the names of the girls at the places he'd been before. He didn't know why. Once, Downs had read a story about a serial killer talking to his unsuspecting next victim in a bar very much like this one, bragging that he always remembered people's eyes. The man the killer had met, who was drunk, did not know the killer was talking about his victims.
Downs always remembered the girls' names. He wondered if that were wrong.
The girl on stage danced to a song called "Rosanna." Maybe that was her name. Sometimes they would play songs like that. Downs knew that most girls played cassettes with dance mixes that they chose themselves. And that they would often play a song like The Knack's "My Sharona" or even Jan & Dean's "Linda." One time a black girl in one of the bars on Rush Street had danced to Little Richard's "Lucille." Now that had been a pip.
The song ended and the girl placed her left palm against the print-smudged mirror. She balanced herself as she took off her panties. Her panties were black.
Downs raised his empty bottle to signal the woman behind the bar to bring him another. The girl on stage was wearing a knee-length black negligee with butterfly patterns across it. One of the secretaries in the building where Downs worked wore pantyhose with the same pattern. The negligee was see-through and that was the reasoning behind taking her panties off after only one song. The girl knew that many men liked this better than seeing her prance in a g-string and garters. The other girls did that, and Downs knew that the quicker the girl on stage could arouse the men in the audience, the better chance she had of making more bucks. The girl's pubic hair was shaved slightly.
The waitress, scrawny and ugly, came to his table, setting the seven ounce Budweiser and a glass down noisily. Downs gave her a five. She asked if he would like to give her a tip and Downs pretended not to hear. She turned away, purposely upsetting the table and nearly causing the beer to spill.
Downs grabbed the bottle and took a long pull, drinking half. He pushed the glass aside. You can never be too sure in a place like this. The song ended and an unenthusiastic few clapped for all of three seconds.
One of the girls walked between Downs and the stage, the lone green light above the stage creating a slight aura around her, illuminating the blond hairs on her arms.
She tried avoiding the man at the first table — the fat guy who had been giving Downs dirty looks — but came close enough for him to take a meaty swipe at her tus
h. The girl said a few words to him, but Downs couldn't make out what they were because of the music. The fat man cursed her loudly. His tone was slurred and coarse. The girl looked back toward the doors, toward the bouncers.
Maybe that was why the fat man had been glaring at him before. Maybe he was jealous or pissed that the girls had gone to Downs' table and not his own. And the guy looked as if he came in here often. Actually, only one girl had been to Downs' table in the hour he'd been at the lounge.
Her name was Crystal. At least, that was what she called herself. She had been dancing when Downs had first arrived.
Crystal's hair was bleached blond and shoulder length. Downs could see the black roots when she bent closer to him. Her eyes were brown and she wore just enough makeup to keep her from looking like a mannequin. Crystal's lips were thin and Downs thought that they looked that way because she spent a lot of time fighting back tears.
When she smiled, Downs saw that her teeth were perfect and white, but with a gap between the two front teeth. This did not make her look bad.
Downs had seen a girl in Las Vegas who had been gap-toothed, when he went there in January. She called herself Raven, and, unlike the girls here in Chicago, she did not have a bit of cellulite anywhere on her body. The bar was the Palomino, run by an old guy who looked like Captain Kangaroo, located on the old Strip across from Jerry's Double Nuggett. Drinks were two bucks and there was a variety of beer brands. Downs had seen a girl on Rush Street who was a dancer and had a cesarean scar across her stomach.
The first thing Crystal asked him when she sat down was why he was wearing bands across his upper arms. Everybody Downs met eventually asked him about his armbands, especially now, in May, when he wore short-sleeved shirts. Usually, the guys who didn't know just thought they were sweatbands for exercising. It was the girls who always voiced the question.
Downs had slight cerebral palsy. He had been wearing the bands since early 1985. The bands were held together with Velcro, so that they were easily adjusted. Thin rubber balls within the fabric created pressure points to help stop the pain. The doctor who prescribed the bands said "alleviate" the pain. Downs said stop the pain. A girlfriend of one of his roommates remarked that the bands weren't too noticeable.
Downs simply told Crystal that the bands helped strengthen his arms, not caring if saying that made the girl think him macho. Considering where he was, Downs didn't give a good damn what anybody thought.
He was in a two-bit clip joint on Front Street in Fallon Ridge, Illinois on a Friday night drinking five-dollar Buds in two gulps apiece. The only thing that would make things any better, Downs thought sarcastically, would be when the scrawny waitress started serving four-dollar Jolly Good colas after midnight. So the hell with what the girl thought. And the hell with what the fat man in front thought. The hell with what everybody in the whole goddamn world thought.
Crystal, who looked all of nineteen, with a kind of cheerful exuberance not shared by Chicago hookers, whose faces were often dulled by age or by drugs, or by repeated beatings from their Broadway and Leland pimps, or by constant harassment by the plainclothes detectives of the Belmont-Cragin district house for any reason whatsoever, even crossing in the middle of the street, Crystal, whose sharp jawline and thin lips etched by private tears when the lights went down and the dancing stopped, Crystal the hooker sitting at Downs' table, Crystal's eyes lit up as she realized she had what she thought was something in common with the guy who was sitting next to her, the guy fate had had a field day with.
Crystal told Downs that she once had a dog that was epileptic. Downs loved it, absolutely loved it! He was talking to a hooker about her crippled dog. This was simply wonderful.
The dog had always been having seizures and Crystal wanted to know if Downs' disease was, like, the same thing. He told her that it was not the same thing. Downs had known a girl in college who had epilepsy. She was twenty-four when, during a bad seizure in the middle of the night, her head smashed into the corner of her bureau. She bled to death. The actor William Holden died the same way. From a self-inflicted head wound. Only he had been drunk.
Crystal then asked Downs if his hands and his arms were good enough to feel her breasts. If Downs would buy her a twelve dollar Tom Collins glass of ginger ale from the scrawny waitress waiting, vulture-like, in the shadows behind the bar, he could do just that. Feel her breasts. Touch the fabric of her blouse. Her white blouse with red stripes on the sleeves, matching her tight shorts. Downs could inadvertently cop a feel from a dozen different women on any crowded day in the Loop. He could do this for free.
Downs could have said something clever like, "I'm on a budget," but he just told Crystal no, he wasn't interested. He wasn't even paying much attention as she left the table. Downs repressed the urge to say something nasty about her dog of bygone days.
The fat man at the first table motioned to Crystal and patted the empty chair next to him. She ignored him, walking past the table with her head in the air, crossing across the length of the bar to a door at the far end of the room. As she opened the door, Downs spotted a poster of Bruce Springsteen and a huge blue sign that said ALL EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK. He snuffled a laugh at that.
Then the door shut and that was the last of Crystal, the nineteen-year-old blond hooker from the safe suburbs of Chicago.
Downs stared into the mouth of his beer bottle for several minutes. He was sick of killing time with his life. He was sick of hiding behind the lame excuse that his cerebral palsy was keeping him from being more successful. What was he doing sitting here in this dive? He couldn't even justify things by being mildly buzzed.
A song by The Alan Parsons Project broke the stillness as a new girl took the stage. "Eye in the Sky." Downs had tried dancing to this song with a girl he met at Gingermanis on Division Street a few weeks back. She had pretended to spot an old friend in the crowd and had left Downs on the pastel-colored neon stage like a flaming fool. "I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools, I can cheat you blind…"
The girl on stage had a face that was okay, but her body had seen better days. She didn't seem to care enough to dance, as if dancing would draw attention to her looks. Downs thought that maybe she had kids to support or something.
The fat man started in on her immediately; Downs had wondered when the heckling would begin. There was always heckling. It made sense that the fat man would be the first to start. Downs figured that the woman was below the fat man's tastes and deserved to be ridiculed. At least the others in the bar had encouraged the fat man further. Uneasily, Downs scanned the tables around him. About ten guys, all fairly young, had come in since the last time Downs had bothered to look, several beers ago. Four of the guys, at two separate tables were wearing softball jerseys, red on blue, that advertised the Tapped-Out Lounge in beautiful, downtown Berwyn.
The fat man was telling the girl on stage that, as a deputy sheriff for Cook County, he should run her in on account of excessive ugliness.
So that explained it. The bouncers weren't doing anything about that fat slug because, if it was true that he was a deputy, he could probably give them quite a bit of heat. Downs had recently read a story in the Tribune about the lousy procedures the state had in the hiring of their deputies. Virtually anybody could be eligible.
The fat man was absolutely degrading the woman on stage. He spoke of what kinds of animals would avoid having sex with her. He said that if he were to have sex with her, he'd probably have to pull her scabs off first. The fat man spoke very loudly and did not laugh at his own outbursts. He wasn't a heckler, Downs decided. He was being a prick because he was in a position to get away with it.
Downs thought that the fat man was taking things too far. He decided it was time to leave, and pushed away from the table.
Taking one last look at the girl, Downs saw her head lowered, her hips undulating listlessly. Downs walked between the tables to the bathroom, his hands in his pockets.
That bathroom was dim
ly lit, the lone ceiling bulb flickering every other second, it seemed. There was one bowl, no stalls or urinals: the deluxe suite. There were quite a few misses at the bowl. Downs read some of the graffiti on the walls as he urinated. The usual "For a Good Time, Call…"' DOWN WITH KHOMEINI (when the hell did they scrub these walls down last, if ever?); Cassady 8-11-82; another admonition: AT LEAST THE TOILET SEATS IN THIS JOINT GO DOWN ON YOU FOR FREE; a few other mindless scribbles. Against the far wall, an ancient machine advertised a LOVE KIT or a RIBBED TINGLER for two quarters.
Downs zipped up and passed the bouncers on his way out the front door. The two men, both built as all bouncers are built, looking like they were made out of solid lead and suffering from perpetual hemorrhoids, were discussing the off-duty deputy up front. The older of the two, who resembled a Bears quarterback from the late '70's, told the other that something had to be done.
Then Downs was out in the early May night. It was about two a.m., he figured. A strong breeze came from the quarry across the lot; Downs smelled salt. A random sports page blew up from the quarry and was plastered against the surrounding chain link fence. Cans of Budweiser and Miller High Life were piled against the fence. The streetlamps on Front Street glittered against the gold of the Miller cans.
The Touch was at the corner of Front Street and Summit Avenue, the first strip joint/clip joint along a half-mile stretch of Fallon Ridge known as Sin Strip. The salt quarry, closed nights since the last of the Midwest snowstorms was long past, ran parallel behind Summit, a residential street dotted with gas stations and convenience marts. There was always controversy about Sin Strip in the local papers.
Downs started a slow walk toward the RTA terminal several blocks away. The bus would be corning soon. He heard voice behind him, muffled by the walls of the lounge. Downs stepped back into the shadows.