“Where were they?” X’s father asked.
“At the border,” Murphy said. “We got a tip. The two of them were on a Greyhound trying to cross into Canada near Newport. We think they were heading to Toronto.”
“Have they said anything?”
“Nothing,” Murphy said, “but they’re being transported back here so we can question them. Now that we have all three, the DA will feel better about moving ahead with prosecution, even though they’re minors.”
“What does that mean, ‘even though they’re minors’?” I asked.
“Well, basically, criminal offences for young people are the same as they are for adults,” Murphy said. “Except Maine law says we have to treat them as ‘misdirected youth.’” He made quote marks in the air as he said this. “So there’s a separate court system, a Youth Court, but because these crimes are so serious, and because they all have records, we think we have a good shot at pushing for adult sentencing.” He paused, looking from Thomas to X to me. “And I think the charges will ultimately include attempted murder.”
I was about to ask why Murphy felt the case against the three was so open-and-shut, but before I could, the door to the interview room flew open. It was Detective Savoie. He looked at Murphy. “Murph, we gotta go,” he said. “We’ve got another situation.”
“Another kid?” Murphy asked, and Savoie nodded.
“He’s not dead, yet, but he’s non-responsive,” Savoie said. “They pulled him out of Casco Bay. Nearly drowned. ID in his wallet says his name is Daniel something.”
“Is it O’Heran … Dan O’Heran?” X quietly asked, his voice sounding raspy, staring at them.
Savoie, Murphy, and his father all stared at us. Savoie spoke: “Yeah, I think that’s his name. You know him?”
Danny! I’m going to puke. FUCK FUCK FUCK.
“Yeah,” X said, rubbing his head. “He’s one of our friends.”
C H A P T E R 21
Danny had been found near a pier in Casco Bay, not far from the tourist whale-watching boats that had been boarded up for the winter. By the time the detectives, me, X, and his father arrived, there were already three police cruisers parked by a boarded-up fried-clams place, the closest spot to the pier. Danny was found by a couple out walking their dogs. At first they’d thought he was dead.
The three of us remained in the back of Savoie’s battered Oldsmobile. No one said a word. After the two detectives had conferred with the uniformed cops, Murphy returned to the car and opened the door. “He’s in the ambulance on the way to Mercy. But we’ve got some Polaroids of the scene,” he said. “You sure you still want to see them, boys?”
His jaw set, X slid out of the car. “Yes,” he said. “I can do it. I want to help if I can.” I got out behind him.
The uniformed officers looked up as we approached. X’s dad walked between us, his hands on our shoulders. Near the pier, there were little markers on the sand, indicating where Danny’s body had been. As we approached a line of yellow caution tape, one of the cops extended a handful of Polaroids.
We looked at them. Right away, we saw that it was Danny. His skin was unnaturally white, so his freckles stood out more than usual. Frost clung to his eyelashes. He looked like he was dead.
My God my God my God.
“It’s him,” X said.
“It’s Danny,” I said. “Is he dead?”
They shook their heads, but looked grim. We stood there looking at the photos a bit longer, while the gulls clattered above us, and then Murphy and Savoie ushered us back to the idling Olds. We all got in, and the detectives turned in their seats to look at us. X was staring out the window in the direction of the pier. “He was breathing,” Murphy said. “But we think he was lying in the shallows for a while. We’re all praying he’ll pull through. Are you guys okay?”
“I’m fine,” X said, his uneven eyes still on the pier. “This wasn’t an accident.”
Savoie and Murphy looked at each other. Sounding uncharacteristically human, Savoie said, “It could have been a suicide attempt, son.”
“Suicide?” I said, pissed off. “That’s total bullshit and you guys know it!”
X looked like he wanted to punch Savoie.
“Okay, okay, Kurt,” Murphy said, in soothing tones, “Nobody knows what happened yet. We’ll know more once the doctors have seen him, okay?”
“Right,” Savoie said, rubbing his lined forehead with a nicotine-stained hand. “EMS says it looks like an accident and nothing more. But, given the fact that he was one of your friends, and part of this punk thing, we obviously have to seriously consider that it might be something else.” He sighed.
“Nobody knows what happened yet,” Murphy said, in soothing tones. “We’ll know more once the doctors have seen him.”
X turned and glared out at Casco Bay, which was black and surging, a living thing.
“How long had he been there?” I asked.
Savoie shrugged. “Hard to say, exactly. If he recovers, he’ll tell us. I don’t know.”
These guys are making it up as they go along.
“You’ve had this Wojcik guy in custody since the Coyle Street gig, right?” X said. “And you say Bauer and the other guy were picked up at the Canadian border just this morning?”
“That’s right,” Murphy said. “We don’t know yet if they left town early this morning or late last night. We’ll know soon enough.”
X turned to look at the detectives, unblinking, and said, “Then there’s no way they could have done this. The border’s hours away.”
Murphy was about to speak, but a scowling Savoie interrupted. “Leave all that stuff to us, okay? Let’s just get you and your dad home. We’ll call you when we have something to pass along, okay?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Thomas said. “Let’s go home, boys.”
X didn’t say a word all the way back to South Portland. I kept quiet, too, super pissed off that anyone could even think that Danny attempting suicide was even a possibility.
When we arrived at X’s place, we found the Upchuck sisters and Sam Shiller waiting for us in the living room. Betty’d been crying, Sam couldn’t speak, and Patti looked like she wanted to hug X, but didn’t. X, meanwhile, was angrier than I think I’d ever seen him. After his dad went upstairs, he finally broke his silence.
“They got to Danny,” he said quietly, looking at us all intently. “He may not make it. And the idiot cops are going to claim he tried to kill himself, just watch. So, enough is enough. We need to deal with this ourselves. Okay?”
We all nodded. But I, for one, didn’t know what he meant.
Yet.
I’d find out.
C H A P T E R 22
It was night at the old Greyhound station at the intersection of Congress and Valley Streets.
The bus station was an unmitigated dump. Single-story, built in the ’50s, the floors were grimy, the walls were grimy, and the air reeked of grimy diesel coming from the buses idling outside in the three bays. Across the street were a shitty strip mall and a few rundown clapboard homes. The area was pretty crappy, but we actually liked it. That fall, before Jimmy Cleary was killed, the X Gang relied on the Greyhounds to follow the Ramones around New England. It had basically been like a religious pilgrimage for us, to see Da Brudders. So we knew the station pretty well — riding buses, as we did, around Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, and wherever. We’d see a show, and then we’d crash in a youth hostel. It was an amazing time, but now it seemed like a long time ago.
X and Patti and I sat on an unoccupied stretch of bench in the dimly lit station. The attempted murder of Danny Hate — because that’s what it clearly was, not a fucking suicide attempt or an accident — had hit me the hardest. He was in my band, ya know? I couldn’t eat, couldn’t rest, I couldn’t do anything. But I also didn’t want to be alone,
so when X said he and Patti were heading downtown, I told them I wanted to come.
Quietly, X and Patti examined a copy of Greyhound’s New England schedule. I was exhausted, so I just watched them, unsure what X was up to.
They don’t actually think they can solve this all on their own, do they?
“Okay,” Patti said. “Newport, Vermont, is pretty far north of here. Takes about three and a half hours to get there, at least. That’s with no stops.”
“There’s a bus just before seven at night, and one just before noon,” she continued, tracing a black fingernail along a column of departure times. “So, I don’t understand how …”
“So,” X said, “Bauer and his friend had to have left town last night, or even yesterday morning.”
“And Sam and Luke were with Danny at Matthew’s two nights ago,” she said. “That’s the last anyone saw him. So, Bauer and the other skinhead could have gotten him that night …”
“No way,” X said. “No way. Danny’s a big guy, but his parents are very religious and super-protective. They wouldn’t have gone two nights without calling around to see where he was. No way he was gone that long.”
“Yeah,” Patti said. “I tried calling them, to offer support or whatever, and they hung up on me.”
I stirred, my head pounding. “What are you getting at, guys?”
Neither of them said anything for a bit. “Someone tried to kill Danny yesterday, Kurt,” Patti said, “when it would have been pretty difficult for that big skinhead, Bauer, to do it.”
“Impossible for him to do it,” X said. “He and his buddy were already on that bus on their way to the border. Or they were already crashing near there, getting ready to cross the border. But there’s no way, none, they could’ve done it. No way. And there’s no way Danny could’ve been lying in the water for that long without being spotted.” X shot a glance at me. “There’s no way Danny could have been there that long and still be alive.”
“Couldn’t some other skinheads have done it?” I asked. “Maybe there are more of those pricks in Portland than we know.”
“It’s possible,” X said. “But having a shaved head, a bomber jacket, and a pair of Docs would make you pretty easy to spot, even by a Portland cop.” He paused. “But the cops sure seem pretty eager to charge these three guys for the murders and be done with it.”
“One youth subculture goes after the other,” Patti said. “End of story. Neat and tidy.”
“Right,” X said. The two of them said nothing for a while, looking around the station, as I waited.
I felt like I was going to puke.
Even if they were right, who was going to listen to them? Who cared what some teenage punks thought?
While Patti was facing the bus station’s double doors, I saw X steal a look in her direction. I’m not into girls, but I can tell you this: she had the face and body of a model. Her dyed-black hair had been backcombed, though, and she kept it aloft with what Sister Betty called “punk rock hair gel” — moistened bar soap. Her makeup was like the girls in the Slits or Siouxsie Sioux or Soo Catwoman — an abundance of black liner around the eyes and a slash of deep red lipstick across her mouth. Under her oversized PUNK ROCK VIRGINS army surplus jacket, she was wearing a studded leather belt, ripped skinny jeans, and an Eagles T-shirt, over which she’d written, in black marker, “I HATE.” On her feet, she wore knee-high Docs. She looked totally amazing.
X suggested we head to Matthew’s to get something to eat, and offer a toast for the speedy return of Danny O’Heran. “Maybe someone there saw something unusual, when he was there with Sam and Luke,” he said, pocketing the Greyhound schedule.
I drove, and we headed east to Matthew’s on Free Street. On its blue canvas awning, Matthew’s billed itself as “Portland’s Oldest Bar and Restaurant, est. 1872.” It was really just an old man’s bar, a dive, much like Gary’s, but in better shape and with an arguably better clientele. It was across from a vacant parking lot and near the abandoned Chamber of Commerce building.
Most Saturdays, especially in the summer, the X Gang would gather there around lunchtime to eat chicken and chips and down a cheap draft or three (or, in X’s case, RC Cola). The bands who played there were country and western, not punk, but no bikers were there to give us a hard time. If any bikers or rockers were around, they would usually be at the Big Easy, farther down by the water.
The chicken and chips at Matthew’s were much loved in the Portland punk scene. The Polish-born Blitt brothers, who had owned the place for decades, bought big baking potatoes and fresh chicken from some Mennonites who lived an hour or so out of town. The Blitts would batter the chicken and chips, then pressure-cook them in their basement bar. For $2.25, we’d get a heaping paper plate of food and a safe place to hang out. Most of the time, Matthew’s was frequented by old vets, old Native American men, and old country-and-western fans. Nobody bothered with us as we devoured our food at the long table near the back stairs.
I was starving. As we got settled in, a grizzled veteran sitting at the next table, Roy, introduced himself. He started chattering amiably with Patti. As X and I got up to order the food, he said to her, “You’re a beauty. That boy should ask you to marry him!”
Patti and I laughed.
X and I returned with the grub, the sodas, and a few drafts — two of which X donated to a grateful Roy. After we ate, Patti slumped back her chair. “I needed that,” she said. “I haven’t been eating much lately.”
“Me neither,” X said.
I continued to pick at mine, saying little.
“Have you guys heard anything about Danny?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Spoke to one of his brothers. No visitors, still in coma. Induced. They moved him to the Maine Medical Center.”
Patti gazed at X, hesitating, as if she wanted to say something and couldn’t, probably because I was there. I took that as my cue to go to the can.
Hi, I’m Kurt, the fifth wheel.
Now, here’s the thing: nobody, with the possible exception of me, ever asked X personal questions. To the 531 bunch, to the NCNA, even to the X Gang, he remained this totally mysterious presence. Because X usually spoke so little, and because he never really revealed what he thought — except in his essays in the pages of The NCNA, all of which Patti could practically recite by memory —X was always an enigma wrapped in mystery. Even to most of his friends (except me, I guess).
I think Patti had adored him, and possibly loved him, since the first time she spotted him at an early Blemishes show. He was escorting his little sister, Bridget, around the all-ages gig we’d helped organize at the Southern Maine Community College. X was doting on Bridget, listening to her, and sticking with her wherever she went. I remember Patti stood near X and Bridget and me, at one point, and I also remember she could not stop looking at him.
X caught her looking, and she flushed. “Excuse me,” he finally said to her. “I don’t want to impose, but I was wondering if you would mind taking my little sister into the washroom.”
“Yes,” she said, quickly.
“Yes, you’d mind?” he said, as me, X, and Bridget looked at her.
“No, no, no,” Patti said, waving her hands. “No, I wouldn’t mind. Yes, I’ll take her.”
That was the sum-total of their first conversation. A few days later, they met, more formally, in the Language Studies area at PAHS. In no time, X was urging Patti to form the Virgins and play some gigs. “The scene is too male,” he’d said. “We need some pissed-off feminist punk bands.” She, for her part, helped us with publishing and distributing The NCNA, setting up gigs, or whatever else we asked her to do.
So, they had been friends for almost two years. In all that time, I know for a fact that he had never touched her, much less made a move to kiss her. During the Ramones tour in the fall, we couldn’t find space in the hostel in Amherst. So X ha
d rented a no-frills hotel room for Patti and Sister Betty, and he and I crashed on the floor near the door. The next morning, while X showered and I watched The Flintstones, Betty looked at her sister. “Holy crap, you are totally in love with him,” she whispered, but I heard her over the sounds of Fred and Barney.
“Holy crap, I totally am,” Patti had whispered back.
Breeders. Lovable, but so, so ridiculous.
Anyway, I kept killing some time in Matthew’s shitter. Much later on, Patti would reluctantly tell me how that historic conversation went.
“Hey,” Patti had said, going for broke. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
His picked-over chicken leg hovered in the air, momentarily, but X didn’t look up. “Depends,” he said, “what the question is.”
Flustered, Patti sipped at her draft, trying to summon up the courage to speak. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “Never mind.”
X finished with the chicken leg, sat back in his chair, wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, and looked at her. “No, please,” he said. “Ask away.”
Patti was feeling profoundly uncomfortable. “It will make me sound stupid,” she said. “It will make me sound like a dumb female.”
“I doubt that,” X said, and Patti thought she could see a faint smile on his face.
“All right, then,” she said, busily rearranging the glasses on the table. “Why haven’t you … why haven’t you ever made a move on me?”
Long pause.
“Like this?” he said, and he abruptly stood up, leaned over the table, and kissed her on the cheek, then on the lips.
X then sat back, watching her. She looked like she couldn’t speak. Like she was in shock.
Roy, who was still sitting at the next table, gave them an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Way to go, son,” he hollered. “She’s a keeper!”
C H A P T E R 23
The Upchuck sisters, née Kowalchuk — all four of them — were a pretty rare example of East-West reverse migration. Meaning, they all started out in sunny and warm California and ended up in cold-as-fuck Maine. Usually, Maine residents move somewhere else, looking for work or better weather. Very few Californians, as far as I know, ever move in the opposite direction. So, the Kowalchuks were pretty unusual, in more ways than one.
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