Expiration Date

by Duane Swierczynski

  I thought I remembered the facts of the case fairly well; it had been a big deal to me when it finally appeared. It was the kind of story that made me want to be a journalist.

  But now I looked at the sidebar again, did a quick count and saw there were fifteen victims.

  No. That couldn’t be right. When I wrote this piece, it was only nine.

  I swear to God it had been only nine.

  Fifteen was an absurdly high number. Did Gary Heidnick have that many victims? Did most serial killers?

  “I think you need to see someone. My dad knows someone who would talk to you, keep it discreet.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “I know that, Mickey. I just think you’ve been living in your head too much lately. You need some help climbing out of it.”

  Did I make this stuff up? Was my subconscious mind putting on one hell of a show for me whenever I nodded off to sleep? When you look at it from the outside, from the other side of the glass, there was a compelling case for insanity. Only I was experiencing these things. Only I had proof. It could all be happening in my head, like Meghan said.

  But I knew it wasn’t. It was real. Senses don’t lie. Not like this.

  Meghan touched my shoulder.

  “There’s also the pill.”

  “What about the pill?”

  “I have a friend who works for a drug company. One of the big ones. As a favor, he ran a few tests on the pill you gave me.”

  “You did what? Oh crap, Meghan. Why did you do that? You have no idea where it came from, and what it was…”

  “Neither did you. And you popped it in your mouth.”

  “I thought it was Tylenol.”

  “The first time. But you kept taking it, even though you had no idea what it might be.”

  “Okay, good point.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a quiet Old West–style standoff moment. She was waiting for me to draw, I believe, so she could expertly shoot the pistol out of my hand before twirling her own gun and replacing it smoothly in her holster. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. She’d have to speak first. And she did.

  “Do you want to know what the pill contained?”

  “Sure.”

  “Nothing but sugar. It was a placebo. Meant for use as a control in pharmaceutical studies. Dan sees them all the time. Took him about five minutes to figure it out.”

  “Right. Which just goes to prove my main point that I am not on drugs. I may be on cheap beer, I might be a junkie when it comes to peanut butter and apples, but I’m not on drugs.”

  Meghan squinted.

  “Peanut butter? Is that why your skin has this strange jaundiced tinge to it?”

  “I also haven’t been out of the apartment in a while.”

  “Anyway, that doesn’t prove you’re not on drugs. It just proves you’re not on those particular drugs, because they’re nothing but sugar.”

  “Jesus H. Christ on a stick. You moved me in! Did you see a box marked random drug paraphernalia? Did you see a bunch of syringes come tumbling out of an old shoe box?”

  “What…you think I’d go through your things?”

  “You told me yourself: you’re a snoop.”

  “Touché.”

  I used the few moments of silence to run Meghan’s evidence through the tired and confused computer encased inside my skull. Let’s say she’s right. The pills do jack shit. They’re nothing but sugar. I was having ridiculously vivid dreams of wandering the streets of Frankford in the early 1970s all on my own. Patty Glenhart’s story had been lurking in my subconscious for years now, waiting for the right dream/hallucination. And maybe it was the same thing with Billy Derace. Clearly I needed some kind of closure, so my brain supplied it. Just like I did with my college essay freshman year.

  Wait.

  I looked at Meghan.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  The name on the downstairs mailbox for apartment 2-C was hynd, not derace. It had been scrawled on a paper mailing label, not a plastic strip with white punched letters. I started scraping the label away with my left thumbnail. Maybe there was some trace beneath. Come on, rules of space and time. Throw me a bone here.

  Meghan padded down the stairs.

  “What are you doing?”

  I ignored her and continued scraping. I was Ahab, and the letters beneath this label my giant white whale. Finally the label worked itself free, but there was nothing else beneath. No blue plastic label, no white letters. Just the sticky underside of the label I’d just removed.

  “Mickey?”

  Except…

  There. It was faint, but legible. The outlines of six letters in the grime, pressed against the cheap metal.

  “Come here. Can you read those letters?”

  She was in this far, why not humor me for just a few more seconds? Standing next to me, she leaned forward, squinting.

  “What is this, a test? D-E-R…H…no wait, A.”

  “Keep going.”

  “A-C-E…Derace?”

  She pronounced it to rhyme with “terrace.” Growing up, I’d always pronounced it to rhyme with “the ace.”

  Either way, the letters were there. It hadn’t been a dream. I wasn’t hallucinating.

  Meghan put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Do you know that name?”

  Even Meghan couldn’t lawyer-logic her way out of that one.

  Fact: Grandpop Henry worked at the same mental institution that housed the man who killed my father with a steak knife. I produced the paystubs, I showed Meghan the Daily News and Bulletin clips.

  Fact: Grandpop Henry rented an apartment in the same building where the man who killed my father grew up.

  Fact: Grandpop Henry kept a bottle of white pills locked up in his medicine cabinet that sent part of their user into the past.

  “I’m not letting you have that one,” Meghan said.

  “Fine. Mysterious white pills that allegedly send the soul of their user back to the past. That okay, Counselor?”

  “Conjecture. But fine, okay—let’s say these pills do what you say. What was your grandfather planning to do?”

  “Kill the man who killed his son. Change reality.”

  “Then why hasn’t he done it? Think about it. If he’s been taking these pills like you think he has, why isn’t your life automatically different?”

  “Maybe he tried. Maybe it’s not as easy as it seems.”

  “Or maybe he tried it once and it sent him into his coma, because those pills are wildly dangerous.”

  I had been thinking the same thing. But I wasn’t going to let her have the point that easily.

  “Conjecture.”

  “Over-frickin’-ruled.”

  We stared at the each for a few minutes, letting our imaginations run wild. The whole idea was ludicrous, of course. But take the pills out of the equation. There were too many coincidences piled up. My grandpop had been trying something—revenge or closure.

  “The only person who knows is my grandpop. And he can’t talk. Not yet, anyway.”

  Meghan looked at me.

  “He might not be the only one.”

  IX

  Asylum Road

  Once you walk up Oxford Avenue, away from the El, you enter Northwood, which has always been the nicest part of Frankford. In fact, if you lived in Northwood, you never admitted to living in Frankford.

  Northwood had slightly wider streets—some of them brick-paved—with singles and twins and trees and big backyards and everything else everyone in Frankford wanted.

  I grew up resenting the whole Frankford/Northwood divide. The dividing line, of course, was the Frankford El. We lived one block south of the El, in a cramped rowhome. Zero trees, a grim factory parking lot across the street.

  But go just two blocks north of the El, and it’s a completely different story. Aforementioned trees and backyards. Why couldn’t my mom have moved there after my dad died? Just a few blocks away? Take a walk
on the wild side, Anne. Sure, maybe the mortgage would have been a couple extra grand—maybe $11,000 as opposed to the $9,000 you’d pay in Frankford—but surely we could have swung that, right?

  Couldn’t we?

  Mom had moved there eight years ago, finally leaving Darrah Street. I honestly don’t know why she stayed in that house so long, other than inertia. I used to pretend that it was because she missed my father, that she couldn’t bear the idea of moving away from the house they’d shared. But if that was true, she never let on. She almost never talked about him, and packed up every photo of him and put them in the hutch in the dining room. Maybe it was the lingering memory of my father, but I just think she hated the idea of moving.

  So she’d traded a standard issue Frankford rowhome for the slightly more upscale standard Northwood twin. Instead of neighbors jammed up against both sides of her home, now she had a single neighbor jammed up against only one side of her home.

  “More wine, Meghan?”

  “No thank you, Mrs. Wade.”

  “There’s plenty here. And call me Anne, willya?”

  “I’m okay. I have to drive later, and I really don’t have much of a tolerance. I’m kind of a cheap date.”

  A mild lie from Meghan. She could hold her liquor like a bartop. She just didn’t want to insult my mother’s choice in grape-based libations. Not that she’s a snob. But chances are, the Charles family never served pinot grigio from a cardboard box.

  We all stood around the kitchen—me in my arm sling, Meghan, my mother and her boyfriend—making introductions and small talk. Mom was so stunned that I brought somebody, she didn’t even notice the sling. In my twenty plus years of dating life, I’ve never brought anybody home. Ever.

  But now I was happy for the witness, because Whiplash Walt was in rare form. Touching my mom’s shoulders, her back, her waist—like he was planning on killing her later and wanted to place as many fingerprints as possible, just so the Philly PD would be extra-clear on who’d done it.

  Whiplash Walt was a lawyer, just like Meghan’s father, but they inhabited two totally different planes of existence. Nicholas Charles Esq. regularly lunched with the mayor and the Philadelphia political elite. Whiplash Walt spent his days handing out cards to anybody wearing a puffy neck brace within a five-mile radius. Whiplash, as his name might imply, did personal injury. It was how he’d met my mom, in fact. She tried to sue the hospital where she’d worked as an accountant for a slip-and-fall thing. She’d lost the case, but won Whiplash.

  Mom asked me if I wanted another beer, but instead I helped myself to some of Whiplash’s whiskey—Johnnie Walker Black. Probably a gift from a grateful client. God knows the cheap bastard wouldn’t spring for it himself.

  Mom excused herself to go to the basement. I knew where she was going.

  “It’s okay. It’s your house. You can smoke here.”

  “You know I don’t smoke, Mickey.”

  “I totally know you do.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  I turned to Meghan.

  “She totally smokes.”

  “I do not smoke.”

  Mom excused herself anyway to go downstairs to smoke. In a few moments we would hear the wrinkling of the wrapper, then the flick of the lighter. And in a few minutes we would all smell cigarette smoke.

  I explained to Meghan, not bothering to lower my voice.

  “Both of my mom’s parents died of lung cancer. She wants me to think that she quit smoking in 1990, when her father died. And I really do think she tries to quit. She just never has.”

  Whiplash was clearly uncomfortable with this, so he made some small talk with Meghan. Once he found out her father was the Nicholas Charles, the small talk became more pointed, asking what her father was working on now, and hey, does he go to the Capital Grille every so often, and hey, is your dad looking to hire oh I’m just kidding but really I’m not.

  My mom returned to the kitchen, absolutely reeking of smoke. It wafted from her clothes and invaded our nostrils. I fought back the urge to sneeze. We all sat down to eat.

  Within sixty seconds Whiplash had whipped through his dinner. Then he stood up and wordlessly made his way down to his basement office. But not before giving my mom a none-too-subtle pinch on her ass.

  The plates in front of Meghan and me were still full, as we hadn’t had time to pretend to enjoy more than a few bites of our rigatoni and meatballs. My mom leaned in closer to us, all confidential-like.

  “He’s working on a case.”

  I leaned in, too.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Whiplash spent a lot of time in Northwood, but he’d never move here. Going from suburbia to Northwood would be serious slumming, even for a personal injury lawyer. So he kept his own condo in Ardmore, but spent most of his time at my mom’s house.

  “More wine?”

  “I’m good, Mrs. Wade.”

  “Hey, I told you. It’s Anne. We’re all adults here.”

  “Right. Anne.”

  Bringing Meghan had been a tactical decision. With a buffer in the room, my mom might not come at me with both barrels blazing. She might even be forced to answer a question or two directly.

  “Mom, what do you know about Grandpop and the Adams Institute?”

  The fork in my mother’s hand froze for a brief moment, like the fancy slow-mo bullet time of a Wachowski flick. She smiled.

  “That’s where I thought I’d end up when you told me you wanted to be a writer.”

  And then the fork completed the journey to her mouth, which chewed and grinned at the same time.

  The Adams Institute was a popular punch line in Frankford. Misbehave, and your parents would say, “You’re going to drive me straight to Adams if you don’t knock that off.” Or, “Where we going on vacation, Mom?” “To Adams, if you don’t stop goofing around.” Adams was the loony bin. It was the most beautiful piece of land in Frankford, spread across ten gorgeous acres on the fringes of Northwood. But nobody wanted to end up there.

  Meghan laughed politely.

  “How many years did Mickey’s grandfather work there?”

  Oooh, kapowie. Anne hadn’t seen that one coming. She was very practiced at smacking away my questions. She had since I was a kid. But the two-on-one assault had left her flummoxed.

  “Oh, gee. I think he retired a few years ago? We really don’t talk too much. You know your grandpop, Mickey.”

  I took a slug of Johnny Walker Black for courage.

  “How long before Grandpop found out Billy Derace was there?”

  You should have seen the death stare on Anne’s face then. My God. Blue eyes like dagger icicles.

  “Billy who?”

  “Mom. The guy who killed dad.”

  “Excuse me.”

  My mom pushed her chair back, wiped her mouth with a white napkin, placed it on the table, then left the room.

  Meghan and I exchanged glances. I took another gulp of Whiplash’s good scotch, which burned my throat as I followed my mom into the kitchen.

  My mother’s palms were pressed to the edges of the countertop. I didn’t know if she was trying to keep her balance or keep the counter from resisting the earth’s gravity and floating into the air.

  “Mom?”

  She looked up. Tears were running down her cheeks. I had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Wasn’t I just here—my mother looking at me and crying? Like, thirty-seven years ago?

  My mom wiped her face dry.

  “You don’t understand. For years I’ve been waiting for the call that your grandfather’s murdered someone over at Adams.”

  “Not just someone. Billy Derace. Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth? You said it was a bar fight. But this guy just attacked Dad out of nowhere. I read the news clips.”

  “When would you have liked to know? When you were nine years old? Or maybe when you turned sixteen? Twenty-one, just in time for you to go out drinking?”

  “Any of those times would have be
en better than you lying to me.”

  “I never lied to you. You assumed things.”

  This was true. I had filled in the gaps. But only because I’d never heard the full story, and had little else to go on. My mother was masterful at shutting down awkward conversations or ignoring them completely.

  I tried a different way at it.

  “I found a bunch of newspaper clippings that Grandpop kept—all about Dad’s murder. I think he saved every newspaper article, and even got a copy of the police report.”

  “Well, that’s a surprise. Your father hated your grandfather and always assumed the feeling was mutual. Who knew he gave a shit.”

  It was always that. Your grandfather. Your side of the family. Your gene pool, not mine.

  “Why did he hate Grandpop?”

  “It’s a long story, and we have a guest.”

  Now it was “we.” Now I was part of the family again. Our weird dysfunctional family of two.

  “Okay, now here’s what I don’t get. You don’t like him. That much is obvious. You never speak to him, you barely seem to tolerate his existence, and yet you’re always bugging me to visit him. You put me in his friggin’ apartment, Mom. Why would you push me toward somebody you hate? Somebody you tell me my own father hated?”

  “Because he doesn’t have anybody else.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And because someday he might wake up. And the doctors say if he does wake up, he’s going to need some help. I can’t do it, not with work. You’re his grandson.”

  Then I understood what my mom had wanted all along. A way to ease her conscience. A way to take care of everything. Me. And my grandpop.

  That is: me taking care of my grandpop. Because she sure as hell didn’t want to deal with him.

  We didn’t say anything for a short while. I knew Meghan could hear every word of this. My mother’s house, as spacious as it may be by Northwood standards, wasn’t a Main Line McMansion.

  “Why did Dad hate Grandpop? Was it because of the divorce?”