Nine Hundred Nights

by Nick Apuzzo

  "Soon as this shit is gone, let's do it. I wanna be out of here...before I come down." TJ said.

  "Fuckin' A." Joe said.

  TJ opened the passenger door and Joe grabbed his arm before he could climb out "Hey, I'm hungry, let's make sure we grab some stuff to eat for the ride."

  "Not here. I don't want bags and wrappers and shit with us in case some fuckin' nosy cop stops us."

  "Oh." Joe nodded "Good thinkin'."

  Joe got out of the Bronco and grabbed a club that was shoved between the front seats and slipped it down the neck of his grey sweatshirt. He walked to the rear customer entrance and pulled the glass door open. TJ climbed on top of the Bronco with a big pair of cutters, he jumped the short distance to the top of the wall that enclosed the dumpsters and then walked along its length to the wall of the building. He leaned against the wall and cut the phone cables, jumped down to the ground, found the main electrical junction box and cut the mains.

  TJ opened his door to the Bronco, threw the cutters behind his seat and retrieved a 'Beretta 92' nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol from beneath his seat, stuffed it into the waistband of his pants and joined Joe at the door to the restaurant. His green parka hid the Beretta well.

  Kenny saw the rear door of the place open, near the bathrooms, and whoever was coming in held the door open long enough for Kenny to feel the cold on his face on the opposite side of the dining room. He frowned and took another bite of his muffin. Suddenly all of the electricity went out and Kenny's first thought was to yell to the person holding the door open.

  "Hey, close the door, you're letting all the heat out!"

  At that moment, neither he, nor anyone else in the place, connected the power outage with the open door, however in the next few seconds that would change. Two very large guys came through the door quickly; the first one through the door wore a green parka and sprinted to the front of the place, hopped over the counter and pulled a blackened steel pistol from his belt. His accomplice came in behind him wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt; he followed the guy in the parka into the front order area and turned the bolts on the front doors, locking them. Then he moved to the entrance of the dining room and pulled a large club from the under his sweatshirt.

  "ANY OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS MOVE A MUSCLE AND I'LL SMASH YOUR FUCKIN' SKULL IN!" Joe screamed.

  He pounded the club on the table next to him and it produced an impressive 'CRACK!' No one doubted that Joe meant business.

  Kenny could hear the muted screams of the people by the order area as they must have been emptying cash drawers from the registers into a bag. He heard the sound of someone getting hit several times but couldn't see around the wall to the area behind the counter. After a minute, one by one, three young women and two young men, in single file, stumbled into the dining area. The last of the young men looked to have a broken nose and it was bleeding profusely down his face, neck and the front of his uniform. Then he noticed the uniform blouse of the third girl in the line was ripped open in front, her breasts were exposed and showed an ugly scratch that ran across them. The guy in the parka told them to sit on the floor and all of them, teary eyed, obeyed immediately.

  Joe looked at Kenny, who was the farthest away from the rest of the customers and yelled in a menacing voice "YOU!"

  Kenny was looking at him, but said nothing.

  "You! Blond haired faggot! Get your ass over here...on the floor!"

  Kenny stood up and began to walk very slowly toward the group. As he did this, TJ approached the blonde women holding her son and groped her chest; it wasn't a quick feel, he took his time and enjoyed the look of humiliation on her face.

  "ON THE FLOOR!" Joe repeated said.

  Kenny crouched down to his knees, but didn't sit.

  JT said to Joe "Take the kid."

  The mother screamed "NOOOOO!" and held onto her son tighter.

  TJ shouted "YOU WANT HIM TO GET HURT?"

  The look on the woman's face was pure terror as she tried to resist Joe from pulling the crying little boy from her arms.

  TJ let go of her breasts and grabbed a fist full of her hair. He gave it a vicious yank and said in a calm voice "Let him go. We're gonna do this...it's gonna happen bitch and I don't think you want him on your lap. Do you?"

  A moment later she resigned herself to the hopelessness of the situation and let Joe take the boy. Once he had the boy in his arm, Joe set his club against the wall and took the pistol from TJ. With both hands now free, TJ smiled and stepped closer to the woman who was now close to hysteria. He began to slowly unzip his fly.

  The woman was more interested in her son than whatever humiliations TJ had planned for her; Joe noticed and smirked as he began to raise the pistol toward the toddler's head, simply to add to the torment that she was feeling. But as he began to move, Kenny sprang from the floor directly at him.

  "ASSHOLE!" Kenny screamed at the top of his lungs as he smashed into Joe and the little boy.

  Joe was fully a 'head' taller than Kenny and considerably more muscled; never the less he was knocked backward into the wall and off of his feet. Joe didn't drop the little boy, but he did drop the pistol. Kenny lunged at it but felt a fist smash into the midpoint between his shoulder blades, and the air quickly left his lungs. An arm appeared from behind him, reaching for the pistol, but he was able to smack it away and get a grip on the barrel of the weapon. Adrenaline was being dumped into his bloodstream and as if he were a machine, Kenny pulled his knees underneath him and shot up to his feet. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly around him now and he turned and saw TJ, with his cock hanging out, about to grab him. He threw his arms around TJ and pulled him farther away from the woman, twisting as he did so. For a brief moment it looked as though the two were dancing as they spun around. Now Kenny was facing the front doors and what he saw took him quite a long time to make sense of, at least it seemed like a long time to him; in reality it was a few tenths of a second. A police officer, outside the farthest of the front doors, was crouched with his pistol aimed at TJ's back.

  Kenny put all of his strength into pushing the man away from him, and the instant they were separated, Kenny let himself drop to the floor. A split second later a shot rang out and though the cop was a good thirty feet away, the sound was deafening. Glass shattered into the ordering area and TJ collapsed onto Kenny's legs.

  Then all was quiet. Momentarily there was no movement or sound; the only sound Kenny could hear was the beating of his own heart. He turned his head and saw the police officer carefully duck under the push railing at the midpoint of the door frame and step through. The glass fragments crackled under the cop's shoes as they broke into smaller pieces against the tile floor; the officer took his first step into the restaurant. When the cop was completely inside of the door frame Kenny felt the pistol pulled from his hand; Joe was making his play.

  Kenny's voice cracked as he yelled from his spot on the floor "THE GUY BEHIND ME HAS A GUN!"

  He looked toward his feet and saw Joe backing away; he lashed out with all of his strength and scored a solid kick to the man's face. Joe shook his head and it was immediately clear he wasn't seriously hurt. Next Kenny noticed the blonde woman reaching out for her boy but Joe had fully recovered from the kick and grabbed her by the hair. Before Joe could pull her to him, Kenny wrestled his legs from under the dying TJ and pulled himself onto Joe. Kenny saw that the cop was almost to the dividing wall, but could see he wouldn't make it in time, so he grabbed at Joe's face as the gunman tried to take aim at the woman's head. Kenny scored a scrape in Joe's left eye. The shock of losing sight in one eye along with the burning pain he felt got his attention; Joe pivoted quickly and shot Kenny in the throat. A split second later the top of Joe's head exploded against the wall in a red fog as the cop's bullet broke apart inside of his skull.

  The blonde woman, covered in blood, grabbed her son up in her arms and hugged his crying and trembling body for a long minute. Then she moved to Kenny and sat on the floor beside him, tears fl
owing down her face. She gently stroked his face as he looked into her eyes, but in less than two minutes he lost consciousness. The bullet had destroyed all of the structure within his neck and even if he'd been in an emergency room at the time of the shooting it wouldn't have mattered, the extent of the damage was too great.

  She would have been surprised to learn that even in his semi-conscious state, the first thought that came to him as her anguished face appeared over his was that he wanted to tell her not to worry, and it frustrated him that he couldn't seem to get the words out. Moments before he died his vision faded to black and he recalled a vivid memory; he was five years old and digging a hole in the sand on a beach with a little red plastic shovel, as his young parents sat watching him from a blanket nearby. He could feel the sun and hear the waves gently licking at the shoreline as he dug into the damp and gritty sand; he felt a deep contentment as he waved to his parents and his consciousness ebbed.

  After he died she continued to stare down at Kenny for a long while. Finally, she kissed his forehead and whispered a soulful "Thank you."

  Track 21

  Where It All Ended

  Thursday evening and all day Friday, the incident at Tex's Famous made all of the local television and newspapers. Video and still photos of the shattered front door, the dead assailants, shot from a tactful distance of course, and a high school graduation photo of Kenny. The woman he'd saved didn't appear in any of the television reports, but she did give an interview with one local paper that was picked up on 'the wire', and published in the other papers. All of the stories were structured similarly, they started out with shocking accounts of what happened and ended with Kenny's heroic actions. On the third day there was some short news pieces on detail learned from the police investigation; the Bronco was stolen from a nearby residential driveway an hour before the crime, the weapon was stolen in a gun store burglary in Middletown, New York several months before and both assailants had lengthy rap sheets and had been to prison. From the fourth day onward the incident had run the course of its media cycle and was considered 'old news'.

  We felt that Friday, the day after Kenny's death, was too soon to approach his parents and during this time, with the exception of a few phone calls, each of us needed to bear the brunt of our initial sorrow alone; the time would come soon enough for us to share our grief with each other. At the moment we were shattered…our families and others close to us worried seriously about the effects they saw in us.

  On Saturday, Sean called Kenny's house and asked if the boys could pay a visit. Kenny's mother thought it a good idea so we all crammed ourselves in Tommy's van and he drove us to the house. The ride over was the first time we were together since it happened and what little conversation there was, was polite and subdued. None of us was willing to open up yet, but each of us knew that the first crack in the emotional dam would lead to a flood, so we each worked purposely to prevent that crack from forming. Sitting in the living room, we conveyed our condolences to Kenny's mother and father; they were polite and subdued.

  After a few minutes of uneasiness Kenny's mom said "Kenny is our son, and he'll always be our son…but we know that you boys were closer to him, we know it's very painful for you."

  Up until this point I had been doing an excellent job of inspecting my shoes, but now I looked up and stared unblinking into Kenny's mother's eyes; I wanted to say something but was finding it difficult to choose the words.

  "It's OK…" she said to me "…it's why you're here."

  "Please excuse me a sec." was all I could manage and I quickly stood and went out the front door and stood just outside; I had almost lost it. I listened to what was said inside.

  "Being older than any of you, I can tell you…" Kenny's mother said in a kind voice "…it does get better. Time heals all wounds. You may not believe that now, but it's true."

  Jimmy, who'd known Kenny the longest, seemed the most capable of bearing the tragedy while keeping his wits about him. He reached out and squeezed Kenny's mothers hand for a moment.

  Jimmy said "I'm sure you know how much time we spent together. Being in a band…you go through a lot of things together and for us it made brothers out of us. Real brothers. With some people…ya know…bad chemistry eventually rips them apart because they spend so much time together." Jimmy looked to Kenny's father "But with us…the more time we spent together, the closer we got." Jimmy looked to the band and confessed "Ya know, the whole first day I kept thinking the same thing over and over. I couldn't sleep that night either, it kept coming back to me…why the hell couldn't I have been there? I wanted to be there and it was too late. I feel like I was cheated." Jimmy shook his head "I don't know."

  Tommy wanted to express what he was feeling to Kenny's parents, but everything that crossed his mind made him miss Kenny all the more, and he knew it would have the same effect on his parents. He remained silent, putting their comfort ahead of his need to grieve openly. Tommy had an inner strength and calm that few ever sensed because of his gregarious position as front man and singer.

  We concluded our visit, conveyed our respects and took our places back in Tommy's van; but before taking off, I jumped back out to the sidewalk and asked Tommy to hold up for a minute. I spoke with Kenny's father briefly and then rejoined the others.

  As Tommy pulled away from the curb, he asked "What was that about?"

  "Let's stop for a beer someplace, I have an idea." I said.

  The wake was held the following Wednesday and Thursday. We discussed it and decided to attend only on Thursday night; we didn't want to intrude on the extended family. It was difficult for us to lay eyes on Kenny's body and hold our emotions in check; we took meaning from the fact that his parents did not have his hair cut short, it was its normal length which is to say well past his shoulders, but arranged in a handsome and dignified way. We recognized it as an expression of understanding and acceptance by his parents. The group of us approached the casket together. Tommy pulled the 'Three Stooges' guitar pick from his jacket pocket and placed it between Kenny's folded hands. Then Jimmy produced a wallet sized picture of he and Kenny in little league uniforms at age eight, standing in front of Jimmy's old house; he slipped it into Kenny's breast pocket. We stood for a long while, each of us alone with our thoughts, yet drawing strength from the group. Ingy looked at Dave, whose complexion was pale and his eyes red, he looked as if he'd lost three quarts of blood. He patted Dave on the back and in a matter of seconds it led to all of us embracing; each of us still working to prevent our total emotional release in front of others.

  The funeral mass was held on Friday morning at Sacred Heart and there were about thirty fans close enough to the band to find out about the funeral details; they sat and stood at the rear of the church leaving most of the seating for the extended family. Sean spotted Scott and Bobby and led them up to the third row of pews. At the end of a solemn service Jimmy, Tommy, Ingy, Sean, Dave and I were the pall bearers and lifted the casket slowly and carried it to the hearse where we gently set it down.

  The long procession of cars slowly made its way to St. Mary's Cemetery in Saddle Brook. The weather was unseasonably warm which made the burial easier on everyone. At the gravesite, Kenny's mother had her face buried in the arms of her husband as she wept tears of the deepest loss.

  The mourners were too numerous for an after-funeral gathering at their home, so Kenny's parents reserved a room at Angliotti's, a restaurant that was also in Saddle Brook just a few miles from St. Mary's. As the mourners entered the large banquet room they were surrounded by Kenny's artwork. Near the entrance hung the large paintings that Kenny had done of each of us, taken from the practice studio walls the night before; however we framed them in beautiful cherry wood. A high-tech metal and glass pedestal stood in the middle of the floor and held smaller drawings Kenny had done in pencil; one of these was in an expensive frame we bought specially for it, and held the original paper placemat sketch of Carlotta that Kenny had done in the Athens Diner, it now had a w
hite canvas border and was mounted under glass. As visitors walked deeper into the room, they saw older and older examples of his work. We'd hung his sketches of insects, birds, trees, people and places and they captured the attention of everyone in the room. The extended family was awestruck at an unframed portrait of a naked woman, done in pencil on a huge white piece of smooth cardboard; the upper right corner of the cardboard was dog-ear-folded back so you could see that it was in fact, the back of a coffee shop window sign.

  After all of the mourners had arrived, Kenny's father stood and said a few words "Jan and I are grateful that you could be here with us today, to remember our son Kenneth. Please enjoy some food and drink. Join me in thanking Kenneth's band members who arranged all of Kenneth's artwork for us to appreciate and share."

  There was a moment of silence and then, gradually, people started to talk amongst themselves. It was quite a while before everyone was seated; there was a 'current' of people slowly moving counterclockwise around the room's periphery as guests were surprised and delighted by Kenny's works.

  We sat together, of course, at two big tables pulled together; April and Jimmy, Chloe and Dave, Venice and I, Hope and Tommy, Sam and Sean, Cheryl and Scott and Ally and Bobby. Bill and Valerie also sat with us and of course Ingy, who had come alone. Before a half hour had passed, everyone in our bunch had played musical chairs with the result that the boys and girls were clustered separately.

  Sean disappeared to the bar and came back with two unopened bottles of Irish whiskey and a bottle of vodka and not long afterward we were the loudest tables in the room. We traded Kenny stories back and forth, often exaggerating to get a bigger laugh than the previous storyteller. When the whiskey had reached the blood stream in sufficient concentrations, we both laughed and cried openly, and there wasn't one of us who didn't have a wet face at some point. When the end of the night neared, the talk about Kenny shifted to his heroic end and the admiration we all felt towards him. Without exception the women drove the men home and put them to bed, thoroughly drunk as we were. We'd finally been able to lower our guards and let out all of the loss we were feeling, while also celebrating our favorite memories of Kenny.