CHAPTER 10
I didn't really remember going home. I know we all smoked a lot and listened to the radio, but the next thing I knew it was morning and I was waking up with a throbbing headache. Ricky had told me to take a couple aspirin before I went to bed, but I think I forgot. I lay there for a moment watching the summer breeze stir the curtains of my bedroom window and listening to the birds chirping outside. Grandma would throw out a bunch of bread crumbs every morning and all the birds in the neighborhood would have breakfast together in our back yard.
Something was bothering me. A bad dream? And then I remembered. Vito's club... the killings... Nick. I closed my eyes sadly and lay there without moving, trying not to think, trying to go back to sleep. Nick was dead. I had seen them carrying him out to the ambulance, covered with a bloodstained white sheet. Where was he now? Over in a morgue in Kentucky with a tag on his toe?
I couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up wearily after a while, a little unsteady. Damn, my head was killing me. I went into the bathroom and popped some aspirin. I still had my socks on.
Now I would have to go down to breakfast and act like nothing was wrong. How could I pull that off? Maybe I should stay in bed and say I was sick. Which wasn't any lie. I was dizzy and my eyes felt gritty and my hand hurt. I vaguely remembered pounding on Kenny's dashboard. My throat hurt, too; I'd never smoked so many cigarettes in one night. I washed my face and pulled on my clothes and went downstairs.
G & G were sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee and listening to the news on the radio. Grandpa was puffing on his pipe, clouding up the small kitchen with the aroma of his tobacco. They looked at me sadly when I walked in. I was wearing a cardboard smile on my face that I had practiced in the mirror in the living room.
"Dear..." Grandma began in a soft voice. Something was up; they must have heard about it on the news and were trying to figure out how to tell me. Great, I only had to act dumb for a minute, so I brightened up and said good morning.
"Here's your juice, dear," Grandma said, handing me a glass of cold OJ. I sat down and guzzled it. Man, was I dry.
"We have something to tell you. It was just on the news." She patted me on the knee. "It's about your Nick."
Damn, hurry up and get it out. I can't keep up this dumb act much longer. I felt like I was about to burst out in tears or something. I had a sudden wild urge to tear up the kitchen, smash the eggs on the stove, kick the radio, throw everything out on the porch, kill those goddamn noisy chirpin'-ass birds.
"What is it?" I asked innocently.
"He got in some trouble over in Covington last night," Grandpa took over the story while Grandma turned back to the stove to work on the bacon.
"Oh?"
Grandpa put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. His pipe lay in the ceramic ashtray I had made for him in art class in the sixth grade. It had gone out. "He's dead, son."
It was almost a relief to hear it. It was official, now. It had been on the news and Grandpa had heard it. Nick was dead. I sat my empty glass down gently on the table before I dropped it.
Grandma, behind me, put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me back against her apron. I sat numbly, not saying anything. She was so sweet, it made me want to cry.
"He killed a man, son. He walked into Vito Siri's place and shot him. Then Siri's bodyguards shot him."
"God," I said softly. "Why?" That's what I had been asking myself in my dreams all night. Why?
"I don't know."
I felt more warm-blooded and mammal-like after I had eaten breakfast, but that didn't mean I felt human.. My headache faded to a dull throbbing that I wouldn't even have noticed if I'd still been asleep, and I goofed around gloomily with my guitar on the back porch the rest of the morning while Grandma worked in her garden and gossiped over the fence with Josephine Cowan and Grandpa washed his "machine." The news at noon had more details of the shooting.
According to witnesses, and there were a bunch of them, Vito and his driver, Lanny Pritkin, entered the nightclub through the rear entrance at 11:45. They were followed by two more employees of Siri's, Moe Spencer and Sam Santori, who acted as bodyguards for Siri and who were licensed to carry firearms in Kentucky. As they walked down the hall toward Siri's office Nick stepped out in front of them from the bar area and started shooting at Siri with a .38 Colt. The two bodyguards quickly returned the fire, but Nick's first shot had got Siri between the eyes, and when the smoke cleared Siri and Nick lay dead on the floor and Lanny was trying to stuff himself behind the cigarette machine, out of harm's way. Nick died without having said a word, and nobody had any idea why he had done it.
Reba's funeral was at 2:00 that afternoon at the same little church where Carol's funeral had been. I didn't want to go, hell, two funerals in one week was a little much, but I put on my tie and dragged myself over to Ricky's and we went to pay our respects. Reba drew a lot bigger crowd that Carol had; everybody knew her. I didn't walk up to view the body this time.
I didn't understand funerals, and still don't. Exhibiting a corpse for public inspection seems to me like such a ghoulish ritual, more appropriate in Cro-Magnon society than in the 20th century. It's like going to see a hanging or a circumcision or a gall bladder operation, and it just makes everybody depressed and costs the family a lot of money. It's amazing that morticians have been able to keep this disgusting moribund racket acceptable to modern society.
Afterwards I rode over to Aunt Eva's with G & G and fooled around with her dead husband's war souvenirs while Grandpa took her to the grocery store. She didn't drive, so Grandpa and Uncle Bill took turns driving her to the store or the doctor or wherever she needed to go. When she went to bingo or to church or to the drag strip she caught a ride with one of her old lady pals.
Her husband, Sam, who was my great-uncle, had brought back a bunch of stuff from France or somewhere when he returned from the war. There was a big sword and a German helmet and some medals and a bunch of pictures. There were some letters, too, that Aunt Eva had written to him while he was over there. She must have been really glad when he came back home all alive and everything. And then he went and got killed in a damn train wreck. After being in a war. I had never met him. I bet he was a great guy, the way everybody in the family talked about him. In his pictures he was always smiling. It was really sad, looking at the old yellowed photos, and I wondered if Eva still missed him; he'd been dead a long time. I put the stuff away and went out in the back yard and played with Sparky until it was time to go home. Sparky was old and had a bad leg and didn't move around too fast, just my speed that day.
After dinner I went out on the front porch. Down the street Mr. Griffin was washing his car, some little kids were hauling some empty pop bottles to Woody's in a red wagon, people were fanning themselves and reading their newspapers on their front porches. Everything seemed oddly normal, like everything was OK with the world. I heard a shrill whistle. It was Ricky, down the street at Debbie's at the rock with Debbie and Sherry. I slouched on down.
The rock was in the shadows this early in the evening. Ricky looked pale; I knew he'd felt as bad as I had this morning, and he didn't look like he was doing much better. Sherry looked like she's been crying. Debbie, not wearing much makeup, was barefoot and dressed in old jeans and a baggy Army fatigue shirt. I didn't say anything; just walked up and put my arm around her.
"Hey, Cuz," Ricky said.
"Hey."
We'd all been to the funeral that afternoon, and we looked at each other bleakly.
Debbie had her transistor radio on top of the rock. "He's So Fine" came on.
"Oh, Reba's favorite song," Debbie said sadly. "She always said it reminded her of Nick.
"Why did he do it?" Sherry asked glumly, scratching at the rock with a nail file. "Why did he shoot that man?"
"Who knows?" Ricky said. "Maybe something to do with Reba."
"With Reba?" Debbie asked.
"Maybe Vito killed her."
"Why would he want to kill her?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"I don't think so, man," I said.
"Yeah, that's pretty far-fetched," Debbie said.
"Yeah, it might be," Ricky admitted. "But it's pretty far-fetched for Nick to walk into Vito's and gun him down, too." Ricky paused, thinking. "Well then, maybe it had something to do with Nick's sister."
"What? You think Vito killed Carol?" I said.
Ricky shrugged.
"There's no evidence to point to that."
"That we know of. This is all pretty complicated, man. There has to be a lot of shit that we don't know about. All these killings just didn't happen out of the blue."
"So you think the killings are connected," I said.
"Well, it doesn't seem reasonable that they're all separate incidents, does it?"
"No, I guess not."
"But if Nick knew that Vito killed Reba, or Carol, or both of them, why didn't he go to the police?" Debbie asked.
"Maybe he didn't have any evidence," Sherry said.
"Maybe." Ricky said. "But then Nick was the kind of guy to settle things on his own."
I agreed with that. I couldn't feature Nick running to the cops for help with anything, not even with this. And then maybe he didn't want it to get out that Carol was a hooker, I thought. Maybe that was why he didn't go to the cops.
"But the Ol' Man killed Reba," I said.
"Oh, yeah. You're the eyewitness," Ricky said.
"'S'not what I meant."
"If the Ol' Man killed Reba, then does that mean that he killed Carol, too?" Sherry asked.
"If the murders are connected it doesn't necessarily mean that the same person killed both girls," Ricky said. "There could be some other kind of connection."
"Yeah," I said. "The Ol' Man and Vito might have been into some shit together. Gambling, or whatever."
"And Carol might have been mixed up in it somehow," Ricky said.
"And Nick found out about it and settled it," I said.
"Oh, pooh," Debbie said, making a face. "You guys aren't explaining anything."
"You're right, Ricky said. "As Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, it's a capitol mistake to theorize without sufficient data."
"Yeah, and we don't have much data," I said.
"I wonder if Reba even knew Vito?" Sherry said.
"Yeah, did she ever talk about him?" Ricky asked.
"No," Debbie said. "I don't think she knew him."
"But Carol knew him," Ricky said. "She worked for him. Did Nick ever say anything to you about Vito?"
"Naw," I said. "Just that he'd been to the club a coupla times, and what it was like and all that."
"Did he know Vito?"
"I don't think so. Not personally."
"They didn't look like they knew each other the other night at Davis's," Ricky said. "They just kinda looked at each other as Vito was leavin'."
"Which is more than you can say about Vito's driver," I snorted. "Nick knew him!"
"Yeah, I wonder what that was all about?" Ricky said.
"He was sure ready to knock the shit outta that guy that night." I said.
"Man, now there's some data," Ricky said, excited. "If we just knew what they said to each other..."
"You could ask the driver."
"Yeah, sure."
"Maybe he was messing around with Reba", Sherry said.
"I doubt that," Debbie said. "She would have told me."
"Did she know him?" Ricky asked. "What's his name? Lanny?"
"Yeah, Lanny," I said.
"She never said anything about him," Debbie said.
"He looks awful suspicious to me," Ricky said. "Worked for Vito, had Nick mad at him..."
We heard a car sputtering down the street and Kenny drove up, the radiator in his old gray Ford smoking.
"Hey, you guys! Got some water?" he hollered at us.
It broke the dark mood we were all in, but just for a moment, and we laughed as he got out and opened the hood. "What's so funny? Aint'cha ever seen a hot car before?" he said, irritated.
"Yeah, that's some hot car," Ricky said. "And I don't mean your ET, either."
"Hey, at least I got a car."
"Merely an accident of birth, m'boy. I'm not old enough to drive yet. Legally, that is."
"Well, maybe when you get your Ferrari you'll give me a ride, huh?"
"Sure, I'll take you down to the junk yard to get parts for this heap," Ricky laughed as he uncoiled the garden hose in Debbie's front yard.
"Hey! Don't open the radiator cap yet!" Ricky hollered at Kenny. Kenny had his hand, wrapped in a rag, on the cap, about to open it. "Cool it off with the hose, first."
"I knew that," Kenny said, embarrassed. It was a status thing back then to know a lot about cars. We all laughed at him again.
When we got it cooled off and tightened a loose radiator hose we decided to take a run down to Dino's to see what was happening. At first I didn't really want to go, but then I decided that I needed to take my mind off all the shit that had been happening. It might make me feel better.
"C'mon, girls. Let's go!" Ricky said, hugging Sherry.
"Yeah, can you go with us?" I asked Debbie.
"I don't know. My Mom..."
"Oh, your Mom," Ricky cut her off. "We won't keep ya out late. And I promise my Cuz here will be a perfect gentleman."
"Oh," she said in a disappointed voice. "I was hoping to have some fun."
"Hey, you heard that, Cuz!" Ricky laughed, poking me.
"We'll be right back," Debbie said brightly, and she and Sherry ran into the house.
"She's hot for your bod, Cuz," Ricky said. "You could get some o' that."
"Yeah, sure," I said.
"She's warm for your form," Kenny added.
"Aahh," I said, shrugging it off.
"Maybe he's already got it," Ricky said shrewdly, winking at Kenny.
"Sure," I said sarcastically.
The girls came back in a few minutes with more eyeliner and more Ambush and we took off for Dino's. Ricky and Sherry up front with Kenny, and me in the back with Debbie. This was one time I didn't want to ride shotgun.
It was just getting dark when we pulled into a bare spot at Dino's and ordered two chocolate milk shakes and two cherry Cokes. I think every girl I ever went out with when I was a teenager drank cherry Cokes. It was a typical night at Dino's, radios blaring and a constant stream of shiny cars circling the block. A Plymouth full of girls that Debbie and Sherry knew from school pulled in next to us and they blabbed at one another about clothes and singers and teachers. Some guys Ricky and Kenny knew came by and we talked cars and baseball. But about every five minutes someone would bring up the murders, and I didn't really want to hear any more on the subject.
Every time I heard a car with loud pipes I thought it was Nick cruising by like he always did. Always until now. There went Phil Murphy, in his '42 Ford coupe. Nice car, fast. Maybe he would take over as King of the Dragstrip. There was Danny Chandler in his Mercury-powered Ford roadster. He had the fastest car in the Millwinders car club. But neither of those guys had ever beaten Nick.
"Hey, lookit that," Ricky said, pointing to a blue sedan driving down the alley. It had blackwall tires and a long aerial swaying from the back fender. Two guys in suits were inside. "Cops."
"Really?" Sherry asked, sipping her Coke.
"Yeah, lookit the license plate," Kenny said.
"Maybe Bodiford needs some help," Ricky snickered.
Bodiford had been around the block several times, more than usual, before he parked across the street where he could see the alley that ran next to Dino's. He sat there now, eating a candy bar.
"Wonder if they're lookin' for someone?" Kenny said.
"Probably for witnesses to last night's murder," Ricky said in his Boris Karloff voice, winking at me when the girls weren't looking. We'd agreed not to tell them that were had been to Vito's.
"Yeah, sure."
"Three teenagers were seen at the scene..." Ricky continued.
"Oh, shit," Kenny said.
"Oohh, I wish I had been there last night," Debbie said, watching the cops turn at the end of the alley and drive down the street.
"Well, I don't," Sherry said. "I think it's creepy."
A bunch of the Caretakers rumbled down the alley on their Harleys, Dover in the lead. His old Pan was looking extra sharp tonight, like he had put some more chrome on it or something, and the black tank with the orange flames looked like he had just polished it. He had on a black leather cap and vest and had a cigar in his mouth.
The next time around they pulled into the parking lot next to some of the Millwinders and broke out a couple of six-packs. Bodiford never hassled the Caretakers too much, and they pretty much drank beer wherever they wanted.
We were trying real hard to have a good time, but it was just too damn depressing, and after we had gone around the circuit a few times we headed back through Bloomburg toward Calhoun. The girls had to be back by eleven, anyhow.
Everything was pretty quiet by now, not much traffic. Dino's was the only thing going on at night, except for a few bars on the other side of town. We saw Jesus, a half-wit drunk, staggering along the sidewalk with a brown paper sack in his hand. He told everyone he was actually Jesus Christ, and he preached sometimes when anyone would listen, but mostly he just laid around by the railroad tracks drinking cheap wine and getting stranger all the time. We hollered at him, like all the kids did, and he raised a skinny arm and either blessed us or gave us the finger, I couldn't tell which.
We pulled up next to a middle-aged couple in a brown sedan at the stop light and yelled at the guy, asking him if his wife knew he was out with another woman. He looked real nervous behind his glasses and took off through the red light and turned down a side street. We hooted and the girls told us how crude we were.
The Old River Road, on the way back home, would be real dark once we got past the railroad tracks. Normally, I would be all Russian hands and Roman fingers in the back seat with a babe like Debbie, but I just wasn't in the mood tonight, and I don't think Debbie was, either. As we turned off Main Street onto the Old River Road a couple cop cars came around us.
"Shit, I hope that tail light's not out again," Kenny said, slowing down a little as one of the cops gave us the eye.
"They look like they're goin' somewhere," Ricky said.
"Yeah, probably for coffee and donuts," Kenny said.
Then another car came around us.
"There's that unmarked car," Ricky said. It was the blue sedan with the two guys in suits we had seen at Dino's. "Somethin's goin' on."
"Let's see what it is," Debbie said, squirming around in the back seat.
"That's against the law," Sherry said.
"What is?"
"To follow a police car."
"Go faster, Kenny," Debbie said.
The cops were nearly out of sight when we saw their brake lights come on.
"They're turnin' into Mandrake's!" Ricky said.
Mandrake's was the Harley-Davidson dealership next to the railroad tracks where the Caretakers hung out. They were supposed to have pretty wild parties in the back room there. Ricky knew a girl who had gone to one of those parties and she told Ricky they tattooed her ass and then about six guys screwed her. Said it was fun.
We slowed down as we got closer; we were the only car on the street. It was pretty dark here away from the lights of Bloomburg. The moon had gone behind the clouds and the only light was the one over the front door of Mandrake's.
"Let's see what's going on," Debbie said, bouncing in the seat.
"Damn, Debbie, don't pee on my seat," Kenny said. "We'll stop."
We all laughed and Kenny pulled over in a closed gas station across from Mandrake's. From here we could see about five cop cars parked around the side of Mandrake's with their headlight aimed at the back door. Everything looked quiet in the dirty orange and black building; no lights showed, but a whole bunch of bikes were parked in the gravel driveway. One cop went up to the door and, standing in the glaring light to one side of it, banged on it with a nightstick while the others stood around with their guns drawn.
"Wow! Looks like the Caretakers're gettin' busted," Kenny said.
"What for, I wonder?," I asked.
"Stolen bikes, drugs, Communist infiltrators..." Ricky said.
"Communist what?" Debbie asked.
"Oh, he's kidding," I said.
"Oh."
"Maybe they tracked the murderer down there," Ricky said.
"What murderer?" Sherry asked.
"Medgar Evers' murderer," Ricky said sarcastically.
"Who?"
"He means Reba's murderer," Debbie said.
"Or Carol's murderer," Ricky said.
Nobody had answered the door, so a couple of cops put their shoulders to it and knocked it open after a few tries. That's when things got crazy, because whoever was inside started shooting. We hears a lot of hollering as the cops dove for safety behind their cars and started shooting back. A cop got on a bullhorn and yelled at them to come out with their hands up. But they weren't about to surrender, and the bullets flew back and forth for what seemed like a long time. The cops lost some headlights and a couple of windshields and the Caretakers' clubhouse was getting the hell shot out of it. We watched breathlessly, and Debbie clutched my arm excitedly.
Suddenly, above the roar of the gunfire, we head a motorcycle start up.
"Look! Here comes somebody!" Ricky said, and Debbie squeezed me, drawing closer to me, and we watched like we were at a Steve McQueen movie at the drive-in.
It was somebody on a motorcycle hauling ass from around the front of the building toward the street. At the angle he was going, he had a good shot at making a getaway, because the cops hadn't been watching the front of the building. We couldn't see the rider in the glare of his headlight, which was bouncing its light off the trees and our windshield as the bike careened up the rocky and rutted driveway, spitting gravel behind it. The cops turned and shot at him, and when he got to the road he suddenly veered toward us, like he'd been hit, and we ducked down to avoid the bullets. He came directly at us, picking up speed as he came, his engine roaring.
"Shit!" Kenny hollered, "He's comin' right at us!" He tried to get the car in gear, but it was too late to move, and we all hit the floor as the big Harley smashed into the front of the car. The old Ford shook with the impact and the doors flew open. The windshield shattered as the bike went up on the hood, and glass rained down on us. I thought for a moment that the bike was going to come right into the car, but it stopped and slid slowly to the ground with a screech of metal on metal, its engine still running.
Then lights swept over us as the cops ran up with their flashlights and we raised up and looked around to see if we were still alive or what. I was on top of Debbie, just like in the movies, protecting her from harm. We brushed pieces of the windshield from our hair and clothes as we struggled to get up and get out of out of the car, and that's when we saw it, poking through what was left of the windshield - Dover's grinning head, dripping blood onto the dashboard. Sherry screamed when she saw it and it took us all about half a second to get out of that car.
Then hands were grabbing us and voices were asking us if we were OK. The cops. I nodded numbly, yeah, I was OK. Debbie was OK. We were all OK. Kenny howled a little when he thought he was injured; he had blood on his arm, but it was only some of Dover's, and he made a face as he wiped it off with a towel a cop threw him.
We stared in shock at Dover's fat, leather-clad body lying so still on Kenny's hood, his head sticking through the busted windshield into the car. He looked dead; there was a lot of blood. Kenny retched a little and had to turn away; Debbie stared in awe; Sherry buried her face in Ricky's shoulder. Ricky, a sardonic grin on his face, raised a forefinger in mock salute to the fallen biker.
A sweaty, hawk-nosed cop with his shirt tail hanging out walked over and poked Dover with his nightstick. Dover didn't move; a bloody spot on his back oozed blood. The cop spat a line of tobacco juice at the ground. "Good shootin', Cletus," he said to a big cop holding a gun at his side.
"Fuckin' scum," the big cop said, gazing down at Dover and holstering his gun. "He don't look so tough now."
The rest of the Caretakers had apparently surrendered while all this was going on, and the cops were herding them out of Mandrake's. There were about a dozen of them, all dirty and nasty looking, straining to get a look at what had become of Dover. The cops had them in handcuffs and were prodding them with nightsticks and gun barrels. The bikers weren't saying much now; they looked like dogs as they shuffled off to jail.
An ambulance came for Dover. They loaded him in the back and put an oxygen mask over his mouth. It didn't look much like they really needed it; he didn't seem to be breathing.
Then a wrecker came for Kenny's car and I thought he was going to cry.
"Shit, man, lookit my car," he wailed. "My Dad's gonna kill me."
The car was a mess; the windshield was smashed out, the hood all dented and blood-smeared, one headlight smashed, the grill all smashed to hell. And a front tire was going flat.
"Aahh, don't worry, man," Ricky said. "You can ride in my Ferrari any time."