CHAPTER 17
Well, that's what happened back in 1963. It was a summer that changed my life irrevocably, and when Kennedy was killed the week after the trial I realized that even the President of the United States was no more special than a couple of small-town teenagers. When I saw the Beatles on the Sullivan show in February I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
The Caretakers went to court and were represented by a couple of slick lawyers from Siri's organization, and they survived to ride again. Lanny Pritkin, the chief witness for the prosecution, had disappeared, and the drug charges were dropped. Then, all they had on them were guns and stolen motorcycle parts, and a few of them drew suspended sentences or fines. None of them did any jail time.
Dover had his trial when he got out of the hospital, some six months later. He was charged with receiving stolen merchandise and fleeing an officer and reckless driving and there was some measure of sympathy for him when he rolled into the courtroom in a wheel chair. He'd been paralyzed from the waist down by the cop's bullet he'd taken in the spine and he got off with a year's probation. He never did ride again.
Nobody in Siri's organization was even brought up on charges. Carol Palladino's murder remained a mystery and Lanny was never heard from again, but it was a good bet that he was at the bottom of the Ohio river with an old Harley engine block chained to his ankles.
The Davis family moved away to the hills of backwoods Kentucky after the Ol' Man went to jail, and their house remained vacant until a bum sleeping in it burned it down with a cigarette on Halloween a year later. The Ol' Man served a couple years of a life sentence and then died in jail, after becoming a minister through some mail-order course. He maintained his innocence to the end.
Grandpa had a stroke in January of the following year and my Dad and I drove down and brought him and Grandma up to live with us and they sold their house in Calhoun. I never went back there again, and I never saw Shauna again. She got married to Rod and they had a bunch of kids and eventually moved to Dayton.
Winston and I did pretty well with our band, and when we got out of high school we were working steady, opening shows around Chicago and environs for groups like the Cryan' Shames and the Buckinghams and we put out a couple records on an independent label and got a little local air play. The band broke up in 1970, right after the Beatles split, and I took off by myself for fame and fortune to Los Angeles and after scrubbing around for a couple of years I hit it big. Ricky came out to California and managed my band for a few months before I got a record deal, but neither one of us was making any money and he became disenchanted with the music business and went back home and married Sherry and went into business with her father, who had some money to invest. They bought a Dodge dealership in Cincinnati and did real well and today he's living in Price Hill with Sherry and their three kids in a five-bedroom house with a pool and a tennis court.
I had spent most of the night partying and jamming with some jazz musicians from London at the Baked Potato and I woke up about one feeling like getting my hands greasy. Shanna had been on a shoot at Malibu and had arrived in her Jag in time to drive me home and she was still snoozed out upstairs in my King-sized waterbed when I went out to the garage a little before two and started laying out my tools and getting the hoist in position. I wanted to pull the engine first, but I figured I'd go through the car first and see if there was anything in it. I'd read in the paper not too long ago about a guy who bought his teen-aged daughter a car at a police auction and found several thousand dollars in cash hidden in it. Turned out the car had been impounded from a drug dealer.
Nothing in the trunk but a flat spare tire and a jack and some rags and a spare taillight bulb. I smiled, thinking of my Grandpa, who'd died in 1978. He'd have had a spare fan belt in there. Grandma had died the next year; she had nothing left with him gone, and she just settled down complacently, waiting to go, too.
When I opened the glove compartment I found an old dried-out pack of Camels and a screw driver and a rusty pocket knife - stuff Nick had left in there, I guess. No gloves, but whoever puts gloves in a glove compartment?
I found one more thing in the glove compartment. A silver crucifix. I brushed the dirt off it and read the inscription on the back: "First Communion - 1953 - St. Mary's". It was Carol Palladino's First Communion present from the nun at St. Mary's. The crucifix that was missing from her bedroom the night she was murdered. The crucifix the murderer had ripped from her neck, and that only he would have.
I sat staring at the little icon numbly, in a daze, my mind racing, the blood pounding in my head, afraid to admit to myself what this meant. I sat there for a long time, then I closed the door to the Chevy softly and put my tools away and went back into the house.
Shanna was up scrambling us some eggs, but I wasn't really hungry. I sat on the sofa all afternoon watching Notre Dame play Southern Cal. It was a big game, but I couldn't have told you the score. I drank a couple beers and even had a shot of Tequila, and I never drink Tequila while the sun's still up.
It had bothered me at the time of Carol's death - why the
killer had taken her crucifix. It wasn't worth much, just a Catholic schoolgirl's First Communion keepsake, and nothing else was missing. I'd never figured that out. But now I had it. A long time ago in Indianapolis there was a lonely little boy whose sister would take care of him and love him when she came home from school at St. Mary's. A sister who took the place of the mother who was never around, the mother who would desert him. And then the sister went bad. And when he fell in love with the girl next door she let him down, too.
He'd killed Carol and he'd killed Reba and gotten away with it. He'd visited Carol that Friday night in Covington and strangled her and tossed her out the window and taken the crucifix with him. Maybe he'd left it in his car as a clue, never dreaming that it would take over thirty years for the truth to come out.
And he'd strangled Reba, too, when he found out what she really was. He'd propped her up in the front seat of his car when he took her home, put her in the back yard , drove off and walked back and drove her down to the gravel pit in the Ol' Man's car and dumped her off.
I'd had it figured right that night when we found out from Lanny that she was another one of Siri's girls. And I knew I had it right, but I just didn't want to believe it.
But he hadn't really gotten away with the murders. Nick had given himself up and was ready to go, ready to pay for what he'd done, when he walked into Vito's and killed Siri, who was the symbol of his hopelessness and nausea. He had us all fooled; we thought he was so cool and together, strong enough to handle all the adversity in his young life. But he was no Superman, no Übermenschen. He was human, all-too-human and he wasn't as tough as Ricky and that German philosopher thought.
It grew darker as the rain picked up, and Shanna came and cuddled up next to me on the sofa. All she was wearing was a Lakers jersey, but I wasn't noticing. She wasn't into football, and I was ignoring her, so she fell asleep.
I played listlessly with Shanna's long blond California hair and listened morosely to the rain wash against the windows, remembering another rainy day long ago, the day Reba's body had been found, when I had stood at the rock in Debbie's yard with her and Ricky and Sherry and watched Nick drive by in the immaculate Chevy. Debbie was gone now, but I wondered what Ricky and Sherry would think if they knew the crucifix had turned up.
I hated to bother Shanna, but I needed another drink, and I eased her off my shoulder and went and set myself up. I chased another shot of Tequila with beer and stood at the rain-splashed window for a long time watching the gloaming descend over the misty Hollywood Hills and thinking about Nick and his car and the murders he'd done.
When it was dark I went out to the garage and put a car cover over the Chevy. I wouldn't be doing any work on it any time soon; it had betrayed me, and I'd lost interest in restoring it. Maybe I'd sell it. I don't know. In the meantime I had the '61 Impala to work on.
THE END