by Mary Leo
“Don’t bail on me now, Carly.”
“Why didn’t you tell me we’d have to work inside Stateville? You lied to me. It’s some kind of sick setup, isn’t it?”
He releases the door. “What the hell are you talking about? Setup for what? The production office changed the location a week ago. I must have forgotten to tell you. What difference does it make anyway? One prison is just like another.”
“I would have never agreed to Stateville. Never,” I say and back out of the parking spot. I put the car in drive and try to move forward but the reporters, still interviewing the people from the other car, block my exit. I hit the horn. A man looks over at me. An older man. A man I once knew. Joe Matusek, father to one of Speck’s victims, Patricia Matusek.
Joe answers the question about Speck being set free. “Speck should never be freed because five minutes after he hits the streets he will be killed.”
There was a rumor in my old neighborhood that Joe had put out a contract on Speck. Nobody ever believed it.
I did.
I pull the car back into a space, turn off the engine and stare up at my beautiful, blue sky. I knew today was Speck’s parole hearing, but never in a million years did I think I would be caught in the middle of it.
After Mike talks to one of the reporters he walks over and starts bugging me to stay. He won’t let it go. I want out of the same air space as Speck but Mike keeps talking, working on my common sense.
“I don’t understand you, Carly. What’s going on? Are you afraid of seeing Speck? He probably lives in solitary breeding canaries. They’ll bring him in for his hearing today and lock him back up in his cage. They wouldn’t let a guy like him out on parole. Not after what he’s done,” Mike says as he eases me out of my car.
“So, you can assure me that he’s down in some dark cellar counting rat hairs with his toes? I’m not going to have to consider the bastard as an extra, am I?”
“Come on. That’ll never happen.”
We walk up to a guardhouse: brick, white plaster, gold sconces on either side of the front door. A wrought-iron fence juts out from the sides of the small building and encircles a long, red-brick, four-story building a few yards behind it. Gun towers and cement walls press in on the ornate building, dwarfing its size. Uniformed guards strut down the walkways heading for another day behind bars.
Fear takes hold. Suddenly my throat burns from dryness. I want a drink, bad.
I tell Mike, “This is a mistake.”
“Relax. It’ll be fine. There’s no way Speck’s going to be part of this. Besides, you’re worried about one murderer when there’s hundreds in there who’ve probably done worse.”
The very thought of more men like Speck tucked behind those walls sends me over the edge. That, plus the notion that Mike thinks there could be anything worse than somebody taking even one life. I have to wonder what Mike thinks about the whole murderous tragedy. Probably not much.
I stop walking.
Turning, I head back for my car. Obviously, this is not going to work.
Mike calls after me.
“Carly…wait. Carly. I’m sorry. Wait. We’ll figure this out. Carly.”
I stop, my head pounding, adrenalin pumping up my anger. My fear. My hate. “Look, you pulled me into this. I warned you in the beginning not to depend on me. Why don’t you just leave me the hell alone? Let me get it over with.”
“Get what over with?”
“Life, you dick.”
I guess I lost it, but he’s such a Pollyanna fool. I hurry for the car, hoping he’ll just fade into my past, but before I can put the key in the ignition I see him saying something to a guard then running toward me like he has all the answers.
I let him hop in, but this time I drive. The roads from the prison are wide open. Nothing but open road for miles. We don’t talk for a long time. Mike gives me my space, allows me to breathe in the countryside, away from the prison. Sometimes he knows just what I need to calm down, to get me to relax. I glance over at him and can see his right hand grasping onto the seatbelt next to his head. Like that’s going to save him when we hit something going ninety.
“You want to get that drink now?” Mike asks after I slow it down to seventy-five, and head back toward the city. “You really don’t have to go back to the prison at all, and I don’t have to go back until tomorrow. I can cast it by myself, for the most part. Maybe bring in our receptionist. She’s been wanting to learn the business. That might be better anyway. Speck’s parole hearing will be over and he’ll be back in his cage. He won’t be bothering anybody.”
I nod in agreement. Okay, so maybe Mike does understand some of my fears, but he’s only guessing. Assuming. Trying to put a band-aid on a severed limb. Thinking that because I grew up in South Chicago I must have a special loathing for Speck—too obvious.
Problem is, he’s just too damn young and cute with that black hair and those baby-blues. The Beave all grown up and he’s sitting in my car. How did that ever happen? That Looney Tune happiness doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s not real. Just lead on paper. Erasable. Temporary.
I once thought that if I cut a hole in my TV screen I could pull out Porky Pig and carry him around in my pocket to make me laugh whenever I wanted.
I once thought that Ringo Starr would give me an engagement ring just like the one Suzanne Farris wore the night she was stabbed eighteen times.
I once thought that Richard Speck was an innocent German sailor caught up in a neighborhood’s rage.
And once, when I was fourteen, I thought that one hot summer night was just the same as another.
Chapter Two
I stop the car in front of a tavern named Bud’s Place, a biker bar with Harleys and Indians lined up out front for mutual admiration. We walk inside and it’s like a movie theater where your eyes have to adjust to the darkness. I find my way to the bar by instinct and as soon as I put down a couple shots, Mike gets me to talk.
He starts slow, like he always does, asking me a benign question, knowing just how to work me. “Did you know that old guy in the parking lot answering the questions?”
Then, like some episode of Happy Days the jukebox blows out a tune, only it’s the Beatles and not Buddy Holly.
“Joe? Yeah, I knew him. He ran a tavern on the East Side where my dad hung out with some of the other local cops. Brought me there sometimes after work, or on a Saturday when he got stuck baby-sitting. Joe was a straight-up kind of a guy with one of those infectious smiles. Made you feel important. Like he was glad to see you. He would make my Shirley Temple with an extra cherry and serve it in a wine glass. The man loved kids.”
Bud’s Place has the right smell. The right feel. Always liked the smell of a tavern, a real tavern, with pool tables, dart boards and a bowling machine. Games my dad taught me how to play. How to win.
Mike listens to the music for a minute, bouncing with the beat, only he can’t quite get it. One of those guys with two left feet and no rhythm. More of the waltz type. He says, “The Beatles are one of my favorite groups.”
I stare at him, blink a couple times and smile. Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth amaze me. As if he hasn’t told me this a hundred times. As if where we met never happened. He probably dropped the coins in the jukebox while I was busy concentrating on the heat of Jack Daniel’s. He uses the Beatles on me like an ointment, knowing their sound will calm me, soothe my agitation. Can’t Buy Me Love is followed by In My Life. Both songs cause my mind to flood with quick images, like some old acid trip: a bridge, a park, a face in the window. Fright runs through my soul as Paul and John sing, “there are places I remember all my life—”
I blurt out, “I think you may have mentioned it once or twice.”
I’m uneasy. Tense. Waiting for the bourbon to camouflage my thoughts. Thinking maybe I should tell Mike about my connection to Speck. Those three days when he lived in my neighborhood. Maybe it’s time to let Mike into my world. Try to make him understand.
Tell him, Carly. He needs to know.
Mike continues as if he’s somehow giving me a revelation into his past, except I know his past. It’s mine we don’t talk about. “I hid all my records from my mom when John came out with that ‘more popular than God’, thing.”
I lean on the bar and turn to face him. “‘More popular than Jesus’. And you were eight. How many records could you have owned?”
Tell him.
Mike runs a hand through his hair. “Okay, so maybe I only had one, Yellow Submarine. I must have listened to that song a thousand times. Loved it. Mom dumped all my sister’s records. Wouldn’t let her buy another one even after John apologized. She never found mine. I think I still have it somewhere.”
“Good. Might be worth something someday.”
He gets an indignant look. “Like I could ever sell it. Like you would ever sell any of your Beatles records. That’s not how I remember it.”
I don’t respond. No need to. He’s right.
Mike and I met during the second Beatles’ tour, at the concert in Chicago, on August 20, 1965 in Comiskey Park when I was thirteen years old and he was eight. My friends and I were up in the nosebleed section, standing on our seats and screaming out our love for the Beatles, when I first noticed this little mop-haired boy crying in the seat next to me. He kept wiping his eyes with his sleeve and licking his upper lip to stop his dripping nose. I felt sorry for the kid and asked him what was wrong. He looked up at me with that little wet face of his and told me he couldn’t see. My heart melted. I got down, lifted him up and stood him on the backrest of the seat in front of me. He stood there, with me supporting him, for the entire concert. His sister was too busy screaming to notice his distress. From where he stood, he had a perfect view of the stage. I could barely see anything. At the end of each song he’d turn around and offer me his sleeve to wipe away my tears. The kid had me.
Mike was the sweetest little boy in the world that day and still is. That’s the problem. I keep thinking of that little boy and I can’t seem to walk away from him.
I say, “John apologized from a hotel room in Chicago. He never meant any harm. His apology made him vulnerable. Made him human.”
I order another Jack, neat, from a middle-aged woman named Dottie who has three pencils sticking out of her tightly permed, Lucy-colored hair and enough makeup to make Tammy Fay jealous. Mike orders a glass of milk and two cheeseburgers knowing I rarely eat meat, telling me I need the iron, that I look pale. The thought of food makes my stomach tighten. Memories twist it into a knot.
After the Beatles concert, Mike’s sister, Barbara, wearing a John Lennon hat (of which I was extremely jealous) asked me for my address and a few pictures. They lived in Minnesota and for awhile we were pen-pals. Something I had always wanted. Mike even scribbled a word or two every now and then. We wrote to each other every week for almost a year, until I stopped. Just didn’t care anymore. Why bother? Then about four years ago while I was recovering from a suicide attempt, a brief encounter with Mother Nature, Mike came back into my life. He read about my accident in the paper and looked me up. I had wrapped my Porsche around a tree. Everyone thought I fell asleep because I was drunk, but hell, I only had one or two shots when I decided to head straight for Father Oak. His roots stuck out of the ground and grabbed hold of my front tire. The car spun around so that the passenger side hit and that tree saved my life. Everyone but Mike said how lucky I was. The little shit knew what I had really intended and somehow with his help and a lot of therapy got me to accept living again.
That’s the problem. Some days I just want to say screw it, but I know Mike would honestly be hurt. See, I’m a sucker for sincerity. A guy with a genuine concern, a genuine kindness. Trouble is, these days, when I see it coming I usually run. Men like him are dangerous. They get under my skin and I have to try to stick around and do the right thing, even when I’d rather toss in the towel. Most women can’t tell the difference between the ‘real thing’ and the ‘thing of the moment’. I can.
That’s the trouble. Mike’s the real deal.
He’s just so damn positive that it’s hard to be around him without catching his pestilence, which I sometimes get a bad case of. It’s such a bummer. It can take me weeks of heavy drinking to get back into my comfortable state of terminal disenchantment, which I seem to be wallowing in at the moment. Then we end up arguing over my drinking. Truth is, I’m only trying to return to reality.
My reality. His doesn’t matter.
Let it go, Carly. Tell him.
“What if I told you a little bit about that summer when I stopped writing to you and your sister?”
“What do you mean by stopped writing? I thought the letters stopped because it was part of our punishment.”
I shake my head, and take a swig of my bourbon. “I never wrote any.”
Somebody opens the front door. The light bounces off the mirror in front of us. For a moment I can feel the sunshine on my face. Don’t like it. Then it’s dark again.
“What? You never told me this.” He sits back on his stool. Gets a smile on his face like he’s glad I’m about to tell him a secret.
“Never wanted to, until today.”
“What’s different about today?”
“Speck’s parole hearing. Brought back some memories.”
“What kind of memories?”
“Some good. Some not so good. I was a different person back then. Positive, self-assured, even funny at times.”
“I remember your letters. Still have a couple.”
For the first time in twenty years I want to talk about that time. Want to let go of some of my past. That maybe if I throw it over to Mike, he might catch it and understand what goes on inside my head.
“I was the kind of kid who thought she could change her world with Mass and a prayer.”
“Hard to imagine you in a church.”
“Every morning for two solid years.”
“You?”
“And my two best friends, the girls you met at the concert, Sharon Lombardo and Lisa Toporis. We were praying to marry the Beatles. We were obsessed.”
“Like my sister.”
“Worse.”
I stare into Mike’s eyes hoping to find empathy. I see only curiosity. How can I get any commiseration from a man who is still in his twenties? He was barely out of the thumb-sucking stage when the nurses were killed. How can he understand my misery? My angst? What does he know about murder?
Mike and I move to a booth made for four. The table is covered with that heavy resin crap that everybody got into sometime in the seventies. The seats are covered with brown vinyl. Matter-of-fact, when I look around, the whole tavern seems to be drenched in brown, from the rough hewn walls to the pool table in the middle of the floor. Sunlight hasn’t entered this room since the last nail was pounded into the roof. It couldn’t be a better set for what I was about to tell Mike, who by the way, is perfect for the part of the innocent friend.
Chapter Three
It was a Monday when I first met Richard Speck. Monday, July 11, 1966. Sometime around noon or one because Sharon had just bought fifty cents’ worth of hard salami from Fata’s grocery store for lunch. She loved to buy one thick piece and gnaw on it while she walked, like it was a candy bar or a Tootsie Pop. Lisa and I each bought a bottle of Coke and a package of Sno-Balls. We preferred straight sugar over real food anytime.
Sharon, at thirteen, was a classy bird with sleek blond hair and violet eyes. Clothes draped over her slim little body like water slipping over a rose. She had flawless skin and a beauty mark just above the right side of her upper lip. All the boys wanted to date her but she wasn’t interested.
No one wanted to date Lisa. She was an overweight twelve-year-old with naturally curly hair. All three of us had long hair, but for some reason on Lisa it just didn’t work. No matter how much she ironed it, her hair still looked like a brown bush. Back then, straight, long hair was in and curly was definitely out. Everything about
Lisa was out. But despite her appearance and all the jokes that were made about her, she remained the most self-confident of the three of us. Lisa read a lot, something Sharon and I never did. Romance novels and poetry. Maybe that’s where she found her strength.
I was pretty shy back then, the wallflower type. Despite my devotion to the Beatles, I longed for a boyfriend. It wasn’t that I was ugly or goofy or anything, I just never talked to boys. They scared me. I hid when they came around. I did have one thing that I liked about myself, though. My hair. It came down past my waist—pure chestnut brown, just like a Breck commercial. Even in the sunlight there were no split ends. VO-5 was my friend. Other than that, I was a typical, skinny, flat-chested soon-to-be fourteen-year-old. Very ordinary and very much in love with Ringo Starr.
Sharon believed that if we went to Mass every morning and said the rosary every night one of us would marry a Beatle. Sister Martha thought we were praying for the sins of the world. The new priest, Father Walsh, who was too cute to be a priest, used us in his Sunday sermon once as examples of model teens “sacrificing our mornings for the praise of Our Lord.”
Ha!
What we were actually doing and had been doing since February 6, 1964 (the day Ed Sullivan brought the Beatles to America) was praying to God, the angels and the saints for one of us, that would have been me, or all of us, which was highly unlikely, to marry Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. We all knew that John and Ringo were already married and that damn Jane Asher kept hanging onto Paul, but we were confident in our faith. After all, it said so right there in the New Testament, “Ask and you shall receive.” We decided that sometimes it might take longer to receive but that was the power of faith like ours. We believed absolutely that one day it would all come true or why be Catholic? I mean, if you can’t get what you want, then what’s the point of all the praying? At least that’s what Sharon said.
We had another girl in our group, Elaine Benaki, who wanted to marry George, but she quit after two months. I think she still wanted to marry George but she just wasn’t willing to pray for it as much as we were. Elaine said we were irrational, unrealistic, delusional—I had to look up delusional in the dictionary—and even dangerous. How un-Catholic of her. She obviously did not understand how our religion worked.
