by Lee Taylor
Not being able to see the sky for a few weeks is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to work this film, even though we’d make a lot of money. Mike insisted. Said he wanted to move us into a real office instead of sharing one with another company. Live the Hollywood dream—as if that could ever happen in Chicago. When I found out we had to work inside Pontiac prison I told him to find somebody else.
A lot of good that did.
Here I am on my way to a state lockup, nauseous, with a mind-numbing headache and a list of dos and don’ts from Major Warden—no excessive makeup, wear a bra, no sex with the inmates and don’t wear blue jeans; the inmates will try to buy them. As if I’m going to negotiate a blue-jean-sex-deal with some rapist.
Who are these people that run the world? Do they really think that we’d do anything for a few minutes of film?
It’s this damn business I’m in. Everybody thinks movie people are ruthless. Anything to get the picture made.
I guess that’s how Mike thinks. “We do whatever it takes to keep the camera rolling.” At least that’s what he always tells the production office when he closes a deal. I just nod and go along. It’s easier that way.
Mike started this company about two years ago, as a joke on April Fool’s Day. I never thought it would go anywhere. Mike did. He thought I was serious about how easy it would be. He takes everything I say as if it’s the God’s honest truth. Most of the time I’m talking crap just to hear myself. Just to make sure I can still string a sentence or two together. Mike took those sentences and started Rockett/Holtzer Casting. I’m Rockett, Carly Rockett. He’s Michael Joseph Holtzer, somehow related to Bill Murray on his mother’s side. Like that makes him some kind of expert on the movie business. I think he and Bill shared a turkey one Thanksgiving when Mike was five. Instead of a turkey, they should have shared Bill’s sense of humor. Mike’s a sourpuss, always telling me how to live my life, always in my way when I want to have fun and always making me money with this damn company we formed.
That’s the problem. I like the money and I can’t really do anything else.
We’re an extras casting company. Who’d have thought I’d ever end up casting background—those uncelebrated folks who fill up an airport or a party or, in this case, a prison.
I used to work for Fred Niles Communications. They made TV commercials, mostly, and shot the studio portion of Wild Kingdom from their sound stage. Bob Newhart got his start there, along with some other movie-types. Now that was a company. Generated millions. I answered the phones and learned a little about how cameras work. Pretty much a mindless job that paid well. All my money went to fast cars and all my free time was spent drinking. It’s an art, you know, maintaining the high without getting drunk. Most people don’t get it right. They drink fast to get the buzz and then stop. The trick is to keep on drinking, slowly, throughout the day. Like the steady drip of an intravenous. Liquid drugs being pushed into your veins. Making you dizzy. Making you forget.
Mike didn’t look at my job with Fred Niles quite the same way. He decided that somehow I had an inside track in the film business because of all the contacts I’d made on the phone. He then used all those contacts to make us an overnight success. Which, unfortunately, we are. Now I have to actually think about my work and I have very little free time. I’m trying to stay calm about this whole thing. Trying to maintain. A shot of Jack Daniel’s would help with that maintenance but it’s that old sourpuss again. The man just can’t seem to lighten up, at least when it comes to alcohol. Must have had a drunk in the family—an aunt or uncle. Maybe the same uncle who owned the ranch.
“Carly, wake up,” a voice says just as I’m about to ride a huge turkey with Bill Murray.
I open my eyes. “Not now. I’m having fun with Bill,” I chide, closing my eyes again, trying to get back into fantasy.
“Carly, open those sweet eyes of yours and get out of the car. About twenty reporters are heading our way. They must have heard about the shoot.” He strokes my cheek, slides my hair off my face and tucks it behind my ear. “You’re better at this than I am.”
I relent to his whining. The morning sun glares down on me. Brutal. “I can’t do anything until I find my sunglasses,” I balk. My head is in a fog.
The reporters buzz towards us in a tight little swarm while I desperately search through my bag, trying to look under the box of stationery I need to carry around with me, just in case I have to write something down. Something important. Something that can’t be forgotten.
“Here they come,” Mike says. “You ready?”
“No…yes! I found ‘em.” I slip on the glasses, stretch my face into a smile and step out of the car. This attack must be Mike’s doing. He loves publicity. He probably called the Trib and the Sun-Times to set it up.
Voices shout out questions: “Do you think the parole hearing will go in his favor?”
“Are you here to protest?”
“Who are you representing?”
“Whose brother are you?”
“Did you go to school with the victims?”
Mike and I stand in the middle of the swarm and I try to understand what the hell they’re talking about. People are very strange these days. Maybe they’re asking questions about the script. Maybe four aspirin are too many and I’m in some sort of aspirin time warp.
Then, just as I’m about to start babbling about the movie business, an Asian woman wearing a pretty yellow dress calls out the clarifying question. “Do you think that Richard Speck deserves to be set free today?”
I have a hard time focusing in on her words. It’s like the world has stopped. Where does such a question come from? And why is she asking me about Richard Speck? Does she know something about me? About my past? How could she? I don’t talk about Speck, about the nurses, or about that night. Ever. Richard Speck set free? The man who walked into my peaceful South Chicago neighborhood and in one night changed the people in it forever. This man set free? This monster?
Another car pulls up.
Mike says, “You’ve got the wrong people. We’re part of the movie crew for—”
He never finishes his sentence. The group turns their attention on the older couple getting out of another car and attacks them with the same questions. I turn around and focus on the building we’re supposed to go into. I know that building. Seen it countless times in the newspapers. It’s not Pontiac at all.
It’s Stateville.
A sickening rush of white heat engulfs me.
I get back into my Corvette, slide over to the driver’s seat and say, “I’m not gonna do this. Not going into any prison where Speck lives.” I pull out my spare key and turn that V-8 over, ready to leave Mike in my dust. He holds onto the car door.
“What do you mean? I can’t do this alone,” he says.
“Too bad then, ‘cause I’m leaving. Let go of my car.”
“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 beau
tiful, 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.
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 e
ight. 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.
