The Acid King

by Jesse P. Pollack

  Dorothy didn’t know that Ricky was wet from washing Gary’s blood off his face and chest.

  After leaving Gary’s body under a pile of leaves in Aztakea, Ricky, Jimmy, and Albert walked back to Albert’s house on Maple Avenue to wash up. Ricky then borrowed a fresh shirt from Albert and disposed of the bloody one in a neighbor’s trash can before walking back downtown with Jimmy. The two were still high on pot, microdots, and PCP when they arrived.

  Ricky decided to hang out with Dorothy, who he enjoyed a friends-with-benefits relationship with, while Jimmy tried in vain to get ahold of his girlfriend, Karen. Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Ricky grabbed Dorothy and aggressively kissed her. At first Dorothy enjoyed Ricky’s energetic display of affection, but this changed when Ricky bit her lip, sending blood trickling from her mouth. She quickly pushed Ricky away.

  “You’re an asshole!” Dorothy cried as Ricky got up and walked off.

  Ricky left his friends and headed over to Corey Quinn’s backyard clubhouse, about two miles away. There, he fell asleep on the couch where he and Gary had crashed so many times before.

  The next morning he left the clubhouse to head back downtown. A friend of Corey’s who had slept over at the house saw Ricky through the window and hollered to him. Corey overheard this and went downstairs to say hi. She immediately noticed that Ricky wasn’t wearing his pentagram necklace.

  “Hey, Ricky,” Corey said, “where’s your star?”

  Ricky lifted his hand to his chest, reaching for the missing necklace. Images from the night before began to flash inside his mind. Gary must have pulled it from his neck while he was stabbing him.

  “Oh,” Ricky replied. “I lost it last night.”

  He put his hand in his pocket and clutched the blood-soaked knife.

  Later that day, Albert found Ricky standing near the wooden rails at the edge of the harbor. He pulled the bloody knife from his pocket and said, “What should I do with it?”

  “Throw it in the water,” Albert replied.

  Ricky chucked the knife into the air. Just as it hit the water, Johnny Hayward walked up to Ricky.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Ah, nothin’, man,” Ricky said, walking away from the dock. “It was just a rock.”

  Ricky’s silence didn’t last long. When the drugs wore off, a part of him was haunted by what he had done, but when he was high, he felt proud of having murdered Gary. He had finally struck back at someone who had harmed him, albeit superficially. Knowing Gary Lauwers was now dead because of him, Ricky Kasso was finally beginning to feel the power he had so desperately been seeking from drugs and the devil.

  This sensation soon began to manifest itself in strange ways. Only a few minutes after Johnny almost caught him throwing the knife into the harbor, Ricky began spinning a bizarre yarn about murdering a man who had recently stopped to give him a ride.

  “Jimmy and I were hitching back from Kings Park,” he told Johnny. “This guy picks us up. We wanted his car so we could drive out to California, so I just stabbed him.”

  “What?” Johnny asked.

  “Yeah,” Ricky said. “He jumped back in his seat and I stabbed him like six more times, but he wouldn’t get out of the car, so we just jumped out.”

  Johnny ignored Ricky, hoping he was just bullshitting. Later he grabbed a local newspaper to see if any murder or stabbing like the one Ricky described had been reported. To his relief, Johnny found nothing, and wrote Ricky’s ramblings off as the product of a stoned imagination.

  The very next day Ricky was back in the roundhouse, high on angel dust and microdots. Pacing back and forth inside the gazebo, he desperately wanted someone to brag to without having to make up another story. When Rich Barton showed up, Ricky pulled him aside.

  “Rich, come here,” Ricky whispered. “I gotta tell you something—I killed Gary.”

  “Bullshit!” Rich laughed.

  “Come on,” Ricky urged. “I’ll show you the body. It’s up in Aztakea. I’ll take you there.”

  “No way,” Rich said dismissively. He figured his friend was high and pulling a sick prank, and walked away.

  By the next day, Rich wasn’t so sure. He walked up to Ricky and said, “All right, I’ll go up and see the body.” He still figured Ricky was lying, but he wanted to see what was in Aztakea. Ricky told Rich, along with their friend Mark Florimonte, to follow him.

  “You’re really gonna see it now,” Ricky told them. “I’m not joking.”

  Once the trio entered Aztakea, a disgusting smell met their noses.

  “Rick, what the hell did you kill—a fucking cat?” Rich asked.

  Ricky didn’t answer. He just kept leading them deeper into the brush until they finally came upon a pile of leaves and broken branches lying on the ground.

  “There it is,” Ricky said, emotionless.

  Rich and Mark moved closer to examine the mound. It seemed to be moving; almost breathing. Once the two were only inches away from the pile, it all became clear—the leaves were covered with thousands of squirming maggots. They jumped back once they saw bits of Gary’s bloody clothing peeking out from underneath the leaves.

  “Holy shit, man!” Rich screamed. “Rick, I’m getting the hell out of here! I’ll meet you back downtown!”

  Mark looked his friend square in the eye.

  “You’re stupid, Ricky,” he said, quickly walking away. “You did the crime, now you’re gonna have to pay the time!”

  Rich and Mark took off, leaving Ricky with whatever remained of Gary Lauwers in the woods. Racing back downtown, Rich saw Matthew Carpenter approaching. As Rich was walking past Phase II, Matthew stopped him to say hello.

  “Hey, Rich,” he said. “Do you have any pot on you?”

  Matthew suddenly noticed how pale his friend looked.

  “Are you all right, man?” he asked.

  “Ricky is really fucked up,” Rich replied.

  “What do you mean?” Matthew asked

  “Ricky did something really fucked up,” Rich said.

  “Well,” Matthew replied, “what did he do?”

  Rich didn’t answer. Instead he walked away, hypnotically repeating the same sentence over and over like a broken record. “Ricky is fucked up. . . . Ricky is fucked up. . . . Ricky is fucked up. . . .”

  Confused, Matthew let it go and walked way.

  Later Ricky found Rich sitting in the New Park.

  “See,” Ricky said nonchalantly, “I told you.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” Rich replied. “You’re gonna get caught. Why’d you do that, man?”

  “For kicks,” Ricky said sarcastically as he walked away.

  Rich began to panic. He knew he couldn’t tell the cops. If he did, and word got back to Ricky, he might end up dead too. Anyway, Ricky was bound to get caught. He had just shown two people the rotting corpse of the friend he had murdered—and who knew how many others had made the horrible trip to Aztakea over the last couple days? If Ricky did get caught, however, Rich’s name would surely be mentioned to the authorities.

  Could he go to jail just for knowing what had happened to Gary Lauwers?

  Rich and Mark left the New Park and walked home to the Barton house on Maple Avenue. There, they discussed everything they had seen. Later they talked to Albert Quinones, who said the only option was to stay as far away from Ricky and Jimmy as possible and hope for the best. After all, no one was even looking for Gary, let alone the cops. He left home so often that his parents didn’t think anything of his absence.

  That would soon change.

  One night during the last week of June, Yvonne Lauwers was sitting at home when the phone rang. She picked up the receiver and heard a voice that sent chills up her spine.

  “You will never see your son again because I just killed him. . . .”

  The ghoulish caller hung up before Yvonne could respond. At first she thought it was a crank call and tried not to think about it. By the next morning, however, Yvonne could n
o longer ignore the words echoing in her mind. She picked up the phone and dialed Scott Travia, one of Gary’s close friends.

  “Scott, have you seen Gary?” she asked. “He hasn’t been home in a while and I don’t know where he is.”

  “I haven’t seen him either, Mrs. Lauwers,” Scott replied.

  “Scott,” Yvonne continued, “someone with a scary voice called last night and said we would never see Gary again because they killed him.”

  This chilled Scott to his core.

  “Do you think they were just joking?” Scott asked, trying to hide his fear.

  “Maybe,” Yvonne replied. “Hopefully . . .”

  Meanwhile, back in Aztakea, Grant Koerner was riding his bike through the BMX trails he and his friends had made throughout the woods. At one point, he rode past a strange pile of leaves.

  He didn’t notice the maggots.

  Chapter 31

  MATTHEW CARPENTER COULDN’T SLEEP.

  Ricky was crashing on his couch again, as Corey Quinn’s stepfather, sick of all the boys sneaking in and out of his backyard, had torn down her clubhouse a few days earlier. Matthew could hear Ricky muttering about something but couldn’t make out the words. Finally he turned toward Ricky, who sat up.

  “What’s going on?” Matthew asked.

  “There are people in here,” Ricky replied fearfully. “They’re coming to get me.”

  “What people?” Matthew demanded.

  “They’ve returned,” Ricky insisted, his body shaking. “They’re haunting me.”

  “Oh, fuck off!” Matthew replied. “You’re just having a bad dream. Get back to sleep!”

  Ricky, however, kept talking about the people in the room until Matthew got up and took him outside to calm down. Once Ricky relaxed, Matthew decided to strike up a conversation.

  “So, why do you like Aztakea so much?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Ricky replied.

  “Remember how you invited us all up there that night?” Matthew asked.

  “Yeah,” Ricky replied.

  “Well,” Matthew said, “I was just wondering why you like it up there.”

  “It’s just a good place to trip,” Ricky insisted.

  “Oh, really?” Matthew asked. “What do you see up there?”

  “I don’t like talking about it,” Ricky replied. “People think I’m nuts.”

  “Try me,” Matthew replied.

  “Well,” Ricky began, “I saw this tree one time. It just sprouted up out of the ground and grew to full size. Then it started glowing.”

  “Oh, wow,” Matthew said.

  “Yeah,” Ricky replied. “Then, another time, Satan came to me in the form of a crow and started talking to me.”

  Matthew had no idea that Ricky was alluding to the night he killed Gary Lauwers.

  “How do you know it’s actually the devil who’s talking to you?” Matthew asked. “I talk to God all the time through prayer. but it’s not like he taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Hey, here I am,’ or anything.”

  “He told me to do things . . . ,” Ricky said.

  “Like what?” Matthew asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Ricky replied. “Like I told you, people think I’m nuts. Maybe I need to get into a rehab or something. I’m tired of living on the street.”

  Matthew decided to change the subject.

  “Well, speaking of Aztakea,” he said, “is my boom box still up there?”

  Ricky didn’t bother lying. He had taken Matthew’s radio into the South Bronx a few days earlier and traded it for more angel dust. Either Ricky failed to see the hypocrisy in committing the same act that drove him to kill Gary, or he just didn’t care. Luckily for him, Matthew was much more forgiving.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Ricky said. “That was wrong of me.”

  Ricky tried to make up for it by offering Matthew a joint laced with the angel dust he got in return for the boom box. He accepted.

  When all was said and done, Matthew wanted to get high more than he wanted a radio.

  The next morning he grabbed a few boxes he needed to unpack. He and his family hadn’t been in the rented house on Bayview Avenue for long, and he still had some work to do. The cellophane tape on one of the boxes refused to budge.

  “Ricky, hand me your knife, would ya?” Matthew asked.

  “No,” Ricky replied. “I don’t carry a knife anymore, and you shouldn’t either. You might end up hurting somebody.”

  Just like their conversation about Aztakea, this exchange would later come back to haunt Matthew. Later that day Ricky walked downtown to meet Jimmy and get high. There, he found an unexpected visitor—Gary’s mother, Yvonne.

  “Richard, I haven’t seen Gary in a few days,” Yvonne said. “Have you or James seen him?”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Lauwers,” Ricky said before walking away, laughing hysterically. He was already high on PCP when he arrived at the New Park, and the minuscule amount of empathy he had for his victim had since faded. Yvonne was unsettled by Ricky’s reaction to her question but still decided not to report her son missing. She walked back home, hoping Gary would turn up sooner rather than later.

  Yvonne was not the only person wondering where her son was. Soon others among the New Park crowd began to whisper about the missing boy. The few who knew the truth were left to deal with a dark knowledge growing inside them like a cancer. They felt bad for Gary, but one slip of the tongue could mean ending up in a shallow grave next to Gary or in a jail cell next to Ricky. Even if they got away with their lives and their freedom, what good would life as a rat be in Northport? Teenagers there lived by a code—and Gary Lauwers was dead for breaking it.

  “If you’re a street kid doing drugs, why would you go to a cop?” says Anthony Zenkus, a friend and peer of the New Park kids. “If you don’t have a good relationship with your parents, why would you tell them your friend murdered somebody? Many of these kids were distanced from their families as well as their community. They were looked at as throwaways. That’s what I thought of when I heard about the things Ricky’s father was saying about him—Ricky was a throwaway. When you don’t believe you have a connection to a loving world, why should you tell anyone what you saw? You’re more likely to worry about yourself and take care of yourself. That’s what kids in abusive homes learn: ‘I’ve got to take care of myself’—or they don’t take care of themselves at all. There was no conspiracy of silence, just a bunch of disaffected kids.”

  Anthony was one of the few people who took Gary’s absence seriously, along with a few of the kids who lived at Merrie Schaller’s house.

  “Gary had people looking for him,” Anthony insists. “We were walking around, talking to people, saying, ‘Did he run away? Is he hiding out somewhere?’ He knew kids on the street, so who knows what he was doing, you know?”

  Glen Wolf was also looking for Gary. A friend had recently given Glen a beat-up car that he and Gary were having fun taking apart in Merrie’s driveway, and he was concerned that Gary hadn’t picked up his tools or the thirty dollars Glen owed him for helping with some odd jobs around the village. Glen checked the local hospitals and jails to see if Gary had been hurt or arrested, but when he found out Gary’s probation officer knew he was missing, he gave up the search. He figured if the officer didn’t think much of Gary’s disappearance, it would do little good to call the police.

  * * *

  Soon after their visit to Aztakea, Ricky started following Rich Barton home. Even when Rich successfully evaded him downtown, Ricky still made a habit of showing up at his house late at night. The back door that led downstairs to Rich’s basement bedroom was often left unlocked, allowing Ricky to come and go as he pleased. Unlike Matthew Carpenter, Rich didn’t have a spare couch, so Ricky would pass out on the floor, again using his leather jacket for a blanket. He usually slept until late in the afternoon, exhausted from the previous night’s dust high. Wanting to stay on Ricky’s good side, Rich would cook him a breakfast of
hot dogs while they watched Friday the 13th and Mad Max before leaving for the New Park.

  One day Ricky went downtown and got stoned on a boat that was docked in the harbor. When he was done, he tried jumping back onto the dock but fell straight into the water. Climbing out, Ricky asked a friend if he could borrow a shirt and a pair of pants. The friend ran home to grab some clothes for Ricky. He found a shirt that would soon end up on the front cover of every major newspaper in the country.

  The garment in question was a bootleg AC/DC shirt sold in the parking lot of Madison Square Garden during one of the band’s concerts in December 1983. It was white with long sleeves, and the front featured the silk-screened image of a green devil accompanied by the AC/DC logo in large, bloodred letters. In less than two weeks’ time, the shirt would become iconic—a veritable weapon wielded by paranoid parents and tabloid journalists against hard rock acts all over the world.

  Later that day Ricky took two girlfriends up to Aztakea to see Gary’s body. Staring at the grisly remains, one of the girls turned to Ricky and said, “You know, you should at least have the decency to bury him.”

  Rather than take offense, Ricky thought his friend might be onto something. Not that he gave a damn about giving Gary any dignity in death, but he suddenly remembered hearing talk of a housing development that was going to be built on top of Aztakea Woods in the near future. What if some construction worker were to clear the pile of leaves, scattering Gary’s bones all over the ground? Would the cops find something there to tie the murder back to him—his stolen pentagram necklace, maybe? Would the people he’d brought to watch Gary rot in the muggy summer heat rat him out?

  Something had to be done.

  Chapter 32

  “ALBERT SAYS WE SHOULD BURN down Aztakea. . . .”

  Ricky briefly considered Jimmy’s words but ultimately rejected the idea. What if someone saw them fleeing the scene? Even worse—what if the fire led the cops to Gary’s body before the flames could permanently cover up their crime? It simply wasn’t worth the risk. Still, the two needed to get out of Northport; there was no question about that. However, with no car, education, or income aside from sporadic drug money, their options were few and far between.