The Acid King

by Jesse P. Pollack

  Eventually, Jimmy suggested enlisting in the navy. He figured they would be sent to boot camp somewhere outside of Long Island. Best of all, they wouldn’t have to spend a dime—Uncle Sam would foot the bill. Ricky thought the idea had merit, and on June 28, he and Jimmy hitched a ride to Patchogue, about forty minutes away. There, at the US Navy Recruiting Station on East Main Street, the two took their Armed Forces Qualification Tests. Ricky scored a 42, which would have been good enough for enlistment had he already earned his high school diploma. He had not, so the office had no choice but to turn him away. Jimmy also failed his test. However, the recruiter told them both to return soon and try again.

  After finding a ride back to Northport, Ricky walked back to Rich Barton’s house, where he spent the next two nights. On Saturday, June 30, Ricky awoke early and asked Rich if he would help him bury Gary’s body.

  “Fuck that, man!” Rich exclaimed. “I’m not getting near that thing! I saw it once and that’s enough!”

  Rich retrieved a garden shovel from his backyard and handed it to Ricky.

  “Here,” he said. “You can have this. You don’t have to give it back to me.”

  Ricky took the shovel and walked down the block to the Quinones house, where he found Albert hanging out with Mark Florimonte. He asked the two if they would help him, but they also refused. Undeterred, Ricky made his way down to the New Park, where he found Jimmy sitting with two of their friends, Ronnie and Cathy. He wasted no time telling them what he had done to Gary Lauwers.

  “Oh, yeah?” Ronnie said. “Bullshit.”

  Ronnie had known Ricky and Jimmy for less than a year, but he came from a tough crowd in Kings Park. He was familiar with Ricky’s habit of getting stoned and babbling strange things—mostly about Satan—and didn’t believe him any more than Rich Barton or Mark Florimonte had. Ricky may have been tall, looming several inches over most other kids, but he was also terribly thin and gangly. Ronnie simply couldn’t picture him killing someone.

  “No, come on!” Jimmy said, visibly excited. “Drive us up to the woods! We’ll show you!”

  Intrigued, Ronnie and Cathy decided to play along. The four hopped into Cathy’s car and drove to Franklin Street. There, they parked at the end of the cul-de-sac and followed Ricky into Aztakea. The putrid smell of decomposition hit them almost immediately. Still, Ronnie refused to believe Ricky had actually murdered Gary. He figured there was a dead animal up there—maybe a dog—and Ricky was pulling a prank. This all changed once Ricky led Ronnie and Cathy over to the pile of sticky, blackened leaves tucked away between the poison ivy plants and cedar trees. Ronnie walked up and brushed some of the foliage away with his foot, revealing Gary’s denim jacket. Startled, he stumbled backward. The realization that he was staring at a murdered human being while the killer stood behind him set in rapidly.

  “Gary’s in Hell now because we made him say he loved Satan,” Jimmy said proudly.

  “Yeah,” Ricky added. “We came up here to hang out. Started doing acid and we got this fire going. I made Gary burn his jacket sleeves.”

  “That’s when he said he had a bad feeling we were gonna kill him,” Jimmy laughed.

  “I started kicking Gary’s ass for stealing from me,” Ricky continued. “There was this crow flying overhead, screeching. That was a sign from Satan. He was ordering me to kill Gary. So, I pulled out my knife and stabbed him once before he ran away. Jimmy went and dragged him back. I started stabbing him more and more until we thought he was dead. We started to drag him away from the fire when he sat straight up. I flipped out and started hacking away at his face.”

  Ronnie had heard enough. He grabbed Cathy, and the two left Ricky and Jimmy behind to bury Gary. As they made their way out of Aztakea, Ronnie looked at his girlfriend and said, “Oh my God, these guys are going to jail for fucking life. . . .”

  As Ronnie and Cathy left Aztakea, Ricky and Jimmy went to work on the grave, digging a hole that was only about four feet long, two feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. After they were done, they grabbed Gary’s remains by his jacket and went to drag him into the hole. When Ricky and Jimmy lifted Gary’s body up off the dirt, his head gave way to decomposition and fell to the ground. In one last petty display of hatred, Ricky kicked Gary’s skull into the grave before covering the bones with a thin layer of dirt, leaves, and branches. He then picked up the shovel and left Aztakea Woods for the last time.

  Chapter 33

  A DAY AFTER BURYING GARY, Ricky and Jimmy split off to visit their girlfriends. Jimmy made plans to see a movie with Karen and her friend Jean Wells, while Ricky decided to hang out with Jane Allen, who had recently started hooking up with him after her fight with Glen Wolf. The two were an odd couple: Jane with her hippie clothes and peace-symbol necklaces, and Ricky with a red bandanna tied around his hair, and an inverted cross and a dagger recently self-tattooed on his arms.

  On this hot July day, Jane found herself sharing a bottle of stolen wine with Ricky. As she reached for a cigarette, Ricky took a big swig, trying to drown his thoughts. The flashbacks had started up again, leaving him shaken.

  “You want one, Ricky?” Jane asked, holding a cigarette in front of his face.

  “Nah,” he replied. “I’m gonna try not to smoke that much.”

  Jane lit hers and inhaled.

  “I know you don’t even care,” she said, “but have you seen Gary? We talked to his mother, and she hasn’t seen him in a while.”

  “No,” Ricky replied, scratching his left wrist. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Suddenly Jane noticed the blotchy red patch of blisters on Ricky’s arm and immediately recognized the source—poison ivy. She took him back to her house and gave him some calamine lotion to help relieve the itching. Jane couldn’t have known that Ricky got the rash while burying her friend.

  Later Jimmy caught up with the two. Ricky kept complaining about the “flashbacks” he was getting, always stopping short of describing them. Jimmy was unconcerned.

  “So, when are you gonna trip again?” he asked.

  “I’m never gonna trip again,” Ricky replied. “I just had a bad trip—a really bad trip.”

  “No, c’mon!” Jimmy scoffed. “If somebody threw eight hits in your face for free, you’d eat ’em.”

  Ricky stood his ground.

  “Nah, Drac,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, whatever, man,” Jimmy replied.

  Jimmy seemed to be completely oblivious to the situation he and Ricky were now both in. Little did they know that the Northport Village Police Department were onto their dark secret buried away inside Aztakea Woods—all thanks to Jimmy’s loose lips.

  The next morning, July 2, Ricky awoke determined to leave Northport for good. Convinced it was only a matter of time before the cops caught up to them, he talked Jimmy into coming with him. Jimmy had virtually no reason to stay on Long Island either. Aside from helping Ricky kill Gary, Jimmy’s court date for his June burglary arrest was rapidly approaching, and there was little left in the village for him to feel sentimental about.

  While Northport Police Officer Gene Roemer and Police Chief Robert Howard were across town interviewing Yvonne Lauwers about her missing son, Ricky and Jimmy began planning their escape. Ricky suggested hitchhiking up to Argyle, and Jimmy agreed. The two had done this once before during the winter of 1980 and were confident they could pull it off again. From there, they could use some of their drug money to buy a used car and flee across the country to California. Ricky had always wanted to live there, spending his days playing guitar and his nights lying on the beach. He would have to settle for hiding there as a fugitive from the law.

  Before leaving, the two curiously created even more loose ends by telling friends they were leaving for California—and even asked a few to come along. Ricky stopped by Rich Barton’s to ask if he wanted to “go camping upstate.” Rich almost went along until his mother intervened. After leaving the Barton house, Ricky walked downtown to see if Matthew Carpenter
might join him and Jimmy.

  Ricky arrived at Matthew’s house on Bayview Avenue in the middle of the afternoon while his friend was taking a nap. Ricky knocked, and a groggy Matthew sat up in bed, noticing Ricky’s silhouette against the white curtain covering the window of his bedroom door. For some reason, Matthew suddenly became very uneasy. Something told him, Don’t open the door. . . . Ricky knocked again, and Matthew froze. After another short burst of knocking, Ricky finally gave up and left. Matthew breathed a sigh of relief and lay back down.

  Ricky later caught up with Jimmy in the New Park and the two said their good-byes to a few select friends. Once they were done, they raised their thumbs and began a two-day journey hitchhiking out of Northport. They had no idea that the Northport police had just finished interviewing Jean Wells and were now on their trail.

  Chapter 34

  RICKY AND JIMMY SPENT THEIR first night on the road sleeping under a highway overpass on Interstate 87. The two were used to roughing it by this point, but the sleeping bags they had brought along made a difference. In one day of hitchhiking, they had made it as far as Saratoga Springs and only had thirty miles left to go before they reached Argyle. They got a slow start the next day, stopping to sell some purple microdots, and didn’t arrive until about an hour before sundown. Ricky took Jimmy over to his friend Tony Mallory’s log cabin on Tall Pines Way. While en route, Ricky carefully avoided his own family, who were vacationing a mile down the road.

  At eighteen years old, Tony was the polar opposite of Ricky. He was married, gainfully employed, and owned his own home. Despite Tony leading his life on the straight and narrow, Ricky trusted him and knocked on his door.

  Tony walked outside to find Ricky and Jimmy standing there. The Kassos had been up in Argyle for nearly two weeks now, and with no sight of Ricky, Tony assumed he had been allowed to stay home for the summer. He didn’t bother asking, but others who did were told by Dick and Lynn that Ricky chose to stay home. They were lying. Disgusted with their son’s grave-robbing arrest and continuing drug use, they hadn’t invited him along.

  “Ricky,” Tony said, surprised to see his friend. “What’s up, man?”

  “Hey, Tony,” Ricky replied. “Can I talk to you for a little bit?”

  “Sure, dude.”

  Tony invited Ricky and Jimmy inside and the three walked upstairs to Tony’s bedroom.

  “So, what’s going on?” Tony asked as he closed the door.

  Ricky didn’t waste any time.

  “I killed someone, Tony.”

  “What?”

  “I killed someone,” Ricky repeated. “I got really high in the woods back home and killed somebody, and I think the cops are after me.”

  Tony was stunned. Having seen Ricky only during the summertime, Tony had never witnessed him doing drugs, let alone displaying any threatening or violent tendencies. To him, Ricky was just one of the guys.

  “Ricky, what the hell happened?” Tony asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ricky said. “I was so high on mescaline. I didn’t even remember doing it until some of my friends brought me back to see the body.”

  Jimmy knew Ricky was lying through his teeth but stayed quiet.

  Strangely enough, as Ricky spoke more and more, the lie quickly faded and soon he was giving Tony a detailed account of Gary’s murder.

  “That kid had been ripping people off for a while,” Ricky said. “It was time someone did something about it.”

  “Ricky,” Tony replied, “if this is true, you’re going to go to jail for a very long time.”

  “No way!” Ricky said. “I’m not spending the rest of my life behind bars, Tony!”

  “If you did this,” Tony insisted, “you’re going to have to face the consequences sooner or later.”

  “If they ever catch me, I’ll kill myself!” Ricky countered. “I’ll never stay in jail! I can’t live in jail!”

  Despite his own panic slowly setting in, Tony tried to calm Ricky.

  “What is it that I can do for you?” he asked.

  Ricky thought for a second.

  “Is it all right if Jimmy and I crash here until we figure out how we’re going to get to California?’

  Out of loyalty to his childhood friend, along with the fleeting hope that none of this was actually true, Tony said yes. By the next morning, however, he was ready for Ricky and Jimmy to leave. He could no longer ignore the horrifying story he had been told.

  “You gotta leave,” he told his old friend. “I can’t have you here with what you’re telling me.”

  Ricky nodded.

  “Look, man, if this is all true,” Tony continued, “they’re gonna know where you’re at. They’re gonna come here.”

  “I know, I know,” Ricky replied. “Can you at least help me get a car? I need a car.”

  “Yeah, I can get you a car,” Tony said, “but man, you should have never come here.”

  The three originally planned to drive over to Vermont. Ricky knew of a place there where he could buy a cheap car, throw a paper tag on it, and drive off. However, Tony thought of a quicker plan. He knew a guy in nearby Cambridge with a car for sale and decided to drive Ricky and Jimmy there first.

  When they arrived, they found the car parked on the side of the road. It was a maroon 1973 Pontiac Catalina two-door that had obviously seen better days. The grille was missing, the bumper was twisted, the tires were bald and low on air, the seats were ripped, and there was an empty hole where the radio used to be. However, it had seats and a roof that didn’t leak, which was more than Ricky could say about his makeshift lean-to in Aztakea.

  Ricky pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and offered Tony’s friend fifty bucks for the car. He accepted, and Ricky and Jimmy threw the few worldly possessions they had—a pile of ratty clothes, the camping gear, and nearly one hundred purple microdots—into the trunk. They waved good-bye to Tony and sped off.

  In an almost comical twist of fate, the two almost immediately encountered Dick Kasso, who was shocked to see Ricky behind the wheel of the Pontiac. He knew his son didn’t have a driver’s license and wasn’t sure Ricky even knew how to properly drive a car.

  “Ricky!” Dick shouted, rolling down the window of his Corvette. “Ricky, pull over!”

  Ricky slowed down and stuck his head out of the Pontiac.

  “I don’t have time to see you!” he shouted, and drove away.

  Dick gave up and headed back to Argyle.

  A few minutes after their encounter with Ricky’s father, Ricky and Jimmy pulled over and found a Chevrolet Caprice station wagon parked on the side of the road. Acting quickly, they unscrewed the rear license plate from the Chevy, bolted it onto the Pontiac so as not to attract suspicion from passing police, and headed back onto the highway. Their plan, however, immediately became flawed in its execution. The bottom of the yellow plate read OFFICIAL. Due to an almost astounding lack of judgment, Ricky and Jimmy were now driving around in a clunker fitted with a government license plate.

  While coasting south on Route 22, the boys made yet another poor decision that would help seal their fates. Instead of heading straight for California, dealing microdots along the way to pay for gas, Ricky and Jimmy chose to go back to Long Island and sell as much of their stash as possible in one shot. They knew they were heading back into the lion’s den, but if they could make some quick cash, it would be worth the risk.

  As Ricky and Jimmy inched closer and closer to Northport, investigators from the Suffolk County Police Department were carefully removing the remains of Gary Lauwers from Aztakea Woods.

  The two were now on a collision course with fate.

  When they pulled into town that evening, the usual festivities were already in full swing. Dozens of teenagers were crowding in and out of the New Park, smoking weed and drinking booze. Ricky and Jimmy knew most of them, and they all were prime candidates for microdot sales.

  Across town, crime scene technicians from the Suffolk County Police Department were wrapping
up their day of removing Gary’s remains from Aztakea. Due to heavy decomposition and a quickly setting sun, the technicians were unable to remove all the bones from the shallow grave. Instead they bagged up what they could and put a tarp over the hole in the ground. To keep any would-be visitors away from the grim site, the Suffolk County Police Department found an officer brave enough to stand guard overnight in the pitch-black woods.

  As the night wore on back in the New Park, Jimmy became visibly uneasy. He knew the longer he and Ricky stayed in Northport, the higher the chance there was of getting caught. He also suspected they were being watched.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Only a few hundred feet away, detectives from the Suffolk County Police Department were sitting in an unmarked car parked on Main Street, keeping an eye on their two suspects. The Northport Village Police Department had already picked up Albert Quinones, and while Suffolk County hadn’t yet collected a signed statement from him against Ricky and Jimmy, the detectives sat waiting for headquarters to give them the go-ahead to arrest the two.

  A short while later, Ricky and Jimmy managed to slip away from the New Park without the detectives noticing. As the sun began to rise over Northport Harbor, the two fired up the Pontiac and drove over to Kings Park to sell more microdots. After spending a little over an hour there, they blew another opportunity by heading back to Northport instead of making a clean escape from the Island. While they were on their way back, the arrest warrant was finally issued at four thirty a.m. Since the detectives staking out the New Park eventually noticed the two had vanished and left to search for them elsewhere, Ricky and Jimmy were able to enter the New Park undetected.

  Soon after they arrived, two friends who had followed them from Kings Park showed up ready to fight. Ironically, they were there to confront Ricky over allegedly stealing some drugs from a mutual friend. Once Jimmy saw the two pull up, he grabbed Ricky and ran to the parking lot. There, they jumped into the Pontiac and drove off as fast as they could, hoping to avoid a brawl. Ricky drove north on Bayview Avenue and made a slight left onto Bluff Point Road. Figuring they had lost the two kids from Kings Park, they pulled over in front of a house just north of the Northport Yacht Club. The club had been a crown jewel of the village for more than eighty-five years. Coincidentally, Joseph Morrell—whose skeletal hand Ricky had gawked at while hanging out with Randy Guethler—had been one of the organization’s presidents many decades before. Ricky parked the car, crawled into the back seat, and stretched out his legs, hoping to sleep off the angel dust high.