The Acid King

by Jesse P. Pollack

  “I guess so,” Chrissy replied.

  “Is that it, King?” Breskin asked.

  Paul nodded and walked away with Chrissy in tow.

  Chapter 46

  ANY FRUSTRATION DAVID BRESKIN WAS feeling over the interview with Paul McBride evaporated when a Northport teen gave him the phone number of Rich Barton, the fourteen-year-old boy who had been taken to see Gary’s remains and later sheltered Ricky before his arrest.

  Breskin figured if he could get closer to Ricky’s inner circle, it might lead to understanding the terrible deeds the Acid King had committed. None of the explanations offered seemed to hold much weight. The Satan angle was superficial and corny, mostly being pushed by overzealous cops and unscrupulous journalists. Blaming it on drugs alone was just as infantile. There were millions of drug addicts in America, and as far as he knew, none of them were sacrificing their friends in the woods. There had to be some ugly truth lurking below the surface of this crime, and maybe Rich Barton could reveal what it was.

  Breskin called the Barton house and asked Rich if he was willing to talk, and the boy cautiously agreed—but only after receiving permission from his mother. When Breskin arrived later that day, Rich invited him into his kitchen to talk.

  “The cops told me not to say anything about what happened,” he said sheepishly as Breskin switched on his tape recorder.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Breskin told him. “I’m nothing to be nervous over. There’s no legal reason for you not to say anything. All the things you’ve told them, they went and told the press anyway. So, how long did you know Ricky?”

  “About a year,” Rich replied.

  “I know you weren’t there when Gary was killed,” Breskin said, “but were you at the park?”

  “I was down at the park that night,” Rich replied. “I went up to Aztakea three hours earlier with Rick and Jim. We tried to make a fire, but we couldn’t. It was wet. And then we tried to get out of the woods, but we couldn’t ’cause we were all fucked up on mesc. They took ten hits. I only took one. I guess when you take mesc, your eyes go bad, or somethin’. We had the tunes cranking—Sabbath, Ozzy, Judas Priest. When we finally got out around nine thirty, I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going home to trip out by myself.’ They went back downtown.”

  Suddenly the doorbell rang. Rich got up to open the door and found Lion waiting outside.

  “How’s it goin’, Rich?” Lion asked.

  Rich shrugged and led Lion into the kitchen, where Breskin was waiting.

  “So, I know there was a bunch of kids down in the park,” Breskin continued without missing a beat, “and a group of them went to Randy Guethler’s party.”

  “Yeah,” Lion said. “That was me, Glen Wolf, Liz Testerman, Marlene, Mike McGrory, and I don’t know who else. Randy had a case of beer in there ’cause it was his birthday. We were out till, like, four or five o’clock in the morning. After the party got beat, we all left and sat down by the water.”

  “So, when was the first time Ricky said something to you that didn’t sound kosher?” Breskin asked Rich.

  The boy replied in detail about the horrific afternoon where Ricky brought him to see Gary’s body rotting in the woods.

  “I didn’t tell anybody,” he said, “but I couldn’t escape it. It came up every two minutes. I wasn’t gonna tell the cops. I thought Ricky was gonna kill me.”

  “You kept this all to yourself for two weeks?” Breskin asked. “You must have been a wreck! Was it hard to sleep?”

  “I had bad dreams about going up there at night,” Rich replied. “We were hanging out in Aztakea, getting wasted, and all of a sudden, someone pops up, grabs me, and drags me into the woods. It was Gary, and his face was all mangled and stuff. He took me into the woods, and I woke up. I had another one where I was sleeping in my room, and Gary came through my door and killed me with a knife. I was sitting there with my mouth wide open, saying, ‘Holy shit!’ He just comes in and stabs me. Doesn’t say nothing. I died right away.”

  “How did you try and escape all of this in your mind?” Breskin asked. “If you thought about it all day, you’d go crazy.”

  “I couldn’t escape it,” Rich replied. “I tried to just do something else.”

  “After I found out, Rich and I went to Adventureland,” Lion said. “We did things to block it out.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  This time Rich returned with Albert Quinones and Mark Florimonte.

  Breskin did his best to appear calm. He had been in Northport for nearly a week trying to find out what had really happened that fateful night in Aztakea, and now the only free witness to the crime—that he knew of, at least—had just walked through the door. In an even stranger turn of events, Breskin hadn’t even been aware of Albert’s existence until the day before. The police had made serious efforts to prevent the press from knowing about their witness, but this was all undermined by Eric Naiburg.

  Jimmy’s lawyer had quickly discovered there was another person in the woods that night—and that he had been secretly offered immunity by the prosecution. A sharp litigator, Naiburg used this to his advantage by revealing Albert’s name and involvement to several reporters. As far as he was concerned, if the public knew there were other people present at the murder aside from Jimmy, it might take the heat off his client.

  Good news for Naiburg; horrible for Albert.

  Now the world knew he had watched Ricky Kasso kill Gary Lauwers—and had done nothing to stop it. Albert knew some of Gary’s friends would be out for blood. Not Breskin, though. He was looking for answers, not vengeance. With Albert Quinones now standing in front of him, Breskin hoped this would be the moment where he finally learned the truth.

  “I’m not gonna harass you or anything like that,” Breskin gently told Albert. “I’m just trying to put all the pieces together.”

  “Everyone’s getting all these different rumors, man,” Albert replied. “It’s making me look worse.”

  “What did Jimmy do to make him as responsible as Ricky?” Breskin asked Albert, trying to take the focus off him.

  “The cops are saying Jimmy held Gary down while Ricky stabbed him,” Albert replied. “But that never happened. He kicked him. It was a fight, man. No one knew what was going to happen. If I knew they were gonna do it, man, I would have let Gary know and I would have talked to Ricky and Jimmy to try to avoid it, man. It bugs me out, man. Gary already paid him his money back. Everyone was his friend. I mean, Ricky and Gary were both talking a lot, shit like that. The thing that bugs me out, man, is all of them were pushing me, especially Gary and Ricky, to take a hit of mescaline. They were all tripping. I didn’t want to, but finally, I just said, ‘What the hell,’ so I took a hit.”

  “Was that one of your first times using mesc?” Breskin asked.

  “I’ve done it a couple times,” Albert replied. “It’s not an every-week thing. It was a trip, man. Ricky treated us to donuts at Dunkin’ Donuts. To me, Gary was being cool and shit. And then we went up to Aztakea around midnight, because they wanted to go to a good tripping area, and they’ve got a little field where you can trip out. See, Ricky was getting pissed off, because he couldn’t start a fire, so Gary just takes off his socks, puts them in there. After Gary made a fire with his socks, they wanted to make it bigger. And Ricky comes out with a remark, ‘Why don’t you just burn your whole jacket?’ The guy’s like, ‘How ’bout I just cut the sleeves off and use my sleeves?’ It was fucked, man. So he took off his jacket and just chopped off the sleeves. I guess he was going to make it into a vest.”

  Breskin sat silently, knowing where the story was heading next.

  “All of a sudden Gary goes, ‘I have funny vibes that you’re going to kill me,’ ” Albert continued. “Ricky was saying, ‘I’m not going to kill you. Are you crazy?’ and shit like that. I was just tripping out, man. I was peaking. They were just fighting. Punching each other and shit, and I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I mean, I could see Ricky’s poin
t too, which is that he was friends with Gary, and he just turns around and steals ten bags of dust. So, they were just rolling on the ground and shit, and Gary got up to his feet after Jimmy ran up to him and kicked him in the ribs and shit, and Gary had gotten up to his feet, and Ricky just bit him in the neck, bit him in the ear, and then he just stabbed him. It was a trip, man; I can tell you that. If you’ve ever tried mescaline, it’s a trip. You hallucinate, man. You sit there and stare out, and you look at the trees, and it looks like they’re bending down and shit.”

  “We were on the Long Island Expressway the other day,” Mark added, “stuck with a flat tire for four hours, tripping on mesc. I looked out from the windshield at these clouds, white clouds, all of them in a circle, and one big one in the middle. They were like drifting and coming closer, and they were like skeleton things. They weren’t like a regular skeleton—they were all distorted. But you could see the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, like a regular skeleton.”

  “It was like a nightmare,” Albert said. “I couldn’t move, man. My whole body, all of a sudden, it just wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t function. It was like in shock. I was going crazy, man. I just stood there in my place, like all bugged out. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “So, how did Jimmy help out?” Breskin asked. “He said, ‘Get him!’ right?”

  “I don’t know if he said that or not,” Albert replied.

  “Ricky told me Jimmy said that,” Mark added. “So did Jimmy.”

  “It all went so quick,” Albert insisted. “After Ricky stabbed him, Gary took off and ran about twenty feet, and Ricky got him, just like that. Jimmy picked up the knife after Ricky had dropped it, and he gave it to Ricky. And Ricky made Gary get on his knees and say, ‘I love Satan.’ Then Ricky just started hacking away at him, man. He just kept stabbing him and shit, and then Gary was just screaming, ‘Ahhh! I love my mother!’ It was really fucked, man. Ricky and Jimmy grabbed him by the legs and dragged him into the woods. They came running out of the woods after they just threw leaves on him and shit. They told me that Gary sat up and Ricky started stabbing Gary in the face and shit. I didn’t know what to think, ’cause no one’s normal enough to do that. If you do that, man, you gotta have lost it, you know? I’d think about going to the cops, but I thought they’d try to frame me, man. They’d set me up.”

  “Were you afraid Ricky and Jimmy were going to do something to you?” Breskin asked.

  “Yeah,” Albert replied. “I wasn’t going to rat them out, because what’s, like, another body? Man, it’s no big deal. I mean, you see them kill once, you just don’t think they’re not going to kill you. For those three weeks when I didn’t know what to do, I was going crazy. I was afraid. I tried to avoid them, and all they did was tag. They’re very persistent. They would laugh about it and shit. They told so many people. They would just make jokes. ‘Oh, Gary’s dead, no big deal. Let’s go get another one.’ They’d say, ‘Let’s go up there and watch him rot.’ It was really fucked up, man. It really bugged my head out. I wanted them to get caught and I’m glad they got caught because they told so many people. They were crazy, man.”

  “See, that day, July fourth, they were searching for the body,” Mark added, “and they found it. So, they wanted to find out who knew about it. They knew Albert hung with Ricky and him, so they grabbed Albert first. And they tried to find out, and Albert wouldn’t tell them anything, so that’s why when Albert came home, his lip was all cut, he had bruised ribs and a big bump on his head. They wanted to know the truth.”

  “The detectives were beating the shit out of me,” Albert said. “They brought me up to this room, and they started questioning me and shit, and they were beating the shit out of me. They didn’t tell me they were going for Ricky and Jim. The next day they said they were gonna let me go, ’cause Jimmy was coming in. He looked like he got away with it and shit—he was playing it cool. I told them everything. Maybe Jimmy was probably thinking that I wasn’t gonna rat him out. I don’t know what to think. My head’s screwed up ever since that night—and it’s still screwed up, man.”

  “Do you have nightmares about it?” Breskin asked.

  “Yeah,” Albert replied. “I was trying to forget about it, man, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep. I had some really wicked nightmares, man. I had nightmares that I killed Mark. I just started stabbing him in the back of the head. And then a cop came in and scooped him up with this little pick or something and threw him in the garbage. It was so weird, man. It scared the hell out of me.”

  “I went up there with Rich,” Mark said. “The really gross part was smelling it like four blocks away. It smelled like a swamp after a thousand years, something just decaying for a thousand years. Really gross, like something you leave in the corner of a house and it just starts decaying, and decaying, and decaying, and there’s maggots.”

  “Albert, have your parents been able to get you someone to talk to about all this stuff?” Breskin asked.

  “My mom wants to send me somewhere,” he replied. “She sent me to talk to Father Colgan. I talked to him about it. He seemed like he didn’t care about me, man. He was more worried about Rich than me!”

  “He didn’t even really say anything,” Rich added. “He talked about how his brothers got killed in World War II. That’s all he talked about.”

  “Sometimes, I get scared to go in my room,” Albert continued, “because when I was friends with him, Ricky used to stay in my room. It was like, every time it would hit after twelve, I’d start bugging out.”

  “It’ll be nice when things get back to normal, huh?” Breskin asked, trying to remain optimistic for the boys.

  “It’s never turning back to normal,” Mark said sadly, lowering his head.

  Rich took a sip of his lemonade. “It’ll take a while. . . .”

  After the interview, Breskin quickly drove back to his rented room in Centerport, rewound the tape, pulled out his notebook, and began hastily transcribing the recording. By complete accident, he had gotten the scoop so many other professional reporters and journalists had tried and failed to secure, and he was not going to take any chances with the revelations he had recorded. If something happened to the tape, he had the notebook; if something happened to the notebook, he had the tape.

  Nothing was going to get in the way of finishing the story.

  Chapter 47

  AT SEVEN P.M. ON SUNDAY, July 15, 1984, nearly 150 residents of Suffolk County crowded into the St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on Main Street in Northport to discuss how to move forward from the tragedy as a community. The meeting was the result of several concerned citizens working together with the Place, the YDA, the village police department, and the local clergy to provide a safe and constructive environment for the residents of Northport to air their grievances, voice their collective support for one another, and offer solutions to the worst tragedy to which they had ever borne witness.

  In addition to the shocked villagers, a fair number of reporters showed up as well. Breskin found a pew in the rear of the church, trying not to draw attention to himself. Once everyone was seated, Reverend Bob McDonald stood and addressed the crowd.

  “I’ve asked the television cameras not to be here,” McDonald said, hoping this would encourage everyone to speak honestly. “I don’t see this as a time for people to be making speeches; I see this as a time for people to be listening to each other. One of the least helpful things we can do is try to place blame for what has happened.”

  Northport Village Police Chief Robert Howard spoke next and almost immediately went on the defense.

  “We, as the police department, have to take care of the mess that society produces,” he maintained. “Lots of people ask us why we don’t get rid of the people in the park, but we have to abide by the law. We don’t have the right to do it as a police department. We have to honor the Constitution of the United States and not violate people’s rights. Parents don’t want to be contacted by us. Parents don’t believe us, or they su
e us. I’m very leery of parents.”

  Sybil Nestor, a forty-five-year-old Northport resident, agreed.

  “There’s a tremendous lack of communication between children, parents, and the police department,” Nestor charged. “You all don’t back the police department. They are working for us and their hands are tied. I’ve seen thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-year-olds—boys and girls—out there in the park at two or three in the morning. I don’t know where their parents are.”

  Mimi Kail, president of the Northport Village Residents Association, echoed Nestor’s sentiment by suggesting a curfew in the New Park and a town-wide boycott of the Midway. Chief Howard rose to remind Kail that an eleven p.m. curfew was already in place at the park, but that his department could do little to enforce it thanks to Huntington’s regulations.

  Anthony Zenkus spoke up against the curfew entirely.

  “Controlling youth is not a solution,” he told the gathering. “We’re not going to solve problems by hiding them.”

  Dennis McBee agreed.

  “This is a problem of the whole community,” he said, “not a ‘youth problem.’ ”

  Glen Wolf joined his friends from the YDA in decrying the perceived discrimination against teenagers in town.

  “I’m an adult who hasn’t grown up yet—a lowlife from Northport Park,” Wolf said, confidently working the crowd, who laughed at his biting honesty. “The police are downtown hasslin’ people over beer while their houses are being robbed. If we run people out of the park, they’ll go somewhere else. Clearing partiers out of the park would put them in the woods, and who knows what would happen there. The root of the problem is angel dust, and the people who supply it are adults who do it for money. I smoke pot, drink, and listen to heavy metal, but I’m no dusthead, Satanist, or murderer.”

  Fifteen-year-old Michelle DeVeau—one of Gary’s former flames—also spoke, giving a voice to the teens in attendance who were too cautious or embarrassed to reveal their drug habits and psychological issues.