Jokers Club

by Gregory Bastianelli

  “No, you don’t understand.” My palms sweated.

  “I hope you’re all having fun, getting drunk and whatever the hell else it is you’re doing there.” Her voice was angry.

  “Listen, please –”

  “I’m kind of busy if you don’t mind –” her voice was cut off and I could hear someone talking to her in the background. It was a man’s voice. She had a man over. Dale was lying dead in a morgue and she had a man with her. I stared at the phone, fuming. I slammed the receiver down. For the first time that day I began to cry, inside that phone booth all alone.

  I don’t know why I chose that moment to break down. Things were happening in my life with such turbulence and disorder, it was making me dizzy. Something was wrong in this town. I came back here for some kind of stability, in the dazed state my mind had been in from learning about my tumor, to the town that had always remained a constant. But everything I looked at seemed cockeyed.

  I drifted along the streets, wherever my legs took me and they carried me back to the old neighborhood that had been the starting point of everything. I could feel the echoes. I wanted to reach out at the curtain of time and grab hold and pull it back, to run through the streets and woods again in a moment when there was no awareness of evil and dark things that crawl out of the cracks, except for the ones my own imagination generated in that attic room where the Joker lived.

  It wasn’t fair that something that happened so long ago should affect the lives of others now.

  I walked down Shadow Drive, toward the ancient and decrepit house that was rooted at the end. There was no one else on the street. Why was this neighborhood so quiet? It was as if, now that the Jokers Club was all gone, there was nothing else left.

  The green shades were still drawn in all the windows. I wondered if it was possible the Tin Man was still alive. But he couldn’t be; he had been so old then. But nobody seemed to age here. It was as if the whole town was stuck in time, stuck waiting for us to come back. Waiting for the long-delayed justice to be dispensed.

  I thought back.

  * * *

  When they found Jason’s body in the old man’s refrigerator, all the parents pointed their fingers at the Tin Man. He was strange, they said. He spooked everybody. He was always chasing the kids out of his yard with that spade shovel of his. He had to be the one. He must have caught Jason in his yard and decided to teach him a lesson.

  The whole neighborhood stood on their front steps or porches and watched when Hooper came to arrest Emeric Rust. What evidence they had, who knew. But it was an answer that would satisfy the restless residents.

  At the inquiry, I was the first one called to testify before the grand jury. It was hot in the county courthouse that day. They had the wide multi-paneled windows open all the way, but all it let in was hot air from outside. The ceiling fans were going, but they just pushed the searing heat that rose back down upon us. One of the fans had a rhythmic squeak, not loud enough to drown out anyone’s voice, but noticeable enough to stick in my ear like a buzzing fly I couldn’t swat away.

  I was so nervous I was nauseous. I just wanted this all to be over. All eyes in the room were on me as I sat on the stand wearing the same suit I wore at the funeral. The only suit I owned. The one I wore to church on Sundays. And here I was about to lie after swearing an oath to tell the truth. But I had sworn another oath: cross my heart … hope to die. I don’t know which urge was stronger, the one to cry or the one to vomit.

  When they asked me when was the last time I had seen Jason Nightingale, I glanced over at the table where Emeric Rust sat. The whole time in the courtroom I had avoided looking at him. I thought the only way I could go through with it was if I didn’t see his eyes. But now I couldn’t help but look at the pathetic old man as he sat there with his head bowed and staring down at his wrinkled and knobby fingers.

  He glanced up and his eyes met mine, freezing me like two animals suddenly crossing paths. I thought about the noise that night that sounded like a shade being rolled up. Had those eyes looked out the window and seen Woody and me in the darkness?

  If they did, they showed no sign of it.

  I told the county prosecutor that the last time I saw Jason Nightingale, he was running down Shadow Drive.

  Oliver and Lonny were the only others of the club they called forth. Luckily they didn’t call Martin or Woody, because I think they would have fallen apart on the stand. But the three of us stuck to the story that we were playing the game and then went home afterward without seeing Jason. They didn’t grill us too hard, didn’t think there was a reason to I guess. We were just kids.

  Emeric Rust remained silent throughout the entire inquiry. He would not utter one word in his own defense. Everyone said it proved he was crazy.

  But the evidence, or rather, lack of evidence, convinced the grand jury there was no reason to indict him. They let him go free, deciding it was most likely Jason accidently crawled into the refrigerator to hide during the game and couldn’t get out. His parents were upset and less than a year later moved out of town.

  I remembered when Emeric Rust left the courthouse that day. I was standing on the sidewalk. My parents and some of the others were standing in a group off to one side, conversing quietly. Outside there was no relief from the smothering heat. With the proceedings over, I had undone my tie and it hung loosely around my neck. I saw Jason’s family driving away, but averted watching them, looking down at the worn leather on the tip of my shoes as I tapped the edge of the stone wall with my right foot. I didn’t want to face them, but they were going back to the same neighborhood I was. How could I help but meet them sometime? Our paths were bound to intersect.

  Hooper led Emeric Rust down those stone steps to his car to give him a ride back to his house. Oliver’s father began yelling and swearing at him until a police officer quieted him down. When Rust got near me, he stopped and stared down at my cringing frame. He bent over and, in a whisper that still managed to roar in my ears said,

  “Keep out of my yard!”

  I stood there quivering as he turned away, led by Hooper who gave me a puzzling look. I was afraid everyone had heard him. But no one could have heard. No one, except …

  * * *

  My mind returning to the present day, I turned and saw Hooper in his patrol car, looking at me. I had been so engrossed in my remembrances, I hadn’t heard him pull up. He got out and approached me.

  “Whatcha doing?” he asked.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I’m keeping my eyes on you boys, you can be sure of that.”

  I looked back at the old man’s house. “I was just checking out the old neighborhood. Surprised to see this place still standing.”

  “I’m surprised to see him still standing.”

  “You mean he’s still alive?” I was shocked, but shouldn’t have been.

  “As far as I know. No one sees him around much, but the undertakers haven’t collected him yet. I guess he just doesn’t get out often.” He grinned at me, but it wasn’t a happy grin.

  “Got any leads?” I asked.

  “That’s what brings me here.” He walked to the Tin Man’s front door and knocked. “Checking things out.” There was a rusted metal doorknocker, but Hooper ignored it and just pounded on the door with his fist.

  “You don’t think he has anything to do with it?”

  “Exploring every avenue. You boys put him through quite an ordeal.” He pounded again, this time louder, then shrugged. “Don’t think he’d answer even if he did hear me.” He walked back to where I stood.

  “You think it’s one of us, don’t you?”

  “That seems most likely.” He looked off to the woods at the Pines. “But heck, maybe it’s just some psycho wandering around town. I’ve got my men checking the vacant cabins on the other side of the lake. Sometimes drifters passing through shack up in them for a while, before moving on.”

  “But that’s just another one of those avenues you’re exp
loring?”

  He looked at me, squinting, licking his lips.

  “They say murder with a knife is a rather intimate kind of killing. Your friend wasn’t robbed. That makes the motive rather a mystery, don’t you think?”

  “It is interesting.”

  He walked back to his car but stopped.

  “I’ll tell you another thing that’s interesting,” he said. “I checked up on your friend, Paul Woodman.”

  If he was waiting for my attention, he had it.

  “Seems he’s been missing for about a month or so.”

  “Really?”

  “Seems he had settled in a town up north near a girlfriend. But he hasn’t shown up for work, hasn’t been at his apartment. Just vanished. No one filed a missing persons report though, so no one’s really looking for him. I’ve asked the local police to check on the girlfriend, but they haven’t been able to track her down yet.”

  “Do you think he’s here?”

  “What do you think?”

  He didn’t let me answer, just got in his car and drove off. But I wasn’t sure how I’d have answered him. I wasn’t sure what I thought. I wasn’t sure where the story was going.

  * * *

  A wind began to blow, kicking up leaves all over the ground. They danced around my feet, sounding like screeching animals as the crisp ones scraped the pavement. It was getting cold and I thought of heading back to the inn, but there were other places my legs wanted to take me, other things to see. There just wasn’t enough time.

  I found myself heading out to the cemetery beyond the Pines and the Little League field. I noticed the headstones were creeping closer and closer to the outfield fence of the ball field, as if the two of them were fighting for territory, as if death were overtaking the ground where youth once held reign. I could almost picture a future scene where outfielders would have to dodge concrete slabs while shagging a fly ball.

  I visited my parents’ graves, wishing I had brought some flowers because I think, in the back of my mind I knew I was coming here. They had both died of cancer just a few years apart. It must run in the family. My father succumbed while I was in college; my mother died a few years after I graduated, before I left for New York City. I had no reason to stay. No family, no Meg, no work. It was as good a time as any to get (run) away.

  The headstones looked cold, the plot lonely. This was where I could be soon, beside them, a family again. If they knew what I was facing they could comfort me. They could tell me it was all right, that it wouldn’t be so bad. But here I was, their little boy, and he was very frightened. I don’t want to do it alone.

  The breeze kicked up, chilling me and I wrapped my arms around myself. Was it death that made this place so icy?

  I heard a car door and saw, over to the east side of the cemetery, a man emerging from a vehicle. I also saw a figure moving along the birch tree covered slope on the northern end of the cemetery. I felt this was an invasion of my privacy. I wanted this whole place to myself. These people had no right to intrude.

  The man from the car stood in front of a grave and as I stared, I noticed it was Oliver. I started walking in that direction, but then slowed. Maybe I shouldn’t disturb him. Let him have his private moment. But I had the sudden urge to talk to him, so picked up my pace. When he turned and noticed me, he smiled.

  In that instant, when his expression was framed in my mind, I was reminded of my first memory of Oliver. I was about five years old and wandered out into my new neighborhood and saw the scruffy looking kid with the black hair dangling in his eyes look up at me from behind a sand castle in the middle of his sandbox, smile at me and ask me if I wanted to help him build it. We had spent the better part of the afternoon piling the sand higher and higher until we had a castle King Arthur would have been proud to call home.

  I remember that smile and wondered what could make an innocent young boy grow up to be such a hard man. Then I looked down at the grave he stood in front of: his father’s.

  He had died a few years back when he was drunk. His car went off the road at a high rate of speed on a rainy evening, slamming into a tree and splitting in two.

  There was no empty plot on either side of Mr. Rench’s reserved for Oliver’s mother. She had deserted the family long ago, leaving Mr. Rench alone with the three boys. That had happened not long after the bicycle incident. It had been the summer Oliver was nine. His father had lost his license for drunken driving. Chief Hooper was the one who pulled him over early one evening right as Mr. Rench was turning onto Maple Street on his way home. Hooper wasn’t even on duty. He was on his way to his house on Elm Street and was driving behind Mr. Rench. Oliver’s father had pleaded with Hooper to let him off, since he was less than a hundred yards from his house and offered to walk from there. But Hooper arrested him and his license was revoked. I think that was the start of Oliver deciding to play pranks on Hooper. It was a way to get back at him — torture him for revenge.

  Shortly after Mr. Rench lost his license, his wife came home with a brand new bicycle. She parked it in the driveway on its kickstand and called out to Oliver’s father. I guess she figured during the nice weather he could ride it to work until he got his license back.

  I remember staring out my living room window and watching Mr. Rench glare silently at the bike. From across the street I could see his face redden. Then he exploded. He turned to his wife and began screaming and swearing. My father came into the room and we both watched silently as Mr. Rench picked up the bicycle and raised it over his head and with a clatter of steel, slammed it down on the asphalt. He jumped up and down on top of the bicycle with his big heavy work boots, spokes snapping and popping, and stomping it as if trying to sink it out of sight beneath the surface of the tar.

  His cowering wife turned and fled into the house and Mr. Rench soon followed. The screaming was louder when they were inside. My father went to the phone and picked up the receiver, fingers hesitating before the numbers pad. I saw the deep furrows on his forehead as he thought about what to do. Then he hung the phone up and told me to come away from the window.

  Oliver and I stared at his father’s grave, and then I decided I should be the one to break the silence.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” I said.

  He laughed. “I come here once a year. I don’t bring flowers though. I may have hated the bastard, but I respected him. He made me what I am today.”

  “Is that what you want to be?”

  “He made me tough, and that’s how you have to be to survive, because it’s a tough world.”

  “And you’re happy?”

  “I’ve got everything I want, and I’m only going to get more. There’s no stopping me.”

  “Oh?” I knew something that could stop him dead in his tracks. He read my mind.

  “That?” he laughed. “That doesn’t worry me. I’m not afraid.”

  I’m not either, I thought. It didn’t matter to me, I realized. I’m already dead.

  “I keep tossing it back and forth in my head,” I said, “that maybe the killer isn’t one of us. Maybe the whole thing is just some random, senseless murder.”

  “Is that what you really believe?”

  “The more I think of it, I doubt it.” I looked around the cemetery, still seeing the man standing amongst the birches. “The killer is close to us. I can feel it.”

  “You think it’s me, don’t you?” His face studied mine looking for some kind of reaction. If anything, my expression showed puzzlement.

  “I’m just not sure about you anymore.”

  “Don’t trust anybody, that’s my motto.”

  Then I asked a question that had festered in the back of my mind for a very long time. “You knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe in that refrigerator, didn’t you? You knew it would kill him.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  Don’t play games with me, I thought. Just tell me. I want to hear it.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Ask yourself
if you didn’t know what would happen.”

  No. I had no idea what was going to happen. I’m sure of it. I never would have let it get that far if I had known. I’m sure.

  “I know I’m no killer,” Oliver said. “But I will kill if I have to, to protect myself.”

  I decided to tell him what Hooper told me about Woody.

  “Well that’s an interesting twist,” he replied.

  “I can’t help but think about something he said to me when I visited him, about having to pay for what we did. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should be punished.”

  Oliver burst out laughing. “Do our penance? That’s the way it is?” He shook his head. “You don’t think we can’t go through life unpunished for our dirty deeds? God, you’re so naïve.”

  “I really believe it’s why we’re here.”

  “What about the killer then?” he asked. “If it’s one of us, and he kills us off, then he’ll be left. He’ll go unpunished.”

  “What makes you think he hasn’t been punished already?”

  He looked at me queerly.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  I don’t know, I thought. Something very strange.

  He walked away, as if unsure of who I was, and headed to his car, not taking his eyes off me. When he opened the door, he stopped.

  “Do you want a ride back to the inn?”

  It was still cool and the thought of a ride back to the warm inn was tempting, but I didn’t want to get in the car with him, and I think he was just as glad I declined.

  As he drove away, I began to meander through the cemetery, working my way along the pathways toward the northern end. I took in the names on each tombstone as I passed. These could be my new neighbors soon. I should get familiar with them. Some names I recognized, could even picture the faces that went along with them. Here was a guy from high school who had drowned trying to swim all the way across the lake on a dare one hot summer night. Here was a young man who was accidentally shot by his father in a hunting accident. There was the headstone of a girl who had lived only five years before riding her tricycle into the road and getting run over by a garbage truck. I remembered the whole town mourning that day.