by Brian Hodge
Picking up a copy of the Tribune's green streak at a corner kiosk on Waveland that smelled like crap, Cassady read that a suspect had been questioned as the Rapid Transit Murderer. Cassady was shocked to find out that Quita McLean's knife-killing was the third in the last four weeks. Why hadn't he read about the others? Were the papers covering this up like they did everything else? Were there people out there who maybe had witnessed one of the other murders like he had? Maybe have seen the killer's face? Would they be sympathetic towards him or hate him?
Cassady pressed his fists to his forehead, dropping the paper. Two Hispanics in leather blazers stared at him from across the street.
Witnesses... the thought made him shiver. He was getting sick again, just like Martin Balsam in The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. This city was killing him. Sarah would help ease his suffering, though. Like she always has. Wait. Someone was watching him from behind.
Turning quickly, Cassady saw no one. Perhaps the watcher was some kind of acrobat and was now hiding behind the newspaper stand? Turning back, he saw the blond man staring, white hairs sticking out of his beard like weeds. Red veins quavered in his eyes. Cassady suddenly realized that he was staring into mirrored glass.
He walked towards Broadway in the quickening darkness, leaves piled like ashes around him. Cassady had known Sarah Dunleavy since his freshman year at the University of Illinois' Polk Street campus, 1982. Geez, four years that seemed like yesterday. He still couldn't find a decent job.
Sarah had tawny hair and almond-brown doe eyes. Cassady felt himself getting an erection. Once, when he was awakened after dozing on the bus and dreaming of Sigourney Weaver, Cassady was embarrassed to discover that he was the proud owner of a raging hard on and at least three bus passengers were aware of it. They had tittered amongst themselves, thinking everything was funny as usual. If only more people could be concerned with what was happening in the real world. After the bus incident, Cassady learned to sleep with a copy of the Trib over his lap, even if he were only daydreaming.
Sarah had taken up nursing after graduation. He had dropped out in his junior year. She still loved him, though. The suspected killer's name was David Spellman, age 27, unemployed. Chicago's Finest found him in an alleyway behind a Winchell's Donut House on Archer, in the process of raping a fifteen-year-old with a broken Coke Classic bottle. Spellman had still not actually confessed to anything. Cassady reeled off the stats from the article as if he had been reading the back of a Topps baseball card. He did not realize that he was talking aloud.
He knew them all, though: Manson, Speck, Son of Sam. And Gacy, seven Christmases ago. What was that joke... Gacy's favorite country & western song: "I'm walking the floor over you..." His voice trailed in mock falsetto, echoing madly in the shadowed corners of New Town. Some people thought the gays deserved it, deserved getting picked up by Gacy and shown the old handcuff trick. Cassady didn't think so, though. Gays were different, but that was no reason to kill them.
The paper also had a short piece about a man who had found Quita McLean's body. It was on page three of the Chicagoland section, next to an ad for Marshall Field Days.
Sarah Dunleavy lived in a second floor walk-up at 1123 North Wolfram. Wrigley Field was a short distance away, and as he trudged towards Sarah's block, Cassady imagined opening day for the '87 season. Maybe this would be the year the Cubs would take it. He remembered all the times his mother had taken him and Janet to the weekend games with the Cardinals and the Mets. The smell of hot dogs and pizza, watching couples hold hands, yelling when Banks or Santo hit one out on Sheffield. Songs on the radio.
"Do you remember when, we used to sing, shala la la.."
Well, shala la la, here he was. He scratched nervously at his right hand before ringing the bell.
"Whatever happened, to Youth staying so slow? Going down in the old van with transistor radio..."
He wondered whatever happened to Van Morrison, the Dave Clark Five, Paul Revere and The Raiders.
"Denny!" Sarah said buoyantly in the open doorway. She was wearing Levi's and a loose fitting burnt-orange sweater. The sleeves were pushed up around her elbows. When they kissed, Cassady felt that she still wasn't wearing a bra. "Bet you're hungry after that long train ride, huh?"
"Yeah," Cassady tried not to sound too distracted. "You bet."
He sat at the kitchen table while Sarah busied herself with the dinner. She turned now and then to ask a question, her hair falling across her face. He was happy that she was not wearing makeup or nail polish. That was for the sluts who worked downtown.
He made small talk about the weather and his job interviews and then stared at the flowered wallpaper until Sarah walked to his seat with the prepared meal.
("Counting flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all...")
They walked together into the living room and sat near the television. Sarah placed a steaming plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes on the tray next to him. She poured a Pepsi into his glass. He watched it fizz, as if it were something mystical.
"Hey, thanks," Cassady said, smoothing his shirt.
Sarah sat back on the sofa and watched him eat. Using the remote control, she turned on the television. He was grateful when Sarah switched from the news to a rerun of Barney Miller.
Cassady slowly cut his meat. It was rare, his favorite. The knife scraped against his ceramic plate, and the juice sprayed finely onto his sleeve.
The juice erupted from the woman's breast and soaked his soiled shirttails
he watched it spread into the cotton blend like a hideous sunset, pushing his plate away in disgust
because she was dead and his hand o god his hand held the bloody knife
and Sarah looked away from one of Det. Deitrichis witticisms to Inspector Luger at the sudden jangling of the plate.
"This steak is too damn rare," Cassady spat, needing something to say.
"Denny!" Sarah exclaimed, wiping her hands down the sides of her jeans. "You always order it that way everywhere we go. You know how the waitresses think you're some kind of a werewolf!"
"The waitresses don't know shit!" Cassady hissed.
"Denny, what the hell is the matter with you?" Sarah said, concerned lines finding their proper place on her face.
Cassady's hands played twister with his hair. His eyes squeezed shut. Minutes passed thickly.
Finally, with Cassady staring at the powder blue carpet, and Sarah looking at him, studying him, the entire time, he spoke. He explained that he was having a rough time finding a job since his unemployment ran out, and that his shoulder was sore again because of the damp weather. Sarah understood him well. And oh how she loved him. Soon, they were laughing about the new Woody Allen film, and about snoopy old Mrs. Spinoza next door. They talked about dinner on the lakefront that summer, Christmas shopping, and the taverns on Augusta Boulevard. Then Cassady's face clouded over as fast as a schizoid's, as if he had just remembered why he had come.
"You know, Sarah," he said softly. She stopped smiling. "Well, I sort of knew this girl once. She worked down the mall from me. A few of the girls from the jeans store used to go to lunch with her."
Cassady was speaking in a detached way, strangely formal, as one might speak to a friend at a wake. Sarah studied his face closer, looking for some clue as to his behavior. There was none.
"It's been almost two years since the night she didn't come home," he continued. "She was a lot like me, you know; she really loved the city. Not being afraid to go out at night like just about everybody else."
"I'm not afraid," Sarah interrupted softly.
"I know." Cassady didn't hear what she said. "I guess that's why I still think about her
"sometimes I'm overcome thinking about it, making love in the green grass"
even though I only met her once or twice. She reminded me so much of myself. I don't know... It's hard, Sarah. It's hard to explain why I love it here so much. Yeah, I know. You can't walk around smiling without people thinking you'
re gay or retarded or something. But let me tell you something, Sarah
"behind the stadium with you"
on a day when everybody and everything spits in my face, I love it here that much more.
"my brown-eyed girl sha lala"
"It was December. This one girl I knew, Karen — she was manager of my store at the time — she told me how her and Vicki used to sit in front of Foxmoor's, and that's what they had done that last day, eating lunch on the mall floor because it was so crowded with Christmas shoppers, and they were throwing fries at each other, making faces at the shoppers. And that night, Vicki went to a bar and never came home.
"This wasn't a bar in a rough neighborhood or something," Cassady said, shaking his head. "It was in Argo-Summit, for chrissakes. Four blocks from her home."
More silence. A car honked outside. The door upstairs slammed distantly.
"They found her that January. This farmer up near the Wisconsin border let his dog out one morning, and... this is how the paper put it: 'After several minutes of digging in the snow, the dog ran proudly back to its master, the head of the missing girl jauntily dangling from his mouth.' Jauntily. Jesus, can you believe that? The coroner put the time of death at about a week before that. There were pieces of her all over the field."
His hands still pressed tightly against his skull, Cassady made claws out of his fingers and dug them into the creases around his forehead, as if trying to reopen a line of sutures that held back a slow trickle of mistakenly discarded memories. He thought of the blood dripping down Quita McLean's thigh, black in the glow of the streetlamps. Just like the others. He did not mention that he had asked Vicki out to dinner, and that she had refused, placing him in the class of all other macho animals. Sarah didn't need to know that.
Sarah had begun to speak when Cassady lifted his head. The blood vessels stood out in his cheeks from where his palms had pushed against his skin. Several thin red scratches ran across his forehead. My God, Denny used to have laugh lines, Sarah thought.
The clock behind Cassady read ten o'clock. Over two hours had passed. A rerun of M*A*S*H was on the television.
"No," Cassady said with a tone of finality, knowing what Sarah was going to ask. Oh, he knew her only too well. Women were all alike, really. "They thought it was her boyfriend, but they couldn't be sure."
He stopped talking then. He was thinking about other, more recent and private things. Sarah reached across the distance between them and took his hand, wiping the blood that was on his nails, soothing him just like she did in that dream thousands of years before. Yes, she knew him well. Too well.
Cassady knew this, knew that it was only a matter of time before the cops came and asked her questions. He really had only one choice.
Sarah slowly realized the change that was occurring in Cassady. He looked too calm. Too serene. Instead of wondering why he had brought up all these memories, tragic as they were, she felt chilled.
Denny's eyes were different, she thought.
"Denny, I—"
"Sarah, wait. Do you remember a couple of years ago, it was around the time of the Humboldt Park riots, that girl who was raped near the Belmont El? Remember that guy, he was a clerk in a record store, and he tried to help, and the guy stabbed him to death?"
"Denny, you can't blame yourself for what happened to that girl at work," Sarah said. "You weren't even with her the night it happened, you couldn't possibly have saved her."
She shivered in the semi-darkness of the room.
"You're right about the city, though. You can only pray it doesn't happen to you. Now, c'mere."
She pulled him towards her, burying his face into the blond hair.
"You know," Cassady spoke into Sarah's breasts. "I'm not afraid of the streets."
"Nobody said you were, Denny," Sarah said, slowly rocking him back and forth in her arms. "C'mon, I'll make you a drink."
She stood up, ruffling Cassady's hair as if he were a child's plaything, and walked across the room to the small bar that stood against the wall. There were only two bottles on the shelf: a full bottle of Seagram's V.O. and a half-empty fifth of DuBouchett's Blackberry Brandy, for when Sarah's father came by to see how his little girl was doing on her own.
"I'm... not sure why you told me these things, Denny," Sarah repeated. "But don't blame yourself, believe me."
"You're right," Cassady's voice was like a metronome. "Life's too short."
He covered his eyes with his hands again. Without stopping, he told Sarah what really happened that Indian summer night on the El platform at Western and 21st, about exactly what kind of a spectator to death he was. In his head he was singing "making love in a rock bed."
Sarah spilled much of the Seagram's bottle onto the counter.
"beneath the subway tracks with you"
Cassady slowly took his hands from his face. Without stopping, he let the knife drop into Sarah Dunleavy's back. Much of her blood spilled on the counter.
"my brown-eyed girl."
The next several hours were a nightmarish blur. Conspiracy blended with paranoia, enveloping Cassady the moment he left Sarah's apartment. His face was no longer familiar; he was wearing the same type of mask that all the other faces were wearing. Every day of their stinking lives. The cops wouldn't even question his motive; they'd nod their head in agreement and maybe even buy him a beer after he told them the reason he killed the love of his life. Sarah.
He grabbed a too-inquisitive squirrel and squeezed its steaming guts onto the dying grass as if the rodent were toothpaste. Squirrel-honey, your gums are bleeding because of gingivitis. Better use Colgate. Ha! He named the squirrel Binky. R.I.P. Binky. Asti Spumanti.
It was a bad day at black rock, all right. First Sarah and her incessant whining over his looks and that stupid laugh that sounded like a freaking air hose! And the rain was making the deadspace in his right bicep throb as if the muscle were still there. Fucking doctors, eight years ago said it'd be all right. Yeah, all the interns at the Chicago Osteopathic Hospital were aware of his case, nodding their heads in agreement, saying the muscle would be back in the next six months. Liars! Didn't they realize that muscles are what girls wanted? They were too busy making their six-figure incomes anyway...
Cassady bought a pint of Seagram's, downed it while crossing Partridge Park, and threw the empty bottle with all his might. He clapped in glee when the bottle smashed against the wall of a recreation center, shattering the gang graffiti and lovers' initials.
He ran screaming down a deserted midnight street. No one looked out their windows, and, knowing this, Cassady smiled broadly and winked at the clouds above.
He shared secrets with the drainage ditches.
Somehow finding his way uptown to Sheridan, Cassady raced madly for the El tracks intersecting the street at Loyola. He fell down, chipping a front tooth. Swinging a ragged fist, he mouthed bloody epithets at several singing winos behind the ruins of the Grenada theater.
He had to get to the train. Pull a train. The train of thought. Hey, where did we go, days when the rain came? All along the waterfall with you, my brown-eyed girl. On State Street that grate street I saw a man he dry humped his wife a Chicano made moan sound. Ha!! I saw a man he danced with a knife in Chicago oh please come to Boston in the springtime... the 'A' train! It was coming, he could make it
"underneath the subway tracks with you
my brown-eyed girl"
the train. A giant, throbbing penis that screwed Cassady every time he took its sterile ride for a job interview. Or for a pick up.
The turnstile of the Loyola station wavered in front of him, a gateway to truth, an upright skeleton of a dead centipede. Glazed with ice, it blazed like neon blue in Cassady's brain.
He found the needed energy to run towards it, making the distance easily in seven long strides. But the bars moved clockwise, providing an exit for the commuters inside. It was not intended to be an entrance. The bars did not budge and Cassady was beyond hearing his nose crack. His
lips curled in a snarl and his teeth touched the frozen metal.
He stepped back, lunging forward three more times, each time harder than the previous, stopping only when a triangular swatch of his cheek was ripped from his face. A bone shard, fingernail-thin and red in the night, peeked through Cassady's right eyelid like a sentry. Scouting a new way to get into the fortress.
He left the turnstile, then. Stumbling towards the closed glass doors. Flecks of his face trailed behind.
The door was locked. He did not hesitate, and by crashing through it, gouged his already blinded eye. When he hit the ground, something broke deep inside him, making a pulpy sound, perhaps that of crushing grapes for wine.
His legs made mock parodies of each other as he fell forward along the concrete floor. Muttering incoherent thank yous that it was too late for a teller to be on duty, Cassady crawled up the iced stairs, ten twenty thirty leading upwards in a mist. Darkness clutched at his one remaining eyelid.
When he heard the quiet rumble of the approaching train, not realizing that the Loyola terminal was closed for repairs, he finally relaxed.
He cried as the train went by, a thunderous blur of winos and late night partiers, none so much as noticing his outstretched, supplicating arms.
He cried louder, in great sobs spewed from his throat like vomit. Then he saw the man, so much like him, dragging his body away from Cassady as if Cassady himself were some kind of psycho pariah. Or was that messiah?
