Recipe for Hate

by Warren Kinsella

  He paused. “And, I’m sorry, boys, but apparently some believe he may be left with permanent brain damage …” He paused again. “In any event, most of the cops, Murphy and Savoie in particular, really want to classify what happened to Danny as a suicide attempt. Which, among other things —”

  X cut him off. “Which eliminates the need to address the alibi the skinheads clearly have in Danny’s case.”

  “Right,” McLeod said and looked right at X, impressed. “That’s exactly right.”

  I was about to ask another question, but stopped. Detective Murphy was suddenly standing behind McLeod, and Savoie was wheezing up to us behind him. Some of the winos in the place looked on warily.

  “You shouldn’t be talking to them, McLeod,” Murphy said, his features dark. “These boys are witnesses, and they don’t need to be manipulated by the media. You know better.”

  McLeod started to protest, but Murphy held up a beefy hand inches from the Press Herald reporter’s face. “You know the rules,” he barked. “And I don’t give a crap about the First Amendment. So, if you don’t want to get charged with contempt, you should piss off. Immediately.”

  McLeod grabbed his notebook and scuttled out without another word. Savoie, still huffing and puffing, glared down at us. “You guys really need to leave the solving the crime stuff to us,” he said, irritated.

  “We’d like to do that,” X said, tossing his Styrofoam cup in a trash can, “but our friends keep getting hurt while we wait for you to do something.”

  C H A P T E R 25

  To no one’s surprise, that Christmas was a bleak, grinding piece of crap. Despite the fact that Bauer, Wojcik, and Babic remained behind bars, and despite the fact that no other punks had been killed, the murders of Jimmy Cleary and Mark Upton remained unsolved — and the attempted murder of my band’s drummer remained a big question mark. Danny was still in hospital in a coma, his ultra-religious parents keeping watch at his bedside. No other visitors allowed, and his siblings had been told not to talk to any of us anymore.

  The skinheads were collectively charged with assault causing bodily harm, and some drug and theft offences. The Portland police had apparently discovered stolen stereo equipment when they searched Bauer’s East End apartment, and lots of speed when they searched the Bayside flat Wojcik and Babic shared. But no murder charges. No statements, either, from the skinheads. They refused to say anything to anyone, including to their addled court-appointed lawyers. The trio remained in the Cumberland County Jail for the holidays, and they were probably happy about it.

  The Virgins and the rest of us jammed occasionally in the basement at Sound Swap. Once or twice, Sam, Eddie, and Luke would join in, and we’d play half-hour-long versions of Patti Smith’s take on “Gloria” and the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” which had been two- and three-chord favorites of Jimmy’s. But no gigs were planned or even discussed. A deep, dark pall had descended on the Portland scene after what happened to Danny, and no one seemed to be interested in doing much of anything.

  Patti Upchuck, meanwhile, confided in me that she was consumed by guilt. Like many other Portland punks, the deaths of our friends had left her grieving and scared. Her new relationship with X, however, had exactly the opposite effect. She told me it made her feel happier and more self-confident than she had been in a long time.

  I was still a bit shocked by their relationship, too. It was something X just did not do, like ever. None of us had ever seen him express affection toward any girl. This had led to rampant speculation at PAHS that X was gay, but Patti had never believed it. X wasn’t gay, as I of course knew very well, but he hadn’t ever seemed interested in any girls, either.

  Patti knew I was gay, but no one else really did except X and my dad. In Portland in the ’70s, being gay was a super-fucking dangerous way to go through high school, even for a guy as big as I am. Later, Patti would learn — as I had — that X’s parents briefly thought their son was gay, too. He had been writing pro-gay editorials in The NCNA, he had been listening for months to the Tom Robinson Band’s British hit “Sing If You’re Glad to be Gay,” and the two of us visited the proudly gay Blackstones bar more than once. He also wore earrings, and many of his other friends at PAHS were gay, closeted or otherwise. As a result, X’s sexuality was kind of ambiguous — which, to most high school students, kind of meant that he must be gay. Some days, X even seemed to promote the notion that he was.

  X did not ask Patti to keep their relationship quiet, but she felt compelled to, except with me and her sister, of course. X was, as we all knew, the most intensely private person she had ever met. She was determined to respect that.

  Well, with one exception: Patti told me everything, pretty much.

  There was another reason for being careful, however: the guilt. Like anyone raised a Catholic, she figured that misery was all we could reasonably expect in life, and that happiness was a trick. It felt wrong to feel happy — about someone, about anything — while a maniac was stalking and murdering your friends.

  So they kept quiet. X because that was what he usually did, and Patti because she did not want to do anything to upset X or anyone else.

  So, Patti spent as much time with us as she had before they got together. And, as before, X continued to hang with me in the Language Studies area, because our hangout in Room 531 was still locked up by the school administration. Most days, Patti sat with the 531 crew, NCNA staff, and the X Gang at lunchtime. I noticed that she always took care not to sit too close to X, though. She preferred that, she told me: she could observe him better when he wasn’t sitting right beside her.

  Away from PAHS, we killed time together going to record stores like Electric Buddha and Enterprise, searching for punk rock gems amidst the cock-rock dreck. Saturdays, we’d gather with the rest of the X Gang for chicken and chips at Matthew’s. And, in the evenings, we’d sometime go to the movies, usually at the Nickelodeon in the Old Port, which screened the more obscure stuff we liked.

  X, as I knew too well, didn’t drive or even have a driver’s license. Most of the time, he relied on Portland Transit or me to get him around town. But once they started seeing each other, Patti started borrowing her father’s car in the evenings and she would drive to Highland Avenue to pick him up and they’d just cruise around. He’d wait for her at the corner by his house, leaning against a pole in his biker’s jacket and his ancient hunting sweater.

  On one such drive, a couple of days before Christmas, they had exchanged gifts. She and her family were heading to Boston to spend a week with relatives, so she wanted to give him his present before they left town. She drove all the way down to Kennebunk, parked at an isolated place called Mother’s Beach, and they watched the waves crash onto the rocks below the homes of the rich summer residents. She told me she told him to close his eyes.

  “I haven’t been told to close my eyes since I was a kid,” he said, going along with her request. “Are you giving me a Lego set?”

  “Better than that, I hope,” she said, lifting a blanket off the item in the back seat and moving it into the front. She told him to open his eyes.

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “Wow.”

  It was a red Fender Telecaster, used, with a grain finish.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “I love it,” he said, taking the guitar. “Thanks, Patti.” He strummed it with a fingernail and then reached across to hug her. “This is too much. It’s way too generous.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. She told me she wanted to tell him she loved him, but — like previous occasions — she didn’t. “Now you just need a band.”

  He moved the guitar into the back seat and addressed her. “Okay,” he said. “I got you something. And Betty and Kurt, too, I guess.”

  “Betty and Kurt, too? What?”

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket and extracted a gift-wrapped box. She opened it. Inside,
there was an envelope as well as a silver ring — two small hands grasping a heart bearing a crown. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s a Claddagh ring,” he said. “To the Irish, it means loyalty, friendship, and love.”

  “I love it, X,” she said, sliding it onto various fingers until she found a spot where it would fit. She kissed him. “Thank you. I love it.”

  “Now open the envelope,” he said.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Tickets?”

  “Yeah, tickets,” he said. “But tickets for all of us to go to Boston next month to see the Clash play at the Harvard Square.”

  C H A P T E R 26

  It was the dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Patti and Betty and their family were still in Boston. The rest of the Portland punks had gone into hibernation, with no gigs or get-togethers taking place anywhere. Gary’s had finally let on that they were reopening, but that punk acts wouldn’t be on the marquee just yet.

  So, a couple days after Christmas, X and I were walking to Bull Moose Music in the city’s Old Port, which usually had better (but pricier) import punk singles and albums from the U.K. He’d gotten some dough for Christmas and he said he was looking for the Ruts’ first release, “In a Rut,” and Wire’s newest single, the artsy “Outdoor Miner.” I told him I’d come with him.

  As we were walking along, two young punks approached us near Pearl Street. They were both short and wore matching army surplus jackets and jeans. The lapels of the jackets were ornamented with badges for bands like Eater, a British punk outfit whose members were about the same age as the two young punks — fourteen or fifteen maybe.

  “Uh, X? You’re X, right?” one of them said.

  Looking at them up close, I figured they were twins.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” X said, stopping. “Why?”

  “I’m Peter, and this is my brother John,” the boy said, looking a bit nervous. “Do you guys have a minute to talk?”

  “Sure,” X said. “We’ve got lots of time this week. Let’s go somewhere, though. It’s pretty cold out.”

  The brothers led X and me to a tiny diner near the Plaza Nickelodeon, at Spring and Union. They were obviously excited that the X had agreed to talk to them. While John got hot chocolates at the counter, Peter told us that he and his brother went to King Junior High. They were likely the only kids in the entire place who were into punk. “We’re used to getting hassled all the time at school, but now we’re getting it from our parents, too.” He paused as his brother put the drinks on the table. “Our dad’s a cop.”

  “Probably the only Asian cop on the Portland force, too,” John added, sitting down. “That’s pretty pathetic in a city like Portland.”

  “Agreed. Is he a detective?” X asked.

  “Yeah,” Peter said.

  “So,” X said, warming his hands on his hot chocolate, “what’s this got to do with us?”

  “Well, like I said, we’ve been getting hassled a lot,” Peter said. “There’s always been a lot of that, but it’s gotten really bad since …” He trailed off. Both brothers looked uncomfortable.

  “Since the murders,” X said, finishing the thought. “Yeah. It’s been bad for everybody.”

  “Our parents, and the teachers, they’re all super pissed,” John said. “They keep asking us why we’re into the scene. Why take the risk, and all that. They want us out. All our friends’ parents want their kids out.”

  “Especially our dad,” Peter said. “He’s really freaking out. He’s worried something’ll happen to us.”

  “Well,” X said, shrugging, “To them, it’s just these weird-looking bands. Maybe you need to explain to them it’s more than that.”

  “How?” Peter asked.

  X ran a hand over the gash on his head, the stitches still visible. “Well, I just wrote a thing for the paper me and Kurt put out, The NCNA,” he said. “Your dad isn’t the only one asking. I’ve even been hearing it from guys who’ve been in the scene for a couple years, too. It’s fair, given everything that’s happened.”

  “Do you have a copy?” John asked.

  “I do, but I just wrote it,” X said, pulling out some sheets from his jacket. “I haven’t even typed it up yet. The gist of it is my argument against what the Pistols say in ‘God Save the Queen.’ You know how Rotten sings ‘there’s no future, no future,’ over and over?”

  The twins nodded in unison.

  “Well, I say that punk is all about the future. Getting one. Keeping it.”

  The boys waited, sipping their hot chocolates.

  X looked at them, considering, then handed over the papers. “Go ahead, read it,” he said.

  The essay was in X’s distinctive handwriting, which was half printing, half longhand. He’d let me read it earlier, so I knew just what it said. It was good. We watched as the brothers read it.

  Peter looked up, smiling. “This is great,” he said. John was behind his brother, reading over his shoulder.

  “Wow,” Peter said, returning the essay, “that’s amazing, X. That’s it.”

  After a bit more talk, X and I told the Chows we had to get going.

  As we were getting ready to go, John turned to X. “Our dad hasn’t been working on the cases involving your friends … but he’s pretty upset about it. Just before Christmas, he said that there was a good reason why the skinheads hadn’t been charged with the murders or anything serious …”

  “Oh yeah? What did he say?”

  “He said that nothing’s happened because some of the cops in Portland are on their side.”

  C H A P T E R 27

  I got a copy of the police report later on. The report said it was about five minutes to go until midnight — and just about five minutes to go until his sixty-sixth birthday — and Ken Haslam was sitting on the couch in his television room on Ocean Street in South Portland, smoking a cigarette and watching a report on the prospects for the Red Sox that season. His wife had gone to bed.

  When the doorbell rang, Haslam was surprised because he and his wife didn’t get too many guests late at night. He wasn’t concerned, though. They lived in one of those super-peaceful, law-abiding Portland bedroom communities, not far from the local cop shop. Two weeks earlier, around midnight, some drunk had left a Christmas party and stumbled down Ocean before knocking on their door to ask for directions. So this night, Haslam was unconcerned as he mounted the short flight of stairs that led to the main floor and opened the front door.

  Standing on the bottom step was a young man with a shaved head. Haslam later told police that he was wearing a black T-shirt with a picture of some sort of sword bisecting an “N” on it, a pair of polished military-style boots, and a navy-blue nylon bomber jacket. Behind the man, in the shadows, stood a larger man, but Haslam could make out little of his features or what he was wearing.

  “How can I help you?” Haslam said, addressing the man with the shaved head.

  “Are you Mr. Haslam?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Haslam said, bewildered.

  “Are you the same Mr. Haslam who worked for Moscow Radio?”

  Haslam squinted at the young man, and then back at the bigger one, still standing in the near darkness. “No, son,” he said. “I never worked for Moscow Radio.”

  “Well,” the man said, undeterred, “were you ever involved with a story about a man in Canada, in Manitoba, who ended up hanging himself?”

  “Well, kind of …” Haslam said, hesitating. “I never worked for Moscow Radio, son, but I was involved in a story a little bit like that when I worked in Canada. My wife’s from there.” He paused. “But why do you ask? Who are you?”

  “That man was my grandfather,” the young man said. “And you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Son, you can think what you like, but we did the right thing.”

  Haslam recalled that he
was uneasy at that point and started to edge back into the house.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” the young man repeated. He suddenly lunged forward, kicking at Haslam before he could close the door, and pulled him outside. One of his boots struck Haslam in the shin, and the old guy fell awkwardly, sprawling on the front steps. He bent forward, trying to protect himself as the young man started kicking him.

  Haslam yelled out to his wife to call the police. It was at that point he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. To his left, the bigger guy had come closer. Haslam saw that he was holding something in his hands.

  The blow was to Haslam’s face: his eye popped like a grape. As he gasped for breath, he yelled out to his wife again. “They’ve got my eye! Dorothy! Call the ambulance!”

  His wife, frantic, was already on the phone in the bedroom, speaking to an operator.

  Haslam could hear the young man’s boots echoing as he ran down driveway. Just before he heard the car doors slam shut, one of the men yelled out “White power!”

  When his wife came outside, she found her husband kneeling on the front lawn, gasping for breath and clutching at his eye. The two men were gone. She heard the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

  C H A P T E R 28

  Ron McLeod told us he knew what had brought the men to Ken Haslam’s door in the middle of the night. Many years before, Haslam had been a pretty popular young disc jockey at a radio station in the Canadian Prairies. He was the station’s late-night man, and he had already been working in the radio business for more than a decade. He started out in Nebraska, when he was still a teenager. From there, he crisscrossed the Canadian Prairies and the U.S. Midwest, meeting his wife at a dance at a Manitoba Bible college. The two of them moved around a lot, and then ended up at a station in Winnipeg. With 50,000 watts of power, it was one of the biggest radio stations in the middle of the continent. On a good night, it could be heard as far away as Montana. The station hired Haslam to be host of a dusk-to-dawn show.