Omer, the little cop, giggled happily and hit me again.
I had been in the lock-up in the crumbling old nineteenth century Warburg County courthouse for hours, I had lost track of how long and couldn’t focus on the clock on the wall. There were no Miranda rights in those days. Rural cops thought that they were perfectly within their rights to beat a suspect into a confession.
Thirty years later I think I can understand the whole Kafka-like scene. By then the cops knew that I was not in the car. Or at least Joe Miller had told them and they perceived it in some dim fashion. But they were under enormous pressure to solve the deaths, both from the people in the Old Houses and from those shadowy forces that were also at work. They wanted a confession from me so they would have some breathing space, even if later, in the next day or two, they would have to release me. Moreover, they had a rare opportunity to take out their resentment against someone from the Old Houses, someone who didn’t quite have the protection other kids did. Finally they enjoyed beating people up—a pleasure many cops indulged in during those days before the Miranda ruling. I think this final explanation accounts for the brutality of the beating.
That model at any rate seems to fit the data.
At first they had locked me in a dark cell in which the stench of urine filled the air and left me there to wonder what they would do. There were no formalities, no filing of charges.
“We’re going to beat it out of you, punk,” Omer laughed. “We’re going to make you confess and we’re going to have fun doing it.”
My handcuffed hands, useless and tortured appendages, felt like they were about to fall off my arms. I wished I could loose them so the pain in them would no longer be mine. My head throbbed, my body was burning with fever. I could hardly remember who I was and what had happened.
Then they had dragged me out of the cell, sat me in a chair in the sheriff’s dusty, humid office; while the two state cops had watched, Sheriff Black and Omer smashed their fists against my head and body. All four of them had laughed enthusiastically as the county cops beat me unconscious, threw water on me, and started in again.
Hope that Tom Keenan would appear and save me had long since faded. But my determination for revenge had not diminished. I would get these phonies if it was the last thing I ever did.
They had taken my wallet and removed my Navy I.D. card.
“This fucker ain’t no fucking Marine,” the sheriff chortled, “he’s a fucking midshipman whatever that is.”
“A fucking midshipman!”
“Hell, he ain’t gonna need this shit, not where he’s going,” the sheriff howled with glee and tossed the card into his wastebasket.
As the day wore on I began to believe that maybe I had been the driver and maybe I had killed my friends.
“How much did you have to drink?” The big cop punched me in the head.
I almost passed out again.
He hit me once more. “Answer me, fuck face, how much booze did you have?”
“I wasn’t drinking.”
The little cop hit me in the stomach. “You did drive the car?”
“I was not in the car.”
“You knew the brakes were no good, didn’t you?”
“Winslow fixed the brakes!”
“Funny, he doesn’t seem to remember it.”
The little cop hit my burned hands. I screamed with agony.
“Don’t like that, do you now? I’m asking one last time, are you ready to confess that you killed your two friends?”
“Go to hell!” I shouted.
Still stubborn, still mean, still plotting revenge.
The door of the sheriff’s office burst open and five more people pushed in—the Murrays and Dr. and Mrs. Clare and Phil who seemed none the worse for wear.
“He killed my babies,” Martha Murray jumped on me and tore at my face with her fingernails. “I want him dead, do you hear me, I want him dead! Kill the bastard!”
Jim Murray jabbed weakly at me with his fists. “You filthy, murdering trash,” he wailed, “I’ll see you in hell!”
I tried to kick at both of them but my feet would not move.
“Maybe we ought to stop it,” one of the state police muttered.
“Hell,” the sheriff snorted, “he’s got it coming.”
“Stop it!” a voice at the door commanded. “Stop it this minute!”
Tom Keenan. And Packy, his eyes blazing with fury. I became light-headed again and almost fainted. I tried to focus my eyes to see if Jane was with them.
She was not.
Packy jumped across the room and pulled the Murrays off me, hurling them back against a wall. Omer approached Packy, saw the look in his eyes and his clenched fists, and backed off.
“Release him at once,” Tom ordered.
“Well, Mr. Keenan, sir,” the sheriff laughed nervously, “we can’t quite do it. You see sir he drove the car last night…”
“You’re a crook, sheriff, we all know that. You think you control the justice system in this county. I don’t care what venal things you do. But when you assault one of my guests, you run the risks of publicity in the Chicago newspapers to say nothing of suits that will destroy you. I said release that boy and release him now.”
“He killed my babies,” Mrs. Murray moaned.
“Martha,” Tom turned on her, “you have my sympathies, but your pain does not excuse this injustice. Leo was not in the car.”
“We think he was,” the sheriff said uncertainly.
“Louie, I tried to tell you last night,” Officer Joe Miller had appeared next to Tom, “this kid wasn’t in the car. I saw him walking down the road with the Devlin girl not five minutes before. He burned himself trying to save the people that were in it.”
“Faulty brakes,” the sheriff grunted.
“He had Winslow fix them yesterday.”
“Winslow says he didn’t.”
“We have a receipt,” Tom held up the piece of paper. “We have the testimony of witnesses that Philip Clare IV borrowed my car without permission yesterday afternoon, that Leo Kelly was not in the car, that he had seen to the repair of the brakes, and that the car was seen driving at a high rate of speed before it careened down the hill.”
“Well,” the sheriff temporized, “we have a crime on our hands here and we’ve got to find out who’s responsible.”
I was a spectator watching this confrontation from a great distance. I did notice, however, the tense worry on Doctor Clare’s face. I began to understand some things. Phil seemed mildly bored. I’d fix him.
“This young man saved a life last night. Either you release him this minute or I’ll put a call through to my friends at the Chicago Daily News.”
The sheriff worked his large jaw thoughtfully. “Well, we might release him, seeing as how Joe here tells us now he wasn’t in the car…”
“I told you that last night, you crazy fool, only you were too drunk to listen.”
“Shut up, Joe. Omer, release this punk. We may want to talk to him later.”
Omer gave my hands one last twist as he opened the cuffs. I screamed.
Packy would have hit him if his father had not reached out a commanding hand. “I don’t propose to forget any of this, Sheriff, even if we don’t sue you and don’t turn the Chicago press on you, you’ll never be re-elected, I promise you that.”
I struggled to my feet, intoxicated with pain and rage. I jabbed my finger at Phil Clare. “You killed them, you drunken bum! You took the car, you got drunk, you drove too fast, you knew the crash was coming, you jumped out and escaped. I saved your life while they burned to death. You’re the murderer and you stand there hiding behind your rich father and your adulterous mother while they beat me!”
“Tom Keenan,” Jim Murray bellowed, “you won’t get away with this. I’ll kill this bastard with my own bare hands. You’ll not soft talk him out of it.”
Martha Murray was wailing hysterically. “My babies! My babies! He killed my babies!”
She meant me, not Phil.
Mean, stubborn, half-mad and still speaking in crude periodic sentences, I raged on.
“I didn’t kill them, you goddamn fool. Your friend Dr. Clare’s son killed them. Just because I’m not rich and he is, you can’t get away with blaming me.”
“Leo,” Tom said softly, “stop it, please.”
“My mother’s no whore!” Phil sprung into action and smashed his fist against my face.
It was a weak blow from a weakling. And a mistake too. Packy threw him against the opposite wall.
“I should have let you die, fucker!” I yelled. “I shouldn’t have ruined my hands pulling you out of the car. You deserved to die with them.”
“Leo!” Tom Keenan’s voice was peremptory. “Please stop!”
I ignored him.
“You’re all up to something crooked,” I shouted. “There were thousands of dollars of counterfeit money in that car. Phil, you were bringing it back from somewhere. That’s why you had to borrow my car. You had to pick it up yesterday. You’re a cheap crook and a killer, just as much as your mother is a whore.”
“There was no money in the car,” one of the state cops said nervously. “We didn’t find a thing.”
“I saw you take it out this morning, coming home from Mass. You said they were real good fakes.”
“Leave it, Leo,” Tom begged me. “It’s not our fight.”
He was right. I was making a fool out of myself.
“Phil Clare is a drunk, and a thief, and a killer!” I yelled. “And his father is a phony and his mother is a whore. You’re letting them all get away with murder.”
The Murrays were cringing in the corner of the room, in their grief unable to understand the scene I was creating.
Doctor Clare, his thin face white and tight, his nostrils flaring, strode up to Tom Keenan.
“I’ve never liked you, Keenan, and you’ve never liked me,” he spoke in the measured, disciplined tones of a doctor in an operating room. “I warn you that if you don’t shut this piece of filth up I will destroy you.”
Tom stared at him from his six feet two inches of towering strength. “You’re incapable of destroying anyone, Phil. Don’t mess with me.”
“My wife and my son have been calumniated. I hold you responsible for it. You have brought this trash into our lives. It’s typical of your pinko values. Get him out of here now.”
Tom considered him thoughtfully. “You’d have a hell of time proving calumny, Phil. A hell of a hard time. Come on, Leo, let’s leave these fools to their folly.”
“They’re covering up murder,” I shouted. “He killed Jim and Eileen because he wanted the money for himself. He deliberately caused the accident.”
The office was dead silent for a moment. Phil ducked behind his father. The eyes of the various cops shifted nervously. Packy’s fists were still clenched. He desperately wanted to hit someone.
And I had hit pay dirt. Or close to pay dirt.
“That’s a pretty wild charge, son,” the sheriff said mildly.
“Come on, Leo,” Tom insisted, “it’s not our fight.”
Packy helped me out of the office, down the steps of the courthouse, and into the Keenan Packard.
“Take us home, Alvin,” Tom said with a sigh to the chauffeur. “You may be right, Leo. There certainly is a cover-up of some sort, but I don’t think we can prove it. If we could, perhaps we should. But, as we can’t, I don’t think it’s our fight. Let’s get you some medical care.”
“I think I should go to the hospital at Great Lakes. My dog tags are in my bag. They’ll get me in.”
“If that’s what you want,” Tom said mildly.
“I’ll drive you in,” Packy offered.
Back at the house he helped me find my dog tags and pack my bag. “You’ll be coming back, won’t you, Leo?”
“Not this summer.”
“I guess I understand that. Do you want to say good-bye to Jane?”
“No.”
I did say good-bye to “Missus” and a few words of thanks in the Polish she had been teaching me. I thanked Tom for coming to my rescue, congratulated him on being a grandfather, asked to remember me to the others, and promised that I’d see them soon in Chicago.
“You did well, son, under terrible pressure.”
“Maybe.”
“We’ll see how it sorts itself out.”
“I don’t want any part of it any more, Mr. Keenan.”
I had made a fool out of myself. Even if there were worse crimes than drunken driving and vehicular homicide, I had no proof. I should not have called Iris a whore, even if we all knew she was. I also knew that I would not return to the Lake for a long, long time—if ever.
“I hope you want part of us.”
“Sure,” I grinned. “You won’t be able to get rid of me.”
“And you won’t be able to get rid of us,” Packy said grimly.
The three of us knew, however, that our summers were finished. If I ever came back, it would be in the deep distant future.
They patched me up at Great Lakes; and, after a couple of days of observation, let me go back to Loyola. The scars on my hands are almost invisible now.
I did stay in touch with Packy. Or he did with me. He told me all the news. The Murray kids were buried amid much weeping from St. Mary’s parish in Lake Forest. Joe Miller was elected sheriff. Maria was a delight. No charges were brought in the Murray deaths, which were ruled accidental. The Murrays sold their home at the Lake. Jane seemed like a lost child.
“You’ve got to come back next summer,” he insisted.
“Maybe.”
I was angry at the cover-up and ashamed of my outburst. I had acted like an injured child instead of an adult male.
“You were not yet an adult male,” my therapist told me years later. “Why put such demands on yourself. Surely no one of any consequence remembered your behavior or judged you by it. The doctor was not the whole community.”
He was right. Now I am told that I am remembered from those times as a hero.
Indeed, during my final year of college I had already begun to realize that perhaps I had exaggerated the importance of the scene in Warburg. Perhaps. Perhaps I should try again. There was always Jane, was there not? The beautiful princess imprisoned in a tower by the wicked witch of the west? Was there not a good witch of the east to help me?
Yet I could not go back to the Lake or to Jane in the summer of 1949. I graduated from Loyola, summa cum laude (not even summa satisfied my mother). The Defense Department commissioned me a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and assigned me to inactive duty. I enrolled in graduate school at the University and prospered. The academy was where I belonged. What I couldn’t achieve there by intelligence and hard work, I could achieve by glibness and guile.
During the spring of 1950, I thought often of Jane (whom Packy no longer mentioned in his increasingly infrequent phone calls). I also thought of how much the Keenans meant to me. I had never seen Maria, never congratulated Maggie, who was now expecting a second child and finishing up her college work. I had been told I’d receive orders to a European post in late June. Why not return to the Lake to say farewell to my old friends and, maybe, to Jane too?
Then Kim Il Sung sent his armies across the 38th parallel and my orders were to the Fifth Marines. I knew the mortality rates in combat of second lieutenants and assumed that I would come back in a casket, a pessimistic prediction, which fitted my mood in those days. I would not burden anyone with heartache over my death.
With an icy feeling of doom in my stomach, I called Packy, home for another summer from the seminary, the first time I had initiated the phone conversation since August 15, 1948.
“I’ve been given my orders, Pack.”
“Paris?”
“Western Pacific.”
“Korea?”
“Most likely.”
“Good God!”
“I was thinking of coming up to say
good-bye until the orders came. Now there won’t be time.”
“Yeah. Well, we’ll see you when you get back.”
“If I come back.”
“You will come back.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Call Jane.”
“I will.”
And I did. No answer.
After I recovered from my POW traumas and got on with my life, I stayed in touch with the Keenans in later years, sometimes sporadically, sometimes less so. I saw Maggie and Jerry again and became “Uncle Lee” to their kids. When I traveled through Chicago I would usually call them from the O’Hare madhouse. I’d eat a meal with them when the political science meetings were in Chicago, although Emilie found them “tiresome” and would not join us for lunch or dinner. I talked to Packy when I was in Rome and signed on as a member of his extended parish.
We almost never talked about Jane. What was there to talk about?
They did tell me that Ita had died just before I came home from the POW camp—a long death from cancer during which she blamed her children for her illness and cursed them literally to her dying breath.
May she rest in peace.
Joe Devlin remarried within the year and lived five more years, like Herbie dying before he was sixty.
I still don’t know why I did not try to talk to Jane again during the two years between the wreck and my orders to Korea. As I try to figure out what was going on in my head then, I think I was on automatic pilot, nursing my hurt and my humiliation—as I saw it—and thinking that in a year or two I could straighten it out. I was not angry at her because she wasn’t around when I needed her. I knew what her mother was like. I guess I still loved her. No, I know I still loved her. Maybe I thought that I had more time, that I could renew our love after I graduated, and that it would take a couple of years for the memories of those terrible days and nights to simmer down, both inside me and in the community at the Lake. I didn’t have the time.
Thus did that part of the story end.
1978
Patrick
The Pope is dead. I regret all the bad things I’ve said and thought about him. In his own way he was a nice man. In his presence you could not help but feel his gentle appeal. He was very kind to me when I met him with Mom and Dad at a private audience—and particularly nice to them—though he must have known I was on the other side.
Summer at the Lake Page 33
