The Last American Martyr

by Tom Winton; Rolffimages

  The falling sun on this fine autumn Sunday afternoon splayed magical light on the towering oaks near Little Neck Bay. Their glowing leaves—gold, orange and crimson—lit up as if neon had replaced their lost chlorophyll. A jumbo jet low overhead roared as it descended toward the tarmac at nearby LaGuardia. Fifteen minutes from home now, Elaina finally said something, but I couldn’t hear with the jet so close to the roof of the cab. When I asked her what she’d said, she just looked at me and slowly rotated her head. Seeing the sadness in her eyes tore at me, and it didn’t let up after she looked back out the window. For the rest of the way home, I tried to think of an amiable compromise, and I came up with a few ideas. I would do almost anything to prevent my Elaina from leaving.

  The funereal ambience continued until the cab turned onto Sampson Avenue. Checking the addresses, the driver slowly motored between the two interminable rows of apartment buildings. Block after block, so close and so tall, these towering brick piles stretched farther than the eye could see. Sometimes, particularly on overcast days, they seemed to lean in on both sides. God help any hapless claustrophobics who might stray here. Entering this shadowy, urban canyon would surely push them to the brink.

  As the yellow cab skirted the endless chain of parked cars that eternally buffer the sidewalk here, Elaina pointed the driver toward our five-story walk-up. The oldest and smallest of all the pre-WWII buildings crowding the block, ours was halfway up on the right. Up and down the sidewalks, on both sides of the street, an entire army of multi-colored children were playing and horsing around. Afraid one of the small, international soldiers might dart out from between parked cars, the cabbie warily pushed forward. As he did, Elaina and I both noticed something peculiar.

  A shiny black SUV, a big Lincoln Navigator, was double-parked in front of our five-story walk-up. Seeing such a vehicle in our neighborhood was quite an oddity, seeing one stopped was stranger yet. Then a tall, well-dressed man emerged from one of the glass and steel entry doors. Like a nervous owl, he glanced quickly to the right, and then to his left. As soon as he noticed our cab coming, he beat heels from the building as if it was engulfed in flames. He hurled himself into an open door of the waiting Lexus, and it sped off before he could even close it.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Elaina.

  “Yeeeaaahhh, that was weird. What do you suppose he…?”

  “I don’t know,” I interrupted, “but he was up to something. I couldn’t make out his face, could you?”

  “No, the only thing I could tell was he was white, middle-aged, had gray hair, and was carrying something dark. Some kind of bag, I think.”

  “That’s about all I saw, too. It looked like an oversized gym bag. And the way it flopped around when he started running it seemed empty.”

  “Oh well,” Elaina said as the cab came to a stop. “Let’s just get our luggage and get upstairs. This has been one hell of a day.”

  After paying and thanking the driver, I climbed out. But before retreating to the trunk for our luggage, I froze for a moment. Still standing in the street, the wind lifting my hair, I pointed at our building and said, “Look, honey! Look what the neighbors went and did.”

  “Was that sweet or what?” Elaina said, as she studied the broad white banner draped above the entryway. In large red letters it read, “WAY TO GO, TOMMY! WE’RE ALL SO VERY PROUD OF YOU!”

  In other parts of the country, things may be different, but in New York neighborhoods such as ours, reverting to the adolescent version of one’s name was, and still is, a compliment. Calling me, a fifty-nine year-old man, Tommy instead of Tom or Thomas, was a flattering, familial display of endearment by our friends. Titles, designations, even the Nobel Prize had nothing to do with acceptance or gaining respect on Sampson Avenue. All that counted was how you treated your fellow human beings. I’m honored that all my friends and neighbors always knew me as Tommy. Whoops, I almost forgot. Everybody didn’t call me Tommy. There were a few exceptions. After Enough is Enough was first published, a few of the local teenagers started calling me “The Professor.” That, too, was a pat on the back.

  After slamming the trunk shut, Elaina and I hauled the luggage toward the front door. As we skirted three little girls and their hopscotch game, Manny Ruiz, the building’s superintendent, came out. With his usual after-duty can of Budweiser in one hand, he held the door open with his other for old Mrs. Jacoby, the matriarch of “The Sampson Arms.” Mrs. J had lived three–fourths of her eighty-one years there, and everyone, young and old, treated her with the utmost respect. But that by no means made her a stuffed shirt.

  Leaning on her cane with one hand, patting my back with the other, she said, “Way to go, Tommy Boy. I’ve been following you for three days on the TV.” Shifting her eyes to Elaina, a wide smile still on her face, she said, “Both of you looked beautiful in Stockholm, and at the airport.”

  Pumping my hand now with his free one, Manny added, “You sure did. And let me tell you, both you guys really gave it to dem reporters at the airport. You told ‘em like it is. Man … everybody is so proud of you.”

  A few minutes later, Manny helped us schlep our suitcases up the five flights. Then, at long last, we were finally alone.

  The first thing I did was go to the refrigerator for a glass of cold water. When I opened the insulated door, and saw what was inside, my heart suddenly felt like it was too large for my chest. It raced and it caromed off my ribs like a crazed elephant in a phone booth. Hot adrenaline seared every vein and capillary in my body. Immediately, a shroud of unfathomable dark doom took hold of my psyche, and I knew then and there it would never let go. In the course of one second I had entered a new world—an eerie, ominous, dark place that nobody should ever have to inhabit.

  Heaped in front of me, on a glass shelf, were eight dead kittens. All of them with their throats slit. A note scrawled in their blood lay on top of them. It said, “You’ve only got one life left, Soles. If you want to keep it, stop the presses.”

  I reached in and felt one of the kittens. It was still warm.

  Then there was a scream, Elaina’s scream.

  With my history of high blood pressure, I thought for sure my heart would implode. Totally submersed in fear, that previous sense of doom now insignificant, I rushed toward the bedroom in a state of unmitigated confusion. I was living out a macabre dream, so horrifying, so chaotic, it dizzied me.

  I burst through the living room, up the short hallway, and swerved left into the bedroom. Once inside, I stopped short as if I’d hit a tempered glass wall. I stumbled two quick steps back as if I’d bounced off it. Elaina was hysterical. Hands over her eyes, her drooping head shaking a long procession of no’s all she kept saying was, “Oh God, oh god, oh god, oh god…”

  Strewn before us, on our bed, were thirteen blood-soaked copies of Enough is Enough. Every last page had been ripped out of them and scattered around the room. They were all over the carpeted floor, on the bureau, the dresser, and the night stands. Blood was all over everything. As if it had been sprayed with a water gun or a similar device, it dripped red on the walls, pictures, closet doors, window, and ceiling.

  Chapter 5

  For the next five days and nights, Elaina and I stayed at a hotel near LaGuardia Airport. Naturally, the detectives from the 109th precinct cordoned off our apartment and declared it a crime scene. They fine-combed every inch of it, as well as the building’s common areas. They also checked out the street where the black SUV had parked, and questioned most of the neighbors, including the children who’d been playing out front. But they didn’t find a single clue. Of course, they contacted the DMV, but with more than 6,000 black Lincoln Navigators in the city, there wasn’t much to go on. Whoever committed this abominable crime knew exactly what they were doing. What concerned me most at this point was what they might do next.

  Holed up in that hotel the way we were, Elaina and I felt like two hunted fugitives on the verge of being gunned down. Other than picking up our meals in the downstairs r
estaurant, we didn’t step out of our room once. As for sleeping, one can only imagine how difficult that was. Take it from me; it’s not easy when there’s a steady stream of fear and heinous thoughts charging in and out of your mind. Occasionally, we’d hear a late-night cough, voice, or noise in the adjoining rooms or out in the hallway. Every time we did, we’d jolt upright in the bed. Horrible as the whole scenario was, hard as it was to get any sleep, being just a quarter-mile from one of the country’s busiest airports didn’t help either.

  To call this experience trying would be the equivalent of calling Armageddon a skirmish. The world as we had known it had become a different place. We had no idea what to do. We hadn’t a clue what was in store for us or where our lives were heading. I started growing a mustache and full beard. I had no plans to cut my hair for a very long time, either. Elaina cut her hair in the motel room, and it broke both our hearts.

  Living in such sheer terror, neither of us even mentioned the money issue until our last night in the hotel. We were sitting in two straight backed chairs, at a table by the curtained window. I’d just killed the TV after Jeopardy ended and was sipping a beer. Elaina fiddled with her glass of Sangria, looked into it and said, “You already know, Tom … I’m not going to leave you, don’t you?”

  “All we have is each other, hon. I, for one, know I wouldn’t want to go on without you. I also know you feel the same way. Like I said on the plane, we have loved each other too hard and for too long to ever consider such a…look, I don’t know, maybe you would be better off leaving me, Elaina. I’m afraid with what’s happened. I’m scared shitless, and I don’t want whoever’s after me to get at you.”

  Waving me off now, she crinkled her forehead, and those sleek, dark-chocolate eyes grew adamant. As if it was a reprimand, she said, “Sure, we’re scared. We’ve been talking about this, living this for almost a week now. But we don’t know for sure if this nut case or those with him would really kill you or me. Heck no, it doesn’t make me feel a whole lot safer, there are no guarantees, but even that policeman, Captain Geiger, said it could just be a threat. He had a point. If they wanted to get you they could have easily done so. Like it or not, Tom, I am not going through life without the man I love.”

  Though it had by then felt alien, a broad smile found its way to my face and I said, “You, young lady, are one tough cookie. I love you, you know.”

  “Oh stop. Don’t go getting all mushy on me now.”

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking about the money thing. I’m ready to compromise…and I have a plan. Want to hear it?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, slowly lifting the wine glass to her lips.

  “OK, I know how much you love this room, hrmmph, but I also know how long you’ve dreamed of taking a road trip around the country. What do you say we buy one of those RV’s, you know, a motor home, and take that dream trip?”

  Her face now lighting up like a teenager’s on prom night, she said, “I’d love to! I’d rather do that than anything in the world. I don’t believe it. How…how are we going to do it? You insist on donating most of the money. I’ve got my job to consider, and then there’s the apartment.”

  “As far as the money is concerned, there’s all too good a chance that the “enough” we’ve always gotten by on is no longer enough to keep us alive. As we said the other day—we can’t go back to the apartment. Not for a while, anyway. So I’m thinking…”

  “Wait, wait,” Elaina interrupted, “do you just want to let the apartment go? Just give it up and get another place when we come back?”

  “Let me finish, I was getting to that. I say we plan on travelling for six months to a year. That’s our safest option. While we’re on the road we can think about what we want to do next. We’ll keep the apartment. I’ll call Manny and tell him we’ll send him the rent every month. That’s not a problem.”

  “That’s going to cost.”

  “Once again, that’s a necessity. I’m not going to just give up my home, unless we decide that’s what we want to do.”

  Elaina let this sink in for a moment. I took a long sip of beer, lit a cigarette. Then she said, “OK, sure. That makes sense. I’ll call Rhonda at work again; tell her I’m going to need a longer leave of absence than I thought.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Alright…that takes care of the apartment and your job. As for the money, look at the huge resurgence in sales the book has experienced. Since the media announced I’d be getting the prize two months ago, sales have gone through the roof again.”

  “Yeah, and we’ve already agreed there’s no way in hell we’re going to take it off the market. That’s a done deal.”

  “Right, like I said, I’ll die before I’ll do that. But let me get back to the money thing now. Between the royalties coming in the way they are, and what I’ve gotten for the Nobel, money is a non-issue. I can easily make the donation to Habitat for Humanity and still have far more than we need for the trip. Once we get back, and decide what we want to do, we’ll set ourselves up, hopefully return to a normal life, and continue our philanthropy.”

  Elaina thought the plan was perfect, except for one small hitch. The only stipulation she insisted on was that after we come back, we keep fifty-thousand dollars in our bank account. And it made sense. With neither of us getting any younger, it was time we had some kind of small nest egg. We had to have something to fall back on.

  After agreeing on that, I called Avis at the airport and reserved a car. Elaina and I did not own an automobile. Living in Flushing for so many years like we had, with public transportation being so convenient, it had been a long time since we’d owned one. But thankfully we’d always renewed our driver’s licenses. With the rental car already secured, we packed our belongings and considering the circumstances, went to bed in reasonably good spirits.

  * * *

  The only thing separating the hotel from LaGuardia was the Van Wyck Expressway. Under cover of darkness early the next morning, Elaina and I hustled across it via an overpass that brought us right into the airport. There we picked up a Ford Taurus. As it was so early and a Saturday, traffic was nearly nonexistent. We made excellent time heading toward New Jersey. We zipped right through Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, entering “The Garden State” just as a fresh new sun glinted on the eastern horizon. Crossing that invisible state line under such a glorious dawn sky made us both feel as if we’d been reborn. As if we had a chance. We not only felt somewhat safer but a heightened sense of anonymity as well.

  Nevertheless, we weren’t about to let down our guard. I may have stopped checking the rearview mirror, but I was still damned glad I had the Glock .45 automatic I’d bought the previous year. Buying the pistol seemed like a necessary evil after sales of Enough is Enough skyrocketed and the response from the business world escalated from mere grumblings to a loud vicious growl. As much as we needed the gun now, I wasn’t very happy when I had bought it. I’d broken a promise I once made to myself. A vow I swore to myself the day I left Viet Nam. I can remember as if it was last week, being on that “freedom bird,” rising above the jungle and rice paddies, watching them shrink and swearing up and down I’d never touch another firearm. Unfortunately, circumstances sometimes dictate that we go back on our word.

  The first stop on our itinerary was Cherry Hill, New Jersey. We had checked our laptop before leaving the hotel and found out that two large RV dealers were in that area. Both seemed to have large inventories, so we figured they would be good places to shop prices and maybe strike up a deal. Also, both dealerships were convenient since we were heading south to begin with. With winter not all that far off, which direction to go in had been an easy decision. If Elaina and I were being forced to hide out, or if we had to keep on running, we might as well do it where it’s sunny and warm.

  After exiting the Jersey Turnpike in Cherry Hill, we stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru, grabbed two coffees then drove the short distance to the first RV dealership. We got there fifteen minutes
before they opened, so Elaina and I sat in the car sipping our coffee. Peering through the windshield and tall cyclone fence, we could not believe the number of travel trailers and motor homes on the lot.

  “My God,” Elaina said, “how will we ever know what to pick out? There must be two hundred of them in there.”

  “I don’t know, but like I said, we should definitely buy a used one. We’re only planning to keep it a year, tops. If we bought a new one, we’d lose a small fortune when the time comes to flip it. Plus, I’m sure there’ll be a lot more wiggle room when we begin to negotiate the price.”

  “I agree. We need to look for one just a few years old with low mileage,” Elaina said as she lifted her bottom off the seat so she could see into the visor mirror. Once she got high enough to see, she quickly finger-brushed her new pixie cut. As she fluffed the short black bangs, her face winced and her eyebrows furrowed. Looking at her now, both our spirits deflated. The fact that she’d been forced to cut off her long beautiful hair was a grim reminder of just how serious our situation was. Our happy respite was no longer so happy, but we knew we still had to move forward with our plan.

  Right then a man dressed like a Wall Street banker—three-piece, pinstriped suit and all—slid the huge, wheeled gate open. I gulped the last of my coffee and drove into the lot.

  Just a few minutes after we had begun wandering amongst the acres of RV’s, the fashion plate from the gate approached us. He was a fast talker who, like your basic run-of-the-mill doctor, acted as if his presence was an overly-generous, selfless gift. Right from the get-go the guy rubbed me the wrong way. He tried to lead us around by our noses but soon learned that wasn’t going to happen. He was tall like me, about six-two, but probably fifteen years younger. He had an athletic build, and his looks were as flawless as his outfit. Beneath a head of impeccable blonde hair, he had a handsome, yet smarmy face that always seemed too close to ours when he spoke. And did he like to talk. The biggest mistake any salesman can make is to not listen to his customer, and believe me this guy was tough to get through to.