by Gary Starta
The applause was thunderous, considering the fact that there are only about two dozen MMAVV members in attendance at the dinner.
Carter smiled as the applause finally subsided. He wondered as he prepared to speak if they’d be clapping when he finished.
“It is true,” Carter said,” children do imitate what they see, without knowledge that what they’re mimicking might very well have negative consequences. I found a joint study conducted by Mass General Hospital and Harvard University to be very compelling. TV violence does have a dramatic impact upon the behavior of our children. And it’s not only shows shown in primetime, but even cartoons can portray 20 violent scenes in a one hour sitting. So yes, I say with conviction, parents must monitor their children’s intake of media containing violence—that includes music videos and video games for that matter. But, to play the devil’s advocate for a moment…” Carter shifted a piece of paper before him while he paused. He purposely kept his eyes away from Chairwoman Leah Magpie; he imagined her facial color paling by the second. An uneasy shifting in chairs followed as if all members took their cue from Magpie.
“I must also tell you that there is no conclusive evidence—as with any study—to show a direct correlation between media violence and crime. Some children might not be prone to imitating the aggressive acts of a criminal but may identify more with the victim of these fictional crimes. And some may become desensitized to violence, according to the study. As you see, there is no clear pattern. As a detective, I have never interviewed a perpetrator who blamed his actions on a movie or TV show. But I have come across young adults in recent years that say they want to study forensics so they can become CSI’s. And that I would have to subjectively conclude is a good thing.” Carter paused. One woman in the back risked a small nervous laugh.
“So can I conclude all children who watch cop shows will become cops—or become CSI’s? No. I cannot say that. So it is best to proceed with caution in any event, yes, parents should monitor TV—employ a V chip to prevent them from seeing whatever the family deems as objectionable. I would encourage parents to enroll their children in after school activities as an alternative to playing a videogame. This is all just common sense.”
Carter stopped again to turn a page; a smattering of nervous coughing filled the void.
“I came here tonight to enlighten you of another factor which might be far more threatening to your child’s welfare. I came here to not only ask that you monitor your TV, but also that you monitor your child’s friends. And I would suggest you do this by simply talking and taking an interest in your child’s day. Ask them what their friends are like, what they talked about during the day. I know this won’t be easy. Some of the subject matter might be embarrassing—I was a boy myself once. But you must try. And if they won’t talk, offer to invite their friends over for dinner. More often than not, your children will agree to this because you’re validating their choice of friends. This is where you might want to look for clues, to tell who might be influencing the other. If you see the friend has an influence on your child, maybe in what clothes they wear or what music they listen to, then this is where you must decide if the friendship could continue—or not. So you see, good parenting is often quite similar to detective work; sometimes you have to be sneaky.
“In summation, I recently came to a disturbing conclusion in my most recent murder investigation. I’m sure you all know that an officer of our department may be responsible for taking at least three lives.”
“Yes,” one woman in a gray dress said, “I find it most distressing that someone put a video of Donnie Cinelli’s murder up on You Tube.”
“As do I ma’am,” Carter continued. “And now our city is facing a lawsuit because of negligence. A victim’s widow claims we were to blame for allowing a mentally unfit officer to remain on the department. To that end, I cannot comment, because of the impending lawsuit. But if we were to consider, hypothetically, that this man had become ill and then had been coerced by another individual to commit crimes—then you might see my point about how important it is to keep your children away from those who might influence their actions or behavior in a negative fashion. And I remind you that this is purely a hypothetical scenario. I cannot prove another person could will another to commit a crime, not anymore than I can prove TV is responsible for creating rapists and killers. But I implore you to put this argument alongside your literature against the media. To let your members—and the parents you influence—to decide if this argument is a valid one. I thank you for inviting me to speak tonight, it’s been an honor.”
Carter closed his speech to a less than enthusiastic round of applause. He wondered if these women, so dedicated to a cause—to protect children—would indeed present this caution to future members. A part of him doubted this. It was far easier to blame a nameless, faceless object like television than to confront people in person; especially if their child shared a friendship with a member of a family they knew or lived next to.
He left in a somber mood, until his cell rang. The woman on the other end was Lila—the dancer from the Spread Eagle. She said she was ready for his help. “I—I need to get out of this—out of this life—but I can’t do it alone. You said you’d help me. I don’t want to end up like Cheryl. Does that offer still stand?”
“Of course,” Carter answered. Her plea brought a ray of hope to Carter. Lila was turning a negative into a positive, sifting good out of the evil pile of debris she had been handed in her life. Abused like her deceased friend Cheryl, Carter knew Lila could find a new path, now that she had asked for one. He was thankful, once again because it was a rare time when he could help not one (the other being Lucy) but two people change their lives around.
Carter said to Lila, “This is what Cheryl would have wanted for you.”
“I know,” said Lila. “I just wish I could have given her another option, to have helped her. It’s why I’m willing to change though, so her death wasn’t in vain.”
“Well now it won’t be, Lila. You’ve answered the call.”
Chapter 25
Two months passed quickly, but Jay and Lucy still felt eyes were upon them, even though they were nearly 3,000 miles away from Boston, living in Scottsdale, Arizona. In their beautiful salmon-colored, three bedroom ranch, Jay and Lucy kept the shades down for the most part. Vampires, Jay thought and felt, it’s appropriate—because we’re frickin’ vampires.
Jay’s last name was no longer Fishburne—it was Fredericks. And Lucy Klein had traded in her surname for King. The changes were all part of the witness protection program. But changing people, Jay and Lucy knew, didn’t come quick, it wasn’t as easy as remembering to sign your new last name to a check.
As Lucy passed Jay on the way from the bedroom to the kitchen, she reminded him of this.
“Hey, we got anything to eat?” he asked her.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure you’re a big enough boy to check for yourself.” She paused, patted him on the rear. Then she sneered at him, hands on hips. “You see I’m not Suzie homemaker—probably never will be. But I have to admit, I did love helping to decorate the place.”
Aztec, I’ll never see anything but Aztec in this lifetime.
The bath was tiled in azure and rust red. Earth tones—rustic and brown—dominated the living room. A carpet of geometric design centered the space with a depiction of the Mayan phoenix—a symbol for rebirth, quite appropriate Lucy had told Jay countless times. Just the other day, she said: “It is quite apropos, don’t you think, Jay? The phoenix reminding us of our so-called rebirth—two losers supposedly converted into upstanding civic-minded citizens. Shit, I might even have to inquire about voting rights.”
Jay allowed Lucy some occasional rants. Most slid off his back. Because at times, when he caught her seated alone on the sofa, when she thought she was not in his sights, he caught her running her fingers through her hair, caught in a trance, perhaps even smiling to herself, perhaps thinking how this detour had come ab
out. She had told Jay, on the plane ride, she had believed death to be imminent for her. It might be slowly painful and deliberate, but eventually it would come. She had accepted any comer for sex, some who didn’t even have enough cash for her time. One guy who had even carried a mace; it was as if she wanted to speed up the inevitable. Her fate.
She began to argue, on the plane ride, that accepting Jay’s proposal of marriage would never have worked. She couldn’t escape who she had become. She said she would have blamed circumstance for her death. And she didn’t want to take Jay down with her. In her words—she had told him he “was too good of a schmuck for that.”
Jay had answered. “He didn’t know about that. He had probably been responsible for Sid’s downward spiral. He told her, “I should have seen it coming sooner—the drinking. He told her, “I might have had a chance to save him. But instead of saving him, I used him to comfort myself. I bled him, making him listen to my stories, to help give my life meaning. So, yes; I was a schmuck, but not a good one.”
Within a week’s time of their relocation, Lucy had begun to soften around the edges. They ate meals together. Slept together—sleeping—not fucking. Even sharing the bathroom mirror together. Once Jay summoned enough courage to bear hug Lucy around her waist until she squealed and laughed like a child. For that week, they believed in the witness protection program, believed innocence could be restored.
More time passed. Finally they received some news from Boston that the case against the Cinelli family was finally making some progress. And Jay began to think, what might happen if Carter did indeed put Johnny, the don, in prison. Would the fed’s release both he and Lucy from their protection? Would Lucy make a dash back to her old ways, abandoning him? He began to think hard about ways to remedy that problem, pretending to be asleep at night, but all the while his mind racing. He thought about Sid and their friendship. Had he indeed influenced him, seduced him—encouraged him to commit those murders? He had to admit, a small, sick part of him had been delighted the adulterer Dan Collins and the stripper Cheryl Thomas had been removed from the world. Did he know all along about Sid’s malady? Carter had explained to him that even a psychiatric test might not have been able to validate his condition—DID—because of his age. Carter even told him not to feel guilty, he couldn’t have known. But Jay failed to tell Carter that he had caught Sid acting oddly back in high school, nearly a dozen years prior to his traumatizing incident—the day when Johnny Cinelli’s beat him into submission, taking some of Sid’s short term memory with them as a prize. And, as Jay battled insomnia on most nights, he attempted self-visualization techniques he had learned from the Internet. He wanted to see if he could recall if Sid had had that scar on his forehead back then. He didn’t have much success with the memory recall, but Jay knew Sid had no doubt often fallen into a strange dialect at times, speaking as if he were a member of a New York gang. All the while keeping dead pan serious to the delight of the kids who reveled in what they had thought was just an impersonation.
Jay’s insomnia continued for another month. He finally succumbed to sleep when he admitted to himself that he enjoyed being a catalyst for Sid’s murderous rampage. Sid had, in his twisted way, brought swift justice to the world. If Sid had lived in the Old West, he would have been a hero, not a psycho. And the icing on the cake was that if this were all true, that he had helped bring Sid over the edge, then he would no longer be looked upon as a hapless wannabe cop. He would be more cunning than Carter ever could. He had had a hand in the murder of at least two of the three people Sid had killed—not counting Donnie Cinelli. And here he was, living out his dream, not in the fashion he had imagined—he was not wed to Lucy—but nevertheless, here she was, sharing his bed, sharing his life. And the best part, she had been saved from her life as a streetwalker; at least for the time being anyway.
Jay soon promised himself he could not let this good thing go to an end. He would keep at Lucy, trying to win by influence, maybe even demanding that she marry him—if the program would allow it—before Carter could pin a murder rap on Johnny Cinelli. He must not lose Lucy. She believed in him, in her own way, and no one really ever had. Not even Sid. Every time he felt sadness or remorse about Sid’s passing, Jay thought of his unkind remarks, his harsh jokes about him. Well Sid, looks like I got the last laugh. And to think, my own father used to tell me words are just bullshit, just talk. Well I proved differently, didn’t I?
Lucy could be heard munching on something on the kitchen, possibly a granola bar. He pondered joining her, yet suddenly realized he had lost his appetite for food, but not for music. He streamed a public radio station from New York from his computer. It played a song, “The Underdog” from a band called Spoon.
The lyrics brought about a moment of clarity for Jay. He began to rethink his marriage proposal. If he couldn’t get Lucy to marry him, maybe she could help him in other ways. He was still a detective at heart. Maybe she could help him meter out justice in this world-be it legal or not. And this time he wouldn’t need a middleman like Sid Auerbach. Jay realized he still had purpose. After all, he couldn’t just forget how her pimp used and abused her. He should pay for this. A lot of people still needed to pay.
Jay lowered the volume on the song and retreated to the kitchen. He bent over Lucy, seated at the kitchen table, and he rested his chin upon her shoulder.
“You know you weren’t quite correct the day you told me you were a vampire.”
“How so?” she said, crunching granola.
“We are both vampires. I fed off Sid, you know, willingly. I can’t turn back on my former self either. I still want justice. I’ve seen its’ power—for myself.”
Lucy tried to turn to see Jay’s eyes.”Is this a gag?” She couldn’t turn to see his face. His weight rested upon her shoulder. He didn’t answer.
And now for some odd reason, Lucy told Jay it was now her turn to bear some weight for him. He had given her this life after all. If it weren’t for his connection to Sid they would not be here today.
“Something tells me you’ve got a plan, Jay Fredericks. Well, whatever it is, you can count me in.”
He lifted her from her seat and kissed her.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But there’s no need to go into details yet.”
“So you just can’t walk away from what you’ve done, can you? Don’t worry, I can’t either; so, I guess despite our lavish surroundings we both realized the truth—that we will never ever change. And that proves an old adage.”
“Which one is that?” Jays asked, softly kissing her neck.
“Misery loves company. I think that’s what brought us together and will keep us together. But don’t stop to think about that right now.” She sighed. “Just keep kissing me.”
And Jay did, feeding off their connection, and as he empowered himself in this fashion he caught his reflection a mirror.
He laughed to himself between kisses. And they say vampires don’t see their reflections . . .
