How Uncle Mort became involved in our downfall would be replayed during his court deposition. Barry shouldn’t have trusted a brother who’d been jealous of him from birth. Before Barry was born, Morty was the center of their parents’ universe, then he got shuttled to side-saddle. Barry was cuter and wittier, and generally more pleasant to be around. Mort was moody and lumpy, the kind of child who already looked like a middle-aged man. Barry excelled in sports, in academics, in social life, while Mort spent all his time studying for lesser grades and was unable to devote any time to friends or girlfriends, not that anyone was really barking up his tree. After Mort had been labeled as the sole reason for his parents’ surviving the camps, as an adolescent and teenager, he was often forgotten. Even in their small apartment, he managed to go unnoticed, relegated to the top of a bunk bed that became his world while Barry got all the fanfare.
As an adult, his job put food on the table, and he had a nice marriage with Connie. He loved his sons fiercely but longed for more than mediocrity. Barry lived this posh life, and even though Barry had taken a hit, he was talking about taking his family on an international trip when he didn’t know what his next job would be. It was unfathomable. Still, Mort needed the business, so he booked the Gimmelmans an open-ended vacation to Malaga. Barry didn’t want return flights in case they decided to stay longer. He sprung for a nice hotel in the center of the city. The trip came to ten thousand in total for the entire family. And Barry had cash ready! He handed it right over. Mort was embarrassed that he’d never held that much cash at one time, the money feeling alien in his palms. It was too late on a Friday afternoon to make it to the bank before it closed, so he’d hold onto the money through the weekend and deposit it on Monday, his cut coming out to eight hundred dollars, enough to fix a leak in the attic, nothing more than that.
He was most excited for the Gimmelmans to be on our way. Our presence upset the fine-tuned machinery of his own family. Andy and Randy were still beside themselves about Jenny’s attack. The kitchen was a mess after Barry and I “wrestled,” and Connie confessed that she had to “talk Judith down from a ledge the other night” when Mom devolved into a mess of tears. Normally, Mort ran the roost, and there was little drama with his brood. Connie was a doting wife, and Andy and Randy were weird children, but they always listened and didn’t cause trouble. The Gimmelman kids were polar opposites. Steph was turning into a full-fledged woman, and Mort admitted to himself that it was hard not to stare at her newfound breasts. Jenny was a nightmare wrapped up in wildcat, and I was sarcastic, snotty, and the last time we stayed with them, he caught me having a Bud Light.
So, the fact that by Sunday, we’d be out of his hair added an extra hop in his step the night that precipitated everything turning to shit for us. It was late, and everyone had gone to bed. Connie had put on her cold cream and was already snoring like a tugboat. I was holding my nose in Andy and Randy’s room. Mom had been on a pill flight all day and had passed out after dinner. Mort had just finished up the transaction with his brother and placed the ten thousand in a safe in the basement. Of course, Barry had to joke how meaningless the money was to him, knowing that would prickle Mort. He boasted of this chapter of their lives closing and a new one on the horizon that would be even more fruitful. “I fall into money,” he told Mort. “It’s just the kind of luck I have.”
Mort didn’t respond. He knew that earlier, the flour on Barry’s nose was actually cocaine. It peeved him how Barry partied through life and seemed to come out on top. Mort had never indulged in any vices other than a beer and sweets, practically a Mormon, and he dreamed of going to a place like Malaga, Spain, but the biggest trip they ever did besides once to NYC was a drive down to the Grand Canyon, which Barry had just come from and barely seemed to care about.
Mort tried to get into a fight with Barry about the way he casually spent his money, but Barry wasn’t into it that night. He’d gotten what he needed from his brother and, therefore, didn’t need to give him any more attention. This inflamed Mort more than anything else his brother had ever done. He even considered figuring out a way to cancel the Malaga trip but had already placed a call to his office, and they had closed for the weekend. Barry practically skipped up the stairs, the clear winner in their dogfight.
When Mort finally went up, too, the myna birds were squawking. Their newspapers needed to be changed. Mort found the latest edition of the L.A. Times, which he finished and began lining the cage. He’d read about the Wild Woodstock Gang and even mentioned it briefly to Connie after seeing an episode of A Current Affair. But he hadn’t thought twice about it. Still, something drew him to the photo of the little girl in the bank in Houston. The grainy image, difficult to make out a face, but the light of the full moon streaming through the blinds seemed to illuminate more than ever before. The pinched little face of the little girl, her wild hair like a scarecrow’s. The tiny button nose, causing his mind to travel to Jenny. He took her image and placed it in the confines of the little girl in the photo, and it was an exact match.
His stomach dropped like he was descending on a roller coaster. His knees quivered. He wrenched the newspaper from out of the myna birds’ cage, making them squawk even more. If you took away the hair of the little girl in the photo and replaced it with Jenny’s burn-victim ’do, he was looking at her doppelgänger.
“Holy moly,” he said, stroking his bushy mustache. “Oh, Mylanta,” he said. “Oh no. Oh no.” He resisted having to puke. Reading through the article, the reporter called the little girl a kidnap victim, but it was clear Jenny was in on the whole shebang. He recalled the other heists that had been on the news. Barry as Jerry Garcia. How could he not have seen it before? How many times had he had to cover his ears while Barry played the terrible noodling songs of The Grateful Dead? Jerry Garcia was the kid’s idol. Mort woke up every day to a poster of Jerry Garcia, high as the sky and tacked up in their shared bedroom. Janis Joplin must’ve been Judith. He snapped his fingers. This had been why Judith was acting so strangely. From breaking down in tears to numbing herself with pills. And the two members of the gang who were referred to as little people were not little people; it was his nephew as Jimi Hendrix and Jenny as Mama Cass.
“That’s how Barry had all that money,” Mort said aloud. The myna birds repeated.
“All that money, all that money,” they squawked.
“Shut up, you,” he said, his brow a pool of sweat dripping into his eyes. “What do I do? What do I do?”
He paced back and forth, clutching the newspaper article in his fist.
“I must protect my family first.”
“Protect family first, protect family first,” the myna birds squawked again until Mort threw a towel over the cage so they’d fall asleep.
He read the article again, drops of sweat blurring the typeface. At the end of the article was the number for the FBI agent assigned to the case. Mort crept into his study, where he’d have the most privacy. He stared at the phone on his desk, picked up the receiver and hung up again. If he let Barry and his family get away, he could be in trouble for being an accessory to the crime. Since he knew about it now, he worried he’d fail any polygraph test. This made the decision for him. There was no way in h-e-double hockey sticks that he would go down for Barry’s crimes. He picked the phone up and dialed.
“Yes, I’d like to speak with Special Agent Alan Terbert,” he said to a woman who answered.
“What is this regarding?”
He cleared his thoughts, felt the power surge through his body, a newfound experience.
“The Wild Woodstock Gang is currently at my house.”