THE NEXT DAY
A murderer.
I poured myself a glass of Brunello and took a long sip. I gazed at the faces gathered around me and took a deep breath and a second sip of wine. “I have something I need to tell all of you,” I said. “Something I should have told you long before today. I don’t know what you’ll think of me after I’ve said my piece. Whatever way you may end up feeling, I want you to know this: Everyone I love and respect is in this room. Nothing that happens today will ever change that. Nothing.”
“The same goes for me, partner,” Pearl said. “No matter what you have to tell us. The way it was between us yesterday will be the way it is tomorrow.”
I smiled at Pearl and faced the room. “When me and Jack were kids, my parents would rent a cabin in Maine every August. To get us out of the city, breathe some fresh air, go sailing, ride canoes, hiking, mountain climbing, all the things we didn’t have much chance to do here. It was in a great little town called Rockport, near Camden. My dad loved it for the fishing, my mom loved the fresh lobster and the relaxed way of life. Me and Jack loved the nearby pools we could swim in and the lakes we could take boats on. It was a week we always looked forward to. A great time for the four of us to get away.”
“I remember you guys taking those vacations,” Carmine said. “Your pop would come back and talk about all the sailing he did, the fish he caught, the mountain trails you all hiked. Every August it was like I was talking to Jack London instead of your old man.”
“It was a great place,” I said. “For each of us. Until that last summer we went up. I was fifteen, Jack was twelve. We always rented the same cabin. But it didn’t really matter. They all looked alike and were all bunched together. Small two-bedroom places with outdoor grills and front porches. You could sleep with the windows open, that’s how cool it would get at night. And how safe the area was. For a few years, the same couple came up with their kids from someplace down South and we would spend some time with them. All of us driving to Miss Plum’s for ice cream or down to the lobster pound for the Friday night special.”
I reached for my glass and took another sip of wine. I looked around the room as I did. They all sat or stood in place, eager to hear the heart of the tale, knowing as well as I did that what they had just heard was merely the setup. I held the glass cupped in my hands and noticed the slight tremble of my wrists and fingers. The vision of what I was about to relay now coming into sharp focus in my mind.
“That last summer, that other family didn’t make the trip up for whatever reason,” I continued. “Their cabin, just down from ours, was rented instead by a single man in his late thirties, maybe a little older. He was brawny, sullen, and stayed to himself. Whenever we crossed paths with him, he would barely acknowledge my parents, but he made a point to smile or wink at me or at Jack. I noticed he left the cabin early in the morning, usually about sunup, and returned in the midafternoon. He drank a lot and there were bottles of bourbon or scotch, usually empty, tossed around the porch. There were no TVs in the cabins, but he brought along a cassette recorder and played heavy-metal rock all hours of the day and night. My father wanted to go over and ask him to turn it down a couple of times, but my mom always talked him out of it.”
I put my glass on the coffee table and felt the sweat running down the back of my button-down shirt. I took a deep breath and continued. “This one day, Jack wasn’t feeling well, coming down with a cold,” I said. “My folks headed into Camden to pick up food and supplies and asked us to stay close to the cabin. I was specifically asked to keep an eye on Jack. We were between the two cabins, ours and our neighbor’s, playing catch, when the neighbor showed up earlier than usual and seemed to be drunk and angry. He stared at us for a few moments and then went into his cabin. After a bit, me and Jack took a break from the game. He wanted to go down to the lake, cool off. I went to the cabin to change while Jack waited outside, bouncing a ball against the wall.”
The crowded living room was still and silent, as if they were sitting through a horror movie, waiting for the killer to emerge. No one ate, no one drank, no one moved. I watched as Connie refilled my wineglass, her right hand trembling slightly.
“I was back out in ten minutes,” I said. “Maybe less. I spotted Jack’s glove in a thick patch of grass, the ball resting against it. His Little League bat, the one that had his name stenciled on the barrel, was up against a tree that stood between our cabin and the next one, where the neighbor was staying. I looked to my left and to my right and didn’t see him. I called out his name a few times, each one louder than the last, and got no reply. I knew he wouldn’t have gone down to the lake without me. Jack wouldn’t have gone anywhere without me. I glanced over at the next cabin and noticed the screen door flapping. I grabbed Jack’s bat from the tree and held it in my right hand. To this very moment, I have no idea what made me reach for the bat. Instinct. Luck. Nerves. But grab it I did, and I held it against the side of my leg and walked toward the neighbor’s cabin.”
I looked at Connie and saw tears running down her face, as if she knew what I was about to say and couldn’t bear to hear it. All the others in the room sat and listened, each one hanging on to my every word.
“I was about five feet or so from the screen door when I heard Jack’s voice,” I said. My throat was dry and my voice was cracking. I closed my eyes for a moment, the scene from long ago now as vivid as if I were there once again. “Then I heard something fall to the cabin floor and shatter, a lamp or a bottle. I stepped up to the screen door and looked in. Jack was lying facedown on the filthy floor, the man’s left hand gripping the back of his neck, holding him in place, ignoring the kicking and writhing. The man’s breaths were coming in spurts as he attempted to undo his pants with his free hand. I stood there, drowning in sweat, my heart racing, my hands clutched around the bat, gripping it as tightly as I could.”
Connie reached out a hand for mine and I took it, holding it as tight as I had held the bat. “The sight of the man unbuckling his belt and lowering his jeans around his thighs, his white bare skin visible in the sharp sunlight, snapped me out of my frightened pose. I swung the screen door open and stepped into the room. ‘Get the fuck off my brother’ were the only words I said to him. He turned the minute he heard me and caught the first swing of the bat hard across his face. He toppled onto his back, falling off Jack, the pants bunched around his upper legs. Jack turned and looked at me. I will never get that look out of my head, no matter how many years pass by. It was a look of fear and terror, and seeing it shook awake something in me I had no idea was even there. ‘Let’s go, Tank,’ Jack said to me. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
“I heard the words, but they were lost on me. I moved past Jack and stood over the fallen man. He had a glazed look in his eyes and blood streaming down the front of his face and neck. I raised the bat and hit him on the side of his head. I could feel the weight of the bat crack through bone and slice flesh. I lifted the bat and swung it down again. And again. And again. And again. I swung the bat until I could no longer lift it.”
I took several deep breaths, my body coated with sweat, my hands shaking, my legs weak. I leaned against one side of the couch and wiped my forehead with the back of my right hand.
“I fell to my knees and gazed down at the damage I had done,” I said. “Even though I had never seen a dead man before, I was sure the beaten and bloody mess that lay before me was no longer breathing. I turned away from the man and looked at Jack. He was on his feet, crying quietly, both hands clutched against his mouth, as if he were swallowing a scream. His eyes were wide open, and his tanned skin now seemed to me to be ghost white. I stared at Jack and he stared back at me, the dead man on the ground a bloodied barrier that lay between us.”
“You had no choice, Tank,” Carmine said, breaking the silence in the room. “He was hurting your brother. If it were me in that room, on that day, I would have done the same thing. Probably even worse.”
“I could have stopped after the first blow,” I said. “But I didn’t. It unleashed a rage inside me that I didn’t know was there. That scared me as much as killing the man. From that day to this, I knew that hidden rage would always be a part of me.”
“That’s something I’m afraid we all have,” Pearl said. “We’re born with it, I suppose. Don’t really know why it’s there, inside of us, but it does rise to the surface now and again. And, on that day, it was a damn good thing it did. For you and for Jack. God only knows what that sick bastard could have done.”
I looked at Pearl and nodded. The voices around me sounded like echoes in a cave, and my eyes could barely focus on their faces. Instead, all I could see, no matter how often I tried to blink it away, was me, Jack, and the dead man, all in that tiny, disheveled room in a cabin reeking of booze and smoke.
“Time stood still for us in that room,” I said, “so I don’t know how long it was before our mom and dad showed up. By the time they did, Jack had made his way out of the cabin, walking backward, hands still clutched across his mouth, his face still covered with tears, his nose running. My father came into the cabin, gazed down at the bloodied body, and gently took the bat from my hand. ‘Let’s get out of here, Tank,’ he said in a calm voice. ‘Get you out of this shithole and away from all this.’
“I turned to my father and took one final look at the man I had beaten to death. ‘I killed him, Dad,’ I said. ‘I killed that man.’ My father didn’t respond. He just walked me out of the cabin, his arm around my shoulders.”
“Did you go to the cops about it?” Chief Connors asked.
I shook my head. “We didn’t tell the cops,” I said. “We didn’t tell anybody. My dad left me and Jack with my mom while he emptied our gear from the cabin into our car. He cleaned the place, left it spotless. We waited until it was dark, and then the four of us got in the car and drove away. We never bothered looking back. The next day was set to be our last day at the cabin, so no one would find it odd that we pulled out the night before. We drove most of the way in silence and turned our backs on Rockport forever.”
“Is that why you and my dad never spoke to each other?” Chris asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Jack wanted to forget what did happen and what could have happened in that room. Not talking about it helped him come to terms with that. Plus, I imagine he saw a side of me that scared him almost as much as what that man had planned to do to him. And, to be honest, I wasn’t eager to revisit it, either. So we never talked about it. Not me, not Jack, and not my parents. It made it easier for us to live with it. There were no winners that day. A man died, deserving or not. I lost my brother and he lost me.”
“So, as far as Rockport PD is concerned, it’s still down as a cold case,” the chief said.
I nodded. “The dead man’s name was Frank Muncie. He was a predicate felon with a long rap sheet, including two convictions for rape of a minor.”
“Never for the life of me will I understand why they let scum like that out of prison,” Carmine said. “You do harm to a child just once, you lose the right to call yourself a human. Toss him in, lock the cell, and lose the key.”
“It’s a cold case but not one anyone was all that eager to solve,” I said. “Seems the cops up there had the same attitude Carmine has. One less child rapist for them to worry themselves about. There wasn’t much activity on it back then, even less as the years passed.”
“Did the local cops reach out to your folks?” the chief asked.
“They got our home number from the guy we rented the cabin from,” I said. “Called the house and asked my dad a few questions. He told them what he knew about Muncie, which wasn’t all that much. Dad answered all their questions, they seemed satisfied with his answers, and they never called again.”
“So no one knows it happened?” Bruno asked.
“Somebody knows,” I said.
“Who?” Chief Connors asked.
“Eddie Kenwood,” I said.
I took one final sip of wine, rested my glass on the coffee table, and walked slowly past my crew and friends and out of the room. I needed to grab some fresh air, take a long, slow walk, and let them digest what I had told them.
As I began my walk through the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, I wondered how it would affect Chris and if it would alter the relationship the two of us had managed to forge. And what about Connie? Would her love for me change now that she knew the full details about the man Jack saw me murder? Yes, she had been raised knowing what her father did for a living and she knew being a cop came with the risk of taking a life. But this was out-and-out murder, in the most cold-blooded of ways. A murder committed by a man she loved.
I wasn’t sure if it would affect how my crew perceived me. If they would now view me under a different scope. And the same was true for Chief Connors and Pearl. The two of them, along with Carmine, had known me for decades and seen me in action. They knew what I was capable of and that I had a temper that would erupt if provoked. I never went looking to cause trouble or bring harm to anyone. But if trouble came my way or if someone close to me was in danger, then I would react, often in a deadly way.
As concerned as I was about the reactions of my friends, one question kept returning to the front of my mind: How did Eddie Kenwood know my secret?
I stopped at a corner and sat on the middle step of a brownstone stoop. I raised my face to the warm sun and closed my eyes. As I sat there, soaking up the sun and looking to erase the image of a much younger me swinging a bat at a defenseless man, I hoped I would not need to wait long for the answers to my questions or the resolution of the two cases that lay before me.
All it would take was for more blood to be spilled and more bodies laid to waste.
What had been true back in Rockport, Maine, would prove to be even truer in New York City.