One of the first occasions that Ziggy showed his true colors was when I caught him melting down my mother's sterling silver silverware set to make jewelry. It was a brisk fall day and I had just walked home from one of my first days of second grade. I walked into Jason’s room, plopped down my jacket and saw Ziggy sitting on a wooden chair. He held a candle and my mom’s fine sterling silverware spoon in his hands.
“What are you doing to Ma’s spoon?” I asked.
“I’m using it to make jewelry. I’m a machinist; that’s what we do. We work with metals, Sport.”
“Ma loves those spoons. Did she give them to you?”
He replied, “Oh she told me I could take these. But hey, Sport, if you promise not to talk about this to anyone, I will give you a really cool present! How’s that sound?” Confused, I nodded my head in agreement.
Then he rummaged through his nightstand and took out a captivating miniature wooden telescope that stretched long and far, resembling the one you see in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. “Whooaaaa! I’ve never had anything this cool,” I thought.
Ziggy handed it over and I put my eye up to the scope. “Everything is so clear!” I said out loud.
Ziggy said, “Take a look out the window! You can see for a whole mile!”
“Cool!” I said. “I’m like a pirate!”
He laughed along and said, “Yep it’s all yours if we can keep our little secret about the spoons.” I nodded in agreement.
A few days later I was bored and decided to look out the upstairs side window with my new telescope. The windows were kind of high and at eight years old, I barely reached the bottom of the window sill. When I gazed into the lense, I could see across the pond where the ducks were, across the river and up the hill into a large brick apartment building complex where I could peer right into the large picture windows. It was honestly surprising how powerful this thing was.
I was just enjoying taking in the scenery when I noticed a man with a large camera on a tripod looking back at me. I wasn’t sure if he could see me but I could certainly see him pointing the camera down at our driveway towards the motorcycle gang. Looking closer, I noticed that he was taking pictures of everyone coming and going. Puzzled, I decided to ask Janie to confirm that she saw the same thing. “Janie, come over here! Check this out. There’s a guy up there looking at our house!”
Janie looked through the telescope and said, “What’s he doing? Let’s show Ziggy. I will get him!” So she ran across the house all excited to tell Ziggy about what we just saw. I was still checking the strange man out when Ziggy came up from behind, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “What are you looking at, Sport?”
I replied, “A man up there is looking at us. Look for yourself!”
Ziggy’s eyebrows narrowed as he peered through the telescope, speculating. “Do you know who that is?” I asked. Then he held his chin briefly, grinded his teeth, smiled and mumbled a bit.
He replied, “Okay. Listen to me, Sport. I want you two to stay right here in this spot. Just don't take your eyes off the telescope; I want to make sure you see this.”
Before we know it, Ziggy was recruiting one of the motorcycle gang members to go with him on his quest over to the apartments. “Let’s go, Gill!” I heard Ziggy yell and they bolted out the door.
I said to Janie, “Ziggy seemed kind of mad. Maybe we shouldn’t have said anything.” Janie looked concerned too but she comforted me by saying, “Maybe they are just going to talk.” I had a bad gut feeling though.
Watching intently through the telescope, my sister and I could see clearly into the apartment where we caught a glimpse of the watching man opening the door and Ziggy forcing himself in. Things escalated violently as Ziggy immediately tackled him and beat him over and over again with his bare fists. My sister and I watched it all happen through the scope. Our hearts beat fast, but we could not stop watching as it became a brutal bloodbath. The man put up a fight then slowly stopped moving completely.
“Is he dead?” I asked Janie. She looked through the telescope and said, “I don’t know. He’s not moving.”
Right behind the brick apartment building lies a cliff with a river about fifty or sixty feet below. We witnessed Ziggy and the motorcycle man carry the limp body outside and toss it ruthlessly out in the river below. If he was not already dead, the impact certainly killed him. Not knowing what to do or say, my sister and I were in shock after witnessing this savage beating. We didn’t speak. We both just dropped to the floor and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Now we saw Ziggy in a completely different light. Why the hell did he want us to watch this? Terrified, we kept our mouths shut for the rest of the night. Judging by his demeanor towards us, he knew that we witnessed the murder.
Knowing Jason and our parents wouldn’t believe us if we told them what we saw, Janie and I set out for proof of the crime by going out to the river bank the next morning. The water was only ankle deep in some spots as it was drought season. We saw the dead man's body lying face down in the river bed on the shallow rocks under the bridge, hidden from plain sight. Janie screamed, but I covered her mouth before anyone could hear her say, “It’s real!” as tears flooded down her cheeks. We were banking on our eyes playing tricks on us, but the reality was that this actually happened.
“Who is this guy?” I asked. Janie said, “Wait, his wallet is still in his back pocket. Let’s take it out and figure out who he is.” We crouched down and removed his wallet to find a badge inside. The badge was gold, very large and shaped like a star with writing in the middle. With that as evidence, we gathered he was some type of cop or private detective.
“That’s not good...”I said nervously. Maybe he was a good guy.
“I’m really scared, Sean. Let’s get out of here,” Janie whimpered. So we took the man’s wallet and ran back towards home.
When we got home, we contemplated our next move and tried to figure out what we should do with the wallet. After getting nowhere, Janie suggested, “Let’s go see the body again. Maybe then we’ll know what to do.”
When we got to the river, we were shocked. The body was gone. “What is going on?” I asked Janie. “Did we imagine this whole thing?”
“Do you think Ziggy knows we took his wallet with his badge? Maybe we should put it back in the river...”
“Yea, we should,” Janie said, and we put it back to get it off our hands.
We were still scratching our heads as to why Ziggy wanted us to witness this horrible incident. Later that night Janie and I saw Ziggy with the man's camera and gun. The next day we came across the camera on the tool bench under a drop cloth in the cellar.
“Open it and see if there’s film inside!” Janie said. As I opened it, we saw it was empty. “Ziggy is getting rid of the evidence!”
So it was confirmed: we hadn’t hallucinated. At this point we were very scared about what we knew. Would we be next? We decided not to talk about it or tell anyone.
A few days after the “incident,” Ziggy rolled in with a brand new orange Dodge pickup truck. I asked him, “Where did you get the new truck?”
“Well, Sport, I received it in a settlement from a bad car accident I was in. I was with two friends. We were fighting over the front seat so we decided to flip a coin. I lost so I had to sit in the back. My friends were drinking and we were going over a hundred miles per hour when the car flipped over on Franklin Street in Quincy. Both the driver and the other passenger were killed instantly. When they found me, Sport, I was dead too. I’m not afraid of dying though. They were able to get my pulse back and I was in the hospital for a long time. Since I broke my neck in the crash, the surgeons had to remove a couple of bones so it would heal properly. That’s why I can’t spin my head around to look behind me. I have to turn my whole body. I am not afraid of dying. It was kind of peaceful when I was dead. I used my money for a memorial for my friends and the city let me put it in the park near the accident scene so we can remember them. It took a few years but finally the insurance company reached a settlement with me and I got this truck. Regardless of the accident, Sport, I am in great shape.”
Then he began to show off, doing pushups on his thumbs and toes. Janie and I attempted to do the pushups as well. Turns out, they are a lot harder than they look.
He seemed to be in a good mood. Like he was a little more relaxed. Was it the new truck? Or did murder have that effect on him?
We continued to keep what happened by the river to ourselves and went on as normal kids, just with a heavy secret. We pretended and acted like nothing ever happened and with a murderer living under our roof, that was probably the safest way to stay alive.