Boarding School (48 page)

“What about one of the teachers?” I continued.

“No,” Matt replied again. “They’re all too chicken shit to do anything like that. If any of them really had a spine, they wouldn’t be teaching here in the first place.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re right about that.”

“That leaves Fatso, or maybe the owner or manager or whoever it is over at the inn,” Matt proposed.

I thought for a moment about my roommate’s suggestions. Neither of us had any idea who it was at the inn who had arranged with Fatso for us to use his business as a base for our operations. “You know, I ‘m sure Fatso wouldn’t actually do the act himself, and I just can’t see him ordering it done, either.” At that moment we were surprised by a severe knocking on our door. “It’s unlocked,” I shouted.

An instant later the head waiter opened our door and peered into our room from the hallway. “Hey, your ride’s here,” he announced unceremoniously. “Let’s get going, huh?”

I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but as I looked into the eyes of this upperclassman who had contributed so willingly to the misery that Matt and I had been put through for the past year, his eyes shifted quickly to avoid my gaze the instant our eyes met. “All we’ve gotta do is close up our cases, and then we’ll be right outside.”

“Ok, I’ll tell’ em,” the bigger kid then left our doorway as quickly as he had arrived.

We were still getting used to having heroin in our bodies, and we weren’t entirely certain just yet if we were able to think clearly. Still, it was reassuring to us to engage in the same routine we had been through nearly every weekend since the previous September.

“Are you ready?” I asked as I closed and latched my bag. “I guess so,” Matt answered gloomily as he did the same. Automatically then, we turned out our lights and left our room. And after we had gone through the large wooden door at the western end of our hallway, and had climbed the cement steps outside until we were on the sidewalk and walking out onto the outdoor basketball court, I happened to look ahead and notice a Plymouth Fury parked over in the circle in front of Ulster Hall. Of course I recognized the car right away and I made a remark about it to my roommate. But when I looked ahead again, I saw something else that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Clint!” Matt suddenly stopped in his tracks. “Oh shit! Look at the car in front!”

By now I had recognized it as well. Sitting there in front of the Fury, was a blue 1963 Cadillac convertible, and Joe was looking our way and leaning up against the door on the passenger side. Suddenly the statement that Fatso had made in his living room about Joe on the occasion of our first meeting came back to us.

“You don’t think he’s here to straighten us out, do ya?” Matt asked fearfully.

“I… I don’t know,” I stammered. It wasn’t all that unusual for Joe to drive us somewhere on the weekend, but it seemed awfully damned coincidental that he was here on today of all days to take us someplace.

Joe saw us standing in the middle of the basketball court and became impatient. “Hey, boys, let’s go,” and he gave his arm a big swing to motion that he wanted us to come toward him.

“He sounds all right,” Matt observed.

“Yeah, I guess,” I agreed.

Joe saw that we still hadn’t moved, so he called to us again. “Come on, guys, we’re gonna be late.”

“What do you think?” Matt asked me.

“I don’t know. If we run, they’re bound to catch us, so I guess we might as well go with him,” I declared.

“Ok. If you say so,” Matt replied. And then the two us began to walk again toward the car with the big fins.

A moment later as we approached the two cars from the rear, I spotted Frank coming out through the front doors of Ulster Hall, and heading down the front steps until he turned left at the bottom with his overnight bag so he could walk toward the Fury and join his cousin who was waiting for him inside his car. And as fate would have it, a moment later when we met up next to the Fury, Frank couldn’t let the moment pass without saying something to me.

“Where the hell are you guys going?” he asked when he saw the suitcases we were carrying. “I though youz two were spending the weekend in your room studying.” Frank then glance back at Joe to get another look at the man we were walking toward. “And who’s that guy?”

Matt and I had no idea what it was that we were in for, but we figured for sure that Frank would be in trouble, if he made too much of a stink over our change of plans for the weekend. “Just let it go, Frank,” I warned quietly as we passed him by. Matt and I then handed our bags to Joe so he could dump them in the trunk for us as he usually did. But before Matt and I could make our escape, Frank turned around and let us have it one more time.

“Let it go?” he repeated loudly. “Let it go?” he said even louder this time. Then he continued. “Yeah, I’ll let it go. In fact you can depend on the fact that I’m gonna let it go! In fact, I’ m gonna let both of youz go, because you’re both assholes. So go on. Just take off with this strange-lookin’ guy and I’ll be very happy to let youz go!” And with that Frank opened the door on the passenger side of the Fury and got into his cousin’s car.

“What’s his problem?” Joe asked as the three of us piled into his Cadillac.

“Oh nothing,” I answered as I took a position in the back seat by myself again. “Just some school thing.” As Joe started up his engine and then began to take us along the main drive toward the front entrance, I figured at least that I had managed to keep Frank from getting caught up in the mess that we were so deeply into. And a few minutes later, when we were finally on the highway and heading north toward the town of Ulster, Matt decided the time had come to ask Joe a question.

“Where are we going this time, Joe?”

Joe then looked at Matt as my roommate sat there on the opposite end of the front seat with his mop of black hair whipping around wildly in the wind. “Today I’m taking you boys to Framingham.”

* * *

Joe backed his Cadillac into the driveway of a nondescript one-story house which was situated in a neighborhood dense with trees. When he had the car parked where he wanted, Joe turned off the engine and then got out to open his trunk for us.

“Whose place is this, Joe?” Matt asked as he opened his door to get out too. “This is where I’ve been living for the past year or so,” the large man replied.

“Of all the times I’ve gone by here on the turnpike,” I began as I climbed out of the back seat. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually been to Framingham.”

“Yeah… well, it’s a nice quiet place to live in, I guess,” Joe admitted. During our drive, our escort had been the least talkative we had ever known the man to be, and now mentally Joe seemed to be someplace entirely different from the suburban concrete we were all now standing upon. “Grab your things and come inside.”

“Sure, Joe.” His different behavior today was making us more afraid of him than we usually were, and Matt was reacting to this fear by blabbering more than he usually did. “Is this where we’re staying for the night? I guess the place looks all right, but it’s a lot smaller than the places we usually get taken to, except for that guy in Providence. Man, he really did me good. Joe, are you having the customer meet us here later today or something?”

“We’ll talk about all that later,” our host said gruffly. “Now hurry up.” It was odd, but at that moment it seemed to me as if Joe wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spending too much time outdoors in full view of the neighbors. And in another moment, he had disappeared into his house ahead of us.

When we were finally inside with the man, Matt and I found suitcases, boxes and other things piled up in the middle of the floor in Joe’s living room. Our host had already made his way past all of this and was getting himself something to eat in the kitchen.

“What’s all this stuff, Joe?” Matt couldn’t seem to stop asking questions.

“What? Oh, I’m moving out,” the big man yelled to us as he held his head in the refrigerator. “I’ve just been renting this place and the time has come for me to move on. You two boys go ahead and drop your things where you are and then take all that stuff of mine and put it outside into the trunk of my car.”

“Really?” Matt replied. “Then after we’ve got your things loaded up are you gonna take us to our customer for the weekend? And where are ya moving to, Joe?”

Now Joe seemed annoyed. It was as if he felt imposed upon to be asked so many questions. “Yeah, never mind right now about any of that, you guys. I’ll tell you all about everything once you’ve got my things packed away in the Caddy. Now hurry up!”

That seemed to end any chance we had at the moment for discussion. Even so, there was still one last question that Matt believed he had to risk asking. “Joe, do you want us to take even these two five-gallon cans of kerosene?” Matt had a point here. It seemed strange enough that Joe was keeping kerosene in his living room.

This last question of Matt’s got a reaction from Joe that shook us both. It was almost as if he hadn’t meant for us to know about the kerosene. “What? Oh, ah,” the man fumbled for a moment to find the words. “Look, you guys, just leave those cans where they are and get moving with the rest of my stuff, and do it now!” His usual gruff demeanor was suddenly changed to one of intense irritation.

“Ok,” Matt responded quickly. And so the two of us began to lug Joe’s heavy belongings out to his Cadillac. As soon as we were outside on the front walk again, I used the opportunity to admonish my roommate. “Next time keep your mouth shut. Will ya?” I wasn’t pleased about the work we had been pressed into doing.

“Sorry, Clint,” Matt offered. “But I’m guessing that from the way he had everything waiting there in his living room, we were gonna have to be doing this, anyway.”

Matt was right of course. Joe would have had us carry his junk out to his trunk even if Matt had been quiet. And if the truth be known, I was feeling nervous over what was happening to us also. After all, at this moment it had only been perhaps two hours or so since we had learned the fate of Juan and Carlos, and as absurd as it would have sounded at the time, we weren’t all that certain that we weren’t going to be next.

As we packed Joe’s things into the trunk of his car, we did our best to perform our task as slowly as was humanly possible. There was something about our involvement in helping this guy to leave town on the very day our friends were found dead which was unsettling to us. Of course we still didn’t know who it was who had killed the boys, or for that matter, if their deaths had been the result of foul play—although it was pretty hard for us to believe that any other explanation made sense. One thing that did seem pretty clear to us though, was that as long as we were engaged in an activity we knew was safe, we could avoid moving onto something else which might be less to our liking. But like the upperclassmen, time is a master who will not be reasoned with, so before long our job as midget movers was finished. And when we closed the lid on Joe’s trunk, my friend and I stood there on that driveway and wondered again if we should try to make a run for it. Unfortunately, our training and the drugs in our systems had us convinced that there was only one course of action available to us, so together we walked back into Joe’s living room to submit ourselves to whatever it was that our host was planning for the rest of that day. “Close the door and lock it!” This order was issued once Matt and I had returned to Joe’s presence inside.

“All right,” I answered. I turned around then and walked back to Joe’s entryway so I could do as he had instructed. To this day I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was out of a deep sense of contrariness I was feeling at the moment. But when I closed the front door and took hold of the latch handle on the lock, I locked and unlocked the dead bolt in one smooth action so it sounded as if I had complied with my order when I had really done the opposite. Joe heard me handle the lock, but because of a partition which stood between the front door and the living room, he was unable to see that I had actually just left his front door unlocked.

“Do you want us to open the curtains to let some light in, Joe?” Matt asked nervously. It hadn’t escaped our notice that our bags were still with us there in the house along with the two cans of kerosene.

The large man then walked back into the living room from his kitchen while he chomped on a ham sandwich he had just made for himself. “No… ah, no that’s all right, kid. I think maybe you guys are gonna want the curtains to stay closed, anyway.”

“Oh?” I asked as I re-entered the living room to stand next to my friend again.
Here it comes,
I thought. “Why’s that, exactly?”

Joe then gave us his first smile of the day. “Because this time, I’m the customer.”

“You?” Matt was as surprised by this news as I was.

“Yeah,” Joe confirmed still smiling. “Why not?”

“Gee, Joe, I didn’t
know you
liked little boys.” I wasn’t really trying to provoke the man, but as long as we had known this guy, he had always seemed to us as the epitome of the macho heterosexual type.

Now Joe’s smile was gone. “Very funny, smart ass. So now you know.” Joe then took a few steps closer to us. “All year long, I’ve been watchin’ you boys go out to have sex with practically everybody in New England, while the whole time I’ve had to keep my mouth shut about what I really wanted to do with you two.” Joe then pulled back on one of the curtains slightly so he could take a quick peek out his front window. “No, I never said nothin’ about it because a guy in my line of work can’t afford to let it out that he likes to do it with kids.” He then turned his head to look at us again as he allowed the curtain to fall back the way it had been.

It was hard for us to read Joe at this moment. We couldn’t tell if he was about to start laughing, or lunge at us.

“So now it’s my turn and you boys better brace yourselves, because I’m gonna want to do everything.” Joe now looked sincere in his desire for us.

It wasn’t the worst news we had been given that day, but it was a close second, and with a quick glance between us, Matt and I understood that we were both uneasy with the knowledge we now possessed about Joe’s true leanings. We were worried now because if indeed Joe preferred to keep this information about him confidential, then after our session with him was ended, he would either have to trust us to say nothing, or do something drastic to insure our silence. And just as I was beginning to contemplate whether Joe was truly the trusting kind, our host went on to finish his thought.