Favorite Sons (36 page)

Killing nine hours in Steubenville, Ohio, is no small task. I wandered around the Fort Steuben Mall for a while, stopped by M&M Hardware to look at lawn edgers, ate—sipped, actually—a lunch of chicken noodle soup and lemonade at Bob Evans, then spent a few hours at the library perusing newspapers and magazines. The last two hours I spent cruising the little towns along the Ohio River, recalling days when we did duck-and-cover drills in school, certain the Soviets would target us for nuclear attack because of the mighty steel industry. It would have been a much quicker death.

*    *    *

At first glance, the conference room at the Glass Works Bank and Trust Company looked like a Crystalton Royals hall of fame, its
walls lined with plaques, certificates, and framed newspaper clippings of past athletic achievements. A shelf extending across the back wall was adorned with dustless trophies. Upon closer inspection, however, one realized that the memorabilia did not honor the teams, but a single member—Adrian Nash. In the corner of one wall were a few framed photos of Pepper in his Pitt Panthers uniform and an article about the national championship team, but those were the only mentions of the younger brother.

When I entered with Deak, Adrian was slouched in a chair on one side of the conference table, dressed in the same flannel shirt and jeans he had been wearing the previous night. He nodded when we entered, though it was barely perceptible. Pepper was seated across from his brother, neat in a pressed blue dress shirt and gray slacks. He stood, shook our hands, and said to me, “What the hell happened to your face?”

“Long story,” I said.

Carson Nash was talking on the phone in his office. I heard him say, “He's here now.” Unless I miss my guess he was talking to one of the Botticellis. Deak sat down next to Adrian. I walked around the table and looked at the clippings, tales of victories of which I had been a part. I wondered what Adrian thought when he looked around a room that was a shrine to his former self. Probably, he didn't think anything. While it seemed like yesterday to Pepper and me, it probably seemed like a lifetime ago to Adrian. He had been so defeated that he no longer considered the depths to which he had dropped.

I sat down and there we were, the Chestnut Ridge four, together for the first time since we sat together at graduation in 1974. The notion of getting all concerned to recommit to silence now seemed like a foolish venture. The realities of June 14, 1971, were known to more people than I could have imagined, all of whom were intricately interconnected. It was inevitable that the truth of that morning would eventually surface. The first domino would fall and nobody would be spared by the fallout.

Carson Nash walked into the room, teeth clenched, his jaw muscles rolling up into his ears. He was in his mid-seventies, but only a grayer version of the man I had known as a boy. The forearms
extending beyond his rolled-up sleeves were thick, his belly stretched tight under his dress shirt. I stood and reached to shake his hand, which he regarded as though it was covered with canker sores. Pepper dropped his head. Carson sat at the head of the table, rolling a fist into an open palm, and it seemed to take him a moment to catch his composure. When that occurred, he turned to me and asked, “So, what's this shit all about?”

As I had expected, all eyes turned to me. “We've got a problem. Jack Vukovich was up on Chestnut Ridge the day Petey Sanchez . . .”

“I know that,” Carson interrupted. “I've known that for years. What's that got to do with anything?”

The heat of anger was creeping up my neck. “He's now ready to tell the world what really happened up there. If I pursue charges against him on another child molesting rap, he says he'll go public.”

“So, who in hell's going to believe him? He a fuckin' child molester.”

“He's going to produce a polygraph test that shows he did not kill Petey Sanchez. It's going to be ugly.”

“Then don't prosecute him. Let him go.”

“Just like that? Ignore the fact that he's molesting a mentally retarded boy?” Carson interlocked his fingers and squeezed his thick hands, staring hard, waiting for me to flinch. “That's not the only problem. There's a state investigative unit, the Main Street Task Force, which works on white-collar crime—banks, governmental agencies, nonprofits. I just found out that its investigators are looking into money being funneled to Vukovich. That's where things are going to get real ugly.”

Carson frowned. “What the hell's that mean?”

“It means someone is dipping into the till and sending money to Jack Vukovich. Their investigators don't care that Vukovich is the recipient; they're investigating the source of the money. My guess is it's either coming from the coffers of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, or one of the Botticellis, or from you, Mr. Nash.”

“Me! That's preposterous. Where in the hell did you get a crazy idea like that?”

“I saw the campaign contributions you've been making to the Botticellis—contributions in your name and the name of some
fictitious political action committee. The contributions began within days after Jack Vukovich was first arrested.”

“Don't ever let me hear those words come out of your mouth again,” he said, gripping the end of the conference table, his nostrils flaring.

“You can be upset with me if you like, but this is all going to blow up in our faces. I can't tell you how the money is getting to Vukovich, but it's clearly illegal or it wouldn't have the attention of the task force.”

He took a few deep breaths. “I'll talk to Botticelli. He can pull some strings and get the dogs called off.”

“If there's fraud involved, there's no way he'll get them to back off.”

Carson laughed in a mocking tone. “You obviously don't know the influence of Alfred Botticelli.”

“Maybe I don't, but I know how hungry reporters act. You think you can make this one go away, but once Vukovich gets his information to the media it will only be the beginning. Reporters will be swarming all over this place like you can't imagine. It'll be like dumping blood in shark-infested waters. They'll do stories about Petey Sanchez. They'll do stories about me, you, Adrian, Pepper, and Deak. None of us will be immune or excluded. They'll talk to Sky Kelso, they'll find out the bank was contributing liberally to the coffers of the Botticellis. It will be an ungodly mess.”

“It would seem, then, that you are the only person in the room that can control that. Make it go away.”

“I can't make the task force go away,” I said.

“I don't give a damn about the task force—I haven't given Vukovich a dime. But you can give Vukovich what he wants.”

“There's a kid who's been victimized, Mr. Nash. I don't think I can ignore that.”

“You can do anything you goddamn want. The last thirty years of our lives have been predicated on one event.” He held up an index finger. “Just one. Everything in our lives has grown from there. I did what I had to do. Yes, I paid off Botticelli. So what? A child molester went to prison and Adrian stayed clean. It isn't anything that any father in my position wouldn't have done. I've paid the Botticellis
every year since. I understand how protection money works. It's part of the price of admission. We've all lived around here. We're the ones who have driven past Chestnut Ridge a thousand times and got a sick feeling in our guts every time. You left. Now, all of a sudden it's become an inconvenience to you, so you want to throw us all under the bus.”

“I hardly think trying to keep Jack Vukovich from molesting another kid is throwing you under the bus.”

Carson Nash slammed his fist on the desk. “Then find a way to shut him up. Do something, but don't ruin our lives.”

“I'm waiting for DNA tests to return. If the tests are positive for Jack Vukovich's DNA, I'll prosecute. I'll have no choice. When I indict him, he'll go to the media.”

“You're a coward.”

My jaw dropped. “Coward? I've got a horse in this race, too, Mr. Nash. My campaign for attorney general goes down the tubes if this comes out.”

“In that case, you're not a coward. You're just stupid.”

*    *    *

Deak and I leaned against the fenders of our vehicles, arms folded across our chests, and watched as Adrian left in his ramshackle pickup truck, dropping over a curb without so much as a glance our way. Carson nodded as he got into his sedan and pulled out of the rear of the parking lot, exiting by the alley and heading toward the old homestead. Pepper came over and hoisted himself up on the fender of Deak's car. The sun was low to the west, balancing atop Chestnut Ridge, preparing to disappear into the Seneca Creek Valley.

“You were awful quiet in there,” I offered to Pepper.

He nodded and for a moment looked like he might be fighting back tears. “You know, I run a successful business, several successful businesses, actually, but when I get around that old man I'm like a whipped puppy. I walk into that conference room and I swear I would like to tear it to pieces. I've spent my entire adult life trying to prove my worth to that son of a bitch, and he can't stop polishing Adrian's high school trophies long enough to notice.”

“Don't blame your dad, Pepper; he can't help it,” I said.

“He can't help it? Are you kidding me?”

“He's a typical parent. He spends time and money on the one that needs the most attention, and that's Adrian. Your dad's fixation on him, though, has moved from admiration to pity. We've all moved on, but Adrian has retreated to a secure place where he can always be Adrian Nash and your dad enables him. Mentally and emotionally, Adrian hasn't progressed much past our senior year in high school. That was the apex of his life and he's content to live there.”

“He's just weak,” Pepper said. “My dad coddles Adrian and he's content just to be a bum. I don't believe all the psychological mumbo-jumbo. He's a bum, period.”

We sat in silence for a moment. We were, I'm sure, in agreement with Pepper's assessment of his brother, but were no less sad for our friend and brother. I asked, “Do you think things would have been different for Adrian if we hadn't run into Petey that day?”

Pepper shrugged. “I don't know. It probably contributed.”

“Probably contributed?” Deak asked. “I'd say it was central. Whatever demons Adrian struggles with are a direct result of that day.”

“We were all there,” I said. “We seem to be doing okay.”

“None of us threw the maul,” Deak said.

“He uses it as a crutch and to sponge off my dad,” Pepper said. “He needs to man up.”

We were silent for a long moment. I asked, “So, Botticelli has been squeezing both of you, too?”

They looked at each other. Pepper nodded. “Yeah, for about twenty years. The
Herald-Star
did a feature story on my businesses and that son of a bitch showed up in my office the next morning. It's a cash transaction. He hits me for ten grand a year. I'd have told him to kiss my bare ass, but you saw how my dad feels about this. I just hold my nose, pay it, and try to forget about it.”

Deak said, “He has never asked me for money. He said he didn't feel right about taking money from a man of the cloth. Once or twice a year he speaks at the church on Sunday mornings. There are upwards of eight hundred people in the sanctuary. He comes on the pretext of delivering a message, but it's nothing more than a thinly
veiled campaign rally. If Adrian had fifteen cents he'd have gone after him, too. You're up next. He'll go after you, especially if you win the election.”

“He intimated that this morning.”

Deak looked at me. “Remember after Petey died, and you said if we could just get enough time behind his death all would be well?”

Tick-tock, I thought. I nodded. “I missed on that one.”

“I think about that a lot. I think about what happened on Chestnut Ridge and the heavy price that's been paid.” Deak looked up at the hill where Petey Sanchez had died and the sun was now a half orb. “You went out of your way to protect Adrian, and what's it gotten us? What's it gotten you? Nothing but heartache.”

“The fact remains, we were trying to protect a friend.”

“But, was that the right call?” Pepper asked. “I mean, in retrospect, if we had gone to the cops that day, what's the worst that would have happened? Most likely, it would have been ruled self-defense and we'd all have gone on with our lives.”

“You can't look at decisions we made when we were fifteen years old through adult eyes,” I said. “We thought we were doing the right thing at the time.”

M
y bowels were rattling like castanets, a combination of nerves and too much caffeine. It was not unusual for my intestines to swing like an untethered fire hose when my nerves got the best of me, but at that moment it felt like a mariachi band was playing in my guts. I was working on my second roll of antacids since noon. I burped in staccato bursts and choked down the acid that gurgled into my throat and mouth. My ribs felt like they were constricted by leather straps, restricting each breath. I hadn't been able to fill my lungs in days.

All this because on a hilltop more than three decades before we had decided to surround the pocket and protect our friend and quarterback. Meanwhile, somewhere in a dive bar in eastern Ohio, Adrian Nash was filling his belly with beer and laughing and telling stories of heroics long past. In some perverted way, I felt Adrian wanted the information to come out to inflict pain on Pepper, Deak, and me for having moved on and made more of our lives than throwing perfect spirals on high school gridirons. How ironic, I thought, that Adrian Nash, the erstwhile would-be astronaut and congressman, the pride of the Crystalton High class of seventy-four, now had the least to lose. In fact, with his reputation gone, he had virtually nothing to lose.