KooKooLand (28 page)

I could hear Shirley sobbing and Jimmy telling her to shut up.

Then I caught some words that the guy on the radio was saying.

Henry Piasecny. Fatal stabbing. Two people. Family home.

I felt myself go stiff and limp at the same time.

I strained to make out more words. One victim was a woman.

Please don't let it be Susan, I prayed. Please don't let it be Susan.

Then I heard Jimmy's voice.

“That goddamn bitch had it coming.”

That's how I learned it was Doris. Doris and some guy clueless enough to mess around with the woman Hank Piasecny was still carrying a torch for.

I edged out into the hall, trying to hear more details, but the announcer had moved on to the weather. A cold snap was on the way.

Jimmy came storming out of his bedroom and spotted me.

“Get back in your goddamn room!” he shouted.

Shirley flew out of the bedroom after him. The faint smear of rouge on her cheeks was streaky with tears.

“Everything's fine,” she croaked.

They raced down the stairs and I could hear Jimmy slamming around.

“Goddamn Doris. Why didn't she stay in goddamn KooKooLand? Why did she have to show her painted Injun face around here again?”

“I can't believe it. I can't believe it,” Shirley kept saying.

A short while later, Jimmy left the house carrying his rifle. He hadn't planned on going hunting, but he told Shirley he really needed to shoot something to take his mind off poor Hank's predicament or he'd go off his rocker himself.

I watched from my bedroom window as he scraped ice off the windshield, his steamy breath pouring out with every angry scrape.

After he drove away, I crept downstairs and found Shirley smoking a cancer stick and drinking a highball and staring into space. She snapped out of it when she saw me and put on a smile.

“Who wants
blueberry
pancakes?”

I was taken aback. Usually she only made blueberry pancakes for special occasions like my birthday.

“OK,” I said, figuring this qualified as a special occasion.

While Shirley got out the fixings for pancakes, I pumped her for more information.

“Do you think Susan knows? Does she know her mommy's dead?”

“I suppose she does by now.”

“Where's Hank? Did the coppers get him?

“He was arrested, honey. But don't you pay any attention to this. These are big-people problems.”

“I wanna see Susan,” I blurted out. “I bought her a snow globe at the beach and I wanna give it to her for Christmas.”

“I don't think she'll be having much of a Christmas this year.”

“I hate Hank! I don't care if he is a millionaire!”

“I never liked him,” admitted Shirley. “I never liked the way he looked at me. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.” Then she quickly added, “Don't tell your father I said that.”

“Maybe Susan's back from college. Maybe she wants to come over.”

“She can't come over. She needs to be with her family.”

“It's not fair! I wanna see her.”

“I'm sure Daddy will take you to see her when things have settled down.”

She mixed up another highball and I turned on the kitchen radio to listen for more news about Hank and the murders. Shirley lowered the volume so it wouldn't wake Virginia, who smoked and read magazines till all hours and hated getting up in the morning. I stuffed myself with blueberry pancakes and then studied the reflection of my blue tongue in the toaster and wondered if that's what it would look like when I was dead. After breakfast, I continued to hover by the radio, while Shirley drank and defrosted the refrigerator. I watched as she placed pots of boiling water in the iced-up freezer and then chipped away at the melting ice with a large butcher knife. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if that knife sliced through my body like what had happened to Doris.

Over the next few days, I couldn't stop thinking about the murders and about poor Susan. I pumped Jimmy for information and poured over the front-page
Union Leader
stories written by a newsman who was an old racetrack buddy of Jimmy's. I pieced together the details as best as I could but it wasn't easy. There were all sorts of rumors flying around. Everywhere you went people were talking about the murders and everyone had an opinion. Some thought Hank Piasecny should get his goddamn keister fried and some thought he should get a goddamn medal. Like I said, everyone had an opinion. But some things nobody could know for sure 'cause the only people who would know the truth were either dead or possibly off their rocker.

So, here's what happened, sort of.

T
hat Friday night as Shirley and I were trimming our scrawny tree, Susan's mom, Doris, was getting all dolled up to go out on the town. She was forty-two, three years older than Shirley, but lots of people said she still looked like a million bucks. It was December 13, 1963—Friday the thirteenth, one of the few days Jimmy steered clear of the bookie joint and a day I always considered myself lucky to get through without anybody dying on me.

Doris wrapped herself up in a fur coat Hank had bought her when they were still married and headed on over to a local cocktail lounge, the Venice Room. She began drinking a few stiff ones with a half dozen of her friends. Some of the friends were married and some weren't, and the ones that weren't were most likely on the make. Shortly after midnight, a big-shot architect named John Betley came into the bar for a nightcap. At fifty, John had four years on Hank, but that wasn't all he had on him. He was better looking and college-smart and more hoity-toity than Hank. Jimmy said he was a real lady-killer and normally that was a compliment, but not in this case.

“He thought he was better than us working stiffs,” Jimmy said, “but Hank showed him who was boss.”

I dug up as much as I could about John Betley. I learned he was the only boy in a Catholic family of five kids. He'd gone to a fancy architecture school all the way over in London, England. During World War II, he'd been an officer, fighting the dirty rotten Nazis all over Europe and getting all sorts of medals. He'd never had a ball and chain and still lived with his parents and Jimmy said that made him a mama's boy.

On that Friday night, he'd eaten a lobster dinner at home with his parents, which made me think they must be loaded. After dinner, he took off in his sleek white convertible. I don't think he was looking for trouble like Jimmy and Hank often were. I figured he was probably just looking for fun.

He arrived at the nearby Venice Room for a nightcap, and spotted Doris and her friends. He joined them. Maybe he was lonely and wanted some company. Maybe Doris had her eye on him and drew him over like the floozy Jimmy
said she was. Either way, he didn't plan to stay long. The place was closing at one and he told everyone he was going back home to bed. But the others weren't ready to call it a night. Doris invited them all back to her house. The house with the bad lawn that was now frozen solid. The house she got in the divorce and was gonna sell soon 'cause now she would be residing in KooKooLand, where the lawns were always soft and green. John said he didn't want to go to Doris's place, but his drinking buddies wouldn't take no for an answer. He finally agreed to go for a quick one.

Nobody noticed that the back door of Doris's house had been forced open. They were probably having too much fun. John didn't just have one drink and twenty-three skidoo. He stuck around. Finally, everyone else took off. Doris and John were left alone in the living room.

But, they weren't really alone. Hank was hiding in the house, listening to them. Some people, like my friend Tina, said they were having S-E-X. Some people said they weren't. Jimmy said bullshit, of course they were, 'cause what else would a whore and a ladies' man be doing alone together at five in the goddamn morning. That was when Hank came out of his hiding place and, as he told Jimmy some time later, ordered John to get the hell out of his goddamn house. John, he said, told him
he
should get out, that the house didn't belong to him anymore and that he should buzz off and leave Doris alone.

Hank didn't say what Doris's reaction was to his showing up. No doubt, if she was half-lit, Hank's appearance would've sobered her right up. After all, she knew better than anybody what Hank was capable of. It was one year to the day since she'd gone and squealed to the coppers. Gone and gotten an order from a judge to keep him the hell away. A piece of goddamn paper that Hank had said frick you to many times by showing up at the house anyway since the coppers always went easy on him. Ever since then, Doris had told people, had even told Susan, that it was only a matter of time before Hank did her in. She told Susan that Goodwin Funeral Home should handle all the arrangements. She didn't want her daughter to be at a loss when D-day came and Hank blew her brains out.

Except he didn't use a gun, which Jimmy said would've been too goddamn easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel or jacking a baby deer. Hank gave them a fighting chance, said Jimmy. He used an ordinary kitchen knife. Well, two ordinary kitchen knives. Knives that used to be his knives from a kitchen that used to be his kitchen.

Maybe John Betley wasn't looking for trouble that night, but trouble found him anyway. I wondered, if he hadn't stood up to Hank, whether he might still
be alive. But any guy who had defended his country against an army of bullies sure as hell wasn't gonna walk away from just one. One who was shorter than him and who probably seemed like somebody he could take. But unfortunately for John, Hank was good and mad. And, from what I could tell, when somebody was good and mad it made them big and strong.

Jimmy thought Hank had every reason to be good and mad.

“In the old country, if a wife cheated on her husband and ruined his good name, she disappeared,” he said to me the night after the murders. “She fell off a goddamn cliff or something, and nobody asked any goddamn questions. That's the way it's been for thousands of years. A man's wife embarrasses him, she pays the price. Sayonara, baby.”

“But Doris wasn't Hank's wife anymore,” I pointed out.

“Don't be an idiot,” Jimmy replied. “Hank's a goddamn Catholic. Even if he never went to church. To Catholics, divorce is a goddamn sin. Once you marry somebody, even if she's a whore like Doris, you're stuck with her. That stupid church and Hank's old lady drummed that into his squash ever since he was a pip-squeak. So if you ask me, it's their goddamn fault he carved up Doris and her big-shot boyfriend. Maybe they oughta lock up his mother and the goddamn pope.”

I nodded because I didn't want Jimmy to think I disagreed with him. But I didn't really see how Hank's mother and the goddamn pope could be blamed for what Hank did. They weren't anywhere near the house with the bad lawn.

Hank was the one who killed two people.

Here's how he did it.

He stabbed John thirteen times, in the lungs, liver, all over his breadbasket. He stabbed him through the palm of his hand, probably as John tried to defend himself and Doris. He stabbed Doris eleven times. The blow that killed her went right into her heart. He left the knife sticking out of her chest. Maybe he couldn't get it out, or maybe he just wanted to leave it in there like some warrior planting his flag on the battlefield. The newspaper said Hank and Doris's marriage had been like a twenty-three-year war. It had looked like Doris had won the battle, but Hank pulled a sneak attack and had come out on top.

John bled to death on the floor between the living room and the dining room. Doris was attacked in the kitchen and laundry room. The cops figured John was killed first and then Doris.

I tried to imagine how long Doris had to watch the bloodbath, how long it had taken Hank to stab John thirteen times. When no one was around, I ran an experiment to find out. I opened Jimmy's special drawer in the kitchen. The
drawer had nothing but knives in it. Knives of every shape and size for cutting up anything from a buck to a flounder. Some of the knives were rusty and some were shiny. Some still had dried blood on them. I picked a good-sized one and pretended I was Hank. I sliced into thin air and timed myself with Jimmy's stopwatch. Allowing for the time I figured it would take to yank the knife out of human flesh, I was amazed to see that Hank could've done it in under fifteen seconds. Even so, that still would've left Doris enough time to escape. Maybe that's what she was trying to do when she went toward the kitchen, since the back door was in that direction. Or maybe she was going for a knife of her own to fight Hank off.

There was no real way of knowing the details. Hank was the only one left who'd been there and his recollection wasn't so hot. Or so he said. Some time later he told Jimmy the whole goddamn thing was like a dream. He said he woke up at one point and he was on the floor. Doris was standing over him telling him everything was OK and that they should get married again. Then he realized he was standing over her body, and she was the one lying dead on the floor.

So he twenty-three skidooed.

He got into his truck and drove off into the early-morning darkness, leaving the house ablaze with lights. He headed out onto the turnpike and drove toward his sports shop. Near the Amoskeag Bridge, not far from the store, he crashed his truck into a guardrail. Maybe he was trying to kill himself, or maybe he was just driving like a maniac and lost control. He abandoned the truck there and walked the rest of the way.

A short while later, a state trooper was flagged down by a passing driver who reported seeing an accident on the other side of the turnpike. When the trooper got to the scene, all he found was a smashed-up truck. No people, no bodies, nothing. Fortunately, the truck had the name of Hank's store written on the side, so the trooper sped on over there.

The trooper pulled up in front of the sports center at about seven a.m. The lights in the store were off, but it was light enough out that he could see inside. He spotted Hank stumbling around the back of the store. Guns and ammo had been knocked or shoved all over the place. Hank appeared to be bleeding from a head wound and trying to sop up the blood with a paper towel. The trooper tried the door, but it was locked. He banged on the door. Hank looked over and gestured for him to buzz off. The trooper realized this wasn't gonna be a routine traffic accident. He got on his radio and called for backup.