KooKooLand (34 page)

And it turned out she had a real knack for it. She filled our bedroom closet with stolen loot. Rolling Stones records. British rock magazines. Black stockings. Black boots. Black miniskirts. More black stockings.

One day Virginia came home from school looking big as a house. Under her baggy, black, Greek-lady coat she was wearing several layers of S-E-X-Y black clothes with the tags chewed off.

“He's never gonna let you wear any of that stuff,” I choked.

“I change on my way to school, dummkopf,” she said. “Hitler doesn't have a clue what I'm wearing. And if you don't wanna be the laughingstock of sixth grade, you'll do the same thing.”

She was older and knew the score so I did what she said. I changed in doorways, behind bushes, between cars. Virginia let me borrow anything that she didn't have first dibs on.

We were the two grooviest-looking birds in the projects.

Then it all came crashing down. Like a numbskull, Virginia wrote a note to her best friend, Carol, explaining why she was swiping all those black stockings. The reason being she'd read in one of those British magazines that Mick Jagger fancied birds in black stockings.

Carol's mother found the note and gave it to Jimmy. The old lady was getting back at Virginia. The week before, Virginia had told Carol she thought her mom and Jimmy were jumping each other's bones and Carol had gone and repeated it to her old lady. Carol's mother denied it, but, of course, we found out later that Virginia was right.

After Jimmy got that note, he came barreling into the house. It was pretty late. Shirley had already left for work. I was in the top bunk, reading a Nancy Drew. Virginia was rolling her hair up in OJ cans. Sylvester was batting one of the cans around on the floor.

We knew by the pounding of Jimmy's footsteps on the stairs that something bad was about to happen. He charged into the room and lunged for Virginia. He yanked an OJ can out of her hair, taking some hair with it.

She screamed and Sylvester dove under the bed.

“You know who wears black stockings?” he bellowed at her. “Goddamn whores! Goddamn whores!”

He began to pull all our clothes out of the closet. Not just the stuff Virginia had stolen. Everything. He spat on the clothes. He ripped up the black stockings. He tore the magazines to shreds. He snapped the Rolling Stones albums like they were potato chips. He decapitated my Ringo doll.

“Daddy don't Daddy don't Daddy don't,” I wailed. But he just kept destroying everything he could get his hands on.

The whole time Virginia didn't say a word and that enraged him even more.

He grabbed her hair and dragged her down the stairs.

I followed, whimpering.

“Daddy don't Daddy don't Daddy don't.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he screamed at Virginia.

She was as silent as the Mummy. She didn't cry. She just glared at him. I
was used to seeing her crumple when Jimmy got mad. But now she was sixteen going on seventeen and he could go to hell.

The more defiant Virginia got, the angrier Jimmy became.

“Say something, you little bitch!” he yelled.

She didn't say a word. She just kept staring at him like she wanted to stick a shank in his breadbasket.

Jimmy pushed her to the floor and grabbed her bare feet.

“Goddamn black stockings! Goddamn whore!” he kept shouting, and began to yank her around by her feet.

“Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” I begged him.

“Shut up! Your sister's a goddamn whore and a goddamn thief!”

He kept dragging her around, but she still didn't say a word.

Finally, he dropped her feet like they were napalm.

“Get on your knees,” he told her. “Get on your goddamn knees.”

She didn't move.

“Do what he says,” I cried. “Just do what he says.”

Virginia struggled to sit up and got on her knees like she was about to start praying.

He stood over her.

“Say you respect me.”

She didn't say a word.

He slapped her face.

“Say it. Say you respect me.”

She didn't say it.

He slapped her again.

“Say you respect me. Say it or I'll put a bullet through your goddamn head.”

“Say it!” I screamed.

She glared up at him.

“I respect you,” she said, her voice dripping with insincerity.

“Say it again.”

“I respect you.”

“Say it again.”

“I respect you.”

Each time she said it she sounded more disrespectful. I thought he was gonna plug her for sure. But just her saying it seemed to satisfy him.

“Now get your ass upstairs and clean up that mess. I want you to throw all that crap in the garbage.”

Virginia got off her knees and we both went back upstairs.

“My own daughter's a goddamn whore,” he called after us.

“He's the one who's fooling around, not me,” Virginia said under her breath.

We salvaged what we could and threw out the rest. I kept Ringo's head. Virginia kept a pair of black stockings.

A
fter that, Virginia became even more sullen.

“I'm just counting the days,” she told me. “Counting the days till I'm eighteen and out of this hellhole.”

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“England. Where else, dummkopf?”

“How will you get there, dummkopf? It costs a lotta dough.”

“I'll take a bus to New York and then stow away on a boat,” she said.

We knew where the boats to Europe left from because we'd gone there to see YaYa and Papou off. Every few years they went back to Greece to lord it over the relatives who still lived in the old country.

Virginia's plan got me to thinking. She had only one year and three months to go until she was eighteen, the age when kids were free to tell their parents to screw off. But I'd just turned twelve. I didn't think I could make it six years without ending up six feet under.

So I hatched a plan with Tina. We'd run away to England too. We'd become go-go dancers. I'd marry Ringo. She'd marry Paul.

I packed some supplies—Skippy peanut butter, Ritz crackers, Chuckles, and Lipton tea bags 'cause I'd heard English people guzzled tea like Pepsi.

One day after school I stole a double sawbuck from Shirley's purse while she was sleeping. Then I snuck out the back door with my suitcase.

Tina was waiting for me. She held a pillowcase filled with Fig Newtons, Twinkies, Lorna Doones, and a Bible. We began to trudge toward the downtown bus station a few miles away.

It was freezing cold and I was hungry and the suitcase was heavy. I kept shifting it from one hand to the other. Tina was dragging her pillowcase on the ground.

The truth was the whole thing was doomed from the start, but neither of us wanted to admit it.

After getting about halfway there, I turned to Tina.

“We started too late,” I said. “It'll be dark by the time we get there.”

Tina looked relieved.

“We shouldn't have left before dinner,” she said.

“Maybe we should go back,” I suggested.

Tina was already turning around.

The trip back seemed harder and longer. I could see my dream of freedom receding with every step.

Tina and I said good-bye, vowing to try another day.

I snuck the suitcase back into the house and the money back into Shirley's purse.

It would be a long time until I gained my freedom.

Hank, on the other hand, looked like he might be going free any day.

His lawyer, Stanley Brown, filed a motion for him to be released from the hospital. Brown presented reports from three headshrinkers saying Hank was now as sane as anybody and should be let out.

It had been less than two and a half years since the murders.

The newspaper was once again filled with stories about Hank and I pored over each one.

Dr. Harry Kozol, the big-shot headshrinker who had helped convince the grand jury that Hank was nuts, now said Hank was “a very sober man.”

“I am certain that this man, out in society . . . will not do something weird or twisted or harmful,” he testified.

In fact, the big shot had changed his mind about what had caused Hank to stab two people in the first place. He'd originally thought Hank was a paranoid schizophrenic—a term I had to get Jimmy to explain. But now he just felt Hank had had a lousy, rotten marriage.

“He reacted to a long stress, causing him to crack. I doubt very many men could stand this so long.”

It didn't seem to matter that Hank was no longer under the homicide-inducing stress of being married to Doris when he killed her. Apparently just having been married to her all those years was enough. But now that she was out of the way he was hunky-dory.

When Hank appeared before the hospital staff to discuss his possible release he said the main thing he had been guilty of in the past was putting his wife on a pedestal. His manner was described as aggressive and hostile, and he even talked about the county attorney being out to get him.

Nobody seemed to hold any of that against him.

Of course there were still some people who didn't want Hank to go free. The assistant attorney general. The family of John Betley. And the do-gooders who thought Hank shoulda fried in the first place.

But the law was clear. If the headshrinkers said Hank was OK there was nothing anyone could do to keep him locked up.

On August 3, 1966, Hank was paroled from the nuthouse. He had to see a headshrinker and a probation officer for a little while, but that was it.

“Doris must be turning over in her goddamn grave,” said Shirley, and I knew she was really PO'd 'cause usually she didn't curse.

“Am I gonna have to call Hank Uncle Hank now?” I sulked.

I was sitting crouched by the TV. We were watching the Red Sox and I was all set to switch the channel bingo bango if Jimmy came home.

“Over my dead body,” Shirley said.

Before long, Hank came over to have a drink with Jimmy. I kept my distance and eavesdropped on them from the kitchen.

“You dodged a bullet, you sonofabitch,” said Jimmy. “I hope you gave Stanley Brown a big frickin' tip.”

“He got paid good. He didn't need a goddamn tip.”

“You didn't throw him a little extra, you cheap Polack?”

“Don't start bugging me, Greek. I gotta keep my nose clean. I can't get into any goddamn fights.”

“You're too old to fight me now, Polack. You're almost fifty. You're an old buck. Hell, my kid could take you. That's right, a skinny little girl could take you.”

“Shut up. I'm warning you.”

“I can ride you like crazy. I can ride you like goddamn Seabiscuit,” Jimmy laughed, “and you can't do a goddamn thing about it.”

“Screw you, Greek,” Hank snapped, and walked out the door.

“Whatsa matter? They take away your sense of humor in the cracker factory?” Jimmy called after him.

Hank didn't answer. He didn't look back. He just drove away.

“Maybe he won't come back,” I said hopefully.

“He'll be back. He's just gotta cool down like a racehorse,” Jimmy said.

Jimmy was right. Hank cooled down and they were still buddies.

But for a guy used to getting into fights all the time, not being able to get into one was gonna be a tall order.

Not long after he walked out on Jimmy, Hank slipped into a bar called Cecille's. He sat by himself, drinking and minding his own business.

Three egghead college boys from out of town were yukking it up near him.
They didn't know who the hell Hank Piasecny was. All they saw was an old buck in a fedora hat. That hat cracked them up. They rode him about it like goddamn Seabiscuit.

Hank sat there steaming mad.

Fortunately, a guy Hank knew, Butch, was also in the bar. Butch came over and asked Hank why he didn't clock those punks. When Hank explained his predicament, Butch got mad too.

He clocked the punks for Hank. One. Two. Three.

“I wish I'd been there,” said Jimmy when Hank gave him the blow-by-blow the next time he stopped by. “I woulda stuck my Nazi knife in them and dumped their bodies at sea. The world woulda had three less eggheads. Good riddance, fish bait.”

Hank laughed pretty hard at that and they drank a toast to Butch.

If Hank couldn't defend his honor, there were still a lot of guys around who would do the job for him.

But not every social outing turned out so well for him.

Soon after, Jimmy invited Hank to go out clubbing with him and Shirley, just like in the old days. Hank was going stag, but Jimmy assured him there were lots of desperate broads at the joint they were going to who would go for an old buck like him.

As usual, Jimmy made Shirley try on a bunch of dresses before they left. I helped her zip and unzip them, getting the fabric caught in the zipper a few times 'cause Jimmy kept telling us to hurry the hell up. Hank was meeting them at the club and Jimmy didn't want to keep the big shot waiting.

When they got to the club, though, none of the desperate broads wanted to fox-trot with Hank. They didn't want those hands that had ventilated two people wrapped around their rib cage. One by one, they turned Hank down. Jimmy whispered to Shirley to get her ass up and dance with Hank so he didn't look like a palooka. Shirley did as she was told, praying that the song would be a short one. While they were dancing, the owner of the joint, a Greek guy, came over to Jimmy. He asked Jimmy to please, please not bring Hank in there again 'cause he was scaring all the women. He asked real nice 'cause he knew Jimmy had a temper. He promised Jimmy free drinks whenever he wanted and that got Jimmy to go along with the plan. When Hank and Shirley returned to the table, Jimmy was already standing up.

“Let's blow this joint,” he said to Hank. “I shouldn't have taken you to such a dive. You couldn't pay me to sleep with these broads.”