Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (11 page)

To outsiders, the job of covering
something like the Davis trial likely appears to be more fun than
work—just sit around the court, listen to the excitement, and have
a few laughs. In truth, it ranks as a good example of the kind of
grind reporters face behind the scenes. For starters, the days ran
long. After sitting through eight hours of testimony, I then had to
digest it into a written version for the next morning's newspaper—a
job that usually kept me writing at the courthouse until nine or
ten each night. Moreover, turning the day's action into an
understandable story required sideline interviews with members of
the legal teams or, in some cases, the judge, who often agreed to
chat off the record. Since the court had not imposed a gag order,
Racehorse and one of the prosecutors usually held impromptu press
conferences in different corners of the courtroom after each day's
testimony. In addition, I had to oversee the work of another
reporter dispatched to cover the rest of the action at the
courthouse while I focused on that trial.

In short, I recall the Davis trial
as a marathon that worked me harder than any other story of my
career. In contrast, the courthouse slowed to a state of boredom a
year later, in the fall of 1979, when Catherine came into my life.
For me, she would provide proof for the old saying about idle hands
and the devil's workshop. I would often look back during the later
days of our fatal attraction to realize that, had I met her a year
before, I would not have had time for Catherine's
shenanigans.

The same week the Davis trial ended
at the courthouse, George Tedesco's bludgeoned body was found in
his condo across town.

FOURTEEN

Late 1960s

I've always believed the demands of
covering that Cullen Davis trial drove the final nail into the
coffin that had become my second marriage. It also underscored the
connection and conflicts between my professional and domestic
lives. But I also realize that my general attitude about marriage
and relationships likely doomed them from the start. Whenever
anyone asks why I was married twice, I usually smile and say: "I
guess I'm just not the marrying kind." I'm only half joking about
that line, and I am completely serious when I add: "I consider both
of my marriages successes."

Why do people get married? My
answer to that question evolved over the years to reflect the
events of my life. Before my first marriage in 1969, I thought
people should get married if they fall in love. After my first
divorce in 1973, I revised that theory. People should get married,
I decided, if they find someone really rich, or if one of them gets
pregnant. Then, when my second marriage ended in 1979—and I was
broke with two children—I revised my philosophy again. I concluded
the only real reason for marriage is to commit adultery.

As a teenager, I had planned never
to marry. I was so committed to that plan that the thought of
sexual activity terrified me for fear I might impregnate someone
who would saddle me with a kid. I had positive role models for
marriage in my parents. Although they fought occasionally, the
institution seemed to work well for them. It provided security for
my mom and a guarantee of companionship for the old man. But it
just didn't appeal to me. It simply looked like a tremendous bore.
I was determined to get out in the world, out of St. Louis, away
from the family business, and fulfill some fanciful dreams of
adventure. I saw marriage and family as an anchor that would hold
me down. Most normal folks likely would describe that view as
anti-American, sacrilegious, antisocial, or all three, but I really
didn't care. My religion was agnostic, and my goal was to
experience life.

Eventually, however, in failing to
stay unmarried, I did learn that marriage and family constitute a
special sort of adventure—one of life's experiences I am glad to
have survived. As a result, I do consider both of my marriages as
successes that provided the kind of emotional education unavailable
through any alternative experience. I still recommend it to all my
younger friends nervous about taking such a serious step. "Try it,"
I tell them. "If it doesn't work, you can always do something else.
It won't be the end of the world."

I know that
Domestic Gary
began to
emerge during my junior year of college. But even with hindsight, I
don't really understand how the first marriage happened, and I bet
my first wife would agree to some confusion about that as well. The
best explanation might just be because there was nothing else to
do. We met at the start of my junior year at Mizzou in 1967. She
was a freshman just hanging around her dormitory when I called
looking for another girl I had dated the year before. Classes
hadn't even started yet. She answered the phone and said she
couldn't find the girl I wanted.

"You'll do," I said. "How do you
look? Want to come out to a party?"

She hesitated only a heartbeat,
then answered with a confident: "You'll like me. Let's go." She was
destined to become wife number one.

When I introduced her to my
roommates, one of them noted her uncanny resemblance to the 1930s
flapper cartoon character Betty Boop—flashing doe eyes, infectious
smile, puffy cheeks, a football helmet hair cut, and, most
importantly, an attitude of independence. It didn't hurt that she
also packed a pair of thirty-eights. Of course, Boop automatically
became her nickname. And as we became better acquainted, she found
a way to humor me by playing a little game with Betty Boop's
trademark buzz phrase: "Boop-oop-a-doop." If I asked nicely, she
would say it for me and shake her hips like the cartoon. It could
have been pretty corny, but she managed to pull it off, creating
another level of comfort with her.

Boop entered my life at a
particularly unsettled point, and I've always given her a lot of
credit for my career. In the beginning, I wanted to do well for
her. She provided motivation. I wanted to impress her. I was
showing off for her. And in the process, I proved to myself how
good I really should be.

At the start of my junior year I stood at a
personal crossroads. I had burned out on school. I was just
starting my journalism curriculum after two years of preliminary
coursework, and it was proving pretty much of a basics bore that
would not trigger my excitement until later when I actually started
reporting. I seriously considered dropping out and heading for
Vietnam.

Boop did not arrive in a loveless vacuum. I
had endured at least three serious relationships to that point. A
high school sweetheart sat heartbroken in St. Louis, and a Mizzou
co-ed had broken my heart by dumping me the year before to stick
with her high school boyfriend. Then, there was a girl named Pixie
attending one of the girls colleges in Columbia. Everyone should
have an old girlfriend named Pixie. She was still in the picture at
the start of the year, and for a while I juggled her with Boop. But
Boop won out with her reaction when I told her I had decided to go
steady with Pixie. She laughed in my face. So I broke up with Pixie
and went steady with Boop.

Just as our relationship grew
tighter, my best friends started peeling off to lives of their own.
Suddenly one day, I looked around to realize my entourage had
boiled away to myself, my last remaining roommate, and Boop. But
Boop was two years behind. I realized I had started thinking in
terms of "us" when I noticed I had decided I needed to resolve the
future.

So, in a drunken haze one night at
a party, I slobbered something like, "We should get married." I
expected her sarcastic laugh again, but instead I got a wink and a
nod. She, too, had reached a point where she wanted something new
for a lifestyle. I had already agreed to take that job in Flint and
the options seemed clear. We either got married or broke up.
Marriage suddenly looked like a pretty interesting adventure of its
own.

The next week found us making
wedding plans with her astonished father in Kansas City. He didn't
look that thrilled, and I guessed he had always imagined his
daughter as a college graduate rather than a newspaper reporter's
wife in Flint, Michigan. My sympathy for his plight grew even
larger a few years later when I calculated we probably got divorced
before he had finished paying for the full-blown church ceremony of
June 8, 1969.

FIFTEEN

Early 1970s

With my student deferment gone and
Vietnam looming just ahead, Boop and I approached our move to Flint
with a fatalistic view. We figured we'd go up, learn about sharing
a life, have a good time, and keep an open mind about the future.
We packed everything we owned into a trailer and pulled it to Flint
one sunny day in June behind the black 1966 Mustang I had bought
with money saved from my part-time jobs. She wanted to continue
school up there, working at that point toward some kind of a degree
in psychology. But we learned she would not qualify for the
affordable Michigan resident tuition until we had lived there a
year, and we couldn't afford it until then. But she didn't seem all
that upset and found a job in a shoe repair shop just around the
corner from The Flint Journal. We rented a furnished apartment just
outside Flint and drove back and forth together each day in that
Mustang. We settled in to wait on the draft.

Those times in
Flint formed the kind of idyllic salad days on which many couples
usually build their lives together. We struggled some financially
but learned to live within our means. And many times when I have
needed to find peace in the midst of some later life hassle, I have
retreated in my mind back to that time when the world stood filled
with promise. Just as she had at Mizzou, Boop became one of the
"guys"—a mascot at
The Flint
Journal
. Several nights each week, staffers
would gather at a bar beside the shoe shop to blast away the
stress, and she fit right in. By the time we left in 1971, she had
become so engrained that a fellow reporter felt obliged to include
her in the final scene of a farewell movie he'd prepared for my
departure party. He ended that film by telling the crowd, "Here's
the real reason we tolerated Taylor these past two years." Then his
film cut to a long shot of Boop walking away from the
Journal
building, twisting
her ass in a miniskirt, and looking back over a shoulder to
wink.

But our relationship had started to
change in a subtle way even before we entertained thoughts of
leaving Flint. The catalyst came in the surprising form of my draft
lottery victory, the one that placed my birthday so far from the
front that we could finally plan on a long-term future without an
interruption for the draft or Vietnam. We suddenly had to face a
troubling question: Had we really expected a concept as serious as
long-term? We should have been overjoyed with the lottery as a
deliverance, and, on the surface, we appeared to celebrate. But we
never discussed the doubts. For the first time, however, I got
scared about commitment, and I believe she did, too. Those doubts
stormed to the surface as we questioned our next moves. Buy a
house? Have a baby? Buy furniture? Get into debt? Meanwhile, we
privately confronted the more basic question each on our own: What
did we really want with our lives? In lieu of an answer, we just
marched along.

Boop enrolled at the Flint campus for the
University of Michigan while I focused on my job. She seemed
pointed to the future. Then I came to a conclusion that I needed to
move on to a bigger challenge in a place with a better climate.
Although she wanted to finish school, Boop agreed to relocate our
shared life adventure, provided I found a place interesting enough
to her. Houston worked for both of us.

Once again we couldn't afford the
out-of-state tuition in Texas, so she had to find a job and wait a
year to become a resident. This time, however, she wanted something
more interesting than shoe repair and found it teaching in a school
for retarded children south of town. We bought a second car for her
and began our lives again. I worked nights at the police station
while she worked days in the school. After a year, we woke up one
morning to discover we really didn't know each other anymore. Boop
had the courage to be the first to voice a doubt, and it took me by
surprise.

"There's a problem, Gary and I
don't know what it is," she said one day in December of 1972. "But
this just isn't working any more. Something has to
change."

Despite our
liberated view of the world on the surface, we still clung to those
Midwestern values that considered divorce an unspeakable
word.
But what was wrong with me?
I wondered. My self-esteem flushed down the
toilet, and I decided to give myself a thorough character exam. In
the end I determined the problem: In my focus on the future, I had
become a square. I was an old man at the age of twenty-four. I
didn't even listen to rock music any more. And who knows how I
performed in bed? All these things, I decided, would have to
change.

By the time Boop finally left in
March of 1973, I was prepared for the end. We had been to a party
the night before. We woke up on Sunday and made love. Then she told
me she planned to rent an apartment that afternoon. I chuckled as I
remembered a teasing comment from a friend at that party. When he
asked Boop to name her favorite song, he said, she had looked at me
and sighed: "I Can't Get No Satisfaction."