Winter of frozen dreams (6 page)

There was no evidence that Harry Berge had ever been there.

— 14 —

When Barbara Hoffman found the entrance to her apartment sealed and padlocked by the Madison police, she raged. She stomped to Rennebohms, a drugstore-coffee shop at the end of the block, phoned Al Mackey, then plopped into a vinyl-upholstered booth and ordered hot tea with honey. A newspaper headline distracted her fury. The discovery of Harry Berges body, accompanied by

a fuzzy photograph of the snowbank at Tomahawk Ridge, was splashed across the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal. She dug a quarter out of her purse and bought a paper. Two articles reported the recovery of the body— battered about the head and genital areas—and a brief biographical sketch of the victim. A man had been detained for questioning, but no charges were imminent. Neither Barbara Hoffman nor Jerry Davies was named in print.

When Al Mackey arrived, he informed Barbara that he'd been on the phone with the DA. Her apartment would be unsealed in a few hours.

And what was she supposed to do until then? Barbara wanted to know. Her voice was more sanguine than the words indicated.

They needed to decide what to do next, Mackey said. The DA soft-pedaled the search. He'd be sending a copy of the search warrant to Mackey s office. The cops were told the body was originally found in Barbara s bathroom, so naturally they were going to conduct a thorough check. It was their job. Of course the DA would like to talk to Barbara. He said they currently had no suspects.

Mackey and Barbara discussed strategy and decided to comply. They reasoned it would look better if Barbara appeared voluntarily for questioning, with Mackey present as her lawyer. She would admit to coming home from work and finding a dead body in her bathroom but nothing more.

Since tax and probate statutes were Mackey s area of expertise, they solicited another opinion. Eric Schulenberg was an attorney who shared office space with Mackey, and he had experience in criminal law. On their way to the City-County Building, they consulted Schulenberg about their course of action.

He immediately nixed their plans. His advice was that Barbara should make no statement to the police and she should not cooperate with their investigation.

His counsel was heeded.

— 15 —

By midday of December 26th Harry Berge had thawed, and Dr. Billy Bauman, the county pathologist, conducted an autopsy. It confirmed what seemed obvious.

Multiple blunt-force injuries sustained by the head, face, and left side of the neck resulted in brain concussion, edema, and death. Furthermore, the head contusions were complicated by a severe pulmonary vascular congestion. Vomitus was present in the nose, mouth, and lungs. The eyes were blackened from hematoma. A superficial scrape four-and-a-half centimeters long was visible at the base of the neck, left side, consistent with what could have been caused by a fingernail s scratch, and was received prior to death. The abrasions and hemorrhage suffered by the genitalia occurred antemortem.

Berge was dead when placed in a cold environment, and exposure was not a factor in his death. The small bruises and contusions evident on his legs and torso were incurred after his expiration. Carcinoma of the right kidney was discovered, but the condition, though advanced, did not contribute to the victims death. It was doubtful Berge was aware of the internal malignancy, and a check of his medical records did not show diagnosis or treatment. Bauman doubted Berge would have survived for a year if the cancer had continued untreated.

An examination of his gastric contents indicated that Harry Berge died within one to one-and-a-half hours after ingesting a large meal. A detailed analysis would show the food in his stomach was ham, cheese, beans from a three-bean salad, and coffee.

A biography of Harry Berge appeared as straightforward as the physiological causes of his death. He was the younger of two children born to a Norwegian Lutheran farm family in the Koshkonong River valley. The community was small and bound closely by a common heritage, a belief in hard work, and a strong connection to the land.

Berge's boyhood was an endless series of farm chores,

broken by trout fishing in the back streams, quail and rabbit hunting in the autumn brush. Books were of little interest, but he was good at tinkering with machines, repairing old radios or small engines, and patching together spare parts to keep the tractor and the pickup truck running. Upon graduation from high school in 1943, Berge opted to stay on the farm, harvesting hay and corn and soybeans and milking a small herd of guernsey cows. While other farmers in the valley did well, the Berges barely got by. Their property was neither large nor choice, and the family eked out a meager living from the marginal land. Frugality and thrift got them through hard times. Alma Berges wizardry in the garden ensured sustenance but little else.

On Fridays the Berges ate lutefisk in the basement of the local church, where neighbors conversed in Norski, strummed guitars, wheezed accordions, strapped bells to their ankles and wrists, and strutted in the traditional dances as the smell of beer and fried fish wafted through the valley. The family attended the Rock County Fair each August, but rarely did they exhibit more than Almas gooseberry or raspberry-rhubarb pies.

Family life was in Harry Berges blood but not in his destiny. The mortgage and the tractor installments, the seed and feed and fertilizer bills axed the family's income by a wider notch each season, and finally the tree tumbled, their precarious financial balance tipped, and the Berges was forced to abandon their farm. On November 9, 1966, they sold the homestead and moved into Stoughton. Harry Berge was forty-one years old. It was the saddest day of his life.

The parents retired. Berge took a job as a forklift operator on the second shift at the local UniRoyal plant. The family settled into a white A-frame house, which, with one neighbor, was wedged between an A&W drive-in restaurant and a tractor and farm implements store. But the parents did not adapt to town living. Berges father died of kidney failure a year after the move, and four years later his mother succumbed to a heart attack.

Harry Berge had never slept more than a week under a roof not shared by his mother. Suddenly, at age forty-six, he was alone. To his sisters recollection, Harry never dated, and his celibacy seemed perfectly natural. She had married and moved out at a young age, but it just seemed right that Harry stayed around home. If he harbored a complaint about anything except not being able to farm, Harry Berge never said it aloud.

Berge's entertainments were simple. He bowled one night a week, he drove to Madison to view a movie, and he converted the cellar and porch of the white A-frame house into miniature railroad yards, for Berge had developed a passion for model trains.

Hundreds of feet of track spanned the green felt-covered plywood tables in the basement where Lionel trains charged, locomotives pumping smoke. The red and yellow mail cars of the Santa Fe Express, the blue and silver sleepers of the Yankee Clipper, chugged through the landscapes he had constructed—prairie towns, farms, cities, mountains. Track twisted in loops, switchbacks, crisscrosses. Boxcars, dining cars, coal cars, cabooses were authentic in minute detail. Now and then Harry invited the neighbors two boys down into his musty lair, where the hundred-watt bulbs beamed like toy suns in a brown sky of floorboard and two-by-six joists. He'd let the kids don his engineers cap, flip the rail switches, turn the speed dials.

Otherwise Harry Berge lived a solitary existence. In the summer he grew tomatoes, wax beans, and rhubarb, the last of which he didn't know how to prepare. Without deviation he was a creature of routine. At 2:50 p.m. each afternoon his Oldsmobile backed out of his driveway as he went to work, and at 11:10 p.m. his headlights cut the dark, announcing his return. His wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of gray poplin work shirts, trousers, and a matching cap perched permanently atop his head. As the weather cooled, he added a sweater, then a red and black checked jacket in winter. Once a week his sister visited, cleaned the house, and did his ironing. On Sundays Harry

Berge toured the countryside, which often included a drive past the old farm and a visit to the Pierces in Cambridge.

Steve and Connie Pierce operated a dairy farm, and they adopted Berge into the family. Ten years their senior, Harry became a surrogate uncle, and the Pierce children called him Uncle Bud. Berge liked to roam the acreage, help Steve mend a fence or chop firewood, get cow shit in his nose again and burrs in his pants cuffs. Usually he'd stay for supper followed by a couple of games of cribbage, and by nine o'clock Harry mumbled good-bye.

In August 1977 Berge hinted he might have himself a girlfriend. His round face twitched in a sheepish grin; his large ears were red and blushing. He told the Pierces she was a younger woman, a student at the university in Madison. When quizzed for more details, Berge rolled his head, snorted and hawed, and said he'd have more to tell another time. The subject didn't come up again, and the Pierces didn't pry.

With fellows at work Berge was less taciturn. During lunch break one day in September the crew discussed the massage parlors in Madison, which two of the men had visited after their shift the night before. Berge, usually uninterested in the lunchtime chatter, tossed out a comment that intimated a familiarity with the city's sex dens.

The remark was surprising. His co-workers at Uni-Royal knew that Berge was not a religious man, but his conduct was reserved and unassuming. On the odd occasion when they coaxed him to the U-Name-It Tavern after work, he drank a Coca-Cola and hurried home, as if the barroom was an iniquitous place. Berge refrained from using tobacco, liquor, and cuss words. He'd be more apt to discuss train sets and the weather than women.

From that day on, however, Berge's behavior made it undeniable that he possessed an intimate and extensive knowledge of the massage parlor scene. He showed one fellow pictures he'd taken at a photographic studio, posed pictures of naked women. His compatriots were startled and agreed that Madison's blue world seemed a peculiar

universe for the meek Berge's travels. What none suspected were the range and frequency of his journeys.

In the bedroom closet of the white A-frame house, in a shoe box hidden by a J. C. Penney catalog, were stuffed sixty-nine MasterCard receipts from various Madison parlors. The crinkled mass of paper covered December 1974 to July 1977 and totaled $1,630. A study of the receipts showed Berge liked his strokes on Sundays and holidays. On Easter, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving, for each of these years, Berge had been provided with $50 worth of pleasure. Harry Berge had been a massage parlor connoisseur.

16

It was evening, December 26th, when Barbara Hoffman was given permission to return to her apartment. First she would have tended her plants. The cops had treated them courteously and left no damaged tendrils or broken stems. Next she would have checked the kitchen cupboard and noted that the contents had not been disturbed. The china bowl of white crystals, which any visitor would have mistaken for granulated sugar or crystalline vitamin C, remained exactly where she had left it.

Barbara picked up the telephone, listened for the subtle click of a wiretap, and heard nothing but a dial tone. Not satisfied, she dialed a number connecting her to a clearing line in Capitol Heights, Maryland, that AT&T used to identify wiretaps or line tampering. If her phone was bugged, a loud buzzing would signal. Her call went through with no warning alarm, and she hung up before the recorded message informed her that she had reached an unassigned number.

Barbara picked up the phone, dialed a New York City area code and number, but got no answer. She didn't need to talk to Matt anyway. Matt had run scared when things were intense.

She had met Matt Bradley in Salt Lake City, where she was doing research on lipoproteins in a summer program at the University of Utah in 1974. He'd followed her to Madison. They lived together, briefly and almost happily. But Barbara was changing too quickly. Her massage parlor job seemed to consume her. They did a lot of drugs—marijuana, hashish, Quaaludes. When she booked him a motel room because she was bringing another man to their apartment, Matt despaired and fled to New York City. Nevertheless, they corresponded. Barbara could talk to him. Matt listened.

The refrigerator chilled a bottle of Chablis. Barbara popped a Quaalude, swished it down with wine. She turned on the TV, and the six o'clock news featured Harry Berge as the lead story.

How death can immortalize a trivial life, Barbara later confided to a friend. Discounting the work crew at Uni-Royal, approximately eight people were aware of the mans existence: his sister and brother-in-law, the Pierce family, his Christian Scientist neighbor, and Barbara. Now Harry Berge was a household name in Madison, a name forever associated with a mysterious Christmas tragedy.

Barbara curled up on the sofa and fell asleep.

The persistence of the telephone ringing woke her hours later. It was Jerry Davies. He asked for a rendezvous the next evening. She agreed to meet him at a local bar, the Kollege Klub.

She rolled herself a stick of marijuana. Marijuana did not affect her like Quaaludes. 'Ludes mellowed her head when it churned overtime, at high speed, mashing thought into thought, vision into vision, which it seemed to do often during her conscious hours. Barbara sometimes wished she could have a switch installed that would snap off the thoughts when they collided and overwhelmed her. In the absence of an internal device she opted for 'ludes and achieved the same effect. Quaaludes allowed moments of tranquillity and negotiation. Marijuana rendered perspicacity and light. When she drew the sweet smoke into her lungs, the storm that clashed in her brain took a focus.

She knew exactly what was real and what was not, or so she believed.

Barbara dialed the clearing-line phone number again. Then she called Liza, who had worked at Jan's with her, Liza who preferred grass to the Quaaludes Barbara favored, Liza who sucked and fucked tricks at the parlor but who refused to provide other amenities, no matter that Barbara explained it was the other amenities that paved the path to riches in their sordid business.