I went through the article carefully. There were quotes from Captain Edmund Gormer, all complimentary to me, and no hint that at any time I’d been a suspect. The paper had to counter all of that with past quotes from my victims’ relatives. I guess it’s easier going from hero to villain than the other way around. Anyway, I got some mild satisfaction from a picture that they included of the Mueller brothers as they were being booked for a host of offenses, both with the same fixed empty gazes in their eyes that you see on every hardened con.
When I was done with the article, I put the paper down and closed my eyes, and tried to remember what Michael looked like. For the life of me, all I could picture was the way he was when he was five years old and I took him to his first Red Sox game. Back then I spent whatever free time I could with him and Allison.
The cab driver recognized me. He was about my age; wispy gray hair framing a square-shaped skull, thick caterpillar eyebrows, rubbery features, near-impossible-to-understand Russian accent. I think he smelled even worse than I did when I first got out of prison. When I entered the cab, he explained away his bad body odor by telling me that he was in the middle of a second straight shift. “Thirteen hours so far in car,” he announced proudly in his thick accent. Soon after we drove off, he started glancing at me through the rear-view mirror, his eyes befuddled under those massive eyebrows.
“You the person on TV,” he said. “One who caught two hoodlums. Beat them up good too.”
I didn’t say anything.
He nodded to himself, sure of his recognition. “I saw you on TV, right before I start driving last night,” he said. I caught the shift in his eyes as he remembered the rest of the story, about what I had done before and all the people I had murdered. He didn’t say anything after that, and I could see the tremor in his hands as he gripped the wheel. Mercifully, it was a short cab ride. When I paid him the fare he avoided eye contact with me, and kept his lips pressed shut when I stiffed him on the tip.
From what I could tell of the little I saw of Medfield it appeared to be a quiet, quaint town. At one point it must’ve been mostly farmland, and still had a country feel to it. The coffee shop I was let out in front of was a modest, brightly yellow-painted Colonial that was probably until recently a family residence, and inside it looked more like an antique store than a coffee shop. Michael sat at a table facing the door, his features tense, his eyes fixed on me as I walked in. He had two cups of coffee in front of him, and he picked both of them up as he came to meet me. Before entering the shop I’d been debating whether to try for an embrace or to offer a handshake when we saw each other, but with both his hands full neither was possible. I followed him outside to an antique-looking cast-iron bench by the side of the building where we could talk without being overheard.
After we both sat on the bench he handed me one of the coffees, and I offered him a doughnut, which he accepted.
“Why’d you do that yesterday?” he asked. “Was it to impress me and Allie? Or were you just trying to get yourself killed?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Michael. When I saw those two men standing outside the liquor store, I knew what they were going to do, and knew how it could turn out, and it just seemed like something I had to do. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or get myself hurt, it was just something that happened.”
He sat quietly digesting what I told him, then said, “You wanted a chance to talk, so go ahead.”
Even without the way he had been anxiously waiting for me inside the store, even without any clear memories of him except as a five-year-old child, I would’ve recognized him from Jenny. As soon as I saw Michael memories flooded back to me of how Jenny used to look. He had so much of my wife’s soft features in his face. On Jenny, they were attractive and added to her femininity, on him they didn’t look so good. They made him look weak, especially having Jenny’s delicate mouth and slight chin. And with his ill-fitting suit and two days’ stubble he looked shabby. I didn’t mention any of that. Instead I told him it was good to see him.
“So it’s good seeing me, what else do you want?” he demanded with some anger, his eyes hard glass as he looked at me.
“For Chrissakes, Michael. It’s been over fourteen years. Give me a break here. I just want to know how you’ve been.”
He took a long sip of his coffee before saying under his breath, “How do you think I’d be? How do you think anyone would be finding out at nineteen that their emotionally distant father was a cold-blooded psychopath and mass murderer?”
I sat back trying to make sense of this. It was hard to imagine that anyone would let their father’s crimes against total strangers have such an effect on their own life, and it was even harder to imagine that someone with this much weakness and self-pity could have my blood in him. I felt an overwhelming sadness as I looked at Michael and knew that I was responsible for him being like this. He was a quiet kid, always serious-minded, but also good-natured. Physically he took after Jenny so much that I knew I needed to shelter him. That was why when he was four I moved the family to an upper-middle-class neighborhood, and that was why I sent him and Allison to private school. Because of that Michael didn’t develop any toughness growing up and never had to learn how to fight. All of this weakness that I saw in him now was my fault.
“I wish your mom hadn’t told you about what was in my confession,” I said. “She should’ve just told you I was arrested for that extortion racket.”
“And that would’ve been so much better, just thinking that you were a violent criminal? But for your information, Mom didn’t tell us about any of that. FBI agents questioned all of us after you gave your statement. They were the ones who let us know about the people you murdered. I guess they thought it was part of their due diligence in verifying what you told them.”
Jenny had never told me that. I couldn’t help feeling some anger thinking about what the FBI did.
“I’m sorry that’s the way you had to find out about me,” I said.
“And what would’ve been a preferred way?” Michael’s eyes had been fixed on me since we’d been sitting. A weariness dimmed the anger in them and he looked away from me, lowering his stare to the floor.
“To answer your question,” he said, his voice showing the same weariness that had taken over his eyes, “I’ve been in and out of therapy for fourteen years, my marriage dissolved after three years, I have a kid that I’m not allowed to see, and I’m a recovering drug addict. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve gotten any sort of life together. So that’s how I’ve been.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, “I tried to give you a good home. And I made sure there would be enough money for college-”
“You don’t get it,” he said, his voice rising as he interrupted me, his eyes once again meeting mine. “How the fuck can you explain to me what you did?”
“It was a job-”
“Murdering people is a job? That’s how you’re going to explain it to me?”
I felt tongue-tied as I tried to come up with something to tell him. “These weren’t nice people that I took out,” I stammered out. My voice broke on me and I had to stop for a moment to take a sip of my coffee. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, then looked back at Michael and saw how still he had become as he stared back at me. I looked away again, and after clearing my throat, continued.
“They were all in the life,” I half mumbled, half said. “They knew the risks and dangers, just like I did. If I didn’t take them out, Lombard would’ve hired someone else to do it. I was just doing a job, that’s all.”