Dave Zeltserman - Killer

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.”

“You’re going to use the old Nazi excuse, that you were just following orders? That would’ve made Grandma proud, wouldn’t it!”

That was a low blow considering how my mom lost almost all of her family in concentration camps. I tried joking it off, though, telling him there wasn’t a thing I could ever’ve done to have made my mom proud. Michael sat staring at me, unmoved.

“This was so long ago, Michael,” I said. “I was a different person back then, and so much has happened since. But even still, I always cared about you, Allie, Paul and your mother. I never wanted to do anything to hurt any of you. Can’t we move on from all that?”

“So your explanation is that you have no explanation,” he said, more to himself than to me.

“That’s not it,” I said. “I tried the best I could for all of you. There’s got to be a way we can put what I did in the past and talk about other stuff.” I stopped for a moment, still tongue-tied, still feeling like I had a mouth full of marbles, then more to change the subject than anything else, asked him what he did for work.

Michael shook his head, said, “That’s not something I want to tell you.”

He didn’t say this peevishly or with anger, just matter-of-factly, his eyes lost as he stared off into the distance. Awkwardly, I asked him about Allison and Paul, whether he kept in touch with them and if he could tell me how they were. Almost as if he were waking up from a dream, he looked at me and shook his head. “I’m not telling you about them either,” he said.

“Is there anything about your life I can ask you?” I said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

He got up to leave, took several steps, then stopped, his lips twisting into an uneasy smile.

“Yeah, there is something I’d like to know,” he said. “After Mom died, how’d you keep getting my phone numbers?”

“I used a service,” I said.

He thought about that, nodded to himself. “Did you get more than just my phone numbers? Like maybe my addresses and pictures of me and my wife and kid?” he asked.

“No, all I could afford was your phone number. Allison’s also.”

“What about Paul’s?”

“I tried, but the service I used couldn’t find him.”

He nodded again, a distant look on his face. “Good for Paul,” he said. He turned his back on me and started to walk away.

“This isn’t healthy for you, Michael,” I called out. “We should talk this through.”

He waved his hand angrily as if swatting at a swarm of gnats, and kept walking. I watched him until he was out of sight and knew I’d never see him again. I wondered briefly if there was any chance I’d ever see Allison or Paul, but accepted that that wasn’t much more than wishful thinking, especially after the way Michael had acted. Of the three of them, he was always the peacemaker, the one who would try to smooth out hard feelings and get people talking again. If he couldn’t forgive me there wasn’t much chance the other two ever would.

I sat for a long moment feeling a weakness in my legs and an emptiness filling up my chest. For a moment it was as if I were drowning in it. Then I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I don’t know what else I could’ve been expecting from him, not with the way he ignored my calls when I was in prison and left those early letters of mine unanswered – the ones I wrote when Jenny was still alive to forward them to him – and not with the way Jenny would change the subject whenever I’d bring up Michael or the other two kids.