Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (38 page)

FIFTY-THREE

January 17, 1980

"Isn't this the time when you are
supposed to confess everything to me?" I asked, almost as soon as
we climbed into my car and started the drive to her place. Out of
context, it sure sounded silly. But, in my car that night, the
question meshed perfectly with the mood.

"You need to explain it all," I
said.

She stared ahead into the
windshield for a few moments, then turned, and said forcefully: "I
will tell you one thing. If you fuck me on this, if I give you this
stuff and you end up back at Special Crimes, Gary, I will kill
you."

"Oh, hell, Catherine," I said.
"You're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"

Fight or flight? Stress management
experts remind us our distant ancestors faced that question several
times a day when confronting life and death challenges from wild
animals or enemy tribes. Despite the elimination of true life and
death threats on a daily basis, they say modern humans still
demonstrate similar physical responses to lesser challenges, such
as a broken television set or rude drivers on the freeway. I knew
researchers had measured typical responses that included everything
from accelerated heartbeat to pooping your pants. Most visible,
however, is the release of adrenalin and endorphins to dull pain
and impair judgment so you can function on instinct for the
quickest reaction when attacked. Except for soldiers and cops,
rarely do humans have the chance to experience the full effect of
the fight-or-flight response. But I was feeling the full effects
already as I drove into the night beside a woman I feared wanted me
dead. I already had committed to fight, rather than flight. I had a
rough plan for action, and my body went on autopilot as the
adrenalin took control. I couldn't shut up, but I also felt
strangely detached, as if I were watching the two of us from the
back seat instead of driving the car. I had never felt anything
like it before and never would experience it again.

"You know," I said, trying to goad
her while using language to bolster my courage, "Mark called you a
bum fuck."

That grabbed her attention.

"He told you that?"

"Why did you bring him into this?
Surely you could have found some other stooge to fuck you for an
alibi."

"He really called me a bum
fuck?"

Pleased to see I had at last found a raw
nerve, I decided to pinch it.

"Oh yeah, he was pissed. He
expected big things from you, and you treated him like your mind
was on another planet. And then what about me? Now I have to
explain why I spent the last three months taking nothing but shit
from a bum fuck. Do me a favor. Next time you fuck one of my
friends, please, give him the time of his life. I have a reputation
to maintain."

Catherine hesitated before speaking
again, obviously amused by my excited state. Then she said, "Gary,
you need to get control of your mouth. When these men come to bring
your property, they aren't going to listen to it. They will just
take you outside and shut you up."

"Ha, huh, just like you planned for
them to do on Tuesday night anyway, right?"

"Are you wearing a
wire?"

"A wire? No. Be my guest. Check me
out."

She leaned over while I drove and patted me
down, checking for recording devices while I continued to
blather.

"You know, I had Little E with me
that night. Did you know that? What would have happened with her
there?"

Apparently satisfied with the frisk
of my body, she moved back onto her seat and said, "These were
honorable men. They would have seen her and taken her somewhere to
be safe."

"That would have been over my dead
body."

"Then, it might well have
been."

Her admission shut me up as I mulled her
words. In my mind, not only had she conceded a role in the burglary
but also exposed it for what I actually suspected she wanted: A
serious beating, or something much worse, for me.

"So you admit somebody came over
there to get me."

"Teach you a lesson."

"And what's happening
tonight?"

"I told you. I've had enough. This
isn't worth my time any more. Take your stuff and Strong's, too,
and be out of my life for good."

"If that's what you truly have in
mind, it sounds like we finally have a deal."

"Did Mark really call me a bum
fuck?"

"Yes, Catherine, that's exactly
what he said."

About eleven-thirty we pulled up to the curb
in front of the duplex I had helped her rent just a couple of
months before. I realized it had been just about a year to the day
since the brutal slaying of George Tedesco. And now, I was about to
meet in private with the woman suspected in that case.

C'mon,
bitch!
I said to myself.
Let's see if you are a real killer or just a
little woman with a big mouth. Show me something. Fuck Strong's
hope for a penny ante burglary conspiracy charge. If I leave here,
I expect to see you facing life for attempted
murder.

FIFTY-FOUR

January 17, 1980

Catherine's duplex apartment was a
simple structure with the layout of a one-bedroom mobile home. Some
would call it a "shotgun" style arrangement—but I've always
hesitated using that term where she is concerned. It was just
typical of a duplex made from a one-story house divided into two
equal-size single-bedroom apartments. A front door opened into a
living room and a hallway ran along a side wall to empty into a
bedroom at the rear. Off the hallway to the right, as you headed
toward the rear, was a kitchen and then a bathroom. Besides the
door on the front wall of the living room, Catherine's apartment
also had a large window.

She had furnished the living room
with a couch, a wicker chair, some sparse bookcases, and a table
that held her prized Sony color television set and a stereo. She
had decorated a table with a framed, black-and-white, eight-by-ten
studio photo of Humphrey Bogart striking a 1930s gangster movie
pose. In the kitchen, Catherine had a small, mobile dishwasher with
a butcher block top. Her cabinets held a variety of liquors. In her
bedroom, an average size closet sat in the wall immediately to the
left beyond the hall, with a wooden door that opened outward.
Catherine's double bed sat across the floor from the closet. Beside
the closet doorway, farther into the room, still sat that chair I
had helped bring down from the attic for her Christmas party. The
front door in the living room was the only way in or out of the
place.

When we came inside, I took a seat
in the wicker chair while she went straight to the phone and made a
call. She said she wanted to make sure "the Mexicans" were still on
schedule. I took her comment in stride, wondering if she really had
any "Mexicans" working this mission at all. I knew she was
physically incapable of handling me without a weapon, so I felt
comfortable as long as I could keep her in sight. I did have
concerns, of course, about the arrival of reinforcements that might
include anyone like my bounty-hunting associate Kenneth. But I had
faith in the vision of Jim Strong parked somewhere out on the
street, ever vigilant with shotgun primed—ready to spring if
Catherine's "gang" were to approach. I believed I had
reinforcements of my own. So I kept a careful eye on Catherine as
she made her call and prepped me for what would be a much longer
night than I had expected.

"We have to wait a while," she
said, taking a seat on the couch. "I don't know when they will be
here."

I was prepared to wait until Catherine
attempted an assault, or, at least, until she reassured me with her
hesitance that she lacked the courage to try. I wanted to offer
myself to her as a target and give her every opportunity to strike.
I resolved to just go along with just about anything she wanted. I
kept an eye on her as she went to the kitchen and mixed a couple of
drinks. At that time, Campari and soda had become her cocktail of
choice. I stayed with scotch and water.

"We've got some time," she said.
"Maybe we should talk."

"Sure. What's on your
mind?"

"I want to know if you ever really
loved me. Did you?"

"Of course. But I've told you that
doesn't mean two people can be together. And in our case, that's
particularly true."

She nodded and started to adopt what I
perceived as an air of detachment. As it turned out, Catherine had
plenty to discuss before getting down to the real business of the
night—deciding what to do with me. I sensed an internal agony in
her demeanor, as if two conflicting personalities were debating
some action inside her skull.

"I want to read
something to you," she whispered. Catherine was a voracious reader,
but she had only a small shelf of books with her in this place. She
went to the shelf and extracted a copy of one her favorites: Mario
Puzo's
The Godfather
. During our time together, she had quoted it often. And now,
sitting there waiting for her "soldiers" to return my stolen
property, she selected a section from Book One outlining the fate
of mob enforcer Luca Brasi when dispatched by Don Vito Corleone to
infiltrate the camp of a rival family. At a meeting in a bar, the
rivals surprise Luca and strangle him from behind with thin silken
cord. After an anxious day wondering what had happened, the
Corleone brothers are startled to receive a package that holds a
fish wrapped in Luca's bulletproof vest. They look to their
consigliore, Tom Hagen, for an explanation.

Catherine read the final passage
with emphasis: " 'The fish means that Luca Brasi is sleeping on the
bottom of the ocean,' he said. 'It's an old Sicilian
message.'"

I wondered if I should take that as a message
for me, as well. In her version, I suspected, Special Crimes became
the mob with Stricklin as the Godfather. Of course, I was Luca
Brasi, exposed while trying to infiltrate her bush league criminal
camp and soon to be sleeping with the fishes.

"Eloquent," I
said. "What's next?
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn?
"

"Dance with me one last time," she
said, laying the book on the table and ignoring my sarcasm as a
slow song came onto her stereo. I agreed, although I couldn't
remember when we had ever danced before in the first place. It came
as no surprise when she tried to lead.

When we stopped dancing, she made
another call and frowned when she couldn't get an answer. Then she
looked at the phone and asked me for a favor.

"Anything you want," I
said.

"I need you to call Denise and tell
her something. Tell her you made a mistake when you took her out.
Tell her you meant to take out Catherine."

"I don't think she'll take my call,
and besides, it's getting pretty late," I said, more perplexed than
ever by this request. I suspected Catherine wanted me to establish
contact with another person outside her house who might later
testify, "Yeah, he called me late and sounded creepy."

"Also," I said, "I don't recall her
number, and it is in my address book—you know, the one that's been
missing since that last day you visited me at Strong's house but
before the burglary."

"If I can find it, will you call
her?"

"Sure," I said, confident Denise
would decline to talk. Catherine immediately reached beneath the
couch and produced my address book. She handed it to me along with
the telephone. I dialed my one-time canoeing partner and, after
about seven rings, she picked up the phone.

"Denise," I began, but she hung up
as soon as she heard my voice. Aware that Catherine had no way to
know I only had a dial tone on the other end of the line, I
continued as if Denise were still there. "I'm calling because I
want you to know I should not have gone out with you. I wanted to
go out with Catherine, but she rejected me—"

Just then Catherine ripped the phone from my
hand, put it to her ear, and recognized the dial tone. She grabbed
my address book and redialed the number, only to receive the same
rude treatment by Denise.

"Imagine that," I said. "The girl
won't even take our calls. Anybody else I can dial? Mario Puzo
maybe. How about Humphrey Bogart? You know, listening to your shit
is enough to make my blue eyes brown."

She said nothing
and returned to the couch, where she sat with an obvious aura of
detachment. I wasn't sure about the time, but I did know I had been
in there long enough. Obviously, I thought, her gang had let her
down. I had given her every opportunity to attack, but it looked
like she only wanted to dance, read from
The Godfather
, and make ridiculous
phone calls. It was time for me to go.

"That's it," I said, rising from my
spot in the wicker chair. "Nobody's coming, are they? No Mexicans?
I'm going to leave, and I guess we'll all just have to handle this
another way."

As I made for the door, Catherine
rose from the couch and spoke very slowly. She said, "Wait, Gary. I
do have something for you. It's back in my bedroom closet. You can
go and get it now."