Even after all these years, I am perplexed by the story. L related it to me in 1981, when we were both at Fletcher School in Boston. His story was so startling that I have kept his name secret even now. Like yours truly, he was from a foreign country, a blithe spirit who much preferred sampling life to the drudgery of heavy-duty studies. He expended the minimum effort required to get by with decent grades. For him, that was adequate academic achievement.
On a bitterly cold night, relaxing in the warmth of my dorm room, staccato knocks on my door made me open it to a visibly agitated L.
“What I’m about to tell you,” he confided, “can’t get out of this room. Actually, I didn’t want to tell it to anybody, but I had to talk to someone.”
“Go ahead.” And I have kept my end of the bargain, until now, after more than a quarter of a century.
“I went out last night with P.”
“Must have been fun.”
P was a Vietnam vet, who did a two-year stint there straight out of high school, was demobilized, finished college, and enrolled at Fletcher. He was a fun character, given to drinking, and driving around in a beat-up, sky-blue Chevrolet convertible all over his native Massachusetts.
L was a good friend of mine, and he and I would occasionally hang out together. “More like a nightmare,” therefore, confounded me.
“Sounds serious.”
“Then listen.” He stared at me for a while before beginning. “You know of General O.”
“The American army commander in the Second World War? Of course. What’s he got to do with it?”
“Nothing directly, but indulge me. P asked me to accompany him on a long spin away from Boston. Said he knew of a great seafood restaurant…seafood, a long drive, and great company. I didn’t have to be asked a second time.”
The two went in the car. A couple of happy-go-lucky men in their mid-twenties. Driving without any fixed destination in mind, shielded from the biting cold outside, listening to rock on the car’s FM radio. L’s stomach began to emit growls of hunger when P veered off onto a road heading to a small town. He pulled up in front of a jeweler’s store. He obviously had planned on going there.
“Sorry buddy, I’m also starving. Have to take care of some business. Why don’t you come along?”
“OK, what do you have in mind?”
“I’m running a little short of cash. I’m going to sell a couple of Krugerrands.”
L knew what the South-African issue Krugerrand was, although he had never seen one before. His curiosity aroused, he was going to ask further questions, but they were already inside the shop, and the owner had come out from behind the counter to greet P. The two obviously knew each other. L was not introduced, and he was a mute, but very interested, spectator. His friend brought out two fairly large, round pieces of metal from pocket. He knew the colour of gold, and was certain that he was looking, for the very first time, at a pair of Krugerrands. L wondered. P he knew to be tolerant of all races, but apartheid was in full swing in South Africa, and here he was in possession of the system’s blood money.
“How much for one?”
“350.”
“OK. I’ll sell both.”
The buyer handed over seven crisp one-hundred dollar bills to P.
“Come again.”
“Will do.”
As the two got in the car, P chortled: “OK buddy, now let’s go get some dinner.”
At this point I interrupted L’s narration: “Didn’t you ask him how he got those Krugerrands?”
“No. Of course, I wondered. But the only bit of information that he volunteered was that he had more of those at home, but said nothing more on the matter.”
P drove on, and then stopped in the parking lot of a restaurant nestled in the woods. L wished he could have come during the daytime. He was certain that the view would have been marvelous. The food was first-rate. While they were eating, P said, “I’m going to visit an old friend and her husband. They live close by. Want to come along? It’ll be fun.”
“As if I had a choice,” L told me. “I didn’t know the place, and P had the transport. I was pretty sure the visit was pre-arranged, and I was selected to go along for God knows what purpose.”
As they were finishing dinner, P told L about them. “She’s General O’s niece – his brother’s daughter. Her marriage is under severe strain.”
“Why?”
“Her husband blames her for it, and they’ve asked me to come help them if I could. Sorry I didn’t tell you all this before, but thanks for coming along.”
“Well it’s too late to be thinking of doing anything else. Anyway, what’s wrong with their marriage?”
“Her younger brother was raped and murdered by a former college football star.”
“What?”
“Like I said. It has broken her down, and her husband can’t take the strain anymore, especially now that the jury acquitted him of the crime.”
L was incredulous. A few weeks ago he had read in The Boston Globe of the acquittal of a former star running back of the exact crime that P had just talked about. The running back was an African-American, and L recalled the name of General O in the report. He asked P if it was the same case.
“Yep. The very same.”
The two pulled up in front of a bungalow, and were met by a rather disheveled-looking woman and her bearded husband. They greeted L, and made him welcome in their living room. They offered him a beer, and hoped that he wouldn’t mind if they took P to the kitchen and talked over some urgent matters with him. L distractedly watched TV in the living room as snatches of loud conversation came from the kitchen. It seemed as if they were planning a hit on the alleged rapist-murderer, and the husband-and-wife team was commissioning P to carry it out. L now concentrated all his attention on the voices from the kitchen in order to hear every word. Caught up in their planning, they had forgotten him in the living room, and were clearly audible in the living room. The words were chilling. L was in a state of panic. He was a foreigner who could be implicated as an accessory to murder. The consequences could be severe.
“You got to do this, P. I want that bastard dead for what he did to my brother,” the woman’s voice reached L.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.”
L heard some more on the theme, and then the husband’s voice came over: “P, your friend must have overheard everything.”
“Let’s go talk to him. Don’t worry about him, he won’t talk.”
And then they filed back into the room. The husband began: “You must have heard some of what we said. We were pretty loud.”
“Yes, some of it,” L said, thinking it would be futile to deny, and would only arouse their hostility towards him.
“I’m sorry you had to hear all that,” said the wife. “But I’ve got to avenge my brother.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You know, my husband and I were in the courthouse when the jury let him off. He walked past us, looked at me with his yellow eyes and smiled. The bastard was gloating over what he had gotten away with. That’s when I decided I would have him killed.”
“Our marriage was falling apart,” the husband volunteered.
“We’ve saved to pay for his death. P’s a trusted friend, and I can’t tell you how happy I am that he’s agreed to do the job.”
“You’re going to keep quiet, now, aren’t you?” the husband eventually voiced the most important words.
“You can be sure of that.”
“Don’t worry,” P jumped in. “L’s my buddy. He won’t talk.”
The party broke up soon after, and they said their goodbyes. The husband and wife were particularly nice to L as they bade him farewell. L was mostly quiet during the long drive back to the dorm.
P was ecstatic. “Hey buddy, my very first contract!” And, after a while, “You’re going to keep quiet about it. Otherwise, I’ll have to take you out too.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve nothing to do with it.” L settled back in his seat to ponder all the ramifications of the past hour or so, breaking out in a cold sweat underneath his ski jacket. That feeling of dread followed him to his room, and his dream when finally, mercifully, sleep overcame him. He woke up late, and finally decided to talk to someone. And so he knocked on my door. He was in obvious turmoil, and did not know what to do.
“Just don’t think about it. And act normally with P,” I counseled.
“What?”
“Look, don’t worry yourself to insanity. You had nothing to do with it. So don’t act like you did.”
“You’re right. I’ll try. But it won’t be easy.”
After he had left, I went over what he had told me. The whole thing seemed incredible, but L could not have been letting his imagination run wild. At the very least, his demeanour told me he was not.
In the evening, as I was about to go out for a lonely dinner, I heard knocks on my door. P was standing outside. “Want to go to Charlestown?”
“Thought you told me I wouldn’t last five minutes in that Irish-American town.”
“Neither would I. But Fitzi will come with us. We’ll be OK.” Fitzi – Fitzpatrick – was the Irish-American dorm janitor. The legend was that Charlestown did not welcome non-whites. Or even the ‘wrong’ kind of whites! I thought that it hid IRA fugitives and operatives, and could not trust anyone but Irish-Americans. But I had always longed to sample its delights. Here was my chance.
“Fitzi will be with us. We’ll be OK. Let’s go.”
I put on my ski jacket, winter gloves, and walked out with P to the parking lot.
Shahid Alam is Head, Media and Communication department, Independent University, Bangladesh.