Chapter V

V

While I was at home, writing about Ruth Ellen and the tape, Joe was at his home, trying to relax. His peace, though, was shattered. A large man with strong breath pounded on his door. “Listen, asshole,” the man hissed, “I have a few thousand dollars worth of damage thanks to you. Someone has to pay for it, and it won’t be me.”

"Excuse me?" Joe asked.

"You. You backed onto 127th Street the other day, and my van got sandwiched between a bunch of other vehicles. Like I said. Someone has to pay for it, and it won't be me."

“Me, either,” Joe retorted, slamming the door.

The man pounded. “Open up, asshole. I need your insurance.”

Joe called the police and had the man removed. “He wants my insurance information,” Joe said later, “All he had to do was ask for it. Respectfully.” 

Coverage in the morning paper was minimal. I thought my story was fairly noncommittal  Tom toned it down more. He used a still of Bobby and his friends sitting at their desks. He took Art’s advice and blocked out Chuck Chandler’s face. He commented later that he thought a conservative approach here might be safer than pointing fingers and screaming these poor murderers were so picked on. “I’m thinking,” Tom explained.  “That we should work into this slowly.  Talk to your boyfriend. Anyone else who knew these kids.”

I would have been thrilled except my interview with Ruth Ellen didn’t make it. “Are you saving it?” I asked.

“Doubt I’ll even use it. We’ll see.”

With Art’s permission I spoke to Linc Weber. The boy said that my first article struck a nerve. He hated Bobby and the others for what they did, but he hated himself for not de­fending Megan when she needed his help. “I didn’t know that she was in that kind of trouble,” he said. “I mean she al­ways had bruises. Bobby, too. It never occurred to me…. I mean when you hear about kids on the news being abused. I mean, I never knew anyone like that. Not here anyway. I didn’t realize how lucky I am...”

“How did you get along with Bobby?”

“Not bad. Not really. I mean I didn’t hang with him or anything. Just didn’t know him that well. He was always pissed off. Like he didn’t want to be bothered with anyone.”

“Tell me about the other four,” I instructed him. “I understand Chuck Chandler and Nick Romaro were picked on.”

Linc plied me with a look, his eyes wide, his head low, that told me how stupid he thought my question was. “That’s an understatement. They were weird, but they weren’t that bad. Just that kids like Matt or Tony used them for punching bags.”

“What about Don Bankencrest?”

“Didn’t know him.”

“Warren Devers?”

“Hump.” Another one of those big eyes looks. “The day he dropped acid on my shoes in chemistry, is the day I said I’d punch his lights out. My toes have scars on them from where the leather melted to my skin, and this jack­ass is laughing his butt off. Real funny.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Since before he turned mean. When he was just a punching bag for big­ger kids. I re­member when we were in first grade. The sixth graders used to single him out...”

I don’t want to sound arrogant, but a writer knows she’s being read by the e-mails or letters she receives after her work is published. Even the bad let­ters are good. After the Boyle article I received a number of angry e-mails, parents wanting to know how I would feel if I lost my children in that man­ner. I don’t know how those families feel, and I pray I never find out. Something deep inside me, though, told me to pursue this line of investi­ga­tion. I understood a lot more because of the film. I just wish I could have wrote what I saw and how deeply it bothered me. Tom was right though.  This needed to be said, but sometimes less is more. The e-mails I received after the article about the video tape was published were like the article. Most were bland.

Wakes began. It sounded easy at first, attend at Joe’s side, say the usual things, and sneak out. It wasn’t. We attended sometimes two and three a night, until I said, “No more.” I couldn’t. I wanted to stay home, and shut off my feelings.

Joe, though, went to each one, saying he felt obligated. He dealt with his pain by talking about them afterwards.

The hardest, he said, was the LoBianco Brothers. It was very hard to get in because there had to be a few hundred police officers from all over the country. Mike LoBianco, the eldest of three boys, was the cop we watched die. Color guards were posted by his coffin, and stood at attention for two days.

He and his brother, Tony, were waked side by side and in closed caskets. Tony was captain of the football team. A photo album with pictures of Mike and Tony growing up sat between them. There were separate photos of Mike and his wife at their wedding, and another of his new born son.

Joe told me about the conversation he had with Tony’s mother. The boy had received two good scholarships, one from Perdue for football, and an­other, smaller one from the Illinois Institute of Technology for aca­demics. Because of the amount of money offered, and the fact that Tony’s second great passion was football, he had been considering Perdue.

Apparently Tony’s other passion was bridges. He wanted to be an engi­neer. His mother showed Joe another photo album. This one had pictures of bridges taken from all over the country. His favorite was the Big Mack which spans the straits between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michi­gan. He took pictures, too, of the bridges that crossed the Calumet Sag Channel right here in Portland. Most need repairs and Tony thought he knew how to do it. In the back of the album were drawings of several, with detailed explanations of repairs.  

On the second day an honor guard of several hundred squad cars, all with their lights on and sirens off, escorted the caskets to Our Lady of the Hill Catholic Church for Mass, and then St. Martin’s Cemetery for burial. The Emerald Society, Chi­cago police officers wearing kilts and playing bagpipes, led the caskets into Church, and again to the cemetery. When it was all over, Mike and Tony were buried side by side.

Kelly Raye’s was difficult, Joe said. Lisa came with friends but stayed long after they left. Joe said that she sat in a chair at the rear of the chapel and watched others come and go. When the night ended, she retreated to a display of holy cards. She chose several, signed the guest book; and as Joe said goodbye to Kelly’s family, Lisa disappeared.

Brenna described what happened next. Lisa set aside the red, black, or­ange and white canvas that had sat on her easel since the night she splat­tered it with paint. In its place, she placed a blank canvas that was about a foot square. Then she sat on her bed and sifted through the holy cards. She chose a picture of the Blessed Mother holding the Christ child, and clipped it to the top of her canvas. Next she mixed oranges, pinks, ochre and beige and came up with a skin tone. By morning, Brenna said that she could see the outline of what should become a facial quadrant. The chin, a portion of a nose, a cheek and a blank where an eye socket would be, took up the entire canvas. Brenna expected that a couple of days would pass before Lisa’s intentions became evident.

Between wakes and funerals, Joe, Kevin and Jack met with the School Board to make plans concerning grief counselors, repairs, metal detectors and the like. Joe returned home some evenings, holding his head. “I can’t believe how stupid some people can be,” he said over and over again. When I’d press him for an explanation, he’d grab his paper and turn on the TV.

As the injured were released from surrounding hospitals, the media courted interviews. Dennis Schriver described how he was knocked backwards over his seat, during the stampede. He said that the leg wouldn’t take his weight, so he got low, and stayed put until someone came for him. He watched the police move onto the field immedi­ately upon the death of Mike LoBianco. One of the shooters ran in the di­rection of the Pullman Avenue fence. Two cops followed him, climbing the back fence and tearing off in the direction of the bridge. Schriver heard shots fired from that direction and heard someone scream. The remaining shooters battled it out with the police until it was obvi­ous they couldn’t win. Then they turned their weapons on themselves.

I interviewed another man who jumped off the top of the visiting team bleachers. He climbed the same fence. Bushes grow along the fence on Pullman, and are planted about the creek and the sign at the corner. The man said he saw the cops, a man and a woman, take the shooter down. The kid landed on his stomach in the creek. Neither of the cops, the man told me, showed any compassion. The male officer, his weapon ready, pushed up next to the boy and kicked him. Then he pumped another bullet or two into the kid’s back. “He didn’t need to do that,” the man said. “He should have arrested the kid if he could. I mean violence breeds violence.”

I asked Bill Ramos about that. “How much did you see from the an­nouncer’s booth?” he asked.

“We saw Bobby get shot, and Mike LoBianco. That’s it. We got down and stayed there.”

Bill bit his lips. Usually smiling, happy eyes turned hard and angry. “I followed Ruth Ellen back there. Her and I. The kid went one way, Ruth El­len went the other. I got him. Me.” He pointed at himself. “Romaro. Nick Romaro. He tried hiding behind the sign on the corner. Shot at me. I only shot him once. He tried running with my bullet in his head, and he fell in the creek, face first. Did I kick him? Yeah, that’s effective police work, isn’t it?”

“Did you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you what I know. If I could have caught up to him and he was alive, I would have done worse than kick him.”

I thought about this a long time before typing my story. How would I feel in Bill’s place? Did he kick the kid? Would I? Did it matter? The Cook County Medical Examiner reported finding three bullets. The first, a bullet to the head, killed Nick Romaro imme­diately. The other two were planted in mid spine. I had to make a decision. It’s my job to report the news, and not to say what goes into the paper and what doesn’t. But this inci­dent involved a friend and a close one no less. I had to decide if I should stand by my convictions and possibly lose a friend, or if that friendship meant more to me. In the end, I wrote it as it happened.

I didn’t want to conduct the next interview, but Tom Koehler insisted. “Only because it’s you that’s doing the asking,” Brenna said when I brought it up to her. “I’m sure Lisa will agree.”

“You know what,” Lisa said when we sat down at Brenna’s kitchen table. “I re­member thinking that Bobby was going to get himself killed.”

“What about that cheerleader? What was her name?”

“Hannah.” She blushed, glancing at her mother as Brenna set a cup of coffee before me. Brenna paused and tried to smile.

“Is this the same Hannah that said those things about Megan?” I asked.

She nodded. “You know what? This is stupid. I could say that I hate her for what she did to Megan. I don’t. I mean Megan had this ‘little innocent’ type of personality. I mean she took so much crap at home, some dude says ‘I love you,’ and she’s ready to fall into bed with him. She’s making plans to run off with him. Her escape. I mean, I tried to warn her about Tony. I mean he tried every girl in school. Hannah, too. The only reason he stuck with Hannah is because she’s ‘A’ list. I mean she earned points for doing him, and he earned just as many when he did her.” Lisa frowned at her lap, and wiped away the sweat accumulating on her palms. “Sounds so stupid.”

“You know something?” I said. “They did the same thing in my day. Tell a girl anything she wanted to hear for a roll in the hay. Worked on some girls.”

She glanced at me before returning her attention back to her lap. “Works too easily now. I mean Hannah is just as ditzy at times as Megan was. Be­lieve anything you tell her if she thought she’d get something out of it.”

“Did your realize you saved her life?”

“No.”

“The police say that a few more people might have gotten shot if you hadn’t jumped on Bobby’s back.”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember. I just wish that Kelly hadn’t..” She shuddered, and pushed aside a tear. “You had to know Kelly,” she said, her voice becoming wistful. “When we were little, she used to make all these plans. One time she decided we were going to get married to best friends, and that we were going to have a double wedding.” She smiled. “She was always making plans. I mean even last week. She was thinking that maybe she’d play for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and I’d be this world fa­mous painter. We’d rent an apartment Downtown, facing the Lake. Only she figured she’d get stuck playing chamber music, and she hated chamber mu­sic. She used to play the cello and the violin. Flute, too. Couldn’t carry a cello in the marching band. A little too big.” She laughed at the thought, but then sobered up a bit. “Uncle Tim says that God has his reasons. That Kelly’s safe now.”

“I know this is hard. I’m sorry.” I patted her hand.

“The hard part,” she said. “Bobby and I were close. I mean when we fig­ured out that we were cousins and that we were in school together. I mean I remember him in kindergar­ten. I mean his Dad let them see us sometimes. Let us know each other a little. It’s just that Bobby and Megan both, they needed someone to talk to. I wanted them to go to Un­cle Tim. Talk to him. Their Dad would never let them. They talked to me. Bobby did anyway, then I talked to Uncle Tim. I know it didn’t do anything. It’s all they had.”

Joe read the article about Bill and Nick Romaro just as he does every arti­cle I write. “You’re opening an ugly can of worms,” he commented.

“I couldn’t lie.”

His eyes caught mine. “I’ll remember you said that next time I ask you to promise me something.”

Reaction was immediate. A small fraction of our readership insisted Bill should resign. It was his duty to arrest Nick Romaro, and not add to the body count.

Carmen Herrera called me at home. “One more time, Moriarty,” she hissed. “You stirred up a hornet’s nest, and I get stung in the ass.”

“Glad I could oblige.”

The next time I saw her, a reporter from CNN grilled her. “Fire him,” she cried. “Hell, I think he should be promoted.” She turned away from the camera, as if leaving, but then spun back. “I was at Roosevelt that night. I was there when it happened, and I was there during clean up. Two of those bastards committed suicide, and one shot another. What makes you think Nick Romaro would have let Lieutenant Ramos take him into custody?”

“One other thing, Mayor Herrera,” the reporter pushed. “There’s a law in Illinois pro­hibiting students from bringing toy guns onto school property. From what we’ve been able to ascertain, these boys carried plastic subma­chine guns as part of their costumes. Why weren’t they taken away?”

“Oh, you’re right,” Carmen replied. “Think of all the lives we could have saved it we took their toys away.”

My interview with Ruth Ellen finally made the paper. Tom Koehler fol­lowed it with an editorial. “Portland’s Mayor Carmen Herrera has a way with words,” he wrote, “that leaves knots in my stomach. She is rude and her comments are usually self-serving. Self-serving or not, I agree with her. Lt. Guilermo Ramos and his officers did the best they could considering the situation. Nick Romaro wasn’t planning to give up..” On the sub­ject of toy guns, Tom wrote, “...haven’t heard lately of a case where someone died be­cause he was shot with a toy gun...”

Someone else wrote, “…if more people carried weapons, less would have been hurt..”

“Right,” Chief Weber said. “If more people carried weapons. Hah. Think of how many people would have been shot accidentally…”

The second Saturday following the shootings, Father Tim met with the Youth Club. More kids came, and like the last time, they were silent and ex­pectant. They were looking for answers to questions, a road that would take them beyond the past week.

“What I want to discuss,” one young man told him, “Are the articles in the newspaper. The Boyles. Why didn’t someone help them?”

This was hard, Father Tim told me later, but he had to deal with this if he wanted to hold onto their trust. “The Boyle family,” he began. I could see him in my mind’s eye sitting amongst a circle of kids, removing a handker­chief from his pocket and wiping his nose. “I’m hoping that you appreciate the difficulty I’m having with this subject. Rose Boyle would be my sister. Why didn’t anyone help Bobby and Megan? We weren’t allowed to. Like living in a cage, my brother-in-law kept his immediate family locked up, and us away. What I would be knowing of Bobby and Megan’s plight is what my niece, Lisa, told me. Could anyone help them? I don’t know. I certainly encouraged my sister to include her children in this group. She didn’t. She couldn’t. Could I do anything further? Maybe I could. Maybe I should have been demanding that her children come here. Maybe I should have been try­ing to step in and take them from her. Why didn’t I? Maybe I didn’t want to know any­more than their teachers wanted to know.”

“How could you say something like that?”

“Tell the truth. Don’t you have enough difficulties in your life that you should take on someone else’s? It’s easier to believe that life outside your sphere is going smoothly, and that nothing more is needed from you. It’s hard to believe that there are people like my brother-in-law that can be this cruel.” Father Tim looked about the room, taking in faces, making mental notes. He said he wanted to lecture them about how cruel some of them were, especially how they treated the shooters. He decided against it. No matter how badly any of the shooters were treated, they didn’t have an ex­cuse for murder.

“What do you think about what he did?”

“What do I think? I think it’s terrible. It’s heartbreaking. I’m blaming my­self for not stepping in and helping Bobby when I could have. Did I know about my niece’s situa­tion? I knew she was hit by a truck. I knew she died. Where I didn’t say her funeral Mass, I certainly attended her funeral. Did I know she committed suicide? No. I wasn’t told that.”

“What do you think about forgive and forget?”

“Forgiveness is something that God asks of all of us. Forgetting? No, I don’t think so. We’re owing it to the memory of those children who died that day. Maybe, some way, some how, we could learn from what has hap­pened to them. Learn where it is that we can be find­ing a remedy to a situa­tion like that so that it might not happen again.”

“How can God let something like this happen?”

“God has given all of us the gift of free will. What a young man like Bobby, or any of this friends will be doing with that gift is another matter.”

“You’re saying that this is beyond God’s control?”

“No. Not at all. Why God would let something this terrible happen, I can’t answer. I have enough faith in Him to be accepting that He has His rea­sons.”

“But if you pray? Why doesn’t he hear your prayers?”

“He does. He hears all our prayers. You might not like His response.”

Father Tim finished the meeting by asking the kids to join him in church. He knelt by the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and he led them in the Rosary. He then explained that God the Father, Jesus his Son, and the Holy Spirit love us with a love greater than any we’ll ever know. He instructed the kids to love God, to thank Him for their health and their families, and to ask Him for forgiveness. Father Tim said that in times of need, they should turn to the Blessed Mother just as they would their own mothers.

After the meeting, Tim said an unfamiliar young man waited in the vesti­bule. “Father,” the boy said. “I don’t know what that means.”

“What would that be?”

“I can’t trust most people here on earth to help me through this. How can I ask a fairy tale for help?”

Tim took a moment to think this through. “God is not a fairy tale, and neither is the Blessed Mother.”

“You can’t have a baby and be a virgin.”

“Isn’t that what a miracle is? The impossible? I have the faith to believe in miracles. And that this one miracle would be the greatest of all miracles with the single exception of Our Lord’s death and Resurrection. I think if you allow yourself to accept this great gift of faith, you’ll be discovering for yourself exactly what I mean about miracles and about love. You might dis­cover something to help you through the worst of this situa­tion.”

Link to Chapter V *