Underworld

Underworld Dave Griffith

{I} We’re late to the game. It must be late in the season—late October, early November—because it’s dark as I walk, fast, across the dim quad, my wife lagging behind, clearly not in the same hurry I am.

Above the dark buildings I see the penumbra of stadium lights. I hear the hushed roar of the crowd and the tinny voice of the announcer:

First and ten, Notre Dame! I turn away from the glow to make sure Jess is there, only to find her in the distance, arms crossed, standing, still as a pillar of salt. This is when I wake up, but only halfway. I say to her sleeping form lying next me, “So you’re not going to the game?” “What?” she croaks, half asleep, too. I am confused and upset— the sleeping half because my wife is stubbornly refusing to go to the game and the waking half, I realize as I rub my eyes and take stock of the room, because I am so upset with her about a football game, which, relative to what has been going on in our lives of late, is pretty trivial.

I am an unemployed writer in the throes of a nationwide job search—43 jobs and four fellowships, so far, and counting. As of now, I am a finalist for two, meaning I’ve made it to the round of three for a job in Tennessee and a job in Virginia. I’ve also had a phone interview with a school in Washington state, and I have a cattle-call interview at a writer’s conference in Atlanta with a school in Ohio—I’ll be one of 15 interviewing. Lately I have been experiencing a periodic seizing breathless feeling in my chest that requires me to put my arms above my head, take a deep breath, and slowly exhale. “I’ve never seen you visibly nervous before,” my wife says admiringly. “I just hide it well,” I say. And I do. I do my obsessing at night after Jess and Charlotte are in bed. I open the folder on my computer marked “job search” and read the various cover letters (already sent out), looking for typos, anxiously dreaming of gainful employment. Then I visit the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Web site and read discussion board posts from other desperate job seekers, all of them using pseudonyms and avatars, and most of them asking for help reading the tea leaves and burnt offerings of three-minute phone conversations with search-committee chairs or abstruse emails from department heads.

And even though I began reading the posts with scorn, I now contribute thoughts of my own. I’ve been initiated into this sad subculture.

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stare into the pitch-dark hall at the foot of the bed, trying to trace the entire dream’s sequence, expecting to see reams of cover letters, or the face of the post office clerk who I superstitiously hope will be working each time I drop another letter in the mail. Instead, I see four stiff and contorted corpses, skin blue from untold days underground.

It’s been two weeks since police found Michael S. Nolan Jr. and Michael W. Lawson bludgeoned to death, stacked one on top of the other, in an underground vault on the crest of a Norfolk Southern railroad trestle, four blocks from our apartment. Three days later, the bodies of Jason A. Coates and Brian Talboom were found, also bludgeoned, in a similar vault 75 yards east of the first. All four men were known to be homeless, frequenters of the Hope Rescue Mission, situated a few blocks east of where their bodies were found, and the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House, which sat ten blocks south. And all were suspected of scrapping, a hustle in which scrap metal is collected and redeemed for cents on the pound at scrap yards—there are two such businesses within a half-mile of the crime scene. Police are treating the deaths as murders motivated by a disagreement over scrap metal or the money earned from it. Although to say that scrappers “earn” money from the metal they “collect” is to overlook that fact that much of the time we’re talking copper wire, plumbing pipes, and aluminum siding ripped from vacant homes; or, in the case of these four men, from old industrial sites, such as the half-demolished Studebaker auto plant, a complex of decrepit factory sheds filled with rusting hub caps, shocks, struts, and the occasional engine, all slowly the noSNBM TDIPPM t TQSJOH |

disintegrating into nondescript piles of rubble.

At the time of the murders, the piles were being slowly backhoed into a large conveyor-belted machine that sorts metal from stone and stone into a variety of sizes so that all of it, every last bit, can be recycled and resold, legally. I passed the site once a week on my way to the recycling center, which is on the same street.

Police say the vaults where the men were found open to a long system of tunnels that run beneath the old plant, tunnels that, in theory, give access to the long-abandoned car parts. But police say it isn’t so much the factory loot they are worried about. During press conferences and in interviews with reporters, they say the tunnels are lined with old wiring that could be cut and stripped of its copper.

And, in what sounds like a warning to future scrappers, they say the tunnels are so long that after awhile they cease to contain breathable air. It’s this apocryphal detail that captures my imagination: spectral faces receding into the long, airless void.

I’m only certain that I’ve met one of the murdered men, Mike Lawson. Soon after his murder I recognized a picture of him on a blog run by a member of the Catholic Worker house. Mike stands against a wall holding a plate of food, wearing a jean jacket over a gray hooded sweatshirt and Notre Dame baseball cap. It was taken at the opening of Our Lady of the Road, a spacious drop-in center run by Catholic Workers, where the homeless can rest, do their laundry, grab a hot meal, and socialize. But I never spoke a meaningful word to him. He, like many guests of the House, acted sheepish around visitors, preferring the company of guests smoking on the porch or, like at the celebration of the opening of Our Lady of the Road, huddling in a back room around a wood-cased television, watching college football. Mike at the Catholic Worker tells me I’ve no doubt seen the other three men before, probably at a First-Friday event, but it’s not so much my proximity to these men prior to their deaths that haunts me: it’s the image of the dark vaults where they were found.

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get out of bed and go into the living room to my laptop. It’s 2:30 a.m. I Google “manhole homeless murder” and sit at my desk reading all the articles I can find: the Chicago Tribune picked up the story, as well as the Detroit Free

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Press, the New York Times, and papers as far away as Texas, but they report nothing I don’t know. There is one thing of interest, though: a photograph of police and EMTs extracting the bodies from the vault—at least this is what the caption says. All you can actually see are bright, crimson tarps held by firemen to screen the stiff bodies from the South Bend Tribune photographer. The photo is very telling: some of the firemen avert their eyes, but others peer over the tarp at the emerging carnage. { II } We—my wife Jess and one-year-old daughter Charlotte—live in an old brick apartment building with a green canvas canopy, a few blocks from the center of downtown South Bend, Indiana. When people ask where we live, I tell them one block from the Studebaker Mansion, a venerable stone and ivy–covered manse, built by the once-great car manufacturers whose plant’s closing in 1964 left 30,000 Hoosiers jobless. The mansion is now a restaurant known for its fancy brunch, a popular choice for summertime wedding receptions. Nearly every weekend between June and August, they pitch big white tents on the lawn and catering trucks line the curbs. When darkness falls, luminaria light the stone steps leading to the lawn so tipsy twenty-somethings in wingtips and sling-back heels don’t trip and sue.

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he mansion is the center of the West End Historical District, a three-block by twoblock rectangle, bordering on the black and Mexican ghettoes, which used to be, for the first sixty years of the century, the Irish and Polish ghettoes. When my wife tells her suburbandwelling co-workers where she lives they all but gasp. Streets once teeming with children from large Catholic families are now deserted by comparison. Houses stand vacant and rotting. Lots are overgrown and filled with windblown garbage. The bells of St. Patrick’s still toll the hours but no longer signal the letting go of the parish school children or their fathers from the assembly lines. They mark the passage of time for the homeless who use Scott Street as a short cut between the places they sleep at night—the Hope Rescue Mission, the South Bend Center for the Homeless, and the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House—and wherever it is they go during the day. At last count,

there were nearly 600 homeless people in South Bend, most of whom come to the city from all over northern Indiana and southwest Michigan because of its homeless-friendly reputation.

It’s not as though I’ve always been concerned with poverty. When I was a student, nearly ten years ago, I never set foot in this part of town.

The homeless were out of view, beyond the edges of the campus. But when we returned to South Bend, I joined the ranks of the Catholic Workers, who run two hospitality houses, one for men and one for women, three blocks away, on the edge of the Historical District. I was recruited to help edit their magazine when I showed up to their monthly First Friday potlucks—Mass followed by a couple hours of grazing a huge spread of food brought by members of the community, many of whom donate money to keep the house open. I try to do my fair share by bringing food to the potluck and staying after to carry pots and plates and silverware into the house where the guests wash the dishes. But rarely do I talk with them, the “guests,” as they’re called. There’s just too great a chasm to cross. The times I do get to talking with someone I am inevitably asked what I do. When I tell them I’m a writer, they seem unsure how to continue, as am I. The one positive deriving from these awkward attempts at conversation is that I feel thankful for what I have. But then later, when I’m alone, writing— writing this—I think of what I have—this computer bought on credit; this apartment; enough money to travel, buy new clothes, a bottle of wine, organic vegetables; a place out back for grilling meat—I feel like a dirty, rotten fraud; a self-centered bohemian. { III } It takes the discovery of the third and fourth bodies for me to become worried about my family; specifically, I worry that Jess will hyperbolically conclude—as she usually does—that we are all going to die at the hands of some serial killer lurking in the sewers and taking people out with pieces of scrap metal; that he will find his way into the building through the drain in the laundry room. I decide not to tell her about the new bodies because, as I park the car at the curb outside our building, just below the green awning, I happen to look up and see the train underpass in the distance and realize this is the very place the bodies were

found. I had then the feeling of being in the midst of something important, some mystery that demanded vigilance, demanded that I do something. But what?

Later that night, with Jess and Charlotte asleep, I write a blog post voicing my astonishment: I live mere blocks from the crime scene; it’s such a strange feeling knowing that something like this has occurred so close to home.

The next morning, thinking I’d get some inspiration from it, some idea of what to do next, I decided to drive to the crime scene.

Outside the world was blue. The night before it had rained and the temperature dropped so that the pavement slicked up, frost beaded branches of trees, large potholes filled with muddy ice. My eyes fixed on the railroad underpass, my dad’s tracks, actually—he’s an engineer for Norfolk Southern and patrols this territory. Once, when he passed through on a maintenance train, we drove to meet him at a crossing (just a couple miles down the tracks from where the bodies were found) so he could wave to Charlotte from atop the engine as it passed. I moved down Scott between Saints Patrick and Hedwig, waited for the light to change at Western, and then crossed to the other side. I drove slow as I passed beneath the black trestle, trying to understand just where the men had been found. I rolled between rows of warehouses and made a left toward the building where the murdered men were known to squat. There, a police cruiser stood sentry in the parking lot near the loading docks, protecting the integrity of the crime scene. I worried I might be inviting trouble, snooping like this, so I darted left, in the direction of the trestle, onto a narrow lane running between the tracks and the housing project. The left side of the lane was defined by a high berm covered in an icy thicket, the right side by the tiny back lots of the projects where clotheslines hung sheathed in ice. I rolled down the window, looked up the steep berm, and began taking pictures. I finally felt like I was doing something, making progress, uncovering something, discovering something, so I crept down the lane, snapping picture after picture, zooming in on particularly complicated brambles. I kept driving around with the window rolled down, left at the housing project, under the trestle, past the warehouses and an old synagogue—now a Baptist Church—and back to the police cruiser

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and the crime scene. As I drove, I saw the history of twentieth-century America flash before me in this constellation of things: the closing of the factory, the flight of the Poles and the Irish to the suburbs, the building of the housing projects, the riots of 1967, and now this cruiser guarding an abandoned building. When I returned home, I downloaded the pictures and showed them to Jessica. She shook her head: “I can’t believe you drove down there,” she says, clearly concerned. “You’re obsessed.”

Later, when Jess isn’t looking, I post the photos on my blog, and, for the first time, feel a sense of accomplishment—but still, there’s no story. I can’t find an angle that doesn’t sound like the sentimental, sensationalist, bullshit articles I’ve been reading. They begin: “Ronald Williamson (not his real name), a forty-oneyear-old homeless man with wispy black hair and a mischievous, toothless grin, squatting in an abandoned house on South Bend’s West side, used to feel safe when he put his head down at night on a pillow made of old rags.”

What I came up with verged on something from a bad Edgar Allen Poe imitation contest: The violence seemed to be swallowed up inside these abandoned buildings, down these manholes, into the great concrete vaults, down the long tunnels where little by little the air begins to thin until there is nothing but darkness and space. Perhaps there are more men waiting to be found. { IV } When we moved to South Bend for Jessica’s new job, we were hoping to replicate what we’d had in Pittsburgh: a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood where children played in the street and neighbors sat on their porches, traded stories, invited you over for beers and burgers on weekends, talked politics and movies and how their children were doing in school. And we thought we’d found the perfect match when we pulled into the Sunnymede subdivision on a bright afternoon in October: a red, two-story saltbox with a finished basement (featuring washer and dryer), a garage, and a fenced-in backyard where we later hung two bird feeders. The landlords, a cute husband-and-wife team, said we lived within five minutes of the best grocery in town. The hot water heater was brand new, the hardwood floors gleamed, and every room was freshly and neatly painted a soothing neutral

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color. The landscaping was impeccable, and large trees shaded the street. There were flowering bushes of all kinds. The domestic hum of lawnmowers and weed eaters floated on the air, signaling responsible and orderly neighbors.

We signed the lease on the spot.

But, as time passed, we found our neighbors unfriendly; light bulbs blew after two days of use; three times the bathtub leaked through the ceiling and flooded the kitchen. Neither did the over-the-hedge chats or burgers and beer materialize—if these kinds of social events happened in Sunnymede, we guessed they occurred in backyards, out of sight. Pathetically, we took to grilling in the driveway in the hopes of attracting others. All of this cost us over a thousand a month.

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o when we heard about this apartment building, how cheap it was—less than half of our current rent—we jumped, or at least I did. The couple that referred us lived on the top floor. They were academics, too, one with PhD in hand and the other ABD. They hosted dinner parties that ran past midnight, where doctoral students wove intricate theories connecting literature, religion, and urban renewal.

Even though it was only a seven-minute car ride, returning to our house in Sunnymede after these parties, I felt like we had arrived in the suburbs. Lying in bed, I imagined our life in that apartment building: daily cocktail hour; swapping books; a shared New Yorker subscription; daily walks to the used bookstore; the liquor store with walk-in wine cooler and wine tastings on Thursday evenings; and the New Orleans–themed café that brewed strong chicory coffee.

Jess took convincing, especially after our meeting in one of the yet-to-be-refurbished apartments with the landlord, a fortyish woman with a cane and a four-foot long bleached blonde braid. The first thing we noticed, even before entering the apartment, was the smell— cigarette smoke and vegetable oil. Jess gave me a sidelong look with her wide eyes: “This place is a shithole.” Walking further into the apartment I saw a brown ceiling, sagging in places from long-ago plumbing disasters. The floors were scored and dull.

“As you can see,” Melody began, “the previous landlord didn’t keep up with the place. The guy used to rent to a young girl and her mother,

and the girl had this boyfriend who would come around and beat her. I think they was into drugs, too,” she said, the last line under her breath. Now Jess glared at me.

“A little coat of paint does wonders,” I said, determined to get out of Sunnymede even if it meant sanding floors by myself. “That’s right!”

Melody said, impressed with my optimism.

“But if you think this apartment’s bad, let me show you next door.” Next door the smell was worse, and the walls in the bedroom were painted antifreeze green, reminding me of an episode of Dragnet I saw where the detectives stumbled into an “acid house” and young men and women sat on the floor, painting walls and eating paint from the brush. But she assured us our apartment would be beautiful when she finished with it.

Back in the car, Jess said, “Oh my God! We are not letting our six-month-old daughter live in a crack house!” I reminded her how much money we would save, the trump card, considering we regularly dipped into savings to make the end of the month—never mind our social isolation. In the end, the money argument won her over.

And our landlord didn’t lie. When the time came to move, the apartment was immaculate.

The makeover astonished Jessica, and she admitted being happy she listened to me. There are now other young mothers in the building; they take walks and trade babysitting. The move was worth it, even though the houses are crumbling around our building; neighbors fight in the street in the early morning; couples have screaming matches in broad daylight—Don’t you fuckin’ walk away from me! Get the fuck back here you punk-ass bitch—bike-riding children often pretend to swerve into my car and then laugh and stare me down as I pass. Men in large cars cruise and catcall Jess on walks with Charlotte: I’ll be your baby’s daddy!

After a year here, I feel we’ve distanced ourselves from those people who have unreasonable feelings of dread when they drive through the bad part of town, because we live in the bad part of town. Kitty-corner from us there’s a grey, windowless monolith owned by AT&T, whose various antennae and satellite dishes loom and hum, reaching several stories into the cloudy sky. One day upon returning from the store, I noticed smoke rising from a grate in the sidewalk in front of this monstrosity. Soon

flames leapt three feet into the air. It seemed Satan would momentarily crawl from the grating, pitchfork in hand. {V} Since moving to the West End we’ve been much happier, but that happiness depends on Jess believing we’re safe, which is why I don’t tell her about the reporter who arrives at our door.

The doorbell rings as I fold clothes and watch Charlotte dance atop the keyboard of the decade-old virus-plagued laptop we allow her to play with. This was a first—no one rings our bell besides the UPS man, who comes in the evening and brings my wife her weekly J. Crew fix, which she then sends back because she says they just don’t make clothes for tall girls (even though the models in the catalogue are clearly Amazonian), but really she returns them because she feels guilty—after all, we moved to Mello Place to save money, put some back for a house, someday. But she orders them anyway, because she needs “career gear” for work, and shopping cheers her up, connects her to a world beyond South Bend.

I pick up Charlotte, who has succeeded in prying loose several letters from the keyboard, and unbolt our habitually locked door. There’s a foot of snow on the ground, and I’m thinking it might be the guy who has been going around asking for cash to shovel the walk. Our landlord commanded us never to give this man money; apparently, the grad students next door gave him ten bucks, shortly after which our landlady found him trying to stash boxes of frozen shrimp in the lockless, makeshift package receptacle in the foyer of our building.

Through the thin curtains I see a young woman with dark curly hair. She is carrying a walkie-talkie. The police, I think and open the door. “Are you Dave Griffith, the one who has been posting on his blog about the murdered men?” the woman asks. She explains she’s been reading my blog: “I’ve been driving around looking for the apartment building that fit the description of the one in the post. I just guessed at which doorbell to ring and got the right one, first try.” I stared at her, incredulous, Charlotte with a handful of computer keys—the “A,” the “N,” the “P”—on my hip. “I’m Alicia Gallegos, reporter for the South Bend Tribune,” she says, extending a hand.

I invite her up and offer a seat at the dining

room table, still piled with clean but rumpled laundry. She says the Tribune is trying to find new angles on the recent homeless homicide story. The last story, about a memorial for the victims organized by my friends at the Catholic Worker, ran more than six days ago. Since then, nothing.

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his case is different than others—usually grieving and outraged family members light up police switchboards with calls to do something already. It’s a more conventional murder situation for journalists because there’s actually someone around to keep the story alive, someone more than happy to sit at their kitchen table and hold up pictures of the deceased for the staff photographer, tell stories about the victim’s life, the legacy they leave behind: the deceased loved to fish or fix up old motorcycles or whatever memory now seems precious. But with this case there was very little of that. One of the men had a cousin who lives locally, but when interviewed on TV he didn’t have much to say other than he hadn’t seen the victim in awhile.

Gallegos wants to talk to me because she’s working on an article about all the attention the case is getting; in fact, just this afternoon, a reporter and photographer from the New York Times arrived, asking questions and taking pictures.

“Why are you interested in the story?” she asks.

“It’s all about proximity,” I tell her.

She takes notes; Charlotte toddles and tries to grab the pen from her hand. I pick her up and keep talking. “I’ve never lived this close to a crime scene—at least that I know of.” Growing up I discovered a neighbor was cheating on his wife, but that was different—fornication is not illegal, at least not anymore. This was brutal and final, premeditated. Knowing that the neighbor was cheating on his wife made me vaguely sad for his wife, but these deaths touched off a profound sadness, one that stemmed from, I’ll admit it, a certain pity for them.

Someone once told me that pity was the worst thing you could feel toward someone. I wish I could remember who said it, because it plagues me, this feeling, especially since moving to South Bend and spending so much more time around and near the homeless—sharing the same sidewalks, walking by the same men

and women every morning as I go to the bank to withdraw money, buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper or a used book, sit on a bench and read the paper across the street from where two homeless men with voluminous beards sit among their bags of things.

But I want to avoid being sentimental with Alicia; it won’t make for good copy. I want what I say to be a commentary on the news, on the sensational quality of the headline: “4 Homeless Men Beaten, Stuffed [the articles favor this verb] in Manholes.” It takes all of my energy not to say, “You know, I just feel really sorry for them, that’s all. It’s doesn’t go any deeper than that.” And why shouldn’t I be allowed to say that? Why should I feel guilty about the measly paycheck I pull down teaching rich kids to write essays? It’s not breaking rocks or digging ditches, but it’s what I can do. These guys were just trying to get by, and they ended up dead in the bottom of a manhole, their bodies not found for weeks, because no one missed them the way I would be missed were I to disappear.

Minutes after Gallegos leaves, I sign in to my blog to delete the explicit references to where we live. But before I can, I receive an email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

Immediately, I call the police and tell them I have information about the homeless murderers. They transfer me to the homicide division, where a detective records my phone number and address like he’s taking a message for his teenage daughter. I then go back through the

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That tussled hair. The way he draped himself languidly in the chair.

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blog posts and delete anything that might help someone find us. Then I send an email to JLB explaining that it isn’t necessary to meet. He can just tell what he knows via email. I click send, part of me hoping he’ll write back with the name of the killer(s), the other part hoping he’ll just leave me alone. I begin thinking like Jess. What if he starts hanging around our building, watching us come and go, waiting for the right moment when Jess and Charlotte are alone unloading groceries or returning from a walk? A few panicked minutes pass before he responds: Dave there wereome other men living in that abandoned building by the name of short haired gene,(A REALLY TOUGH PERSON), LONG HAIRED GENE, DAVE, AND KEN. NOW BRIAN BRIAN WAS SLEPPING UNDER THE BRIDGE ON IRONWOOD AND NORTHSIDE BLVD. AND I WENT AND GOT BRIAN AND HE STAYED IN MY CAR DURING LAST SUMMER. BRIAN WAS GIVING BRIAN HIS FOODSTAMPS TO SHORT HAIRED GENE AND A TAXI DRIVER WOULD COME FROM ELKHART AND PICK UP THE FOOD STAMPS FROM SHORT HAIRED GENE( DONT KNOW HIS LAST NAME) AND TAKE THEM AND SELL THEM AND BRING THE MONEY BACK TO GENE. BRIAN AND GENE USED TO FIGHT ALL THE TIME ABOUT THE MONEY , BECAUSE GENE NEVER WOULD GIVE BRIAN THE MONEY. MAYBE IT WASENT FOODSTAMPS, MAYBE DRUGS. I WOULD ALSO LOOK INTO A PERSON NAMED CECIL BLACK, SR. IN THAT VACENT BUILDING THAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THEY HAD STEPS GOING UP TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND AT THE BOTTOM OF THOSE STEPS THEY HAD A PIECE OF WOOD FROM THE TOP FLOOR TO THE BOTTOM FLOOR. THE PERPATRATERS PRIOBABLY PUSHED THEM INTO THAT WOOD AND KILLED THEM THAT WAY BECAUSE IT WAS SOLID. BRIAN HAD BAD KNEES AND A BAD BACK SO I KNOW HE WASENT PUSHING ANYTHING OUT OF THE BUILDING LET ALONE WALK UP THE HILL TO TEE RAILROAD TRACKS. SOMETHING NOT RIGHT. I

THINK THOSE PEOPLE I NMENTIONED HAD IT IN FOR THEM FOUR GUYS BECAUSE THEY DIDNT WANT TO BE WITH THEM AT ALL, ESPECIALLY BRIAN TALBLOOM. PEACE BE WITH YOU, J.L.B. P.S. WHERE IS CURRY APARTMENTS AT, I LIVED IN S.B. 32 YEARS AND I NEVER HEARD OF THEM.

I slip into a frenzy of paranoia and megalomania. I feel I’m mere keystrokes from cracking the case. I Google “Long-haired Gene,” “Short-haired Gene,” and “Cecil Black Sr.,” but nothing comes back but pages and pages of dog breeding sites for the two Genes and genealogy sites for Cecil. I pull the South Bend phone book from under the couch, dust it off, and look up Cecil Black. There are so many Cecil Blacks I don’t know where to start. { VI } The next day Gallegos’s article runs in the Tribune—Manhole slayings draw national attention to South Bend. I read it online in the early morning before Jess and Charlotte wake. Seeing my words repeated gives me pause. I sound cold, focused on the writerly details, using writerly words: “It just struck me,” Griffith explained Thursday during a chat at his home. “The brazenness of the crime.” [Brazenness. Who says that?!]

Griffith lives with his wife and baby daughter on South Scott Street and said the eerie mystery surrounding the homicides lingers in their minds. The writing teacher wonders why reported developments on the deaths have seemed to dry up, especially since the crimes seem to have so many dimensions.

“The fact that they all had something to do with manholes,” he said when asked why he is detailing the crimes. “That fact plays prominently in everybody’s imagination.”

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ater that day we go see our friends in Chicago as a distraction from the job search obsession. We shop boutiques and high-end thrift stores in the Swedish-neighborhoodturned-gay-enclave. We have Cubano sandwiches for lunch, espresso afterwards. Later we eat at a hip soul food restaurant, then return to our friends’ apartment to drink wine and watch a movie about a low-rent pimp who aspires to being a rap star. I go to bed slightly drunk and

wake with an urgent need to check the South Bend Tribune Web site for breaking news.

The headline reads: Two Charged in Manhole Murders. The perpetrators are homeless, just like J.L.B theorized, squatting in the same building. The men, Daniel J. Sharp and Randy Lee Reeder, are being held, one in Michigan and the other in the South Bend jail, just a couple blocks from the railroad trestle where they disposed of the bodies. And while I no longer feel my family is in danger, strangely, I feel no relief. There is still the fact of my own unemployment, and that we will return in the morning to a place where my wife can’t take a walk without being harassed and where we anxiously call “Who is it?” when there’s a knock at the door.

On the drive back to Indiana I say very little.

For the first time I allow the blighted landscape of East Chicago and Gary to oppress me; a corridor I had previously romanticized as the thrumming sacred heart of the Midwest is now a moribund, dark, poisonous wreck. I wallow in self-pity; that I could have ever felt so close to this land is beyond me. When Jess is offered a job at Notre Dame, we jump at the chance, because it is, after all, my alma mater, and her bosses practically guarantee her they will pull strings to find me a job. This does not happen, despite several trips to the spousal hiring specialist in HR, who looks at my CV and then at me with a puzzled look that says, “What do you expect me to do with this?” I don’t know what I expected would happen for us. I guess I felt called back to this place, a place I associate with the heady joy of learning, the riskless taking of any and all chances. I felt I could reenter that rare atmosphere at no price or sacrifice. Instead, I learn that life is no longer without risk, and that I if I have been called back it is to become acquainted with desperation.

The night after returning from Chicago, with Charlotte and Jess asleep, I descend once more into the underworld of the educated and jobless. The lights in the apartment are off. The radiance from the laptop screen illuminates my hands and wrists but nothing else. I read posts from job seekers moaning and gnashing their teeth over the fact that they might have to teach three classes a semester as opposed to two. I read lamentations about the rural location and lack of diversity at the college that offered someone a job. I read a mercenary step-by-step manifesto

on “How to negotiate the salary you deserve.”

An hour passes. The thin spectral light begins to hurt my eyes, so I rub them and look over my shoulder, back down the hall to where my wife and daughter sleep, but I can’t see anything, just a blue-black wall of dark. I stare into it, willing my eyes to adjust. i

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