Echoes in the Darkness (6 page)

For Vince, it was a great honor to be admitted into Bill Bradfield's inner circle so readily, and to become a friend of the unquestioned leader of the English department.

"I learned right away to give him latitude," Vince Valaitis said. "I didn't press him with questions. He was incredibly fascinating and different. There were so many secrets about him. Like where he lived. A simple enough question for anyone else."

One day at school, Bill Bradfield placed his hand on Vince's shoulder and in his own conspiratorial style said, "Vince, there are certain things about me that I don't reveal, but though we've only known each other a short time, I count you as one of my true friends."

And so one afternoon over lunch Bill Bradfield revealed an episode in his past. It seemed that during the revolution he'd gone to Cuba on a mission for the government. He met some Castro guerrillas who took him to the harbor in Havana to show him yanqui ships loaded with munitions. All at once somebody started shooting at suspected saboteurs. Everyone dashed for cover.

"I'll never forget the moment because I was wearing expensive alligator shoes." Bill Bradfield chuckled, while the astonished Vince Valaitis tried to keep his chin off his plate.

"There were always those touches," Vince said later. "You could never doubt any part of his stories because of the little touches that were so convincing, like the alligator shoes."

Bill Bradfield came up choking on seawater, he said, and found that he was inside a military compound. He had to get away pronto, and though he had never committed an act of violence in his life, he had no choice but to garrote a Cuban guard and make his escape. Before returning to America he helped the Castroites blow up that ship in the harbor. But that was another story to be told later.

Vince was asked not to talk freely about this part of Bill Bradfield's past because there were still dangerous people who might resent his having been a young revolutionary. And while Vince was crossing his heart and hoping to die or something, Bill Bradfield revealed yet another secret that would require even more discretion. He cautioned that it should never be revealed to a living soul, particularly not another soul at Upper Merion.

Bill Bradfield said, "I want you to come to our place for dinner tonight. Mine and Sues. I live with Sue Myers, and no one can know. We'd be fired if the district found out."

Vince had only a few seconds to chew on that one when Bill Bradfield said, "I want to assure you that my relationship with Sue is not and never has been sexual. By the way, how do you feel about chastity?"

And Vince, who'd had about as much sexual experience as his Star Trek hero, Dr. Spock, started wondering where this conversation was going.

Bill Bradfield said, "I respect so much about you. Your mind is incredibly receptive, and I admire that you're a devout Catholic. I've spent a great many years in contemplation of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. I respect chastity most of all. I think the Church is correct in urging young men to remain absolutely chaste until marriage. I hope you agree."

"Of course," Vince reassured him. "Of course I do. In fact, I almost entered the seminary. I thought very seriously about becoming a priest."

"Well, well," Bill Bradfield said. "That's admirable. I want you to know that the relationship between Sue and me is one of friendship. We have a lot in common and I care for her deeply, but only in a platonic sense."

It's not certain if at this time Bill Bradfield had learned a few things about Vince Valaitis. For one, Vince still wore a scapular around his neck, a practice that most Catholics had abandoned a generation earlier. Moreover, he carried at all times a set of rosary beads. Most Catholics who still did that lived in convents.

A dinner invitation to the apartment occupied by Sue Myers and Bill Bradfield represented the best thing that happened to Vince at Upper Merion.

"I felt tremendously flattered," he admitted much later. "I was honored."

Bill Bradfield had painted three Chinese characters on the white interior wall next to needlepoint hangings that Sue had done. He explained to Vince that the writing was from the Ezra Pound translation of Confucius.

It said, "Day by day, make things new," and pertained to Pound's advice that all translators should try to tum a translation into a poem in the new language. Bill Bradfield was trying to turn his life into a new kind of poetry.

Privately, Bill Bradfield revealed a little more about his Cuban adventure. He had been forced to spend a short time hiding out in a bordello. The prostitutes made passes at him, but he resisted. His traveling companion was a friend named Tom. The prostitutes left Tom alone after they were told he was homosexual.

Vince managed to amuse Sue and Bill Bradfield when the talk turned to their principal, Dr. Jay Smith. Vince told them the prince of darkness story and they laughed. He didn't tell them that he had an overpowering urge to draw his rosary and point that crucifix like a six-gun every time the principal passed his way.

Pretty soon Vince was relaxed and enjoying himself immensely. He flashed his trekkie's bunny tooth grin after Bill Bradfield made a startling suggestion.

"I was simply bowled over," Vince Valaitis remembered. "Bill Bradfield asked me if I'd like to live in their building. There was a vacancy coming up and he thought I'd make a fine neighbor."

He didn't need coaxing. Soon Vince was moving in downstairs, getting all settled with a videocassette recorder, his collection of fantasy films and his brand-new tombstone that had been chiseled out of granite for someone named Mary Hume.

When he'd had a chance to buy that tombstone, he couldn't resist. After all, this was his first real home away from home other than an apartment he'd shared with a roommate, and anybody who adored Dracula movies should have a tombstone in his living room. Vince Valaitis was exceptionally happy.

Before long, Vince was aware of Bill Bradfield's scheme to sail to Barcelona on an oceangoing sailboat. He got to see all the specifications that Bill Bradfield had obtained by mail, and it was even hinted that Vince might be considered as a shipmate on that dream voyage. Nobody commented when Sue Myers said he could take her place because she'd rather be a cabin girl on the poop deck of the Andrea Doria.

The fantasy trip to Barcelona was nothing compared to the most ambitious scheme to date: the Terra Art store. This one scared the hell out of Sue Myers but it was mostly her idea.

Bill Bradfield had decided that there was money waiting to be made in a retail store in the Montgomery Mall. What the mall needed, Sue decided, was a store offering arts and crafts, the things she enjoyed. Bill Bradfield wasn't frightened by the huge money investment. It seemed like a sure thing because it was a franchise operation and had an established factor of name recognition.

He'd never seemed to care much about the world of commerce, but this was a way to achieve his plan of someday having the economic security to cruise the Mediterranean on the trail of Odysseus. That would require a whole lot of money for a gaggle of schoolteachers.

Sue Myers agreed to supply most of the labor and Bill Bradfield mortgaged the house he owned in Chester County and put up $40,000. Vince threw in his nighttime labor. A corporation was formed with Bill Bradfield as president, Sue Myers as secretary, and Vince Valaitis as treasurer with a salary of 5 percent of the business.

The store opened its doors on the very day that a bogus Brink's courier pulled a major theft at the Sears store in St. Davids. Vince and Sue did all the actual work at the store and business was all right at first.

The Christmas season was also pretty good but there were some disturbing signs that the shoppers at Montgomery Mall had not been spending their lives waiting for gimcracks. Still, Vince was well paid and was happy with the arrangement.

When Bill Bradfield had occasion to take time off from school Vince often took over his class. Bill Bradfield would have a lesson plan even for a one-day substitute, a detailed lesson plan complete with a laboriously drawn seating chart. He wanted to control the class even if he wasn't there.

Vince wished that Bill Bradfield was less serious, and even hinted to the older man that there were things in life that could not be controlled.

* * ?

It had been a prosperous holiday season for the Sears, Roebuck store in Neshaminy Mall. The bags containing the receipts were bulging on Saturday afternoon, December 17, 1977. The cash total alone was $137,798.

It was nearly time for Armored Motor Service to make its daily pickup, and the assistant head cashier waited impatiently. Sears was running short of one-dollar bills and silver coins.

At 2:00 P.M. the assistant head cashier was finally handed an identification card by one of her clerks who told her that the courier had arrived. The woman took the couriers identification card to the back office to compare the name with a list of Armored Motor Service couriers on the office wall. For security reasons, the names and signatures of all couriers were posted.

The courier's name, Albert J. Wharton, checked out with the name on her list, but she decided to use a little more caution because of the August theft at the Sears in St. Davids.

She compared the signature of Albert J. Wharton on the card with the signature of Albert J. Wharton on the posted notice. They had not been written by the same hand.

The assistant head cashier walked out of the back office and examined the uniformed courier. He was fiftyish, a tall man with glasses.

"Did you bring our money?" she asked. "We ordered coins and one-dollar bills to carry us over a few days."

He shook his head and said, "Had a^ very heavy demand today. Had to put it on another truck."

The courier seemed calm and controlled. But the woman had worked at that store for seven years, and the couriers bad never needed a second truck.

"Just a few minutes," she said, and went back to her office.

The armed courier looked at his watch and began to pace outside the cashier's office. A minute passed, then another. Even if the courier heard the call going out over the Sears public address system he probably wouldn't understand it.

"Eight hundred call for operator thirty-nine," the voice announced.

It was directed to the store security officer and meant trouble in the cashiers office.

The cashier would later say, "There was something about his face. It was not a common face."

Hiat uncommon face was suddenly damp with sweat. The courier looked at his watch once again.

"You can't go in there!" one of the cashiers yelled from the outer office as the courier suddenly vaulted the half wall and ran toward the inner office where the assistant head cashier awaited the arrival of the Sears security officer.

He slammed into another clerk knocking her to the floor as he burst into the office.

"I want my card!" he warned, stopping before the assistant head cashier. "I don't have to take this type of treatment! I'll just go back downstairs and send somebody else up! But I want my card\"

The frightened woman didn't get a chance to reply and perhaps couldn't have, as she gaped at that uncommon face. The courier snatched the card from her hand, turned and bolted out.

. During his escape, the courier pushed people out of the way and hurtled daringly down the moving steps of the escalator. The courier did not get the money. Not this time.

"The composite police drawing never got the eyes right," one of the witnesses later complained to police. "There was something about his eyes."

Things in the Upper Merion crucible had been simmering for three years and were bound to boil over.

The confrontation took place in the teachers' lounge. According to Sue Myers, she lost her temper and kicked Susan Reinert in the shin. According to Susan Reinert, it was a knee in the thigh coupled with a warning that sounded like "If you care for yourself and your kids you'd better leave Bill alone."

That afternoon a sobbing Susan Reinert called her therapist and said, "How do I handle something like this with Karen and Michael? I don't want to scare them, but I think they need to take necessary precautions. What do I tell them? Should I say to beware of any woman who comes up and tells them she knows Mommy from school? I really fear this woman!"

Susan Reinert had stopped seeing Roslyn Weinberger on an individual basis by then, but still telephoned and still attended group therapy. The group was not composed of the kind of people with whom Susan Reinert had shared her life. They were not Great Books advocates, nor English teachers, nor even college graduates necessarily. They were ordinary working folks, and they had lots of advice when Susan Reinert brought them her tale complete with contusions.

One of the group members asked, "How much more are you going to expose yourself to, Susan?"

"Well, I don't know," she answered. "You see she works with me and . . ."

^We're not talking about her" another one muttered.

"This guy means you no good," still another informed her.

"He's a manipulative son of a bitch!" yet another piped up.

"Whether he does or doesn't leave the other woman, you can do better than this bullshit!" still another pointed out.

"But I think you have the wrong idea," Susan Reinert squeaked. "You don't understand. He really does have lovely qualities. And he's been with her so long he just doesn't want to run out on her when she's so unstable and needy. He's just waiting for the proper time to get her out of his life!"