Thursday, September 4, 2008

We Work For The Dead





There's a serial killer in Los Angeles that has been named The Grim Sleeper because he stopped killing from 1988 until 2002. There's DNA and ballistics evidence, and the MO was always the same. Homicide cops will answer the phone saying "We work for the dead" or "We work for God." The first sounds better to me, after all, the dead need to be avenged, its not about closure, I word I have come to despise. And while some might argue working for God, I stand by my belief that there is a Higher Power, my belief coming from my being born a cripple. If that Higher Power wasn't benevolent, we'd all be goose-stepping Nazis in His/Her image or three-dimensional kids on Camazotz like in Madeline L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME. So, both phrases work, but I like the first. Grounded to the streets. Back in the 70s, it was more mafia hits than serial killings, a neighbor named Lourgis who lived at the corner house at 85th & Springfield (3901 to my 3909) was gunned down in his driveway and I worked for Sam Annerino at Pa's Italian Sandwich Shop on 95th Street, one Monday he went to Mirabelli's Furniture at 103rd & Cicero and three guys shotgunned him on the street during rush hour. Unsolved in the books. A girl was bludgeoned and dumped between McInnerney Funeral Home and the White Castle by Bogan High School when I was a senior. Her boyfriend did it. But back in the summer of 1974, Billy DeSouza went and disappeared. Walked to the carnival set up in Scottsdale Shopping Center at 79th & Cicero, never came home. The cops looked everywhere, I recall my father always talking with other cops about the case. At one point there was reason enough to search a wooded area that is now Orland Park and Homer Glen, many cops were on horseback to cover more ground because by then it was autumn and the leaves were falling. Another Unsolved. Until 1995, when a guy on death row in Connecticut gave up information with the uncanny detail, the photographic memory that I both wish and do not wish that I had. Sure enough, right there in a tree trunk within sight of the Orland Park Shopping Center at 175th, the skeleton of Billy DeSouza, intact. But during the latter part of 1974, my father was one of the Murder Police, and those are the men and women who work for the dead, to give an answer to the corpse's question of why was I killed?.........