ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Lee lives in Baltimore and recently completed the MA writing program at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has won the Maryland Writer’s Association fiction contest and appeared in JMWW. “Back River Neck” was inspired by the 2000 East Baltimore killing spree of Joey Palczynski.

Back River Neck

By Jennifer Lee


I had interviewed an old buddy of Lester’s earlier in the day and all I got was the smell of Marlboro Reds soaked into my shirt. And this woman Gail—she was an ex-girlfriend—I could tell it wouldn’t be much different. She took one look at my badge and crossed her arms. Like she didn’t have to talk to me.  Turned out, though, she liked to talk.

“It’s messed up him killing that girl and everything,” she said. “I thought he was going to straighten out with her. She didn’t party or nothing.”

She smoked her cigarettes down to the butt, one after another, grinding them out on a cracked yellow saucer.

“This shit’s fucked up,” she concluded, smoke streaming out her nose.

I could have told her ways it was fucked up that she hadn’t even thought of. And there were more ways than that, ways I hadn’t figured out myself. It wasn’t worth saying to her, though. My brother Tommy would have said that Gail had been rode hard and put up wet. She had that stringy, dried-out junky look to her.

“When was the last time you saw Lester?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, a couple of months ago maybe. What difference does it make?”

She was back to crossing her arms, so I pressed it. “What did you and Lester do, last time you saw him?”

“What difference does it make,” she said, again. “Casey was off at some church thing and there was a party and Lester was there and we hung out, that’s all.”

Meaning she and Lester partied all night, probably smoking crack and screwing, but I didn’t ask for details because I didn’t want to hear it. I’d known people die from that kind of good time.

It was getting hard to breathe, what with all the smoke, so I asked the last question.

“Do you know where he is now?”

“You’ve asked me that like a hundred times. No, I don’t know where Lester is. If I did, I’d tell you. That son of a bitch is dangerous.”

I stood up to go. I was starting to sweat, feeling sick from the narrow little room. I put my card on the table next to the cracked yellow saucer. “If you hear anything, give me a call.”

 

Lester Pazinski was somewhere in East Baltimore. People like him don’t go far from home no matter what they’ve done. He shot his girl, Casey Stump, made a mess of her in the mean little apartment they shared on Martin Boulevard. That was Thursday morning, and Pazinski went crazy after, shot a gas station attendant and snarled traffic when he took off running down the highway, a shotgun in his hand. Footage of that made the Baltimore evening news, with kids in the area spending hours at school in crisis response mode, crouched under the chalk boards with the doors locked and the lights off. 

I had a sick feeling from the beginning that I would be the one to find Lester Pazinski. It hit home, this crazy shit happening where I grew up. There was no one in the department that knew the area better, from Essex down to Sparrow’s Point, and my relationship to the area, anyone’s relationship to a place really, was complicated. My mother, my brother Tommy and I used to live with my grandma in a little bungalow on Murro Street. Ceiling fans and no air-conditioning, cracked sidewalks and the old Schwinn a neighbor gave me. Tommy’d ride shotgun on the back of the bike, me pedaling hard for all I was worth. Later he’d take his joyrides in stolen cars, but I wasn’t a part of that. Anything he was into that could lead to real trouble he’d always tell me I was too young; Tommy looked out for me that way. Black-eyed Susans pressed through the asphalt of the vacant lot next to our house, and the smooth, cool touch of chain-link fence led the way to the snow ball stand at the end of the block. I missed these things. Still, somehow, I was ashamed of it, like all it amounted to in the end was a train wreck like Lester Pazinski. I knew a lot of wild people growing up—my brother for one—but they didn’t all turn out like Lester did, they didn’t all pick up a gun. But I couldn’t figure out the balance of it.

I knew it would be hard interviewing Pazinski’s mother. I saw her first thing, when the news of what her boy had done was still fresh on TV. Her house was only half a dozen blocks from where I grew up, with the same narrow steps and pitched roof, shingles torn and fallen into the gutter. Julie Kaiser was her name, a big woman in sweat pants.

“What you come here for?” she said to me. “He ain’t here.”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I didn’t expect he was. But I got a couple of questions I need to ask.”

I asked about his friends, the women he knew, and Casey Stump’s relations. I tried to make it easy for her, but nothing about it was going to be easy for Julie Kaiser. When I stood to leave I offered her my card. She snorted like it was a bad joke and flicked the card from my hand. It landed upside down near an empty water glass.

Outside I took a last look at Julie’s house. Three scrawny azaleas grew under the window, and an ancient boxwood filled the air with its strange sad scent. I brushed its bristling leaves with my palm as I went down the steps.

It’s strange about places. My granny’s house had a boxwood out front, and I loved its unpleasant smell and the way small birds flew in and out of it. Sometimes it’s hard to get away from things. When I feel that way I like to drive down Back River Neck Road to where it ends at Rocky Point. I sit and watch the brown haze of the bay, the slow rich flow of the muddy water. 
That far out on the watery strip of land tucked between Middle River and Back River, the houses are real nice, up close to the water with their own private docks. Sometimes I imagine living in one of them. Further inland, where Back River Neck Road crosses Eastern Boulevard, is where I grew up. There are more convenience stores, places like WaWas, or Seven Eleven or Royal Farms, more package liquor stores, square yellow buildings without windows, big signs advertising malt liquor and Kool cigarettes.

I knew all those places. And after Lester Pazinski shot his girlfriend, I spent more time than usual parked down at the point.

Julia was in the shower when I got home. I took off my heavy shoes, the heavy belt, draped the black shirt and pants over a chair and got in with her before she turned the water off.

Later, when she was drying her hair with a white towel, she said, “I made a salad with grilled steak. And there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge. Put them in the cooler, okay?”

“Where we going?”

“Belvedere Square. Free Friday concert, remember?”

Julia liked these free concerts in the summer. For me, they weren’t much. You’d sit in a fold-out beach chair and watch other people’s children, the music all right but nobody dancing. Julia would make a picnic and we’d have a bottle of wine.

We got there at seven and the band had been playing for a while and we found a spot on the grass near an older couple with a dog. Julia petted the dog and was friendly with the couple and we learned the dog’s name was Rico and that he was a Wheaten Terrier, six years old. The salad with the grilled steak was really good—Julia is great at salads—and the wine was good too. I don’t remember the name of the band, but they were okay, up there covering Jimmy Buffett songs.

“Everything but the snakes,” Eileen said. “In our church, we got it all going on.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Eileen Stump was Casey’s sister, and I was working Saturday morning, wishing I was still in bed with Julia. The thought of snakes was making me sick.

“I mean speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor,” she explained. “We got all that. Most folks go to church an hour on Sundays. When we go, we stay all day. You go to church all day, you start speaking in tongues. I guarantee it.”

Eileen was older than Casey, maybe by ten years, and had an easy smile. I liked her, even if I thought her religious beliefs bat-shit crazy. Her house looked like a little old lady lived in it. Pillows and throw rugs covered the sofa and armchair, and the mantle and a glass display case were filled with porcelain angels. My grandma would have admired her taste.

“Did Casey go to church?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, she was always there. Even back in the beginning when her and Les was hot and heavy, Casey always came to church on Sunday.”

“Did Lester ever come with her?”

“Once he came, which, if you know Lester, is about as big a miracle as speaking in tongues. But that was back in the early days.”

“How did they meet?”

“At work. Casey and Lester was both working at the Golden Corral at the time.”

“And when was that?”

She thought for a moment. “About a year ago. Ten months, maybe.”

“Why do you think Lester shot your sister?”

Eileen swirled the Pepsi in her glass, listened to the ice rolling around. “I don’t know the answer to that. I seen violent men before, and you can usually tell what’s coming. I know Lester had a temper; I seen him go off yelling and cussing about little things. But Casey and him was really in love. Until this happened, he never laid a hand on Casey. He was never violent like that.”

“You have no idea what set him off?”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. He called here the day before, screaming how she was cheating on him. I don’t know where he got that idea. Lord, Casey wanted to marry that man.”

 

I left Eileen’s place and at Eastern Boulevard I turned right and headed north to Martin Boulevard. I drove past the apartment building where Casey had been killed. Further down was a long stretch of woods close up to the highway. It made me smile to see it. Those woods were where my friends and I had partied in high school. Saturday nights it seemed everyone I knew would be in the woods making out, drinking the liquor they’d stole from their parents. My brother Tommy would start bonfires in a clearing, better than any boy scout, and him and his friends would sit around the fire drinking Jim Beam and Blue Ribbon beer. His crazy laugh rang through the trees. He was always good for a party or a fight, and there was more than one girl that claimed she had his kid. Tommy had a buddy, Joe Rakowski, who played guitar and sang Bob Dylan songs. Tommy couldn’t sing or do anything musical, and when Joe would play he’d grin and watch him, almost like he had a crush. I teased Tommy about it once, and he slapped my head and said, “It’s because of the girls, stupid. Girls dig guitars. Why do you think so many chicks hang out with us?” But I knew my brother loved Joe.

My first girlfriend, a girl named Amber, used to meet me in those woods nearly every night when we were going out. We’d kiss until my lips were numb and tingling, her face raw from the scratch of my chin, buttons and zippers all undone. It took weeks before Amber let me go all the way, and even now it still makes me smile to remember how amazed I was that anything as good as sex could be had in life for free.

We were in the spring of our sophomore year when Amber moved away. It was a sudden thing, it happened like that a lot, kids moving on in the middle of the year. One week they’d be there, the next the family couldn’t make the rent, they’d be out, they’d wind up sleeping on the floor of a cousin’s living room until they found a new place. Likely as not the new place would be in a new school district, and the kids would have to start all over, making friends and figuring out class schedules. I think Amber ended up at Sparrows Point High School, but I’m not sure. I never saw her again.

 

Saturday night was Julia’s birthday. She likes fancy restaurants and being outdoors, so we were at the Oregon Grille, dining in the garden with the moonlight and the fountain, a thick Delmonico steak for me and the Chilean sea bass for her. I ordered a good red Zinfandel to go with it and there was still wine in the bottle when the dessert came, a thick slice of chocolate cake with “happy birthday” written expertly in the sauce.

I gave Julia a pair of expensive silver earrings, and she put them on at the table, changing them with the ones she had on. I like it when she does things like that, things people aren’t quite supposed to do.

We finished the wine with the cake. It was a cool night, like it gets in early June, so after dinner Julia and I walked out of the restaurant and followed the road up to Oregon Ridge. I could smell the sweet tang of fresh-mown hay, hear the surf sound of wind in the trees, all the colors muted in darkness. I’d eaten like a king and had a beautiful woman on my arm. Life doesn’t get any better. A man is lucky if he gets a moment like this, luckier still if he remembers it. I was feeling like a wise old king, alright, and for once was thinking of nothing else.

Then Julia asked, “Why does Pazinski get to you?”

“How do you know he gets to me?”

“I’m guessing. You‘ve seemed kind of lost in your head the past few days.”

I told her about Rocky Point and the time I spent down there thinking. I told her names of places, names of people, remembering suddenly the names of all the Pollack kids I knew growing up, how Lester Pazinski could have been any one of them. I tried to tell her about Tommy and my mother and my grandmother, all gone, but nothing made any sense. Julia looked at me steady as I spoke, and when I finished talking she kissed me hard and whispered, “Come back to me.”

I wanted what she wanted, but I could hardly see her in the darkness. Her eyes and lips had blended into the night.

Julia is a late sleeper but I’m not. I like a coffee alone in the morning, listening to the house sounds of a clock ticking, water in the pipes, distant traffic. Sunday morning I left Julia in bed, her back smooth in the twisted sheet, her hair loose on the pillow and across her cheek. Maybe I like getting up in the morning just to see her like this.

There was a tiny screened porch off the kitchen where I drank my coffee with the sports section, squinting into the bright light. My phone rang.

“You know that motel over by Pulaski Highway and Rossville Boulevard? It’s called Bay View. He’s there. Room 17.”

She hung up without giving her name, but I’d recognized Gail’s voice. I waited a moment to call it in, my eyes closed against the light, waited until my throat loosened and I thought I could talk. I didn’t hear the house sounds anymore, just the racing of my own pulse.

I should have gone straight to the motel, but I didn’t. I sat in that wicker chair on the porch nearly half an hour, the newspaper limp in my hands, the coffee cold on the table.

The last time I saw Tommy was seven years ago. I was sixteen and getting wild, but nothing like Tommy. He had started dealing, not big time, but I thought he was something. He didn’t ride around in hot cars anymore. He had a sweet black Mustang, and when I tried to borrow it or get Tommy to take me with him, he’d punch me in the arm hard and say, “I’m a working man now, you punk. I don’t have time for your shit. You stay out of it.”

After he died, the police came with warrants and searched the house. They didn’t have a kind word for my mother, just turned out the closets, flipped the mattresses and looked through all the papers. She stood in the threshold of the kitchen and glared at them, her mouth a thin line, her arms crossed. She didn’t cry, not in front of them.

The police didn’t find what they were looking for; Tommy was too smart for that.

I could have taken his place, I guess. Joe Rakowski made sure I got the keys to my brother’s Mustang before he left town, and older guys I hardly knew slapped my back and told me to ask for anything I needed. I finished high school instead.

Police work is a strange choice for a lot of people; I imagine I’m not the first person to come to it for reasons so important and at the same time so poorly understood. It had been good for me until Lester Pazinski. Maybe it was his age, twenty-one, the same age as Tommy when he died. Maybe Lester reminded me of Joe Rakowski, a man I never saw again and who I missed sometimes as much as I miss Tommy. I don’t know. It leaves me angry. All I know for sure is my brother wasn’t anything like Lester Pazinski.

Julia woke up while I was putting on my shoes. She saw the dark shirt and pants and her eyes grew wide. “Where are you going?” She said.
“I’ll be back soon,” I told her. “It’s over now.”

There were unmarked cars and cruisers in the parking lot and along the highway when I got to the Bay View. A knot of local people stood on the far side of the intersection and looked on.

A captain, Joe Martin, saw me walking toward the motel and said, “Where you been, asshole? I thought this was yours?”

I shrugged my shoulders and walked down the row to room 17. Saul Reimer, the photographer, was just setting up and I had a minute to take a good look at Pazinski.

He was a skinny guy, a pretty good-looking kid. He was wearing his jeans low, boxers hanging out, and his legs lay twisted on the floor at an odd angle, his feet hidden by the edge of the bed. There was a bullet hole—three of them actually—in his chest, but they hardly looked deadly. They were clean, only a little blood congealed in thin streaks across his smooth, bare chest. The exit wounds in his back were hidden from view, but all around his body blood had soaked from them into the blue shag carpet and turned it a wet reddish-black. He had died quick, and though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but think that Tommy had died quick too, shot like Pazinski, multiple times in the chest. I wanted to look at this piece of trash and think how different he was from Tommy, who never hurt anyone, how Pazinski didn’t deserve it so easy, but all I could focus on was the spotty stubble of beard on his cheek, hardly enough to shave.



Published January 2010