Dear Ann (Part Four)

Dear Ann, Part Four :

At this point, Ann, I have to divert once again from my narrative to describe something that puzzled me for a very long time. You may be aware that I had amnesia of the entire twelve day event for over four years. Until October 1993 I remembered nothing of what happened, and even at that point it took several more years for the memories I do have to return to me. They came back in bits and pieces, and it took a strenuous effort on my part to place them in a continuous timeframe and make sense of them.

One of the things I have never been able to make sense of, though, was how Howard Schaller knew your sister, or at least knew who she was. I remember feeling a total disconnect at seeing his face at the moment he attacked our car, but because it was such a violent situation, and because of everything else that had happened that night, at the time he confronted Lillian it never occurred to me to ask why.

It wasn't until my memory returned that I asked that question. "Why was Howard Schaller at Northridge Hospital that night, why did he attack our car, and most importantly, why was he after Lillian? How would he have even known her"?

These questions perplexed me to the point of distraction, and finally I had to approach the situation as would a detective. I took into account the common ground of the Northridge Hospital parking lot. Why would Howard be there late on a Friday night, at the same time we were? The answer to that question was obvious : Someone alerted him that we would be there. Well, why would someone call Howard Schaller, of all people, to tell him that we would be at the hospital? Because something had happened that Howard would want to know about. But what could that "something" be, and who in the world could have called him?

Here I must interject again, to relate an encounter that took place earlier in the evening while I was still inside the apartment at Concord Square. The situation was a "domestic dispute". I had gotten loud, and the apartment manager had threatened to "call security", as she put it. I have never heard of apartment houses having security guards, especially back in 1989, but in any case, there was a knock at the door within a short time after she made that threat. Instead of seeing police officers in the doorway, as one would expect in such a situation, instead there were two thugs. These guys were approximately my age, maybe a little younger, 25ish. One resembled a Valley surfer type, and the other guy looked tough : fat, with jeans and a t-shirt, wallet chain, balding, hard demeanor and scary. He wasted no time.

"Who's the asshole causing the problem"?, he wanted to know.

Terry, the tenant of the apartment (and also the guy who later rode to the hospital in the Mercedes with his mother), pointed to me.

"C'mere, asshole", the thug said to me.

This was actually the first situation in the entire twelve days where I was terrified. There would be many more, and worse, but up until this brute came to the door of Terry's apartment, the situation inside had only involved an argument between three people.

I was very frightened of this guy, so I did as he told me. I walked to the door. There, he immediately grabbed me by the shoulder with one hand and pulled me out onto the doorstep. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a switchblade knife, flicked it and stuck the point about a half inch from my stomach. That was the first time I thought I was going to die. The encounter with this "security" thug is much more detailed and ended up involving Terry (the tenant) and your sister, who the thug chewed out after letting me go. When my memory came back, I asked myself several questions.

If you are an apartment manager, why would you call a thuggish criminal-type to quell a domestic dispute, instead of calling the police? The only answer that made any sense to me was that the apartment manager must have had something to hide. Why else would she not call the police?

This conclusion led me to resolve another more important question : How did Howard Schaller know we would be at Northridge Hospital? The only answer that made sense to me was that the thug called him. He looked like the kind of guy who would know someone like Howard, and if he was sent to Terry's apartment by the manager in order to quell the disturbance and keep it "in house", so as not to involve the police, then he surely would have been part of a larger, secretive situation involving the apartment, or at least the people in it, or at the very least he would have been sent on behalf of Howard Schaller. And so my answer to the above question was that the thug called Howard Schaller and told him that something had gone wrong at Concord Square, that there had been a loud disturbance, and that whatever secret was being hidden there was in jeopardy. He told Howard that we had left for the hospital, and may have noted that Lillian and Terry followed us in Terry's mother's car. 

Howard then raced over to Northridge Hospital, Ann, to confront your sister.

I only made these connections many years later, perhaps around the years 1998-2000, but even then, I still couldn't understand how Howard knew Lillian. I thought it must have something to do with drugs, and I pored over it again and again and again. Howard is a drug dealer, but Lillian doesn't do drugs.

It just didn't make any sense.

And Ann, I will wind my way out of this diversion now, by telling you that it wasn't until 2015, twenty six years after the fact, that I finally found a semblance of an answer that made any logical sense.

I know it is not easy to read, but the real problem is not that I am telling it to you now, but that it has been kept secret for so long. You may even know the totality of the secret; I do not, but at any rate, as far as I am concerned, there could only be one reason Howard Schaller was at Northridge Hospital that night, why he was so enraged and why he attacked our car, and why he singled out your sister.

She must have been involved with him in a drug deal. I'm sorry Ann, but there is no other possible conclusion.

Now, the most perplexing question of all, the one that took me 26 years to figure out, was how could this possibly have come about? Lillian was not a drug user. She was, however, an adventurous person, one who, in hindsight, took chances. She once told me that she scored cocaine for the guys in Cheap Trick, her favorite band. That is no big deal and nothing for me to judge, I was a drug user for the entire time we were together. But with Lillian, she kept things under wraps. With me, my behavior was out in the open, but with Lilly, she had the appearance of an honor roll college student (which she was), but on the side she very likely had gotten involved, by 1989, in some situations that were very dangerous. I still don't know the extent of them, because she kept them secret and won't talk about them to this day, but as far as Howard Schaller was concerned, there can be no doubt, looking back, that she was involved in some sort of drug deal with him, and the reason Howard came to Northridge Hospital was to confront Lillian because the "security thug" at the apartment building had called him and told him that the disturbance we had created had put his deal, or his money or whatever - maybe the possibility of him getting arrested - in jeopardy.

Finally, Ann, I asked myself again : how in the world could Lillian have known Howard Schaller? Yes, I had known him, but I'd never introduced him to Lilly and by 1989 I hadn't seen him or had any contact with him for more than seven years.

But then, in 2015, I considered my late friend Dave S. Dave was my best friend from 1979 until he passed away in 2008. When I began taking meth in 1979, Dave wanted in on it, and by 1982 we were making weekly trips to Howard Schaller's house in Canoga Park. I would go inside the house to make the purchase, Dave would wait in the car, but he knew where Howard lived. We went to his house weekly for a whole year.

Much more importantly, sometime around 1988, Dave called me to say "you won't believe who just came into the shop"! Dave worked at Mr. B's Flowers in Canoga Park. Of course, he told me that it was Howard Schaller who had come in. Howard's house was located just two blocks away. Dave hinted to me that Howard might be "selling" to employees in the flower shop, and I later figured that might include Dave himself.

What I figured was that Dave must have introduced himself as a friend of mine when Howard came into the shop, and thereafter maintained his own connection to Howard. Dave loved speed, just as I did, but he never wanted to quit using it.

And Ann, here is the bottom line : I believe that your sister had a double life going on. I believe that in addition to being a straight-A student, she also had her rock n' roll life happening, which included a lot of nights out in Hollywood and hanging out with her favorite band Cheap Trick. I still cannot pinpoint how her desire for a quantity of drugs may have arisen, but there is no doubt that she needed or wanted to make a purchase, most likely of cocaine (because most rock stars and partiers don't use meth), and I believe that because she didn't know where to get ahold of drugs, she asked the only person besides myself who she knew was a user - my friend Dave - if he could help her to get what she wanted.

She would have asked Dave to please keep it a secret - "don't let Adam know", and he would have been cut in on the deal, as would have Terry, who undoubtedly knew the secret as well.

As I say, Ann, to this day I have no idea why Lillian would have entered into a drug deal with Howard Schaller, unless it was to impress some rockers she knew, or for some other risk-taking purpose. Lillian's "other side" liked risk. And the only way she could have come in contact with Howard Schaller was through Dave, my best friend who knew Howard through me, and who had come into contact with him again in 1988 via Mr. B's Flower Shop, which was located around the corner from Howard's house.

It took me 26 years to figure all of that out, Ann, but it's gotta be the truth, or very close to it. And Howard came to Northridge Hospital that night because he was alerted by the "security thug" who came to the door of Terry's apartment. The thug knew Howard, was involved with him, called to tell him that we went to the hospital, and there he was, attacking out car and singling out your sister, who he felt had caused the problem.

The truth is that Howard was a violent criminal and Lillian should never have gotten involved with him. But just like the Manson girls, she was under a very bad influence at that time of her life, and whatever it was, I know nothing about it to this day. I am glad she got out from under it, and that her life has been a success, but Ann I must say that whatever she was involved in had a profound effect on my life.

After that first night, I was at the center of continuing violence, violence that was directed at me for eleven more days, that resulted from the situation that began that first night at the apartment building. I became the chosen victim, to be punished for whatever criminal situation it was that had been disrupted, and my life has never been the same since. /////

I will continue with my narrative tomorrow night.