Prologue / “POLICE! OPEN THE DOOR!”

 

With earphones on and listening to music on my ten-year-old desktop computer in my smoke-filled studio apartment about a mile from downtown Reno, Nevada, I had not initially heard the pounding on my apartment door.

 

“Police! Open the door! Now!”

 

I did, however, clearly hear the word “police”. I was up from my desk and opening the door as quickly as my fifty-seven year old, four foot nine inch tall body could move, which, admittedly, is not as fast as it once was.

 

“Where is Charles Seaborn?” the first officer at the door, gun drawn, demanded to know.

 

“He’s not here,” I said. “I have not seen my brother in ten years and the last time I spoke to him was in January of 2013. Nearly a year and a half ago.”

 

“We have reports that your brother was seen coming and going from this apartment all day long today.”

 

“Is that right?” I asked, getting slightly annoyed yet not wishing to come off as a smart-aleck with police. So far, I had done nothing wrong. I wished to keep it that way so as polite as possible, I continued.

 

“Officer, I was gone all day long. Downtown. At the library and other places.”

 

“We need to come in and check out your place.”

 

Apart from their initial pounding on the door, they were actually very nice police officers. There were four of them. They obviously meant business at apprehending my wayward sibling.

 

“Please, come right on in,” I said, moving to my table lamps and switching them on to lighten up the whole room, being both hospitable and trying to show that I had nothing to hide. Which was true. I had nothing to hide. I did not want problems; did not need problems.

 

Given my one room studio apartment, it was not as though my brother could have run out the back door (if he had been there, which he was not) without being spotted while the officer waited for the odor of cigarettes to dissipate. Finally, I guess, the young officer deemed it was safe for him to enter. They checked out my closet (clothes, boxes, vacuum cleaner…but no brother) and behind my shower curtain. I have a kitchen that is shared with three other apartments. Opening the door to the kitchen area, one of the officers loudly said “Charles Seaborn” to my neighbor who was Filipino. (Obviously not Charles Seaborn…as we are Caucasian white as you can be…they scared the poor man half to death as he was sitting there trying to just eat his dinner in peace.)

 

The officers were clearly puzzled. This was not just some drill or some hope that they would find my brother here. Whatever source of information they were relying upon, they had felt certain that Charles, on the run from the law for fifteen months, was at my apartment. That Charles was in Reno.

 

And that revelation had me concerned. Very concerned and scared.

 

In fairness to Charles, there were deep-rooted reasons in our childhood for why he became addicted to alcohol. Why he became an alcoholic. Nora (our mother whom I had quit calling mother following her betrayal of me in 1981) had no idea what she was getting herself into when she had agreed to marry John (Jack) Henry Seaborn. That is really where the story begins, with their wedding.

 

It was October 31, Halloween, of 1952.