The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 38

When Lizzie descended the stairs late the next morning, she saw two men emerge from Frederick Gibbs' apartment with a large rolled Persian rug on their shoulders. The first guy was obviously apprehensive about the long flight of stairs between him and the front door of the apartment building. "You ready Brody?" he said.

"Let's get this over with," said Brody, breathing heavily. He looked like he had been stuffed inside an oversized beanbag body and couldn't get out. He wasn't designed to haul heavy freight.

Lizzie watched them take slow, cautious steps down the staircase, their faces flushed.

As she turned to enter the Gibbs' apartment, a scruffy-looking man pushed past Lizzie and braked to an abrupt stop on the landing, giving her a steely glare. On his left cheek was a tattoo of the Ace of Spades. The tip of his pink tongue poked in and out at the corner of his crooked mouth like an eel peeking out of its cave.

She didn't immediately recognize the sketchy gawker who had been standing on the sidewalk staring up at her window the other day.

"You live up there?" he said, glancing at the floor above them.

"Yeah. Where do you live?"

He galloped down the stairs elbowing his way past the rug carriers on his way out the front door.

"Watch it, jackass!" shouted Brody, his booming voice filling the stairwell.

His partner added, "You jerk!"

Nikki and her sons rushed out onto the landing. She called down to the rug haulers who were halfway down the flight, "Is everybody okay?"

"That idiot almost knocked us down the stairs," said Brody.

"Bet it was that creepy dude," said Caleb.

"He was very rude," said Lizzie.

They watched the men navigate safely to the bottom of the staircase, the heavy rug precariously riding on their shoulders. With one last push, they lugged their cargo out the front door.

"As soon as I saw that guy I knew he hadn't come to buy anything," said Nikki. "How did he even get in?"

Scooter shrugged. "Musta followed somebody in. He just stood in the kitchen looking out the window. Total creeper."

Lizzie said, "He had a face like an anorexic squirrel. With a tattoo."

"Exactly," said Caleb.

"Who was he?" Scooter asked.

His mom checked her phone, reviewed the list of potential buyers, and shrugged. Had she known the man's identity, she would have burst into an explosive rage.

His name was Tyson Russko, Vinny Scarpino's ex-roommate. Vinny currently had a new roommate in the Ohio State Penitentiary where he was serving his sentence for the murder of Nikki's father, Frederick Gibbs.

Tyson Russko was a dumb ass loser. It would be difficult to find anyone who'd disagree except for a former employer who took it a step further and described Tyson as a rat-faced, soul-less bottomfeeder. Apparently, Lizzie wasn't the only one who thought he looked like a rodent.

Tyson's upbringing wasn't to blame for his loutish behavior. He had good parents who didn't deserve him. His little sister, Jeanette, grew up in the same household and she turned out fine. In fact, she was well on her way to earning her degree in Veterinarian Medicine.

When they were kids, she tolerated his abuse as typical mean big brother annoyance until it became painfully apparent that Tyson was a sadistic bully. He teased her relentlessly and took pleasure in breaking their toys. He tormented their cat (who also noticed Tyson's rodent-like resemblance). The only time Tyson seemed happy was when he was making others miserable.

He didn't have goals and aspirations. He lived day to day under the delusion that he was somehow special and didn't need to follow the rules like everyone else. It wasn't until he was twenty years old that Tyson came to the sobering realization that the world wouldn't be rolling out the welcome mat, that there were no free lunches, that he wouldn't be marrying into the Kardashian family, and that he wasn't going to find a multi-million dollar lottery ticket on the sidewalk. He wasn't the chosen one. These were dark days of shallow self-reflection. And so, keeping alive the streak of regrettable life decisions, Tyson got a face tattoo.

Tyson believed his fortunes had changed when he answered a Craigslist ad for a roommate and met Vinny Scarpino, a low-level local drug dealer. He and Vinny had a lot in common. They had no friends, lived just above the poverty level, subsisted on fast food, and made up a lot of implausible stories about all the hot women they'd bedded. At the shaky hand of Vinny Scarpino, Tyson embarked on a 'promising' career. He learned the low-level drug trade, starting with marijuana, graduating briefly to pills, and eventually cheap methamphetamine.

Life was good until the senior citizen in the building across the street persisted in spying on them. He was relentless. He stood at his window each night, watching every customer who came and went.

One night, tweaked out of his mind, raging paranoia got the better of Vinny and he slinked across the street to confront the nosy neighbor. (see Chapter 5). Tyson thought Vinny's boasting about killing the old man was mere bravado until he learned his roommate had been arrested.

Fearful of returning to the apartment, Tyson lived as a vagrant, scavenging through trash cans for meals and sleeping on the street. Rumors swirled through the neighborhood that a strange girl living in the same building as the old man had formed a close relationship with one of the detectives who'd arrested Vinny. People had seen the same detective entering and leaving the apartment building on several occasions.

After processing this 'credible information,' Tyson concluded that if the strange girl no longer lived in that building, then the detective would have no reason to visit and, as a result, customers would feel safe returning to the neighborhood to buy drugs. This was precisely the kind of muddled imbecilic thinking that cemented Tyson Russko's well-deserved reputation as a dumb-ass loser.