The Antichrist Revealed: An Original Terrorist Novel

By Roland Hopkins

Brenda—a young, active, and attractive housewife living in a very high-class town—was ordered by her lawyer husband to not return to her very successful teaching and tennis-coaching jobs at the local high school. He was a control freak who was brought up to believe that men are always the total bosses.

Brenda decided to take a job behind her husband’s back, offered by her very trustworthy and friendly high school headmaster.

The job was having harmless lunch with traveling salespeople in a local hotel (no monkey business). Her first job was to meet with a successful and very religious traveling salesman who immediately became a true friend. While one of the most important job rules was to never accept an invite into a client’s room, she trusted her first client so much that she did visit that man’s room. They shared a harmless drink, harmlessly chatted, and then she left.

The next morning, he was found murdered.

Brenda was arrested, tried, and convicted (with no help from her husband) and was sentenced to life in prison.

Hey, that’s just the first few chapters. Several close friends, including the high school principal and an eighty-year-old retired private detective, work hard to prove her innocence. Good luck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546276821

Roland Hopkins

Roland (Rolly) Hopkins is a successful newspaper publisher whose background (way back) included Lay preaching, and he came very close to becoming a fulltime minister. Instead, he spent five years as a radio disc jockey, successfully feeding and clothing a wife and three children. Fun, fun, fun. Much more fun than publishing a deadlined weekly newspaper. He also dabbled in professional horse racing, winning (as an owner) over 300 races and having a horse nominated for the Kentucky Derby (the dream of every owner, breeder and and trainer). More fun, fun, fun, but no profit. profit, profit. Rolly’s real passion was and is writing fiction, and this book is his latest attempt at new fun.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

Private Eye Forever (Or Not)

The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. A voice broke into Sunday afternoon’s most popular radio program, The Shadow.

Six-year-old Mickey Gabriel sat in the living room with his family, a Sunday ritual. His father, mother, aunt, uncle, sister, and brother all traded concerned glances, stunned at the news bulletin.

Turn up the radio, his father said. "Maybe it’s part of the program. Remember H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds radio show that shook up thousands of listeners until he admitted that it was just a joke?"

Unfortunately, the December 7, 1941, announcement was no joke. The Japanese had wiped out most of the US Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor.

The next day, dozens of young men from Mickey’s neighborhood in the North End of Boston stood in line at the YMCA building to sign up for the duration. Little did President Franklin Roosevelt—or any of the enthusiastic, naive, revenge-minded citizens—know just how long the duration would be. Some of them would never see the North End again. Mickey swore to his family that if he had been several years older and bigger, he would have forged his birth certificate and immediately enlisted.

Mickey had been born in 1935 and brought up in a tough Italian section of Boston. Other than the horrible, never-ending recession, most people had learned how to live with less, and people whose names ended in vowels ran the streets where he lived. Luckily, Mickey’s father worked for those blessed people, handling minor bookmaking and numbers games. Still, Mickey was forced to earn respect in the streets, and he did so by learning the manly art of self-defense at Curley’s Gym in Scollay Square, a tough neighborhood.

His first fight was a loss. Hey, he was only eleven. As his mother placed ice on Mickey’s bloody nose, the boy swore never to fight again until he had learned and trained enough to win. He got a job after school with the Boston Ice Company, delivering heavy cakes of ice, which helped build up his muscles. Most households still featured iceboxes, and even though refrigerators had been invented, they were expensive.

By age fifteen, Mickey felt brawny enough to resume his pugilist career, and he now had a false birth certificate that said he was eighteen. If there was another war, he’d be first in line.

He went back to boxing, worked hard at it, and excelled; he was now respected on the streets, even though he had no vowel at the end of his name.

I’m gonna turn pro, he told his family one day at breakfast. Tommy Grasso, my manager, says I can make a good livin’. Whadaya think, Pop?

Mickey’s father preferred his son fight for an honest living rather than follow in his footsteps and be constantly under the scrutiny of the law. I think Tommy’s right, Son. You stick with him, and you’ll be fartin’ through silk.

Then came the next war: the Korean War. The North Koreans fought against the South Koreans from 1950 to 1953. Mickey couldn’t sign up fast enough, and he was one of the first soldiers to land there—and also one of the first to be sent home wounded. Mickey’s right hand stopped a ricocheting bullet. The injury ended his career as a soldier and also ended his career as a boxer.

Back in the North End, now much wiser, Mickey Gabriel was ready to work with his father, running the numbers, booking the bets, and maybe even collecting for the loan sharks. I might as well use the muscles I’ve worked so hard to develop for my livelihood, he decided. Besides, the US government taught me how to shoot a gun—another rare and, for most people, useless talent.

No. Absolutely not. His father pounded his fist on the dining room table. You will not work for the Family. You can use your training for good deeds, not evil ones. I’m acquainted with people on both sides of the fence. I’ll get you a job with Boston’s finest, meaning the police force.

Mickey applied for a cop job, but his hand didn’t pass the test. He couldn’t even bend his smashed wrist. But he received full disability from the US government, along with a monthly check and a worthless medal that he immediately pawned.

Mickey tried training boxers but found it boring.

He worked as a bouncer in a bar and discovered, to his delight, that with one hand, he was still tougher than most hoodlums he had to bounce. But still it was boring.

He secured a job as an usher at the Old Howard Burlesque Theater in Scollay Square. He enjoyed gawking at bundles of bare breasts and was never at a loss for cheap dates, but even that sport soon became a bore.

If you’ve seen one boob, you’ve seen them both, he facetiously told his envious friends.

Then his father had a brainstorm. I got a dear friend who’s gettin’ old. He’s a colorful character like that movie and radio mug Boston Blackie. You know, the private eye who’s a friend to those who have no friends and liked by everybody. I think the time’s come for my friend to take on a partner—someone young who can do the legwork and arm work, if you know what I mean. It’s an honest livin’. Well, sort of. You’d like it, Son. I’m sendin’ you to see him.

It was 1956, and Mickey Gabriel, twenty-one years old, became a licensed private investigator for the firm of Louis Cataldo, PI, Ltd., with an office on the second floor over the Casino Movie and Burlesque House in run-down Scollay Square, which ten years later would be demolished, making way for urban renewal and Boston’s new government center.

Louis Cataldo knew the flatfoots and the crooks; he worked with them all, and they all respected him. He taught Mickey how to play both ends while staying out of trouble and staying alive.

Louis Cataldo was over ninety. He carried several pellets of lead in different parts of his body, which had earned him the nickname the Cat, an animal that supposedly had nine lives.

I’m on my ninth and last life, he told Mickey, his young protégé. I’ll teach ya everything I know, introduce ya to everyone ya need to know, and then retire to Miami, where I can go to the horse races every day and not always have to watch my back.

Mickey listened, followed, and learned.

In 1962, Louis Cataldo, PI, the Cat, retired. The day before his plane to Miami and the morning after his wild going-away party, his heart gave out.

Mickey and his family buried him.

The mayor of Boston attended the funeral, along with the local Mafia boss, the chief of police, the governor, the manager of the Red Sox, and a hundred nonentity faces. Louis had been a friend to those who had no friends—and also to everyone else.

Mickey took on the detective agency and ran it just as his mentor had, and he became almost as popular. The cops retained his services to find missing persons or clean up cases they’d messed up. The mob hired him to find deadbeats. Mickey agreed to their requests, but he insisted on the right to advise the fugitive to either pay up or leave town. He flatly refused to break arms and legs or put anyone to sleep.

Both sides of the law trusted and liked him.

Back in those days, and earlier, thrifty Italians had the habit of land-banking their money. Land was so scarce and valuable in the old country that rich Italians would buy inexpensive, remote acreage in the United States rather than hold large bank accounts returning small interest.

Mickey’s father was not Italian, but in the 1920s, following the advice of his speakeasy-owner boss, he purchased sixty-five almost giveaway acres surrounding a remote pond in a small South Shore town called Pilgrim Way, located halfway between Boston and Cape Cod. He never laid eyes on the property and willed it all to Mickey.

In 1964, when Route 3 opened up Boston and surrounding towns through to Cape Cod with an interchange into Pilgrim Way, Mickey decided to check on his inheritance.

He built a small cottage next to the pond, and over the years, he sold house lots, the first ones at $5,000 per acre and the final few at more than $100,000 each. He also built a couple small cottages as rentals.

Mickey spent every August minding his own business and languishing on his homemade sandy beach, fishing for anything that would bite.

On one late summer evening in 1977, forty-two-year-old Mickey heard a scream coming from the other end of his pond—the side accessible to the town and facing the main Pilgrim Way street. Even though there were No Fishing, No Boating, and No Trespassing signs, people still picnicked there and were left alone.

Evidently, an eight-year-old girl had tested a new blow-up raft, drifted out about thirty yards, and tipped over. She couldn’t swim, and neither could her mother.

Only a few cottages lined the shore. Mickey could barely make out the frantic woman through the evening dusk as she waved her arms and called for help. Mickey jumped into his rowboat, and his one strong arm pulled him across the lake in less than a minute. Seeing some ripples where the woman pointed and also seeing the empty raft, he dove down into what turned out to be about seven feet of dark, murky water. Another neighbor, seeing the commotion, called the fire department. Within minutes, the rescue squad arrived on the scene, along with the police. The terrified woman continued to scream, pointing to the raft. Two policemen waded into the water.

Suddenly, like a mysterious vision, the limp body of the fully dressed sixty-pound girl rose out of the pond, held up by one powerful arm. Both policemen quickly dove in and swam to the girl. They grabbed her and returned to the shore, where the rescue squad worked feverishly, performing CPR, and finally revived the youngster.

Where’s the person who saved her? someone in the gathering crowd finally asked a full five minutes afterward.

The policemen looked at each other with questioning eyes. The rescue squad shrugged. They peered out into the dark pond, seeing only the empty rowboat and raft.

He must be still in the water! one of the policemen yelled. We never saw anyone!

Two of the rescue squad and both policemen threw off their jackets and returned to the water, to the same spot where they had found the girl. After another few minutes, they discovered the hero’s body lying on the bottom of the pond.

Mickey was rushed to South Shore Hospital, where they pumped out his lungs and placed him on emergency life support.

After seven days in a coma, Mickey Gabriel opened his eyes. What’s your name? the doctor asked, sure that Mickey was mostly brain-dead because of the lack of oxygen.

Mickey Gabriel, he answered groggily.

What day is it? the surprised doctor asked.

Sunday, December 7, 1941. The damn Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor.

Mickey Gabriel recovered physically, but mentally, he couldn’t recall any event after December 7, 1941.

He closed his private-investigation business and moved to Pilgrim Way, keeping mainly to himself, embarrassed of his lack of memory. Fortunately, as the years passed, his memory gradually returned, but he was never again to be the tough Mickey Gabriel who had been equally respected and slightly feared by the police and the wise-guy fraternity.

CHAPTER

2

Who’s the Boss?

Slap. Ouch! That hurt! Are we playing some new game that I don’t know about? Brenda asked her half-inebriated husband as he stumbled through the front door, home late from the first day of his new lawyer job in Boston.

He’d spent the last seven years attending college and then law school, and she’d attended junior college and then gotten a job teaching English at the local suburban high school, where she also coached the girls’ tennis team. On Saturdays, she did some waitressing at the town’s most popular restaurant, Miles Standish, and picked up some nice tips. Her money went toward paying for her husband’s schooling.

When people asked why her husband didn’t take on part-time jobs, she answered that he was too busy studying and soon would be a high-paid lawyer. Lawyers don’t take menial jobs, she said.

After a surprising slap, he told his shocked wife, Just showin’ you who’s the boss around here now that I passed the bar and have been hired as a full-time lawyer. My father taught me that the husband is always the boss, and he should have the honor of reminding his wife of that fact anytime he thinks it important. You and your mother have been telling me what to do ever since Junior was born, and that will stop tonight. Got it? He slapped her again.

The second blow was not as hard as the first but just as shocking. She had never seen that side of her handsome Tom Cruise–look-alike husband, whom she had dated since high school and been married to for six years and with whom she had a five-year-old son.

She gently pushed him away, thinking the alcohol must have caused his behavior. Her husband had always been pleasant and never shown any violence, but now he was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and her push only earned a much harder slap. This one knocked her onto the floor.

And no more high school job for you either! he yelled. We don’t need the dough anymore. And while we’re at it, your mother is fired. She’s a crazy pain in the butt anyway, and it’s your job to take care of the house and bring up Junior. Got it, kid?

Brenda crawled across the floor, started to cry, and leaned up against the living room wall. Mother has no place to go, and she’s been a great help in taking care of Junior when I’ve been working—and putting the money toward you earning your law degree. I love my job, and no more slapping. I know that’s the alcohol and not the real you—certainly not the nice man I married six years ago.

He flashed an evil-looking smile. Look, jerkhead, I’m a full-fledged lawyer now, and I have learned how to take control of any situation, including custody of Junior. All you have to do is shut your damn mouth and do as I say, and I’ll let your mother stay here. But you have to quit working at the damn school. That’s it. No arguments. Got it?

Brenda was speechless and continued to cry. Whatever you say, dear. Whatever you say. She didn’t want another slap, and she didn’t want her mother to have to leave.

This person wasn’t anything like the man she’d married.

CHAPTER

3

Meet Pilgrim Way

Twenty-five back-road miles south of Boston lay the diminutive ocean-side village of Pilgrim Way. A mixture of old and new, Pilgrim Way, founded in 1720, featured grand white colonials lining the main street, shadowed by ancient elms and maples. The newer ranch houses and Capes joined them on the outskirts. The town was envisioned as a deluxe bedroom community also offering easy highway access to major city business and industry.

Six years ago, newlyweds Brenda Parker and her husband moved into a small two-story, three-bedroom Cape Cod–style rental located on a far corner of the town’s only pond, which was small and owned by an elderly retired private detective. Brenda had landed a job at the high school as an English teacher and coach of the girls’ tennis team, and she also did Saturday night waitressing at the town’s most popular restaurant, the Miles Standish. The income helped pay for her husband’s law school education. She worked. He didn’t. Although teaching was stressful, she loved coaching tennis and could have done that 24-7, especially since her mom had moved in to help with family chores.

It took three years of law school for her husband, Chadwick, to finish his schooling, and upon passing the bar exam, he was hired by a reputable Boston law firm. The position would earn him enough income to finally take the financial responsibility off Brenda and pay all the bills himself.

Suddenly, his sweet, soft, loving personality changed. The handsome, clean-cut guy she had happily married, had a son with, rented a nice house with, and appeared to be living happily ever after with totally changed his personality. He finally had a solid money-making job—no more classes, homework, tests, or job interviews. He was, in his mind, finally a real man, and apparently, he wanted to puff out his chest to prove it. His wife was shocked; she’d never seen this tyrant-like side of her husband before, not even a hint of it. His father had been a domineering alcoholic jerk who’d slapped his wife around on occasion, but Chadwick never even once had raised his voice, let alone his fist, and couldn’t have been more caring and sharing before and during his law school days.

A sad Brenda gave two weeks’ notice to the high school, saying she had to resign because of her health. Her husband thanked her for obeying orders. Stick with me, kid, he said, and he gave her a hard kiss on her chin that actually hurt. You’ll be glad you quit working when you get involved in the yacht club that just yesterday accepted our application. Actually, it was our fourth application since we moved here. I’m sure the fact that I got a job at Boston’s largest law firm had a lot to do with our acceptance. All yacht clubs are classy.

Chad claimed the club was good for business, while Brenda liked the tennis courts.

Thirty-eight straight Massachusetts Turnpike miles northwest of historic Boston stood the bigger and less exclusive town of Framingham, which was infamous for its overcrowded women’s prison, Winningham State Prison, founded in 1888. Among the inmates resided seven females who’d premeditatedly murdered their husbands because of physical abuse. Their stories had been well documented on the scandal TV shows and in supermarket exposé tabloids, such as the National Enquirer, Star Weekly, People Magazine, and others.

Residents of Pilgrim Way knew little about how people of that persuasion lived and died. They had experienced one murder in seventy-five years. That might have been a Guinness Record. The deluxe town populace were from a different world, and what went on in places like Framingham didn’t affect them in any way—yet.

CHAPTER

4

Happy Birthday

What’s it like to reach twenty-five? Suzanne White asked Brenda as she carefully sliced a thin sliver off the end of a fattening birthday cake. It was Brenda’s birthday, and she had invited a few of her closest friends over.

Four-year-old Chad Parker Jr. had conveniently been put down for his afternoon nap an hour earlier. At his birth, Brenda’s widowed mother, Jemima, had moved in as an inexpensive babysitter.

Brenda answered, To tell the truth, it sucks. I now have no job. I loved teaching, and I loved coaching. Happy sucky birthday to me.

Suzanne took a bite. Yummy. No diet for me today, and you always have that perfect movie-star figure. Are you and your husband planning on having more children?

Brenda puffed out her chest and gazed at her reflection in the ceiling-to-floor living room mirror. Maybe. Just maybe. Chad used to tell me I resembled Marilyn Monroe. Of course, that was when he was courting me. She’s dead now, but maybe?

Well, my friend, you do resemble her, and I’m not courting you. So happy birthday. She handed Brenda a hundred-dollar gift card from Walmart, which could buy just about anything.

Better than a gift that would be secretly returned, Brenda thought.

Brenda’s mom cut a big piece of cake and devoured it in a few bites. Yummy for my tummy, she said, and she burped. Known to friends and neighbors as Jemima because of her love of fattening Aunt Jemima waffles, she was an avid student of all things New Age and insisted that recent daily events, such as the growing activity of violent storms, floods, high winds, and tornadoes, were obvious evidence of the prophesied Tribulation, not to mention crazy terrorists blowing up, shooting up, and cutting the heads off innocent people in places all over the world, especially the Middle East, and schools being shot up by crazies. Most everyone ignored her, and Brenda found her theories all silly and boring.

So how do you keep so svelte? Suzy asked her birthday-girl friend.

Chad won’t allow me to go back to work, so I go to the health club every day, Brenda answered. I’ve even started lifting. Feel my muscle.

Suzy grabbed the birthday girl’s arm. Oh! You’re right.

Brenda caught the side glances of Vicki and her sister, Anne, both of them smiling and attractive. If anyone in town resembled a movie star, it was voluptuous Vicki. She was the prettiest of all the girls, with great curly red hair, full lips, shapely hips, and perfectly formed bosoms. Could she have passed for Julia Roberts? Close.

Where’s Chadwick on your birthday? Jemima asked. Her late mate, Brenda’s father, had been a philanderer, liar, and deadbeat, and she thought every man followed the same pattern.

How old does a woman have to get to be that cynical? Brenda always wondered. Or how many times does she have to be cheated on? She had caught Chad only once, and his excuse had been that he’d had too much to drink while attending a bachelor party. He said all the men had cheated that night, and Brenda sort of bought it—a weak excuse to forgive him. Since becoming a licensed lawyer, he’d started coming home many a late night smelling of booze and perfume that she knew he didn’t wear. She had suggested divorce just once, and he had not answered but slapped her face with a closed fist, almost breaking her nose.

He’s working. What else? the birthday girl answered, her voice tainted with a bit of denial. Someone has to pay the bills to afford to live in this affluent town. He says he’ll make partner next year, and I hope he does so we can afford to move into one of those classy homes on Main Street.

Jemima frowned into Brenda’s eyes. All men cheat, she said.

Brenda attempted an apologetic look at Suzy, Anne, and Vicki—all Pilgrimites born and brought up in the town. It seemed that Brenda was always apologizing for her nutty New Age mother, who subscribed to a monthly Apocalyptic Newsletter and even attempted to read passages to anyone who’d listen—as she did now. She grabbed the latest issue from her purse and said, The Mayans ended their calendar on December 21. What does that tell us? They screwed up, or we screwed up the year. Many think it was the final year of the twentieth century. Maybe they missed the year by a few, so every New Year’s since then, I’ve spent that entire day in my basement, and it’s only three months or so away. I don’t really think the world will come to an end, but an end will come to the world the way we know it. I mean, why the hell else would the Mayans have ended their calendar on that date?

The rest of the group, not really knowing or caring who the Mayans were, traded doubting glances and condescending smiles as crazy Jemima continued.

"I’ve been watching the years leading up and past this fatal