The Lottery Game

By Gerard Shirar

Pete Morrissette’s wife Cath has passed on and Pete finds himself at a crossroads. No longer willing or able to mow the lawn or dig out the driveway in winter he decides he must find a new way of life and settles on the assisted living community of Brook Haven in Central Massachusetts where life is pleasant and the amenities comfortable. In the beginning he finds things just the way he wants them and he settles into a pleasant but uneventful and somewhat boring way of life with friendly people much like himself, with the pressures and expectations of their younger years behind them. However all that changes when Manfred Toomey takes up residence at Brook Haven and Tony Cantangelo enters Pete’s life. Things take a decidedly downward turn for Pete as he finds himself caught up in the Lottery game, something that will drastically change his life and send his world into topsy-turvy turmoil and… as he so apply puts it… “into the toilet.”

In this mystery thriller an elderly man’s innocence and gullibility are exploited and the legal system unfairly makes him a scape goat, forever altering a decent elderly man’s life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532096112

Gerard Shirar

Gerard Shirar is a Purdue University graduate, a US Army veteran, a former director of security of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a former attorney who practiced in Everett, Massachusetts. Now retired, he resides in an assisted living community amid pleasant surroundings and company. This is his sixth book.

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Copyright © 2020 Gerard Shirar.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9612-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9613-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9611-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020904564

iUniverse rev. date:  06/15/2020

Contents

Dedication

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Part Two

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Part Three

Chapter Fifty-Two

Dedication

To those I met along the way.

Life is God’s lottery. You’re

dealt your ticket, and fate

and time spin the wheel.

PART ONE

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Chapter One

I don’t know who said it first, but I think if you dwell on it, you’ll see that it’s true: Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. My life has played out pretty much that way. It’s also been lived in stages: a kid learning to tie his shoelaces and acquiring life’s societal skills, then a teenager with the heavy baggage of personal insecurities and not knowing where the future might take him, then the twenties, when life was fun, lived carefreely and selfishly, followed by settling down and starting a family. And finally, old age with the passing of friends and loved ones. That’s the stage I’m in today—old age, with my feet halfway up the staircase to heaven, and the lingering question: was it all worth it?

I’ll bet, if you think about it, you’ll see life’s been, or will be, the same for you. But one thing’s for sure: there’s no going back to the comfort of the womb. Turning back the pages of life is simply not an option. We’re stuck with the cards we drew and how we played them.

I guess you’ve probably figured out by now that when all is said and done, my life has not been much to crow about, and you’re right. For one thing, I’m writing this in a six-by-nine notebook while doing time in a federal prison hospital. To be exact, the Federal Medical Center Devens. FMC Devens is located on the site of the former Fort Devens Army base near Ayer, Massachusetts. It’s one of the places your federal tax dollars end up to care for ill and infirmed male miscreants convicted of federal crimes. Basically, old, sick guys like me who, as Norman Mailer would have put it, fucked-up in life.

The Devens facility houses 1,164 inmates in total, 1,051 at the FMC and 113 at the center’s minimum-security satellite camp. I’m housed in the medical center in one of the two-prisoner cells. My cellmate and I get along. He’s a seventy-five-year-old Vietnam War veteran with bowel cancer who was homeless and on drugs when he was sentenced to six years for holding up a federally insured credit union. No gun, just a note. But he’s due for release soon, so I’ll keep his name to myself.

They call FMC Devens a medical facility, but it’s actually a prison with a few doctors and nurses. The FMC’s manual claims that the center specializes in long-term medical treatment and encourages visits by family members so long as there is no reasonable suspicion of a breach of good order or security. I’m quoting from the center’s handbook, a dose of government propaganda that uses a lot of words that don’t tell you much and glosses over the way things really are.

Most of the center’s serious cases are either taken to civilian hospitals for outpatient treatment or seen by specialists who travel to the FMC to treat the inmates in house. The less severe cases, or those beyond hope, are treated by the center’s medical staff. Some of the cells are outfitted with medical equipment intended to ease an inmate’s pain, accommodate their physical limitations, and monitor their medical condition. My part of the cell is equipped with a hospital bed and a machine that monitors vital signs. It was set up when my lymphoma flared up. Now they monitor my breathing and heart and pulse rate only at night. Aside from a regime of chemo a while back, a bunch of medications, an occasional blood test, and a PET scan every three months, I’m mostly left on my own. Since my cellmate and I are classed as low risk, they keep the cell door unlocked most of the day, so I’m free to move around in the wheelchair I’ve been issued. Right now, I’m attending a classical literature course given by one of the prisoners, a former college professor with a Ph.D. in literature and advanced melanoma, in for fraud involving federally backed student loans. I’m also taking a quilting class taught by a kind volunteer lady from Ayer, the nearby town.

In case you’re interested, I share the cellblock I’m housed in with other unwell male prisoners convicted of federal crimes that run the gamut from white-collar to organized crime. In the statute books, the latter is defined as highly centralized enterprises run by criminal’s intent to engage in illegal activity, which means I’m forced to share a cellblock with guys like Peter Madoff, the brother of the celebrated Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff, Frank Locascio, an underboss of the former New York City Gotti mob, two kidnapper child molesters, a politician convicted of producing child pornography, a former member of Congress who was convicted of transferring obscene material to a minor. The list goes on. Me…I’m in for a crime I didn’t commit a crime for which I was made a scapegoat by the crooks who pulled off the scam, and by the assistant US attorney who tried me when he and the FBI couldn’t bring the real criminal behind it to trial.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, FMC Devens isn’t a pleasant place to be, but it could be worse. I’m eighty-eight years old now, with a long list of illnesses, so it’ll probably be my home for the remainder of my three-year sentence, one and a half years. That’s if I live that long. I’ve been in what the Federal Bureau of Prisons refers to as their care and custody for almost a year and a half now. But who knows what the future holds? There’s an appeal that’s been pending for about a year…so we’ll see.

Oh…by the way, you may have read about me. They told me the stuff they claimed I was involved in, as well as my trial, made the local TV evening news and the Boston newspaper headlines. They said that even the New York Times and the Washington Post covered it…on their back pages. But heh! For those who relish their fifteen minutes in the spotlight, the back pages of the Times and Post…that’s big-time recognition.

Just to make sure we have it on the record, let me introduce myself. The name’s Pete J. Morrissette. The J is for John, and the Pete is for Peter. But since I’m counting on us being friends, please…call me Pete.

You may be wondering how I got into the mess I’m in. I’ve been wondering that, too. So, the other day, as I was sitting in my cell, I suddenly realized that when I’m gone, no one’s going to know my side of the story and how I ended up in this place. So…I’ve decided to write everything down in a notebook and let the chips fall where they may.

Now, where to begin? I guess we can start with my wife’s passing. Cath died in October 2000, which, according to the Gregorian calendar, was the beginning of a new millennium. The name she was christened with was Catherine Hemsley. Morrissette was added with her marriage to me, but I don’t think I ever used her full name, Catherine Hemsley-Morrissette, except maybe to do the taxes and stuff like that. To me, she was simply Cath, and she always will be.

After our girls started school, Cath went back to teaching and taught third grade. She was known to her woman friends, most of whom were teachers who taught in the same public school she did, as Moo. She told me she picked up the nickname during a second-grade class outing to a dairy farm. She got tangled up with one of the cows, who chased her across the pasture, mooing. The nickname stuck with her through high school, college, and her working life.

We were married for fifty-three years, years that just seemed to slip by. Our marriage wasn’t a relationship with a lot of hearts and flowers, like in the romance novels. I suppose, looking back on it, you could best describe what we had as compatibility, but…don’t get me wrong. There were a lot of sweet times.

Our two girls turned out fine, not that either of us knew what we were doing. There was a house in a middle-class suburb, with a mortgage we paid off together, her teaching, me in a string of unfulfilling jobs. Holidays, birthdays, two notable vacations. One for two weeks in our forties, spent in Paris. The other in our early fifties in London. Three weeks spent living at the Ritz, wandering the streets of old London Town and attending plays and musicals at the Old Vick, the Strand, Drury Lane, and Theater Royal. A few vacations on Cape Cod, where we rented a cottage for part of the summer. And high school and college graduations, the marriages of our daughters, Carol now living in San Francisco and Barbra in one of those ritzy towns outside Boston. The birth of grandchildren and great-grandchildren… But some sickness, too. Cath had Addison’s disease, was in the hospital a lot, and needed cortisone to survive. But I guess, all in all, you could label our life together as two imperfect people who never gave up on each other.

It took a year after Cath’s passing for me to realize I was at a crossroads. I woke up one morning and grasped the fact that I was eighty years old. Most of my hair was gone. I had rheumatoid arthritis, an enlarged prostate gland, not to mention type two diabetes and atrial fibrillation, for which I took warfarin, and lymphoma that my oncologist and I were monitoring. I also no longer wanted to cut a lawn or shovel snow from a driveway and realized that what a wise man once said was true: Growing old isn’t for sissies.

After Cath’s death made the obituaries, I began receiving brochures in the mail from Life Care Communities, touting their accommodations, amenities, and lifestyle. So, I decided to investigate the possibility of moving to one. I visited five in all, which ran the gamut from places with a country club lifestyle, and costs way outside my budget, to those I could afford but that seemed like waiting rooms for the afterlife, with the residents biding their time as they awaited a summons from Saint Peter…or beckoning from Beelzebub, depending on how they had played life’s cards.

Just when I reached a point where I was about to give up looking, the mail brought me a brochure from Brook Haven Life Care Communities, Inc., in Fairview, a town in Central Massachusetts. The pamphlet was two pages, embellished with photographs. One showed a group of octogenarians; the women well dressed and coiffured, the men in casual attire, their gray hair neatly combed, sitting around a table in a large windowed game room, playing cards. Another showed a foursome of elderly men and women dressed for golf on a putting green, while a third was of a group of smiling, stylishly dressed elderly men and women sitting at a well-appointed dining room table and being served by a grinning chef in full regalia, with the caption Best restaurant in Massachusetts. There were also several photographs of the interiors of apartments and verbiage that extolled Brook Haven’s living accommodations. While it looked expensive, I was beginning to realize moving to a life care place wasn’t going to be cheap, so I arranged a visit.

My initial view of the place couldn’t have been under more ideal conditions. I arrived on a pleasant July day with the temperature in the mid-seventies. The sky was cloudless, and an early-morning rain had perked up the flowers and brought the lawns to a lush green.

The Brook Haven campus sat on a twenty-acre parcel, with the massive wooden four-story box-gabled main building capping the top of a hill. As I drove up the wide circular drive, I was reminded of the Tara plantation from the film version of Margaret Michell’s Gone with The Wind. The main building was impressive, with large, double-hung windows, vine-covered walls, and an aura about it that said luxury and wealth. The drive led to the main building’s Greek revival entrance, from which I had a panoramic view of the vast, sloping front lawn, the decorative flower garden midway down it, and the massive mature oak trees that bordered the street in front of the property.

According to the thirtysomething saleslady, named Margo, who led me around that day, the main campus building had once been the ancestral home of the Dudley family. The family patriarch, Linus Dudley, had built his fortune in the post-Civil War era by investing in railroads, a fortune that future generations of Dudley’s lost in the Great Depression of the thirties and in subsequent financial misadventures. Brook Haven Life Care Communities, Inc., the legal name of the property’s present owner, had bought it at a bank foreclosure auction in 1989. Under the guidance of a New York architectural firm, they’d gutted the building’s interior and added two very large wings, one on either side of the original structure. Within the now-enlarged building, they’d created a selection of three hundred various sized apartments, running the gamut from two-bedroom suites to studio apartments. They also included a library, a large dining room, a cafeteria, meeting spaces, a dispensary, a gymnasium with an extensive array of exercise equipment, and an indoor swimming pool. After that, they hired and trained a staff, and I’m quoting the saleslady, dedicated to responding to and servicing every need of our residents.

During my guided tour, I learned there were also two tennis courts, a large outdoor putting green, a driving range, and an outdoor swimming pool. In a separate building, connected to the main building by an enclosed walkway, there was a seven-hundred-seat theater with a large, ornate crystal chandelier that hung above the orchestra seating and a backstage equipped with rigging, sound equipment, and lighting that rivaled that of a Broadway theater.

It took only the one visit to sell me on the place. I was instantly hooked. Whatever it takes, this is the place for me.

Since the real estate market was somewhat depressed, it took me four months to sell my house and dispose of the furniture and other things that Cath and I had accumulated, much of which was donated to charity, given away to my girls and friends, or sold to second-hand dealers. The treasures, Cath’s needle and quilting work, along with her porcelain figurines, I kept. These treasures, just ordinary things, occupied a place in my heart, and I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, let them go. Of course, among those treasures were also the photo albums that chronicled the history of our family life together, the photographs all taken by Cath with throwaway 35 mm cameras she’d bought at CVS and Walgreens.

With the money I made from the sale of our house, I was able to meet Brook Haven’s hefty entrance fee. After providing proof that my investments and income would allow me to meet the monthly costs, the day for signing the Brook Haven Life Care contract arrived. The signing took place in the model apartment, presided over by Brook Haven’s executive director of independent living, Leo Kelsey, and the firm’s lawyer.

Immediately several problems arose. My name was misspelled on the contract, and the ballpoint pen intended to be used in the signing was found to be out of ink. As everyone sat around, including the two employees who were intended to act as witnesses, the secretary in the sales office hurriedly prepared new contact pages with my name spelled correctly, and a working pen was located. Finally, I signed the contract, which I didn’t fully understand, and in December of 2002, just after my eighty-first birthday, I moved into one of Brook Haven’s one-bedroom apartments.

I was now downsized to a living room, a kitchenette, and a small bedroom with an adjoining bath and a walk-in closet. There were grab bars in the bathroom, emergency pulls to call for help placed throughout the apartment, and a sprinkler and alarm system to protect everything from fire.

The items of furniture I brought with me fit well with the apartment’s decor, and the view from my windows allowed me to see the hills to the west and the sunsets at twilight and, because of the sun’s movement during the year, to enjoy the warming sunlight as it streamed into my living room during the winter months.

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Chapter Two

A fter settling into Brook Haven, my first contact with a resident was with a member of the welcoming committee who stopped by my apartment to acknowledge my arrival. He was an elderly and feeble-appearing man who used a walker to get around. He brought with him an assortment of brochures, schedules of events, and a map of the premises, as well as a box of welcoming chocolates. He gave me his name; however, I don’t remember it. After our initial meeting, I saw him about the Brook Haven campus, the last time six months after our initial meeting, when they wheeled him through the lobby on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. As it turned out, the welcoming chocolates were stale, and the fillings unappealing, but the sentiment was appreciated.

Next, I was invited for a walk around the property, during which I was guided by a rather attractive lady in her early seventies named Glenda Markey, also a member of the welcoming committee. During the tour, we visited all of Brook Haven’s amenities, and she explained the rules that governed the use of each. I had dinner the next evening in the large formal dining room with a group of five tenants, again organized by the welcoming committee, where I became acquainted with the dinner ritual. Fortunately, I had consulted the Brook Haven handbook beforehand and learned what the dress code was, both the no-no’s, jeans, T-shirts, and flip-flops, and the required, dress pants, leather shoes, shirt, and tie, with jacket optional. The following day, I was on my own.

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The first two years at Brook Haven passed relatively uneventfully. I had become active in several groups; Monday night bingo, a book club that met weekly on Wednesday and discussed that week’s book, usually one selected from the New York Times Best Seller list. I also spent Friday nights playing poker with a group of men in the solarium on the fourth floor. The pot limit was a dollar, and the game ended at eleven o’clock no matter what so we could all get our sleep. I hadn’t been playing long before I figured out who the bluffers were and who held winning hands. It’s a matter of decoding eye movement and finger-tapping. Some also tip-off what they have by fiddling with their chips. As a result, I usually ended the night with a few more bucks than when I’d started.

I also became part of a group, three women and three men, who dined together on Wednesdays…although I usually preferred to eat alone, not being one who enjoyed small talk.

As time passed, I grew to appreciate what I had discovered. A place to live out the rest of my life. A community of people who had put the ambitions, conflicts, and uncertainties of their younger years behind them and joined to form a friendly, generous, and caring community. Perhaps there were similar places, and maybe they were much the same, I didn’t know, but I was glad I had chosen Brook Haven.

During the time I lived there, Brook Haven was at almost a hundred percent occupancy. About two hundred women and ninety-seven or so men. Most were single, widows and widowers, with only about ten couples. The residents ranged in age from their mid-sixties to at least one woman who had reached over a century of life, one hundred and two years old. Owing to the age of the residents, there was a frequent turnover. The grim reaper paid visits, and ambulances occasionally arrived to rush a resident to the hospital. Modern medicine being what it is, however, most ambulance riders returned, and the population, with the sales force constantly recruiting new residents, remained close to capacity my entire time there.

All or nearly all the residents were upper-middle class, people who were able to meet the required large deposit, most from the sale of the family home, and the sizable monthly cost. A few were borderline wealthy. Most were college-educated, with the professions well represented. I got to know some of the residents through social interaction and dinner invites…and of course, bingo, the book club, poker, and from doing what put me into FMC Devens.

I was never much of a joiner or given to small talk…you know, finding something to talk about in a social setting. Getting along in years as I was, I also wasn’t anxious to become too attached to new people. I had attended too many funerals of family members and close friends to want to go through the pain of doing it again. Getting to know people intimately was not something I wanted, but there were a few Brook Haven residents I got to know that you might be interested in.

The first one I’ll introduce you to is Clement Thompson, a retired Marine captain most of the residents called the General. He was a veteran of Korea and Vietnam, having served twenty-five years in the Marine Corps. Physically he was not someone you’d picture as being a Marine. He was bald, gray around the temples, short, maybe five-nine, if that, with a paunch. His personality was cordial, and I found him likable despite his frequent reference to his military experiences. The welcoming Committee had arranged dinner for a new resident, a former bank executive I nicknamed Money Bags. The discussion got around to Money Bags’ military service, which gave an opening for Clement to give us his usual story.

During my time in the service, I took part in two of the Marines’ biggest battles, at the Chosin Reservoir and Huế, he said, "The one at the Chosin Reservoir took place about a month after China entered the Korean conflict and Mao Zedong sent the PVA—that’s the People’s Volunteer Army—to infiltrate the northeastern part of North Korea. They surprised us Marines, and we were encircled and attacked by about 120,000 Chinese troops who had been ordered to destroy us. But we fought them for seventeen days in freezing weather and were able to break out and make a fighting withdrawal to Hungnam. During the withdrawal, we inflicted heavy casualties on the bastards.

During the battle for the city of Huế, we defeated ten battalions of North Vietnamese regular army and Viet Cong. I was proud to have been part of both battles.

The