The next eight months were tough for everybody. Rom fell apart and was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion.   After that he went to live at Casa Lopez, where Rom shared his friend's attic bedroom.
 It was a difficult case.  Sgt. Vinnie Soriano handled it himself, taking a month off to search the East Coast in vain for Gregor Ziko.  He could find no trace of him, and the case went into the "Unsolved" file.  But he made sure that his cousin's kid got what was coming to him.  Sofia's insurance more than paid off the house.  Vinnie found a buyer and put the profits and the remainder of the insurance money into a trust fund Rom could get into when he turned 18, a matter of a few months, and held out a couple thousand and gave it to the Lopezes to offset Rom's expenses.
     Mr. and Mrs. Lopez  took  Rom into their home a bit reluctantly.  The superstitious Evalina now regarded the boy  fearfully; the two rarely talked, for even after all these years in America, and despite her husband's command of the language, she could barely get through a sentence of English.  Fabio, who knew Cassandra had a crush on Rom, displayed a father's natural concern for his daughter's chastity but relented to quiet his son, who pleaded for his friend's sanctuary. But after moving in, Rom never became part of the household, or anything else.  He  never showed up for his senior year and spent his days playing basketball, usually over in the black neighborhoods near the East Orange city line.  His skills were regarded as not bad for a white boy.
     Rom and Lopy, as he called his friend, still had some good times, but Rom's moods changed quickly.  He started taking downers.  As winter wore on he'd be gone for days at a time and would be secretive when he returned.  Mr. Lopez, who had commented on Rom's "lean and hungry look," was about to evict the sullen teenager that spring, but two things made that unnecessary.  The first was Rom's 18th birthday.  The second was Lopy's discovery of 15-year-old Cassandra in bed with Rom.
     The elder Lopezes were visiting Puerto Rico for the week.  Cassandra, although she felt awful about Rom's mother, loved  having Rom live in her house, even though she could only occasionally break through his black mood.  On a Sunday night, with her brother at the Tivoli theater, Cassandra, wearing only her terry cloth bathrobe, went up to the boys' attic bedroom and found Rom stretched out on the bed, dozing, fully clothed.  She knelt beside him and took his hand.  Rom awoke and, seeing her, told her to please get lost.  He kicked off his shoes and lay back down onto the bed, his back to her, under the covers.  Cassandra turned off the small lamp beside the bed, took off her robe and slipped in next to him.  As Rom turned to face her; she kissed him hard, clumsily, and after a moment Rom surrendered.
     Ninety minutes later, Lopy found them sleeping, locked together, in his room.  He pulled his sister out of the bed, slapped her and sent her naked down the stairs, throwing her robe after her.  He swung at Rom, who dodged and tried to calm his friend down.  But Lopez, furious, kept swinging, finally smashing Rom in the face.
     The two fought savagely, Cassandra screaming in the hallway, until Rom, naked and bleeding from the mouth, finally pinned an exhausted, tearful Lopez on the floor.
     Lopez' fury spent, Rom let him up, and his friend ran downstairs and outside.  He was gone all night.  When he returned the next morning to dress for school, Rom feigned sleep.  Cassandra tried to talk with Rom the next day but he avoided her.  When the Lopezes came back a couple days later, Lopy said nothing.  He barely spoke with Cassandra and not at all with Rom.
     On that Thursday, Rom's 18th birthday, Rom took a Brown & White cab to the Howard Savings Institution on Broad Street and collected his money — almost $30,000 — in cash.  He went back to the Lopez house, left $5,000  for Lopy and $5,000 for Cassandra, bought a used black Ford Fairlane for $500 and an assortment of drugs and drove off in the warm spring evening toward Route 22 and points west.

     It took Rom only three days to drive clear across the country. He chose Los Angeles because it was warm and romantic and famous.  He put most of his money in the bank, found an apartment in Glendale and traded in the Fairlane for a '66 Bonneville.
     He took a warehouse job at a Sound Crazy store, graduating after six months to selling stereos and TV sets. He shacked up with  Cyndi, a waitress at the nearby Donut Derby who had ID for 18 but was really 16.  That ended three  months later when she ran off with a guitarist she and Rom had met in a club on Sunset Strip.  She'd left a note warning Rom not to come after her, saying she would reveal her true age — a surprise to him — and have him arrested for "statuary rape."  She'd added in her girlish scrawl that Rom was "not to brite" and "could use a few lessens in how to please a women."
     Rom  brooded for a while but  busied himself in his work.  Within three years he became assistant district sales manager.  He bought a Corvette, rented an apartment in West Hollywood and developed a cocaine habit.  His circle of friends consisted of people he snorted coke with, mostly other young hotshots in the business, and a succession of women who found him handsome and generous but moody and unpredictable enough to leave behind once the coke ran out.
     He had gone through most of  his savings when he wrecked his car on Topanga Canyon Road while zonked out on quaaludes one night and was hospitalized for a concussion and a broken arm and ribs.  The general manager of the Sound Crazy chain, who was fond of his sales chief, sent Rom through drug rehab, then arranged an assistant manager spot at a store up in San Bruno, a few miles south of San Francisco.  Rom rented a little house in South San Francisco on Chestnut Avenue, and for the next five years worked at the little store in Tanforan Mall, two of them as manager.  He started dating Maria Mendoza, a beautiful Mexican-Hawaiian woman who worked in the Record House in the same mall, and soon she started spending weekends at his house.
     It was a happy relationship, comfortable and uncomplicated. She liked drinking beer and listening to music and fixing Mexican food and driving to Carmel and making love, and Rom gave all of himself to her.  Slowly, surely, the cloud was passing from his life, and he could see a future, a family.  Life was good.

Friday, Oct. 31, 1980

     Autumn brushed the Bay Area with orange and gold.  The air was cool and clean. Rom and Maria, who both had the day off, slept late and made love.  Maria fixed Huevos Rancheros, then began to decorate for a small Halloween party that night. Rom had to go into San Francisco to pick up his costume, a space suit.  Maria had everything she needed to become a "space stripper."  It would be some party.
     As Rom kissed Maria goodbye, the doorbell rang.  Rom grabbed his jacket and opened the front door.  There stood a young man in beat-up clothes and a baseball cap, with dark, severe features and black hair.  A gypsy!  He spoke, asking Rom if he wanted his driveway re-coated with asphalt.  It looked cracked, the man said, and it would only take 20 minutes and cost $50.
     Rom wondered where he'd seen him before.  He was younger than Rom.  Something about the slow eyes and fat nose.  He noticed a pickup truck at the curb with five-gallon buckets in the bed.  Undoubtedly the old crankcase-oil-and-paint- thinner ploy.
     Rom closed the door behind him, said a firm "No, thank you" and walked to his Toyota SR-5.   He could see a figure in the front seat of the truck — it looked like an older man looking his way — but the sun glinted off the window and he couldn't quite see a face.
     As the man walked back toward the truck, Rom started his car and wheeled uneasily out into Chestnut Street toward Grand Avenue.  Distracted, he fiddled with the radio while heading for the Bayshore Freeway.  He had just entered the northbound lanes when his heart froze.  He remembered where he had seen the young gypsy's face, or one like it.  Gregor Ziko!  Yes, that was it!  Could that have been his son?  And the man in the truck — Ziko?
     A car horn blared.  Rom steered back into his lane and floored it.  Had Ziko recognized him?  Had he seen the name on the mailbox?  Was Maria safe?  How had the gypsy found him?
     He sped to the Oyster Point Boulevard exit and got onto the southbound side of the freeway, weaving in and out of lanes, blowing his horn, cursing.  He went through three stop signs on Linden Avenue before he screeched to a halt in his driveway and jumped out of the car, motor still running.  There was no sign of the truck.  It had been maybe 10 minutes.  He tried the front door; it was locked.  He knocked and rang the bell, then got his keys from the car, panic building.
     The people next door opened their curtain to observe the fuss.  When Rom finally ran into his house they heard a scream that tore their hearts out.

     The coroner said she died of shock and blood loss from the stab wounds.  She had put up a fight and the place was a mess.  The neighbors told of seeing two men, one about 25, the other about 50, go into the house.  A few minutes later the men returned to the truck, and it pulled away.  No license plate, vague description, fat chance.
     Rom was questioned and released.  He spent two weeks crying and drinking and crying some more, sometimes at home, sometimes in public.  At the Camino Bar & Grill in San Bruno he ran into an acquaintance who nearly dropped his drink when he saw Rom.  The man, a UPS driver whose route included Rom's store, had heard only that Rom had taken some time off, and he stared in puzzlement at the unkempt, pale, puffy-eyed man with the double bourbon.
     "Jesus!" the man said.  "There are faster ways of killing yourself, dude."
     "You're right," mumbled Rom.  He finished his drink, left and got into his car.