If I am able to help you carry some of your load, I will gladly do so. Your gratitude is welcome but your apologies will not be accepted. For I am your friend.

December 26th, 1992

I went to college in Baltimore.  To pay the bills I waited tables at a steak house.  My sister Kelley and I were roommates and coworkers.   We spent a lot of time together back then and to this day, are still very close.  The story you are about to read is a big reason why.

The day after Christmas, December 26^th 1992, was a very slow day to work at a steak house in the suburbs north of Baltimore.  Around 8:30pm, there were only a handful of diners and we were working hard to close the restaurant at 9.  Kelley was in the back rolling silverware or cleaning coffee pots or performing some other mundane closing duty.  I was in the “front of the house” vacuuming the floor.  That’s when our lives changed forever. 

There was a commotion at the front door as 3 men barged in, clad in dark colored, oversized winter coats, and panty hose over their heads.  They were yelling and pointing guns at the employees and customers.  I was ordered to “Get on the floor!” by the smallest of the 3 from behind a nickel-plated .38.  Somehow I was overcome by a calm that, to this day, I still don’t fully understand.  I squatted between 2 tables a few feet away from the restaurant’s two managers, who were eating dinner when the robbery ensued.  It occurred to me that, when this was over, there would be police and police reports and a lot of questions.  With that in mind I stared at the gunman who had ordered me on the floor so that I would have something to tell the cops when they came later.  I stared at his face through the disguise, studying his facial features, his revolver, and his clothes.  But mostly his face.   I almost never took my eyes off of his face.   

One of the other thugs had leapt over the front counter and emptied the cash register before going from table to table to personally rob each of the diners.  Meanwhile, the third was in the back herding the cooks, dishwashers and servers out to the dining room.  As the procession of terrified employees filed out, the leader with the .38 ran back and grabbed one of the staff by the arm demanding to know where the manager was.

John Tillman, 29, was in a work release program at the restaurant as were many of the cooks and dishwashers.  John had served 9 years for robbery and had all but paid his debt to society when he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.  John was very popular among the other soon-to-be-ex-cons as well as the rest of the staff.  He was very handsome with perfect hair, clear eyes and a beguiling smile.  He had a great sense of humor, killer style and crazy swagger.  My favorite thing about John was that he never did anything fast.  He always moved slowly, not because he was lazy, but because he was fucking cool.  He would call my sister and our friend Julie “Hottay” (hottie) and it was never creepy.  They would giggle and enjoy the innocent flirtation.  When John came into work that afternoon he had a large shopping bag with him and, as I walked past the storage room where he was changing into his work clothes, he called me in.  On the way to work from the “center” (sort of a halfway house) he had snuck into the mall between bus transfers and purchased two leather coats.  He was proudly showing them off to me and explaining how one was for his lady and the other for his mother.  He had planned to meet them briefly after work to give them their Christmas gifts.  He was stoked.

“Where is he?!” the masked gunman screamed.  John, with his hands raised casually on either side of him, was less than 10 feet from me, with a gun in his face.  Unimpressed, John, his hands still raised, sort of tilted himself in the direction of the managers who were seated a few feet from where I was squatting, still staring at the masked face behind the shiny little hand gun.  It was at this point that I noticed my sister and Julie huddled under a table inches from the unfolding scene.  Their fear was evident.  I remained calm and collected and had never even “gotten down” all the way, still squatting with my arms resting on the two tables on either side of me.  From the moment the robbery began I was thinking things like, “Well, shit.  Now I’m going to be here for hours talking to cops.  What a drag.”  It never occurred to me to be scared.  These guys just wanted money.  Once they had it, they would leave and we would finish closing up. 

“Who?  Him?” the robber demanded, pointing at a customer at the table next to the managers.  “Nah, man…” John replied calmly, about to correct the error when POP! The coward behind the gun, behind the panty hose, shot John in the face. 

Pandemonium ensued as my calm dissolved into full-blown terror.  I was suddenly paralyzed; unable to look at the gunman at all for fear that I would be next.  I stared down at the floor, now on my knees with my head down when my thoughts turned to my sister.  Seconds later the murderer and his accomplices fled the scene and the shocked silence was replaced with screams of horror and sadness at what had just happened to our friend.  John was dead before he hit the ground.   

As I stood and gathered myself, I saw Kelley huddled under that table, inches away from John’s lifeless body.  Blood slowly spilled from his wounds and pooled around his head.  I immediately called 911 from a payphone adjacent to the dining room, in plain sight of the scene and my traumatized sister.  I finally came to her afterward and held her while she wailed into my chest.  I had turned to stone. 

In the hour that followed, I felt very little.  All I could do was silently console my sister and wait for whatever was to come next.  I shed no tears.  I found myself alone in the manager’s office soon after, smoking a cigarette, when the phone rang.  I answered to hear the voice of an older woman crying, asking me what happened to John.  It was his mother.  She had received a call from the center, and was told that John had been shot.  In her panic and disbelief she called the restaurant hoping that it wasn’t true.  I told her that her son was dead.  The phone dropped from her hand and I heard her cries coming through the receiver.  I hung up the phone as the reality of what happened overtook me.  The phone rang again.  Still alone in the office, I answered again to find John’s father on the other end.  In the background I could hear John’s mother still crying loudly and his father’s voice, hopeful that it was all a mistake.  I assured him that it wasn’t and offered my meager condolences.  Then I hung up the phone and cried.

A week later, detectives came to our apartment and interviewed us again about what we had seen and showed us each a book of mug shots, hoping we might be able to identify John’s killer.  In the nights that passed after the shooting, I dreamt about the face that I had studied so intently.  My mind had constructed an image of the face without its disguise and I knew that I would know it if I ever saw it again.  I sat alone with the detectives as they flipped through the book of photographs directing me to tell them anything that I thought about any of the faces that I saw, even if I wasn’t certain it was John’s killer.  “Tell us anything that comes to mind as you look at these,” one detective said.  After several pages of earnest scrutiny, I didn’t recognize anyone.  When the page turned again I immediately saw, in the midst of 20 or so faces, the face of John’s murderer, the face I had seen so clearly in my dreams.  It was him.  I was absolutely certain of it.        

Of the 30 or so people in the restaurant that night, only Kelley and I were able to positively identify the murderous coward.  Months later, we testified against him and put him away.  His lawyer argued that the gun went off accidentally and apparently made a good enough case that he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter rather than second degree murder which, everyone in the restaurant that night could tell you, was the actual crime.  Before taking the stand I remember being nervous, even scared about testifying in front of the man who killed my friend.  When I took the stand and was sworn in, however, I once again turned to stone.  I stared at John’s murderer the entire time I was examined, then cross-examined.  I never took my eyes off of that face.  I did not feel a drop of fear.  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of having power over me the way he did when he hid behind that nickel plated revolver and women’s underwear.     

It may seem unjust that John’s killer was found guilty of the lesser charge.  That is, until you remember John.  His killer went into the same penal system that John had gone through, making friends of everyone he met.  John was a special man and everyone loved him - adored him.  I have always taken solace in the sincere belief that his killer definitely got what was coming to him.