steve_6

By the same author:

Steve 1
dining car
Steve 2
Steve 3
Steve 4
Steve 5
Steve 7
Steve 8
Steve 9
Steve 10

That wasn't him singing, that was the bitter young man who had spent five years in an American prison for a crime he had not committed:

As I walked past Portlaoise Prison
"I'm innocent," a voice was heard to say
"My frame-up is almost completed.
My people all look the other way."

They had taken his youth away, put him behind bars when he was fifteen. He had no watertight alibi and could not make them believe that he did not put the theater on fire. Everybody in Provincetown knew that he and his step-father hated each other's guts. So when the police found the burned body of his step-father in the rubble it was a clear as mud: Steve must have done it. Steve could think of a dozen other people, among them his real father, who disliked his step-father at least as much as he did. Trouble was, they had better alibis than he had.

When Steve was released, Ronald Reagan was president, his widowed mother had sold many of his real father's paintings to support herself and his little sister, and Steve had no intention of returning to Provincetown. So he picked up his guitar and went to Germany to live with his mother's sister.

He found a job as an editor of an English publication, started a band, even wrote some songs, started a family, and moved into a house. He had visited his mother in the U.S. a few times, had always sent her a little spending money. When she passed away, he suddenly felt all alone. His wish to find out what happened to his real father increased with time. Then that letter from the Gallery arrived. How could he not go?

He snapped out of his reverie when Dieter and Peter tapped him on the shoulder and told him to come meet some friends. (link to Dieter, Bruno and Kim from Cologne)