‘Motherfucker!’ yelled Paulie, as another bone broke beneath his punches. ‘Motherfucker!’

When a combination of Dave Evans, Charlie Parker, and a handful of off-duty Portland PD officers finally managed to drag the brothers away, it came as a surprise to them to find that the driver was not dead, although it was not for want of trying. Neither was his companion, who remained unconscious where he had fallen. Attached by a magnet to the wheel well of Parker’s car was a device composed of five pounds of plastic explosive, two pounds of nails and shotgun pellets, and a mercury tilt switch so delicate that it would have been activated as soon as the car began to pull out of its parking space.

The two seriously injured men were carrying New York State driver’s licenses in the names of Borko Zorić and Miroslav Tomić. Both were naturalized US citizens, originally from Serbia but now living in Queens. They’d been in and out of prison, if only for misdemeanors and minor felonies, but the gun used by the driver, Tomić, would later be linked to fifteen murders, including those of three women and two children. It was, Tomić would subsequently tell prosecutors through wired jaws, his lucky gun, and he hadn’t wanted to throw it away. As for Borko Zorić, he would not utter a word during his interrogation or subsequent trial, not even to confirm his own name, and appeared totally indifferent to his fate.

But all that was to come. For now, there was a bar to be evacuated while the police dealt with the car bomb, and later a bear head to be reattached to a wall. Local and national news media would interview the Fulcis. The front page of the following day’s Portland Press Herald, featuring Tony and Paulie flanking their proud mother, would be added to the memorabilia collection of the Great Lost Bear. The Fulci brothers had saved the Bear, but in doing so had become part of its structure and history, forever inseparable from both.

It was, Dave Evans would later reflect, one of the worst days of his life.

IV

‘I incline to Cain’s heresy … I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’

Robert Louis Stevenson,
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Chapter LXVIII