When One Man Dies Page 10

  Walking to the front, toward the casket, my body felt numb. My mind tried to force me back to Jeanne’s wake, but I fought against it. Put my arm on Tracy’s shoulder, leaned over, whispered a condolence in her ear. She looked up, eyes red, some mascara running. She smiled.

  “You came. What happened?” She wrapped her arms around me. Stepping away, she looked me in the eye. “You promised. Where were you this morning?”

  When I returned from my journey to Morristown, I charged my cell phone. I had missed seven calls. They were all from Artie and Tracy. After a minute, I had put the phone in my pocket.

  “Let me say a prayer. I’ll tell you after that.”

  She nodded, biting her lip, bringing the tissue to her eyes. I wondered how many times she’d done that already today. It was the first time she’d seen her uncle in years, and he was lifeless.

  I walked toward the casket, taking in everything but the body. My mind wouldn’t register it. The casket was finished wood, with two gold handles on the sides for the pallbearers. In front of that was a stoop to kneel on, padded in a color that matched the wood of the casket. A framed collage of pictures of Gerry, his military photo in the middle, stood on an easel. Behind it were a multitude of flowers—yellow, red, green—a bright flash contrasting with the otherwise drab room.

  As I knelt in front of the casket, I finally looked at the body. Gerry was wearing a navy blue suit with a bright blue tie and white shirt. He looked peaceful and younger, like so many years had been shaved off. He had a natural expression, eyes closed, mouth shut, hair perfectly in place, combed to the side like he always wore it. I wanted to shake him, wake him up so we could get a drink and get the hell out of here. He would have hated the quiet of the room, no one laughing, no one drinking. I could nearly hear him bitching about it.

  I bowed my head, and just before I closed my eyes, I noticed his hands. The same thing happened at Jeanne’s wake, at every wake I’d ever been to. Folded over each other at his waist, I could see the makeup. That was always when it registered the person was dead, when I saw the hands. I wondered what the undertaker did with them, how careless they got with the hands. It looked like they were covered in petroleum jelly, trying to make them shine, and some of it hung off the thumb. Hands show life, they move, they twitch; Gerry’s were doing nothing.

  Someone had run Gerry over with a car. The police believed it was a homicide. My friend had asked me to look into it. He didn’t trust the police to give full effort, and neither did I. Prayer wasn’t in my playbook. It wasn’t something I did regularly, and I wasn’t even sure God existed. But I could feel Gerry’s presence as I knelt. I closed my eyes. I promised to find who did this to him. I was going to find out what he had been hiding, and answer the questions his death raised. I didn’t bother to say a prayer.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to face Artie. Behind him the two men he’d been talking to were finding seats.

  “We need to talk,” Artie said, keeping his voice low. “Now?”

  “Yeah.” He started to walk away. “Come outside.”

  I followed him. As I passed the rows of chairs, I felt Tracy’s hand touch mine. An offer of support, it seemed.

  Out in the parking lot, the cars rumbled on 18, the sun’s heat burned through my suit jacket. Five feet from me Artie stood, arms crossed, stiff, teeth clenched so tight his skin wrinkled at the jaw. He was pissed. And that pissed me off.

  “Where the fuck were you this morning?” he asked. “Do we really have to go through this?”

  “Tracy called me in a panic. I didn’t think we’d get the suit there in time. You said you were going to fucking be there.” His hands went up in the air, waving frantically. “And then you don’t pick up your cell phone. Why, because you said you’d find out who did this?”

  I realized that if I snapped back, not only would it make a scene, it would fracture whatever the hell friendship Artie and I had.

  “My cell phone was dead.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “My client—from the other case—”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, here we go.”

  “What are you, my girlfriend?” I said. “My client was in fucking trouble. I didn’t know what kind until I got to her, but I had to help her. I didn’t want to let someone else die.”

  “Die? What the fuck are you—?”

  “I didn’t know what was going on. Gerry’s death, fucking Bill Martin, the Madison cops, it’s all been on my fucking mind the past few days. I don’t know what to expect right now.”

  “But you promised . . .” He trailed off. The conviction in his voice faded.

  “I told you, no. I’m sorry I didn’t call this morning. Let’s go back inside and get through this all later. Please, I owe Tracy an apology.” Despite my new resolve to look into this again, I was not about to let Artie win this argument.

  “What about me? I drove her.”

  “Quit whining.”

  “Fuck you.” There was still anger in his voice, but he was trying to play it off with humor.

  I let him have that.

  The rest of the afternoon moved by like a glacier. I felt like I was out of place. This was the kind of wake I’d normally go to for half an hour, offer condolences, and then sneak out the back. But I felt required to stay, even though whoever did this to Gerry was out there. I stood and watched as, one after another, people shuffled in and gave Tracy a hug or a kiss. They would usually whisper in her ear and she’d smile or nod, and they’d move on to the casket. The minutes ticked by, and finally it was four.

  We adjourned for a few hours. Artie and Tracy went to get something to eat, and I went back to my office and made a few more phone calls from Hanover’s contact book. I got the feeling that either the police or the press had also gotten a copy of these contacts. Nearly everyone was screening their calls or hanging up on me when I identified myself. Damn. More footwork for me. I was going to have to visit these people at some point.

  I went back for the evening session of the wake, arriving about ten minutes late. Artie and Tracy stood on opposite sides of the room. No one else was there. Even Gerry looked like he wanted to leave. The minutes and hours ticked by, and only one other person showed up, one of the older gentlemen who had been there that afternoon. Finally, at quarter to nine, I whispered in Tracy’s ear that I had some business to take care of. She smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and said good-bye.

  Truth was, I didn’t really have business to attend to, but I had to get out of there. I’d spent the evening fighting off memories of Jeanne; all I really wanted was a drink. Tracy’s performance of “Bernie’s Song,” her movements as she played were also in my head, doing battle with my nostalgia.

  I saw Artie get into his car and pull out toward Route 18. He didn’t look all that happy, and I was surprised he didn’t wait for Tracy, who was lingering in the lobby. I could see her through the glass doors. I hated to think of her as option B, but I couldn’t help it. I got out of the car and approached her.

  She must have seen me coming, because she pushed the door open and stepped onto the sidewalk, a confused look on her face. “What are you still doing here? I thought you had some business. Did Artie—?”

  “Artie didn’t do anything,” I said. “There was a chance I was going to have to go somewhere, but it didn’t pan out. How come you didn’t ride home with him?”

  “He wasn’t in the best mood. I told him I needed some time to myself and was going to call a cab.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not yet. Do you smoke?”

  “Not anymore.”

  She nodded. “I quit, too, but I could really use one now. I can’t believe no one showed up tonight.”

  It was a typical New Jersey April evening. The sun had gone down and there was a chill in the air that was comfortable to sleep in. But to the skin and the brain it was warmth that hadn’t been felt since early September. Spring was pushing its way through the haze of a cold winter and a rainy March. The
scent of rain still hung in the air. Gave the night air a clean, refreshed feel. You could still smell the carbon monoxide from the cars on Route 18, and their horns carried through the air clearly. That’s what I always noticed when spring came to New Jersey, you could hear and smell the traffic better.

  “You feel like getting a drink?” I asked.

  I think she was taken aback by my quick change of subject. Her eyes widened, and she didn’t say anything.

  “Come on, there’s a sports bar on Eighteen. We can talk there.”

  ***

  We got a table in Double Play, a bar on the northbound side of 18 in East Brunswick. The bar was crowded with Mets fans drinking dollar drafts of Yuengling and chewing on ten-cent wings. They were watching their team get their tails handed to them by the Phillies. The Yankees were still on the West Coast and hadn’t started yet.

  The best thing about the place was the Molson on tap, a brand of beer Artie had never invested in. I sat with a pint while Tracy sipped her bottle of Coors Light. She ordered a plate of mozzarella sticks. Tracy took one, broke it in half, and dipped it in the marinara sauce. I took one, dipped, and bit a chunk, the hot cheese nearly burning the roof of my mouth.

  “Gerry didn’t have many people here after Steve died. He kind of went into a shell. Hung out in his apartment and at the bar. That was it,” I said, after a sip of Molson cooled my mouth.

  “That’s too bad. We used to see him all the time. Family was important to him. Sunday dinner. My aunt made a great pot roast. Mashed potatoes. It was like Christmas dinner every Sunday. In the summer we’d have them to our house for a barbecue.”

  “I never met Gerry’s wife. He didn’t talk about her much.”

  Tracy finished off her Coors and signaled the waiter for another round. I was only halfway into my Molson, but having a second glass on deck couldn’t be all bad.

  “How’d Gerry’s wife die? Jesus, I don’t even know her name,” I said, realization striking me.

  The Mets must have scored a run, because there was a spattering of applause from the bar. Tracy was taking another mozzarella stick, but wasn’t talking much.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My aunt disappeared when I was eight or nine. Aunt Anne. According to Uncle Gerry, she went to the grocery store one day and never came back. Steve had to be taken out of school for a year, he was so upset. Gerry brought the police in, but no one demanded a ransom. The cops said maybe she just got sick of being married, wanted to start a new life.”

  “He never said anything.”

  “He alienated himself. Left the acting business, stopped talking to my family. My parents never spoke with him again. I went alone to Steve’s funeral. They won’t even think about coming to Gerry’s.”

  I finished my pint just as the second was being placed in front of me.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this. I can’t. I just want to have a good time.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  I couldn’t believe that Gerry would never mention his wife had gone missing, even if it was years earlier. He didn’t say anything when Jeanne died. He never, ever mentioned it. And all Gerry did was tell stories. Stories about serving in Korea. Stories about being up onstage. Stories about watching old baseball players play games the right way, as opposed to today’s home-run-happy superstars. Something didn’t feel right.

  But, then again, I’d been so inundated with information over the past few days, nothing felt right. Getting my mind off the wake, Rex Hanover, everything, would be worth it. Just sit back, have a few beers, and talk.

  The bar was getting more crowded behind us, a few Yankees fans rolling in to take advantage of the beer and wings specials before their game started. We finished off the mozzarella sticks and drank.

  “So, what’s being a private investigator like?” Tracy asked.

  She was now on her third beer, and I could see her loosening up. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and the crow’s-feet at her eyes were gone. Her cheeks were a little ruddy and a small smile formed. I liked the look.

  There were several ways to go about answering her question. The stock answer, that it was boring, sitting outside random hotels on Route 1 waiting for sleazebag husbands to come out of rooms with prostitutes, just sitting in a car for hours at a time twiddling your thumbs. Or I could tell her the romanticized version: I’d solved murders, saved children, and stared down mobsters. Or my version: people die who shouldn’t and you break people’s hearts, showing them things they ask you to find. Things they don’t really want to know. And it’s not worth it, you’re not really saving anyone, and it was time for me to leave the profession, once I paid my way through Rutgers. In all the activity, I’d almost forgotten about my upcoming enrollment at the school.

  “While it might sound cool, sitting outside some of the hotels on the highways waiting to take pictures of sex scandals, it’s not exactly my idea of an exciting job. A lot of sitting around and waiting, fighting off sleep in the middle of the night.”

  She put her elbow on the table and cocked her head, leaning it against her fist. “You’ve never killed anyone?”

  I could tell by the glimmer in her eyes she was just kidding around. The smile looked like it was about to cave in to laughter. Two beers earlier and I’d have laughed at her statement and said no.

  “Once.”

  “Oh my God. Really? What happened?” She was sitting up straight now, her arms crossed at the wrists on the edge of the table. She leaned forward a shade, as if to hear me better.

  “I dated a woman a few times in February. She was a graduate student, just moved out here from Fresno. Her ex-boyfriend followed her. He wasn’t what you’d call stable. At one point, he cornered her on his deck and threatened to slash her throat. I shot him.”

  “Oh,” she said. She downed the rest of the beer. “Wow.” I finished my beer as well. “Sorry you asked?”

  She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Not at all. How’d that make you feel?”

  I tried to recover and lift the serious mood with a joke. “You’re a psychiatrist now?”

  “Come on, I’m serious. Two months ago you killed a man. Sure, you did it to help someone, but that doesn’t happen to everyone. Now a friend of yours is dead. I can’t imagine how you feel.”

  I slipped my hand out from under hers, thinking I’d rather be talking about anything else. We could talk about jazz, we could talk about drinks, about baseball. We could talk about anything but death. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”

  The waiter came back to our table, and we both ordered a fourth beer. I was feeling it in my bladder and excused myself.

  In the bathroom, standing at the urinal, I took a deep breath. The conversation had been taken off to places I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Gerry’s murder, I didn’t really feel it. Not like Tracy felt it, seeing her childhood again, seeing a relative ripped from her, even though she wasn’t as close to him anymore. I didn’t feel it like Artie did, his best customer brought down, not by old age, but by some careless driver. I didn’t feel a need for revenge. I didn’t like having Artie watching my every move, using me to feed his sadness and anger, to at least find a reason why. But at the wake, I knew I wanted to find Gerry’s killer. I just wanted to do my own thing, and stay as far away from pain as possible.

  Returning to our table, I found the beers already there. Tracy’s sat untouched. Condensation dripped off my glass, forming a small puddle around it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No. I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought—well, I thought maybe you wanted to talk about it. I know I would.”

  “It’s not my favorite topic of conversation. That’s all. Don’t worry about it. I’m not mad.”

  We sat and drank, making small talk. Then I drove her back to the hotel, where she decided to stay for the night. Easier than going back
to Asbury.

  Pulling in front of the lobby, I turned toward her. “See you tomorrow morning.” The funeral.

  I leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. Before I realized it our lips had locked together. It was a long kiss, my eyes closed; I felt our tongues touch. My stomach fluttered a bit, and the buzz from the beer intensified. She put her hand on the side of my face. Our lips refused to part.

  Finally, when we broke, she said, “I can’t do this right now, Jackson.”

  A quick kiss. Her mouth was familiar to me. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I have a boyfriend. I—”

  We kissed some more. As I pushed harder against her lips, she broke away.

  “We have to stop,” she said. She opened the door. “Listen, you don’t have to come tomorrow.”

  “I want to.”

  “No. Work on the case. It’ll probably be just me and Artie. Gerry would want you to be working on that case. That’s more important. Find out who did this to him. Find out why he had that stuff in his closet.”

  She leaned in and we kissed again. “I’ve had too much to drink.” I watched her walk into the lobby. Despite myself, I smiled.

  Ten minutes later, I unlocked the door to my apartment. The beer buzz was still strong, and I could taste Tracy’s breath on my tongue. I noticed the smell of cigarettes in the air. The lights were off, but my blinds were open. I was positive they were closed when I left to go to the wake. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, if my mind wasn’t elsewhere, I would have caught it quicker. I would have been ready. Instead, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my neck.

  The next thing I knew I was staring at my carpet. Shaking my head, I rolled over expecting to see the two guys who paid me off earlier.

  I was surprised.

  Hovering over me was Rex Hanover.