When One Man Dies Read online

  Next, I washed my hands and checked the medicine cabinet. Nothing unusual: two bottles of Sudafed, a bottle of Advil, toothpaste, nail clipper, shaving cream, and a razor. Crouching, I checked behind the toilet and the sink. Nothing but floor tiles. I pulled open the shower and found a leaky faucet and a wet floor. Soap and shampoo rested on a shelf. Finally, I turned and opened the closet. What I saw made me catch my breath, though I wasn’t sure why.

  The bottom shelf of the closet had a stack of bath towels. The shelf above it was filled with packages of lithium batteries, fifteen, twenty, maybe more. Very odd to be stored in a bathroom closet. On the shelf above that were about twenty bottles of Sudafed. Something started tickling the back of my brain, something from my days on the police force. Something I knew, something that if I wasn’t out of practice would have registered with me immediately.

  I closed the closet door and found Tracy waiting in the living room.

  “Did you go through all the cabinets?” I asked. “Yeah.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing unusual?”

  Tracy paused, as if thinking about it.

  “He has a lot of matches. But I think that’s to start the oven.”

  “Show me.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, leading me into the kitchen.

  “I’m not sure.” It wasn’t clear, but unless Gerry collected the items—which would be odd—something wasn’t right.

  I checked the oven in the kitchen and saw it was autostart. No matches needed. Tracy, meanwhile, found a closet under the sink. It was filled with red-and-blue boxes of matches, the wooden kind with the sulfur tip. Next to it were two boxes of coffee filters. My brain was cramping. I was missing something, some connection. Sudafed, sulfur matches, and lithium batteries.

  “What’s wrong?” Tracy asked. “Why does he have all these matches?”

  I took a deep breath. Slowly it started to come together in my brain. I just had to talk it through.

  “When I was on the police force, I was a narcotics cop. We used to go to workshops, where they’d teach us different ways to make different drugs. That way when we went to take someone down, a dealer, someone trying to make shit out of their bathtub, we knew what to look for.”

  “What does that have to do with matches?”

  “Sulfur, pseudoephedrine, and lithium. Each ingredient is tracked by the DEA, you can’t buy it in large portions. You do that, the DEA will be at your door in no time. But you can find sulfur in matches, lithium in batteries, and pseudoephedrine is the active ingredient in Sudafed. I found Sudafed and a ton of batteries in the bathroom closet. Plenty of matches here.”

  Tracy took a step back, covered her mouth. “These are the ingredients of crystal meth.”

  Tracy’s face turned pale. She pushed past me and slammed the door to the bathroom. I could hear her crying, even as I tried not to listen. Deciding to give her privacy, I took the stairs out to the street. The air was cool and the faint breeze had picked up into a stiff wind. Heavy clouds hung overhead.

  ***

  The clouds had opened and rain poured, my windshield wipers fighting to keep up. Traffic on Route 18 had slowed to a crawl, and we hit all the lights red. Ahead of us, a trailer truck kicked up puddles of water, which splattered over the windshield. The storm had hit quickly, soaking the asphalt and shocking the rush-hour drivers.

  Except for the rain tapping on the roof, the ride so far was silent, Tracy looking out the passenger window, me squinting to watch for brake lights. My Honda Prelude didn’t handle too well in the rain, and I didn’t want to push it. Questions about Gerry were just starting to come to the forefront of my mind, but I had to push them aside in order to focus on the road. It was slick and the first time I stepped on the brakes, I felt them lock and I had to struggle to control the car.

  “Do you mind if I put on the radio?” Tracy asked.

  “Go for it,” I said, swinging into the left lane. Passing the trailer would make it easier to see, I hoped.

  Tracy spun the dial on the radio and came across a hip-hop tune. She whispered the lyrics to herself as she turned back toward the passenger window.

  I passed the trailer, pulled back into the right lane, and said, “You okay?”

  “Are you sure about what you saw in there?”

  I nodded. “We found meth labs all the time on the force.”

  “You know, when I was a kid, Gerry was the guy who gave me the drug talk. Not my dad, not my mom, but Uncle Gerry.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “You know, the usual stuff you tell a kid. The stuff that goes through your head the first time you smoke a joint in college. You’ll get hooked, no one in their right mind does the stuff. It’ll kill you. Your future will be screwed. The scary shit.”

  “Why did Gerry give you the talk?”

  “My parents were always working. My mom was a teacher, my dad was in business. After school was over, when my mom was still working remedial or driving home, Gerry was still around before he went to act. Steve came home from first grade and was talking about some kid who said his dad smoked different kinds of cigarettes.”

  Steve was Gerry’s son. He died of cancer a few years ago.

  Tracy continued, “Gerry took the opportunity, jumped right into the conversation. Must have watched a public-service announcement just before he picked us up. He sounded like a commercial.”

  “I’m pretty sure your uncle did smoke pot at times.”

  Tracy laughed. “I’m sure he did, too, but he never let us know about it. He wanted Steve and me to be like brother and sister, not cousins, and he wanted a Norman Rockwell childhood for us.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Most of East Brunswick was strip malls and traffic lights, and I seemed to hit every red light. In fact, I think everyone did. It gave motorists more time to decide whether or not to stop at the Borders, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or Kohl’s that lined the highway. The rain hadn’t let up, but traffic was lighter as I crossed the last traffic light. I pressed the accelerator.

  “I was thinking,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “The landlord said the cops had been up to the apartment.”

  I knew what was coming. It had been bothering me as well. “Yeah. He did say that.”

  “If you know what ingredients go into crystal meth, wouldn’t the police know as well?”

  Martin sure as hell would. He went to the same workshops I did. “Yeah, they should.”

  “Why didn’t the cops take all those ingredients in as evidence?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I put on my right blinker and took the next exit for Milltown Road. “Best I can figure is it’s circumstantial. There was no proof that Gerry was actually making crystal meth.”

  “But you seem sure of yourself.”

  “I’m not. But Gerry never seemed like the guy who would collect batteries, matches, and Sudafed. He was never that sick.”

  “I don’t think my uncle was like that, though.”

  I didn’t think he was either, but something inside me, that old cop instinct, was screaming at me to look at the evidence. I had no tangible proof, but all the evidence was there. Making crystal meth was a big deal; it wasn’t easy; and it could blow up on you at any moment. But someone confident, someone who knew what they were doing, could make a fortune selling the stuff.

  Just a year ago Gerry was struggling to pay his rent. He even hired me to help him out. I tracked down a woman who owned a theater he used to work in. She was trying to force him out of house and home to drum up business. She figured if she could say this old actor was homeless or worse, she would drum up support for modern actors to keep them from finding the same fate. After clearing the case, I hadn’t heard any complaints about money from him, and I saw him at the bar nearly every night. I couldn’t prove anything, but I knew something bad was going on,
and what we had found in the apartment seemed to support that idea.

  I pulled into the funeral home parking lot, the rain still pounding down. I wondered if Gerry had enough money to pay for his own funeral. We exited the car and headed inside.

  Chapter 15

  Brushing the rain off my shoulders and running my hand through my soaked hair, I followed Tracy into Rinaldi’s Funeral Home. The lobby was carpeted in red, and the wallpaper was mute beige. A few thick easy chairs, also dark, more a maroon, contrasted with the carpet. Perfect for a wake. A bronze coffee table sat across from the chairs, a few magazines resting on it. The lobby was clean and smelled antiseptic, a cross between lime and bleach, a scent I hadn’t experienced in a while.

  A short heavy man in a black double-breasted suit stepped out of a room I assumed was his office. To his right was a larger room where they held the actual wakes. The man’s face was pale, except for deep red cheeks. He had dark hair slicked back. His clothes were neatly pressed, and his loafers reflected the artificial light from above. He smiled at Tracy.

  “Ms. Boland, I assume?” He reached his hand out in her direction, taking hers and pumping it twice. He looked at me. “And you are?”

  Tracy introduced me.

  He took my hand loosely and shook it. “Mr. Donne. I am John Fleming, the funeral director.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Ah,” he said, looking at his watch. “I wish it was under better circumstances. You are about ten minutes late, Ms. Boland. I was beginning to worry.” He tugged at his lapels, then brushed a piece of lint off his shoulder. “If you’d like to get started, we can go to my office.”

  Fleming turned on his heels and stepped through his office door. Tracy turned my way.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to handle this on my own.”

  Tracy disappeared into Fleming’s office, the door swinging shut behind her. I took a few steps around the lobby and peeked into the funeral room. There wasn’t a body or even a casket inside, but the room was set up with flowers and about ten rows of seats.

  I walked around, the antiseptic smell growing stronger. The room’s colors were the same as the lobby, same carpet, same walls. The chairs were maroon as well, though they were more like folding chairs than easy chairs. I stepped up to the small lift where the body would be kept, trying not to picture Gerry’s body in a morgue; instead, trying to picture him lying at rest in a coffin tomorrow.

  I never understood wakes, which were apparently for the living. Why keep a corpse, open casket, made up to look like some cheap plastic imitation of your loved one, lying at rest for four hours?

  People came in and out, offered fake condolences for a while and said prayers, then left, hitting the local bar. It didn’t do anything for me.

  The antiseptic smell was unique to funeral homes, and it brought back the memory of Jeanne’s wake. When Jeanne died, just two weeks after I had gotten out of rehab and six months before we were to be married, I wanted nothing to do with a wake. She had been cut down by a drunk driver as she drove herself home from a get-together with work friends. The driver had crossed the double yellow lines and smashed into her front fender, forcing her car off the road. By the time the fire department used the Jaws of Life, she was long dead. Her parents insisted I show at the wake and funeral, saying it would do me good to see her, to know how much her friends and relatives cared about her. I agreed.

  Dressed in my best suit, then missing the puncture hole from the switchblade, I showed up, stone-cold sober. Jeanne was laid out in the black dress she wore to her first job interview. I had joked it was the reason they hired her. Around her neck was the silver locket I had given her for our second year together, and it rested open on her chest, revealing the small picture of the two of us together in a park. Memories of her flooded back to me, and I felt my knees wobble. Then I saw her face, the thick makeup washing out any sign of life. Her eyelids were stitched closed, and while people couldn’t see the stitches, I always noticed them. It wasn’t the woman I had spent the last three years with, the woman I slept with, the woman I shared secrets with. It wasn’t the woman I loved. It was an imitation.

  My vision clouded, my knees gave way, and I could feel myself falling. Jeanne’s father caught me, sat me in a seat, much like the ones in the funeral home today, and got me water. I don’t remember any more of the wake. The funeral the next afternoon, I remember it poured, much like it was doing now. I remember going to the bar afterward and going on a bender, waking up in my office days later, mouth dry and head pounding.

  I had an empty feeling in my stomach now, and I sat in one of the chairs trying to clear my brain. Gerry’s death wasn’t the same as Jeanne’s death. There were secrets, and they were gnawing at my insides. But the solutions weren’t here; I wasn’t going to find them. I sat and waited for Tracy to finish so I could drive her home. I was determined to find Hanover and find out who had run over Gerry. Then it was time to get on with my life, get away from the past. I didn’t want to come to any more wakes for any more murder victims.

  Tracy popped her head in the doorway and called my name, snapping me out of my daydream. Her hair and clothing had dried in the office, and she had redone her lipstick. She’d also run a comb through her hair.

  Fleming stood in the background, his arms crossed in front of him. He tapped his foot.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “Good. We’re going to have the wake tomorrow, two to four, and seven to nine. Can we come back tomorrow? Drop off a suit for them to put on Gerry?”

  There was a moment of silence during which I noticed a spot of mud on my left sneaker. I tried to wipe it off on the carpet.

  Fleming jumped in. “That shouldn’t be a problem. If you need to, you can drop the clothing off early tomorrow morning. Will that be acceptable?”

  Tracy looked at me. “I just want someone to come with me.”

  “I should be able to take you. If not, Artie will.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will find the arrangement quite satisfactory, Ms. Boland. You will be pleased with all of your choices.”

  Fleming extended his hand and shook Tracy’s. Then he shook mine, the same limp, pale handshake as before. The guy played the part of the funeral director well; I had to give him that.

  We exited the funeral parlor, back into the easing rain and more rush-hour traffic.

  Ten minutes into the car ride, Tracy said, “Feel like taking a walk?”

  “It’s raining.”

  She winked at me. “It’ll stop.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Drop me at my car and follow me to Asbury.”

  ***

  An hour or so later, she was right. The rain had stopped. The boardwalk was empty and dark. Few streetlights illuminated the area, and only briefly did headlights flash behind me. Faintly, waves kissed the beach forty feet away. The smell of salt water filled the air, and though I couldn’t see them, I could hear seagulls squawking above me. The breeze came off the ocean. It was colder here than in New Brunswick. High fifties, I’d say.

  I had a windbreaker on, over a polo shirt, hiding my Glock. I zipped the windbreaker up about halfway, high enough to keep me a little warmer, low enough that I could still get to the gun. Two black guys in long football jerseys and sideways basketball caps sauntered past, giving me a look. I made eye contact. One of the guys called me a fag, and kept going. God forbid someone be polite in this neck of the woods.

  There used to be a running merry-go-round on the boardwalk, and Skee-Ball and all the food you could imagine. But no more, they had long since closed down. Some of the painted advertisements were still there, the one I was standing next to, a faded clown smiling maniacally and thumbing over his shoulder toward the shore.

  Tracy approached me, smiling.

  “Nice night,” she said. “I can only give you about an hour. Then I have to get to work.”

  “Where do you work?”

>   “I’m a musician.”

  We walked up the thick wooden boards and made a right, the beach to my left. The smell of the salt was stronger now, and sand blown by the wind onto the boardwalk crunched as we walked.

  “Do you sing?”

  “No, I play tenor saxophone. I have a gig at a bar in Sayreville tonight. Starts at ten.”

  “Cool. Not playing at the Stone Pony?”

  She tilted her head, crossed her eyes, like saying “Come on.”

  “I think only Springsteen plays there. Rehearses just before he plays twenty straight nights at Giants Stadium or whatever it is.”

  “Not a fan?”

  “Please. I’d take Sinatra and Bon Jovi as New Jersey’s signature musicians before I’d take Bruce.”

  “Bon Jovi?”

  “Yeah.”

  We walked in silence for a few seconds. Tracy watched her feet.

  She was right: even though it was a little cool, it was a nice night. The sky was clear, a half moon crested above the ocean, and the sea air always added something to an evening. I reminded myself, however, not to get sucked in by it. At any moment, my nerves screamed, I could be ambushed. What if the two thugs from my office had followed me?

  “You really don’t remember me, do you, Jackson?” I looked at her.

  She laughed. “I used to see this guy, Pablo. We hung out at Artie’s bar. One night we had a fight. You were there.”

  “I remember.”

  Memories swirled at the edges of my brain. There was some familiarity to the story, but it was hazy. Four years ago, I was so coked up I hardly remember anything. Except for the few weeks when Jeanne and I were separated. Right before I proposed.

  “Then why didn’t you say so in the bar?”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Artie.”

  The memories started to come into focus. I could see Tracy’s face, a little younger, drinking a mixed drink. Doing a line of coke with me. Kissing her.

  “Tracy, I—”

  “We never slept together.”

  “I know,” I said. “But my fiancée thought we did.”