Blood and Bone (6 page)
Sure, it was a little morbid, but hell, everybody needs a hobby. That was why Toth’s funeral was so special. There was no wondering if his father had really known this dear departed, Toth was his partner. And it was Laszlo Toth who had expelled Kyle from his father’s own funeral, instigating the events that Kyle seemed to replay in his heart during every funeral thereafter and that remained, puzzlingly, the proudest moment in his life. Of all the funerals he had attended, or would attend in the future, the sad little affair at the grave site of Laszlo Toth would be, for Kyle Byrne, the large-size 1979
Empire Strikes Back
Boba Fett action figure of funerals, which is to say pretty much the ultimate.
The tears came unbidden, but not unexpectedly. It was why he had worn sunglasses. In a way, as he watched the priest deliver his eulogy over the casket and as he watched the grieving Mrs. Toth be comforted by his father’s widow—a woman who still had never acknowledged Kyle’s existence except when she had pinched his face fourteen years ago—in that special moment he felt closer to his father than he ever had in his entire life. As he lifted his head and surveyed the burial fields, through teary eyes he thought he spotted a mop of gray hair in the distance, and the mirage, instead of feeling like a sick joke of some sad sort, seemed perfectly natural.
“Nice day for a funeral,” said a voice from beside him.
So lost was he in the distant vision and the swell of his emotions, Kyle hadn’t noticed the woman who had sidled up to him. Slowly he turned his head toward her, but even then he couldn’t quite focus on who she was and the words she had spoken.
“Huh?” he said.
“The day,” she said. “It’s nice. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I suppose you could say so.”
She was pretty, actually, young and solid, with tawny skin, high cheekbones, and lovely brown eyes. And he liked her lips, full but not too thick. He wondered what they would taste like. And just that quick, the swell of emotions he had been feeling about his dead father were replaced with the swell of something more pressing. It might seem perverse, but Kyle had learned from his funeral hobby that nothing stirred a whole bouquet of hungers more than a hole in the ground.
“Were you crying?” she said.
“Uh, no,” he said, lifting his glasses with one hand and wiping his eyes with the back of the other. “Allergies.”
“It’s okay to cry, it’s a funeral. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Loss? What loss is that?”
“The deceased. Mr. Toth. I can see that you were close.”
“We weren’t, actually.”
“So you’re not a relative?”
“Not even distantly.”
“A f r iend?”
“Not exactly.”
“A friend of a friend?”
“You couldn’t really say that either.”
“So what are you doing here, just enjoying the day?”
“Yes, actually. You’re right, it is a lovely day. And who doesn’t enjoy a good funeral?”
“Is that what this is?”
“Well, I have to admit I’ve seen better. This one’s a little sparse on the attendance, and the words of remembrance are a tad generic, but the communal atmosphere has a certain piquant poignancy. I’d give it a solid six.”
“You sound like an expert.”
“Funerals are sort of a hobby of mine.”
“You should get together with my partner,” she said. “He loves funerals, too. Can’t get enough of them. Between you and me, I think he’s looking forward to his own.”
“Partner? What, like a life partner?”
“Thank heavens, no.”
“So you’re single?”
“Yes.”
“That’s such a coincidence,” said Kyle with a big old smile, “because so am I.”
“Are you hitting on me? At a funeral?”
“Of course not. I am shocked and appalled at the implication. In fact, I think you and I need to have a rather stern talk about your perverse sense of funeral decorum. Perhaps over a drink.”
She fought not to laugh and failed.
“My name’s Kyle.”
“Lucia,” she said. “Lucia Ramirez. It’s nice to meet you, Kyle.”
“If you want to know the truth, this Mr. Toth isn’t actually a total stranger.”
“Really?” she said.
“Fourteen years ago he kicked me out of my father’s funeral.”
“Fourteen years ago?”
“To the month, in fact. Not that I hold a grudge.”
“And that’s why you’re here on this fine day? Because you don’t hold a grudge?”
“That’s right.”
“Fourteen years ago.” She tapped her chin. “Isn’t that when Mr. Toth’s partner died?”
He looked at her again. He had thought she’d just wandered over, but there was a degree of purpose in her stance, in the way she was staring at him now.
“How did you know that?” he said.
“Was Mr. Toth’s partner your father?” she said.
“Just so happens yes.”
“So that’s your mother sitting beside the widow?”
“No.”
“But that’s—”
“Yes.”
“Ahh, I see.”
“Do you?” He looked at her, caught the intensity of her gaze. “What do you see, exactly?”
“How did your father die, do you know?”
“Heart attack, or so I’ve been told.”
“Told by whom?”
“Well, by Mr. Toth.”
“Did you ever get any documentation?”
“Why would I?”
“Just wondering. You have the time?”
Kyle reflexively checked his watch. It was an old gold thing with a square face and an expandable metal band. “One-twenty,” he said.
“Nice watch. What is it, a Raymond Weil?”
He looked at it again. “No. It’s a Longines. It belonged to my mother. Who are you anyway?”
“When was the last time you saw this Mr. Toth?”
“A while ago, I don’t remember. Hey, what’s going on here? I thought we were mindlessly flirting.”
“Where were you on Friday night? I’m talking late, now. About midnight.”
“That’s the night Mr. Toth was killed, right?”
“That’s right,” she said.
He looked at her a bit more, and then it came to him, wholly and with utter clarity, the way the most obvious things come to you when you finally grasp hold. This wasn’t just a cute girl flirting as she passed the time at some boring old funeral. This was a cop, admittedly a fine-looking cop, but a cop nonetheless, a cop investigating the murder of Laszlo Toth. And Kyle Byrne realized with a shock that he had suddenly become a suspect.
How cool was that?
ROBERT SPANGLER WAS LISTENING to a priest drone on at the
funeral of Laszlo Toth when he spotted the two police officers scanning the crowd. They were in plain clothes, but still, the moment he saw them, he knew, what with their law-enforcement stances—like prison guards on the walk—their sunglasses, their chins. Not to mention their races. The old black man and young Latino woman stood out like messengers from another planet in the sea of white Hungarian trash.
Robert had never before had the opportunity to attend the funeral of someone he’d actually killed, though he’d sat through the funeral and memorial service of Liam Byrne, whom he had tried to kill but who had died before Robert could get a second chance at him. That funeral was an odd experience, especially after it had been disrupted by Byrne’s illegitimate son, who snatched the urn full of the old man’s ashes and darted crazily into the depths of the cemetery. But this funeral was stranger still for Robert, an opportunity only a rare few ever had the temerity to experience. What did it feel like to stand by the open grave of a man whom you had murdered in the coldest of blood?
He took a moment to gauge his emotions, and this is what he felt: disgrace and exultation and boredom all at once. Disgrace at the humiliation that he accepted from her at every turn. In her eyes he was no better than a pet—worse, actually, because her cat was treated with far more respect than was he. Exultation at the act itself, not the killing per se but the execution of it, clean and hard. He had taken his time, he had set the scene, he had laid traps to cover his tracks. Except for a missing cuff link, everything had gone perfectly. It was a lucky thing he didn’t have a taste for the work, because he was damn good at it. And finally boredom, yes, boredom, because, frankly, funerals were boring as hell.
But now, with the cops barging in on the graveside service, he felt something else, too. A shot of fear. Interesting. And strangest of all, he discovered that he liked it.
They were talking, the two of them, off to the side. She had left for a bit to question one of the old-timers who had shown up, and now she was back with her partner, surveying the crowd. For a moment her gaze fell upon Robert like the beam of a klieg light, and even as he maintained his stolid demeanor and stance, he felt something rise within him. A thrill, like being on a roller coaster, the moment at the crest of the initial rise when nothing but the fall is before you. And then her gaze passed on and the thrill disappeared.
He kept watching her as she scanned the crowd. After a moment more with her partner, she headed off, toward a man in a gray suit standing on a small hill beyond the coffin. He studied the man for a moment. There was something familiar about him. And then Robert recognized him. So captivated was he by the ebb and flow of his own emotions that he had turned sloppy and hadn’t seen him clearly, but now he did.
It was the boy who had run off with the ashes, the son of Liam Byrne.
He’d been looking for this Kyle Byrne ever since Laszlo Toth had told him about the missing file cabinet. He needed to learn if this Kyle knew anything about where it might be and what might be inside, but the son had been hard to trace. The only pictures he had were of a younger, thinner figure, a teen, actually, still in high school, photos from the sports pages of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. The address that was listed on the Internet was no longer valid; the son had moved out of the house just a few weeks before. A neighbor seemed to remember that this Kyle worked at a place called Bubba’s. He had found the bar and waited there for way too long—there was only so much piss-gut beer he could drink—but the kid had never shown, so Robert had delivered his message to the scrawny black bartender and then left. He had planned to visit the bar after the funeral to sniff out what he could, but he no longer needed to.
Instead of Robert’s having to search for the boy, the message had borne fruit and the boy had come to him.
Robert watched as the cop sidled up to this Kyle Byrne and started talking. The boy seemed to be lost, and it took him a moment to realize that someone had spoken, but the two eventually settled into conversation. Robert could imagine what was being said, the cop asking the kid questions about a murder. But wait a second, it didn’t seem like an intense interview. It actually looked like she was flirting. And son of a bitch, it looked like he was flirting back. At a funeral, no less. He had to admire that. He’d have to be more careful with this Byrne boy than he’d thought. He watched as they chatted amiably, and then the conversation took an obvious turn.
She was turning cop on him, and he was getting defensive. Interesting. Whatever was going on between them had turned into an interrogation. Could the son of Liam Byrne be a suspect in the murder of Byrne’s former partner? Why not? The more the merrier. Robert was only disappointed that he hadn’t seen the possibility sooner. It would have been nice to add a piece of evidence to the crime scene implicating the boy. Maybe he’d still have his chance.
It lasted a moment more, the conversation, and then the cop slipped away to head back to her partner. They’d talk about the kid, they’d keep an eye on him, which meant Robert couldn’t go right over. He’d have to wait.
His moment came after the priest had finished his monotonous oration, after a few prayers from the little pamphlet had been read, after the coffin had been lowered and dirt had been spilled onto its dark wooden surface with the pattering thud of finality. The three women from the front row had been helped into their respective limousines, the crowd was shaking heads and shaking hands and dispersing toward the cars parked tightly on the road that wound around the gravestones. Robert spied Kyle Byrne walking alone with his head down toward an old red sports car parked well away from the others. “Mr. Byrne?” said Robert as he came up from behind. “Mr. Kyle Byrne?”
The kid stopped and turned around and gave Robert a careful look before saying, “Yes.”
“Liam Byrne’s son?”
“That’s right.”
“I knew your father,” said Robert. He stifled his smile as he saw the son’s eyes widen with curiosity. He had wondered what to offer as bait, and suddenly he knew. “Your father was a fine man.” “Was he?”
“Well, sometimes he was. And sometimes not so. If you’re interested in the details, maybe we should talk,” said Robert, fishing a card from his pocket, offering it to Byrne. “I think we can help each other.”
Byrne took the card, glanced at it. “How can you help me . . . Mr. O’Malley?”
“I know things about your father.”
“Things? What kinds of things?”
“Things about his life, his frailties, his death.”
“His death?”
“Things that might surprise you,” said Robert. “Secrets. What child doesn’t want to probe the secrets of his father? But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you have no interest at all in your father’s past. And if so, good for you. Only the foolish look back. Forward, forward is all. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“No, no, wait,” said Byrne as Robert started to turn away. “We can talk. Why don’t we talk now?”
“They’ve just buried your father’s partner,” said Robert. “This is an inappropriate venue for our discussion, don’t you agree? Call me, and we’ll meet someplace seemly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Call me.”
“Wait, don’t leave.”
“Soon,” said Robert as he backed away.
“Mr. O’Malley?”
“Yes?”
“You said we can help each other. How can I help you?”
Robert stopped, stared for a bit, and then walked up to Byrne so his softest voice could be heard. “I am looking for something. I was a client of your father’s, and I gave him certain information that he put in a file. A legal file. With my name upon its label. I would like that information back. Do you have any idea where the file might be?”
“No. None.”
“That’s too bad,” said Robert as he backed away and then turned again to leave.
“But we should talk.”
“Find me my file and we will.”
“I don’t even know where to look.”
“Think,” said Robert over his shoulder. “Think hard, and then give me a call.”