Yesterday's News (22 page)

Dykestra shrugged. “Guy's a cop. A fuckin hero for saving the kid and everybody else in the building. Good public relations.”

“No, Richie. Good private relations.”

“I don't get you.”

“Schonsy seems the kind of guy you don't shortchange.”

“Look, I got one of the Porto's lives in the place willing to say her uncle smokes in bed, okay? That means the fire's not my fault. But I got no insurance, no guarantee a jury with half of them Portos and the other half smokers are gonna see it that way. Plus, Schonsy was saying he tripped on the carpet coming down, and the staircase got so fuckin wrecked from the fire, who could say?”

“You have the building's title in a real estate trust?”

The face narrowed. “Yeah.”

“Any other property in the same trust?”

“What's it to you?”

“I'm still wondering why you settled without a suit being filed. Even conceding you'd lose on the merits, why not just let Schonstein and his lawyer take the destroyed house and the land under it for what it's worth, so long as the trust didn't own any other parcels worth your saving?”

Dykestra's eyes made a circuit of the room. “Awright, you wanna know, I'll tell you so's you'll know. Cop like Schonsy, he's been around forever. He's got things on everybody. He makes a phone call here, drops a hint there, he could get everybody and his brother on my back. Everywhere I got property in the city. I don't need that, Jack. I don't need fines up the wazoo because my drunk fuck janitor in a twelve-unit complex ain't wearing a surgical mask when he takes the garbage cans to the curb.”

“Not to mention fire inspections, building code violations—”

“You got the picture. Any more questions?”

“Yeah. How much was the settlement?”

“That you don't need to know.” He picked up a message slip and pushed a button on the telephone console. “Give my regards to Boston, huh?”

“Maybe I'm not leaving town just yet.”

“You ought to. I don't think Nasharbor's agreeing with you too good, you know?”

T
HE
A
LMEIDA FUNERAL
Home was just off Main Street in a sprawling Victorian painted the obligatory white with black shutters. Three men with olive complexions were standing around a hearse and a limo in the driveway. The middle-aged one was shifting from foot to foot, a Clydesdale waiting professionally for the start of another parade. The two younger ones shared a cigarette and quiet jokes.

Inside, several viewing rooms branched off from the main foyer and central staircase. Next to one double doorway, a black felt board spelled in white plastic letters
JANE RUST/PARLOR A
. Managing editor Arbuckle was standing beside a seemingly sober Malcolm Peete. Each was talking out of the side of his mouth, as though that showed more respect for the deceased in the closed coffin. Kneeling at the casket was Bruce Fetch, secretary Grace seated nearby. A dozen or so people milled around, a few of them faces I remembered from the city room. As a portly man moved aside, I could see Liz Rendall speaking with an elderly woman I recognized from one photo back on Jane's dresser. She wore a faded print dress that appeared ten years out of fashion. When Liz spotted me, she excused herself and came over.

Her eyes shone brightly over a face set in an appropriately subdued smile. “John, I'm glad you could make it.”

I checked my watch. “I miss the services?”

“No. Jane wasn't religious, so I didn't think a service would be in keeping, especially given … the way she died. Almeida does a nice, simple job, regardless of, I think he said, ‘the faith of the departed.'”

A silver-haired man in a morning coat with the manner of a patrician came into the room. He briefly took the elderly woman's hands in both of his and bowed slightly at the waist.

I said to Liz, “Almeida?”

“Yes.”

“And Jane's aunt?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You think I could ask her a few questions?”

Rendall frowned. “I don't know. She's been pretty good so far, but Jane was her only living relative, and I'm not sure how close she is to losing it.”

“I'll tread softly.”

Liz was cut off by Almeida saying, “May I have your attention, please?”

Everyone acceded, and Almeida explained the vehicular order of march. I noticed a few of the newspaper people growing sullen. Probably planned to stay only for the expected service in the funeral home, but now felt trapped into driving to the cemetery as well.

As Almeida concluded, I could see the aunt's eyes searching the room for Liz. Making contact, she approached us.

I quickly said to Liz, “Be easier for you if I rode in the limo, too?”

Before she could reply, the aunt was upon us, saying, “Liz, who is this good-looking young man? Your beau?”

Rendall said, “I wish, Ida. This is John Cuddy.”

The aunt pressed my hand and said, “You were a friend of Janey's?”

I wasn't sure how much detail Liz had told her. “Yes, but only recently.”

“Too bad. More friends like you and Liz, and I'll bet matters wouldn't have come to this.” She noticed the room emptying out, and said, “If you don't have a ride to the cemetery, how about sharing the limousine with us?”

“Sure.”

Ida gazed back at the casket. Almeida and the three I'd seen outside were politely waiting till the room was cleared before trundling the coffin out to the hearse.

Ida said, “Well, best be on our way, I guess. Leastways Jane's gotten a nice day. She would have liked that.”

“Manhattan, Kansas. Ever hear of it?”

“No, ma'am. I haven't.”

“Call ourselves ‘The Little Apple.' Get it?”

“Yes, ma'am. Clever play on words.”

“I think so. I do. Even got some decals and bumper stickers, that sort of thing. Couple of the shopkeepers made themselves a bundle on them. A bundle, word has it.”

Liz and I sat next to each other in the limo, facing Ida in the most comfortable seat. I was thinking that if Ida was close to cracking, I'd hate to see her party mood.

“'Course it's still just a little town, just the university to keep it going, truth be told. But I've lived there all my life and never wanted anything else. Not like Janey, no.”

“Did she stay in touch?”

“Oh, some. She'd write me, call on birthdays, Christmastime, that sort of thing. Janey was my sister's child, my younger sister. Died young, too. Right around Janey's age. Bad luck or bad seed.”

“Janey talk much about what she was doing here?”

“On the newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“No, not since she wrote me with her new address and all. Said she was real happy with it, her first ‘real' job, she said. I guess the other papers didn't treat her so well, but if it wasn't for them, she wouldn't have been here, so who can say?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if it wasn't for her friend down in Florida, she wouldn't have gotten this job, but who can say whether it was good or ill, seeing as how things worked out for her.”

Liz and I exchanged glances. “What friend?”

“Well, young man, I don't rightly know. Can't say she ever said, and if she did, I don't remember. Think it was just somebody from Florida who helped her, from the paper she worked on down there.”

“Do you remember which paper?”

“Oh, mercy, no. She worked on so many, and they all sound the same to me, like nobody who ever owned them had as much imagination as a farmer naming his herd. But it was in Florida, for certain, near where she went to school.”

I said to Liz, “You know where that was?”

“Probably Miami. They've got—”

“No, no. Wasn't Miami. Miami I would have remembered. Ry Bicks, he moved down there when his wife took sick. Couldn't ever understand Ry's doing that, never even saw the place before he upped and took her there, but I would have remembered Miami. When I read Janey's letter, I mean.”

I said, “Tampa, Gainesville, Talla—”

“Gainesville! Gainesville, yes, I remember wondering if that's where the dog food came from, you know? Yes, it was Gainesville alright, whatever their newspaper is.”

I was about to ask something when the driver slewed to the right and through the cemetery gate. As he proceeded slowly down the macadam, Ida looked around and her lower lip began to quiver.

She said, “Trees. Oh my, that's nice. Janey would have liked having trees around her.”

Liz shot me a look that said, “Enough, okay?,” and I had to agree with her.

Almeida was as short and sweet over the grave as he had been indoors. I could appreciate the heavily Catholic parts of the ceremony that he necessarily, but smoothly, deleted. The dozen or so mourners stood uncomfortably close together, Fetch directly behind me, Grace next to him.

Ida, weakening slowly, was between Liz and me. Liz had her right arm around the aunt's waist for support. Ida reached down with her right hand and clasped my left in that bony, intense way older people have. She cried softly into a hankie. The hankie gave off a faint scent of lilac.

Almeida, from the tone of his voice, was approaching the last few sentences when I felt Liz tug on my suit pocket with the hand behind Ida's back. I ignored it, but she tugged harder.

I looked first at Liz, then at what had drawn her attention. Coming across the grounds, perhaps forty yards away, was Gail Fearey, carrying her diapered son curled in a skinny arm. Fearey was running, a desperate, knock-kneed caricature of a punt-returner whose team is losing in the fourth quarter.

Liz immediately hunched closer to Ida, getting a better grip. I moved around the grave as Almeida turned to see what the now-audible running was all about.

Before I could get between Fearey and the grave, she started screaming, “Biiiiiitch! Murdering fuckin biiiiitch!”

Tiger, who had been quiet till now, began to wail. I said, “Gail, please …” and took her free arm gently.

She wrestled away from me with surprising strength. Tearing off the child's soiled diaper, Fearey flung the cloth onto the coffin itself.

“You biiiitch! You fuckin biiiitch! The only fuckin thing I had, and you killed him! You fuckin biiiitch!”

Almeida's people moved with calm precision toward Gail. She felt the human net closing and whirled around, running back the way she came. When we didn't pursue her, she stopped. Bending over at the ground, Fearey screamed, “biiiitch!” The baby's weight nearly toppled her as she seemed to throw up. It was then run/stop/scream/heave at roughly ten-yard intervals until she ascended a low hill and disappeared from sight.

I heard Peete's voice say, “Christ, I need a drink.”

“T
HE REAL SHAME
of it all is the absence of creativity, don't you think?”

“How do you mean?” I said.

“Well, consider it, good sir. ‘The Almeida Funeral Home.' It's flat, unappealing. Would you want to be buried from there?”

I'd had enough vodka to think about it. Malcolm Peete used the gap to pour another triple into his glass. We'd both wanted a postmortem after Gail Fearey's scene at the grave, and Peete even asked Liz Rendall and Arbuckle to join us. Liz begged off on the ground that she thought she should look after Ida. Arbuckle just begged off.

“No.”

Peete looked up from the bottle. “What's that?”

“I said no, I wouldn't want to be buried from there.”

“Of course you wouldn't. Nobody would. Then again, by the time you have need of such services, the option is no longer yours. That's why Madison Avenue has to step in. A niche needs filling.”

“Don't get you.”

He set down his glass, spreading his hands. “Look, currently the choice of home is made by the survivors, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Well, that's the problem. The survivors can't very well be clever and buoyant about it. They have to show some respect for the deceased, as a result of which the mourners feel the same way, only more so. Everyone attends under this leaden shroud.”

“And?”

“And that's where the advertising gurus are missing a bet. Don't you see? Sell the services to the deceased before the demise! Reserve the package in advance, requiring a reasonable deposit so the home doesn't get stuck for the buffet.”

“Buffet.”

“Right. Or the cocktails, the band, any of those touches. You plan it, you publicize it, and obviously you attend it, though your dance card will probably remain open.”

“You plan your own funeral.”

“And draw a list for invitations. Who knows better which people should be there than you do? Now it's a free-for-all, gatecrashers galore. Restrict and refine, that's the ticket. Only those you really want to enjoy themselves will benefit.”

“Peete, that's sick.”

“Sicker than catering christenings and bar mitzvahs, weddings and anniversaries? All those events are benchmarks, my lad, benchmarks in a life. Why not a similarly anticipated blowout for the last benchmark of all?”

“The funeral homes would never go along.”

“Go along? They'd jump at it! The only markups they can take now are on containers and liners. Think of champagne, pâté, and caviar. Plus the zing it would put into their commercials. No more somber dirges in the background. Instead, you'd hear some celebrity endorser announce, ‘And now, for Dead to the World, a subsidiary of Out Like a Light, Inc., the largest chain of funeral spas in the East, the hard-rocking sounds of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful—'”

“Could we try something else for a while?”

Peete's features, till now theatrical, drooped back to normal. “Sorry. Always thought it was better to treat the passing of a loved one as an absurdity. Muffles it, somehow.”