Basket Case (43 page)

Janet says, "I can't believe they shot Tito. Holy shit."

"They thought he had a copy of the hard drive. That's the computer box where your brother stored the album tracks. They figured you had one, too. That's why they broke into your house."

"This is nuts. Totally."

"It's Cleo," I say.

"But why would she care about Jimmy's stuff? She's the one with the dumbass hit song." Janet gazes out the window, shaking her head. "Crazed," she mutters.

I ask her if she sat in on any of the Exuma sessions. "Did your brother ever play any of the songs for you?"

"Long time ago," she says. "He wrote it for some girl, she dumped him for one of the Ramones."

"What was the name of the track?"

"God, lemme think. Jimmy only had a few lines written. Mostly he just hummed and played along on the guitar."

"Would you know it if you heard it again?"

"I dunno. I remember it was a really nice song, but we're talkin' like three years ago. Maybe longer."

I insert the disc of "Shipwrecked Heart" into the stereo and twist up the volume. Janet hunches intently toward the speakers. After about eight bars she says, "Pull the car over!"

This requires some slick navigating, as we are boxed in the center lane on the interstate.

"Jack, come on!" She's beating the dashboard with both fists.

Flashing my headlights, I shoot through a Fiat-sized gap between two eighteen-wheelers. Snaking a course toward the shoulder of the highway, I'm greeted by upraised digits from a corpulent biker and a swarthy businessman in a Lincoln. As I brake to a halt, Janet begins stabbing at the buttons on the stereo console.

"Play it again! I want to hear it again," she demands tearfully. "Where's the damn Replay thingie?"

"Calm down. Deep breaths."

I re-cue the disc and take her hands in mine. Once more we listen to her brother's song, Janet protesting, "But isn't that the name of Cleo's album—'Shipwrecked Heart'? How can that be?"

"Is this the one Jimmy played for you?"

"Yeah, Jack, it's the same song. He didn't have a title yet, but now I remember what he called it."

"Tell me."

" 'Kate, You Bitch.' "

Gershwin, eat your heart out.

"That was the name of the chick who dumped him," Janet explains. She shakes a finger at the speaker: "Listen right here, where he's singin', 'Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart'? When Jimmy did it for me, it was, 'Kate, you bitch. You skanky bitch.'"

"I believe I like the new lyrics better."

"Come on, Jack. He wasn't finished yet."

Fair enough. A Paul McCartney tune called "Scrambled Eggs" eventually became "Yesterday," the most widely covered song in music history. While it's the same syllabic hop from "Kate, You Bitch" to "Shipwrecked Heart," I somehow doubt the genealogy of Jimmy's composition is destined for pop lore. In any case, the number's over and Janet is getting weepy again.

"It turned out so pretty," she says.

"Remember when you couldn't think of a reason Cleo would kill your brother? This is why she did it. She needed a hit song and this is the one she wanted."

"And Jimmy wouldn't give it up."

"Bingo." I ease the Mustang back into traffic. "But here's the pisser: I can't prove a damn thing. Except for Cleo, everyone who knows the truth is dead—Jay Burns, the two imbeciles on the airboat. Tito's alive but he can't offer much. Hell, he didn't even play on the sessions."

"So there's nothing to give the cops," she says gloomily.

"I'm afraid not."

"And nothing to put in your newspaper."

Tragically, that is true.

We're driving back toward the donut shop. Janet has slipped behind sunglasses to hide the redness in her eyes. Miles ago she turned off the stereo. I ask her what she's thinking.

"I was just wonderin' how Cleo did it."

"We'll probably never know."

"But if you had to guess—I mean, you've wrote about stuff like this before, right? Murders and all."

The truth is, I've been thinking a lot about the same question. "She probably drugged him. Slipped him something before he went in the water, to knock him out."

The centerpiece of my theory is the fish chowder.

After I first interviewed Cleo, she must have realized her story wasn't seamless. That's why she embellished it for the New York Times, saying Jimmy had gotten sick from the chowder and she'd begged him to stay in the boat. Clearly she was trying to cover herself in case somebody demanded a legitimate autopsy. She wanted it to appear as if she'd tried to prevent her husband from making the dive, and would thus be an unlikely suspect in his death. Once the cremation was complete, the widow Stomarti never again mentioned bad fish, or her phony premonition.

Almost inaudibly, Janet says, "I hope it wasn't too painful. Whatever happened."

"I hope not, too."

In front of the donut shop, she points out a sporty Mercedes convertible. "Raquel loaned it to me while the Miata's in the shop. She's one of the nuns." Janet laughs self-consciously. "You know what I mean—one of the strippers posing as nuns. But they've been so nice, honestly, Jack."

"Ask them to say a rosary for me." I lean across the seat and kiss her on the cheek.

She says, "Can I please hear the song one more time? He sounds so damn good, doesn't he?"

"He'll sound even better in that sixty-thousand-dollar nunmobile."

I pop the disc out of the dash and place it in Janet's palm. Then I reach into the backseat for the bag containing the extra copy of the hard drive. "This is everything he wrote for the album," I tell Jimmy's sister. "It's yours."

"What about Cleo?"

"Starting today, Cleo's looking for a different sound. That's my prediction."

Janet lifts the sunglasses off her nose and studies the plastic computer box from all angles, as if it were a puzzle cube. Her shoulders are shaking when she looks back at me.

"Jack, I still can't believe he's really gone."

And I can't believe his wife is getting away with it.

"I'm so sorry, Janet." I couldn't be any sorrier.

She sniffs away the tears and gathers herself. Propping the car door open with one knee, she says, "Look, I need to show you something. I want you to follow me."

"I'm meeting a friend in about ten minutes."

"Then bring her along."

"But—"

"No excuses," says Janet Thrush, with SWAT-team authority.

At age forty-six my father got drunk and fell out of a tree and died. It was a pathetic finale, and I'll have the rest of my days to picture it happening. I am now forty-seven, grateful and relieved and joyous to have spent more time on this earth than the man responsible for my being here. This might sound appalling but it's honest. For me to have loved or hated my old man was impossible, but it wouldn't have mattered either way. Black irony is known to be indifferent. I would have been pleased to see him make it to his nineties, juggling dentures and pacemakers for the tourists at the Mallory docks. I am pleased, however, not to have followed in his woozy footsteps by punching out at the absurd age of forty-six. If there is (as my mother alludes) a fuckup gene running through his side of the family, I will proceed as if it's recessive. I intend not to get plastered and chase feral wildlife through avocado trees. I intend not to die idiotically, but to live a long reasonable life.

Perhaps even with Emma.

Jimmy's sister has led us across the causeway to Breezy Palms, a small cemetery. There aren't many large cemeteries in Florida; coastal real estate is much too valuable. Many of the folks who die here get air-freighted north for burial—someone back home was considerate enough to save them a plot.

"What's up?" Emma wonders as we pass through the gates of Breezy Palms.

"I wish I knew."

I picked her up in front of the gym. She's worried that sneakers and sweats are inappropriate for the solemn venue.

"Wait'll you see Janet," I say.

The introduction is made in a shaded cupola overlooking a sloping field of gravestones. No natural hills are found in this part of the state, but one has been created here by dredging out a limestone rockpit. The rockpit is now called the Pond of the Sacred Souls.

Janet stuffs a wad of gum in one cheek. "I know this must seem really weird. Thanks for coming."

"Emma's my editor."

"You mean, like, your boss?"

"That's right. The iron fist."

"So you know about everything," Janet says to her. "What happened to my brother, and so forth? The stuff Jack told me, that's all true?"

"It is," Emma says, boss-like.

"But you can't do a story in the paper?"

"We need evidence, just like the police."

"Or we need the police to say they've got evidence," I add.

Janet frowns, nervously tapping one foot.

"Jack, I don't wanna break down again. I'm not a damn crybaby."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of." I go to pieces every time I see Old Yeller.

To Emma she says: "Can I ask you something? You believe in reincarnation?"

Emma looks to me for an assist, but on this subject I'm useless. After a moment's contemplation, she says, "I believe anything's possible."

"Me, too." Janet steps closer. "Look, this is dead serious. You gotta look me in the eye and tell me for a fact Cleo Rio murdered my brother. How sure are you guys?"

"Ninety-nine percent," I say.

"Ninety-eight," says Emma.

"That'll do, I guess." Janet pops her bubble gum. "C'mon. This way."

Sandals flopping, she stalks down the hillside through the winding rows of graves. We follow; Emma going first, swigging from a plastic bottle of spring water.

Surprisingly, I make no effort to avert my eyes from the markers or the telltale numbers etched thereon—the date of the dearly departed's birth, and the date of the dearly departed's… departure.

If the years should add up to forty-seven, so what.

Happy Birthday to me.

It hammers everybody in different ways, at different times. Seventeen days after Jimmy Stoma's death, the awful reality has overtaken his sister. Janet is kneeling on a patch of fresh sod in front of a gleaming new headstone.

Emma seems puzzled but it's beginning to make sense to me. Jimmy's gone, every mortal trace of him, and there's no place where Janet can mourn.

She says, "You remember him, Jack? Such a sweet little man."

"Of course."

The name on the headstone belongs to Eugene Marvin Brandt, the medical-supplies salesman who was laid out smartly in his favorite golf duds, spikes and all. "My Gene," his wife had called him.

At the time I'd thought it was flaky of Janet Thrush to crash the viewing at the funeral home. And undeniably I was creeped out when she asked me to join her at the side of the old man's open casket.

Looking back, though, the scene doesn't seem quite so twisted. Soon her brother would be ashes, and Janet knew she'd be grieving over thin air. She wanted a special place to go, a surrogate gravesite, so she adopted Eugene Marvin Brandt. I believe I understand.

Or maybe not.

"Aw, Jack, I've done something terrible!"

She breaks down in seismic sobs. Emma takes her by the shoulders.

"The worst… thing… I ever… did… in my whole… damn life!" Janet stammers wrackingly.

"It's all right," Emma says.

"Oh no, it's not. Oh no."

I stoop beside her. "Tell me what's the matter."

"I feel so bad for Gertie."

"Who's that?" Emma asks gently.

I nod toward the headstone. "Mrs. Brandt," I whisper.

Emma leans closer to Janet. "You're both hurting, you and Gertie. You've both lost someone dear."

"You don't understand. Jack?" Janet turns to me, her cheeks shining with tears. "Jack, I did a really bad thing."

Now I'm puzzled, too. Jimmy's sister gets up off the grass, discreetly tugging the wedgie crease out of her bikini bottoms.

"I saw this thing about reincarnation, it was on the Psychic Network," she's saying, "about how some people think it doesn't work so good without the actual body in a grave. And the more I thought about it, I wanted Jimmy to have a chance, you know? At least a chance to come back as a dolphin or a flying fish. Whatever he's supposed to be."

"Janet, what are you saying?" I feel Emma's fingers tighten on my elbow.

"See, Cleo knew. She knew Jimmy wanted to be cremated."

"Convenient for her, as it turned out."

"Jack, I love my brother and I respect his wishes, but I wasn't ready. Cleo was pushing so hard to get the cremation over and done, I just knew somethin' wasn't right. Plus I wasn't ready to say goodbye.' Janet's hands are fluttering, like she's tossing a Caesar salad. "And Cleo, she didn't give a damn how I felt. She wouldn't even return my phone calls."