Lucky Leonardo (15 page)

Janet Casey picked up Mulverne for the ride to Brockleman's funeral. “You look dapper,” she chirped as he climbed his crotchety way into her freshly-washed Beemer sedan, in ladylike white with a stick.

“Anything new?” he asked.

“Marge Blitz called me.”

“Your new buddy.”

“My new drinking buddy. Pursuant to your request.”

“When did she call?”

“8:00 am this morning.”

“She started work early.”

“She started drinking early. She was already pickled.”

“Because of Brockleman?”

“She's drinking earlier because of him.”

“She feels responsible?”

“She talks tough, you know. She says she's lost suspects before and it's no big deal. She says Brockleman was like all the other fast lane guys when a cop pulls them over…”

“They bribe the cop?”

“No. They're fragile. They shatter.”

“She still thinks he did it?”

“Yes, very much. She believes the secretary.”

“And you?”

“Mostly I do too. You?”

“I never trusted the fat bastard. May he rest in peace.”

They stopped talking when Janet turned her big-engined machine onto the highway, and ramped up to and past traffic speed, weaving from lane to lane like a tank commander eager for glory but late for battle, scaring the piss out of Mulverne as she always did with her driving, except for the shy and rarely-allowed-out-of-the-house kid part of him which reacted with delight, which was why he asked her to drive. “Yes,” he said more or less audibly as space opened ahead, and she accelerated through it.

Janet recognized this twist in Mulverne's road early on, when she drove him to lunch at half-time of her desultory job interview and u-turned the momentum en route by threatening to love nudge the rear bumper of an old-timer who was clogging the passing lane. “Sorry,” she said to Mulverne after she honked the old-timer to the sidelines. “Sometimes my driving gets…a little aggressive.”

“Christ,” Mulverne replied through gritted teeth, “let's talk…compensation package.”

Janet used this shared intimacy as a promotional tool like she did with her former boss who got off on baseball talk coming from the mouth of a woman, especially in the winter months, or for that matter her dad who had a sweet tooth for beef stew.
Whatever,
she implicitly reconciled.
If I were brilliant, well-adjusted, and beautiful, as opposed to smarter than some, not completely nuts, and prior to surgical tampering blessed with an enormous nose which kept the boys busy elsewhere, and I don't mean inside my panties, I mean on the other side of the room so that I had plenty of quiet time for studying, I might not feel the attraction of driving fast to please my boss. And while I am almost certain he came in his pants the time I was stopped for speeding on the Mass Pike [Interstate 90], which might have been his only come of the decade, I didn't have to touch anything and under these circumstances I do not feel like a prostitute.

The coroner relieved everybody, except possibly Brockleman's poker-buddy cardiologist, when he identified a massive heart attack as the cause of Brockleman's death, because even after a lifetime of excess and provocation, a heart attack still feels like God's will, a natural ending as opposed to the unnaturalness of high speed impact with a slab of concrete or bullets to the base of the skull which leave their survivors blood-splattered and pacing long hallways of regret.

If he has to be dead, better this way say the aggrieved, except his widow didn't stop asking, “Why me?”

———

The New York underwriters kept pushing Mulverne to settle Eugene's lawsuit. “Jack,” they said again this morning, “it creates uncertainties in risk and value. Pay him off and move on. Whatever it is, get it done. We can't raise capital until you do.”

Mulverne gave the underwriters his usual, “Tough shit. I'd rather eat my foot than pay that crazy slimeball dime one,” but he was mulling it over. He needed to raise capital. He was pushing his liability insurer. As Janet slowed down before the pearly gates of the cemetery's parking lot, he asked her, “Do you think it's too early to talk settlement?”

“Depends.”

“What do you think it would take to buy our way out?”

“Greene will report to me later today on the shrink's deposition. I'll run it by him,” she said as she parked. She and Mulverne disembarked into the frosty afternoon and walked along a paved path through the gravestones to the place on the rise of a hill where a small crowd was gathered, which was the wrong funeral, it turned out. Having pushed to get to the front row and then squeezed in place by the mourners—including the elderly widower, who was the tip off, along with the reverend saying, “Now we lay to rest our dearly departed Ethel…”—as they closed ranks against the cold so that the only opening was straight ahead into the fresh hole, and with the widower finding comfort next to her luxurious mink, it being otherwise a cloth-coat crowd, Janet considered the viability of stonewalling the faux pas and doing Brockleman as the second part of a double feature, time permitting.

But Mulverne made it easier for them to cut and run, albeit at the bad end of a chorus of curses and with their arms covering their heads to evade identification like perps led from the paddy wagon, when he too loudly asked, “Who's Ethel?”

Eventually they found the Brockleman party, in time to witness the casket go down, and express sad condolences to the widow who looked wobbly and beaten up, like she saw her husband's ghost in the mirror and kept smashing herself on the glass as she tried to bring him back to her side, or, as actually happened, almost killed herself when she fell down the stairs at the mortuary on her way to the casket display room to see what they had in extra large caskets; and to the teenaged son who looked like a nice boy who would now have it tough.

“Call me if there's anything I can do to help,” Mulverne said to the son, although he didn't have anything helpful in mind, and didn't expect a call.

And of course Selma the histrionic secretary.

She was out of control, feeling responsible for her boss' current condition, which is that he was not her boss any more, and was lying laterally in a wooden container at the bottom of a hole.

It was horrible. Beyond any nightmare she could imagine. “Bill, come back,” she screamed in a very loud voice, but not loud enough to rouse him. “Bill, please come back,” she screamed again with all her might, on her hands and knees at the lip of the hole, tears streaming down her face and her body shaking, but still not loud enough. Still not loud enough unless it was loud enough and he heard her but was trapped inside and was clawing at the roof of his coffin and couldn't get out.

“Open the coffin,” Selma screamed like a revelation was upon her. “Open the coffin. He's alive. He wants to get out.”

The widow was unhinged by Selma's outburst, and collapsed backwards into the lap of her son, like in a reverse pietà, as the mourners rushed to her side, and hovered and murmured and wrung their hands. In the background one gravedigger jumped into the hole, and put his ear to the top of the coffin to listen for signs of life, while the other gravedigger stood his ground and smirked.

“She's the one,” Janet said, pointing at Selma, as Selma kneeled bereft and unattended, like a bride abandoned by the wedding party, more and more of her tilting over the edge and into the hole, moving Janet and Mulverne to sidle to her, and try to comfort her, and move her away, while the widow drew the murmurings and attention of the rest of the crowd. They raised Selma to her feet and started her walking. She was weak but they kept her in motion down the path to the parking lot, and didn't look back. Like Good Samaritans escorting Eve from the Garden of Eden.

“Are you here with someone?” Mulverne asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you have a car?”

She shook her head.

“How did you get here?”

“Cab.”

“Brockleman got you into a big mess?”

“Wha…Yes, he did.”

“Would you like a ride?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to drive?”

In this day of cameras in the courtroom, on the catcher's mask, at the scene of the crime, around the far side of the moon, and way up your urinary tract, we expect visual coverage and are nervous and unhappy without it. When Leonardo got home from his deposition with birdies still chirping in his head, too late to attend Brockleman's funeral even if he had his car back and felt invited, he wanted to turn on his television, kick back on his couch, and catch the highlights.

The lowering of the casket. The widow's grief. The crowd's reaction. With commentary, file footage, intrusive close-ups, and tips on how to dress for a winter funeral. The works. But Brockleman was, among other things, no Kennedy. His burial didn't make network, cable, pay per view, wherever. Leonardo, seeking closure, settled for the hundred best sex rock videos on MTV.

“Poor Brockleman,” Leonardo sighed, meaning poor each and every one of us, members of the family of mortals, next time we should be born into a better family. Amen.

———

Marge Blitz, on the other hand, had the video. She poured herself a fist of scotch and sat back with her assistant Kurt Knight, who recorded from the high ground a safe distance away, and watched it all unravel. Kurt said it reminded him of the wedding scene at the beginning of Godfather, when G-men snapped photos of guests from the perimeter of the compound.

“James Caan?” Marge asked Kurt.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Me too.”

They observed the mourners congregated around the coffin. They recognized Selma despite her veil of tears, and the late-arriving Mulverne and Casey duo. The audio was useless on account of the distance, so it was impossible to hear the clergyman's remarks, or to discern the role faith played in them. “What's his affiliation?” Marge asked.

“Dunno,” answered Kurt. “He looked pretty generic.”

“What do you think about religion?” Marge asked, draining and re-filling her glass with the fluidity of a problem drinker.

“It seems to comfort people,” Kurt answered. “It doesn't do much for me.”

“Me either,” said Marge. “Although I think morality matters. God knows I do my best to lead a moral life, to be honest, and charitable, and respect the feelings of others. But to me that's a lot different from believing in miracles and resurrection and things like that…”

“Amen.”

“To me, dead is dead. Like as pissed off as Brockleman was at me I don't think he'll be taking any appeals to higher authorities on the other side…”

“I agree.”

“…or enforcing any of his curses…”

“Marge,” Kurt said as the on-screen clergyman closed his book and signaled for the casket to begin its final descent, “I'm quite certain we're seeing the last of Brockleman.”

Marge raised her glass to this prospect. “May he rest in peace,” she said, “and not become an angry ghost.”

“I'm also quite certain,” Kurt continued, “that if he had lived he would have confessed, and begged you for mercy.”

“I hear what you're saying,” Marge said, “and I deeply appreciate it…Because I'm scared to death of angry ghosts.” She reached over and held his hand. A waft of liquored breath and florid perfume hit him on the head.

“You deserve some love,” Kurt said, his face reddening.

The casket dropped slowly, like a knuckle curve. A batter could swing three times and eat a ham sandwich before it reached the plate. Kurt got impatient and redder. He fast-forwarded with his free hand to the scene where Selma crouched down on all fours at the lip of the open grave. Given the camera angle and the spread of her tush, it set up like a booty shot.

“I can see her underpants,” Marge commented, her spirits rising the deeper Brockleman dropped into his hole. “Not bad for government work, Kurt, you little devil.”

“Thank you,” he said, blushing like a rose.

———

Cut back to Leonardo, alone on his couch with his MTV, not looped into Selma's dramatic roles in Kurt's graveside video or in Brockleman's heart-stopping finale, deciding to call her because she was helpful and friendly to him when he was a Brockleman business associate. She might explain what happened. He couldn't think of anyone else he knew who could or would, and he itched to know.

“She no longer works here,” the law firm receptionist coolly advised, “but I am authorized to give out the following telephone number…”

Leonardo dialed the number.

“Hello?” Selma said. She just that minute was dropped off by Janet and Mulverne, and was still a wreck.

“Selma?”

“Who's this?”

“This is Leonardo Cook. You may remember me from when I did some work with Attorney Brockleman…”

“The shrink?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me how Attorney Brockleman died. He always seemed…”

“What?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me how he d…”

“Fuck you,” Selma said, and hung up.

“Hmm,” Leonardo said. When his phone rang a second later, he picked up and said “Selma?” on the assumption she had pressed her call-back button and wanted to apologize for her rudeness, but it was Barbara.

“Lenny,” Barbara said, “I had to change some things around.”

“What?”

“Harvey's school.”

“What?”

“I've sent him to boarding school.”

“What? You can't do that.”

“I had to. It was an emergency. I had to get him away from the bad influences.”

“What bad influences?”

“Your niece Joan.”

“But Joan's just a…”

“And you.”