The Twenty-Year Death (57 page)

“That’s what I said.” This was starting to make me nervous. Why were we going back through my statement? That couldn’t be a good thing. That could only mean they suspected something. But it was hard to think, tired and hungry as I was.

“That seems about right, the man on the desk that night said you came in around 1:15, so that’s about what it would be, right?”

“I don’t understand,” I said, hoping my expression showed confusion, not fear. “We went over all of this yesterday. What’s going on?”

“Why’d you leave the hotel?” Dobrygowski said.

So they did suspect something. “Aunt Alice offered to put me up.”

“Aunt Alice. But she’s not your aunt, is she?” Healey said.

“Quinn, my ex-wife’s great aunt, her mother’s mother’s sister. Why is this important? Gentleman, I’m really—”

“And she just now decided to put you up?” Dobrygowski cut in. A real bleeding heart, that Dobrygowski. This guy just lost his son; we better grill him.

I didn’t say anything. I was sick to my stomach, that ambiguous feeling that could mean hunger or could mean heartburn. I needed to eat, and I needed a drink even more.

“We’re just trying to get things straight,” Healey said, the good cop.

“I’m sorry, gentleman, but Joe got killed two days ago. I just can’t go through this again right now.”

“It’s funny how you say Joe got killed,” Dobrygowski said, jumping on me. “Because if it was just an accident, falling asleep with a lit cigarette, I would have thought you would have said that Joe died, not that he got killed.”

“It’s just a way of talking,” I mumbled.

Healey sighed. He looked at Dobrygowski, but when he spoke it was to me. “The M.E. says that it looks like your son may have been murdered.”

And there it was. A punch in the stomach. It couldn’t have hit me harder than if they were putting the handcuffs on me right then. Then I’d know at least. I almost retched, but managed to turn it into a burp, covering my mouth. I tasted stale alcohol.

Dobrygowski reached out as though he were going to brace me.

“Are you okay?” Healey said.

I coughed and swallowed, and shook my head, waving my hand to show I was all right, just give me a second, I’m all right.

“I’m sorry to have to bring you more bad news,” Healey said,
and I could tell he really was. He wasn’t a bad guy at that. He really cared. And my reaction had been the right one, it turned out. He thought I choked out of parental horror. I choked because I felt the noose tightening. “It’s not definite,” he said. “He had a pretty severe skull fracture at the back of his head. It’s possible that he just fell, and it’s even possible that it didn’t kill him, that he still made it to his bed and lit a cigarette. But it looks suspicious, and so we have to look into it.”

“Is that why you’re checking my story with the deskman?”

“I’m sorry about that. It’s no good. It makes me sick. But we had to come at you with this to see how you took it.”

“Well, how am I taking it,” I said, angry now. Angry that I was so relieved they
weren’t
putting me in handcuffs. And angry because it meant I had been much more frightened than I had thought.

“I’m sorry,” Healey said again.

“So what happened? Joe was murdered?”

“We didn’t say that. We’re not saying that. We’re just saying that it’s something we need to look into.”

So they were just double-checking my story. They didn’t suspect me of anything. I was just the last person to see him alive, as they always say in the movies. Didn’t mean I killed him. He was my kid. How could I have killed him?

“I’m really sorry we had to ruin another morning for you,” Healey said.

“So am I.” I said it with a little heat behind it. I was entitled to some anger now.

“You will contact us if you think of anything else?”

I sneered. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.”

My tone seemed to pain Healey, but it made Dobrygowski
examine me with more intensity. “Right, then. I’m sorry again,” Healey said, putting his pad back in his pocket. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“You know where to find me,” I said, showing that I had nothing to hide. I was right out in the open.

Healey opened the door, and I stepped forward and held it as they both filed through, and then I closed it behind them. When I turned around, Connie was right there, creeping down the hall from the kitchen.

“Someone killed Mr. Joe?” she said.

“That’s what they’re saying,” I said.

“It sounded like they was giving you the third degree. If I’d a known that, I’d a said you weren’t here, the no-good police hassling a father in mourning. They should be ashamed.” Her indignity was enough for the both of us, hands on her hips, lowered brow, and pushed-out lips. “Well your breakfast is all fixed, so come on back and get something inside you now.”

In the kitchen, she took a plate out of the oven with a towel, and brought it over to the small kitchen table. “You don’t mind eating in the kitchen here, do you? Miss Alice takes all her meals in here with me now. The dining room’s only for company.”

“That’s fine, Connie.” And it was fine. Scrambled eggs, a link of sausage, hash browns, grits, and a toasted English muffin with a container of jam on the side. It was the kind of meal a man deserved on a morning he was hassled by the police. My stomach was still boiling, but I figured it would calm down once I got some grub in me. I dug in, and Connie went about her business cleaning up, not saying anything. She and Great Aunt Alice could probably go whole days without saying a word to one another.

I ate with relish. Once I got the first taste of egg, I knew that
my discomfort was more hunger than heartburn, although there was still some of that too.

I reviewed my interview with the police. I had been by turns exhausted and angry, but I didn’t think I’d made any big mistakes. Aside from one or two glances from Dobrygowski, and that crack about me saying ‘killed’ instead of ‘died,’ it seemed like what they said it was, a routine double-check of my statement now that they were approaching it as a murder and not an accidental death. And they said they weren’t even sure if it was a murder, they were just looking into it. No, I was fine. They didn’t suspect me of anything. Why would they? I was Joe’s father. I ran through it again, and I still couldn’t find any other mistakes. I was okay.

I wanted to call Vee, though, or to see her. I wanted to let her know what was happening. But it was exactly the last thing I should do, and she would be mad as anything if I did get in touch. It would call further attention to our relationship than we wanted. For all I knew at the moment, they didn’t even know about Vee, and it was better all around if it stayed that way. Still, I really could have used her reassuring voice.

I finished my meal. Connie had left the kitchen, presumably to check on Great Aunt Alice. I knew I should probably do the same, but even fortified by the food as I was, I didn’t have it in me for another long session in the conservatory. I couldn’t call Vee, and what I’d really have liked was to call Clotilde, but it was too early on the West Coast. The hospital would never put me through to her even if I claimed it was an emergency. Especially if I claimed it was an emergency. They wouldn’t want to do anything that might unduly excite one of their residents.

That left me with the long day ahead and nothing to fill it. Except for thoughts of Healey and Dobrygowski digging around, narrowing their search, closing their net. The idea was too much to bear. I yawned and thought I could really go back to sleep, I was that tired, like the food had weighted me down and I couldn’t even find the energy to stand up. But I made it back up to my bedroom. I collapsed on the bed, and before I knew it I was dead to the world.

The next few days passed in much the same way. I woke up some time before noon and Connie gave me a meal in the kitchen. I’d go back to my room, try to pick at a book from Great Aunt Alice’s library, and then fall asleep after a few pages and be out until dinner. I only saw Great Aunt Alice at dinner. And then the conversation was only of books and it didn’t really matter how much I contributed, Great Aunt Alice could talk enough for both of us, which was all she really wanted anyway. Otherwise, I managed to sleep as much as eighteen, twenty hours a day.

The funeral was scheduled for Thursday, one week exactly after Joe’s death. I would have liked it to be sooner—I felt I would be safer with the body in the ground—but once it was declared a murder, the city wouldn’t release the body until two days after the autopsy, which put it on a Sunday, which in the police bureaucracy really meant Monday. So the earliest the funeral could have been was Tuesday. But Mary was in charge, along with Frank Palmer, and she wanted to get it just right. She’d gotten very particular as a widow. Only of course she wasn’t even a widow since they never were married. I just slept, letting it all happen without me, at a distance, and so I was told the funeral was on Thursday and the funeral was on Thursday.

I saw Mary only once in that time, on Sunday. She came to the house all fired up with the distraction of planning, and said that she was in the midst of all of these decisions—the flowers, the clergy, the eulogy, the obituary, everything—and she was afraid
that she had overstepped her bounds. She was afraid I would be angry. I put my arm around her and told her it was all right, it was great, it was the way it should be, and the weight of the whole thing suddenly showed on her face. It went from pinched to slack, and her eyes got shiny, but she didn’t let a tear drop. She was a good sport like that. She said again that she wanted to think of me as a dad, and I said I wouldn’t like anything better, and she managed a smile at that, even if it was pained, and she left, back to her organization, keeping busy to keep her mind off of it.

When I was awake, however, I couldn’t keep my mind off of it. It would creep up on me, Joe’s fall, carrying his lifeless body up the stairs, the glow of the lighter... Even if it had been an accident, covering it up was surely a crime, and when your kid got hurt, even if you had nothing to do with it, you felt guilty and thought, if only I had...if only...and here I had everything to do with it. Mary wanted to see me as a father, but it was I who needed a parent. With that thought, I’d roll over and force myself right back to sleep.

There was a phone call with Palmer. I
had
come into money. Since Joe died without a will, the estate was distributed according to the order of succession, first to Joe’s kids if there were any and there weren’t, and then to Joe’s parents, which was me. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel one way or the other about the news, and we agreed it was best dealt with after the funeral. I knew I should at least tell Vee that much, but I didn’t know what her situation was with Browne, and it still felt too risky to make contact. And every time I thought about calling Clotilde, I couldn’t face the idea of having to put off Director Philips once more, or worse, on the weekend, one of the sub-directors.

On Tuesday, I was finally forced out of my lethargy. I was
dreaming about the funeral, and the bell tolled, but it wasn’t one sonorous note but a stream of notes, up and down. They ran through their sequence again, and I became aware of the room, the bed, the leathery dry interior of my mouth, and I realized the ringing wasn’t in my dream. It was the doorbell.

I lay there on my stomach in my suit pants and shirtsleeves, one arm hanging off the bed, feeling too tired to get up, but awake enough to know I wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. Then there was the sound of Connie on the stairs, and a knock at my door.

“Mr. Shem. There’s a man here to see you.”

I didn’t move. I was so numb to everything that I wasn’t even worried it was the cops. They could come and take me for all I cared.

“Mr. Shem? Should I send him away?”

I called, “I’ll be right there, Connie.” There was a pause, and then I heard her walk away. I pulled up my arm, swung my feet around, and sat on the edge of the bed. Man, did my head feel like it weighed twenty-five pounds. I brought a hand to my forehead to support it. If Vee could see me now... I deserved whatever vitriol she could spew, and she was expert at vitriol.

I pulled myself together and got up. I felt a little lightheaded and dizzy at first, but that was to be expected. I rubbed my cheeks to get some blood into them, and they were like sandpaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved.

From the top of the stairs, I could see a young man in a blue suit with no tie and a gray hat. He was familiar, I knew I should know him, but I just couldn’t place him. In the back of my mind a note of panic edged in with the sense that this man knew something about Joe’s death. He was linked to it in some way.

He looked up when I was halfway down the stairs, broke into
a nervous grin, and hurried off his hat. “Mr. Rosenkrantz.” His expression got a little funny as he took in my condition, but what was that to me?

“I’m sorry, I...” I said as I reached the bottom of the stairs.

His face fell a little, but he managed to keep his grin. “Taylor Montgomery, sir.”

“Who?” I said out loud. I couldn’t remember any Montgomery.

His face fell even further, and he looked down. “Oh, I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t...” He darted a look at me to see how he was faring. “I knew I shouldn’t have come.”

Montgomery? It dawned on me. It was the kid from the newspaper who I’d shot the breeze with the day I... That was why I thought of him and Joe. It felt like a year ago. “Montgomery. Sure. Sure. No, the kid from newspaper. It just slipped my mind for a minute.”

“Because I could come back. Or if you’d rather be alone...”

“No. It’s all right. What can I do for you, Montgomery?”

“I got your address from the hotel. They said this was where your messages were to be forwarded. I hope it’s all right. I mean, I know with your son and all... I just wanted to tell you how awfully sorry I am. I just feel terrible.”

And he looked it too. It embarrassed me to see how deferential he seemed, how worshipful. I couldn’t look him in the eye. “Thanks, kid.” I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at me with his chin still tucked in.