The Twenty-Year Death (59 page)

“But Joe died?”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“I miss you.”

I sighed. This was actually worse than the conversation with Hub. He’d sent some gangster on my trail, but Clotilde...she tore it right out of me, you know? She emasculated me. All the no-good things I’d done to her. I just needed to lie back and go to sleep and never wake up.

“You’ll pay Director Philips now?” Clotilde said. She’d stopped crying, but her voice still sounded small, like a shy little girl’s.

“Yes.”

“I’m so happy, Shem.”

“Yeah.” It went on like that a little longer, with the I-love-yous and I-miss-yous. I’d planned to tell Director Philips the good news about the money, but I didn’t have it in me anymore, so when I was able to, I let Clotilde hang up. I don’t know how long it took me to get up, but I eventually made it back downstairs to Montgomery, and at first I was morose, but after a drink and a half he was able to pull me back into it, and we wrote until late in the evening, and he stayed and we had dinner with Great Aunt Alice and Connie.

The next day was the funeral. It was unseasonably cool thanks to the rain of the previous night. We gathered at the same funeral home where Quinn’s service had been held just under two weeks before. Mary and her parents, Great Aunt Alice, and I sat in the first pew, with Connie directly behind us, and Montgomery a row behind her. Palmer Sr. was also there, and some other acquaintances I didn’t recognize, friends of Quinn’s from her life without me. It seemed that Joseph had had almost no friends of his own or maybe they were just all far away, seeing as how he’d always
boarded at school. I half expected Vee to show up too, and I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed when she didn’t. I’d see her the next day at the hotel anyway.

In front of our pew, there was a waist-high wooden barrier that separated us from the closed casket and the podium from which the minister spoke. He did a hell of a ceremony, quoting the Bible about how the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, to every season, you die in body but live on in spirit, etc., etc. He threw in a bit about Abraham’s test with Isaac on the mountain, and tried to make it that God tested us every day, and some trials were harder than others, but we should always trust in God. I guess he brought that up for my benefit, seeing as I was a father robbed of his only child. It was a nice try, but it only made me sick to my stomach.

When he’d finished, a man from the funeral home announced the location of the cemetery and informed us that people outside would be handing out maps to anyone who needed them. The pallbearers, just members of the funeral home’s staff, wheeled the casket up the aisle and we all stood to follow it out.

It was then that I saw Healey and Dobrygowski standing in the back of the room. I had really hoped to not have to see them again, and the sight of them there started me sweating. Fortunately, they filed out ahead of everyone else and were gone from the lobby by the time I reached it. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that they had come because they knew something, that they had wanted me to see them so that I could stew a little, and would be more likely to make a mistake when they actually talked to me.

I was on edge the entire ride to the cemetery. I didn’t even attempt to talk to Mary or her parents. I told myself that the cops were just paying their respects, that there was no other reason
for them to be at the funeral. Even the police couldn’t be so cold as to arrest a man at his own son’s funeral. They probably had already gone back to work. Surely Joe’s case wasn’t the only case they were working. They felt obligated to make an appearance, but that was all it was, an appearance, and I didn’t have to worry about them anymore.

I’d just about gotten myself believing it when we pulled into the cemetery through an enormous granite archway, the wings of a black iron gate folded back into the grounds. The narrow road was just large enough for a single vehicle. The driver of the hearse expertly drove through the winding hills until he came to the Hadley plot. The large family marker, engraved with the umbrella that had made their fortune, was visible from the car, as was a four-foot pile of dirt.

And on the other side of the road, pulled off on the grass, was a black Lincoln with Healey and Dobrygowski standing up against it.

I got out of the car on the opposite side, and reached back to take Mary’s hand. My reflection in the car’s window—pallid, pinched face, shoulders hunched nervously, rumpled suit—was frightening. I looked like I had a big ‘guilty’ sign around my neck, and my only luck was that it was my son’s funeral, and I hoped the guise of mourning still masked my expression.

I focused studiously on Mary, and even when Dobrygowski gave me a wry smile and a nod, I acted as though I hadn’t seen him. We walked between the graves, picking our way up an incline towards the Hadley marker. It was shocking to see how many of the gravestones, even in the old part of the cemetery, were marked with the war years, ’43, ’44, ’45. And all of them with birth dates as much as twenty-five years after mine.

We got to the grave where several folding chairs had been
arranged facing the empty hole. Mary hung onto me for support, but I felt as though I could just as easily topple over on her. I hadn’t had a drink that morning, and I was feeling shaky.

I poured her into a seat, but continued to stand myself, facing the grave. I could feel Healey and Dobrygowski behind me, watching from their respectful distance. I began to worry that they were allowing me to attend my son’s funeral out of courtesy, and were planning to arrest me as soon as it was over. At the thought, my mouth went dry and my chest grew taut, and it was sheer exhaustion that prevented me from bolting. Exhaustion and the knowledge that making a half-hearted attempt to escape two younger men in a cordoned-off cemetery was crazy and would just make my case look worse.

Great Aunt Alice grabbed my sleeve, startling me. She had her cane in the hand that held my sleeve, and Connie had her other arm. “Shem, help me will you?” Her back was hunched, so that she couldn’t look up at my face.

I took her arm, and with Connie’s help, we guided her to the empty folding chair on the end, leaving two chairs between her and Mary. I insisted that Connie take one, and Mary pulled me down in the other.

The pallbearers, along with two gravediggers in dungarees, worked the coffin onto a set of canvas straps that hung over the grave on a large stainless steel frame. When it was in place the minister began. He had asked me before the ceremony if I’d wanted to say anything, but I’d declined. He invited Mary to say a few words.

She brought out a much-worried crinkled paper from her small handbag, and stood but did not turn, instead addressing the grave. Her voice was thin, and she had gotten through barely a sentence before she broke down in tears. She waved away any
help, managed to regain herself, and continued, although I think she left a lot of it out, the writing on the paper was so small and she only spoke for another minute tops.

Hearing Mary bawl like that nearly made me lose it too. I felt like it was kind of my fault that she had to feel that bad, but I bit down and did what I could to not let it bother me. I wasn’t going to give the cops the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

When she finished, the minister asked us to rise. Connie and I stood, but Great Aunt Alice stayed seated, her hands propped on the top of her cane. The cemetery workmen stepped forward and began to undo the locks on the canvas straps, lowering the coffin slowly into the ground as the minister talked about dust to dust. The workmen expertly pulled the canvas straps from the grave and moved off to be unobtrusive. Mary continued to cry, and it kept making me feel worse, but I made it. All of the other funereal trappings were just trappings, things I had long ago internalized and drained of feeling.

The minister finished, and went around the grave. The rest of the little crowd broke up, and started to make their way back to the street where the line of cars was still facing further into the interior of the cemetery. Having been closest to the grave during the ceremony, I was one of the last to leave. Palmer had waited for me.

“Shem, it’s been a hell of a month. Just a goddamn hell of a month.”

“Yes,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“We still need to meet. Could you come around to my office sometime in the next few days? I’d like to sit and talk with you a minute, let you know what’s going on with the estate.”

“What’s going on with the estate?”

“This isn’t the place to go into it. It’s just what we talked about
on the phone. But since Joe died intestate it’s not going to be quite as straightforward as it could be. We don’t have to meet for long. You think you can swing by?”

“When do you want me?”

“Anytime is fine. Just drop in.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll do that?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Good.” He paused, and his voice grew much more somber. “Shem, I’m so sorry.”

I said nothing.

“It’s been a real hell of a month.” He clapped me on the back, rubbed once or twice, and then guided me forward with a hand on the back of my neck, leading us out. Healey and Dobrygowski were still by their car watching me, and when Healey saw that I was looking, he gave a little wave.

Great Aunt Alice and Connie stood at the end of the path at the edge of the road. “Shem, are you coming back with me or you going back with the hearse?” Great Aunt Alice asked.

Neither option would move quickly enough to avoid the detectives. The entire entourage had to drive forward before getting to a turnaround where they could head back. I was as good as trapped.

While I stalled, Palmer walked past us towards his car. Mary’s parents had her in the front seat of their car, and I saw her father hand her a flask, and it made me feel awfully thirsty.

“Well?” Great Aunt Alice said.

The detectives started towards me, staying on the grass, out of the way of the mourners, but walking along until they were even with me. They stepped between the cars.

“Mr. Rosenkrantz.” It was Detective Healey. “A word.”

“Oh, enough’s enough,” Great Aunt Alice said. “If you catch us, you catch us, otherwise you can make your own way.”

Healey and Dobrygowski were beside me then. “We won’t be long, ma’am,” Healey said, but Great Aunt Alice didn’t even look at him. He turned to me. “I’m sorry to be doing it like this, Mr. Rosenkrantz. This isn’t really the place for it.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. My stomach was in my throat, but I tried to make my expression fierce.

“It won’t take a minute. You haven’t heard anything of Ms. Abrams?”

“Ms. Abrams?” I said, and my shoulders dropped and my knees went weak. They weren’t going to arrest me. Not just then anyway.

Dobrygowski gave a little ‘huh’ at that to show he was amused.

“You were staying with a Victoria Abrams at the Somerset,” Healey said.

“Right. Vee.” I turned to Dobrygowski, making sure to look him in the eyes. I just needed to be indignant, the way that anyone would be if the cops showed up at their son’s funeral. “Maybe you remember all your friends by last name five minutes after you bury your son.”

He held up his hands palms out in apology, but he didn’t look sorry. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“He didn’t mean anything,” Healey said, giving him a chastising look. He turned back to me. “Have you heard from her?”

Up and down the row of cars, engines came to life.

“I haven’t heard from Vee,” I said, trying to decide how to play this. It was probably best not to deny the relationship, but to deny everything else. “I’m worried. Why? Is she okay?”

“Sure, she’s fine,” Dobrygowski said. “Just peachy.”

“We don’t know,” Healey said. “We’re looking for her.”

“What’s your relationship with Victoria Abrams?” Dobrygowski said.

“She’s my girl—She, we’re...We live together.” I decided to switch back to anger. “What’s this all about? You come out to the cemetery, pester me at my son’s funeral, in front of all of my family, my friends.”

“You don’t really have much family left,” Dobrygowski said.

“Listen, you,” I said, forcing myself to take a step towards him, all the while my heart beating so hard I could hear the blood in my ears. “I’ve had just about enough—”

Healey put his hand out as if to block me. “You’ll have to forgive Dobrygowski.” He looked at his partner. “That was uncalled for.”

Dobrygowski gave another ‘huh.’

“Did you know that she also goes by the names Nancy Martin and Michelle Grant?” Healey said.

I swung around to face him. “How would I know? I don’t know. She did?” It wasn’t that much of a surprise that Vee had other names, but I was flustered by the fact just the same.

“We got a pretty interesting rap sheet from Cleveland on her.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t care.”

“Oh, but you might care about this,” Dobrygowski said. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’ll care. When ‘Vee’ went by Nancy Adams there was a fire in her house. This was in the suburbs right outside of Cleveland.” I waited for it. “There was this fire and her husband was killed.”

They watched for a reaction to that. “Her husband?” I said, confused.

“You didn’t know she was married before?”

“What do you mean before? I didn’t know she was married ever.”

A horn honked, and I jumped bringing my hand to my chest. The police looked back at the car we were standing in front of just as the car to our other side pulled away. The caravan was moving again. We stepped off onto the grass.

“Look, I need to go,” I said. “I can’t handle this right now.”

“Of course, of course,” Healey said. “Just a few more questions. We can take you anywhere you need when we’re done.”

I didn’t like that, but it was probably better to get it over with.

They took my silence for assent. “So Vee, Nancy, Ms. Abrams. You didn’t know about her husband.”

“I just told you I’d never heard of Nancy whatever-you-said or this other name. I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

“Please, don’t get upset, Mr. Rosenkrantz. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. We’re sorry to have to tell you more.”