Death Of A Dream Maker (5 page)

“Let go of my pants!” the rabbi demanded indignantly.
He made another grab for the gold shovel with his free hand and
missed again, but managed to snag the edge of the AstroTurf carpet.
Simultaneously, he let go of the widow with his other hand so that
he could grab at his waistband.

“Don't you let go of me, you bastard!” the widow
shrieked as she tightened her grip around his pant legs.

They were her final words before, in a flurry of
unrabbilike oaths and a flash of scarlet undershorts, the rabbi's
tenuous grasp on the AstroTurf gave way. With a sucking sound, the
pair slid down the steep embankment as swiftly as a pair of otters
at play.

In horrified fascination, the family and crowd
pressed forward, endangering the already crumbling edge. One
enterprising fellow inched toward the lip of the grave.

“They're still alive!” he screamed, as if the pair
had tumbled into a volcano instead of a mushy six-foot-deep
grave.

“Looks like they're wrestling or something,” he
added. “No, wait, they're trying to climb back up.”

An echo came from the bottom of the grave. The crowd
leaned forward.

“What are they saying?” Rebecca Rosenbloom demanded,
stamping her booted foot impatiently. She did not look entirely
unhappy that the widow had slid into the grave, but she was
displeased about not having a better view and had thrown her black
shawl on the muddy ground in a fit of pique.

Never short of nerve, Auntie Lil crept closer and
stood beside the man at the edge of the grave. They listened
together to the shouts from below.

“What are they saying down there?” someone repeated
impatiently. The cacophony issuing from the grave sounded like a
caldron of wildcats being boiled.

“The old lady was right,” the man at the edge yelled
back. He looked at Auntie Lil with admiration.

Auntie Lil took her triumph with characteristic
modesty. “I told you so,” she announced to the assembled mourners.
“There's another body at the bottom of the grave. And the widow
insists that it's someone named Davy.”

Pandemonium erupted following the announcement that
there was a bonus body in the grave. Reaction was swift. A third of
the crowd headed immediately for their cars, ignoring the
distracted protests of the plainclothes detectives standing guard
in the parking lot. Clearly, a good number of the mourners had
prior experience with law enforcement and were not eager to stick
around to chat. These early departers were met at the edge of the
grounds by two well-dressed men flashing federal badges, but not
even this show of government muscle was enough to stem the
tide.

The remaining crowd members erupted in a verbal
volcano of overlapping exclamations, revealing dozens of opinions
on Davy and his relationship with Max.

“He would do something like this,” one woman shouted,
as if Davy had committed suicide using the novel method of
suffocating himself in graveyard mud.

“Wait until Abe finds out,” someone said. “It'll give
him another stroke.” Several people murmured their uneasy
assent.

“Max spoiled the crap out of the kid. He let Davy get
away with murder. It's fitting that the kid should steal the
spotlight at the old man's funeral.” More tactful mourners quickly
shushed this speaker into silence.

“My God,” an overdressed female declared at the top
of her lungs from a spot not two feet from the stunned family. “Did
you hear her shriek when she saw it was Davy? I told you there was
something going on between them.” A trio of voices chorused
agreement.

T.S. and Auntie Lil joined a small huddle of guests
in staring at Abby, Max's sister-in-law—and, T.S. suspected, the
now dead Davy’s mother. Abby’s rubbery complexion had faded to an
alarming beige. She tottered as if faint, and was helped to her
chair by the tall executive with the boyish face who had stood
close to T.S. Abby sat, staring blankly at the grave as if
expecting Davy to rise from the dead. The bald middle-aged man with
the cold stood gazing down at the ruddy clay opening, his open
mouth forming a small, dark oval against his deeply flushed face.
His hands trembled at his sides. His female companion had slipped
her hand into his raincoat pocket and was clutching a Kleenex to
her own open mouth. It did not entirely conceal a small, uncertain
smile.

The young man and blond woman in their mid-twenties
stood together at one end of the grave, arms around each other's
waist. They stared down at the muddy scene in silence, tears
glistening on their cheeks. They seemed to be among the very few
mourners genuinely saddened at the declaration that Davy was dead.
Everyone else was acting as if they were at a particularly exciting
cocktail party. Whoever Davy was, he had few friends among this
crowd.

“Who's Davy?” Auntie Lil demanded impatiently,
grabbing a bald man by the elbow and pulling him toward her. He
slipped on a patch of mud and crashed into T.S. but did not
apologize.

“You've got a grip like a plumber,” the bald man
protested, rubbing his elbow and glaring at Auntie Lil.

“Who's Davy?” Auntie Lil demanded again. “I found the
body. I deserve to know.”

The man's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Seems like you
would already know if you were a friend of Max's,” he said. “Davy
was his favorite nephew. The kid was going to inherit every buck
Max had, or so some people said.”

One of the detectives had hurried back to his
unmarked car and radioed in for help. In the meantime, the
remaining officers had commandeered lengths of rope from the sullen
cemetery workers and gone fishing for the widow and rabbi. The pair
was pulled from the open grave with the enthusiastic assistance of
several volunteers. They emerged looking like the losers of a
particularly sadistic tug-of-war.

Safe at last, the mud-covered widow began to shriek,
piercing the air with remarkably synchopatic screams until Rebecca
Rosenbloom rose regally from her chair, marched ceremoniously over,
and slapped her full across the face. Stunned, Sabrina Rosenbloom
shut her mouth and stepped behind the rabbi for protection. He was
too busy digging mud out of his eyes to be of any help to anyone,
but if the old lady swung again, at least he'd go down first.

This provided fresh fodder for the gossips trying to
make themselves and their theories heard. Auntie Lil was in danger
of pulling a neck muscle from overzealous eavesdropping. She hardly
knew where to turn next. T.S. could not separate the voices well
enough to glean any useful information. He used the time to look
around instead. Twenty yards away, leaning against the widow's
limousine, stood the young woman T.S. had seen on the way in. Her
wrinkled raincoat had fallen open, revealing her tight black sheath
and the incongruous high-top tennis shoes. Who was she anyway? Was
she simply an interested onlooker? One of those kooks who enjoyed
attending funerals? If so, she had hit pay dirt with this one.

T.S. contemplated several other theories about her
identity until his thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a
swarm of police cars. Their lights flashed through the fog of the
graveyard and sent eerie red-and-blue shadows flickering across the
gravestones. It looked like the set for a Michael Jackson music
video. All it lacked were dancing zombies.

Police officers were suddenly as abundant as mourners
and a rigid processing system was established within minutes. A
pair of men dressed in orange rubber overalls shimmied down ropes
into the grave. They carried a black bag and a lumpy knapsack
between them. One had a camera slung over his shoulder. Other
officers began quickly taking down names and addresses. There was
no shortage of volunteers to describe what had happened. After
Auntie Lil had been pointed out by a dozen or so onlookers as the
person who had discovered the body, she began to take on the air of
a beauty pageant winner. She stood at the edge of the AstroTurf,
modestly accepting congratulations with queenly aplomb. The only
break in her orgy of egoism came when a detective pulled her aside
for questioning.

T.S. gave his own statement and, deciding that enough
was enough, claimed Auntie Lil and began to firmly escort her back
to the car. She became petulant at having to leave the scene. It
was the most excitement she'd had in months.

“You aren't going to get any more information right
now,” T.S. pointed out sensibly. “The place is a zoo and it's
starting to rain even harder. It's time to go.”

She reluctantly complied. On the way back to the car,
they heard the rumor repeated several times: Davy had been shot in
the head. No one mentioned Max. In all the excitement, the man had
been completely forgotten. He'd probably be buried later, once the
lifting mechanism was fixed.

A small line of cars had gathered at the cemetery
exit, where the mud-covered rabbi inexplicably stood guard. As each
car pulled up to the gate he tapped on the window and leaned
inside, mumbling something to the occupants.

“Surely he's not soliciting gratuities,” Auntie Lil
said.

“Why not? He's going to have a hell of a dry-cleaning
bill,” T.S. said. Suddenly the rabbi's muddy face loomed against
the car window in frightening detail. T.S. rolled it down hurriedly
before the rabbi smudged the pristine glass.

“I have been asked by the family to inform you that
the mourning will take place at the family home as scheduled,” the
rabbi said mechanically. He noticed Auntie Lil and his mud-rimmed
eyes widened in anger. “You tried to hit me with a shovel!” he
said.

T.S. thanked him profusely for the information on the
reception and pulled away before Auntie Lil could answer.

“Hmmph.” Auntie Lil sniffed unapologetically after
T.S. had let his disapproving silence speak for itself. “That was a
wretched eulogy and that man deserved to fall in.”

T.S. refused to comment. Auntie Lil did not even
notice. “Oh, Theodore,” she said as they reached the highway, “This
is all so exciting. Max would have loved it. Did you see those
people? How horrible to think that he spent his life surrounded by
such... such
bloodsuckers.
I can't wait to hear what they
have to say.”

T.S. looked over at her as if she were daft, and
nearly sideswiped a bread truck in the process. “No,” he said.
“Absolutely not. We are not going to the mourning.”

She stared at him innocently. “Why ever not? Max was
a dear friend of mine.”

“Why ever not? Are you insane? You just created a
huge scene at the funeral, which ended with the widow and rabbi
plopping down on top of a very dead nephew. I seriously doubt
they'll even let you in the front door at the family home.”

“Me? I did not kill the nephew and you were the one
who knocked the rabbi into the grave.” She stared straight ahead
and primly adjusted her pants over her sturdy ankles.  

“It might have been me, but it was your
pocketbook.”

“I will leave the pocketbook in the car.”

“No. No mourning. I don't care if I never see another
Rosenbloom again. They can bury me alive. I’ll share a grave with
Max and his nephew. But the answer is no.”

Auntie Lil knew when it was time to give in. A
little. “All right, Theodore. We'll compromise.”

T.S. glanced sideways at her suspicious acquiesence.
“How?”

“We will drive to the family home. We will park a few
doors away. And we will watch who arrives and who leaves. That's
all.” She announced her offer as if she were bartering over a bolt
of cloth with a street merchant in New Delhi.

“What do I get in return?” T.S. asked.

“I promise not to whine about the mourning for the
next three days and”—her brow furrowed as she cast about for a good
hook—“I promise not to ask you about Lilah Cheswick for the next
three months.”

“Six months,” he said evenly. “And you’ve got a
deal.”

“Done.”

They agreed on their game plan just in time for T.S.
to take the Garden City exit. They headed for the Rosenbloom
home.

Their body heat had created a fog inside the car.
Outside, the rain poured. “This is real cozy,” T.S. grumbled,
wrapping his raincoat more tightly around him as he slowly drove
down the road. “What happens if one of us has to go to the
bathroom?”

“Don't be such a wimp,” Auntie Lil replied. She
squinted at the windshield, too vain to pull out her glasses for a
better look. Fog hampered the view as well. It was, altogether, a
rather futile attempt at spying.

“Go ahead and put them on,” T.S. said.

“Put what on?” Auntie Lil asked innocently.

“Your glasses. I know they're in there.” He nodded at
her pocketbook.

“Of course,” she said as if suddenly remembering. “I
had forgotten all about them. And, please, don't let me stop you
from putting on your own. I believe they are in your left-hand
pocket, Theodore.”

She took an eternity to adjust her glasses properly
on her nose, then brightened. “Much better. Quite a turnout, isn't
it?”

“I'll say. Funny how the people who fled the
graveyard before the cops arrived are now stampeding like lemmings
to the free food and booze here.”

“I didn't realize lemmings could stampede, dear,”
Auntie Lil said absently.

T.S. was right. The road was jammed with cars parked
bumper to bumper. Max Rosenbloom had lived in an affluent Garden
City neighborhood. It was filled with huge wooden houses and small
Tudor-style mansions, most built in the thirties or forties when
bare land was not such a popular barometer of wealth. Unlike newer
homes, these featured small but tidy yards, and what land there was
had been given over to the house. Every small patch of lawn was
immaculately manicured, and every window in every house sparkled.
Max had lived in a large stone house situated on a quiet corner. It
was ringed with enthusiastically blooming holly bushes that formed
a thick hedge reaching to the bottom of the first-floor
windows.