Plainclothes Naked (12 page)

Manny never thought of his brother except in revolting circum stances. Breathing in the hell of a Hefty garbage bag housing an aborted fetus, the stink of a month-dead junkie bloating on a rooftop in July, or the thousand other olfactory treats his job bequeathed him, the same thought always wriggled into Manny’s skull:
Fucking Stanley the fucking stockbroker never has to breathe this shit.
Once this bit of psy chic self-laceration was over, Detective Rubert could get on with the job, which in this case meant going toe-to-toe with a drying-out hard case named Dolly Zank.

“You the cop?” the old lady whooped the second he stepped toward her bed. “You wanna talk to me, you gotta get me wet—and I don’t mean south of the border. I mean in
here.
”

Mrs. Zank made a feeble attempt to point down her throat, but so much of her was in traction the effort was doomed. “Don’t expect me to rat out Tony,” she informed him hoarsely. “You don’t pour me a slug of something potent, I’m gonna clam up tighter than the pope’s vagina.”

She was, clearly, borderline mental. But the part that hadn’t crossed the border, Manny figured, would be wondering how big a patsy he was. Manny slid a short dog of Four Roses out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the top, made a show of checking right and left, then gave her a wink and tipped the bottle into his mouth. He made sure she could see every wriggle in his gullet as he took a long, slow pull. “Hoo-doggy,
that
hits the spot,” he said, smacking his lips. He screwed the lid back on the bottle, held it up to the light, and shook it. “Empty,” he sighed. “I guess this little soldier’s ready to retire.”

The old lady stared at the bottle, jowls wobbling. “At least let me lick it,” she pleaded. “You can’t deny an old girl a little lick.”

“No can do.” Manny said, “Your doctor said one sip could kill you.” He peeked around again and slipped the top of a second bottle out of his other pocket. “Of course, I always travel with reinforce ments.”

He thought the old alky’s eyes were going to crawl out of her face and grab his pant leg. “Mmm,” he smiled, going thoughtful on her. “Sometimes I just like to screw the top off real slow and sniff it. You ever do that? I do. I like to take a whiff, then screw the top back on and slip it back in my pocket. Just knowing it’s in there makes me happy. Knowing I can take myself a big, fat, kick-in-the-head swallow when ever I want, just
knowing
that makes life pretty damn sweet. Is that crazy?”

Mrs. Zank’s tongue lolled out of her mouth, and Manny wondered if he’d laid it on too thick. But her bloodshot eyes packed a mean, hard look that told him otherwise. He hadn’t gotten to her. Not completely. Bad as she needed a drink, if she had to choose between killing him or killing her thirst he sensed she’d still have to flip a coin. Clearly, Tony didn’t get his sterling personality licking the wallpaper. Mom was tough. Manny tried one more maneuver, pulling the bottle out and kissing it.

“I think I’m in love,” he said, and Mrs. Zank finally cracked. “Okay, okay!” she wailed. “Just tell me what you want to know. I

got no reason to protect my boy. He dropped me out the damn win dow, didn’t he?”

“What I want to know,” said Manny, “is why would he do some thing like that?”

“I guess he wanted a bike for Christmas,” she said bitterly. “He bar reled in ranting about how he hid something under my mattress, but when he came back for it, it wasn’t there. I don’t know why he was mad at
me.
Only thing I ever tried to hide was a quart of Thunderbird I bought from Snooks the janitor. And that got pinched when I was out doing recreational therapy. They got us makin’ moccasins. I look like a Navajo to you?”

She set her ravaged face in profile, and Manny had to look away. “So Tony didn’t tell you what he hid?”

“Alls I know is, he said it was gonna get him millions and he lost it all on account of me. Tony’s a crap artist. If he asked, I’d’ve told him it

was a stupid place to hide anything. The girls change the damn sheets once a week. Leastways, they’re
s’posed to.
But whenever the hell they change ’em, if they find a goddamn prize under the mattress they take it.
I
would, I was making five dollars an hour cleaning up after a bunch of old toads don’t have the good sense to be dead.”

“What was it?” Manny inquired, more casually this time.

Mrs. Zank treated him to a scowl. “Some kind of envelope, he said. It couldn’t have been too bulky or I’d’ve felt it. Like the princess in ‘The Princess and the Pea.’ I’ve always
loved
that story. It’s romantic, like. So gimme the juice.”

“Not yet.” Manny calculated how much longer he could grind her. “Where’s Tony now?”

“Someplace stupid,” she sneered. “I guarantee, if I know my boy, that’s exactly where he is.”

Manny stood up, tapped the bottle in his pocket, and gave her a chipper smile. “Sorry, Dolly. Not good enough. Have a nice day.”

He bet himself he’d get five steps. The old lady caved on three. “Wait a minute!” she croaked. He turned back and Mama Zank was shaking her head. She sighed dramatically and raised her gaze to the ceiling. Then, going for full-on martyr, she sniffed loudly and squeezed out an off-color tear.

Out of respect, Manny gave her time to perform. He’d had experi ence with snitches. Like most, Tony’s mom was trying hard to con vince herself she felt something. Years from now, when she woke up sweating at three in the morning, she’d remember these tears. She’d forget they’d been fake and go back to sleep. Family members always put on the best show.

“Tony’s my
son!
” the old woman reminded him, her eyes staying hard and mean beneath the pantomime of anguish. “That should be worth at least . . . three bottles.”

“I agree,” said Manny. “At
least
three. The bad news is, I’ve just got the one. Tell you what, though. Give me somethin’ that helps, I’ll see to it personally you get a whole case of poison under your bed.”

Suddenly, Mrs. Zank was all business. “Pawnee Lodge, out on Saw Mill Run. All the rooms got them Indian hats over the door. They call ’em ‘cottages.’ Ha! Tony gets in trouble, that’s his hideout. He thinks I don’t know, but seeing as he pays with theVisa he stole outta my purse,

it’s hard to keep it a secret. God love ’im, he got his late daddy’s brain pan.”

Manny nodded thanks. Then he stepped to her bed, lifted a pillow, and slipped in the Four Roses. Before he could move away, she placed a fractured hand on his wrist. With her other one she threw back the blankets, revealing seven decades of thigh.

“I like a man that’s not too good-lookin’,” she cooed. “Tempting,” Manny said, then backed out of the room before she

could show him more.

Tina’s visit to the funeral home left her in sugar shock. From the outside, the place looked like a supper club, and she’d driven in and out of the lot twice before she noticed the sign,
MARTINO AND SONS MORTUARY
, between a pair of stunted pines. There was plenty of parking.
‌

Mister Edward, as she’d psychically surmised, was indeed a sallow young gentleman with questionable skin. Along with a bad case of adult acne, he sported a quar tet of moles on both cheeks. Tina spent the first moments of their meeting trying to decide whether his right and left mole-squares matched, or if the right was more ob long. His mortuary office was a tasteful imitation ma hogany, decorated with numerous renderings of Julius Caesar.

“One of our greatest Italians,” he explained, steer

ing Tina to a seat with a hand on the small of her back. “Did you know he had a sweet tooth like a five-year-old? I’ve done some research. His favorite was marshmallow creams.”

The candy thing, apparently, was Mister Ed’s way of justifying the half dozen jars of gumdrops, jelly beans, sour balls, and assorted other treats that cluttered his desk between Caesar busts. It was easy to see how he’d gotten his skin problems.

“I never knew the Romans had Mallomars,” she said, smiling to let him know she was as fascinated by Caesar’s candy habit as he was. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Mister Edward that if he cut out sweets, maybe his pimples would clear up. If the police ever asked, she’d need the mortician to recall her as a polite, grief-stricken, and demure-type widow.

Not that Tina didn’t think hooking up with Manny could stave off such difficulties. They’d never officially announced, “Well, now we’re involved!” But somehow, from the moment they met, it had felt that way. Still, a girl had to take care of herself.

For the appointment, she’d eschewed makeup, going for a tear-streaked
au naturel
look that pretty much screamed
VICTIM
!

“Actually,” Mister Edward was saying, “the Romans invented candy bars. They spread honey over blocks of nougat and baked them in clay ovens. They served it at state funerals. I like to think I’m con tinuing the tradition.”

“That
is
lovely,” Tina offered, adding shamelessly, “you really seem to care.”

Mister Edward blushed, his blemishes glowing a deeper scarlet. He clamped one hand over the other, as if to keep it from hopping up and raiding the gumdrop jar. While her host droned on about the ins and outs of “final care” and “afterlife maintenance,” Tina found herself popping sweets compulsively. She’d worked her way from gumdrops to jelly beans, on across the desk to the heavy ammo, knuckle-size wrapped caramels and chocolate-covered cherries on a silver platter. Normally she tried not to eat sugar, and the sudden overload made her feel anxious and giddy at the same time, as if she’d IVd bad speed.

“What I’d like,” she told him after his spiel, “is a simple crema tion.”

Mister Edward winced and went for the gumdrops. “Memories,”

he said meaningfully, patting what looked like a soap sculpture of Cae sar on the head as he let the word sink in. “What we provide here at Martino and Sons are the final, beautiful memories of your loved one. What we believe, Mrs. Podolsky—”

“Call me Tina, please.”

“Tina,” he said, flushing again. “What we believe,Tina, is that a life is like a house. A proper funeral is like the roof of that house, the final element that makes the structure complete. If you decide to forego that last—and I believe
necessary
—aspect of your husband’s time here with us, you’ll have a sense of incompleteness, a lack of closure that, I regret to say, may let the rain in on your peace of mind... .”

He stole a glance at the jelly-bean jar, grabbed his left his hand with his right to keep it in line, then gave up and snatched a handful of the little sugar eggs and threw them in his mouth before continuing. “Will you at least consider holding off on the decision for twenty-four hours?”

Tina dabbed at her eyes with a hanky she’d stashed up the sleeve of her dress. “I’d
prefer
a traditional ceremony,” she said, “it’s just... .” She dabbed again and blew her nose, she hoped, with what looked like tragic bravery. “It’s just that Marvin left instructions—specific instruc tions—that he was not to be buried. He was adamant. What
I
want, Mister Edward, doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t feel right defying his wishes.”

“I understand,” said the mortician. Tina felt his attitude change, as though a
NO SALE
sign had popped out of her collar. Or maybe it was something else. “Perhaps we should discuss the service,” he went on. “Will family be arriving?”

“No family.” Tina shut her eyes and shook her head from side to side.
This is difficult!
she wanted that head-shake to say.
This is sad!
“We met in an orphanage. It was not having a family that brought us together, that made us mean so much to each other.” She cupped her hands over her nonexistent belly and tried to look mournful. “That’s why I feel so bad for my baby, little Marvin. Now he won’t ever get to know his daddy... .”

To Tina’s horror, Mister Edward smiled. Maybe it sounded as ridiculous to him as it did to her.
Busted,
she thought, and was men tally preparing her escape when he swallowed his jelly beans and

announced, in a tone of all new intimacy, “I’m an orphan myself, Tina. Only I never found my little orphan girl.”

His smile was so hideous, Tina almost missed the fact that he was hitting on her. She could not stop staring at that smile. His face seemed embalmed. Only the lips moved. Tina could think of absolutely noth ing to say, and was hugely relieved when Mister Edward stopped wax ing romantic and plunged on with the business at hand. “Will you be interring, or would you prefer to keep the cremains?”

“I’ll take him to go,” Tina said, catching herself when she saw the look on the undertaker’s face. “I mean, I’ll be taking him to go to India. His spiritual homeland. Marvin wanted his ashes spread over the Ganges.”

Disappointment pinched Mister Edward’s lips. “Well, the Italians are doing wonderful things with urns.You can select one today, or I can give you one of our catalogues.”

“Can we just do it?” Tina asked, her nineteenth gumdrop going to her head and making her skin tingly.

Unable to stop himself, Mister Edward leaped out of his seat, upset ting a bowl of malted milk balls. “Mrs. Podolsky . . . Tina ...I have to tell you. . . .”

Tina stiffened. Was he going to jump her? Did he plan on kissing her right here, in front of the Caesars? The thought of his creepy skin coming anywhere near hers made her gorge rise. God knows what you could catch from an undertaker.

“Mrs. Podolsky,” he began again, slightly hysterical, “I’m sorry, but I think you’re making a terrible mistake.You are a creature of deep passions, I can see that. If you cremate your husband, I just know you’ll regret it. Trust me! A funeral is the last act of love we perform for the departed. The last”—he lowered his eyes dramatically—“
act of love
... .”

Tina wondered if this pitch worked with other widows. She forced herself to meet his eyes, doing her best to make her gaze as sincere and longing-packed as his. Maybe she could get a discount.

“I’d like to take care of it today,” she said, pulling a pair of fifties out of her purse. She’d pawned Marvin’s vid cam and computer on the way down to the home. “Here’s a down payment.”