The Hearse You Came in On (36 page)

I padded across the floor on my orange feet. Alcatraz didn’t budge; I had to step over him. I found some
aspirin in the bathroom and chewed them raw. No diluting. Then I shrugged out of my clothes and heaved my carcass into the shower and stood there until the hot water ran out. It was painful, but it worked. I emerged from the shower considerably more alive than when I had gone in. Now, if I could stick my head into a bucket of coffee I would be a brand-new Hitch.

I put on my charcoal suit, white shirt and burgundy tie. I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood for a funeral, but there was nothing to be done about it. I clicked a leash onto Alcatraz’s collar and the two of us headed over to the funeral home. Alcatraz took care of his ablutions on the way. He bounded upstairs to Billie’s apartment, trotted over to the lambskin rug she keeps for him in the corner of her living room, dropped onto the rug, yawned and settled in for the morning.

Sam had already pulled the hearse up around the side. The rear door was open and ready to swallow. Sam was leaning against the car aiming his face up at the sun as I came back outside.

“Good morning, Sam. Ready to rumble?”

“Let’s rock and roll.”

“Come on then.”

Billie was having tea with Mrs. Simons inside.

“I’m so sorry about Edie,” Mrs. Simons said to me as Sam and I entered. I glanced over at the two coffins on the far side of the room. Apparently we had parked Edie here last night after the wake.

“Would you boys care for some tea?” Billie asked.

“I don’t think so, Billie. We’d better get moving.”

Mrs. Simons let out a sigh. “It’s going to be a zoo at the cemetery, isn’t it?”

I shot her with a finger pistol. You got that, girl.

•  •  •

Billie helped Mrs. Simons select the flowers she wanted placed on top of the coffin, as well as which ones were to be taken out to the grave site for decoration. I went on ahead and took the batches of flowers out to the cemetery. I had instructed the folks at Green-mount to put up the largest canopy they had, and I didn’t think that two dozen folding chairs were too many for the occasion. After arranging the flowers by the grave, I saw that I still had a little time before I had to be back at the funeral home. I plotted a course due north and in five minutes was standing in front of a headstone that read “Sewell.” I knelt down and plucked a few weeds from around the main stone as well as the three smaller stones identifying my parents and my never-born little sister.

My parents made me very happy when they were alive. And although my little sister never got the chance to charm me, I have always assumed that she would have been the most fantastic sibling. I know I had been looking forward to her arrival. I remember that my father and I had joked that we would use the new baby as a football, for a few months at least, until it grew too big. My mother’s response had been that certain persons—in particular, a certain Sewell and son—can never get too big to be used as soccer balls either and that if we dared to try out the great American sport on her brand-new child, she would gladly try out the great Italian one on the two of us. “I’ll kick-a your high-nees” was sort of how she put it. Of course she never got the chance.

I patted the stone and stood back up. “Incoming,” I announced to the family Sewell. “Film at eleven. I love you. Gotta go.”

As I headed back to my car, though, I was no longer thinking about my absent family. I was thinking about Kate. I was worried. I wondered if maybe I had been underestimating the kinds of pressures she was under. Even if Kate were to discover that it was really Bowman’s bullet that had been the one to kill her husband—and that was still a big “if” —she had nonetheless also shot him herself. She had known that shock and had lived with that agony for six months now. And in that time she had been pressured first into an affair with her boss, then into sleeping with a known hustler. Somebody had killed the hustler. Possibly Stuart. And now, all the recent revelations about Lou Bowman and this Epoch Ltd. situation … Kate was settling a lot of scores. She was under the kinds of pressures that I could only muse about. And they all seemed to be coming to a head. No wonder Kate was so brittle on the phone. And so fragile. I wished to hell I knew where she was or how to get ahold of her.

Don’t worry.
Could two words ever be more useless?

As I got into my car I thought about something else that Kate had said to me on the phone.
Just walk away.
I started the car, then just sat there, my hands gripping the steering wheel. Kate was cutting me loose. In the past twenty-four hours our contact had suddenly whittled down to a pair of fairly abrupt phone calls. She was steering clear of me for a reason. Was all this happening too fast for her? Too much too fast, that sort of thing? I could all too easily envision Kate as one of those people who have a difficult time relaxing into a good thing. It spooks them; they start thinking that they don’t deserve this or that it’s all going to go away soon
so why not blow it up in advance and get it over with. Certainly Kate’s history suggested the “I don’t deserve it” frame of mind.

It also suggested the hero mentality. The one who will give herself up to the brutal blows in order to keep others safe. I steered my Chevy Nothing through the gates of Greenmount Cemetery and headed east on North Avenue, which ought to be impossible. I stopped at a red light. Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe
I
was the one suffering the misguided hero complex. Maybe
I
was the one beginning to show signs of relationship freakout. I’m sure I could turn Dr. Freud’s magic magnifying glass on old Hitchcock Sewell and write an entire book about it. It’s easy to swim in clear water; it’s a whole different thing to navigate a swamp.

I turned right onto Broadway. I tried to tell myself to relax. Kate and I would hook back up before I knew it and I would dump all these silly fears into the Dumpster of silly fears. It didn’t work. Something
was
terribly wrong. I could feel it.

I drove past Johns Hopkins Hospital on my left, where my parents and sister were pronounced dead and where I was born. Downtown was a mile over to my right. In front of and behind me … the rest of the world.

Sometimes you have to take stock of where you are.

Everything back at the funeral home was set. The guests had already started to arrive. Billie took the front hallway; I stood just inside the parlor doors, pressing the flesh and handing out the programs. We had arranged the chairs in as wide a crescent curve as
the rooms would handle, with a large aisle running down the middle. We left enough room in the back for the minicam crew that the station had sent out to cover the event. The advance crew the day before had hung a few of their lights, mainly up front where the coffin sat, and these had already been turned on. They were as bright as hell.

I was to discover later that in addition to the neglected message from Kate on my home machine, I had received a few messages at work that I had failed to retrieve as well. And so I was taken completely by surprise by the arrival of the entourages of the two main contenders for the governorship of Maryland. They arrived within five minutes of each other.

Spencer Davis arrived first. I had just fetched a handful of programs and was pressing one into someone’s hand when the hand made a fancy move and took hold of mine with a firm grip.

“How do you do? Spencer Davis.”

There he was. The candidate. He had toned down his million-dollar smile in deference to the occasion, but he was a dashing young liberal nonetheless. He was about my height and even with his hair neatly combed down, you could still tell that it was something of a boyish cut. It made him look ever so slightly mischievous, despite his present gravity.

“Hitchcock Sewell.”

“May I introduce my wife?”

Well sure, why not. He presented a pleasant-looking woman, a trifle shy I thought, but fighting it gamely. There was a darkness around her eyes that brought to mind—unfortunately—the look of a raccoon. Her hair was cropped at the shoulders, black with a full spider-webbing
of premature gray. It was not difficult for me to imagine Mrs. Davis in her college years: baggy overalls, no bra, no shoes, handing out fliers protesting God knows what, smoking a lot of pot, painting flowers on her boyfriend’s cheek, yanking open the sliding door of a VW van and piling in. In other words, a mildly rebellious youth, a lot more active spunk than I saw now in the woman whose hamster hand was already slipping from my grip.

A person could make a million bucks if they could read someone’s future just by shaking someone’s hand. They once made a movie about that. Reading their past that way is more of a parlor trick.

The candidate and his wife found a spot near the front. Davis’s advance man—a cheerless Joe named Bill—came rushing into the room (not exactly in advance, you’ll notice) and told me that he had called and left several urgent messages on my machine alerting me to the fact that the candidate would be attending the funeral.

“What was the urgent part?” I wanted to know. I indicated Mr. and Mrs. Davis down front, reading their programs. “He seems to be doing just fine.”

“I… well… the cameras… I—”

“I see,” I said. “So everything’s fine then?”

Bill couldn’t really say.

Aunt Billie and I had placed Reserved signs on about a dozen of the chairs closest to the front. Mrs. Simons of course would take one. Jeff was an only child, as well as a bachelor. The family factor wouldn’t play a big role here today.

“Who are those seats reserved for?” Bill wanted to know. Actually, he was demanding to know.

“Weather, sports, news and entertainment,” I answered. “And consumer affairs. Maybe even that gal who pulls the lottery numbers.”

Bill looked confused. “What?”

“Colleagues,” I explained. “Could you please move along? You’re blocking the door.”

Bill moved along. Evidently he wasn’t happy with the arrangements. His man was not being hit by the TV lights.

Some of those colleagues of the late newscaster were now arriving. TV people. I detected a trace of discomfort among a few of them. These are people who are used to smiling when they’re out in public; it’s usually tacked on with superglue. But this was a funeral. They had to put on their bad-story faces. Multiple murders. Killer tornadoes. The Orioles’ miserable loss to the Pirates in ‘79 when they were up by three …
by three
… and couldn’t close it. I directed the troubled faces to the reserved chairs. Mimi Wigg was among the mourners, of course. Her skin looked … well, frankly, she looked like a corpse. Dull and shiny at the same time. I handed her a program and aimed her toward the front.

The next thing I knew I was face-to-face with a stunning blonde. The last time I had seen her she hadn’t exactly been dressed for a funeral.

Alan Stuart loomed behind his wife like a mighty Colorado Rockie. Snowcap and all.

“Mr. Sewell, isn’t it? My campaign manager has been telling me about you.” He placed a large hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I don’t believe you’ve met my wife?” I took the hand that was offered. No parlor
tricks this time. No need. Millionaire’s daughter. Spoiled and cold. How hard is that?

“How do you do, Mrs. Stuart?”

“Hello, Mr. Sewell,” she replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Was it just my lion’s pride or had I detected a little flash of light in her cool blue eyes? Was this lady flirting with me with her husband standing right behind her? Alan Stuart offered a sort of private smile over the top of his wife’s head, almost as if to say,” I know what she just did. She always does it. Just ignore it.”

I did.

“Did you know Mr. Simons well?” I asked. A little patter of the trade. I realized that my palms were sweaty.

Amanda Stuart answered. “Yes. He was a supporter of Alan. Impartial on the air of course. Jeffrey had tact.”

“I saw your brother last night,” I said, quickly changing the subject.

An eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes. He’s been seeing my ex-wife. Who I still see. Though not the same way, of course.”

A crack formed on the ice as the lady Stuart frowned.

“Mr. Sewell is just kidding around, Amanda,” Alan Stuart interjected. He reached out and gave me a burly handshake. “Perhaps we could talk after the funeral.”

It wasn’t really a suggestion. It was a politely issued order. We
will
talk.

Stuart pointed down the aisle. “Are those seats reserved?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Good. Thank you.” Alan Stuart grazed me with a flesh wound. His wife sank one deep, right between the eyes. And off they went. Lovely couple.

I watched Bill the advance man take gas as Alan and Amanda Stuart slipped into two of the reserved seats, right next to the popular sports guy. The minicam was picking it all up. Bill made his way over to me.

“What’s that all about! I demand that Spencer be seated in the VIP section!”

“There is no VIP section,” I answered him. “Those seats are for family and close friends.”

“Alan Stuart was no friend of Jeff Simons’s. They hated each other’s guts!”

“I didn’t seat him there. He just took it.”

“Arrogant bastard!” Bill stormed off. I wondered if he meant me.

The room filled. As Billie had predicted we had an overflow crowd. A lot of people were clearly fans, not friends or family. A number of them were clutching photographs of the late Jeff Simons. A little late for autographs. I escorted Mrs. Simons to her seat. Just as I was about to steer her into the aisle, she suddenly stopped and performed one of those religious curtsies. I almost ran over her.

I caught Alan Stuart’s eye as I turned to head back up the aisle. It was a stern and displeased eye. I remembered what Hutch had said to me out in the park by the Washington Monument. Whether or not Stuart was still seeing Kate—and I was positive that he wasn’t—he was still an unreasonably possessive man. It was my connection to Kate at the very least that was earning me this pissiness. I guess it wasn’t enough that
he had this beautiful filthy-rich trophy wife sitting next to him. Of course if Hutch was to be believed, the man also suspected that I was attempting to blackmail him and to destroy his career, not to mention getting away with murder. I changed my direction and stepped over to where Spencer Davis and his perfect no-bullshit wife were sitting quietly, holding hands no less.