The Job (28 page)

“Tomorrow. Three-thirty. In Hartford.” I gave her the address of the crematorium.

“You think you could maybe take half a day (tm), grab the train up here? Otherwise it’s just going to be me in attendance.”

“I’m gonna do my best to get there, Mr. A. Promise. And I’ll also call the old gang-Dave, Doug, Phil, Hildy. See if they can make it, too. We all liked him….”

She started to sob.

“One last favor,” I said.

“Anything.”

“As soon as you get off the phone, I want you to march into Chuck Zanussi’s office, and tell him exactly what happened. And make sure he understands it was a suicide.”

“I’m on my way now.”

It was just a ten-minute drive from the precinct to the offices of Home Computer Monthly. They were located in a small industrial park bordering 1-93-and judging from the prefab building in which they occupied the first floor, the magazine looked like the nickel-and-dime operation I had suspected.

There were a lot of nervous glances at the detective and me as we were escorted through a corridor of desks to the office of the publisher, Duane Hellman. He was around thirty-two-a big mop of greasy black hair, a shiny blue suit, a wet, weak handshake. He was visibly anxious in our presence.

“You asked to see Mr. Allen?” Detective Kaster said as we sat down.

Duane Hellman picked up a pencil and began to absently tap it against his desk.

“Can I get you folks anything? Tea? Coffee? Diet Coke?”

“You can get to the point, Mr. Hellman,” Detective Kaster said.

“We don’t have all day.”

He kept tapping that damn pencil against the desk.

“Ivan told me all about you. Said you were just about the best damn boss a salesman could have. Really built you up as some kind of amazing-” I didn’t want to hear this, so I cut him off.

“Do you have any idea why he killed himself?” I said.

The pencil-tapping now escalated to double time.

“I’ve got to tell you, I was just shocked as heck. I mean, Ivan was only with us six or so weeks, but everyone liked him. And he seemed to be in pretty good spirits-”

“Please answer the man’s question,” Detective Raster said, sounding peeved.

“Why do you think he killed himself?”

Hellman swallowed hard, averted his gaze, tossed the pencil aside. When he finally spoke, his voice was nothing more than a croak.

“I let him go on Friday.”

It took a moment to register.

“You what?”

“Friday was his last day here,” he said.

“Because you fired him?”

“I didn’t want to…”

“Answer the goddamn question.”

“Easy, Mr. Allen,” Detective Kaster said.

Duane Hellman was now the color of talcum powder. And he looked genuinely frightened of me.

“I liked him, he’d already closed a couple of small things, I really didn’t want to let him go. But…”

“What do you mean, you didn’t want to let him go?” I said.

“You were his boss-so it was your decision whether he stayed or went.”

Hellman picked up the pencil again. Tap-tap-tap.

“He’d become a liability,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?” I challenged.

“I mean … he was going to cost us if he continued working here.”

“If he’d already closed a few things, if you actually did like him, then how the hell could you call him a liability?”

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

“What happened was this,” Hellman said, trying to sound composed.

“One of our main advertisers informed me that they would cancel all future spreads with us if Ivan continued on in his job.”

“What advertiser said that?” I demanded.

Hellman leaned his forehead against the palm of his hand and stared down at his much-doodled-upon desk blotter.

“GBS.”

I went numb, rigid.

“Ted Peterson?”

Hellman, still focusing on his blotter, nodded slowly.

“And you bought his threat?”

“I tried to argue his case, but Peterson was adamant.”

“And so you kicked Ivan’s ass out, no questions asked.”

“They’re GBS, for God’s sake. We depend on them….”

“And Ivan Dolinsky depended on you.”

Hellman had begun to sweat, two large watery globules cascading down his beefy face.

“Look, if I knew…”

“Did he plead… ?”

“I can’t tell you how upset-” “Did Ivan plead with you…”

“It wasn’t my call…”

“DID IVAN FUCKING PLEAD WITH YOU FOR HIS JOB?”

I was hovering over Hellman’s desk, yelling. With gentle firmness, Detective Kaster took my right arm and led me back to the chair. Hellman had both hands over his head, as if he’d expected me to punch him. I could hear him whimpering.

“Yeah,” he said.

“He pleaded.”

A long silence. Finally broken by me.

“Murderer.”

It was pointless to return to Manhattan that night. Anyway, after that scene in Duane Hellman’s office, I needed several stiff drinks-and Kaster, now officially off duty, was only too happy to keep me company.

Which is how we ended up at an old-style steak joint called Kappy’s in a residential corner of West Hartford-where, over the next four hours, Kaster and I bought each other rounds of bourbon and beer, devoured a London broil apiece, and eventually started trading secrets. Hers was a biggie: Just last month, after over twenty-five years in the closet, she had come out as a lesbian.

“It kind of surprised me how everyone in the department took it in their stride. Especially when I showed up at a departmental party with my squeeze, Beth Anne

“What’s she do?”

“A plumber.”

Having shared this revelation with me, it was my turn (according to the unwritten rules of “strangers drinking together”) to divulge a confidence or two. So I told Kaster about the business with Kreplin, and my assorted professional and marital troubles since then.

“You’re lucky you didn’t slug that nerd Hellman,” she said, tossing back her bourbon, ” ‘cause this time you would’ve been booked for assault. Have you always been a hair-trigger kind of guy?”

“Only since all this shit started.”

“Well, I’d stop it. Like now. And since I’m handing out loads of free advice tonight”-she gave me a tipsy smile-“here’s another pearl of wisdom from the dyke detective. I’d give your wife as much space as she needs right now. Know what women hate more than anything in guys? Neediness. You come across desperate to her, you can forget about winning her back.”

I kept that advice in mind when I checked into a nearby Marriott motel, which the detective recommended. It was 10:00 P.M. I slumped on the bed and checked my messages at home. No word from Lizzie. So I called her office in L.A. Her secretary, Juliet, was working late.

“I passed on your message from Friday, Mr. Allen. But Lizzie never returned to L.A. yesterday-she had to go straight from Carmel to San Francisco today for a last-minute business thing. Now she’s caught up there in a dinner, so we don’t expect her back in L.A. until tomorrow. Another message?”

“That’s okay.”

Instead, I called the Mondrian and asked to be put through to Lizzie’s voice mail. I left a simple, straightforward message, in which I explained about Ivan’s suicide, how I had ended up identifying the body and arranging the funeral, and wouldn’t be back in the city until late Tuesday night. I didn’t get emotional. I didn’t leave a number in Hartford where she could reach me. I didn’t come across as beseeching. As Kaster recommended, I played it cool and sounded very much in control. Whereas I was feeling anything but controlled. And I wanted to scream into the phone, I’m going crazy…. I miss you…. Please, please, let me jump a plane to the Coast and try to sort things out.

Why is it that, if we say what we actually feel to the most important person in our lives, we often risk losing that person altogether?

I pondered that question again at three-thirty the next afternoon as I stood outside the crematorium with Detective Kaster, puffing away on a cigarette. A taxi drew up outside the crematorium. The door opened and Debbie stepped out, accompanied by Phil Sirio. I went running over and threw my arms around both of them. I could tell they both looked a little startled by my newly accumulated weight, and by the cigarette clutched between my fingers.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you so much. I thought I would have to do this alone.”

“No problem, boss,” Phil said.

“Workin” for my brother in the restaurant supply game these days, so I can come and go as I please.”

“Yeah, and Mr. Zanussi had no problem giving me the afternoon off,” Debbie said.

“How’d he take the news?”

“He went all quiet. I hope the man felt shame. You doin’ okay?”

“Could be better.”

“What’s with the cigarette?” Debbie asked.

“Just a temporary lapse.”

“You crazy, Mr. A.? That shit’ll kill you….”

“Only if he really works at it,” Detective Kaster said, wandering over to join us. I introduced her. But we were interrupted by the oily, black-suited funeral director, clipboard in hand, glancing at his watch like a time and motion analyst.

“I think we should start,” he said. Under her breath, Detective Kaster added:

“Because the next customer shows up in half an hour.”

The chapel was a plain, simple room. White brick walls, a sandstone floor, varnished pine benches, an imitation marble bier upon which sat the simple wooden coffin I had chosen for Ivan. As they entered, Debbie and Phil did a double take at the sight of the coffin. Not that they didn’t expect to see it-but there’s always something deeply disquieting about the sight of that box. Because you know that, inside it is someone who, up until a day or so ago, was as alive as you are now. And because you also know that box is your destiny, too.

We all sat together in the front row. The rabbi entered. Early sixties. Black suit, black tie, black yarmulke. We’d spoken on the phone earlier that morning, after I’d had a chat with the funeral home about final arrangements. The rabbi asked what I wanted for the service. Keep it simple, I said. Prayers-but no eulogy. The idea of a stranger extolling Ivan’s essential decency and goodness to an empty funeral chapel was just too much to bear.

The rabbi stood to the right of the coffin and began to intone some prayers in Hebrew, his eyes clenched shut, his body gently swaying back and forth like a tree branch in the wind. Then, in

English, he said that he would now say the Kaddish-the prayer for the dead-for our departed brother, Ivan.

At first, his voice was almost imperceptible. But very quickly it swelled into a deep, haunting baritone-fervent, potent, profoundly tragic. And though none of us understood a word of what he was in canting the emphatic force of those prayers said it all. A man had died. A life had ended. Attention must be paid.

Debbie had covered her face with one hand and was weeping quietly. Phil stared stonily at the coffin, doing his best to control his emotions amid the full-frontal assault of the Kaddish. Even Detective Kaster seemed curiously moved by the terrible loneliness of this service. And me? I just felt… adrift. My bearings lost. Wondering why an ethical man like Ivan went under, while an unscrupulous shit like Ted Peterson flourished. And thinking just how easy it was for everything to come unhinged.

Abruptly the Kaddish ended, the final baritone chords reverberating against the chapel walls. Then, after a moment’s silence, there was the hum of machinery as the coffin slowly descended from view. The rabbi approached and shook hands with each of us. The unctuous crematorium supervisor ushered us out into the light. I glanced at my watch. The entire service had taken ten minutes.

Detective Kaster had to head back to the precinct. She gave me her card, a peck on the cheek, and told me if I ever needed a plumber I should call Beth Anne I thanked her for everything.

“Go easy,” she said.

“Especially on yourself.”

The funeral director called us a cab. He also discreetly asked me for a credit card (“We accept everything except American Express and Diners”). We declined his offer to wait in “the family lounge.” The sun was still bright, the March cold tolerable. I lit up a cigarette and received reproachful looks from Debbie and Phil. But they said nothing. Because the service had rendered us all mute. And because we were all staring at the now smoking chimney.

The funeral director returned with an invoice and a credit card slip for me to sign. I looked down at the price: $3,100, including basic embalming, coffin, transportation, the service, the incineration. Death was not cheap. I also noticed that the charge slip had been made by one of those old-style, by-hand imprint machines.

Thank God for that. Had it been a new, instant-verification machine, my MasterCard would have been instantly declined… though I don’t know exactly what the oily undertaker could have done about it. Except, maybe, pulling the plug on the furnace before the job was fully done.

“You haven’t told me where I should dispatch the ashes,” the supervisor said. I handed him the piece of paper on which I had written Kirsty Dolinsky’s name and address.

“Included in the charge,” he said, “is second-class postage anywhere in the U.S. We can, however, FedEx the ashes for an additional charge of twenty dollars. Guaranteed next-day delivery, of course.”

Phil Sirio said, “I don’t want Ivan goin’ second class.” Then, whipping out a large roll of money, he peeled off a twenty, scrunched it up into a ball, and dropped it right at the director’s feet.

“There’s your extra twenty,” he said with unconcealed contempt.

“And if I hear that Ivan ain’t in Florida tomorrow, you are gonna hear from me.”

We caught the 4:20 Amtrak express back to Penn Station. We sat in the bar car. Phil nursed a beer, I threw back a bourbon on the rocks, Debbie quickly killed a rum and Coke, then started to cry. Loudly.

We drank all the way back to New York. Phil kept plying me with bourbon, and I found myself unable to stop talking-the whole god-awful story of the past ten weeks spilling out in a torrent of words. It really was like an extended stint in the confessional box. And though Phil and Debbie couldn’t offer me absolution, they were, at least, two pairs of sympathetic ears.