Текст книги "Mr. Mercedes"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

That year was full of sometimes.

Sometimes he loved Frankie up and kissed him.

Sometimes he’d shake him and say This is your fault, we’re going to have to live in the street and it’s your fault.

Sometimes, putting Frankie to bed after a day at the beauty parlor, Deborah Ann would see bruises on the boy’s arms and legs. Once on his throat, which was scarred from the tracheotomy the EMTs had performed. She never commented on these.

Sometimes Brady loved Frankie. Sometimes he hated him. Usually he felt both things at the same time, and it gave him headaches.

Sometimes (mostly when she was drunk), Deborah Ann would rail at the train-wreck of her life. ‘I can’t get assistance from the city, the state, or the goddam federal government, and why? Because we still have too much from the insurance and the settlement, that’s why. Does anyone care that everything’s going out and nothing’s coming in? No. When the money’s gone and we’re living in a homeless shelter on Lowbriar Avenue, then I’ll be eligible for assistance, and isn’t that just ducky.’

Sometimes Brady would look at Frankie and think, You’re in the way. You’re in the way, Frankie, you’re in the fucking goddam shitass waaay.

Sometimes – often – Brady hated the whole fucking goddam shitass world. If there was a God, like the Sunday guys said on TV, wouldn’t He take Frankie up to heaven, so his mother could go back to work fulltime and they wouldn’t have to be out on the street? Or living on Lowbriar Avenue, where his mother said there was nothing but nigger drug addicts with guns? If there was a God, why had He let Frankie choke on that fucking apple slice in the first place? And then letting him wake up brain-damaged afterward, that was going from bad to fucking goddam shitass worse. There was no God. You only had to watch Frankie crawling around the floor with goddam Sammy in one hand, then getting up and limping for a while before giving that up and crawling again, to know that the idea of God was fucking ridiculous.

Finally Frankie died. It happened fast. In a way it was like running down those people at City Center. There was no forethought, only the looming reality that something had to be done. You could almost call it an accident. Or fate. Brady didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in fate, and sometimes the man of the house had to be fate’s right hand.

His mother was making pancakes for supper. Frankie was playing with Sammy. The basement door was standing open because Deborah Ann had bought two cartons of cheap off-brand toilet paper at Chapter 11 and they kept it down there. The bathrooms needed re-stocking, so she sent Brady down to get some. His hands had been full when he came back up, so he left the basement door open. He thought Mom would shut it, but when he came down from putting the toilet paper in the two upstairs bathrooms, it was still open. Frankie was on the floor, pushing Sammy across the linoleum and making rrr-rrr sounds. He was wearing red pants that bulged with his triple-thick diapers. He was working ever closer to the open door and the steep stairs beyond, but Deborah Ann still made no move to close the door. Nor did she ask Brady, now setting the table, to do it.

‘Rrr-rrr,’ said Frankie. ‘Rrr-rrr.’

He pushed the fire truck. Sammy rolled to the edge of the basement doorway, bumped against the jamb, and there he stopped.

Deborah Ann left the stove. She walked over to the basement door. Brady thought she would bend down and hand Frankie’s fire truck back to him, but she didn’t. She kicked it instead. There was a small clacking sound as it tumbled down the steps, all the way to the bottom.

‘Oops,’ she said. ‘Sammy faw down go boom.’ Her voice was very flat.

Brady walked over. This was interesting.

‘Why’d you do that, Mom?’

Deborah Ann put her hands on her hips, the spatula jutting from one of them. She said, ‘Because I’m just so sick of listening to him make that sound.’

Frankie opened his mouth and began to blat.

‘Quit it, Frankie,’ Brady said, but Frankie didn’t. What Frankie did was crawl onto the top step and peer down into the darkness.

In that same flat voice Deborah Ann said, ‘Turn on the light, Brady. So he can see Sammy.’

Brady turned on the light and peered over his blatting brother.

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘There he is. Right down at the bottom. See him, Frankie?’

Frankie crawled a little farther, still blatting. He looked down. Brady looked at his mother. Deborah Ann Hartsfield gave the smallest, most imperceptible nod. Brady didn’t think. He simply kicked Frankie’s triple-diapered butt and down Frankie went in a series of clumsy somersaults that made Brady think of the fat Blues Brother flipping his way along the church aisle. On the first somersault Frankie kept on blatting, but the second time around, his head connected with one of the stair risers and the blatting stopped all at once, as if Frankie were a radio and someone had turned him off. That was horrible, but had its funny side. He went over again, legs flying out limply to either side in a Y shape. Then he slammed headfirst into the basement floor.

‘Oh my God, Frankie fell!’ Deborah Ann cried. She dropped the spatula and ran down the stairs. Brady followed her.

Frankie’s neck was broken, even Brady could tell that, because it was all croggled in the back, but he was still alive. He was breathing in little snorts. Blood was coming out of his nose. More was coming from the side of his head. His eyes moved back and forth, but nothing else did. Poor Frankie. Brady started to cry. His mother was crying, too.

‘What should we do?’ Brady asked. ‘What should we do, Mom?’

‘Go upstairs and get me a pillow off the sofa.’

He did as she said. When he came back down, Sammy the Fire Truck was lying on Frankie’s chest. ‘I tried to get him to hold it, but he can’t,’ Deborah Ann said.

‘Yeah,’ Brady said. ‘He’s prob’ly paralyzed. Poor Frankie.’

Frankie looked up, first at his mother and then his brother. ‘Brady,’ he said.

‘It’ll be okay, Frankie,’ Brady said, and held out the pillow.

Deborah Ann took it and put it over Frankie’s face. It didn’t take long. Then she sent Brady upstairs again to put the sofa pillow back and get a wet washcloth. ‘Turn off the stove while you’re up there,’ she said. ‘The pancakes are burning. I can smell them.’

She washed Frankie’s face to get rid of the blood. Brady thought that was very sweet and motherly. Years later he realized she’d also been making sure there would be no threads or fibers from the pillow on Frankie’s face.

When Frankie was clean (although there was still blood in his hair), Brady and his mother sat on the basement steps, looking at him. Deborah Ann had her arm around Brady’s shoulders. ‘I better call nine-one-one,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

‘He pushed Sammy too hard and Sammy fell downstairs. Then he tried to go after him and lost his balance. I was making the pancakes and you were putting toilet paper in the bathrooms upstairs. You didn’t see anything. When you got down to the basement, he was already dead.’

‘Okay.’

‘Say it back to me.’

Brady did. He was an A student in school, and good at remembering things.

‘No matter what anybody asks you, never say more than that. Don’t add anything, and don’t change anything.’

‘Okay, but can I say you were crying?’

She smiled. She kissed his forehead and cheek. Then she kissed him full on the lips. ‘Yes, honeyboy, you can say that.’

‘Will we be all right now?’

‘Yes.’ There was no doubt in her voice. ‘We’ll be fine.’

She was right. There were only a few questions about the accident and no hard ones. They had a funeral. It was pretty nice. Frankie was in a Frankie-size coffin, wearing a suit. He didn’t look brain-damaged, just fast asleep. Before they closed the coffin, Brady kissed his brother’s cheek and tucked Sammy the Fire Truck in beside him. There was just enough room.

That night Brady had the first of his really bad headaches. He started thinking Frankie was under his bed, and that made the headache worse. He went down to his mom’s room and got in with her. He didn’t tell her he was scared of Frankie being under his bed, just that his head ached so bad he thought it was going to explode. She hugged him and kissed him and he wriggled against her tight-tight-tight. It felt good to wriggle. It made the headache less. They fell asleep together and the next day it was just the two of them and life was better. Deborah Ann got her old job back, but there were no more boyfriends. She said Brady was the only boyfriend she wanted now. They never talked about Frankie’s accident, but sometimes Brady dreamed about it. He didn’t know if his mother did or not, but she drank plenty of vodka, so much she eventually lost her job again. That was all right, though, because by then he was old enough to go to work. He didn’t miss going to college, either.

College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.

6

Brady comes out of these memories – a reverie so deep it’s like hypnosis – to discover he’s got a lapful of shredded plastic. At first he doesn’t know where it came from. Then he looks at the newspaper lying on his worktable and understands he tore apart the bag it was in with his fingernails while he was thinking about Frankie.

He deposits the shreds in the wastebasket, then picks up the paper and stares vacantly at the headlines. Oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and British Petroleum executives are squalling that they’re doing the best they can and people are being mean to them. Nidal Hasan, the asshole shrink who shot up the Ford Hood Army base in Texas, is going to be arraigned in the next day or two. (You should have had a Mercedes, Nidal-baby, Brady thinks.) Paul McCartney, the ex-Beatle Brady’s mom used to call Old Spaniel Eyes, is getting a medal at the White House. Why is it, Brady sometimes wonders, that people with only a little talent get so much of everything? It’s just another proof that the world is crazy.

Brady decides to take the paper up to the kitchen and read the political columns. Those and a melatonin capsule might be enough to send him off to sleep. Halfway up the stairs he turns the paper over to see what’s below the fold, and freezes. There are photos of two women, side by side. One is Olivia Trelawney. The other one is much older, but the resemblance is unmistakable. Especially those thin bitch-lips.

MOTHER OF OLIVIA TRELAWNEY DIES, the headline reads. Below it: Protested Daughter’s ‘Unfair Treatment,’ Claimed Press Coverage ‘Destroyed Her Life.’

What follows is a two-paragraph squib, really just an excuse to get last year’s tragedy (If you want to use that word, Brady thinks – rather snidely) back on the front page of a newspaper that’s slowly being strangled to death by the Internet. Readers are referred to the obituary on page twenty-six, and Brady, now sitting at the kitchen table, turns there double-quick. The cloud of dazed gloom that has surrounded him ever since his mother’s death has been swept away in an instant. His mind is ticking over rapidly, ideas coming together, flying apart, then coming together again like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. He’s familiar with this process and knows it will continue until they connect with a click of finality and a clear picture appears.

ELIZABETH SIROIS WHARTON, 87, passed away peacefully on May 29, 2010, at Warsaw County Memorial Hospital. She was born on January 19, 1923, the son of Marcel and Catherine Sirois. She is survived by her brother, Henry Sirois, her sister, Charlotte Gibney, her niece, Holly Gibney, and her daughter, Janelle Patterson. Elizabeth was predeceased by her husband, Alvin Wharton, and her beloved daughter, Olivia. Private visitation will be held from 10 AM to 1 PM at Soames Funeral Home on Tuesday, June 1, followed by a 10 AM memorial service at Soames Funeral Home on Wednesday, June 2. After the service, a reception for close friends and family members will take place at 729 Lilac Drive, in Sugar Heights. The family requests no flowers, but suggests contributions to either the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army, Mrs Wharton’s favorite charities.

Brady reads all this carefully, with several related questions in mind. Will the fat ex-cop be at the visitation? At the Wednesday memorial service? At the reception? Brady’s betting on all three. Looking for the perk. Looking for him. Because that’s what cops do.

He remembers the last message he sent to Hodges, the good old Det-Ret. Now he smiles and says it out loud: ‘You won’t see me coming.’

‘Make sure he doesn’t,’ Deborah Ann Hartsfield says.

He knows she’s not really there, but he can almost see her sitting across the table from him, wearing a black pencil-skirt and the blue blouse he especially likes, the one that’s so filmy you can see the ghost of her underwear through it.

‘Because he’ll be looking for you.’

‘I know,’ Brady says. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Of course I’ll worry,’ she says. ‘I have to. You’re my honeyboy.’

He goes back downstairs and gets into his sleeping bag. The leaky air mattress wheezes. The last thing he does before killing the lights via voice-command is to set his iPhone alarm for six-thirty. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

Except for the tiny red lights marking his sleeping computer equipment, the basement control room is completely dark. From beneath the stairs, his mother speaks.

‘I’m waiting for you, honeyboy, but don’t make me wait too long.’

‘I’ll be there soon, Mom.’ Smiling, Brady closes his eyes. Two minutes later, he’s snoring.

7

Janey doesn’t come out of the bedroom until just after eight the following morning. She’s wearing her pantsuit from the night before. Hodges, still in his boxers, is on the phone. He waves one finger to her, a gesture that says both good morning and give me a minute.

‘It’s not a big deal,’ he’s saying, ‘just one of those things that nibble at you. If you could check, I’d really appreciate it.’ He listens. ‘Nah, I don’t want to bother Pete with it, and don’t you, either. He’s got all he can handle with the Donald Davis case.’

He listens some more. Janey perches on the arm of the sofa, points at her watch, and mouths, The viewing! Hodges nods.

‘That’s right,’ he says into the phone. ‘Let’s say between the summer of 2007 and the spring of 2009. In the Lake Avenue area downtown, where all those new ritzy condos are.’ He winks at Janey. ‘Thanks, Marlo, you’re a doll. And I promise I’m not going to turn into an uncle, okay?’ Listens, nodding. ‘Okay. Yeah. I have to run, but give my best to Phil and the kids. We’ll get together soon. Lunch. Of course on me. Right. Bye.’

He hangs up.

‘You need to get dressed in a hurry,’ she says, ‘then take me back to the apartment so I can put on my damn makeup before we go over to the funeral home. It might also be fun to change my underwear. How fast can you hop into your suit?’

‘Fast. And you don’t really need the makeup.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Tell that to Aunt Charlotte. She’s totally on crow’s-feet patrol. Now get going, and bring a razor. You can shave at my place.’ She re-checks her watch. ‘I haven’t slept this late in five years.’

He heads for the bedroom to get dressed. She catches him at the door, turns him toward her, puts her palms on his cheeks, and kisses his mouth. ‘Good sex is the best sleeping pill. I guess I forgot that.’

He lifts her high off her feet in a hug. He doesn’t know how long this will last, but while it does, he means to ride it like a pony.

‘And wear your hat,’ she says, looking down into his face and smiling. ‘I did right when I bought it. That hat is you.’

8

They’re too happy with each other and too intent on getting to the funeral parlor ahead of the relatives from hell to BOLO, but even on red alert they almost certainly wouldn’t have seen anything that rang warning bells. There are already more than two dozen cars parked in the little strip mall at the intersection of Harper Road and Hanover Street, and Brady Hartsfield’s mud-colored Subaru is the most unobtrusive of the lot. He has picked his spot carefully so that the fat ex-cop’s street is squarely in the middle of his rearview. If Hodges is going to the old lady’s viewing, he’ll come down the hill and make a left on Hanover.

And here he comes, at just past eight-thirty – quite a bit earlier than Brady expected, since the viewing’s not until ten and the funeral parlor’s only twenty minutes or so away. As the car makes its left turn, Brady is further surprised to see the fat ex-cop is not alone. His passenger is a woman, and although Brady only gets a quick glimpse, it’s enough for him to ID Olivia Trelawney’s sister. She’s got the visor down so she can look into the mirror as she brushes her hair. The obvious deduction is that she spent the night in the fat ex-cop’s bachelor bungalow.

Brady is thunderstruck. Why in God’s name would she do that? Hodges is old, he’s fat, he’s ugly. She can’t really be having sex with him, can she? The idea is beyond belief. Then he thinks of how his mother relieved his worst headaches, and realizes – reluctantly – that when it comes to sex, no pairing is beyond belief. But the idea of Hodges doing it with Olivia Trelawney’s sister is infuriating (not in the least because you could say it was Brady himself who brought them together). Hodges is supposed to be sitting in front of his television and contemplating suicide. He has no right to enjoy a jar of Vaseline and his own right hand, let alone a good-looking blonde.

Brady thinks, She probably took the bed while he slept on the sofa.

This idea at least approaches logic, and makes him feel better. He supposes Hodges could have sex with a good-looking blonde if he really wanted to … but he’d have to pay for it. The whore would probably want a weight surcharge, too, he thinks, and laughs as he starts his car.

Before pulling out, he opens the glove compartment, takes out Thing Two, and places it on the passenger seat. He hasn’t used it since last year, but he’s going to use it today. Probably not at the funeral parlor, though, because he doubts they will be going there right away. It’s too early. Brady thinks they’ll be stopping at the Lake Avenue condo first, and it’s not necessary that he beat them there, only that he be there when they come back out. He knows just how he’s going to do it.

It will be like old times.

At a stoplight downtown, he calls Tones Frobisher at Discount Electronix and tells him he won’t be in today. Probably not all week. Pinching his nostrils shut with his knuckles to give his voice a nasal honk, he informs Tones that he has the flu. He thinks of the ’Round Here concert at the MAC on Thursday night, and the suicide vest, and imagines adding Next week I won’t have the flu, I’ll just be dead. He breaks the connection, drops his phone onto the seat next to Thing Two, and begins laughing. He sees a woman in the next lane, all gussied up for work, staring at him. Brady, now laughing so hard tears are streaming down his cheeks and snot is running out of his nose, gives her the finger.

9

‘You were talking to your friend in the Records Department?’ Janey asks.

‘Marlo Everett, yeah. She’s always in early. Pete Huntley, my old partner, used to swear that was because she never left.’

‘What fairy tale did you feed her, pray tell?’

‘That some of my neighbors have mentioned a guy trying cars to see if they were unlocked. I said I seemed to recall a spate of car burglaries downtown a couple of years back, the doer never apprehended.’

‘Uh-huh, and that thing you said about not turning into an uncle, what was that about?’

‘Uncles are retired cops who can’t let go of the job. They call in wanting Marlo to run the plate numbers of cars that strike them as hinky for one reason or another. Or maybe they brace some guy who looks wrong, go all cop-faced on his ass and ask for ID. Then they call in and have Marlo run the name for wants and warrants.’

‘Does she mind?’

‘Oh, she bitches about it for form’s sake, but I don’t really think so. An old geezer named Kenny Shays called in a six-five a few years ago – that’s suspicious behavior, a new code since 9/11. The guy he pegged wasn’t a terrorist, just a fugitive who killed his whole family in Kansas back in 1987.’

‘Wow. Did he get a medal?’

‘Nothing but an attaboy, which was all he wanted. He died six months or so later.’ Ate his gun is what Kenny Shays did, pulling the trigger before the lung cancer could get traction.

Hodges’s cell phone rings. It’s muffled, because he’s once more left it in the glove compartment. Janey fishes it out and hands it over with a slightly ironic smile.

‘Hey, Marlo, that was quick. What did you find out? Anything?’ He listens, nodding along with whatever he’s hearing and saying uh-huh and never missing a beat in the heavy flow of morning traffic. He thanks her and hangs up, but when he attempts to hand the Nokia back to Janey, she shakes her head.

‘Put it in your pocket. Someone else might call you. I know it’s a strange concept, but try to get your head around it. What did you find out?’

‘Starting in September of 2007, there were over a dozen car break-ins downtown. Marlo says there could have been even more, because people who don’t lose anything of value have a tendency not to report car burglaries. Some don’t even realize it happened. The last report was logged in March of 2009, less than three weeks before the City Center Massacre. It was our guy, Janey. I’m sure of it. We’re crossing his backtrail now, and that means we’re getting closer.’

‘Good.’

‘I think we’re going to find him. If we do, your lawyer – Schron – goes downtown to fill in Pete Huntley. He does the rest. We still see eye to eye on that, don’t we?’

‘Yes. But until then, he’s ours. We still see eye to eye on that, right?’

‘Absolutely.’

He’s cruising down Lake Avenue now, and there’s a spot right in front of the late Mrs Wharton’s building. When your luck is running, it’s running. Hodges backs in, wondering how many times Olivia Trelawney used this same spot.

Janey looks anxiously at her watch as Hodges feeds the meter.

‘Relax,’ he says. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’

As she heads for the door, Hodges pushes the LOCK button on his key-fob. He doesn’t think about it, Mr Mercedes is what he’s thinking about, but habit is habit. He pockets his keys and hurries to catch up with Janey so he can hold the door for her.

He thinks, I’m turning into a sap.

Then he thinks, So what?

10

Five minutes later, a mud-colored Subaru cruises down Lake Avenue. It slows almost to a stop when it comes abreast of Hodges’s Toyota, then Brady puts on his left-turn blinker and pulls into the parking garage across the street.

There are plenty of vacant spots on the first and second levels, but they’re all on the inside and no use to him. He finds what he wants on the nearly deserted third level: a spot on the east side of the garage, directly overlooking Lake Avenue. He parks, walks to the concrete bumper, and peers across the street and down at Hodges’s Toyota. He puts the distance at about sixty yards. With nothing in the way to block the signal, that’s a piece of cake for Thing Two.

With time to kill, Brady gets back into his car, fires up his iPad, and investigates the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex website. Mingo Auditorium is the biggest part of the facility. That figures, Brady thinks, because it’s probably the only part of the MAC that makes money. The city’s symphony orchestra plays there in the winter, plus there are ballets and lectures and arty-farty shit like that, but from June to August the Mingo is almost exclusively dedicated to pop music. According to the website, ’Round Here will be followed by an all-star Summer Cavalcade of Song including the Eagles, Sting, John Mellencamp, Alan Jackson, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen. Sounds good, but Brady thinks the people who bought All-Concert Passes are going to be disappointed. There’s only going to be one show in the Mingo this summer, a short one ending with a punk ditty called ‘Die, You Useless Motherfuckers.’

The website says the auditorium’s capacity is forty-five hundred.

It also says that the ’Round Here concert is sold out.

Brady calls Shirley Orton at the ice cream factory. Once more pinching his nose shut, he tells her she better put Rudy Stanhope on alert for later in the week. He says he’ll try to get in Thursday or Friday, but she better not count on it; he has the flu.

As he expected, the f-word alarms Shirley. ‘Don’t you come near this place until you can show me a note from your doctor saying you’re not contagious. You can’t be selling ice cream to kids if you’ve got the flu.’

‘I dno,’ Brady says through his pinched nostrils. ‘I’be sorry, Shirley. I thing I got id fromb by mother. I had to put her to bed.’ That hits his funnybone and his lips begin to twitch.

‘Well, you take care of yourse—’

‘I hab to go,’ he says, and breaks the connection just before another gust of hysterical laughter sweeps through him. Yes, he had to put his mother to bed. And yes, it was the flu. Not the Swine Flu or the Bird Flu, but a new strain called Gopher Flu. Brady howls and pounds the dashboard of his Subaru. He pounds so hard he hurts his hand, and that makes him laugh harder still.

This fit goes on until his stomach aches and he feels a little like puking. It has just begun to ease off when he sees the lobby door of the condo across the street open.

Brady snatches up Thing Two and slides the on switch. The ready-lamp glows yellow. He raises the short stub of the antenna. He gets out of his car, not laughing now, and creeps to the concrete bumper again, being careful to stay in the shadow of the nearest support pillar. He puts his thumb on the toggle-switch and angles Thing Two down – but not at the Toyota. He’s aiming at Hodges, who is rummaging in his pants pocket. The blonde is next to him, wearing the same pantsuit she had on earlier, but with different shoes and purse.

Hodges brings out his keys.

Brady pushes Thing Two’s toggle-switch, and the yellow ready-lamp turns operational green. The lights of Hodges’s car flash. At the same instant, the green light on Thing Two gives a single quick blink. It has caught the Toyota’s PKE code and stored it, just as it caught the code of Mrs Trelawney’s Mercedes.

Brady used Thing Two for almost two years, stealing PKEs and unlocking cars so he could toss them for valuables and cash. The income from these ventures was uneven, but the thrill never faded. His first thought on finding the spare key in the glove compartment of Mrs Trelawney’s Mercedes (it was in a plastic bag along with her owner’s manual and registration) was to steal the car and joyride it all the way across the city. Bang it up a little just for the hell of it. Maybe slice the upholstery. But some instinct had told him to leave everything just as it was. That the Mercedes might have a larger role to play. And so it had proved.

Brady hops into his car and puts Thing Two back in his own glove compartment. He’s very satisfied with his morning’s work, but the morning isn’t over. Hodges and Olivia’s sister will be going to a visitation. Brady has his own visitation to make. The MAC will be open by now, and he wants a look around. See what they have for security. Check out where the cameras are mounted.

Brady thinks, I’ll find a way in. I’m on a roll.

Also, he’ll need to go online and score a ticket to the concert Thursday night. Busy, busy, busy.

He begins to whistle.

11

Hodges and Janey Patterson step into the Eternal Rest parlor of the Soames Funeral Home at quarter to ten, and thanks to her insistence on hurrying, they’re the first arrivals. The top half of the coffin is open. The bottom half is swaddled in a blue silk swag. Elizabeth Wharton is wearing a white dress sprigged with blue florets that match the swag. Her eyes are closed. Her cheeks are rosy.

Janey hurries down an aisle between two ranks of folding chairs, looks briefly at her mother, then hurries back. Her lips are trembling.

‘Uncle Henry can call cremation pagan if he wants to, but this open-coffin shit is the real pagan rite. She doesn’t look like my mother, she looks like a stuffed exhibit.’

‘Then why—’

‘It was the trade-off I made to shut Uncle Henry up about the cremation. God help us if he looks under the swag and sees the coffin’s pressed cardboard painted gray to look like metal. So it’ll … you know …’

‘I know,’ Hodges says, and gives her a one-armed hug.

The deceased woman’s friends trickle in, led by Althea Greene, Wharton’s nurse, and Mrs Harris, who was her housekeeper. At twenty past ten or so (fashionably late, Hodges thinks), Aunt Charlotte arrives on her brother’s arm. Uncle Henry leads her down the aisle, looks briefly at the corpse, then stands back. Aunt Charlotte stares fixedly into the upturned face, then bends and kisses the dead lips. In a barely audible voice she says, ‘Oh, sis, oh, sis.’ For the first time since he met her, Hodges feels something for her other than irritation.

There is some milling, some quiet talk, a few low outbursts of laughter. Janey makes the rounds, speaking to everyone (there aren’t more than a dozen, all of the sort Hodges’s daughter calls ‘goldie-oldies’), doing her due diligence. Uncle Henry joins her, and on the one occasion when Janey falters – she’s trying to comfort Mrs Greene – he puts an arm around her shoulders. Hodges is glad to see it. Blood tells, he thinks. At times like this, it almost always does.

He’s the odd man out here, so he decides to get some air. He stands on the front step for a few moments, scanning the cars parked across the street, looking for a man sitting by himself in one of them. He sees no one, and realizes he hasn’t seen Holly the Mumbler, either.

He ambles around to the visitors’ parking lot and there she is, perched on the back step. She’s dressed in a singularly unbecoming shin-length brown dress. Her hair is put up in unbecoming clumps at the sides of her head. To Hodges she looks like Princess Leia after a year on the Karen Carpenter diet.

She sees his shadow on the pavement, gives a jerk, and hides something behind her hand. He comes closer, and the hidden object turns out to be a half-smoked cigarette. She gives him a narrow, worried look. Hodges thinks it’s the look of a dog that’s been beaten too many times with a newspaper for piddling under the kitchen table.