When One Man Dies (14 page)

I went back for the evening session of the wake, arriving about ten minutes late. Artie and Tracy stood on opposite sides of the room. No one else was there. Even Gerry looked like he wanted to leave. The minutes and hours ticked by, and only one other person showed up, one of the older gentlemen who had been there that afternoon. Finally, at quarter to nine, I whispered in Tracy’s ear that I had some business to take care of. She smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and said good-bye.

Truth was, I didn’t really have business to attend to, but I had to get out of there. I’d spent the evening fighting off memories of Jeanne; all I really wanted was a drink. Tracy’s performance of “Bernie’s Song,” her movements as she played were also in my head, doing battle with my nostalgia.

I saw Artie get into his car and pull out toward Route 18. He didn’t look all that happy, and I was surprised he didn’t wait for Tracy, who was lingering in the lobby. I could see her through the glass doors. I hated to think of her as option B, but I couldn’t help it. I got out of the car and approached her.

She must have seen me coming, because she pushed the door open and stepped onto the sidewalk, a confused look on her face. “What are you still doing here? I thought you had some business. Did Artie—?”

“Artie didn’t do anything,” I said. “There was a chance I was going to have to go somewhere, but it didn’t pan out. How come you didn’t ride home with him?”

“He wasn’t in the best mood. I told him I needed some time to myself and was going to call a cab.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet. Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore.”

She nodded. “I quit, too, but I could really use one now. I can’t believe no one showed up tonight.”

It was a typical New Jersey April evening. The sun had gone down and there was a chill in the air that was comfortable to sleep in. But to the skin and the brain it was warmth that hadn’t been felt since early September. Spring was pushing its way through the haze of a cold winter and a rainy March. The scent of rain still hung in the air. Gave the night air a clean, refreshed feel. You could still smell the carbon monoxide from the cars on Route 18, and their horns carried through the air clearly. That’s what I always noticed when spring came to New Jersey, you could hear and smell the traffic better.

“You feel like getting a drink?” I asked.

I think she was taken aback by my quick change of subject. Her eyes widened, and she didn’t say anything.

“Come on, there’s a sports bar on Eighteen. We can talk there.”

***

We got a table in Double Play, a bar on the northbound side of 18 in East Brunswick. The bar was crowded with Mets fans drinking dollar drafts of Yuengling
and chewing on ten-cent wings. They were watching their team get their tails handed to them by the Phillies. The Yankees were still on the West Coast and hadn’t started yet.

The best thing about the place was the Molson on tap, a brand of beer Artie had never invested in. I sat with a pint while Tracy sipped her bottle of Coors Light. She ordered a plate of mozzarella sticks. Tracy took one, broke it in half, and dipped it in the marinara sauce. I took one, dipped, and bit a chunk, the hot cheese nearly burning the roof of my mouth.

“Gerry didn’t have many people here after Steve died. He kind of went into a shell. Hung out in his apartment and at the bar. That was it,” I said, after a sip of Molson cooled my mouth.

“That’s too bad. We used to see him all the time. Family was important to him. Sunday dinner. My aunt made a great pot roast. Mashed potatoes. It was like Christmas dinner every Sunday. In the summer we’d have them to our house for a barbecue.”

“I never met Gerry’s wife. He didn’t talk about her much.”

Tracy finished off her Coors and signaled the waiter for another round. I was only halfway into my Molson, but having a second glass on deck couldn’t be all bad.

“How’d Gerry’s wife die? Jesus, I don’t even know her name,” I said, realization striking me.

The Mets must have scored a run, because there was a spattering of applause from the bar. Tracy was taking another mozzarella stick, but wasn’t talking much.

“What’s the matter?”

“My aunt disappeared when I was eight or nine. Aunt Anne. According to Uncle Gerry, she went to the grocery store one day and never came back. Steve had to be taken out of school for a year, he was so upset. Gerry brought the police in, but no one demanded a ransom. The cops said maybe she just got sick of being married, wanted to start a new life.”

“He never said anything.”

“He alienated himself. Left the acting business, stopped talking to my family. My parents never spoke with him again. I went alone to Steve’s funeral. They won’t even think about coming to Gerry’s.”

I finished my pint just as the second was being placed in front of me.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this. I can’t. I just want to have a good time.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

I couldn’t believe that Gerry would never mention his wife had gone missing, even if it was years earlier. He didn’t say anything when Jeanne died. He never, ever mentioned it. And all Gerry did was tell stories. Stories about serving in Korea. Stories about being up onstage. Stories about watching old baseball players play games the right way, as opposed to today’s home-run-happy superstars. Something didn’t feel right.

But, then again, I’d been so inundated with information over the past few days, nothing felt right. Getting my mind off the wake, Rex Hanover, everything, would be worth it. Just sit back, have a few beers, and talk.

The bar was getting more crowded behind us, a few Yankees fans rolling in to take advantage of the beer and wings specials before their game started. We finished off the mozzarella sticks and drank.

“So, what’s being a private investigator like?” Tracy asked.

She was now on her third beer, and I could see her loosening up. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and the crow’s-feet at her eyes were gone. Her cheeks were a little ruddy and a small smile formed. I liked the look.

There were several ways to go about answering her question. The stock answer, that it was boring, sitting outside random hotels on Route 1 waiting for sleazebag husbands to come out of rooms with prostitutes, just sitting in a car for hours at a time twiddling your thumbs. Or I could tell her the romanticized version: I’d solved murders, saved children, and stared down mobsters. Or my version: people die who shouldn’t and you break people’s hearts, showing them things they ask you to find. Things they don’t really want to know. And it’s not worth it, you’re not really saving anyone, and it was time for me to leave the profession, once I paid my way through
Rutgers. In all the activity, I’d almost forgotten about my upcoming enrollment at the school.

“While it might sound cool, sitting outside some of the hotels on the highways waiting to take pictures of sex scandals, it’s not exactly my idea of an exciting job. A lot of sitting around and waiting, fighting off sleep in the middle of the night.”

She put her elbow on the table and cocked her head, leaning it against her fist. “You’ve never killed anyone?”

I could tell by the glimmer in her eyes she was just kidding around. The smile looked like it was about to cave in to laughter. Two beers earlier and I’d have laughed at her statement and said no.

“Once.”

“Oh my God. Really? What happened?” She was sitting up straight now, her arms crossed at the wrists on the edge of the table. She leaned forward a shade, as if to hear me better.

“I dated a woman a few times in February. She was a graduate student, just moved out here from Fresno. Her ex-boyfriend followed her. He wasn’t what you’d call stable. At one point, he cornered her on his deck and threatened to slash her throat. I shot him.”

“Oh,” she said. She downed the rest of the beer. “Wow.” I finished my beer as well. “Sorry you asked?”

She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Not at all. How’d that make you feel?”

I tried to recover and lift the serious mood with a joke. “You’re a psychiatrist now?”

“Come on, I’m serious. Two months ago you killed a man. Sure, you did it to help someone, but that doesn’t happen to everyone. Now a friend of yours is dead. I can’t imagine how you feel.”

I slipped my hand out from under hers, thinking I’d rather be talking about anything else. We could talk about jazz, we could talk about drinks, about baseball. We could talk about anything but death. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”

The waiter came back to our table, and we both ordered a fourth beer. I was feeling it in my bladder and excused myself.

In the bathroom, standing at the urinal, I took a deep breath. The conversation had been taken off to places I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Gerry’s murder, I didn’t really feel it. Not like Tracy felt it, seeing her childhood again, seeing a relative ripped from her, even though she wasn’t as close to him anymore. I didn’t feel it like Artie did, his best customer brought down, not by old age, but by some careless driver. I didn’t feel a need for revenge. I didn’t like having Artie watching my every move, using me to feed his sadness and anger, to at least find a reason why. But at the wake, I knew I wanted to find Gerry’s killer. I just wanted to do my own thing, and stay as far away from pain as possible.

Returning to our table, I found the beers already there. Tracy’s sat untouched. Condensation dripped off my glass, forming a small puddle around it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No. I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought—well, I thought maybe you wanted to talk about it. I know I would.”

“It’s not my favorite topic of conversation. That’s all. Don’t worry about it. I’m not mad.”

We sat and drank, making small talk. Then I drove her back to the hotel, where she decided to stay for the night. Easier than going back to Asbury.

Pulling in front of the lobby, I turned toward her. “See you tomorrow morning.” The funeral.

I leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. Before I realized it our lips had locked together. It was a long kiss, my eyes closed; I felt our tongues touch. My stomach fluttered a bit, and the buzz from the beer intensified. She put her hand on the side of my face. Our lips refused to part.

Finally, when we broke, she said, “I can’t do this right now, Jackson.”

A quick kiss. Her mouth was familiar to me. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“I have a boyfriend. I—”

We kissed some more. As I pushed harder against her lips, she broke away.

“We have to stop,” she said. She opened the door. “Listen, you don’t have to come tomorrow.”

“I want to.”

“No. Work on the case. It’ll probably be just me and Artie. Gerry would want you to be working on that case. That’s more important. Find out who did this to him. Find out why he had that stuff in his closet.”

She leaned in and we kissed again. “I’ve had too much to drink.” I watched her walk into the lobby. Despite myself, I smiled.

Ten minutes later, I unlocked the door to my apartment. The beer buzz was still strong, and I could taste Tracy’s breath on my tongue. I noticed the smell of cigarettes in the air. The lights were off, but my blinds were open. I was positive they were closed when I left to go to the wake. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, if my mind wasn’t elsewhere, I would have caught it quicker. I would have been ready. Instead, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my neck.

The next thing I knew I was staring at my carpet. Shaking my head, I rolled over expecting to see the two guys who paid me off earlier.

I was surprised.

Hovering over me was Rex Hanover.

Chapter 24

It seemed like a good idea. A way to bring Donne back on the case. Get someone Donne used to trust and feed him important information. So, barely twenty-four hours later, after telling him not to talk to Donne, Bill Martin strolled along George Street looking for Jesus Sanchez.

The theaters had let out already, patrons finishing their drinks in bars around the city or driving home on the turnpike. Come to New Brunswick, dump your money here, get a few parking tickets to pay his salary, and head home. Keep the streets clean and make it look like this was a wholesome college town.

Fucking bullshit.

Ever since Johnson & Johnson moved in, this town was getting spic-and-span and it was all a front. Martin hated it. He would rather George Street still be overrun by porn and drugs and hookers. That was real. This new stuff—the theaters, the faggy bars—all fake. It made this town and its hierarchy too concerned about appearances.

Now Martin had to worry every time he talked to a drug dealer and declined to arrest him. It was exhausting, watching his back all the time.

He pulled up the lapels of his tweed sports coat, and kept going. He could see the C-Town sign up ahead, glowing in the dark street. Jesus Sanchez smoked a cigarette underneath it.

As Martin approached, the smell told him Jesus was smoking something other than a cigarette.

“How you be, Billy?”

“I need a favor.”

“Shit, now I gotta listen to you, yo.”