I spoke to Arlene, who had been leaving her own series of messages for TJ. She gave me the details for the funeral. She said nothing about our kiss, but it was there anyway. Awkward pauses and a curious reluctance—on both of our parts—to hang up. It was truly strange.
Cam didn’t ask me to stay. It was just assumed. Especially with Jennifer also staying, I just slid as expected into the routine of occupancy.
I stood in Cam’s master bathroom, brushing my teeth with a borrowed toothbrush, studying myself in the wall-sized mirror. None of the stuff on the counters was mine. Not the lotions or the makeup, the perfumes or the swabs. This was her bathroom, separate from me, totally and completely. I popped my seizure pills and headed into the bedroom to lie down before I became too dizzy.
Cam was already in bed, leaning against the headboard, reading a magazine. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. My eyes were open. Bob wasn’t sleepy.
“What are we doing?” I said to the ceiling.
“Hmm?” Cam said, still reading.
“What are we doing here?” I repeated to the ceiling.
Cam put the magazine down. “What?”
“I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
“Michael, are you okay?”
“I mean, are we really divorced? Is that our reality?”
“Yes,” she said. “We are really divorced.”
“Then what are we doing here? Why am I in your bed?”
She hesitated, examining me. “Don’t you like being in my bed?”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
I sighed, still staring straight up. “You date other people.”
“Yes.” She knew enough of my social life not to say So do you.
“And that’s not supposed to bother me?” I said, finally looking at her.
“I don’t know. Does it?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“So … what, you want me to stop dating other people?”
I closed my eyes and let out a rueful chuckle. “Yeah.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Cam, we’re divorced. You can date farm animals if you want and I have no right to say boo.”
“Do you want me to stop dating other people?” she repeated.
“How can I ask you that?”
“Then what do you want?”
I paused, thinking about the question. It was a good question, really cutting to the core of my concern. The truth was that I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. My navigation seemed off. Did I want a relationship with Cam? Or Arlene? Or anyone? Or was it pointless, given my circumstances? What did I want? Perhaps the question really was, did I want to live or die? The answer to that might determine everything else.
But I couldn’t articulate that to Camilla. I barely even understood it. So, instead I said, “Do you think we’ll ever get remarried?”
That brought her up short, with an expression that might result after unexpectedly sitting on the wet seat of a public toilet. I thought I saw subtle flashes of at least four distinct emotions dance across her face. Shock. Pity. Love. Disappointment. She exhaled and I saw it all in her eyes.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“It didn’t exactly work out before.”
“Yeah. Plus, the terminal cancer makes a big effort kind of a waste of time, right?”
Now I saw the hurt in her eyes. I was sorry I said it. Not that there wasn’t some truth in it. I just shouldn’t have said it.
“That’s not fair,” she said, emotion catching in her throat. “You know this has nothing to do with that.”
“Okay.”
“I just don’t think we’re compatible like that. I need someone who … can give something back.”
“Yeah. So, I ask again, what are we doing here?”
I thought she was going to get mad. The old, predivorce Cam might’ve let me have it, although I’m not even sure why. I was never exactly sure why she got so mad at me. For me, our married life was a constant adventure in anger discovery.
But this new Cam, the one who cries secretly in the bathroom in the middle of the night, was silent. Her eyes glistened and she tried to force a smile through her obvious pain. “I’m just … not ready to lose you yet.” She placed a palm on my cheek. “I’m holding on to you the only way I know how. I’m … just so sorry.”
“Yeah…”
She put her magazine aside and lay down next to me, draping an arm across my stomach, her face buried in my shoulder. We lay like that until she fell asleep.
Bob and I stayed up for a while, thinking.
* * *
I’m not sure how much sleep I got. A few hours. A few minutes. It all had the same effect. Bob roused me in the predawn with a good old-fashioned skull-splitter.
I got up and leaned on my elbows over the sink. I felt like I was going to puke, but I never did. I wish I had. I might have felt better. Bob managed to maintain just the right level of low-grade nausea to keep me miserable.
I took a shower, keeping one hand on the tile to stay upright. Then made some coffee, took a handful of pills—antiseizures, pain relievers, Flintstones vitamins, I don’t even know anymore—and sat on Cam’s balcony. The world was quiet. Every so often I heard a car door thunk, the early commuters heading off to work. But, mostly, the world was still, shrouded in a low fog that sat on everything like a layer of thick, puffy cotton. Car roofs, palm fronds, and the top of the bricked community mailbox seemed to bob on top of the mist. I sipped my coffee.
Today was the day they would bury Eddie Sommerset. By all accounts, his was a wasted life. But that was a harsh judgment, wasn’t it? He had his good points, right? He had to. No book is a single piece of paper. Even Hitler had his mama.
At some point in the not too distant future, they would be planting me in the ground. What would they say about me? What would be the consensus? A wasted life? I hope not. Surely I had done some good. I had taken a lot of bad people off the streets and put them behind bars. Surely the world must be a little better from having had me around.
Since I had become involved in the search for TJ Sommerset (to which I had started referring, only to myself, of course, with the Hardy Boys title The Case of the Missing Boy Band Boy), I had been too busy to wallow in my own particular flavor of self-pity. I had actually gone for an hour or so at a time without thinking about my brain tumor. I don’t want to say that I forgot about it, that wouldn’t really be true, but I was able to push it into the background. Not focus on it. Not obsess about it.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but I really think that’s what triggered the seizures. Bob was jealous and wanted some attention. I had something else to think about now and he responded like a petulant child. As I said, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m the one with the tumor, so cut a guy a little slack.
I felt the woozy light-headedness of the antiseizure meds descend like a light rain, misting over the nausea, melting into a combined glaze of total body discomfort. And the headache was still going strong. I drained the last sip from my mug, but didn’t get up for a refill.
Somewhere, out there in the fog, TJ Sommerset was hiding. From Eli. From his mother. From me. From whoever killed Eddie. From himself, maybe. From his life.
I wondered if I would find him in time. Not in time for the concert tour, although I guess, on some level, I still wondered about that, too.
Finding TJ had become inexplicably important to me. Something I needed to do before I was gone. For Jennifer. It had become some sort of twisted redemptive quest.
So, I sat there with my empty coffee cup and wondered if I would find him in time—in time to prevent my attendance at another Sommerset funeral. God, I hoped so.
* * *
I closed my eyes and steadied myself on the back of the pew in front of me. My glaze of nausea and dizziness was still thick. I hadn’t barfed in church since I was six years old. It was a particularly unpleasant experience
and I had no desire to repeat it now.
I felt Jennifer’s hand rest on my back, a silent, meaningful gesture. A few deep breaths later I felt a little better and opened my eyes. I exchanged a wan smile with her. She gave me an oddly maternal pat on the back and removed her hand.
I surveyed my surroundings. Maybe forty or fifty people were in the Baptist church. I saw no sign of the goon from the Mustang. I did spot Gary Richards sitting on an aisle, looking appropriately sad, his usual expression. Arlene sat in the front with who I presumed was Eddie’s mother, Carol. I only saw the back of her head clearly, but Carol appeared to be holding up stoically. No wailing. No hysterical crying. Just a quiet, dignified sorrow.
An organist played an old hymn, one of the usuals, “How Great Thou Art” or something, while the pallbearers escorted a white coffin down the center aisle, leaving it in front of the pulpit. Not surprisingly, Eddie’s mother had opted for a closed casket.
A minister stepped up to the pulpit. He was younger than I expected. They always seemed to be silver-haired middle-agers. But he was in his midthirties, thin, and spoke with a voice that could have used a little more baritone to suit his profession. He reminisced about Eddie’s passion for life. His zeal. His love of competition. His independent spirit. I gave the preacher credit. He did a masterful job euphemizing Eddie’s vices to the point where they could have been virtues.
I continued looking around for TJ, periodically checking the entrances for a shaft of light that would reveal a door opening and a figure slipping in. But he was nowhere I could see. I caught Gary Richards doing the same sly checking.
I wondered if TJ might have shown up in disguise. If he did, I wasn’t good enough to detect it. I hoped no one else was either.
I wanted to do a quick exterior check, see if I could spot a car parked on a corner or a mourner who looked out of place, TJ’s yellow Jetta, anything that might point me toward either TJ or Eddie’s killer.
“I’m gonna get some air,” I whispered to Jennifer, and patted her knee. Then I stepped my way out of the pew and slipped outside.
The sun blasted me as I pushed out of the church. There was no relief looking down. The white cement of the steps and sidewalk reflected the overhead sunlight with a blinding brilliance. I squinted and came down the steps, moving off the sidewalk and onto a patch of unmowed St. Augustine grass.
Looking up and down the suburban street, nothing jumped out at me except the unmarked white van two blocks down. I pegged it for an Orange County surveillance team. One block in the opposite direction I saw a woman standing at the curb, leaning against a silver Ford Taurus, smoking a cigarette. I recognized her and stepped over.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” said Orange County homicide detective Sharon Crowley. “How’s Jennifer?”
“I think she’ll be okay. She’s inside now.”
Crowley’s eyebrows went up in surprise that Jennifer was at the funeral. Then she jutted her bottom lip and nodded slightly. A way to go, kid kind of gesture.
“You see anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Clean so far. We’ve got people in a perimeter all around the church. We’ve got electronic surveillance. We’ve got undercovers inside. We’ve got a half dozen patrol cars hiding five blocks away, waiting for the call for backup. We should be ready for anything.”
I glanced around. No sign of anything suspicious. All this prep may have been a lot of setup with no punch line. “Yeah, but are you ready for nothing?” I said.
She took a long drag on the cig. “I did some checking on you, you know.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “I have some friends assigned to MBI. One of them’s been there awhile. Remembered you.”
“Who?”
“Bill Urlacher.”
I nodded. I remembered him. Eager, hotshot kid from the Sheriff’s Department. But he was okay. I liked him well enough.
“How do you know Urlacher?” I asked.
“Long story. Too long. Let’s just say that cops should never date cops.”
“Yeah.” If there was ever a motto that belonged in stone, that was it.
“Anyway, Urlacher says you’re the real deal. Said that the Juan the Don bust was all you before the Feds took over.” I didn’t say anything. “Urlacher said you pissed off some family men in the tristate area. Said there was a bounty on your head.”
“Rumors,” I said. “Obviously I’m still here.”
“I remember that case.” Crowley looked at me and crinkled her eyes. “That was badass.”
“Long time ago.”
“I’ve done some checking on Eddie Sommerset, too. If your hunch is right, Eddie was in over his head to someone, probably a bookie. But there hasn’t been a major gambling operation in Central Florida since you busted Alomar.”
“That you know of,” I added.
“True. There’s an outfit in Tampa and the usual cast of characters down in Miami who we might want to consider.”
“Or Eddie was layin’ bets with someone out of state. Or offshore. This is the information age, y’know.”
She smirked. I liked her smile. It was attractive with a no-nonsense directness. No overdone lipstick, no duplicity. “We just don’t know enough yet,” she said.
“Whoever it was, Eddie must’ve been in pretty deep to bring that kinda heat on himself.” I glanced over at the van. “So why aren’t you in your car? Aren’t you afraid of spooking anyone who might show up? TJ? The bad guys?”
She shrugged. “I’d give ’em a lot of credit if they knew who I was. Plus, I did a radio check with everyone and got an all clear before I got out. Mostly, I just needed a smoke.”
I glanced into the Taurus. Empty. “You don’t smoke in the car?”
“Diaz asked me not to.”
“I don’t see him sittin’ there.”
“He says he can smell it in the seats.” She hunched her shoulders again. “Your partner makes a request, you try to accommodate. It’s a small car. Y’know how it is.”
I did. The front seat of a surveillance car gets even smaller when you’re sharing it with Big Jim Dupree.
“So where is my buddy Diaz?” I asked. “Other side of the church?”
She shook her head. “His kid is in a school play or something. He took a personal day.”
I made a thoughtful face. “No kidding. He didn’t strike me as the daddy type.”
“No? He’s got six kids.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Friend of yours is covering the back. Joey.” She made a sour face.
“Joey?” Then I realized. “Joey V?”
“Yeah. Kind of a prick. Thinks he’s my boss.”
“That’s him. Except nobody calls him Joey V to his face. He hates that.”
Her smirk appeared again. “I’ll remember that,” she said, obviously filing that knowledge away for possible use at a later date. I liked her more and more. “We’re still fighting over jurisdiction. But since this church actually sits in county territory, we agreed it was our show. Joey V,” she said with more than a twinge of sarcasm, “didn’t like it.”
We were silent for a moment, each of us doing the slow rotate with our eyes, scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary. Crowley looked over at me.
“You know something, Garrity?”
I cocked my head.
“You don’t look like the daddy type, either,” she said.
CHAPTER 25
They planted Eddie Sommerset in a lovely spot, partially shaded by a big old live oak tree drooping with Spanish moss. The burial was well attended with most of the mourners from the church memorial service making the long trek through the suburban streets with their headlights on.
The crowd looked larger than it actually was with the attendance of the local media. The TJ Sommerset connection was too juicy to ignore. Microwave vans and print reporters hovered nearby, close enough to hear the minister’s final words, but far enough away to claim some sort of fa
ux respect for the service.
The few available seats were reserved for the family under a portable nylon awning, so everyone else stood. A lucky handful got a spot in the valuable shade of the oak. The rest of us, including Jennifer and me, stood exposed like rotisserie chickens in the scalding noontime sun.
Since we’d left the church, I’d felt my nausea and dizziness returning, building like an incoming tide. I also felt Bob knocking around in my skull, the headache still hanging on. Bob’s idea of a tantrum. I felt crappy and was ready to leave.
I couldn’t take any more antiseizure meds. In fact, they were probably causing the dizziness and nausea. I did have a couple of capsules of Cam’s Zuraxx in my front pocket. I kept my hand in my pocket, fingering the pills, feeling the sweat emerging on my scalp and rolling down the back of my neck and forehead. The tie and the dark suit only made the sun worse. The texture of the pills, how they rolled between my fingers, reassured me, gave me some hope of feeling better at some point. However, there was no way to take them until the ceremony was over and I could find something to drink.
The casket lowered down to the bottom of the grave with the help of an automated winch that made a quiet whir as it unrolled the supporting straps. A few moments later it was all over and the crowd dispersed.
I put a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder in what I hoped to portray as a paternal gesture, but was really more of an attempt at steadying myself so as not to fall face-first into the grave as we walked past back to the cars. When I turned, I found myself staring directly into a microphone and a NewsChannel 2 video camera.
“Mr. Garrity,” said the attractive redheaded reporter. “Can you comment on your reaction to Eddie Sommerset’s funeral, in light of your role in his murder?”
“What?” I said, squeezing Jennifer’s shoulder for stability. Jennifer looked at me, her face confused, aghast. “I had no role—”
“Why did you receive Eddie’s severed head?” the reporter continued.
“Look,” I said. “Now isn’t a good time.” I closed my eyes to stop my vision from swaying. I opened them again. The reporter’s eyes were wide, her brow raised in anticipation. In my peripheral vision I saw the horde of other reporters moving in.
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