Yesterday's News - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  Almeida, from the tone of his voice, was approaching the last few sentences when I felt Liz tug on my suit pocket with the hand behind Ida's back. I ignored it, but she tugged harder. I looked first at Liz, then at what had drawn her attention. Coming across the grounds, perhaps forty yards away, was Gail Fearey, carrying her diapered son curled in a skinny ann. Fearey was running, a desperate, knock-kneed caricature of a punt-returner whose team is losing in the fourth quarter.

  Liz immediately hunched closer to Ida, getting a better grip. I moved around the grave as Almeida turned to see what the now-audible running was all about.

  Before I could get between Fearey and the grave, she started screaming, "Biiiiiitch! Murdering fuckin biiiiiteh!"

  Tiger, who had been quiet till now, began to wail. I said, "Gail, please. . ." and took her free arm gently.

  She wrestled away from me with surprising strength. tearing off the child's soiled diaper, Fearey flung the cloth onto the coffin itself.

  "You biiiitch! You fuckin biiiitch! The only fuckin thing I had, and you killed him! You fuckin biiiitch!"

  Almeida's people moved with calm precision toward Gail. She felt the human net closing and whirled around, running back the way she came. When we didn't pursue her, she stopped. Bending over at the ground, Fearey screamed, "biiiitch!" The baby's weight nearly toppled her as she seemed to throw up. It was then run/stop/scream/heave at roughly ten-yard intervals until she ascended a low hill and disappeared from sight.

  I heard Peete's voice say, "Christ, I need a drink."

  20

  "The real shame of it all is the absence of creativity, don't you think?"

  "How do you mean?" I said.

  "Well, consider it, good sir. The Almeida Funeral Home. It's flat, unappealing. Would you want to be buried from there?"

  I'd had enough vodka to think about it. Malcolm Peete used the gap to pour another triple into his glass. We'd both wanted a postmortem after Gail Fearey's scene at the grave, and Peete even asked Liz Rendall and Arbuckle to join us. Liz begged off on the ground that she thought she should look after Ida. Arbuckle just begged off.

  "No."

  Peete looked up from the bottle. "What's that?"

  "I said no, I wouldn't want to be buried from there."

  "Of course you wouldn't. Nobody would. Then again, by the time you have need of such services, the option is no longer yours. That's why Madison Avenue has to step in. A niche needs filling."

  "Don't get you."

  He set down his glass, spreading his hands. "Look, currently the choice of home is made by the survivors, correct?"

  "Correct."

  "Well, that's the problem. The survivors can't very well be clever and buoyant about it. They have to show some respect for the deceased, as a result of which the mourners feel the same way, only more so. Everyone attends under this leaden shroud."

  "And?"

  "And that's where the advertising gurus are missing a bet. Don't you see? Sell the services to the deceased before the demise! Reserve the package in advance, requiring a reasonable deposit so the home doesn't get stuck for the buffet."

  "Buffet."

  "Right. Or the cocktails, the band, any of those touches. You plan it, you publicize it, and obviously you attend it, though your dance card will probably remain open."

  "You plan your own funeral."

  "And draw a list for invitations. Who knows better which people should be there than you do? Now it's a free-for-all, gatecrashers galore. Restrict and refine, that's the ticket. Only those you really want to enjoy themselves will benefit"

  "Peete, that's sick."

  "Sicker than catering christenings and bar mitzvahs, weddings and anniversaries? All those events are benchmarks, my lad, benchmarks in a life. Why not a similarly anticipated blowout for the last benchmark of all?"

  "The funeral homes would never go along."

  "Go along? They'd jump at it! The only markups they can take now are on containers and liners. Think of champagne, pate, and caviar. Plus the zing it would put into their commercials. No more somber dirges in the background. Instead, you'd hear some celebrity endorser announce, 'And now, for Dead to the World, a subsidiary of Out Like a Light, Inc., the largest chain of funeral spas in the East, the hard-rocking sounds of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful—'"

  "Could we try something else for a while?"

  Peete's features, till now theatrical, drooped back to normal. "Sorry. Always thought it was better to treat the passing of a loved one as an absurdity. Muffles it, somehow."

  I raised my glass to his and clinked. "To Jane."

  He nodded. "To Jane."

  "You said, 'loved one' just now."

  "I did?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Well, I guess I did love her, in a way. You love all the new ones, you know."

  "How do you mean?"

  Peete lowered the drink and his voice. "The new ones come in so full of the mission, the mission that took them through journalism school and into the business itself. 'To inform and thus protect.' It takes a while for it to wear off, but on some it becomes the messiah complex."

  "Liz Rendall said the same thing."

  "Ah, a point of agreement between Tin Lizzy and me. I should note it for my biographer. "

  "You figure the complex is what Jane had?"

  "Good sir, after enough years and cases of the hundred proof, figuring doesn't enter into it. You can almost smell it, like the scent a mother discerns from a puppy in her litter. The problem is, Jane had the fire without the emotional stability that allows some to function, indeed succeed, with and through it."

  "You ever have it?"

  Peete laughed. "You behold the rarest of the rare, a former addict cured of that particular affliction, though some would argue the cure is worse than the disease. Those who would so argue, however, would be wrong. Dead wrong. No, there is nothing worse than to see the world clearly and suspect, nay be certain, that you, and you alone, can improve upon it."

  "Speaking of certainties, I thought you told me you never drove anymore?"

  "You may have formed that impression."

  "Somebody else told me they've seen your VW around town."

  Peete slurped, recalled how much he liked the stuff, and drank deeper. "There are a few days, here and there, when I feel up to motoring myself about. Not many, and never at night, if Jane's death was where you were heading."

  Switching off, I said, "I met with Schonsy the other day."

  "Ah, and how is he enjoying his well-earned pasturing?"

  "A hard man to read."

  Peete gestured to the bartender, pinging a fingernail against our nearly empty bottle. To me, he said, "Tell me, which of the many faces did he turn toward your sun?"

  "What?"

  "Was he 'Schonsy: The meanest sonofabitch in the valley,' 'Schonsy; The counselor rabbi,' 'Schonsy; The picaresque rascal/hero,' or what?"

  "Thought you said you didn't know him all that well?"

  "I don't. But Schonsy is an example of a certain species, much like Jane was. I have observed other such specimens at length. Marvelous creatures to study."

  "The Schonsy I saw was a battered old man, confined to a wheelchair and trying to be upbeat."

  "That's what I mean. Another facet. The truly great cops can sense a scene, just like the truly great actors. They come upon a situation, and often an audience, and trot out just the right impersonation to match the circumstance?

  I said, "Ida told me that Jane got her job on the Beacon through a friend."

  "Could be. Often happens that way."

  "Any idea who the friend might be?"

  "No. She never said anything about it to me."

  "Apparently the friend was from a Florida paper."

  "That could be also. A lot of us move around in this business, Jane more than most for someone so young."

  The Smirnoff arrived. I said, "You know anybody I could talk to on any Gainesville papers?"

  "Singular, not
plural."

  "Sorry?"

  "I believe you'll find Gainesville has but one daily, though God knows even the Messenger may have competition by now.

  That part of the country's gained a lot of population recently. Undoubtedly some weeklies as well."

  "Yes, but do you know anybody there?"

  "Probably. I've been around more than most, too. Problem is, I wouldn't remember them, and they'd think ill of me, so a letter of introduction wouldn't advance you much."

  Peete drained his glass, cracking the new bottle. "Join me?"

  "No. I've got things to do. Final question?"

  "As many as you like. I'm not going anywhere."

  "Peete, what do you think happened, really?"

  Peete measured out another triple, siphoning half of it. He set the glass down. "Charlie Coyne and Jane Rust, you mean?"

  "That's what I mean."

  "I think a little shit living on borrowed time got knifed. I think Jane had as much to do with causing that as she did the Johnstown Flood. And, I think her blindness to her own insignificance so altered that delicate balance we all sense but refuse to acknowledge that she killed herself."

  "A derelict, the one who saw Coyne get killed. He died last night."

  "They often do that, drunks."

  "The cops think he drowned in three inches of rain water."

  "Dangerous stuff, water. Thanks for the warning."

  I got up and turned to leave.

  "Cuddy?"

  When I looked back down at him, the boozy cheer was all gone, replaced by the leaky eyes of an old man who'd been crying hard and knew he was about to start again.

  Peete said, "Allow me to reciprocate in the warning department. I told you I could smell the messiah complex? Well, my lad, you come across like you bathed in it, and I'm sick at heart from covering funerals this week."

  "Thanks."

  "Didn't think it would help," said Peete, lifting his glass.

  * * *

  I walked around Nasharbor for a while to clear my head enough for driving. In that acute accessibility to suggestion that alcohol can trigger, I realized just how sick I was of Dykestra's city "perched on the edge." Deciding to leave it, I stopped at a pay phone to call Liz Rendall to see if I could help her out by giving Ida a ride to the airport. Someone in the city room at the Beacon said she hadn't returned from the funeral, and there was no answer at the tugboat.

  Next I tried a travel agent I knew in Boston. He said there were no direct flights to Gainesville on the weekends, but there was a seat available on the Sunday flight to Jacksonville. I could then rent a car for the seventy or so miles to Gainesville itself. I asked him to set it up, including a room for Sunday night at any motel that had a swimming pool.

  Last, I dialed Nancy at the DA's office. Her secretary said she was still on the rape case. I left a message that I would see her at home that night.

  * * *

  "Checking out?"

  "Afraid so, Emil."

  Jones appeared forlorn. "Figured you might be staying on, you been here so long already. "

  "Not much else I can do."

  He dug out my bill, worked on it with a ballpoint, then slid it over to me. "No extra charge for the message services." Taking out three more twenties, I said, "I appreciate that. And your backing me up with Schonstein and Cronan."

  "Wasn't nothing. Good to have some company I could talk to."

  After counting my change onto the counter, he extended his right hand. "Stop back now, if you can. "

  I shook, his grasp thorny. "I will."

  * * *

  "Not a good week, kid."

  Nasharbor didn't live up to your expectations?

  "Just the opposite."

  I straightened up, my left leg still stiff. Mrs. Feeney's tulips huddled against each other on the grave. The air was colder in Boston, only about sixty with a stiff breeze coming off the water. Still, it felt like heaven.

  Hey, remember me?

  "Sorry, Beth."

  That's alright. This case really bothers you, doesn't it.

  "No more than any other."

  Right.

  "Okay." I told her about Liz Rendall.

  They say everyone has a double.

  "That's not what gets me. What gets me is that I found myself attracted to her because she looked like you, not because I found her attractive. See?"

  But nothing happened.

  "Nothing."

  John, you may have been attracted to this woman because of me, but nothing happened because of Nancy.

  I didn't reply. Sometimes you get tired of telling people they're always right.

  * * *

  From where I was parked, I could see her before she saw me. Alighting from the red Honda Civic, she juggled a bag of groceries while shaking her key case at the front door of the threedecker

  I got out and called over. "Can I get that for you?"

  Nancy turned. "Among other things."

  Walking to her, I took the keys and unlocked the deadbolt. "How's the trial coming?"

  "It's been rough, but we should close to the jury on Tuesday."

  "Does that mean you'll have to work all weekend?"

  "That means I'll have to work part of the weekend." More quietly, she said, "How are you?"

  I stared at her, perhaps a little to long, because her expression grew worried. "John?"

  "I'm Fine now."

  21

  The Jacksonville airport seemed a relatively small and friendly place, although it could just have been that spending Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning with Nancy lifted my spirits. The garment bag and I made our way to the Hertz booth.

  A bronzed young woman with hair the color of honey greeted me. "How're y'all doing today?"

  "Fine so far. My name's Cuddy. I believe you have a car for me?"

  "One minute. . . yes, here we are. Picking up today, returning tomorrow?"

  "Yes."

  She leaned over the counter. "Is that all your luggage?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I just had a Mustang convertible turned in two days early. Couple found they couldn't manage all their stuff in it too well. But, if you'd like, I could give it to you so long as you cross your heart you'll have it back to me by ten A.M. on Tuesday."

  "I promise. Thank you."

  "No trouble. Hope you enjoy it."

  We did the paperwork, and she handed me the keys. "The lot's just behind us, and that there's your plate number."

  I walked through the sliding doors and into the convection oven that is Florida in June.

  Sweating through my shirt, I found the car, top up. The trunk was so shallow, the carryon barely fit flat. I got into the car, starting the engine and the air conditioner. Then I realized technology had passed me by.

  I couldn't figure out how to put the top down.

  Ten minutes later, I waved at a broad-shouldered woman in a Hertz maintenance uniform. She came over and patiently showed me the controls, including the, I thought, unfairly hidden latches at the windshield.

  After brief legs on access roads and interstates, I settled onto 301, the highway southwest toward Gainesville. After the army, I'd used my last cash payday to buy a Renault Caravelle, a small, sporty car with both rag- and hardtops. Now I turned up the Mustang's radio, enjoyed the breeze raking my hair, and generally felt young and carefree.

  The scenery, on the other hand, was a bit peculiar. Every other car dealer had an old Ford or Chevy impaled on a pole thirty feet high. Farm stands were selling watermelon, Vidalia onions, and boiled peanuts. There were a lot of gas stations-cum-convenience stores, the attendants wearing straw cowboy hats. Oddest of all were the pastures I passed. Brimful of dry, yellow grass, each had a complement of gaunt cows or steers, with legions of foot-tall white birds striding on the cattle's backs. In Gainesville, elderly white women walked with pink parasols, and elderly black women walked with black umbrellas, all raised against the afternoon glare. My Holiday Inn lay
catty-corner from the beginning of the University of Florida campus.

  I asked the desk clerk what the little white birds were called. She said she was from New Jersey and didn't know. She did, however, recommend a dip in their Olympic-sized pool and the menu at Cedar River Seafood and Oyster Bar, just down the road. I went up to my room and changed into my trunks. The pool area was airy and perfectly kept, the water as crystal clear and clean as the Caribbean. I swam two leisurely laps before my leg hurt, then spent a dozy hour or so lying on a chaise with a Cherry Coke and the setting sun for company. The clerk proved stronger on food than nature. The grouper stuffed with blue crab at Cedar River was terrific, the place packed with Ht, retired couples and large, young families, all seeming to enjoy immensely being in each other's collective company.

  I had a screwdriver in the lounge of another hotel with a piano player so assured and mellow I stayed for two more sets and three more drinks. At 10:10 PM., the bartender announced last call, telling me that the city required all liquor off the table by 11:00 P.M. on Sunday nights. On the way back to the Inn, bugs the size of dragonflies started smashing into my windshield, playing their own lose-lose game of Calaxians. I slowed down, which seemed to give them a lighting chance of being swept up and over the glass.

  In my room, I caught most of Ishtar on the cable hookup and agreed that fifty-one million doesn't go as far as it used to. I fell asleep in tune with the world and about as well prepared for the next day as the lamb is for the slaughter.

  * * *

  Lyle Cabbiness was managing editor of the Gainesville Messenger. Fifty-ish and overweight, his blotchy complexion seemed unsuited for year-round sun. He was, however, happy to speak with a private investigator from Boston. I was ushered into a first-floor office with a view of the highway and an interior wall devoted to plaques and framed photos.

  "Don't get many of y'all down in these parts."

  "People from Boston?"

  "Right, right. They say once a body spends time by the ocean, they can't endure being away from it. Most of them go down to West Palm or Lauderdale, Miami being what it is. Others try the West coast, Naples if they got the dollars. We get more the midwesterners, or old Texas hides like me. What can I do you for?"

  "To begin with, what are those white birds that stand on top of the cattle?"