“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, pâté, 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 wil
l.”
“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 three-decker.
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 too long, because her expression grew worried. “John?”
“I’m fine now.”
Twenty-one
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 fit, 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 P.M., 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 Galaxians. I slowed down, which seemed to give them a fighting 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?”
Cabbiness hooted. “Those? Those are egrets. Believe they call them common egrets, the crows of the South. They got a museum over to the university, you need more detail.”
“No, just curious.”
“Didn’t figure y’all flew two and a half hours for that one.”
“I didn’t. I’m wondering if you can tell me something about a reporter who used to work here.”
“Might, might not. Name?”
“Jane Rust.”
“Ah, Janey. I remember her, indeed. What’s this all about?”
“She’s dead. Cops say suicide, I’m trying to …”
I stopped, because Cabbiness had taken off his spectacles and had rolled his rump up enough from the chair to draw a handkerchief from his back pocket. He wiped first the glasses, then his own eyes and nose. I found it a strikingly sincere gesture, and I waited until he spoke next.
“Suicide, you say?”
“Maybe.”
“Janey was … oh, hell, worse to speak too well of the dead as too ill. Janey worked here just a summer, my first year as managing editor. She was an intern
, between semesters.”
“And?”
“And she, well, I guess the sociology folks would say she fell in with a bad crowd.”
“How so?”
“Janey was kind of … impressionable. She wasn’t too well formed back then, kind of looking for a role model, I guess you’d say. Unfortunately, she found the wrong one.”
“Who was that?”
“Reporter here named Cassy Griffin.”
“Griffin, did you say?”
“Yeah, F-I-N at the end. Born to raise hell, that one. All the time doing things she hadn’t ought to.”
“For example?”
“Well, we got us a little place on the West coast named Cedar Key. Kind of a resort town for this area, hour’s drive. Hemingway-type bars, dockside cafes where you can see the dolphins—or porpoises, whatever y’all call them up in Boston—hunting in pairs in the harbor. Janey fell in with this Griffin, idolized her, she did, and got herself into all sorts of tight spots down to Cedar.”
“Drugs?”
Cabbiness raised his chubby shoulders. “Drugs, drinking. Men, too, the wrong kind, and too many. You know much about this part of the country?”
“You mean Florida?”
“No, but that’s what I mean.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“People from up North say ‘Florida,’ they’ve got a picture in their head of Miami. Used to be beach and boardwalk. These days, cocaine and silk jackets, more likely. Gainesville now, this isn’t Miami. This is the South. The Old South. Oh, the kids all go to the same schools, and everybody can eat in the same restaurants, no muss or bother. But white or black, y’all go to church on Sunday and say ‘yessir’ and ‘nossir’ and respect your elders. And a paper here can’t tolerate behavior on its staff that the readers wouldn’t tolerate in their homes. I let Janey finish her summer, on account of I didn’t want a mark against her in the record, but I would have bounced that Ms. Griffin if she hadn’t up and quit on me a week before.”
“Any idea where this Griffin woman went?”
“Nope. Couldn’t have cared less, either, if you get me.”
“Could I look at her employment records?”
Yesterday's News Page 18
