by Ross Thomas
“The Old Folks Home, right?” Sergeant Mock said, holding the rear door open for Dill, who climbed into the air-conditioned car and sank into its soft cushions. “That’s what they used to call it—the Van Buren Towers, I mean,” Mock added as he got behind the wheel. “I don’t know why they called it that, but they did.”
The sergeant pulled the large car away from the curb in front of the Hawkins Hotel and drove north up Broadway. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Dill, who sat slumped in the right-hand corner, staring out at the light Saturday-morning traffic.
“I’m sorry about your sister, Mr. Dill,” Sergeant Mock said. “She was one real nice little old gat—although I reckon Felicity wasn’t so little at that—five-nine or ten, around in there.”
“Five-ten,” Dill said.
“Tall for a woman.”
“Yes.”
“You might want me to shut up?”
“It might help.”
“A little hung?”
“A little.”
“Look in that compartment right in front of you—you gotta slide it open. I put three cans of cold Bud in there, just in case.”
“You’re a saint,” Dill said, opening the cabinet and removing one of the still frosty cans. He opened it and drank gratefully.
The sergeant grinned into the rearview mirror. “I always do that on funeral details,” he said. “First thing I do when I get up in the morning is head for the kitchen and pop three or four cans in the freezer—you know, get ’em good and cold. Lotsa people need a little something when they go to a funeral. Sad things, funerals.” He paused. “Well, I’ll shut up now.”
“Thank you,” Dill said.
Anna Maude Singe wore black—simple expensive unrelieved black—except for the white gloves, which she carried. She came out of the Van Buren Towers escorted by Sergeant Mock, who had volunteered to fetch her. Dill slid over into the left-hand corner of the limousine as Mock opened the right-hand door for Singe. She came into the car gracefully, her rear first, followed by her long dancer’s legs, which she swung in with one smooth motion. She turned to examine Dill, who was wearing his dark blue suit, a white shirt, and the knitted black silk tie. Singe nodded both her greeting and her approval. “You look nice,” she said, “and that hangover you’re trying to hide lends a certain sad credence.”
“I somehow knew you’d talk in the morning,” Dill said.
She smiled. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Again behind the wheel, Sergeant Mock started the engine, turned his head, and said, “The lady doesn’t look like she’s gonna need a beer, Mr. Dill, but if she does, you know where it is. Now I’m gonna roll up the divider so you all can have your privacy. People going to funerals always like their privacy.”
“Thanks,” Dill said. Mock pushed a button, the glass divider rose out of the back of the front seat, and the large car pulled away from the curb.
“You want a beer?” Dill asked.
Singe shook her head no. “Where’d you get the hangover?”
“Up in my room alone.”
“I didn’t think you’d drunk that much with me.”
“I had a visitor.”
“Up in your room?”
“Down in the hotel garage. We talked in his van.”
“Who?”
“Clyde Brattle.” Dill paused. “I didn’t tell you about Brattle, did I?”
Again, she shook her head no.
“Maybe I’d better.”
“Where do they keep that beer?” she asked.
“The cabinet in front of you—just slide it open.”
Singe opened the cabinet, brought out a beer, pressed its top down, and handed it to Dill. “Okay,” she said, “Tell me.”
Dill took a long swallow of the second beer and then told her about his meeting in the blue Dodge van with Clyde Brattle and the two men called Harley and Sid. When he was finished, they were nearing Trinity Baptist Church, which was located at Thirteenth and Sherman, a little more than fifteen blocks from the Van Buren Towers.
Singe looked thoughtful for a moment or two after Dill finished his account. Then she frowned and said, “I’d feel better if you’d called the FBI yourself.”
“Yes,” Dill said. “So would I.”
There were far more Baptists in the city and state than anything else, followed—not too closely—by Methodists, Presbyterians, Christians, fundamentalists of various stripes and hues, Catholics, and a surprising number of Episcopalians, whom most people thought of as prosperous, stylish, Eastern, and not nearly so given to strange ritual as the Catholics with their suspect allegiance to Rome. In 1922 a rumor had circulated that the Pope was due in at Union Station on the 12:17 MKT from Chicago and an estimated three thousand persons turned out to see if it was true. Most had come merely to gawk, but others had thought to bring along asphalt and feathers. All were disappointed when Pius XI failed to step down from the train.
Trinity Baptist had been built in the mid-fifties from plans drawn by a professor of architecture down at the university who was noted for his extreme taste in design, women, and politics. The state legislature didn’t necessarily think a man’s womenfolk, or what kind of bricks he favored, were any of its business, but it did know, as one member put it, “right smart about politics.” The members also knew they didn’t want any pinkos teaching the kids down at the university. So they hauled the professor up in front of a state House of Representatives subcommittee on subversive activities and grilled him mercilessly about his crackpot political theories, and after they tired of that, about his women and his draftsmanship.
One seventy-two-year-old representative from an area of the state known as Little Dixie brandished a rendering of a rather free-form piece of statuary that was destined to grace the church grounds. He wanted to know if that was what the professor really thought John the Baptist looked like. The professor replied that he thought it indeed did look a great deal like John. Smiling sweetly, he then asked if the committee had yet found any pink in the beard of the saint, but none of its members could quite figure out what he was getting at. The hearings ended shortly thereafter. The professor wrote a four-word letter of resignation (“Fuck it. I quit.”) and went off to teach at the University of California at Berkeley. The Baptists went ahead and built the church he had designed for them. Almost everybody now liked it immensely.
Dill was surprised by the number of cars that filled the church parking lot and were double-parked out front. He counted twenty-four police motorcycles—all bone-jarring Harley-Davidsons, he noted, and not the infinitely superior Kawasakis. Made in America still counts for something down here, he decided, pushed the button that lowered the dividing window, and asked: “All these people aren’t here just for my sister’s funeral, are they?”
“They sure are,” Sergeant Mock said. “Your sister was a cop, Mr. Dill, and when cops get themselves killed, other cops turn out. I saw the list. Why, we got cops here from as far off as Denver and Omaha and Memphis and all the way up from New Orleans.”
“Where else?” Singe asked.
“Lemme think. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, Little Rock, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and—oh, yeah—the one who said he was coming down from Cheyenne. They’re gonna witness, Mr. Dill, that’s what. They’re all gonna witness.”
It was a few minutes before ten when Mock pulled the limousine into the chief mourner’s reserved space, got out, and opened the door for Singe and Dill. Fifty or sixty weaponless policemen were still standing around outside, all wearing their neat dress suntans. For some reason, Dill had expected them to wear blue. He could sense their pointing him out to each other as the brother of the dead Felicity Dill.
A smooth-looking, olive-complexioned lieutenant introduced himself as Lieutenant Sanchez, graciously expressed his sympathy, and offered to escort Dill and Singe. He led them through the police and into the church. It was the first time Dill had been inside and he was impressed by the architect’s w
it. It looks like a Baptist church all right, he thought, but like one where they really do make a joyful noise unto the Lord and have just one hell of a good time doing it.
The interior was of granite (with just a blush of pink) and it soared up eagerly, almost happily, as if indeed bound for glory. Dill found the stained-glass windows to be of an interesting, not quite abstract design. He decided that if you got bored with the sermon, you could always stare up at the windows and make up your own stories. If his sister had to be prayed over in a church, Dill thought it might as well be this one. She would’ve liked the architecture, if nothing else.
Lieutenant Sanchez ushered Singe and Dill to the center aisle and turned them over to the waiting Chief of Detectives John Strucker. It was the first time Dill had seen Strucker in uniform. He was impressed with how well the chief wore it and with the uniform itself, which had been meticulously tailored out of what appeared to be tan linen, although it didn’t wrinkle enough for linen. Under his left arm Strucker had tucked his garrison cap, which had a lot of gold braid on its bill.
“We’re all the way down front,” Strucker murmured and led them down to the front row on the right. A man rose from the left front row and moved toward them. He was an older man, in his sixties at least, and Dill finally recognized him as Dwayne Rinkler, the chief of police. It had been years since Dill had last seen him and the chief’s long narrow face seemed to have lengthened; the frigid blue eyes appeared to have grown even colder, and the thin lips had finally disappeared, leaving only a wide straight ruled line. Rinkler also had lost most of his hair and acquired a deep tan. He wore his uniform almost as well as Strucker. There was even more gold braid on his cap.
Strucker made the introductions and Chief Rinkler shook hands first with Singe and then with Dill. “We’re deeply sorry, Mr. Dill,” he said in his rasping bass, “all of us.”
“Thank you,” Dill said.
“She was a fine woman,” Rinkler added, nodding as if to reconfirm his own assessment. Still nodding, he turned and went back to his seat. Strucker joined him. Dill and Singe took their places across the aisle.
When seated, Dill examined the casket for the first time. He really couldn’t see the casket itself because it was draped with a large American flag. On either side of the casket, six tall stalwart policemen in immaculate summer uniforms stood at motionless parade rest. Dill wondered how long they had been standing like that.
Somewhere, a mixed choir began to sing. Dill followed the sound, turned, and looked up. In the choir loft twelve very young male and female police officers were lifting their unaccompanied voices in a slow somber rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” They apparently intended to sing all four verses as the church filled up. Dill thought they sang quite well and wondered if Felicity would have objected to the hymn. She might have once, he concluded, but she doesn’t now.
When the hymn was over there was the usual amount of rustling and throat-clearing and half-stifled coughs. The young-looking minister made his appearance and mounted slowly to the pulpit, where he surveyed the gathering with sad eyes from behind earnest horn-rimmed spectacles.
“We are here today,” he said, “to mourn the death and pray for the soul of someone who was not of this church or of this faith, but one who chose a life of public service that protected both this faith and this church. We are here to mourn and pray for Detective Felicity Dill and to thank her for her all too short life of dedicated service to this community.”
He went on like that for another five minutes—a deadly dull young man, Dill thought, apparently devout and obviously sincere. When the young minister uttered the inevitable words “in vain,” Dill quit listening as he always did when anyone spoke those words. They always came right after “sacrifice,” another word that sent Dill’s attention wandering. Someone murdered my sister, he thought, as the young minister’s voice rose and fell. If Felicity didn’t die in vain, I don’t know who did.
There was a new sound and Dill realized the young minister had finished and the police choir was singing yet another hymn. The dozen fresh-scrubbed young policemen and women were giving out with “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that Felicity Dill had particularly detested. “Read the words sometime, Pick,” she had written him shortly after Jimmy Carter let it be known that “Amazing Grace” was his favorite hymn. “I mean really read them and then you’ll understand why people still put up with all the shit they put up with.” Dill listened to the words now, really listened, but they meant absolutely nothing to him, although he thought the police choir sang them very well indeed.
After the hymn was over, Dill assumed the services were too, but they weren’t. The young minister had already descended from the pulpit and now someone else mounted it. The someone else was Gene Colder, Baptist deacon and homicide captain, looking neat and melancholy in a dress uniform that seemed as finely tailored as the chief of detectives’. Colder gripped the lectern, not out of nervousness, but with the air of an experienced orator who has something important to say. His eyes examined his audience, beginning with those in the back and ending with Dill in the front row, to whom he nodded slightly. Colder then picked out the mourner he intended to talk to—who seemed to be about halfway back—and began.
“I have been asked to say a few words about Detective Second Grade Felicity Fredricka Dill (God, how she hated Fredricka, Dill thought), not only because she was in my division, homicide, but also because we were friends.” Colder paused and added. “Very good friends.” Now everybody knows they were sleeping together, if they didn’t know before, Dill thought.
“Detective Dill was what I would call a cop’s cop,” Colder continued. “She won her promotions, and they were indeed rapid promotions, because of her hard, often brilliant work. I do not hesitate to predict that had she lived and pursued her career with this same determination and brilliance, she could’ve become this city’s first female chief of detectives and, it is not at all inconceivable, its first female chief of police.” Captain Colder smiled slightly. “It goes without saying that she would have made captain.”
After that, Colder talked about what a wonderful person Detective Dill had been. He praised both her mind and her bravery. He had nice things to say about her sound common sense and her uncommon compassion. He described her loss as tragic and her legacy as everlasting, although Dill didn’t know what he meant by that. Colder failed to mention the dead detective’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy and the yellow brick duplex, which were also part of her legacy, but not an especially everlasting part, in Dill’s opinion.
Finally, Colder said, “I can only repeat the highest compliment we can pay her: she was a cop’s cop, and we shall miss her. All of us.”
The deacon now gazed out over his congregation, for that was how Dill had come to think of it, and asked them to join him in the Lord’s Prayer. Dill watched as the honor guard’s heads snapped down and they prayed together at parade rest.
When the prayer was over, the police choir burst into song again. Dill, no churchgoer, thought this one was “Abide with Me.” He glanced at Anna Maude Singe, who reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Think of it this way,” she said in a low voice. “Somewhere she’s laughing.”
“Sure,” said Dill, who didn’t at all believe it. He turned to meet the approaching Captain Colder, who shook hands first with Singe and then with Dill. “I appreciate what you said, Captain,” Dill said.
“I meant every word of it.”
“It was very moving,” Singe said.
“Thank you.” He looked at Dill. “Everything work out all right—the limousine and all?”
“It’s been perfect. I want to thank you very much.”
“Well, I’ll escort you back out to your car. It’ll be right behind Felicity.” Not behind the hearse, Dill noticed, but behind the still uninterred Felicity. Colder smiled reassuringly. “The graveside services are very brief, very formal. Shall we go?”
As they walked up
the aisle, Dill looked for someone he knew—for some old family friend he could nod to or smile at—but there was none. She has friends here, he thought, but you don’t know them because that ten-year gap between your ages was almost unbridgeable. He did notice the section of out-of-town policemen who sat together, spruce and correct in their varied uniforms, and eyed him curiously and with sympathy as he walked past.
And that’s who came to bury Felicity, Dill realized. Cops and the wives of cops. The cops themselves were young and middle-aged. I guess there aren’t any old cops anymore, except for the chief of police. I guess they put in their twenty or thirty years, take their pension, and get out. Detective Dill. Sergeant Dill. Captain Dill. Chief of Detectives Dill. Chief of Police F. F. Dill. Well, who knows. It might have happened.
On the aisle seat in the next to the last row sat Fred Y. Laffter, the ancient police reporter. He rose and sidled up to Dill and in a hoarse whisper said, “We’re gonna go with the stuff on your sister’s insurance policy and the money she paid down on her duplex and all that crap. Any comment you wanta make?”
Dill stopped. “What d’you mean ‘we’?”
Laffter pointed a finger skyward and shrugged. “They tell me upstairs they wanta go with it, so we go with it. I can still work you in a graph, if you want, although that’s my idea, not theirs.”
“No quote,” Dill said. “Nothing.”
“For God’s sake, Laffter, not now,” Colder said and inserted himself between Dill and the old man.
“I’m doing him a favor,” Laffter said.
“Not now, damnit,” Colder said.
Laffter stared at him coldly. “It’s my job, sonny,” he snapped, stepped nimbly around Colder, and again confronted Dill. “No hard feelings, kid.”
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Dill said.
CHAPTER 20
Led by the two dozen Harley-Davidsons, which were themselves led by a green-and-white squad car with its bar flasher on, the mile-long funeral procession rolled at a stately fifteen miles per hour toward the Green Glade of Rest cemetery that once had been a hardscrabble farm on the eastern outskirts of the city.
