The Undertaker

by Brown, William

  I looked over at Sandy in her new clothes. “MIT? That's a new look for you.”

  “I'm studying to be a rocket scientist.”

  “We already have one in the family, we don't need another one.”

  “Whoa!” She stopped walking and turned me around where she could see my face. “What was with that “family” thing? Don't tease me about something like that, Talbott.”

  “I wasn't teasing, but you're right. This isn't a real good time to be making long-range plans.”

  “Don't worry, I'm not going to trap you into something you aren't ready for.” She threw her arms around my neck. “But you're damned lucky you didn't say anything like that to me back in the laundromat. I'd have dragged your butt into the restroom and given Lena a real story to take home to the kids.”

  We crossed over to Hanover Street and ducked into a dark doorway near a flower distributor. She snuggled underneath my new windbreaker. “Is there some reason we're hiding here watching trucks?” she whispered.

  “Maybe we can scarf a ride. If we can get to Providence or New Haven or somewhere, we can sneak on a morning train to New York.”

  Two buildings over was the warehouse of a large vegetable distributor. The overhead door was up and the bright light inside cascaded out into the street. Three men with handcarts carried out stacks of small wooden crates filled with vegetables and loaded them into a large, white panel truck with “DeFanucci Brothers, Green Grocers, Providence” stenciled on the side. The truck appeared to be loaded. The driver was a middle-aged man in a long grocer's apron, with a thick head of curly black hair. He checked the paper on his clipboard and then rolled down the rear door and walked back into the warehouse.

  “Come on,” I said as I pulled Sandy to the side of the truck.

  A few minutes later, the driver came out and walked around the front of the cab, where he saw us standing next to his door. He stopped short. “Can I help you?” he asked suspiciously, eyeing us both up and down.

  “Are you with DeFanucci's in Providence, by any chance?” I asked.

  The driver nodded, still not sure. “Yeah, I'm Dominick. Why?”

  “I'm Steve Bowen. This is my friend Wendy. She goes to Brown, in Providence…”

  “In an MIT sweatshirt?”

  “Oh, that's mine,” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, we were up here at a concert and my car got stolen. I've got to get her back to campus, and I saw your truck. Well, I wondered if we could talk you into a ride. I mean, I'll pay you some money if you'll take us, but we're like, really in a bind.”

  He looked us both over again, but we must not have looked too threatening. “How much?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” I tried to look as helpless as I could. “Fifty?”

  “Make it a hundred,” Dominick answered.

  “Seventy-five!” Sandy shot back. “And we get to ride in the back.”

  “Deal,” he snorted as he looked at her. “But no squashing the veggies. I know these Brown girls. She gets too excited back there, you pay for anything you crush.”

  “Deal,” she said with a big grin.

  He rolled up the back door and let us climb inside. “There's a couple of tarps and a stack of mover's blankets over there on the side so you can get comfortable. You sure you're up for this, Steve? It's going to be an hour and a half before I let you out of there, you know. That can be a lifetime with a Brown girl.” he winked at her. “But I'll honk when we get near Providence.”

  He waited for us to throw the moving pads on the floor, then rolled the door down and latched it from the outside. It was pitch black inside as I joined her on the floor. She put her hands under my shirt and put her head on my chest, then lay there quietly.

  This was a mood I had not seen, I thought, as I stroked her hair.

  “Here I have you alone in the dark again, and all I want to do is crawl under your shirt and hide. I'm sorry,” she whispered. “But I'm terrified that something's going to happen to you. Can you understand that?’

  We lay there quietly like that all the way to Providence, her head lying on my chest while I stroked her hair. After what we found in Doug's kitchen and all the rest of what they had been throwing at us the past few days, we needed some quiet time to reaffirm life and get comfortable with what was going on between us, but that was good.

  As we crossed into Rhode Island, she pulled my shirt up and slowly ran a line of kisses across my chest. “When we get to Providence, let's get a room. There's no sense getting to New York in the middle of the night and I'm really, really tired.”

  It was almost 11:00 when we heard the horn beep. Five minutes later, we felt the truck slow and stop moving. The driver's side door opened and slammed shut, and we heard footsteps coming around to the rear. When Dominick rolled the truck's rear door up, we were sitting innocently on the moving pad.

  “How did my veggies do back here?” he asked.

  “We didn't crush a single grape,” Sandy said. “But the avocadoes blushed.”

  “Ain't love wonderful? Then I'll cut you some slack on the veggie abuse, but I don't have to send those moving pads to the cleaners, do I?” he chortled.

  “Heavens no,” Sandy answered demurely. “I'm a Brown girl.”

  “Yeah, my ass!” Dominick laughed as we dropped to the ground and he rolled the rear door down. “Well, Brown girl, there's the front gate, as promised.” He pointed to two brick columns a short distance up the street.

  “You're a life saver, Dominick,” I told him as I handed him a hundred dollar bill.

  “The deal was only for seventy-five,” he said.

  “Yeah, but the lady's embarrassed and we were hoping the extra twenty-five might help you forget all about us being in the back of your truck tonight.”

  “I already did,” he said as he pocketed the money and helped us down. He got in the truck and drove off, while we walked down to a taxi stand that was outside the campus gate. We hopped in the first cab in line.

  “What's the nicest hotel downtown?” Sandy leaned forward and asked the driver.

  “That would be the Marriott. It ain't far.”

  “Is the train station near there?”

  “Yep, just down the street.”

  “Great!” She sat back and pulled my arm around her. “When it's late at night and you need a room in a strange town, with no reservation and no luggage, money talks. And the more you pay and the bigger the tip you leave, the less the desk clerks will remember… Sister Josephine, and don't ask.”

  The room cost us another $380 of the goon's money, but Sandy was right, discretion comes at a price. The room was on an upper floor. I was exhausted and collapsed in the middle of the King-sized bed on my back while she headed for the Jacuzzi in the equally large bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes in her wake. By the time she reached the bathroom door, she had nothing on and looked back at me over her shoulder, “All I want is a long, hot bath to get the mud from that alley and the smell of vegetables off me, followed by a good night's sleep.”

  “Sounds great,” I answered as she closed the door. I got up long enough to get undressed and pull the bedspread and blankets down. I heard the water running in the bathroom and I guess I heard the Jacuzzi motor start, and then I was out like a light. The next thing I remember was warm, moist skin settling down gently on top of me. She put her arms around my neck and I could smell her and feel her engulfing me.

  “Remember the part about me only wanting a hot bath and a good night's sleep?” she whispered in my ear. “Well, I lied.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  New York: a rolling stones is harder to hit…

  I didn't sleep long, but I did sleep well. This was the first time we had slept together in something that wasn't narrow, moving, or bouncing down the road smelling of lettuce and avocados. You would think that moving from a narrow bunk no more than four feet wide to a huge king-sized bed might gain a tiny bit of separation. No. Even when Sandy was sound asleep, if I moved, she moved with me, up, down,
across, and right up to the edge of the bed, never losing contact. The girl was like Crazy Glue. Obviously, she would take some getting used to.

  The sun was up when I woke the first time. I was lying at the left edge of the bed and she was laying half on top of me, sound asleep. Our room was on an upper floor and we hadn't bothered to close the drapes on the bay window at the foot of the bed. They were wide open and the morning sun streamed in across the bed and across us. Lying there, I was able to look up and out the window to the high blue sky. Instinctively I looked for Terri, and that was the instant I knew she was gone, and she would not be coming back. Surprisingly, that sudden realization did not terrify me, fill me with grief, or rip my heart out, because I understood this was what Terri had always wanted.

  At 9:30, I woke again to find Sandy standing next to the bed. She still wore the high-speed, karate-kicking Reeboks, but her light-brown hair had been combed-out and styled soft and full. She wore soft, pastel makeup, and she was wearing a brand new outfit — an attractive, light gray pants suit with a dark blue blouse and pearls. The effect was stunning. The sharp-edged sales clerk I followed up North Michigan Avenue was completely gone now. She had an older, more professional look, like an ad out of Vogue.

  “I couldn't sleep, so I took some of the cash from the gumba in Boston and hit a couple of stores down the street.” She tuned slowly around for me to see. “You like?” She asked proudly.

  I looked her over, head to toe. “What I see, is the glowing, relaxed look of someone who has been getting laid way too often.”

  “I'll be the judge of that.” She grinned from ear to ear. She opened a bag and put my new clothes on the bed for inspection. There was a pair of pleated, light gray, men's dress slacks, a white silk shirt with French cuffs, and a dark-gray striped sports coat. With the blonde hair and clear sunglasses, the new look should work for me, too.

  “You want me to try them on?” I asked.

  “Actually,” she said as she began unbuttoning her blouse, “I thought I'd take mine off. See, the train doesn't leave for two hours...”

  “And we wouldn't want to get them wrinkled… being new and all.”

  “It's amazing how fast you catch on now.”

  And it was amazing what that girl could do in an hour when she wanted to.

  Packing and checking out were very quick, and we walked outside into a delightful New England summer morning. The sun was shining and the sky was clear. The train station was less than a half mile away, so we walked, passing a Starbucks where I stopped for a cup of real coffee and a pay phone.

  “You're calling Billingham again?” Sandy asked.

  I nodded as I dialed his office number and began dropping in coins. This time I got a real person and asked for his secretary. When I told her my name, she immediately replied, “Oh, yes. Mr. Billingham is expecting your call.”

  It was less than a minute before I heard a thick, friendly, baritone voice at the other end of the line. “Mister Talbott, you have been a busy fellow these past few days.”

  “A rolling stone gathers no bullets, Mister Billingham.”

  “An excellent point. What can I do for you?”

  “It's important that we talk, important to both of us.”

  “Important, eh? Well, I have this line swept three times a day, so go on.”

  “No, face-to-face. I have some information that might interest you.”

  “Interest me? I doubt that.”

  “I guarantee you won't regret it.” There was a long pause at the other end of the phone. “How about later this afternoon?” I asked. “Not in your office, some place outside, with wide open spaces.”

  “Here in Manhattan? My, my, you do roll,” he chuckled. “Assuming you are familiar with the city, perhaps Washington Square, under the arch at say, 5:00 PM?”

  “I'll find it, but I thought your office was on Sixth Avenue, in Midtown?”

  “Excellent. I appreciate a man who does his homework. My office is indeed up in Midtown, but I have a 3:30 class down at NYU.”

  “Really? What are you taking?”

  “No, no, Mr. Talbott,” he laughed. “I'm teaching, not taking — Advanced Criminal Procedure, and it usually draws a pretty good crowd, if I do say so myself.”

  “I saw you on TV a couple of days ago.”

  “What a monstrous waste of time. Well, if you watched, you'll know I am fat and jolly, completely bald, and I'm never without a big smile or a couple of large bodyguards. So don't get any peculiar ideas, Mr. Talbott, or try to do anything but talk.”

  “Me? I'm a pussy cat, Mister Billingham.”

  “That's not what the Boston Globe said about you this morning, or the Chicago Tribune the day before. And I guess the Columbus papers the day before that, but who's counting, eh?”

  “None of that stuff is true.”

  “Of course not. I'm a defense attorney, remember? That's what all my clients tell me,” he chuckled. “But if you really are part of the innocent, tiny minority, that's all the more reason for you to be careful. 5:00 PM is a long time from now and like most pussy cats, you've already used up most of your nine lives… and “ciao,” Mr. Talbott.”

  Two doors down from the Starbucks was a bookstore. We ducked inside and I bought a copy of the Boston Globe, curious about the story Billingham mentioned. I opened it and groaned. This time we had made page one. They had my photo again, with the headline, “Torture Slaying in Back Bay, Midwest Cop Killers Believed in Boston,” and they had enough of the details and the twisted background to convince me it was more of Ralph Tinkerton's handiwork. This time, they had Sandy's photograph too. Mine was the same old California driver's license mug shot they used in Chicago, but Sandy's was even worse. Her black hair looked dirty and uncombed, not stylishly “messy,” her skin was pale and fleshy, and she wore black lip-gloss and eyeliner. With a pair of dull, dead eyes and dark bags underneath, she must have been in her Goth phase. I turned the paper and showed her.

  “Which was it?” I asked. “A horrible hangover or Halloween?”

  She stared at the picture without saying a word and I could see the tears start to form.

  “Hey, I'm sorry,” I said. “I was only kidding.”

  “You should keep that,” she pointed at it and managed a whisper. “You can pull it out any time I get moody or piss you off, or you don't think I appreciate you enough. That was me, about a year ago, after I hit bottom. Like I said, you need to keep it.”

  “Well, one good thing,” I said, as I gave her a hug. “That sure isn't you anymore.”

  The ride down to New York's Pennsylvania Station at 34th Street and Seventh Avenue in Midtown took about three hours. When we crossed into Connecticut, I began to relax. With all the local crime in New York, the newspapers in the Big Apple would have more than enough of their own news without needing Boston or Chicago stories for filler. By the time we reached central Connecticut, the sky had turned gray as fresh showers came up the Atlantic coast to meet us.

  The station is underground, and Sandy and I joined the flow of bodies heading for the narrow escalators. The old, granite, neo-classical train station had been torn down and replaced by the Madison Square Garden sports arena. The railroad waiting room and ticket windows were in the basement, complete with the usual array of homeless, Hari Krishnas, panhandlers, bag ladies, and three-card Monte dealers. In the middle, we found a large, confusing map that showed the complex array of bus, train, and subway routes that overlaid the five boroughs.

  “Looks like the wiring diagram for the space shuttle,” I mumbled, trying to orient myself to the big map.

  She stared at the map for a second, as if she was taking it all in, then her finger shot out and touched a spot on the map. “There's Washington Square at the lower end of Fifth Avenue. Isn't that where we're going?”

  I stared at her, wondering how she did that.

  “And those little dots? Aren't those the subway stops around it? If we took this line here.” Her finger traced a thin green
line across the map. “But we aren't really going to take the subway again, are we?” She wrinkled up her nose. “Yuk.”

  “We can walk if you'd like,” I glanced at my watch and saw it was only 2:45. “Our meeting with Billingham isn't until 5:00,” I said.

  “Good. My butt is tired of sitting.”

  “It's probably raining out there, you know.”

  “Talbott, when you're in love, you can walk right between the drops.” She wrapped herself around my arm and pulled me away. “Let's get out of here before I figure out a better use of that extra two hours.”

  We took the escalator up to the street. Standing under the canopy at 34th and 7th Avenue, we looked out on a sea of umbrellas bobbing past in the misty summer rain. On the corner, I spotted one of the ubiquitous New York street vendors selling cheap umbrellas for $10.00. Yesterday they were probably $5.00 and he was mostly selling knock-off Oakley sunglasses, but yesterday the sun was shining.

  “Love's great,” I told her as a raindrop dripped off my nose. “But even Gene Kelly used an umbrella.”

  “Just buy one. If you buy two, you'll make me cry.”

  As we walked down 7th Avenue, Washington Square lay ahead of us in the gray mist about three miles away, but it was an easy walk huddled under the umbrella. The rain was only a light drizzle and the extra time would give us a chance to check out the meeting site. Sandy was wrapped around my arm as we walked south and I realized how comfortable that felt now. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned, and pulled her to me. Our lips met and we stood, arms entwined, kissing, mouths open, tongues probing, for a good two minutes. In any other city, we would get comments, odd looks, or even a few loud grumbles, but not in New York. You can get away with anything for five minutes on a New York sidewalk.

  “Not too shabby,” she said as I finally put her down. “Was there some particular reason for that?” she asked, smacking her lips to get the circulation back.

  “None at all, I just felt like doing it.”

  “Just like that, huh?”