Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  Naturally, I went over the case in my head all the way home. Not that it did me any good. All I knew was, to the best I could determine, just before she died Julie Steinmetz had made appointments to see at least two Albany City Councilmen.

  And I had no idea why.

  28.

  I DON’T LIKE FUNERALS. I skip them if at all possible. Given my druthers, I’d like to skip mine. ’Cause they’re not for the dead, they’re for the living. The relatives of the dead. And I have problems dealing with such people. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say, I feel so awkward. The only thing I can think of to say is how sorry I am, which seems so stupid and so wrong. Yet nothing seems right. I just feel miserable and uncomfortable. And then I think, shit, well why shouldn’t I feel bad at a funeral? But I don’t think the bad I’m feeling is the bad you’re supposed to feel. You’re supposed to feel bad for the dear departed and the ones they left behind, not just uncomfortable for your own inadequacies. Of course, realizing that makes me feel even worse.

  It’s hard to function under such circumstances. I’ve gotten better at it, however, working for Richard. You see, some of Richard’s clients are dead. That’s because he handles accident cases, and sometimes the accidents are fatal. And I have to sign ’em up, just like any other client. Of course, I’m not dealing with them, I’m dealing with their families. Which, as I’ve said, makes me terribly uncomfortable. I feel like such a schmuck asking questions of a wife who’s lost a husband, or a mother who’s lost a child. But it’s my job and I have to do it, so I do. And the only thing that makes it bearable at all is the knowledge that the reason that I’m there asking them questions in their time of grief is because they asked me to come.

  No one asked me to come to Julie Steinmetz’s funeral. But I did.

  It was at the Riverside Memorial Chapel on Amsterdam Avenue. I drove over, found a parking space, went inside. A sign in the lobby said, Steinmetz, Second Floor. I went up and found it.

  It was pretty much what I’d expected. Medium-size room with a casket. Closed, thank god. About half a dozen people were standing around talking. Well-dressed yuppie types. Most likely Julie’s friends and acquaintances from the fashion industry.

  At the far end of the room a plump, middle-aged woman, dressed in black, sat on a chair. She wore glasses. The eyes behind them seemed dull and unseeing. Her whole face was a mask of doom. At first glance she looked totally dispirited. But her lips were set in a firm line. Her jaw was set too. As if there was anger behind the grief.

  The obituary in the New York Times had said Julie was survived by her mother. This woman had to be her. There was no mention of a father, so he was either dead or long departed. The woman was alone, isolated, unapproachable.

  I felt like a total shit. But I had an obstruction of justice charge hanging over my head that just might get changed to murder.

  I walked over.

  “Mrs. Steinmetz?”

  For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me. I didn’t have the balls to say it again, and I was on the point of turning and walking off, when the eyes flicked behind the glasses and turned to stare up at me.

  “Yes?” she said.

  I took a breath. “I’m Stanley Hastings,” I said. “I knew Julie. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

  For a moment or two she just looked at me. Then she said, “Thank you. So you’re one of Julie’s friends.” She shot a glance at the people at the other end of the room, then looked back at me. “Julie’s high society friends,” she said. “You know, aside from the funeral director, you’re the first person who’s spoken to me.”

  I could understand that. Sitting hunched in her chair with her jaw set, she’d looked like some malevolent gorgon. I wouldn’t have spoken to her if I hadn’t had to.

  “I take it you’re not from New York?”

  “No. I’m from Albany.”

  The magic word. On the one hand I tried not to appear excited, but on the other hand I wasn’t going to let it drop. “That’s where Julie grew up?” I asked.

  She frowned. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Just making conversation. It’s an awkward time. Hard to know what to say.”

  She snorted. “Yes, of course,” she said, irritably. “Isn’t it hard on you? What’s to become of me?”

  The phrase ’who gives a shit?’ came to mind. I could grant the woman her grief, but she was being downright nasty. And from what I’d seen so far, she was less upset about losing her daughter than she was about how she was being treated.

  I was mushy enough to feel bad for her anyway. “You all alone?” I asked. “The newspaper didn’t mention Julie’s father.”

  “Dead five years now. First him, now her. It’s very hard.”

  “She never mentioned a brother or sister. Was she your only child?”

  “My only child. There’s no one. No one.”

  Jesus Christ. I was ready to crackup and start screaming and begging for mercy. Given my natural reluctance to deal with the grieving, things couldn’t have been going worse. I was living poison to this woman. Everything I said was just driving her deeper and deeper into abject despair. I had a feeling she must have wanted to get away from me as much as I wanted to get away from her.

  Wrong again.

  She looked up at me and said, “You going to the cemetery?”

  I sure hadn’t planned to. But that sure sounded like an invitation. “Yes,” I said.

  “How are you getting there?”

  “I have my car outside.” I paused, wondering if she was fishing for it. “Could I give you a ride?”

  She was. She almost smiled. “That would be very nice. I was supposed to ride with the funeral director, but that’s rather grim.”

  Grim. Good lord. What did she think I was? For that matter, what did she think she was? The woman had practically invented grim. But, I figured, the ride would give me a chance to pump her about her daughter. Particularly about her daughter’s home life. The way I saw it, coming from Albany had earned Mrs. Steinmetz her ride to the cemetery.

  I told Mrs. Steinmetz I’d be glad to take her, and excused myself from her oppressive company.

  I walked over and introduced myself to Julie Steinmetz’s circle of acquaintances. Ordinarily I’m shy at meeting people. But with Julie’s mother watching me, I didn’t want to appear to be a total stranger. I also wanted to pick up any gossip about Julie that might help me. So I strode right in saying, “Hi, I’m Stanley Hastings,” right and left, and shaking hands with everybody and saying what a terrible thing it was, and did you know her well? and what a terrible thing to have happened, weren’t you surprised? and who could have possibly done such a thing?—and by the end of it they were all looking at me kind of funny. But all things considered, I think I played it pretty well. And while of course everyone there knew that they didn’t know me, I’d have been willing to bet you each and every one of them figured me to be a friend of someone else.

  I’d also be willing to bet you I didn’t learn one damn thing useful. No one young man stood out as Julie’s particular flame. No one stood out as Julie’s particular friend at all. Aside from me, the mood was convivial, almost party-like. The people gave the impression they were just ready to move on to the next watering hole.

  Which was of course the cemetery. Which turned out to be the Cypress Hills in Queens. I knew how to get there of course, having driven by it many times in my travels for Richard. This time I didn’t have to think about it. I was in a funeral procession. Just line up and follow the hearse.

  As funeral processions go, this one was rather limited. Of the revelers from the funeral parlor, at least half of them dropped out, apparently having an aversion to cemeteries, Queens, or both. That left the hearse, the car from the funeral parlor, a rental car with the remaining revelers, and me.

  I shamelessly attempted to pump Mrs. Steinmetz on the way out. She was more than willing to talk, or rather, complain. I was
doing my best to feel sympathetic for her under the circumstances, but even knowing she’d just lost a daughter, it was hard. Everything she said was laced with bitterness and self-pity. It was as if her daughter’s death had been a personal affront, aimed solely at her. Still, she was willing to talk, and I was willing to listen.

  Julie Steinmetz had grown up with her parents on a small farm on the outskirts of Albany. Years ago, Mr. Steinmetz had actually farmed the land, until rising costs had made it impossible to turn a profit, and like many other small farmers, he’d gone under—another personal affront, aimed directly at Mrs. Steinmetz. He’d then gone to work at a factory—I never did learn at what—where he remained till he died, yet another personal affront.

  Julie Steinmetz was twenty-eight. She’d grown up on the farm, gone to high school in Albany, gone to Cornell, but dropped out after one year (another personal affront), and come home to live with mom and dad. She’d hung around Albany till she was twenty-three, largely, I gathered, socializing and enjoying the night life. Through some contact or other—I gathered from the tone of Mrs. Steinmetz’s voice, a man—Julie’d become infused with the idea of going to Manhattan to become a model, and had taken off to do so. This coinciding with Mr. Steinmetz’s death, had left Mrs. Steinmetz alone and, to hear her tell it, destitute, and seemed to be the chief source of her bitterness.

  I sprang the names of the city councilmen on her, not identifying them as such, just as people Julie might have known. The name Fletcher didn’t ring a bell. The name Kevin Drexel was familiar to her. Mrs. Steinmetz couldn’t be sure why. She thought it possible he was one of Julie’s old boyfriends. I gathered Julie had always been rather uncommunicative about her boyfriends, and having met Mrs. Steinmetz, I could understand why.

  We got to the cemetery about then, and in a mercifully short ceremony, Julie Steinmetz was laid to rest.

  Mrs. Steinmetz and I got back in the car, pulled out, and headed back for New York.

  “Where can I take you?” I asked.

  “Port Authority. I have to catch the bus.”

  “Oh? What time?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They leave all day long.” She shuddered. “What does it matter? What does it matter now? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

  The woman dissolved into sobs.

  Which destroyed me. I wouldn’t know how to deal with a sobbing woman even if I weren’t driving a car. But cruising along the twisty Interboro Parkway there was really nothing I could do.

  I felt bad for her, of course. But I must say the “What am I to do?” sounded extreme. I didn’t understand it really. I mean, it wasn’t as if Julie had been living with her. The woman had been alone before. She had to deal with her loss, but not with a change of life style, if you know what I mean. I know that sounds heartless, but I was just trying to make some sense out the situation. I desperately needed something to make sense for me somehow. As usual, nothing did. So while I couldn’t deal with the woman’s grief on the one hand, on the other I couldn’t follow her. “What am I to do?” Try and dissect what that meant.

  I’m sure I would have had no luck on my own, but when she pulled herself together, Mrs. Steinmetz told me.

  “Two hundred dollars a week,” she said. “That’s what Julie sent me. Every single week. Ever since she got established. Well, less at first, a hundred, but for the last three years it’s been two.

  “But no more. Gone. Finished.

  “And no insurance. Nothing. A kind girl, but not smart. Not a planner, you know? Spent every cent she got. Nothing saved. Her apartment rented, not owned. No provisions. No insurance. Not even a will. Of course, she didn’t expect to die.”

  So. A concrete fact. Not a particularly helpful one, but at least a fact. Julie Steinmetz’s death reduced her mother’s income by two hundred dollars a week.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “What will you do now?”

  That was just what she wanted to hear. She jumped on it almost eagerly.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “What can I do? I’m old. I can’t work. I can’t maintain the farm. The taxes and the up keep. With two hundred a week it was tight. Without it, there’s no way. No way.”

  She seemed ready to lapse into sobbing again. I wanted to head that off, so I said quickly, “So what’ll you do, put it up for sale?”

  That staved off the weeping all right. She shot me a venomous look.

  “For sale?” she said. “Are you kidding me? It’s been on the market for five years. Ever since my husband died. No one wants it. There’s no profit in farming it, and it’s no good for anything else. Just flat, treeless land. Worthless.”

  My head snapped up. I was suddenly tense and alert.

  I guess I just read too many mysteries, but the minute she said the word, ’worthless,’ newspaper headlines started flashing in my head. URANIUM DEPOSITS IN UPSTATE NEW YORK. OIL DISCOVERED ON ALBANY FARM.

  I took a breath. The case was getting to me. This wasn’t a mystery story. Worthless land was worthless land. Mrs. Steinmetz’s problems were simply mundane, not the result of some sinister plot. My problem was I was stuck with an unsympathetic grieving mother and I was gonna have to fight midtown traffic to get her to Port Authority.

  So I said, “So you’ve been trying to sell the farm for five years, but no one’s interested?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll have to put it on the market again. Not that it will do any good.”

  “Again?” I said. “I thought it already was on the market.”

  “It was. Up until a month ago.”

  “What?” I said, once more tense and alert.

  “It’s been off the market since last month. Now I’ll have to see the broker, register with them again.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t understand. You took it off the market. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jesus. “I’m sorry. What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Julie called me. Told me to take it off the market.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “Of course I asked. She didn’t tell me. She was breezy, mysterious, the way she always was. ‘There, there, Mom, don’t you worry about a thing. Just do as I say and it will be all right.’”

  “Maybe she found a buyer.”

  “What?”

  “Some rich New Yorker who wanted an upstate retreat.”

  She shook her head. “The place is falling apart. I try, but I got no help. And even then. The foundation’s rotting away, you know? You couldn’t renovate it. Have to tear it down and rebuild. And if you’re gonna do that, you might as well just buy land. And if you’re buying land, you don’t buy flat, treeless land that’s no good for growing its keep.”

  “She must have had a reason. Didn’t you have any idea?”

  She frowned, shook her head. “Only one thing I could think of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “New highway’s going through.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not through my land. If it was, at least they’d have to pay me for that. But right along the north field.”

  “Wouldn’t that up the value?” I said. “Just the access? Why wouldn’t some housing developer want to put up a subdivision?”

  She waved it away. “Yeah. Sure. Ten or fifteen years from now, little good that’ll do me. You don’t build a flock of houses in the middle of nowhere. They’ll subdivide all right, but they’ll start closer into town. By the time they get out to my farm I’ll be long gone.”

  “All right. Well, what about a gas station? Department store. Maybe even a whole shopping mall? If this is a major highway you’re talking about—”

  “Oh it is. Four lanes wide.”

  “But it’s not a thruway? I mean it’s not like you’d be caught between exits. If someone wanted to build a mall, there’d be access?”

  She sighed. “Yeah. That’s the dream. Someone plunks down a pil
e of money to build a shopping mall. I’m out of there like that. Get me a place down in Florida. Getting old, you know. It’s the winters I can’t take.”

  “Well, maybe that’s it,” I said. “Maybe that’s what Julie had in mind.”

  She sighed. Shook her head. “Not a chance.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Couldn’t happen. Not on my land.”

  “No? Why is that?”

  She sighed again, frowned, and shook her head at what I realized was another in a long line of personal affronts.

  “It isn’t zoned commercial.”

  29.

  THIS TIME I KNEW my way around. I turned into the Empire State Plaza on the first pass, parked in the garage, wrote my car location in my notebook, took the elevator up to the North Concourse, came out the right tunnel, and walked down to City Hall.

  The gray-haired clerk sprang up when I came in. She met me at the counter.

  “I got all the New York papers,” she said. “Every one. There wasn’t a mention of the City Council.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “So what’s the story?”

  I smiled. “I think you have to reexamine your reverse logic. Just because someone tells you they’re not a reporter, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a reporter.”

  “You’re not a reporter?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you could have fooled me. What do you want?”

  I couldn’t resist. I pulled the ticket out of my pocket. “I got this parking ticket out by the monument, and I was wondering—”

  Her jaw dropped open. “I don’t believe it. After everything you said—”

  I shoved the ticket back in my pocket and held up my hands. “Just kidding. This ticket is my own damn fault, and I’m gonna pay. I don’t care about it and I’m not a reporter.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Well, maybe you are a reporter and you haven’t gotten the whole story yet.”

  “That’s an angle. What is the whole story?”

  “What?”

  “I have a few more questions.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s a new highway going through.”