The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  “I made you, Harold. You would’ve never got to be chief without me.”

  “I know that. But I am not going to jail for you.”

  “Let me tell you something.” Mike stood back, his voice scrounging down in the gutter. “You try and drown me, I’ll pull everyone else down with me.”

  “Then I take it you already have the name of a good lawyer.” Harold gave him a circumspect look.

  “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

  He saw Harold shake his head at Paco, as if they were a couple of gravediggers rubbing their hands. Thirty-two years. So this is how you bury a friendship. You bring a stranger with you.

  “Look,” said Harold, reaching into his back pocket for a white business card, “I brought along Dr. Friedman’s phone number at County Psych Services, in case you lost it. I remember how she helped you out after Johnny died.”

  “Just what I need. A professional friend.”

  Mike took the card from the chief, tore it in half, and handed it back to him.

  “There. Now you can say you tried.”

  Harold stared at the torn pieces in his palm. “Can’t make a man take a lifeline if he doesn’t want it.” He said it not so much to Mike, or even to Paco, but to himself.

  “No, you certainly can’t,” said Mike, hitching up his chinos and drawing up to his full height.

  “Fine, we’ll do it your way.” Harold sighed in resignation. “Go get me your gun and badge. We’ll wait out here. No one wants to humiliate you in front of your family.”

  31

  WITH EACH THUMP and scatter of dirt hitting the coffin lid, Lynn felt the hollowness inside her chest.

  A breeze swept across Green Hill Cemetery as she watched the ritual of mourners taking turns shoveling dirt into Sandi’s grave, having heard Saul and Rabbi Heyman from B’nai Israel recite the burial Kaddish.

  “Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’mei rabbaw …”

  The words still seemed to circle in the wind. But a different recitation was going on in her head.

  That’s my friend down there in that rosewood box. That’s real dirt they’re throwing on top of her. These are three dozen people we both knew dressed in black, gathered in a circle around this hole in the ground. Those are her children back in the rented Lincoln Town Car by the entrance with their step-grandmother. Those are her feckless brothers at the back of the crowd. That’s the man she married, looking ashen and anemic. That’s my husband standing beside me in a black yarmulke, holding my hand and bowing his head.

  Amen.

  Grief kept reinventing itself and finding new ways into her. She remembered a woman she’d met at Sloan-Kettering with Sandi last spring, an old lady with Alzheimer’s and a double mastectomy. Every night she forgot what had happened to her, and every morning she woke up and started crying again.

  She saw Saul, his hair brilliantined and his eyebrows trimmed, take the shovel and stare bitterly at his son-in-law. With a grunt, he stooped and stuck the blade into the mound and then ladled the dirt lovingly into his daughter’s grave. A decommissioned old warship adrift on a dark river. She understood that he needed to do something with all this pent-up rage, but this seemed wrong. Not a half-hour before, Jeffrey had delivered the eulogy at B’nai Israel and spoke so movingly of how Sandi had been his soul mate and conscience that tears burned the corners of Lynn’s eyes like kerosene. So weren’t they all part of this growing province of grieving people?

  She looked up the hill toward the grove where she’d buried her own mother last year. Harold and Paco Ortiz stood in the shade of an elm near the grave, with their heads lowered but their eyes conspicuously alert. Something about seeing them here broke the mood. Were they paying their respects or on the job?

  She turned back, watching Saul daven, rocking back and forth over the grave. Lost in bereavement, he closed his eyes and began to recite the Kaddish all over again, having forgotten he’d already done it. Marty Pollack came to the head of the grave and took the shovel from him. He bent over to stick the blade into the pyramid of dirt and then stopped and delicately touched the small of his own back as if he’d injured himself. Jeanine came up quickly and took the shovel from him, tossing a coffee cup’s-worth of soil down on the lid and fulfilling the family’s obligation. Again, the thump felt like a depth charge going off inside Lynn. The finality of it. The grain-by-grain reality of covering someone she’d known all her life. The surrendering of flesh to the earth. She decided that when her turn came she’d have to pass.

  Barry let go of her hand and went to take the shovel from Jeanine. Something about watching him unbutton his suit jacket and get down to business made Lynn feel slightly distant from him. He could say he understood what she was going through, but really he couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t quite get to him after his father died. Grief put a velvet rope around you. People could come and look, but they couldn’t touch. Barry turned the shovel over, and a hard lump of dirt fell and broke on the coffin lid. The sound caused Saul to look up from his davening.

  “V’yis’halawl sh’mei d’kudshaw b’rich hu …”

  Slowly, all eyes went back to the grave, except for Harold’s. Lynn saw him staring into the mid-distance, that look of alertness beginning to pull his heavy features together.

  “L’aylaw min kol …”

  Barry handed the shovel to Jeffrey with a solemn man-to-man nod and then went back to Lynn’s side. “He’ll be all right,” he muttered. But she was distracted, seeing Harold give Paco a small nudge.

  “B’all’maw, v’imru: Amein.”

  “Amein,” the men in the crowd answered.

  Jeffrey sniffed, dug into the pile, and started to bring out an unsteady scoop. But then the shovel stopped and hovered over Sandi’s coffin, a few shaky grains spilling over the side and pouring down on the lid. Something was not right here. His mouth opened slightly, and the lenses of his glasses turned into opaque white circles. Following his gaze, Barry looked over his own shoulder. Then Jeanine started to whisper to Marty and point urgently.

  “Y’hei shlawmaw rabbaw …” Saul’s voice trailed off.

  Lynn turned and saw Mike Fallon lumbering up the hill toward them, over the low-lying tombstones and the paling neatly trimmed grass. He seemed to bring a highly charged ion field with him. The sight of his thick wrists dangling from the sleeves of an ill-fitting dark suit only heightened the sense of a man out of place.

  “Min sh’mayaw, v’chayim … ,” Saul began to recite the prayer again, oblivious to the disturbance.

  Lynn saw Paco Ortiz’s chest swell as he started down the hill to intercept him. But then Harold took his arm and pulled him back, waiting to see what would develop. Saul’s bewildered eyes found Lynn’s, requesting explanation. But all she could do was dip her shoulders helplessly.

  “Awleinu v’al kol yisroel …”

  Jeffrey turned over his shovel full of dirt and then lowered the blade as the circle of mourners parted. Mike stepped between them and boldly walked right up to Jeffrey, the interloper confronting the bereft. They stared at each other blankly, like species encountering each other for the first time.

  It was, Lynn decided, the most uncomfortable thing she’d ever seen.

  Mike, a good two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Jeff, firmly seized the shovel from his hands and looked around the circle, daring anyone to try to take it back from him. His eyes lingered on Barry, doubling the challenge. Lynn squeezed her husband’s hand, silently begging him not to rise to the bait again.

  “Oseh shawlom bim’ro’mawv …” The rabbi joined Saul in running through the prayer a second time, trying to complete the ancient words of a tribe used to burying its dead while under siege.

  Satisfied that no one was going to try to take the shovel from his hands, Michael loosened his tie, bent his knees, and dug into the mound as if he was about to heap coal into a steam engine. Dirt cascaded over rosewood. Most of the other mourners had only tossed a small ceremonial amount in. But Mike pivot
ed and threw another load down and then another, a small rivulet of perspiration appearing by his temple, glimpses of scalp reddening vividly through his bristle cut. Several of the women in the circle stepped back, not wanting any part of this confrontation. Saul looked at his useless sons and then at each of the other men in the circle, imploring one of them to intercede. But then Mike suddenly stopped, having completed his tribute. He turned and handed the shovel back to Jeffrey, as if to say, See, that’s how it’s done.

  Then he walked out of the circle and back down the hill again.

  32

  THREE DAYS LATER, Lynn picked up the small bronze coffin that sat at the edge of the chief’s desk and turned it slowly, noticing its craftsmanship—the tiny hinges on the side, the minuscule indentations representing nails in the lid, and the name of the funeral home etched on the side.

  “So, what’d you think of Sandi’s funeral?” she asked Harold, who sat before her, half-tilted back in his leather chair, bifocals riding down his nose as he reviewed her complaint against Mike.

  “Can’t go wrong with understatement,” he said, turning a page and still not quite meeting her eyes.

  “I meant what Mike did at the graveside.”

  Instead of answering immediately, Harold just rocked in his chair, flipping back and forth between one page and another as if trying to understand an abrupt transition.

  “We all grieve in our own way,” he said finally.

  Poor Harold. His office was starting to feel like a reinforced air lock with all the pressure building up outside. In the week since Sandi’s headless body had been found, there’d been emergency town meetings, Neighborhood Watch Groups formed, beefed-up security around the schools. A hot line number for anonymous tips had been set up at the police station, and blue and red signs for ADT and Slomin’s Shield security systems had begun popping up in front of houses like crabgrass. But none of it was enough to reassure anyone, especially with the backdrop of local Activist Moms complaining that not enough was being done to safeguard the nuclear power plant twelve miles up the road from terrorist attack. All at once, the tag line of every other conversation in the parking lots and driveways seemed to be But when are they going to do something? And obviously Harold could not have missed the unspoken implication: that everything had gone to hell as soon as a black man was put in charge.

  “I guess you must’ve heard they were seeing each other, Sandi and Mike,” Lynn offered tentatively.

  “And where did you hear that?” Harold replied cautiously, staying in neutral.

  “Hmm, people who’ve been around the house.” Lynn lowered her voice, not wanting to expose Inez as her source and betray a confidence.

  “Well, then I can’t comment to you about that,” Harold said. “It would be prejudicial.”

  “Of course.”

  She put the little coffin back down on his desk and brooded for a while, still seeing the image of Mike shoveling dirt into Sandi’s grave. Had Harold known about the affair already? He would have been hard-pressed not to have suspected it after the funeral.

  “So how’s it going with Sandi’s case?” she said, changing the subject.

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “Is there a lot of talk about the state or the county police coming in to help out?”

  “We have most of the resources we need within our own department,” he said curtly.

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  She folded her hands on her lap, hoping she hadn’t offended him. Her affection for Harold had been one of the real constants for her in this town. Even as a teenager he’d had a kind of stolid patience beyond his years, always listening to everyone else’s arguments to the last intemperate word and then talking sense to them. Always knowing just the right thing to do and say to calm everyone down, whether it was in the middle of a schoolyard brawl or a funeral with two hundred and fifty guests waiting in the chapel.

  He suddenly brought his chair upright and took his bifocals off.

  “Lynn, may I speak with you?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s why you asked me here.”

  “No, I mean, can I really speak with you? Plainly and honestly. About this other matter.”

  He looked down at the double-spaced two-page complaint Barry had made her type out about Mike coming in to her studio and trying to kiss her.

  “Sure.” She felt her ears pop as if the room had changed altitude. “I realize it seems awfully trivial compared to everything that’s going on …”

  He cut her off. “I asked your husband to wait outside while we talked because you’ve put me in a difficult position.”

  She looked back at the door, wondering how Barry was doing in the outer office with the year-old Sports Illustrateds and People magazines. At least a half-dozen cops had wandered past the doorway while they were waiting, blatantly checking out the skirt and the stiff who’d brought charges against the number-two man in their department.

  “Normally, Mike would be the one running an Internal Affairs investigation into an officer, but since he’s the subject in this case, that’s obviously not an option.”

  He put his glasses down on the statement, and through the lenses she saw the words at that point, Michael tried to put his hand down the back of my pants magnified beyond fourteen-point type.

  “My other main detective, Paco Ortiz, is running the homicide investigation, so I can’t ask him either.” Harold rubbed his eyes, plunging blindly ahead. “That leaves me. And I’ve known both of you most of my life.”

  “Harold, if there was any other way …”

  “Wait.” He held up a hand. “Now, I am not in a position to tell you not to press charges against Michael. That would be an abuse of my position. My job is to take the statements from you and your husband and then turn them over to a prosecuting attorney appointed by the board. And once that happens, the entire matter is out of my hands.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’ll be a disciplinary hearing put on the schedule, and you’ll be called upon to testify in open court. And once that ball starts rolling, there’s no way to stop it.”

  She felt a dry leathery spot crack at the top of her throat and realized that she hadn’t swallowed since she’d walked into the office. I don’t want to do this, she’d told Barry last night. We have to live in this town.

  “Are you condoning what he did and telling us to just let it go?” she asked cautiously, licking her lips and wondering if she’d worn too much makeup today.

  “No, I am not. But I want to make sure you have the full picture before you decide to move forward.”

  “Harold, that sounds a little bit like a warning.”

  He gave her the famous tombstone eye, a look that said, Go no farther. “I don’t need to tell you how long the Fallon family has been in this town. Michael is an important part of this community. He raised eighteen thousand dollars last year organizing a bowling tournament for Sergeant Quinn and his wife after their daughter got leukemia. He took the Little League team to the county finals three years in a row and helped pay for the runner-up trophies out of his own pocket. And the truth is, you wouldn’t even be sitting here if he hadn’t cleaned up the crack problem down by the train station. Because you wouldn’t have wanted to buy a house in Riverside …”

  “So does that mean the law shouldn’t apply to him?”

  One corner of his mouth jerked, threatening a quick smile. “This is not an opinion,” he said. “This is stating facts.”

  “But you’re telling me that everyone’s automatically going to be on his side.”

  He sighed and hunched forward, his fingertips forming a kind of triangle. “I’m saying this is a situation involving two people I care about. And both of you could get hurt badly.”

  “Oh?”

  She crossed her ankles and stretched back into the confines of her chair, trying to look guiltless.

  “If you get up on the stand, you’re gonna be subjected to all kinds of ugl
y questions. The normal rules of evidence and procedure don’t apply in a disciplinary hearing. A defense lawyer can ask you anything he wants.”

  “I see.”

  She was aware of a small pain starting to grow, very much like a flathead screwdriver wedging in under one of her shoulder blades.

  “They might dredge up all manner of things from the past that might be very painful for a person with a family to hear discussed in public.”

  “You’re not blackmailing me, Harold, are you?”

  She saw something flare white-hot in his eyes and only cool slightly with the hooding of his lids. And for just an instant, she sensed the sheer physical exertion and strain of his life, all the effort it took to keep other people from ever glimpsing the true depth of his anger.

  “I am trying to give you the information you need to make an intelligent decision,” he said, as if he had a steel bit clenched between his back teeth. “What you do with it is up to you.”

  The digging under her shoulder blade sharpened. She should have told Barry more before they came in here today. But there were parts of her old life that she’d barely even admitted to herself, let alone tried to explain to anyone else. They were like pictures that sat at the bottom of a chemical tray for too long, dark and undeveloped.

  “Barry said there was a good chance that Mike would fold and take a plea once he saw our statements rather than go through the whole process.”

  Harold shrugged. “I can’t predict the future. I’d have thought you might’ve dropped these charges after your husband’s arrest got voided.”

  “You don’t know Barry. His gears don’t do reverse.”

  “And neither do Mike’s. He’s pushing to get this hearing over with so he can get reinstated right away. And the mayor’s thinking the same thing. He doesn’t want this mess hanging over the whole department while we’re trying to solve a homicide and restore confidence. They’re talking about putting this trial on next week.”