OUTSIDE THE CHAPEL Uncle Max and the man called Laszlo were arguing loudly, or at least Uncle Max was arguing loudly, while Kyle’s mother leaned on the rear end of a parked car and smoked. There was a certain unsurprised quality to her smile now, as if this argument was exactly what she had expected when she showed up at the funeral and sent her only begotten son to the front of the chapel to touch the urn containing his father’s ashes.
“What are you going to do to take care of this family?” said Uncle
Max. “We need this settled here and now.”
“This isn’t the place to have this discussion,” said Laszlo. “Why the hell not? This looks like a perfect place to me. Let’s
bring out that Mrs. Byrne and all hash it out together. Why the hell shouldn’t his son have a right to sit in at his own father’s funeral? Who the hell are you and her to tell him that he can’t?”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Hell no, we’ll talk about it now, you son of a bitch. And if need be, we’ll get our own damn lawyers.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“Why is it that when a lawyer says getting another lawyer involved isn’t necessary, it always turns out to be necessary as hell?”
While the two men argued, Kyle squatted in the sunlight and rubbed a stick along the parking lot, leaving trails of bark atop the asphalt. His cheek ached, as if the witch with the puffy red lips had thrown a fastball at his face. But even worse was the sight of all those important people giving their condolences to her. Why weren’t they giving their condolences to him?
I’m so sorry for your loss. Your father was a fine, fine man. Please know we’re all thinking of you
. He wanted condolences. Where were his condolences? He guessed they were lost, along with his tears.
Liam Byrne had never been a huge physical presence in Kyle’s life. Kyle couldn’t remember anymore the time when his father had lived with them, he only knew of it from his mother’s say-so. What Kyle remembered was his father’s “Hello, boyo,” when he would show up at the house every other month or so, to be served drinks and dinner by his mother, or maybe very occasionally at the field behind the police station to watch Kyle pitch. Kyle assumed his father called him “boyo” because he couldn’t remember his real name. His father had always been more a ghost in Kyle’s life than anything else, so it seemed almost natural that he had become the real thing. The only difference for Kyle was that from here on in, when he looked at the stands from the Little League mound, he wouldn’t be disappointed over and again.
Still, he knew in his heart there should be something more than this emptiness: no tears, no condolences, just a bruised cheek and a sordid argument in a hot parking lot. He thought of going back inside and telling everyone who he was, going pew to pew asking for condolences.
He was my father,
he’d say. And then they’d all start in.
We’re so sorry. You must be such a brave boy. If there is anything we can do.
Maybe he should just go in and touch the urn like he had tried to do before, maybe that would break the dam and let everything flow. Except the Secret Service man was still there to stop him.
Kyle stood up, tossed the stick away, went over to his mother. “How come they won’t let us back inside?” he said.
“It’s complicated.”
“His wife talks funny. Is she French?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why he wouldn’t leave her?”
Kyle’s mother let out a bark of a laugh.
“They didn’t let me touch it,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The urn.”
“That’s too bad, Kyle.”
“Who gets it after this is over?”
“I suppose they’ll bury it.”
“Why don’t we get it?”
“Would you really want it?”
“No, not really,” he said, but it was a lie.
Kyle was not one of those kids who needed the latest of everything. He hadn’t begged his mom for a superpowered aluminum baseball bat or a Wilson 2000 baseball glove, hadn’t whined for the Nintendo Super NES when his Sega system became outdated. But suddenly, more than anything he had ever wanted in his entire life, he wanted that urn.
He started walking toward the chapel door as Uncle Max continued his argument.
“We just want to know how you’re going to step up and satisfy his obligations,” Uncle Max said, his face red, spittle flying. “Tell us that we’ll get what’s fair. Let’s hear it, come on.”
At the entrance Kyle stood for a moment rubbing his cheek. Then he opened one of the doors and slipped inside.
When the door closed behind him, Uncle Max’s bray disappeared, replaced instead by the soft and insistent voice of a priest, talking from the altar. Kyle didn’t look at the priest or the heads that swiveled to take in his presence, or even the Secret Service man, who noticed him enter and started walking toward him from the front of the chapel. All he saw was the urn, flowery and stout, like a jolly little man, waiting to be touched, held, waiting to be lovingly embraced.
And then time slowed down into discrete and perfectly understandable moments.
This was how it felt sometimes on the mound before a crucial pitch, or just before a play in football as he dropped into his stance in the backfield and the quarterback began to bark the signals. Things slowed down. And the action, when it came, seemed to happen unhurriedly and step by step, with the simple geometry of a pool game, even as it happened haphazardly and all at once in real time.
The Secret Service man in the dark suit came up the aisle, slowly, jerkily, like in an old movie. Kyle charged right at him, threw out a straight arm, bounced off toward the front of the chapel. He sprinted up the aisle, snatched the urn, popped a spin move before dashing to the side door. His left hip slammed into the latch bar.
In the chapel’s parking lot, when the alarm went off, Laszlo started searching around even as Uncle Max continued with his rant. “You look at me when I’m talking,” said Uncle Max, jabbing his finger right into Laszlo’s face. Kyle’s mom, still leaning against the car, turned her head to see what was happening. And then she started laughing, a light, sardonic laugh. She laughed as she spotted her son, Kyle Byrne, suit jacket flapping behind him, tearing off like a flushed fox into the depths of the cemetery, the flowered urn tucked into the crook of his arm like an oversize green football.
Years later, when questions about his father’s death rose like a cobra from its basket, when he found himself caught within a story of low violence and high aspirations, of family pathologies and political ambition and murder, in that time of mystery and blood, Kyle Byrne would think back on that sprint through the graveyard as the purest moment in his sad, misspent life.
He hadn’t gotten far, actually. After a few seconds of glorious freedom, alone with just his father by his side, his foot had caught the top of a gravestone he was trying to hurdle, sending him sprawling and the urn flying through the air. The urn landed with a thunk and a crack, loosing a fine cascade of ash and bleached bits of bone into the air. When the wiry gravedigger in overalls found him, Kyle was sitting on the ground, desperately trying to stuff what was left of his father back into the broken urn.
“What have we here?” said the gravedigger, calmly leaning on his shovel.
“It’s my daddy,” said Kyle.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was a lawyer.”
“Even so.”
“They burned him.”
“Yes.”
“I need to get him back in the pot.”
The man smiled kindly. “No you don’t, son. I’ll be glad to take care of it.”
“But it’s my daddy.”
“Don’t you worry, little man. No matter what happens to his remains, he’ll still be with you.”
“My daddy? How?”
“That’s just the way of it with sons and their fathers. He’ll be living on in your blood and bone. For better or for worse, he’ll always be there.” The man lowered himself on one knee. “Let me help you.”
“No thank you,” said Kyle, as the pounding footfalls and the shouts of indignation came from the direction of the chapel. “I think I need to do this myself.”
In the truck, on the way out of the cemetery, Uncle Max was complaining loudly about that rat Laszlo Toth while Kyle’s mom stared out the window, smoking. Kyle sat between them, his hand in one of his jacket pockets, feeling strangely happy.
He had liked the way the gravedigger had knelt to help him. It was the nicest thing that had happened to him all day. Maybe he would grow up to be a gravedigger, it seemed just then to be the noblest of professions, a helper of children and burier of griefs. He looked down at what was left of his suit. The knees on both of his pant legs were torn and marked by blood, and one elbow of the jacket was in tatters. The suit was ruined. That, at least, had turned out well.
With all that had happened, he felt relieved and almost normal. It was true that he still hadn’t cried for his dead father, he thought as the fingers in his pocket sifted through a handful of fine gray powder, but he had bled for him, and that had to mean something, didn’t it?
Didn’t it?
NOW
THE NAME WAS ROBERT, not Bobby or little Bobby or Bobby dear. Robert. How many times had he told her? And still, with her it was always the diminutive.
Bobby, I have something I need from you. Bobby, can you do this one important errand? I knew I could count on you, Bobby.
In court, or in his pleadings, or atop his letterhead, he went by the name of Robert, Robert Spangler. It was a name of respectability, of sobriety and accomplishment. He was Robert, always, except when she needed something from him, one of her favors. Then, with her chin raised and her little sneer, she would call him Bobby, because she knew exactly how it made him feel.
“Bobby dear,” she had said just that afternoon, “do you still have your gun?”
Maybe he should just turn around, forget about her little task. That would show her, that would put her in a pickle. Who else could do for her the things that he could do for her? But he wouldn’t turn around, he knew that and he knew she knew that, for they both knew she held out for him the one thing he yearned for most. And even though he had begun to suspect he would never get it from her, still the scantest possibility was enough to ensure that Robert would always do her bidding. It had been that way from the beginning between the two of them.
But he was Robert, damn it, Robert Spangler, Esquire, and he had a job to do. The job was distasteful—it left an acid taste in his mouth, there was no way around that—but it was not outside his range. In fact, in the way it made him irreplaceable to her, he almost longed for the bright, bitter taste of acid, the taste of his devotion. Let her have her Thomases and Williams, her Stephans at the charity balls, her precious Francis. When it came time to take that final step, where others would falter, she always came to him. And he wouldn’t disappoint. And maybe with this one, this final one, she’d finally have to admit the truth, that he was the only one she could rely on, that he was the only one truly worthy of her love.
The building was now on his right, an old stone town house, a number of brass plaques bolted beside the heavy wooden door announcing the various businesses housed inside. He looked up at the dark building. The only windows lighted were at the corner of the second floor.
There was a parking spot directly in front of the building, but he passed it by, went a block farther, turned south on Fifteenth Street. He circled around and found an open meter about half a block away. After parking, he took his briefcase out of the car and quietly closed the door. It was too late for the meter to matter. He backed away a couple of steps, looked at the car in the spot. As ordinary as a rental car could look. He pressed the button on the key fob to lock it and headed north.
Before he reached Locust, he turned into a small alley behind the building. Amid the garbage cans and black bags filled with trash was a door. When this house had been a grand residence, this was the servants’ entrance. Fitting, he thought as he put down the heavy briefcase for a moment. She always seemed to make sure he entered through the servants’ entrance. Out of one jacket pocket, he pulled a pair of pale rubber gloves, which he yanked on and tightened with a
thwack
. From the other pocket, he pulled out a key.
She was a marvel, with a snap of her perfectly manicured fingers she could get anything. Even a key. He imagined the blue of her eyes for a moment, the coolness of her touch, and then wrenched himself out of his reverie. There was a procedure to follow in matters like this, a process that could go horribly wrong if you lost your concentration and missed a step. Later he would think of her, the way she insinuated herself into every part of his life, the way she played with his weaknesses like a cat worrying a ball of yarn. Now there was just the job.
He slipped the key into the lock, gave it a turn, pushed the door open with his shoulder. He grabbed his briefcase, stepped inside, closed the door tight behind him without locking it. Slowly he made his way through the pitch-black hallway.
He had memorized the layout from the hand-drawn map she had handed him along with the key. There was a storage room on the right, though he couldn’t see it, and boxes piled on the left. Through a door he passed into the ornate lobby, gently illuminated by the streetlight filtering through the gauze-covered windows. A desk for the receptionist, a conference room off to the side, an elevator. He skipped the elevator and took the steps that circled the shaft, climbing as silently as the old wooden staircase would allow.
On the second floor, the staircase opened directly onto an outer office, dimly lit, with a number of secretarial desks and doors leading to four offices, only one of which, the corner office, was occupied. There was a copy machine on one wall, a teetering stack of white boxes on another. The phones on each of the secretarial desks showed a single line in use. He could hear one side of a conversation.
“I just have something to finish up here. . . . No, I won’t be long. . . . Don’t be foolish.”
Robert took off his gloves, put them in his pocket, and waited for the phone conversation to end. He could simply have rung the bell at the front door and allowed himself to be buzzed in, he could have taken the elevator and had his meeting without the skulking about. But then he might have been spotted in the street. And he wouldn’t have had the joy of walking silently toward the lit office, standing in utter stillness, seeing the startled expression on Laszlo Toth’s greedy little face when Toth looked up from his desk and saw the dark and upright figure of Robert Spangler looming ominously in his doorway.
“Oh, it’s only you,” said Laszlo Tot h af ter he had regained his composure. He was a small wizened figure, humpbacked and gnarly, with a burst of wild gray hair. Three fingers on his left hand were set in a cast. “I figured you’d be the one she sent.” Was that a note of derision in his voice, or was Robert just imagining it? “How did you get in?”
“Through the door,” said Robert. He kept his voice soft and even, his legal voice.
“It wasn’t locked?” said Toth. “I thought I locked it.”
“Close the blinds, Laszlo.”
“Don’t worry, no one—”
“Close the blinds,” said Robert, and Toth, noticing the sudden edge in Robert’s voice, bowed his head slightly before pushing himself out of his chair and pulling the blinds on all three of his windows. With the wooden slats now closed, Robert entered the office and sat in one of the client chairs facing Toth’s big mahogany desk.
“I’m glad you came so quickly,” said Laszlo Toth. His voice was surprisingly sonorous for someone his size, trained by decades in the municipal courts of Philadelphia. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for her, but once I found the file, I was sure it was something she would want to get her hands on immediately.”
“You were right about that,” said Robert.
“She needn’t have bothered sending the family lawyer, though. I was willing to take it directly over to her. I told her that.”
“This is better for all concerned. She is, of course, very grateful for your tact. She is curious, however, about where you found the file.”
“In a box.”
Robert tilted his head, offered a bland smile that made it very clear he needed more.
“The firm is winding down,” said Laszlo. “It’s now only me and two young associates running around and cashing their paychecks without enough to do. I tried to keep it going for as long as I could, but Byrne & Toth has run its course. Sad, but there it is. Since Byrne’s time we’ve had files in storage at a warehouse. I decided to stop paying the monthly fees. They can destroy the files for you at these places, but I thought we ought to see what was there before we put them to the flame. Maybe send them off to whatever clients still might want them. So when the boxes came, we went through them.”
“We?”
“Me, I mean,” he said quickly. “Just me.”
“We’re talking about the boxes piled in the outer office.”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a job to do all by yourself.”
“The associates are too young to have any idea of what is junk and what might be valuable. So it has been left to me to go through the boxes one by one.”
“A nd?”
“And then there it was. Quite a surprise. I didn’t remember it—it was Byrne’s case, his chicken scrawl was all over the file—but as I went through it, things became clear.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“Shocking, actually. I can imagine the anguish it caused her, knowing it was in Byrne’s possession all those years. He wasn’t the most discreet soul. And you know what they say about the authentic Irish recipe for lamb stew. Step one: Steal a lamb. But right away, as soon as I understood what it was, I knew that she’d want to get her hands on it.”
“And she is grateful, Laszlo. Very grateful. How old are you?”
“Too old.”
“You look tired.”
“Keeping the office open as long as I have has been a strain. Byrne always said he wanted to die in court, but I was never so dedicated. When the end comes, I’d like to be on a beach somewhere.”
“And you have a place in mind.”
“We’ve always liked the Outer Banks. It’s quite beautiful down there.”
“Expensive.”
“I don’t need much. Just a little cottage with a view of the sea.”
“A little cottage. How sweet. And then you found the file. Convenient.”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Do you have it here?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Let me see it.”
Laszlo bit his lip for a moment, as if he were considering whether to call or to raise in a poker game. The little eyes burned bright for a moment and then dulled. Call. He opened a desk drawer and took out an old green file folder. He put it on the desktop, looked at it for a moment, pushed it over to Robert as if pushing in his chips.
Robert took the file, opened it, paged through it quickly. It had copies of the settlement agreement, a copy of the signed and notarized statement, copies of letters from and to Liam Byrne. He had seen it before, years before, and didn’t need to go through the whole thing again to know it contained all the proof he would ever need that his efforts with her were in vain, that the die had been cast against him long before he was old enough to even care. Actions didn’t count; it was only a matter of blood. The impossibility of his situation shot a dose of anger into his voice.
“Where’s the rest of it?” said Robert.
“That’s it, that’s all of it. I swear. Everything I found. I’m trying to help here.”
“And you think Byrne put it in storage long ago and forgot about it?”
“Obviously.”
“Where else might he have left a copy?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been through everything in the office and in storage, and I found nothing.”
“There must be someplace else. Think.”
“I’m thinking.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“A n accident.”
“You’ll have another if you don’t think harder.”
“Byrne did have an old file cabinet. We bought a number of them when we first set up the office. He claimed one as his own, put all kinds of personal stuff in it, but that disappeared long ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“Just before he died, he moved it out of here. A heavy metal behemoth, like the others in the storage room. I came in one day and it was missing. He called later and told me he’d taken it home. He was living on Panama Street then. His wife still lives there.”
“See what you can come up with when you think hard, Laszlo? Did he have any children?”
“No, they couldn’t. Cissy Byrne was . . . Oh, wait, there was one. A son. Illegitimate.”
“The boy at the funeral.”
“That’s right. Were you there?”
“What’s his name, this boy?”
“Kyle. The woman gave him his father’s last name even though they weren’t married. An impudent act, which fit her personality. Kyle Byrne. It’s a shame about him.”
“How so?”
“Talented kid, but things never worked out. He dropped out of college, has gone from job to job. Last I heard, he was bartending at some dive and living off friends.”
“What dive?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where?”
“Here. Philadelphia. Near South Street.”
“Okay. Now, Laszlo, answer me as truthfully as you are able. And I don’t expect much. Did you make any copies of this file after you found it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes, of course I’m sure. What are you implying?”
“What I am implying,” said Robert, “is that you are a stinking Hungarian blackmailer who might not be satisfied with one dip from the bucket.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. Is that what she thinks?”
“No,” he said. “She considers you a loyal friend who is looking out for the best interests of her family.”
“And she’s right. She is. You should be ashamed of yourself, thinking the worst of everyone.”
“Not everyone.” Robert closed the file and lifted his briefcase onto the desk. He opened it so that the top lid stayed upright as a barrier, blocking Toth from seeing what was inside. Toth shifted to his right and tried to peer around the open lid.
“Uh-uh,” said Robert, wagging a finger.
Toth sat back in his chair and waited.
Robert reached into the case, took out a thick bundle of bills bound with a rubber band, smacked the bundle onto the desktop. He thought for a moment and smacked another right on top of the first.
Laszlo stared at the stack of money, rubbing his lips with the good fingers in his left hand.
“I figure that should do it,” said Robert.
As he gazed at the money, Laszlo’s demeanor changed. All his careful obfuscation of motive seemed to pass away as if the money itself had chased it, like the sun chasing the clouds. He turned his gaze to Robert and let the slightest smile twist his lips. “For the roof, maybe,” he said.
Robert stared back, shook his head sadly, reached into the briefcase. With his left hand, he took out two more bundles. He tossed them onto the table toward the others. As Laszlo Toth’s eyes tracked the cash, Robert took an automatic pistol out of the briefcase with his right hand and placed it on his lap.
“And now we have a living room,” said Laszlo.
Robert took out three bundles and lobbed them at Toth. “Here are the kitchen and two bedrooms,” he said.