The Accidental Pallbearer (6 page)

“Bravo, Detective Conte!”

“Milly, had Robby done a number on him when we were at Proctor High, Del’Altro – he may have turned out a decent citizen and even, who knows, a good man.”

“Violence can be a cure?”

“Sometimes we reach that point.”

“What do you have in mind for Michael Coca? Akron, too?”

“Milly, I’m going to send him to the bottom of hell.”

Back home, Conte immediately contacts the owners of Utica’s three African-American beauty salons and tells each that he’d like to buy a $200 gift certificate for their most well-known customer.

The first one says, “Who would that be, darlin’?”

“Millicent Robinson, who had an appointment with you day before yesterday. Friday at 10:45.”

“Never heard of any Millicent whatever.”

The second responds, “That stuck-up oreo bitch never set her ass in my shop.”

The third responds, “Let me check my book. Oh yeah, she comes here, but she had no appointment at 10:45 on Friday. She had her hair done two weeks ago on a Monday at 4:30.”

“Do me a favor?”

“I don’t cut white hair. That’s beyond me.”

“Keep the gift certificate a secret until her birthday, which is in three weeks.”

“My lips are sealed. Be sure to put that check in the mail now – real soon, dear.”

Conte’s arm feels like a 500-pound boulder as he places the phone back into its cradle. Goes to the kitchen, pours a very large Johnnie Walker on the rocks and carries it to the front window where he stares, glass in hand, at the rain that has thickened again – wind-driven now in a mean slant against the house. The Robinsons had lied. He hasn’t touched his drink when he abruptly returns to the kitchen – pours the Johnnie Walker into the sink – leans over low and inhales the rising odor of expensive scotch.

He’d always known Millicent Robinson as a woman of subtle indirection, but she’d made it almost crudely clear. After all my Italophilic husband has done for you, whether you believe our story or not, you owe us and let’s not ever pretend you ride a white horse. Add Coca to the filth you swim in. Do it for Tony, if you love him.

Michael C is not a rapist, he’s convinced, but then what exactly has he done to make himself so threatening to the Robinsons that Antonio wouldn’t reveal it to his brother-in-all-but-blood, whom he’d asked to take Coca “out of play”? Whatever that means. How had he put it before going off to High Mass? Ram the fear of Our fuckin’ Lord hard up his
ass. Whatever that means. Should he confront Antonio? Or play along?

For Eliot Conte, time seems never to pass or (greatest of all blessings) disappear, except at the opera. (Sex too, formerly.) His practice consists mainly of repetitively sordid cases of adultery. Of background checks that rarely turn up anything surprising. Of runaway kids he sometimes locates and retrieves, but mostly doesn’t. Of hours of butt-numbing surveillance, sitting in his car, pissing in an empty coffee cup, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and, if he’s lucky, at the end of it all, snapping a compromising picture with a telephoto lens. So much for doing good for Utica.

He’ll play along, why not, and maybe become the lead character, the tragically flawed but essentially decent guy, as he fancies himself, in a story whose end lay hidden, like those time-killing Scandinavian detective thrillers he’d been reading lately one after another as fast as he could. The very sorts of novels that the author of a UCLA Master’s thesis on Melville and Faulkner used to scorn – well-wrought pulp, elegant trash, and altogether mind-blowing (like the opera always, like sex once was) and a total cure while the books lasted. The treacherous hard stuff that he abuses, usually alone on Saturday nights, in order to obliterate time and thought, only hurls him deeper into depression and the dead time of boredom that seems never to pass.

They would play him for a fool. Okay. He’ll play the fool. Meanwhile, on yet another lonely, time-crawling Sunday afternoon, Jed Kinter awaits his attention.

He’s leaning low over the sink – hoping futilely for a buzz in the brain.

Castellano’s Artistic Flowers, at the corner of Rutger and Culver, has a front entrance on Rutger and a side entrance on Culver. The two-family house where Castellano occupies the first floor and the Kinters the second is just around the corner on Culver. Conte calls ahead and tells Castellano that he’d like to meet him at the shop.

Castellano says, “It’s Sunday, for God sakes. Come to the house.”

Conte responds, “Do me the favor of meeting me at the shop.”

Castellano says, “I’ll see you at the side entrance.”

Conte responds, “Indulge me, Tom. I need to come to the front entrance.”

“Quick, Eliot,” Castellano ushers him to the back room, “because I don’t want people to formulate ideas that on a Sunday – coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll pour you one anyway, just in case.”

“Okay, Tom.”

“Have one of these,” Castellano pushing a plate of six biscotti before him. Conte takes one, but doesn’t eat.

“So hush-hush, Eliot, like a private dick, you’re here all of a sudden after how many years? You should know I personally made those biscotti. They don’t come from Ricky’s. My so-called brother.”

Tom Castellano had been Conte’s first case twenty years back. He’d just married when his wife, the former Candace Bowles, started to step out on him four days after the honeymoon – in the open at the most popular restaurants and bars. When Castellano confronts her, she tells him, “No problem, I get half the shop regardless.” Artistic Flowers was Utica’s most lucrative and had been Tom’s grandfather’s and father’s pride.

So Conte shows her a photo. She yells, “You’re crazy, I never did that. You somehow created that disgusting picture.” Conte replies in his characteristic soft monotone, “Yes, I did, and I’m going to nail it to every telephone pole in this town and mail one to your blueblood father unless you legally renounce your rights in the shop.” She says, “I’ll sue.” He says, “A lawyer acquaintance of mine will see you tomorrow with the proper documents, lacking only your signature. Keep in mind, Candace, that a psychiatrist, who happens to be an acquaintance, at the proceedings – should it come to that – will recommend Marcy State Hospital for what this photo shows. Marcy State, Candace.” She makes a last attempt: “You want a blowjob, Conte? Is that what this is all about?” Tom had said to Conte at the outset, “I’m not a fag, you know. Because I know what they say about me as a flower person. Believe you me, I got her good on the honeymoon, every which way. I even used devices.”

She renounces, they’re quietly divorced, but the grapevine was intense for months and Castellano’s humiliation was beyond description and repair. Conte stayed away because he didn’t want to be yet another reminder, and he never told Tom how he’d convinced his wife to be reasonable – never showed him what it pleased Eliot to think of as “ocular proof.”

Conte takes a bite out of the biscotto, dunks it in the coffee, and finishes it off. Takes another one. Same routine.

Castellano says, “Good, huh?”

“They are. They really are.”

“So what’s the story, Eliot?”

“Your next-door tenants.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Ever hear any screaming coming from the apartment? Constant baby crying? Like last night?”

“Screaming? You serious? You’re shitting me, right? The baby cries, they all do, though I don’t have any first-hand experience, thanks to that cunt I should’ve killed with my bare hands. Constant crying? No. You’re thinking spousal abuse?”

“I presume you checked with his previous landlord before he signed the lease.”

“Everything was up to snuff. I called down to the paper, by the way. No problems there, either.”

“There was a landlord previous to that, too.”

“News to me, Eliot.”

“See anything out of the ordinary last night or this morning?”

“Definitely. Last night on TBS I saw
Psycho
for the first time.”

“Nice, Tom.”

“I have to confess, when she gets stabbed in the shower? I got turned on. I wanted to fuck Janet when she was getting stabbed. Especially then. I was almost hard. Tell me the truth, Eliot. How abnormal am I?”

“My guess is that many men share your feelings.”

“Including yourself?”

“Anything is possible.”

It crosses Conte’s mind that Candace Bowles may have had her reasons.

“He took out the garbage last night, pretty late. That out of the ordinary?”

“Does he usually take out the garbage late at night?”

“Sometimes. Don’t we all?”

“Nothing of interest to tell me?”

“Come to think, he took the garbage out again this morning. A little odd, no?”

“Do you always wear your hearing aid, Tom?”

“Not always. I put this fuckin’ thing in your ear, you’ll find out.”

“Did you wear it last night watching
Psycho
?”

“Never when I watch TV. I turn up the volume. Okay, I get your drift.”

“Kinter complains about the volume?”

“No. He’s an ideal renter.”

“How loud, Tom?”

“Loud. Maybe I wouldn’t have heard anything, okay, which I doubt there was anything to hear.”

“In the house, you never wear it?”

“I live alone. What’s the point?”

“Do me a favor. Knock on the door – see if anyone responds.”

“And if they do, then what?”

“You’re a shrewd guy. Invent something.”

“Hey! I saw
Rear Window
.”

“Nice, Tom.”

“Only because I owe you big time, Eliot.” He leaves and
when he returns, “No one home unless there’s a corpse up there. In case you’re wondering, I knocked very obnoxiously many times. Jesus Christ, Eliot, you’re pretty extreme.”

“Okay. Call.”

Castellano calls. The answering machine.

Conte takes another biscotto.

“Tom,” chewing, “I need to borrow your key to their apartment.”

“That’s an illegal act, as if you didn’t know.”

“Not if you put the key in and come in with me.”

Conte knocks heavily and repeatedly for thirty seconds. Nothing. They enter. Walk around. Nothing remarkable. Conte inspects the bathroom with care. The tub. Asks Castellano to fetch a screwdriver. Castellano throws up his hands, “
Madon’
, Eliot!” When he returns with the screwdriver, Conte opens the tub’s strainer, puts his finger in, and circles it around. Clean. Takes a wooden spoon from the kitchen, wraps its long handle with tissue paper, which he secures with the vaginal lubricant he finds in the medicine cabinet, inserts in the drain and twists it around. Pulls it out. Nothing. Thinks, Kinter could have run hot water a long time. Or maybe used one of those powerful chemicals that clear drains. Castellano says, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

“I’m looking for blood and tissue.”

“Christ, these are normal people.”

Technicians from the police would need to get into the trap, but there is no reasonable cause for suspicion that a crime has been committed, unless Antonio would do him a favor. Bone fragments? Teeth? In the trap? Conte says, “Let’s check the garbage cans.”

“We should’ve checked those first before looking for evidence of a slaughter. If we’re talking crazy.”

Downstairs, at the cans, “Those are my bags,” removing the lids, “and his real big ones I don’t see and neither do you, Sherlock.” Castellano adds that he saw Kinter head to the backyard that morning, but his view doesn’t permit him a sight of the garbage cans and even if it did he doesn’t make it a habit to watch his tenant throw out the garbage.

Conte says, “Maybe he put the bags in his car. Does he park back here?”

“My aching balls!”

“Can you see his car from your back window?”

“You mean my rear window?” Laughs. “Just the front. The angle is off to see the trunk. You’re thinking chopped-off body parts, stuffed in garbage bags, that were stuffed in the trunk, which the car is not here, so he disposed somewhere, for Chrissakes? You know this Jed Kinter? Is that it? You wanted to come in the front entrance of the shop because you don’t want to be seen from his apartment? Is that it? That why?”

“Yes, to all your questions.”