“This production is doomed,” I said.
She waved her hand in the air. “Of course it is, they always are. That’s the fun of it. Another Gypsy Players tragedy. Now scoot.”
She goosed me and gave me a peck on the cheek. I hugged the pole and stepped into the void. I landed in the gallery. There were no customers, only Chinese Sue behind the cash register leafing languidly through a magazine. Chinese Sue isn’t really Chinese. She’s from Dundalk, which is about as blue-collar as you get in Baltimore. But she wears velvet jackets and cuts her hair in bangs and stares at you as if she hasn’t a clue what you just said, and that furthermore, she doesn’t care. I’ve no explanation for her. That’s what people call her. And she runs Julia’s
gallery. Anyway, when I came down the pole, she didn’t even look up.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to root like a pig to locate Carolyn James. She was waiting for me when I got back to the office. Aunt Billie handed me the paperwork the moment I walked in the door.
“Suicide,” she said. “Asphyxiation. It just breaks my heart.”
I hurried down to the basement, where we prep our customers. A waifish redhead was stretched out in front of me, a slightly agonized look forever etched into her freckled face. She was about five four, and thin as a rail. The skin above her left cheek was discolored, almost green. She had recently suffered a black eye.
I had never seen her before in my life.
T
he details on the dead woman were few. She had lived in an apartment in Charles Village, over near Johns Hopkins University and had been found in a garage in the alley behind her building, in the front seat of a Honda Civic that was idling very high, filling the garage with its deadly exhaust. There was no doubt that the death was intentional; several towels had been stuffed along the bottom of the garage door. If that weren’t convincing enough, then the rippled plastic tubing that ran from the exhaust to the crack in the driver’s-side window was pretty persuasive. It came from a vacuum cleaner that the police found while inspecting Carolyn James’s apartment. It’s doubtful that she was just clearing the air. As far as the police were concerned, the case was shut before it even had a chance to open.
As far as
they
were concerned.
Carolyn James, aged twenty-seven, had been employed as a caterer’s assistant. The head of the catering company said that she was a diligent, responsible worker who did as she was told, no more, no less. She had been employed for about a year, her first job since moving to Baltimore from somewhere out west.
She had no family that anyone could find, and was single, though apparently there was a man in her life. The exact nature of the relationship was a little fuzzy. The head caterer described the fellow to me as “a cocky bastard son of a bitch Grade-A prick.” If this caterer cooks like he swears, I want some.
“He’s a good-looking guy. A real Joe Stud type,” he said to me. “Which was why I could never quite figure the two of them out. Carolyn was a nice kid and all, but she wasn’t exactly Sophia Loren.”
It seemed to me that he was setting the bar kind of high, but I remained silent.
“I wouldn’t exactly describe her as homely, but she didn’t really have a lot of personality. She was shy, basically. And this guy of hers … well, he came on strong. It never made much sense to me.”
My little chat with the head of the catering company took place in Parlor Two, where we had laid out the unfortunate caterer’s assistant for her viewing. Billie had a wake going over in Parlor One, for a beloved old high school teacher. Popular enough in fact to have almost warranted pulling open the plastic curtain, had we not been conducting a doubleheader. As for Carolyn James, she pulled a miserably small crowd. Aside from the head of the catering company and a few of her co-workers, there was the man who had discovered her in the exhaust-filled garage, a butcher from the Eddie’s Supermarket where she had done her shopping and her across-the-hall neighbor, an elderly cuss named Mr. Castlebaum. This left only two people conspicuous by their absence. One was the cocky bastard son of a bitch Grade-A prick. The other was the woman who had borrowed Carolyn James’s name long enough to tell me—
in her own peculiar way—that the not-terribly-popular caterer’s assistant would soon be Parlor Two’s unhappy guest of honor.
This was Baltimore, not Denmark. But something here still stank.
The buzz coming from Parlor One made it sound like bingo night at the local fire hall compared to what we had going in Two. We had us a small somber wake for a friendless young lady who had decided to click off the program early. The whole thing got me sad and it got me angry. Aunt Billie could see it in my face later when she pulled herself away from her Mardi Gras and found me sitting in my office with my chin on my fists.
“Bad one?” she asked.
“A low show.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. And such a young girl. Maybe it’ll pick up tomorrow at the funeral. You know how that can sometimes happen.”
I looked over at her standing there at the door. Betty Crocker’s sweet old mother.
“Your teacher went well?”
“Lovely,” she said. “They laughed, they cried.”
I do love my little auntie.
The fake Carolyn James did not show at the funeral the next day. I didn’t really expect that she would. Whatever bizarre reason the woman had for impersonating the caterer’s assistant and putting in an early request for burial would have to remain a mystery. I sifted and resifted my ten minutes with her but came up with nothing. She was, as Julia had said, a Mystery Woman. Bona fide Sister Cipher. A Face Without a Name.
Lady X.
I did however have the pleasure of meeting the son of a bitch bastard Grade-A prick. I knew his name already from the paperwork that Billie had handed me when I had come back from my tryst with my ex-wife. His name was Guy Fellows. I kid you not. Some parents simply have no regard. Mr. Fellows had apparently handled the funeral arrangements in record time, over the phone. He bought Carolyn James the least expensive coffin the law would allow (the Pauper’s Pillbox, we call it in the trade), and he had left it to Billie to suggest the cemetery and to arrange for the plot. His attentiveness was touching, to say the least.
Guy Fellows showed up at the cemetery wearing khaki slacks, a navy blue sport coat and a faded maroon club tie. He was—as advertised—a good-looking fellow. Tanned and trim, his hand-combed sandy hair featured a jaunty cowlick in the front which lent an unmistakable devil-may-care sexiness to his surfer-boy looks. And as with a certain breed of pretty boys, this guy wore his arrogance on his sleeve. He arrived at the grave site with his hands in his pockets, like he was posing for a fashion shoot. I watched him closely as he looked down at the coffin. It wasn’t sadness in those sharp blue eyes. It was irritation. If Carolyn James’s suicide ruffled him at all, it was largely because the funeral was interrupting his busy busy day. Even his one show of tenderness went sour. After staring at the coffin for some ten seconds he reached out and placed a hand on it. He drummed his fingers a few times then withdrew the hand, bumping the flower arrangement and knocking it down into the grave. “Shit,” he muttered, and then
stepped back under the canopy. Lovely bloke all around.
The service was brief. Like Carolyn James’s life. When it was over, Guy Fellows turned and walked away. The priest looked a little lost, having no one to console. I shook his hand. He shook his head.
“We could have phoned this one in, couldn’t we’ve? That was the saddest funeral I’ve done all year, Hitch. What? Did she have the plague?”
But before I could answer we were interrupted by a ruckus over by the cars. Guy Fellows and Carolyn James’s across-the-hall neighbor, the elderly Mr. Castlebaum, were engaged in a shouting match. I hurried over.
Castlebaum:
You’re a bum!
Fellows:
Shut up!
Castlebaum:
I won’t shut up! You’re a bum! You killed that girl!
Fellows:
You don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.
Castlebaum:
I heard the way you treated her! You think these aren’t ears?
Fellows:
Why don’t you mind your own goddamn business?
Castlebaum:
Don’t you “goddamn” me in a cemetery, you Nazi!
Fellows:
Fuck off!
That’s when Mr. Castlebaum went for him. The old guy went for the face. His hand whipped across Guy Fellows’s cheek and left a pair of claw marks. The younger man responded instantly, growling “You little
bastard
!” as he jabbed a rabbit punch to the old man’s jaw. The little old knight went down.
“Hey!” I rushed in. I looked around for Sam. He’s our hearse driver. Big as a wall. Nice kid. He’s also a bouncer at several clubs around town. But he was nowhere to be seen.
Fellows was quick. The instant I registered on his screen he wheeled around and sent out another piston jab, catching me on the side of my nose. The jolt shot right to my toes. In an instant I could taste blood. Then he hit me again, this one missing my face and landing instead on my windpipe. It literally took my breath away. Guy Fellows was in a boxer’s crouch now, but he didn’t go for a third hit. Mr. Castlebaum was on his fanny, shaking off the sucker punch. I saw Fellows’s eyes flick back in the old guy’s direction and I tried to warn him off, but my throat was still collapsed. All I managed was a hiss. Then I measured my height advantage over the Grade-A prick and shoved him as hard as I could. He slammed against the side of the hearse. When he tried to straighten back up I shoved him again, harder. To be honest, I was beginning to enjoy this. I had his reach measured now and I knew he couldn’t get to my face. He whipped my arms away from him.
“Hey, buddy, get out of my face!” he snapped. “Why don’t you mind your own business!”
I shoved him again. I croaked, “This
is
my business. I’m in charge of this funeral.”
The guy sneered. But he remained leaning back against the hearse. “Nice job, buddy.”
I rubbed my sleeve along my face and got a nice blood streak for my efforts. My nose was pulsing. Mr. Castlebaum was slowly getting to his feet. I turned to him.
“Are you okay?”
Guy Fellows answered first. “He’s fine. I barely touched him.”
“Is beating up on old men one of your hobbies?” I asked.
“Hey, buddy, what I do is my own business.”
I was getting a little tired of being called buddy. “Why don’t you apologize.”
“He came after me first,” Fellows snapped.
“Okay, okay. Hold on,” I said. “Look, tensions can run high at funerals. I’m sure Mr. Castlebaum didn’t mean anything—”
“Like hell I didn’t! I meant every word. This guy is a punk!”
Fellows slapped a hand down on top of the hearse. “Hey, old man, want a ride?”
Ding! Round two.
The old man dove at the young man and they started to mix it up again. This time I squeezed in between the two, wedging Mr. Castlebaum aside and taking hold of Guy Fellows’s sporty lapels. Enough was enough was enough. I jerked our faces so close together we could have kissed. We played a quick game of eye chicken.
“Can we stop this now?”
“Let me go,” he hissed.
“Not until you show a little more respect.”
“What are you, an Eagle Scout?”
I thought I had a good hold of the guy’s jacket so I rattled him hard. But he slipped right out of my hands and went slamming against the hearse again, this time giving the top of the door a good rap with his head. He came up in a fury.
“Goddamn it!” He leaped at me, kicking and scratching. No more boxer stuff. I caught a few fingernails to the cheek. Finally Sam appeared. He hurried over, still pulling up his fly. Sam is basically a square human being, half fat, half muscle. He’s a good kid, although I’ve told him more than once about peeing in the cemetery when he’s on the job. He’s got a bladder the size of a shot glass. Sam removed Guy Fellows from me. Simple as that. Fellows shook himself free and took a few steps away, holding up his hands as if to show he was unarmed. “Okay, okay, that’s it, I’m fine. I’m cool.”
“Are you all right, Mr. Sewell?” Sam asked me.
“I’m fine, Sam. Thank you.” I signaled Sam to escort Mr. Castlebaum to his car. The old man went without a fight. Well, without further fight. Guy Fellows was settling down. He straightened his collar and tie and finger-combed his raffish mop. A long slow grin grew on his face as he looked back up at me.
“I got you good, didn’t I?” He reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a handkerchief. The corner of it went swiftly red as I dabbed it at my nose.
“You sucker punched me.”
Fellows laughed. “Then I guess that makes you the sucker.” He put his fingers to his cheek to see if the old guy had drawn any blood. “Crazy old coot.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you.”
Fellows shrugged. “He’s one of those busybody neighbors. Thinks he’s everyone’s father. He’s upset about… you know.”
“Aren’t you?”
He looked past me toward the grave. “Well sure.
Sure I’m upset. I mean, what the hell? Who knew the damn girl was going to go and kill herself?”
It was a rhetorical question. But it just so happened that I had an answer. Or part of an answer. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about the dark-haired woman with legs to her ears, but something called back the question. Instead I asked him if he knew the deceased well. It was a throwaway question.
“We were friends.”
“And you have no idea why she killed herself?”
He shrugged. “I guess she was unhappy.”
“When I’m unhappy I watch a Marx Brothers movie or I go out and drink too much,” I said. “I don’t go napping in a garage with the engine on.”
His eyes narrowed. “Maybe she didn’t like the Marx Brothers.”
Smart aleck. I didn’t like him. He was a slime. A good-looking slime, a handsome clotheshorse slime, but still a slime. He didn’t give a tinker’s ass about his dead “friend,” that was clear. I wondered why he even showed up for her funeral, let alone paid for it. Assuming his check was good. I thought again about asking him about the fake Carolyn James, but something again held me back. For some reason I didn’t want to imagine that she had anything whatsoever to do with this guy, even though I had a strong and uneasy suspicion that she did. Very much did. And in the next twenty seconds, my suspicions were pretty much confirmed.