I walked up the gravel path toward an assembly of the city’s finest, planning to watch from the background. I’d parked my car about a mile back along the twisting road behind the last in the funeral procession. I worked my way between granite headstones that caught the afternoon sun on their polished fronts and back. I could hear the Anglican priest giving Chester his last shove into the next world; he stood at the head of the grave which was surrounded by brass rails. Flowers covered the casket, and green imitation grass covered the earth on either side. Myrna looked brave, wearing a black hat and veil. She made a lovely widow, standing there, still looking less than forty. Next to her, a tall, sandy-haired man of about fifty, but admitting to forty-five, with the widow’s arm on his. My guess made him William Allen Ward. Next to his stood my old pal, Vern Harrington. The other mourners include the mayor and most of the other aldermen. There were no children or even any young people. From the looks of them, I could see a lot of “ought” written on a lot of faces. Faces that “ought” to be seen to have come: colleagues, cronies, and people whose presence was expected, each wearing his face for the occasion, hats doffed, eyes fixed on the flowers on top of the coffin.
“I am the resurrection and the life …” The priest’s white vestments were caught by a spring breeze. Squirrels went about their own affairs, and I stood at the back.
I tried to put names on the people standing there. There were few women. Most of the aldermanic wives had begged off, but there was a girl or two from his office. I noticed Martha Tracy had found a suitable hat, and stood with a clutch of office girls around her, like an iceberg with its chips.
When the deed had been done, the crowd started moving back toward the cars in twos and threes. Two cemetery workers who had come up behind me watched them recede through the tall monuments and along the gravel path. They started talking Greek to one another and set about making the final earthly arrangements for Chester’s eternal rest.
I was about to turn away and follow the winding herd myself, when I felt someone sharing the view over my shoulder. It was Pete Staziak from Homicide wearing a light gabardine raincoat and carrying a green tyrolean felt hat. He put it on. It looked too small for his head.
“Hi, Benny. You sleuthing?”
“Sure, Pete. Only … I can’t sell what I have.” He gave me a grin that should have been shared with a third party; it wasn’t meant for me. We started back, crunching along the path. “I thought Harrow drew this case?”
“He did. And he wrote ‘Closed’ on the file last week. He’s on something else today.”
“You one of Chester’s fans?” I asked, trying a line that wouldn’t explode in my face in case he turned out to be his cousin. Although with a name like Staziak he had as much chance of being related to the dear departed as I did.
“Nope,” he said. “But I was told that I might find you here, Benny. They had you pegged pretty good, I’d say.”
“Did they send you to see if I would steal the floral tributes, Pete?”
“Sure are a lot of them. Seems a waste, doesn’t it? I guess somebody makes a buck out of it.”
“Pete, I never knew your philosophical side. Come on, for crying out loud, as an old friend, what’s eating them downtown? What are they so worried about?”
“This isn’t official.”
“Naturally. You’re invisible. Look I can put my hand right through you. What do you take me for, Pete? Who told you to come out here and play tip toe through the tombstones? Come on. Level with me.”
We stood leaning on my car, which now looked parked foolishly far away from the grave site since the other cars had vanished.
“Benny, I could get into a lot of trouble telling you anything. But what you’ve been saying around town about Yates’ death being murder and not suicide has got a lot of important people feeling uneasy, like you might take advantage of the funeral to make a speech or point the guilty finger or stuff like that. It don’t worry me, see, because we go back a long way together, but some people worry easy.” He was scratching his head under his hat. I could see it wasn’t easy for him to lean on me. He resented having to do it and he resented the direction from which the pressure came.
“I get you, Pete. I’ll keep my bib clean. But while I’m doing it why don’t you put a couple of numbers like two and two together. Why are they on my tail? Did anybody ever worry so much about Benny Cooperman before? What are they worried about over at City Hall? Doesn’t their nervousness make you wonder what they’re nervous about?”
“Ah, they’re worried about Myrna Yates, that’s all. They don’t want anybody upsetting her on top of all her other troubles. You can understand that. So there, that’s official.”
“You mean unofficial.” I grinned and he caught and returned it.
“Yeah. Okay, you understand what I’m not saying?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Okay. Now. Tell me what you got, Benny. Let’s have it.”
“I’ve got a suicide who buys himself a going-away present with only two hours to go.”
Pete squinted into the afternoon sun a little, like he’d seen a western sheriff do it on television. “Well now, it does sound peculiar. What else did he do before he got dead?”
“He spent an hour with his shrink.”
“Christ, Benny. There goes your theory up the chimney. A shrink could have got him into a very highly excited state in an hour. He could have stirred up all that muck in his subconscious, and you know, he could have left the shrink’s office in a depressed and suicidal state. Why don’t you let it lie, Ben? No good’ll come of your playing with it.”
“Pete, look. If it didn’t get so many people worked up I might let it alone, but people don’t get excited without a reason. And that reason could be that there is more in this than yesterday’s lunch. Why wasn’t there a post mortem? Why weren’t the contents of the organs sent to the Forensic Centre in Toronto? Why weren’t there tissue samples taken?”
“Because there was no need. Look, we had powder burns on his head, right; we had contact marks, right; we had prints on the gun, right; and we have nitrates showing up in the paraffin test. So, where’s the miscarriage of justice? Where’s your case? Do you even have a client?” He leaned over me, smirklines on either side of his thin mouth.
“You’d be surprised,” I said, sighing. We both looked at the other for a few seconds, not saying anything.
“Well, Benny. Take it easy.”
“Sure, Pete. Sure thing.” I got into the Olds and started the motor. Pete Staziak watched as I curved along the road, and I could see him in my rear-view mirror until the trees and headstones blanked him out.
Back behind my desk in my old swivel chair, things started looking the way Pete said. What did I really have? I had a wife suspicious of her beloved husband and willing to pay me good money to find out what he was up to. I had a bike-buying suicide, and a scared shrink. And the towel; I mustn’t forget the towel. That was my biggest clue so far. Why I could knock down the door of the Supreme Court with a clue like that.
It was time for a very late lunch. I never eat before funerals. Around at the United I sat down at my usual place at the marble counter.
“Super Jews,” the waitress said.
“What?” I said dropping my teeth.
“Soup or juice? You want to see the menu? You know it by heart.”
“Bring me … bring me … bring me …”
“A chopped egg sandwich on white. Right?”
“Toasted,” I said triumphantly, like I’d just put her king in check and discovered “gardé” on her queen. She sniffed haughtily and disappeared to the other end of the counter. In a few minutes she dropped the sandwich in front of me without a word. She ad libbed a glass of milk and I let her. There was nothing quite like lunch to make me hurry back to the office. I kept crazy hours in my business, sometimes working late into the night and once or twice a year right around the clock. Lunch at the United was what I had instead of regular office hours.