When One Man Dies. Dave White

tune. She whispered the lyrics to herself as she turned back toward the passenger window.

      I passed the trailer, pulled back into the right lane, and said, “You okay?”

      “Are you sure about what you saw in there?”

      I nodded. “We found meth labs all the time on the force.”

      “You know, when I was a kid, Gerry was the guy who gave me the drug talk. Not my dad, not my mom, but Uncle Gerry.”

      “What did he tell you?”

      “You know, the usual stuff you tell a kid. The stuff that goes through your head the first time you smoke a joint in college. You’ll get hooked, no one in their right mind does the stuff. It’ll kill you. Your future will be screwed. The scary shit.”

      “Why did Gerry give you the talk?”

      “My parents were always working. My mom was a teacher, my dad was in business. After school was over, when my mom was still working remedial or driving home, Gerry was still around before he went to act. Steve came home from first grade and was talking about some kid who said his dad smoked different kinds of cigarettes.”

      Steve was Gerry’s son. He died of cancer a few years ago.

      Tracy continued, “Gerry took the opportunity, jumped right into the conversation. Must have watched a public-service announcement just before he picked us up. He sounded like a commercial.”

      “I’m pretty sure your uncle did smoke pot at times.”

      Tracy laughed. “I’m sure he did, too, but he never let us know about it. He wanted Steve and me to be like brother and sister, not cousins, and he wanted a Norman Rockwell childhood for us.”

      “Did you get it?”

      “Not a chance.”

      Most of East Brunswick was strip malls and traffic lights, and I seemed to hit every red light. In fact, I think everyone did. It gave motorists more time to decide whether or not to stop at the Borders, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or Kohl’s that lined the highway. The rain hadn’t let up, but traffic was lighter as I crossed the last traffic light. I pressed the accelerator.

      “I was thinking,” she said.

      “What about?”

      “The landlord said the cops had been up to the apartment.”

      I knew what was coming. It had been bothering me as well. “Yeah. He did say that.”

      “If you know what ingredients go into crystal meth, wouldn’t the police know as well?”

      Martin sure as hell would. He went to the same workshops I did. “Yeah, they should.”

      “Why didn’t the cops take all those ingredients in as evidence?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. I put on my right blinker and took the next exit for Milltown Road. “Best I can figure is it’s circumstantial. There was no proof that Gerry was actually making crystal meth.”

      “But you seem sure of yourself.”

      “I’m not. But Gerry never seemed like the guy who would collect batteries, matches, and Sudafed. He was never that sick.”

      “I don’t think my uncle was like that, though.”

      I didn’t think he was either, but something inside me, that old cop instinct, was screaming at me to look at the evidence. I had no tangible proof, but all the evidence was there. Making crystal meth was a big deal; it wasn’t easy; and it could blow up on you at any moment. But someone confident, someone who knew what they were doing, could make a fortune selling the stuff.

      Just a year ago Gerry was struggling to pay his rent. He even hired me to help him out. I tracked down a woman who owned a theater he used to work in. She was trying to force him out of house and home to drum up business. She figured if she could say this old actor was homeless or worse, she would drum up support for modern actors to keep them from finding the same fate. After clearing the case, I hadn’t heard any complaints about money from him, and I saw him at the bar nearly every night. I couldn’t prove anything, but I knew something bad was going on, and what we had found in the apartment seemed to support that idea.

      I pulled into the funeral home parking lot, the rain still pounding down. I wondered if Gerry had enough money to pay for his own funeral. We exited the car and headed inside.

Chapter 15

      Brushing the rain off my shoulders and running my hand through my soaked hair, I followed Tracy into Rinaldi’s Funeral Home. The lobby was carpeted in red, and the wallpaper was mute beige. A few thick easy chairs, also dark, more a maroon, contrasted with the carpet. Perfect for a wake. A bronze coffee table sat across from the chairs, a few magazines resting on it. The lobby was clean and smelled antiseptic, a cross between lime and bleach, a scent I hadn’t experienced in a while.

      A short heavy man in a black double-breasted suit stepped out of a room I assumed was his office. To his right was a larger room where they held the actual wakes. The man’s face was pale, except for deep red cheeks. He had dark hair slicked back. His clothes were neatly pressed, and his loafers reflected the artificial light from above. He smiled at Tracy.

      “Ms. Boland, I assume?” He reached his hand out in her direction, taking hers and pumping it twice. He looked at me. “And you are?”

      Tracy introduced me.

      He took my hand loosely and shook it. “Mr. Donne. I am John Fleming, the funeral director.”

      “Nice to meet you.”

      “Ah,” he said, looking at his watch. “I wish it was under better circumstances. You are about ten minutes late, Ms. Boland. I was beginning to worry.” He tugged at his lapels, then brushed a piece of lint off his shoulder. “If you’d like to get started, we can go to my office.”

      Fleming turned on his heels and stepped through his office door. Tracy turned my way.

      “If you don’t mind, I’d like to handle this on my own.”

      Tracy disappeared into Fleming’s office, the door swinging shut behind her. I took a few steps around the lobby and peeked into the funeral room. There wasn’t a body or even a casket inside, but the room was set up with flowers and about ten rows of seats.

      I walked around, the antiseptic smell growing stronger. The room’s colors were the same as the lobby, same carpet, same walls. The chairs were maroon as well, though they were more like folding chairs than easy chairs. I stepped up to the small lift where the body would be kept, trying not to picture Gerry’s body in a morgue; instead, trying to picture him lying at rest in a coffin tomorrow.

      I never understood wakes, which were apparently for the living. Why keep a corpse, open casket, made up to look like some cheap plastic imitation of your loved one, lying at rest for four hours?

      People came in and out, offered fake condolences for a while and said prayers, then left, hitting the local bar. It didn’t do anything for me.

      The antiseptic smell was unique to funeral homes, and it brought back the memory of Jeanne’s wake. When Jeanne died, just two weeks after I had gotten out of rehab and six months before we were to be married, I wanted nothing to do with a wake. She had been cut down by a drunk driver as she drove herself home from a get-together with work friends. The driver had crossed the double yellow lines and smashed into her front fender, forcing her car off the road. By the time the fire department used the Jaws of Life, she was long dead. Her parents insisted I show at the wake and funeral, saying it would do me good to see her, to know how much her friends and relatives cared about her. I agreed.