Flinch Factor, The
Page 27
Crane’s legal career was kaput. He’d have plenty of time to evaluate new job options during his years behind bars.
As for me, my job essentially ended with Ken Rubenstein’s answer to my final question in court. Susannah was my client. She’d asked me to look into her brother’s death—to see whether he’d died the way the police said he had. I’d proved he hadn’t, and thus my representation was concluded.
Susannah invited me to a graveside memorial service for her brother, which was held earlier this Sunday afternoon. It was mostly a family affair. She delivered a short speech through tears, I said a few words, and then we drove back to her house for donuts and lemonade. After hugs all around, I said my good-byes and drove off.
Because the sky was blue and the air was warm and my mom had the kids for the afternoon, I decided to drop by the other cemetery, which is where I was now, seated on the memorial bench facing Jonathan’s gravestone.
Some days I come here to talk to Jonathan, to share stories about his children. Some days I come here for advice—not actual words of wisdom from the great beyond, of course, but more a chance to voice my own fears and hopes. Today, though, I came for serenity—for a chance to share a few quiet moments away from clients and family and telephones and emails, to just, in my stepdaughter Sarah’s words, chill.
But serenity eluded me. I thought of Nick Moran and the future that had been stolen from him. Though I’d helped solve the mystery of his death, I felt no sense of triumph or vengeance. He was, as Raymond Chandler wrote, sleeping the big sleep—and, like Jonathan, decades too soon. Some of the people who deserved to go to jail would go to jail, and in the process they would forfeit their careers and their reputations, but through it all Nick would continue to sleep the big sleep. There was no final retribution, no settling up in this lifetime—and hope of any such reckoning thereafter, of some final celestial accounting, offered me no comfort.
Thoughts of Nick and Jonathan triggered in my mind that haunting passages from Ecclesiastes:
For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten.
“Never again,” wrote the preacher, “will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.”
Never again.
I sighed.
Although I’d received praise in the aftermath of that televised hearing, my main reaction had been then, and was still, sadness. There was nothing to celebrate. Sometimes I wonder whether Nick’s death would have been easier to accept if the original version—an accidental overdose—had turned out to be the correct one.
“Hey.”
I looked up to see Benny standing there.
I forced a smile. “Hi.”
“As the chicken said to the horse, ‘Why the long face?’”
“What are you doing here?”
“Talked to your mom. She told me about the memorial service for Nick. I called your house a half hour ago. No one was home. Took a wild guess where you might be. I’m obviously the modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes.”
“Obviously.”
“Scoot over.”
I did.
He sat down next to me. “So?”
I shrugged.
“I knew it.”
I turned to him. “What?”
“You’re bummed.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“Oh, Jesus. Not that goddam Ecclesiastes again.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ Christ. Don’t pay attention to that grim jackass.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t help but smile. “You have someone better for me?”
“Hell, yeah. Omar Khayyam. Dude had the right motto: shit happens, so lighten up and crack open another cold one.”
“Was that line in the Rubaiyat?”
“Don’t joke about my homey Omar. I actually took a course on him in college. Dude had the right philosophy. Take me, for example. I’m dating a waitress from Hooters, for god’s sake. You think Ecclesiastes wouldn’t be all over my ass? But Omar? He’d give me a high five. To quote the man: ‘Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.’”
He gave me a wink. “And that’s why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“I know why you go, and where.”
“Where?”
He stood and faced me. “Your mom’s taking the kids out to dinner, and I’m hauling your gorgeous tush down to the Broadway Oyster Bar. They got the Zydeco Crawdaddies playing there at five-thirty. I called Jacki after I spotted your car in the cemetery parking lot. She’s going to meet us down there. We’re going to get you some oysters on the half shell and a big plate of jambalaya and a bucket or two of Dixie beer and then we’re gonna dance to Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler. Let the good times roll, woman.”
He reached out his hand.“Deal?”
My eyes watered. He pulled me to my feet.
I gave him a kiss on his cheek.
“Deal,” I whispered.
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