“And you’re only interested in the gold. You don’t give a shit about Kennedy.”
“Oh, no, Walter. You underestimate Louis Devereaux. He was a very loyal man. He would do anything for me. Abby O’Malley too. She was a great friend to him. Of course, he was going to destroy the confession. Once he got the location of the gold, that is. Once I had-once we had the gold, he would give Abby what she wanted-the entire document, up in smoke. I’m sure you didn’t find it, did you?” Again, she laughed. “No se puede.”
“Lo halle,” said Walter. “No problema. Facil.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“There’s a bar in his living room-a small wet bar-do you know it?” Walter asked. “I’m sure you do. Underneath, where the plumbing for the sink is, on the right-hand side, high up, anchored against the sink itself, is a button. Press it and you open the false front, the cabinet facing on the bar that appears to be solid. It isn’t. When it opens, it reveals a small safe, a sort of mini-vault. You don’t even need a key or a combination to get in. He never thought anyone could or would find it. Just open the front. Press the button. Took me less than thirty minutes to find it. That’s where it was.”
“You’re lying.”
“Roosevelt shit in his pants at Yalta. Did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. How could you. How could anyone. The smell made Churchill sick, but apparently, Stalin didn’t even notice it.”
“What?”
“It’s in the Lacey journal, his confession. There’s a lot more in it besides the Kennedy killings. But there’s no gold, Chita.”
“You have it!” she said. “Where is the gold?”
“Sir Anthony Wells?” said Walter ignoring her question. “The American Ambassador? What about them?”
“Overzealous associates.”
“Overzealous associates!” cried Walter. “That’s it? Just like that.” Conchita Crystal shrugged her shoulders.
“So, then you decided to hire me. Harry was hiding and wouldn’t even tell you where he was.”
“Not me, Walter. I never heard of you. Louis. Louis told me not to worry. He knew someone who could find Harry no matter where he had gone. Louis sent me to you. He said you weren’t working anymore, you had retired. But he was sure you would work for me.” The gleam in her eye, the smile on her lips, said it all-“Facil? You don’t know what easy is.”
Walter rubbed the back of his neck, shook his head and breathed slowly, deeply through his nose. He felt himself getting lightheaded. “I know,” he said. “You set me up real good. I found Harry for you and as soon as I did, you had someone on me. That we got away-me and Harry-was just a mistake. It didn’t matter, though. You figured out where I would hide him. ‘Someplace no one else could find him,’ isn’t that what you said? But you knew how to find that too. Devereaux found Harry through Isobel Gitlin. But it was you who went to New Mexico. It was you who killed him. It was you who took the document.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” she said. “And Louis never told me there would be any killing, not in London, not in New Mexico. Whoever he sent overdid it. There was no reason to kill Harry. It hurt me. I’m sorry. I’m deeply sorry-for Sadie Fagan too-but I can’t turn back the clock. I can’t make it unhappen.”
“You have anything to drink?” said Walter. “Something cold.”
“Sure. I’m sure I have some Coke.”
“Diet?”
“Walter, what other kind?” She patted her flat belly, inviting and secure within those skin-hugging jeans and a green silk blouse that also fit like it had been made just for her. She saw the look in his eyes. She smiled at him. One of those smiles again. A smile that never quit, equal parts magic and desire. Probably enough right there to melt the Czar’s gold, Walter thought. They walked into the kitchen. Walter was surprised to find it much smaller than he would have guessed.
“Why did you kill Harry?” he asked, as she poured the drink into a glass filled with crushed ice.
“I didn’t kill Harry. I told you. Things got out of hand. I don’t know how. I wasn’t there.”
“Sure you were, Chita. You were there. You were the only one there. You’re the one who shot him. You killed Harry.”
“Come on, Walter,” she said, throwing off his accusation as lightly as she might discard a sweater on a warm day. “What do you think I did? Go busting into his cabin, guns blazing, firing away? Shoot him down-grab Lacey’s papers and drive off? Is that how it happened?”
“No, that’s not how it happened.”
“Then what makes you think I had anything to do with it? How could I have been there?” Walter took the glass she offered, took a long sip and put it down on the kitchen counter.
“I knew it anyway,” Walter said. “But if there was any question, any doubt at all, you just told me you were there.” Chita looked at him, half a grin, half a rebuke written on her beautiful face. “Cabin?” Walter continued. “You said cabin. How would you know it was a cabin? And, Lacey’s papers. You called them papers. Not a journal, not a notebook, not a diary, not even a document-papers. How would you know that, if you hadn’t pushed them all together in a stack, packaged them and took them, leaving Harry dead on the floor.” Conchita Crystal had nothing to say. She’d run out of script. “And you weren’t even careful. The Russian cigarettes-‘papiroses,’ they call them. Just like the one you smoked the day you came to St. John, the one you lit up so dramatically at the bar. You probably have a pack in your purse right now-a couple of cartons in the pantry. Hard to find. Can’t get them at your neighborhood supermarket. Devereaux got them for you. You threw the butt on the floor and stepped on it, but the holder, the cardboard part, didn’t get squashed. If a man steps on one of those things, the whole thing gets flattened. A woman, however, a woman with high heels-she uses only the front of her shoe. You didn’t get the whole thing. You only stepped on the front of the butt.”
“My, what an imagination you have, Walter. You even know how I step on a cigarette.”
“The same way you did in Billy’s. The same exotic cigarette. The same crushed butt. What made you think you could mislead me?”
Chita Crystal said nothing.
“You know what made me sure it was you? You know how I knew it was you, how I knew from the minute I found Harry’s body? Do you?” Still she was silent. “Answer me, goddamnit!”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Harry was shot so close there were powder burns on his shirt and an indentation larger than the bullet itself. An indentation the size of the barrel. You hugged him. You brought him close to you, up tight. And you reached up, pushed a little single-shot pistol, no bigger than a cigarette lighter, against his heart and pulled the trigger.” Walter had to catch his breath now. He took another, longer, bigger swallow of his drink. Conchita Crystal, she did that which was most natural to her, that which she had been doing since she was fifteen.
“I know you want this,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse, leaving it tucked into her jeans, riding on her hips, low beneath her waist. With the slick ease of a poisonous snake, her hands slid the open blouse around behind her, showing him her breasts, the silky smooth curve of her belly, and as the open blouse fell from her shoulders, as she pulled each arm through the sleeves, she was bare from the waist up. “It’s all yours, Walter. Touch it. Go on, touch it. It’s all yours-today, tomorrow, forever. You and me.” She could see what she was doing to him. How many men have reacted the same way? How many over thirty years? Who could resist? Facil. She kept her eyes on his, smiled the smile that always got her what she wanted, and with a twist of her fingers, unsnapped the top of her jeans and began slowly pulling its zipper open. She no longer had to say it-not in English-not in Spanish. Walter Sherman had what she wanted and she had what he wanted. “Walter,” she said, walking up to him, right up to him, taking one hand and putting it on his neck, running it across his shoulders, up into his long hair, pulling him closer with the other arm, that hand touching his hips and
moving over them, around behind, into the small of his back. “Walter.” She squeezed against him and he held her tight, his own hand moving down her back as she pushed hard against him. She knew when things were going her way. She felt it. To Walter, she felt so warm, smelled so wonderful. She never stopped looking him in the eye, and then she drew his lips to hers and kissed him. Her tongue fired into his mouth. Her eyes shut. His didn’t. But he held her close, as close as he could.
“Did Devereaux ever tell you,” he whispered, “about Leonard Martin? Did he ever mention the name?”
“No,” she answered.
“He should have.”
Walter shot Conchita Crystal in the heart. The tiny pistol he pushed against her smooth warm brown breast had only a single shot. The force of the small caliber shell was not enough to even produce an exit wound. If she knew what happened at all, it could only have been for a fraction of a second. He let go and she slumped to the floor, dead.
THE ENDING
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone.
- Jackson Browne-
Thursday is a good day to die.
For Jews, and others with similar beliefs about the nature of death and the behavior required of survivors, you can have a funeral before the weekend. If your faith dictates otherwise, requiring one or more time-consuming ceremonial activities, or if you have no religion at all to guide you, and in its place find it desirable to have the deceased shown off, available for public viewing, Thursday can still be good. The departed, resplendent in mortuary makeup and laid out in the comfort of a silky, satin-finished, cushioned box, can be viewed Friday and Saturday, then buried on Sunday. Some people want nothing more than the simple, respectful display of a closed coffin. For them, Thursday is also a good day to die. A Saturday funeral can disrupt a weekend, and most feel a Sunday funeral is better. Neither, however, causes a single day of missed work. But best of all is dead on Thursday, buried on Friday. One day off and nobody’s weekend plans get ruined.
There are the few times when, even if dead on Thursday, a Monday funeral is scheduled. When there are so many mourners and friends, when some come from far away, they will have all day Saturday and Sunday to pay their respects. They can show up for the funeral on Monday and maybe, if it’s early enough, not miss a full day of work. Dying on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is the worst. That can, and often does, inconvenience many.
“It’s a thoughtful man who dies on a Thursday.” This was the wisdom Ike imparted to Walter and Billy, a few years ago, after attending just such an inconvenient, midweek funeral for an older cousin on his wife’s side. He had arrived at Billy’s promptly at lunchtime that day, straight from the cemetery, still dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, and immediately ordered his usual. “Thursday is a good day to die,” he said.
And now, on this day, as Walter straightened his own tie and readied himself for a moment he wished had never come, he recalled Ike’s pithy pronouncement that day. True to his own advice, Ike died on a Thursday.
He was home alone when his aged heart stopped beating. It was late in the afternoon, an August day so hot Ike had to leave his table in Billy’s, next to the sidewalk, across from the square. “I’ll be back later,” he said. “Maybe. Got to cool down some.” Grandson Roosevelt had come to get the old man. He knew it was too hot for anyone to be sitting all day in the sun. Billy told Ike, so often in recent years it was like complaining about the man’s smoking, to move inside. He practically begged him. “Sit over here,” Billy said, pointing to a table in the shade near a fan. “Or sit next to Walter, if you still have the strength to climb up on a barstool without breaking your balls. Just get out of the sun, Ike.”
“No,” the old man said. “This, right here, is my table. Been so a long time. I ain’t moving. Besides, you just gonna yell at me when the smoke gets all over you. You know that.” To punctuate his decision, Ike reached into his shirt pocket and took out a crooked ugly butt, stuck it in his mouth and struck a big, wooden match. It looked like his whole head was about to catch fire.
“When are you going to quit that shit?” Billy asked.
“Never,” replied Ike, coughing. After a second, full-throated, hacking cough, he said, “Walter-you hear me?”
“I do,” answered Walter, folding his copy of the day’s New York Times and putting it down on the bar in front of his drink. “I hear you.”
“Well, I want you boys to remember something.” Ike leaned in, toward them, both of his wrinkled, black hands resting on the tabletop. When he felt he had gathered their undivided attention, he said, “When I die…”
“Ah, come on, Ike!” growled Billy, dismissing him with a wave of his bar towel.
“No, no,” the old man went on. “You listen to me. This here’s important. I want one of you to remember this. Don’t let them bury me without a smoke or two and a couple of matches. I’m expecting to make it to Heaven-sure as sweet Jesus will have me-and I ain’t positive they got any there.” Then he showed his friends that great, yellow-toothed smile that dominated his countenance for nearly ninety years.
“Consider it done,” said Walter.
“Bullshit,” Billy said, turning his attention quickly to wiping down an already spotless bar. Helen had been watching and listening, working down at the end of the bar closest to Ike. She gave the old man a look that said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they do it.” Ike tipped his cap to her. That was on Wednesday. The next day he died.
Hayes Home of Funerals buried nearly all the black people who died on St. John. It had been that way for five generations. For reasons deeply embedded in the American psyche, they rarely provided final services for white folk. This time, they went all out for Ike. Ninety years is a long time to live among such a small group of people, thought Walter. It’s often said at funerals, that many are loved and he was sure that was true, but Walter was certain few were loved as much as this old man. It seemed everyone on the island was there and not a few from St. Thomas, and some from places farther away. Walter paid his respects, offered his condolences to Ike’s family-dozens and dozens of them-by showing up at the funeral home on Saturday and again Sunday morning at a time he knew the clan would be done with church. Billy and Helen were also there both days.
Henry and Willie Hayes did a wonderful job on Ike. They didn’t make him appear different than he was in life. Walter had attended his share of funerals, and so often it was the case, the dead looked like a stranger. No one was ever pleased with that. Yet people had a way of remarking at the sight of the deceased how lifelike their dead bodies looked. Most of the time the opposite was true, everyone knew it, and no words to the contrary could change that. Ike, however, looked just like Ike. Walter went out of his way to thank the Hayes brothers.
Except for his visit to the funeral home, Walter stayed at home that weekend. He didn’t go down to Billy’s at all. On Monday, the day Ike was laid to rest, Billy shut the place down. A simple, black tarp hung over the locked front door. It was the only time the building had ever been closed that anyone could remember.
The funeral was almost a joyous occasion. A ninety-year life celebrated, as it ought to be. A group of five-three of Ike’s sons and two of his grandsons-backed by a single piano, sang a favorite of his, The Closer You Are, written and recorded more than a half century earlier by Earl Lewis and The Channels. Walter smiled, knowing the old man had requested it. He might have sung along, as he did many times with Ike-back in the day-but, instead, today he just listened.
The-a closer you are
The brighter the stars in the sky-a-i
Billy looked over at Walter, both men smiling with lumps in their throats. He was tempted to bring out the old chalkboard and write it up. The choir sang Going Up Yonder like it was the last time you’d ever hear it and the packed church, most unable to sit still, rose up in spirited appreciation. Shouts of “Yes, Jesus!” “Oh, my Lord!” and “Sing that song, children!” reverberated through the old, clapboard building, turning it
into something closer to a Baptist church in Alabama or Mississippi than an island Episcopal sanctuary. Walter felt the place shake on its foundation. Many joined in the singing.
I’m going up yonder, to be with my Lord.
A small group, no more than a dozen or so, had been selected to pass by the casket before it was closed forever at the conclusion of the service. Walter was among them. He stopped for a moment to look at Ike a last time. He almost expected the old man to wink at him. A lonely tear rolled down Walter’s cheek. He fought to get the tennis ball out of his throat. Like the others in the procession, Walter placed a single flower next to Ike’s folded hands. Then he reached down and placed two home-rolled cigarettes and two long, wooden matches in his friend’s shirt pocket.
A few weeks later, Walter was sitting in his usual spot. A handful of bushwhackers sat at one of the rear tables. It looked like they were celebrating someone’s birthday or anniversary. Across the small square a whole boatload of them descended upon St. John for a day’s adventure. The open truck taxis were filling up with beachgoers. Couples, and small groups, headed on foot for Cruz Bay’s fancy shops.
Walter was eating a Caesar salad topped with Billy’s indescribably delicious, spicy, blackened shrimp and sipping his usual when the sound of familiar footsteps broke the midday silence. They were headed his way.
“What’s up, Tucker?” he said without turning to look.
“It’s a pleasure to see you too, Walter,” she responded as she carefully adjusted herself to the high wooden seat next to him. She wriggled, ever so slightly, from side to side, as one often does to get comfortable after sitting down. Walter smiled in her direction.
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