by Nick James
“Aren’t you just the prompt person,” she said coming around the corner.
He glanced toward battle ax Marci and smiled, but didn’t respond.
Chapter Twenty-Three
He walked up to the grocery store a few nights later. He still looked around suspiciously whenever he came out of his building, or any building for that matter, but he never saw anything suggesting he was being watched or followed. Still he’d waited until dark, which meant he had to hurry since the grocery store closed at nine.
He was literally the only person in the checkout lane and he thought he was probably the last customer in the store. As he grabbed his bag and made his way toward the door the checkout girl was already busy closing down her register, probably hurrying to make a hot date. All he knew was she didn’t have time to pay attention to him. He stole a newspaper off the rack. Big deal, they’d be sent back first thing in the morning with tomorrow’s deliveries anyway, so it wasn’t like the grocery store was really losing anything.
He was sitting on the floor, nibbling on some of the Doritos he’d taken from Ardis Dempsey a few days back while he read his stolen copy of the paper. He’d made his way through the news, such as it was, and began working his way through the obituaries.
There it was, “Katherine ‘Kate’ Clarken. Died unexpectedly. Visitation between six and eight. Thursday evening. Private internment.”
That was tomorrow night. It struck him that the visitation service was short, just two hours, with no funeral service or survivors mentioned. Given the few hours of Kate’s life he’d been exposed to, Bobby didn’t find it surprising there wasn’t a throng of people lined up to bid a tearful good-bye. Still, in a way he felt sorry for her.
* * *
He parked on the street about half-past seven hoping to avoid any crowd. He needn’t have worried. The Geo Metro was the only car parked on the street for a block in either direction.
The Capitol City funeral home had been in business for close to a century. When Capitol City first started out, this section of town must have been some kind of neighborhood. Bobby guessed the area had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression and then life just sort of skidded downhill from there. Now, the place was a jumble of nondescript two-story brick warehouses, the odd little ugly frame house, a few small salvage yards and a sleazy bar named Harold’s that advertized Happy Hour All Day Long directly across the street.
He grabbed his four-dollar bouquet of grocery store flowers from the passenger seat and headed inside the Capitol City funeral home. The lobby was small and nondescript. Off to the right was a small office illuminated by the glare coming off an old television sitting on a desk.
“Can I help you?” a man asked from about a foot behind the television and flicked on a light. He was dressed in an out-of-date dark suit, a white shirt yellowed around the collar with age and a dark tie. He didn’t bother to get up. For that matter he didn’t really bother to look at Bobby. He just quickly glanced in the general direction and then returned to the television.
“Katherine Clarken,” Bobby said.
That seemed to get the attendant’s attention. He studied Bobby for a long moment, glanced at the bouquet of flowers in his hand. “Straight ahead, second door on the left.” Sounding like he couldn’t quite believe someone had even asked for her.
“Thanks.”
The hallway wasn’t all that long and sported trim and ceiling molding that looked like it came out of a 1940’s movie. The ceiling had grayed over time and both the walls and trim were painted the same sort of icy pale green color. There was a definite grime pattern on either side of the hallway from seven or eight decades worth of hands running along the walls. The carpeting looked to have once been a burgundy sort of affair with a floral motif but was now in desperate need of a good cleaning or maybe it should just be hauled outside and burned.
The second door on the left led into a small, claustrophobic room in need of ventilation. The room was poorly lit with a dreadful dirge droning in the background over a crackling speaker. There was a grey vinyl partition hung from the ceiling that had been pulled across the rear of the room to accommodate smaller affairs. At the front of the small room a dozen brownish metal folding chairs were lined up in three rows of four, two chairs on either side forming a sort of pretend center aisle. At the very front of the room, past the folding chairs a small card table stood draped with a white table cloth. Placed in the middle of the card table was a very plain wooden urn. In case there were any doubts, a 4 x 5 card lay in front of the urn with the handwritten name in black marker, Katherine Clarken. The stuffy room was empty except for one young guy sitting off to the right in the rear row of folding chairs.
Bobby walked up to the front of the room, past the chairs and stood in front of the card table. He didn’t know what to do, but felt it would be rude to just turn and leave. So he stood there and pretended to say a prayer. Then he placed the flowers on the card table next to the urn, careful to lay the $3.99 price tag face down. He bowed his head then as he turned to leave he nodded at the young man in the chair.
The young man gave a curt nod in response, then his eyes narrowed and he growled in a deep voice, “Who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Bobby,” he said and extended his hand.
The young man brought a massive paw over and wrapped it around Bobby’s hand. He squeezed gently, but left him with the sense it would have been no problem to simply crush Bobby’s hand. He was solidly built, with a weightlifters chest and a very thick neck. He wore a black short sleeved shirt, just three buttons, all undone. The sleeves were stretched around large biceps tattooed in some blue Celtic-looking pattern. His hair was clipped short, almost but not quite shaven, and his eyes looked red and puffy. He’d been crying.
“Thanks for coming. You’re the only one. She would have liked those.” He lifted his square chin in the direction of Bobby’s grocery store bouquet.
Bobby smiled and nodded. “I only met Katherine, Kate, a few days ago, really just a simple business arrangement. I was supposed to pick her up and, well…”
“Pick her up? Business arrangement?” There was suddenly an edge in his voice.
“I was hired by a firm, a law firm downtown to drive people so they could give depositions. Katherine, Kate was one of the people I drove.”
“You brought her downtown?”
“Actually no, see, we ran into some difficulty and we weren’t able to get there in time, get to the attorney’s office. I ended up driving her back. She wanted me to drop her off at Moonies that night and well…” He thought it best not to go on from there and stared at the floor. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.
“So you’re the one who brought her to Moonies?”
“Only because that’s where she told me she wanted to go. I picked her up at Foxies, that’s where they followed us from,” Bobby said.
“Followed you?”
“I really don’t want to get into it. She couldn’t tell who they were, she didn’t know. At the end, she just told me to drop her at Moonies so that’s what I did. Then I heard about this awful…” He stopped there, ready to give another nod and leave.
“Sit down,” the young man said. Not so much an invitation as a command.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bobby ended up telling him the story. He told him the entire story, almost. About going to Kate’s apartment, Moonies, Foxies, those idiots shooting at them and how he took off down the alley to get away. That was the point where the young man told him he was Kate’s son and Bobby made the decision to leave out the part about buying her the cheapest bottle of vodka he could find, dressing her and dumping her in front of Moonies in a quasi-comatose state so he could flee the scene.
“So Bobby, what you’re telling me is you saved her life.” The young man’s eyes watered up as he gazed at the wooden urn.
“Anyone would have done the same thing.”
The young man scoffed, “Don’t bet on it.”
“I just wish I could have prevented what happened later. We talked about her going there, I suggested she go home or I was even willing to get her a hotel room. She just wanted to go to Moonies and begged me not to call the police. She was fairly insistent so in the end I went along and did what she wanted. I wish I could change all that now,” Bobby said and sort of let that hang out there for a moment hoping the opportunity would present itself so he could get up and leave.
“You did your best, man,” he said, then sort of came back to reality and focused on Bobby. “You need a ride or anything?”
“Me? No, thanks, I’m parked right out front. Kind of you to offer, but its not necessary.”
“Come on, we’ll walk out together, the three of us,” the young man said, then went over to the card table, picked up the urn and tucked it under his arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They walked down the dimly lit hallway together, past the small office and out the front door.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” A voice called from the office, but never left the glare from the TV to see them out.
They stood out on the street, Bobby’s car sat at the curb, wheezing.
“That yours?” the young man asked.
“Yeah, that’s me. Look I…”
“What happened to it?”
“I told you, someone pulled along side of us, a burgundy Escalade. They lowered the window, stuck a cannon out, I slammed into the side of the Escalade a couple of times, but they still got two rounds off before I pushed them into some oncoming traffic. I just wanted to make sure Kate, I mean your mom was safe so I hit the brakes and drove onto the sidewalk then took off down an alley. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t follow.”
“You really did save her, man,” he said looking at Bobby’s windshield.
Bobby nodded.
“They were aiming for her, weren’t they? She was sitting right there in your passenger seat. You didn’t have those quick reactions they would have shot her, right then.”
There seemed to be no advantage to telling him Kate was passed out in the back seat having just finished throwing up.
“Yeah, they stuck that pistol out the window I knew they were aiming for her so I slammed into them, figured it would be the one thing they wouldn’t be expecting.”
“And that’s your car?”
“Yep, one of a kind. I get some money saved up, I’m gonna get that windshield replaced.”
“Better do it sooner rather than later, cops take a dim view of that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, things are just a little tight right now. But it’s first on the list.”
“Say Bobby, I wonder if I can ask a small favor of you.” He said it in a way that eliminated the response “No” right off the bat.
“Possibly, what is it you need?”
“I’ve actually got an appointment in a bit. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind taking my Mom home with you, just for tonight, keep her safe. I’ll come by later and pick her up. That sound okay with you?” Again with that tone of voice that said “No” was not an option.
“It would be my pleasure, be happy to help.”
He handed Bobby the urn, then pulled his phone out, swiped his finger across the face, pushed the screen twice and asked, “What’s your number?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m just switching cellphone carriers so I’m sort of between numbers,” Bobby lied.
“You got an address?”
Bobby told him.
“Great, got it. I’ll be in touch, Bobby,” he said, then shut the phone off, nodded and crossed the street.
Bobby placed Kate’s ashes on the floor of the passenger seat, then watched in his side mirror as her son stepped inside Harold’s, “Home of the all day happy hour”. Bobby climbed behind the wheel and drove Kate back to his place.
He set her urn on the kitchen counter and put a pizza in the oven. He was a little curious and opened the lid on the urn, it looked like it had been filled with cat litter. Maybe it had and Capitol City just dumped folks in a large hole somewhere. He decided it might be better to just focus on the pizza.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He’d been moved up a notch in the pecking order of Marci’s roster. Violet Oxley had been subpoenaed to testify in a court case. He was to drive her down to the Courthouse. Then sit with her in the hallway outside courtroom ‘2’ cooling his heels until she was called to testify. His guess was, at three-thirty-five in the afternoon that it had grown too late in the day for Violet to be called. Unless, of course, there happened to be a real jerk on the bench presiding, which there was as a matter of fact, her honor, Judge Susan Eckersbe, a decidedly unhappy individual. Back when he had been practicing he’d had the distinct displeasure of finding himself in her courtroom on a couple of occasions. Those appearances had never seemed to go his way.
“Goodness, I almost hope they don’t call me, now,” Violet said at three-forty.
“I’m pretty sure they won’t, this time of day they usually like to wind up around four. Gives the attorneys time to file motions, get things lined up for tomorrow. The judge will be able to beat the traffic home.” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the joke which seemed to bring a smile to Violet’s face.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Trust me, I’ve been around this particular block more than a few times”
At four-ten the bailiff stuck her head out the door and called, “Violet Oxley?”
“Dreadful,” Violet said an hour and a half later and not for the first time. “Just positively dreadful. Where do I send my complaint? Because believe me I’m going to write one. That woman could do with a good thumping,” she said, then stared out the window of Bobby’s back seat.
It was almost six and they were still inching along in rush hour traffic. They weren’t being helped by the construction lane closures that had this section of Snelling Ave. going from three lanes down to one. There wasn’t a construction crew within sight to save Bobby’s soul.
“Yeah, that’s Judge Eckersbe. Not a very happy person.”
“I should say not. She practically shouted at me while I sat in that chair out in front of everyone trying to gather my thoughts.”
“The witness stand.”
“It was worse than being on stage. For pity’s sake, I thought it just might be important to give correct information. She apparently couldn’t be bothered to grant me the second or two I needed to gather my thoughts before I began. Dreadful, absolutely dreadful.”
“No argument from me, Ms Oxley,” Bobby said then turned off Snelling and headed West on Larpenteur. He turned right two blocks down and then pulled into a toney cul-de-sac a few moments later.
“Just pull up in front if you would. I don’t want you dripping oil on my driveway.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said and pulled up next to her mailbox.
“Thank you, Bobby. You’ll be here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning?”
“I will,” he said and climbed out to open the rear door for her.
“Try not to be late. I’ll be waiting,” she said, then stepped out and walked up the driveway to her front door. She unlocked the door and stepped inside without looking back.
He gave her the finger from behind the passenger door and drove off.
Bobby was just tidying up the kitchen area after dinner when someone knocked on his door. Since he didn’t have a peep hole to look through he had to ask, “Who is it?”
“Kate’s son. Here to get my mom.”
He glanced over at the kitchen counter. Fortunately, he had just removed the plate he’d washed and leaned against the urn to dry along with the fork he’d set on top of it. He opened the door.
“How’s it going, Bobby?” The young man smiled and walked in. He was dressed in a nondescript t-Shirt and jeans, the t-shirt stretched taught over his muscular chest. The fabric around his large biceps looked like it was about to rip. A black guy about the same age and size followed in behind him. The guy had a to
othpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Neither one bothered with any form of introduction.
“I set the urn right over here, on the kitchen counter,” Bobby said making a beeline for the urn. He kept talking as he grabbed a dish towel and wiped a few drops of water from the fork he’d left on top. “Lovely little bit of wood, I’m sure she would be pleased,” he smiled and pretended to polish the top and sides.
“Not sure she’d even know,” her son said looking around the sparse surroundings before he asked, “Exactly how long you been living here?”
“Me?”
The two visitors both looked at Bobby like he was nuts.
“Just a couple, well maybe four weeks. I’m sort of getting resettled.”
Kate’s son nodded and smiled. “You just got out, didn’t you?”
Bobby nodded.
His visitors grinned.
“I knew it. Picked up on it the other night, you had that sense about you. A fella can tell, just a certain way about you.” He flashed a quick smile, then got serious, very serious. “So maybe those two you mentioned, driving the Escalade, maybe they were looking for you all along.”
“The shooters? Not likely.”
“You locked up with some bad asses, you give ‘em some of that privileged boy attitude? A lot of folks don’t like that shit.”
“I wasn’t locked up with real criminals, I was with bankers, lawyers, and accountants.”
“Not real criminals? Shit, now that’s funny. You think that’s funny Arundel?” he said to his sidekick.
“Shit.”
“Listen, they weren’t after me. Just for starters they were looking for your mom at Foxies. I’d never even been there before, Foxies. I told you one of them tried to go in the ladies room after her and I had to stop him. Told him to get the hell out of there, he backed off, went away, once he realized he’d have to deal with the likes of me. Then they were out on the street looking for her. Hey, they would have got her right then and there if I hadn’t pulled into traffic the way I did. I tried to lose ‘em in traffic, but the bastards found us, somehow. They would have had her for sure if I hadn’t reacted when they shoved that pistol out the window, it looked like a .45 or maybe a .357, big damn thing. Most guys would have frozen under fire. I didn’t have that luxury. I slammed into them a couple of times, then jumped the curb, raced down the sidewalk and blasted down that alley so I could get her the hell out of danger. I lost count of how many rounds they got off. Of course, I was more than a little preoccupied at the time.”