He calls Marshall after hospice talks to him again, they call the mortuary, then Chester speaks to them but before he does that he tells Marshall, “She’s gone.”
“I can be there in ten minutes,” Marshall says and he arrives though it is fifteen minutes, he puts his hand on Chester’s shoulder. “If you need help, just let me know. I meant to see her before this happened, but I think it’s best that it was just you here. Did you get to tell her everything you needed to?”
“I guess I did.”
“Some people never get that chance, just value that, you’ll always remember it.”
The two men from the mortuary arrive, hospice tells Chester how the coroner will determine cause of death just for legal purposes, he supposes, the two men tell him, “We’re sorry for your loss,” and he knows that is what they say to everyone.
They cover the body and wheel her out, Chester turns to Marshall. “It came quicker than I expected.”
“She wanted you to be there and you were, you’re going to be a mess for a good long while but then you’ll go on living, that’s all we can do, if you think about death too long, it will find a way to you.”
“I ain’t afraid of dying, I’m afraid of my life not making a difference,” Chester explains.
“What we do makes a difference but we cannot think about death.”
“Is that how you’ve survived this long?”
“You make me sound like an old man.”
“You ain’t old.”
“I’m only two years older than you.”
“I know, that’s why I said you ain’t old.”
“You’ll be really busy for the next week or so.”
“I expect you’ll get moving on that serial killer.”
“That’s the ironic thing, I escaped the hospital to get a head start on getting after him, but I need to be here until you’re ready to go.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I need to stay.”
“Are you going to do anything about that huge bandage around your torso, the small but still noticeable bandage on your head, and your arm in a sling?”
“I solved a case for a doctor last year; I’ll let him look at me for the next week or however long it takes.”
“I can’t believe I helped you escape a hospital, how did they not notice the disguise?”
“It was a good disguise; I played it well until I walked right out and was in the clear.”
Chester goes to the funeral home the next day to buy a coffin; his mother had bought a plot next to her mother about five years ago. He has to pick out the prayer cards, which prayer he wants on them and the picture, he goes with Jesus in the garden for the picture and for the prayer he just picks the, “walk through the shadow of death,” verses from the Bible, he picks out some white flowers, he knows nothing about flowers, the funeral director says she can play music or he can bring the music and she’ll play it for him. He goes with the second option, she tells him where he’ll be standing at the visitation and she asks if he has a priest picked out to preside over both.
“Reverend Phillips is who she wanted.”
“Do you want me to contact him or do you want to call him?”
“I can call him. Can someone else stand up there with me during the visitation?”
“Anyone you want, this is your arrangement.”
“It had always just been the two of us, my cousins will come and a few other relatives but we have no close family, my mother had no siblings and neither do I.”
“This is going to be a tough time for you, she was still young, fifty-five is not old anymore.”
Chester signs off on the paperwork, he calls Reverend Phillips and arranges for his appearance to preside over the visitation and the funeral, Chester agrees to meet with him tomorrow. “He said he’d do it.”
“I figured he would, we can put her obituary in the paper as well if you wish.”
“I haven’t written one yet.”
“Once you write one, you can e-mail it to me or drop it off, I’ll get it in the paper with the date and time of the visitation and funeral. How many copies of the death certificate do you need?”
“I have no idea.”
“If she has life insurance, they’ll need a copy, it’s best to have two at the minimum but I would advise three unless you think you’ll need more?”
“Three will be fine,” Chester responds, he looks down at his large hands, he feels empty.
At the visitation, Chester rises and walks up to the podium to speak. “I am a quiet man by nature, but my mother was not, if she saw you, she would talk to you, no matter where you were or who you were, she was the talker. At an early age, I learned to listen. Some may say I should’ve listened better but she had that gift for making people believe in themselves. She could talk a man into doing things he didn’t think he was capable of, and overcoming things he should have never been involved with in the first place. She worked two jobs so we could always have a roof over our heads and food on the table but she never complained about it, maybe once because her feet hurt but that was it, she always put me before anything else. I wasn’t always as good at doing the same, but I was there when she died, she died a strong woman and that’s what I’ll remember the most about her, she was the strongest person I’ve ever known and she was only five foot two. Life is fragile, cherish your days, know tomorrow could be your last, there are all those clichés about seizing the moment but my mom taught me many things, most of what we encounter in life doesn’t matter, it’s our relationships with people that make the difference, we never had many people around us, we just had each other but that was enough.”
Marshall was at the visitation and he is there at the funeral the next day at the church on 39th and Troost, he sits with Chester and helps as a pallbearer with his uninjured arm. Guy Solomon is there as well and spoke before Chester did at the funeral but he kept it brief, he knew the focus should be what her son had to say about her and not a few words from a D.A. Jack Spoiler is there as well, he sits in the pew behind Marshall.
“I’m sorry,” Marshall tells him as they are in the limo on the short drive to the cemetery.”
“It’s part of life,” Chester says. “She wasn’t the same woman the last two weeks; she was just a shell of herself.”
“Just remember her the way that she was,” Marshall says. They listen to the reverend and his prayers as they stand in the snow and watch the casket lowered into the ground, they each lay flowers on the casket first, Marshall puts his arm around him as they trudge through the snow back to the car.
“She told me she wanted me to brave and to be a good man,” Chester tells him.
“Well you are and you will be in the future.”
“I’m not a good man, Marshall, I have issues.”
“We all have issues. You are both brave and good, you’ll make her proud,” Marshall says.
“I’m brave but I’m not a good man,” Chester replies in partial repetition.
“You might not see it yet but you are, what you did in the past is just that. What you choose to do in the present, that is what matters. You work for me and I’ll help you become what she wanted you to be. She knew it was in you and I know it’s in you. The only thing you may need is guidance, and I’m willing to provide it if you accept my offer.”
“Give me a few days, then we’ll get to work.”
“Take as much time as you need.”
“The quicker we start, the easier it will be for me to get my mind off of things.”
“When you’re ready, come to my house,” Marshall tells him, he gives him his card even though he had given it to Chester before, he figures it doesn’t hurt to have two in case if he lost the first one. “And if you need to talk, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Thanks,” Chester says, they shake hands, Marshall places his hat on, he tips the front down.
One day passes and on the second day, Chester has his packed bag and is standing on Marshall
’s doorstep. Marshall makes coffee for the two of them; he gets sugar and brings it out along with a spoon.
“How’s your heart?” Marshall asks.
“You mean because of my mom?”
“No, I’m asking about you in general, not just because of what has happened lately.”
“I’m not soft, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It has nothing to do with being hard or soft.”
“Then what are you asking?”
“I have to know if you’ve grown cold or not. It has to do with your heart and it has to do with strength. Your heart still has to have the capacity to be shredded. If that’s not possible, then you’re of no use to me. It may not seem important now, but at the end of our journey, no matter where it leads, your heart will make the difference.”
“My heart can still be broken.”
“Then I can overlook your past.”
“What do you know about my past?”
“Everything.”
Years ago Chester walked into the meeting room, the basement of a house off of Troost; he looked at the teenagers assembled there. “A dream is a powerful thing. It can cripple a man, or it can define him. Now I know none of you motherfuckers know what a dream is, you wouldn’t recognize it if it stood over you and tea bagged your face. You think dreams are just what happens when you sleep if you ever think about them at all but that’s not what they are. You only think about money and drugs, you have no higher aspirations. None of you had an original thought in your fucking lives, all you think about is hustlin’ and fuckin’, and even then you don’t do any of it well. Buncha wannabe gangsters and you even fail at that. You like big jewelry, the Italians liked it first, everything you do was started by someone else. Red versus blue, seriously? The sports teams figured that shit out generations ago, Dodgers and Angels, Royals and Cardinals, we’re just niggers killing niggers and sure we rake in the money but what do we do with it? If any of you were real gangsters you’d have fucking mansions, you wouldn’t be living in the projects or your momma’s house or your cousin’s we’d be building empires but no, none of you niggers have any vision. You have kids but you don’t raise any of them, you don’t create anything, you just kill your own people, this lifestyle leads to two places, prison or the grave, I got into it to survive.”
“The only way out is death, isn’t that what Damon would say?” one of the older members says.
“I think that’s the most Chester’s ever spoken in his life,” one of the teenagers says.
“You don’t understand, if any of you want to try to stop me, you better think about your families, you better think about those kids you have, if you think about them at all, because if you try to kill me and I come back, I’ll hunt all of them down and then kill you last.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“A tool for negotiation.”
Chester opens the bag, a few of the men nearby see Damon’s head in it, one of them draws his gun, Chester shoots him in the leg, the man howls on the floor. “What I’ve created is a power vacuum and occupied that vacuum, if you want the keys to his kingdom you all can fight it out with each other, but it’s in the bag too.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“You ever read a fucking book in your life?” Chester asks. “Certain Native American tribes believed in scalping their enemies, I needed to send a message and instead of scalping him, I took the whole head, the message is you occupy the vacuum how you see fit, you should all be thanking me, the man was as crooked as they come and what I did wasn’t right and I’ll have to live with it, but he’s off the street, a man has to buy his freedom in this country, I’m buying it with power and the head of Damon.”
“Chester’ I’ve killed people in my time but that’s some fucked up shit,” one of the older members says.
“The first man that tells me they didn’t think about killing him, you meet me outside that door, this is my resignation. You boys go on living your lives, and I go on livin’ mine. What happened here is never spoken of, the cops aren’t that interested when crime lords get killed, but if they come around asking questions none of you turn rats or you will die. A dead man isn’t hard, the king is dead, this is America, we never liked the notion of kings in the first place,” he says, picks up the bag, leaves the papers on the table, and walks out of the basement. One of the men thinks about shooting Chester when he leaves but the man doesn’t do it, he knows it is the way, but he thinks about the head, and he thinks about if he was in Chester’s shoes, he realized what had to be done and he would have to see that for the rest of his life, sure Damon was a pederast and a drug dealer who had murdered countless people but what Chester did was cold and what he said was cold, the man looked at him as a man frozen and then decided not to shoot him, he’d just find a way to survive anyway.
“What you did to Damon was never substantiated but a man slated to die by lethal injection confessed to me on a separate case what he had seen that night, he knew you killed Damon, cut off his head, and you were never seen in their circles again, they said you just up and vanished, Damon included,” Marshall recalls.
“Kansas City is spread out enough, there are plenty of places to hide, Jesse James hid out here,” Chester explains.
“You needed to get out, I don’t approve of what you did but the man I am after does what you did once on a regular basis and he seems to do it for sport, recruiting new people along the way, I understand what it’s like to be a criminal.”
“Marshall, you were a cop for Christ’s sake, you were never a criminal.”
“I come from a family where all of my dad’s line were cops or sergeants, then my mother’s line were ne’er do wells, I could have gone in either direction.”
“You’re white in America; the world is your fucking oyster.”
“I am Irish as well; you know how they treated the Irish.”
“Don’t get into that, what they did to us was worse.”
“Precisely, I am not interested in your past, Guy Solomon cleared you and that is good enough for me, I know you haven’t been arrested since then, you haven’t been involved in any criminal activity, you aren’t late on your taxes either.”
“How’d you get ahold of my tax record?”
“Easy, once you learn this line of work, you’d be amazed at what’s out there on everyone.”
“What are you?” Chester asks.
“I’m just an ordinary man, looking for truth. It’s a detective’s job, that’s all I am, I’m a guy that asks questions and observes, that is all.”
“No, you’re not just that, you’re something else.”
“I’m not, I’m just like you; I can be killed, I can be broken. My work is the only thing that will live on. What we’re doing matters, there must always be those who search for answers, all those people he’s killed, they deserve justice, they deserve the truth. We make sense out of the chaos, many would say it’s futile but it’s all I know how to do. Gina was going to be the one to carry on, then Parnassus took her from me.”
“But he’s dead and you’re still here, you’ve got to let it go.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“I can’t undo what I did.”
“I know, believe me, but you are a changed man, Guy Solomon vouched for you, granted he didn’t have access to the information I had but he trusted you, I need your help and I don’t believe you’re the same man that walked into that basement years ago.”
“There isn’t some part of you that doesn’t think I should be sitting behind bars?”
“Chester, society must determine that, the people I hunt are the ones who kill for pleasure, you killed for survival, a cop knows the difference, ex-cop anyway.”
“What’s in your past that would make you say that?”
“I’ll tell you everything in time, we all have things we would like to do over again, we’ve all made mistakes but you can’t change the past, we can discover its secrets but it can’t be changed. We�
�ll embark in the morning, we will be gone a long while,” Marshall says, he spends the rest of the day filling Chester in on the case up to the present, separated by lunch and dinner, Marshall cooks; in the morning, he had visited Jack Spoiler.
“So I need to call in a favor?” Marshall asks as he talks to Spoiler at the precinct, Central Division.
“What’s that?” Spoiler answers with a question.
“I’m going to need some equipment.”
“Marshall, I can’t just let you walk out of here with equipment.”
“No, see you can deliver it. I’ll pay for all of it. Here’s the list.”
Spoiler reads it over. “Night vision goggles, two-way shoulder comms, teargas, ethylene oxide, miscellaneous lab equipment: microscopes, tubes, etc., a radio jammer, tracking beacons, flares, and a whole bunch of other shit, seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“I can’t get this stuff out of here.”
“You’re a resourceful man, you’ll figure out a way. I’m paying for all of it, saves me trips to military surplus plus there are certain items on the list they don’t sell there. That was all equipment I had before Carmen burned my office down.”
“Sometimes you truly test the limits of our friendship.”
“I never ask for more than what I need.”
“Do I want to know what you need this for?”
“Chester and I are going hunting.”
“Hunting for what, with all this equipment?”
“We’re going to hunt the man in brown.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: JACKSON ADDLER
“The people in this city, they sicken me. I always thought it would be better in a city with this much action, but I find myself disappointed again,” the Addler explains.
“What are you going to do?” Caleb Charles asks.
“I’m making too much money to just vanish though I have done that before.”
“Our work is stressful, maybe you should get on the shit that Johnny’s selling.”
“No, I like to keep my senses sharp. I don’t believe in altering my reality, I’m happy with who I am.”
Detective Tumbler and the Man in Brown (Detective Tumbler Trilogy Book 2) Page 9