by Matt Witten
Eventually the pandemonium died down, and the questions started pouring in. "Did you kill Jack Tamarack?" was the first.
"No," Will said.
"Where were you at the time of the murder?" came the follow-up.
"For legal reasons I can't answer," said Will.
Flash bulbs were popping, TV cameramen were angling for position. "Where'd you get the gun?" the next questioner asked.
"For legal reasons I can't answer any questions about the murder. I'm sorry," Will said.
But the questions kept on coming. "Why'd you kill him?" "Were you upset that you were going to lose the election?" "Don't you think it will be seen as outrageous that you're still running?"
Finally Will couldn't take it anymore. He mumbled, "Thank you. Good night," and edged off the stage.
I hurried out the back of the auditorium and dashed to the side door to meet him. I found him in the hallway, scurrying away from me.
"Hey, Will!" I called out. He turned toward me, and his eyes widened. He seemed to be looking over my shoulder. Then he took off like a bat out of hell. Behind me I heard people running and shouting Will's name. I turned around to see ten or fifteen media people bearing down on me, chasing after Will. How could I stop these people from torturing my friend? There was nothing I could do . . .
But then, without thinking, I reached out my arms and grabbed the first reporter in the pack, a tall, thin man with red hair and glasses. He gave me a puzzled look as I shoved him in the way of reporter number two, a muscular woman with a camera that fell to the floor but luckily didn't break. Reporter number three stopped in her tracks, to make sure she didn't run into the camera. Behind her, a short man with unwieldy TV equipment had to stop, too.
I threw my arms around a cute woman reporter who was trying to make it around the pileup. She stomped me in the foot with a high heel, and that was the end of that maneuver. But by the time the media people got going again, Will had successfully made his escape. A couple of minutes later, when I stood in front of the building looking around for Will, the fourth estate was out there too, doing the same thing I was and cursing their luck.
Later that night, my phone rang. It was Will. "I made an ass of myself tonight, didn't I?" he said.
"I'm afraid so," I replied.
"But I'm not giving up," he said, and when I tried to convince him to at least take a few days off, he hung up on me. When I called him back, his phone was off the hook.
The Hack's funeral was scheduled for the very next day, which surprised me; usually, the only folks that bury their dead that quick are Jewish people and Kennedys. I felt like a sleazeball attending the funeral, since I'd never even met the man—and from what I knew, I didn't like him.
But most of the two hundred other mourners in this huge, impersonal chapel probably didn't like the dead man all that much either. My guess was, they were here because they had to be. I didn't see too many tears, that's for sure. Of course, maybe Republicans don't cry as much as other people.
I recognized the mayor of Saratoga and three or four other local politicos, but no one else. These weren't the type of folks I usually hung out with, and anyway, I tend to have a sievelike memory for faces. Yet another bad trait for a murder investigator. Ah, well.
The unctuous, bushy-eyebrowed minister droned through a long routine about what a great man the Hack had been. If you bought his shpiel, the Hack was a loving son, husband, and father who went to church every Sunday and devoted his life to serving others. He always obeyed the speed limit, put fallen baby birds back in their nests, and never picked his nose in public.
Okay, maybe the minister didn't quite say all of that, but he came darn close. He was from the Henry James school of literature, never using one word when one hundred would do the job just as well. Even worse, he had a habit of lingering over the "s" sound when it came at the end of a syllable, so a word like "consciousness" took him about ten seconds to spit out. "Consciousssssnesssss." It was excruciating. When he sputtered to a halt at last, and the organ churned out a sad ditty, all of us "mournerssss" hightailed it out of the church as fast as we politely could.
I decided to skip the cemetery, out of fear that the minister might show up with new gas in his linguistic tank. Instead I went to my home away from home, Madeline's Espresso Bar on Broadway, for a cappuccino. Thus fortified, I then crashed the wake at the Hack's house.
The Hack had lived right in Saratoga Springs, like myself. But whereas I lived in a small colonial in a working-class neighborhood, he lived in a two-story brick affair on Fifth Avenue, one of Saratoga's priciest streets. As I stepped past the Corinthian pillars on the porch and opened the solid oak front door, I felt utterly out of place, like I always do in fancy houses. I got rich so suddenly, even now I don't feel rich. I still pick up dirty pennies from the sidewalk.
The Hack's living room was full of forty-something white men wearing suits and ties—in other words, guys who looked just like me. But still, to my eyes they were creatures from another planet. I wonder, do other men feel like they're donning some bizarre alien raiment when they put on a suit and tie, or is it just me?
When I'm ill at ease socially I always gravitate toward the other misfits, and that's what I did now. I ambled over to the one guy who stuck out like a Tibetan lama at a Burger King. He looked about eighty-five, by far the oldest guy there. His suit hung too loose, and was probably three times cheaper than any other suit in the room—even mine, and that's saying something.
Most striking of all, the man had the grizzled, careworn face, rough, calloused hands, and sinewy arms that shouted, "blue collar." No one else at the wake had any of these characteristics.
Nor did anyone else have anything resembling his facial expression. It was an unfocused sneer, like he was disgusted with something but wasn't quite sure what.
His sneer was so off-putting that I paused before reaching him, planning to turn back. But then he glanced up and saw me, and I couldn't figure out a graceful way to retreat. "Hi," I said nervously.
He nodded suspiciously. Who was this strange old bird? Maybe the Hack's lawn care guy or something.
"It's a sad day, huh? Were you a friend of Jack's?" I ventured.
"Not exactly," he rasped in a scratchy voice. "I'm his father."
I gulped with surprise. Nothing about this man's blue-collar look or edgy attitude reminded me of the smooth, dull politico I knew as the Hack.
The old man's eyes crinkled with bitter amusement. "What's the matter, I don't look the part?"
"No, you do," I stuttered. "Actually, you look just like him."
"Bullshit," he snarled. But then, out of nowhere, he started to cry. That got him coughing, and soon his whole body was racked by a ferocious coughing spasm.
"Are you okay?" I asked, rather stupidly, because he obviously wasn't okay. "Can I get you something?" But he was coughing and shaking so hard, he couldn't answer.
I looked around the room for help, but none of the suit-and-tie guys were paying any attention at all to Hack Sr.'s noisy health crisis. They were wrapped up in their conversations about real estate, politics, and golf. It was as if they had signed a secret pact to ignore the old man.
Hack Sr.'s hacking was getting so explosive I half-expected him to have some kind of seizure. Should I call 911? Get him some whiskey? Or just ease on out of the house and let someone else deal with it?
Just then a little boy about Derek Jeter's age came into the room. He ran up to the old man and threw his arms around him. "Grandpa," he said.
The old man's killer coughs gradually subsided, replaced by gasps. Finally even those receded into ordinary breaths. Hack Sr. tenderly ruffled his grandson's hair and held him close.
Feeling guilty for having brought on this fierce attack, I slipped out of the room. I walked toward the kitchen, which beckoned me with welcoming food smells and the gentleness of women's voices.
There must have been a good twenty-five women in that kitchen, and I swear to God, every single one
of them was holding a casserole dish. Additional casseroles were overflowing the counters, heating up in the oven, and cooling off in the refrigerator. Why is it that when someone dies, all the women who knew him feel compelled to cook casseroles?
Well, no doubt the widow would be grateful for all that chicken pot pie in the lonely weeks ahead. Speaking of which, where was the widow?
Maybe right here in the kitchen. I searched the room for a female specimen who looked more stricken with grief, and less preoccupied with casseroles, than the rest.
But these specimens all looked equally bland. No grief here. I moved on.
I wandered down a hallway toward the bedrooms. At first I thought they were all deserted, but then I heard voices seeping from behind one of the closed doors. It sounded like they were arguing—quite heatedly, in fact. I put my ear to the door, but was confounded by all the competing noise from the kitchen and living room. On an impulse, I opened the door and walked in.
All six people in the room immediately shut up and looked my way. There were three frowning middle-aged men sitting beside each other on the edge of the bed, reminding me somehow of the Three Stooges. Standing in front of them were a man and a woman, both in their thirties, and both of them red-faced and angry. Meanwhile a bald man with an ironic expression stood apart from everyone else, leaning against a wall. He tapped his foot impatiently, waiting for me to leave.
The polite thing would have been to say, "Excuse me," and close the door quietly behind me. But instead I stared back at them, trying to remember where I'd seen them before. In particular, I was trying to place that angry thirty-something man with the square jaw and piercing blue eyes—Pierce, that was his name, Robert Pierce, the state assemblyman from Wilton.
Pierce was only about five-foot-seven but he was definitely on the rise, a star in local GOP politics, their new fair-haired boy. Everyone had expected him to be chosen as the next congressman when Mo Wilson was laid low. But the party bosses fooled everyone by picking the Hack instead, and Pierce was said to have swallowed his pride and accepted their verdict.
Now, though, with the Hack out of the way, it looked like Pierce would get his big chance after all. According to the newspapers I'd read that morning at Madeline's, the local Republican big cheeses—the county chairmen of the 22nd District—were about to endorse someone as their official, party-approved write-in candidate. All the pundits were predicting that they would select Pierce, who would of course go on to clobber his opponent, the Jewish liberal suspected murderer, in the election.
The lone woman in the room broke into my thoughts. "Looking for someone?" she asked, trying to soften her irritation with a hint of a smile.
She was too waif-like for my tastes, but attractive in an Ally McBealish sort of way. Though she looked more exasperated than grief-stricken, I finally recognized her anyway: she was the Hack's widow. I'd seen her mug on the back of his campaign brochures, gazing up at him adoringly.
What argument had I interrupted? And who were all the other men in the room? Unfortunately I didn't have time to figure it out. "Excuse me," I said belatedly and withdrew, closing the door behind me.
The quarrel instantly started up again—but quieter this time. They were trying to be discreet. All I could hear was an occasional "Screw you!" or "The hell with that!"
Disappointed, I started back down the hallway. But then I noticed an open bathroom to my left, immediately next door to the bedroom in question. Even better, there was a connecting door, now closed, between the two rooms.
Carpeing the diem, I snuck into the bathroom and shut the door to the hall. The noises from the living room and kitchen fell away. I tiptoed to the connecting door, dropped down to the floor, and put my ear as close as it could go to the crack under the door.
The voices began leaking through. "If you think I'm gonna lie down and let you fuck me," a man was saying, "dream on."
"Damn it, Pierce," another man growled, "if the widow goes through with it, and you two split the vote, that asshole Shmuckler could win."
"Give it a rest," the first speaker—Pierce—said. "Shmuckler'll be lucky to get five percent."
"We don't know that," a third voice whined. "What if people get some sick kick out of voting for a murderer? We can't risk it."
"So you're gonna let this bitch scare you into doing what she wants?" Pierce yelled, outraged.
Then there was a sudden silence. What was going on in there? I wriggled even closer to the door, putting my ear right up against the crack—
And the door burst open.
I looked up from the floor. The bald guy was standing there with his hand on his hips, glowering down at me. Behind him, five other pairs of eyes glowered down at me too.
Feeling like a poor excuse for a worm, something too low to even use as fish bait, I scrambled awkwardly to my feet. "Excuse me," I mumbled for the second time in two minutes, grinning inanely, and got the hell out of there.
My wife laughed her head off later that day, when I told her how I'd been caught in the act. "Hey, it wasn't funny," I complained.
"I'm sure it wasn't," she said, and laughed even harder.
I didn't get too riled at her, though. I knew this was just Andrea's way of releasing nervous tension. She had gone along with my decision to help Will beat his murder rap, since she'd become friends with him too over the years. But she wasn't too thrilled about the whole thing. She still maintained—with some justification, I must admit—that the only reason I'd escaped my previous Sam Spade impersonations alive was because I got lucky as hell.
Finally she got her guffaws under control. "So what were these people quarreling about?" she asked.
I'd had plenty of time to cogitate about that quarrel, with its allusions to "splitting the vote" and "letting this bitch scare you." "I think the other men in that room were Republican county chairmen," I said. "Pierce and the widow were both asking them for the party endorsement. And the widow was threatening to run anyway, even if they didn't endorse her—and even if that meant the Republican vote would be split."
Andrea whistled. "She's acting pretty ballsy for someone who just lost her husband."
"Yeah. And she didn't seem too horribly broken up about his death, either."
"I'll have to ask Rosalyn about her."
Rosalyn was Andrea's friend, a fellow English prof at her community college. "Why Rosalyn?"
Andrea frowned at me. "I thought I told you. The Hack's wife took a course from her."
"Oh, right, I remember." Actually, I didn't. Yet another symptom of the alarming forgetfulness I'd been having lately. Dreaded middle age strikes again.
Any further discussion of Rosalyn and the widow was halted by my two sons, who suddenly raced into the room whooping with joy. "Daddy, guess what?" Derek shouted. "We found the Yankees' web page!"
"It's so cool!" his little brother, Bernie, exclaimed. "It tells you everything about Bernie Williams. Everything!”
Three months ago we bought the kids a fancy new computer, and now that machine gave both of them their reason for living. We limited them to an hour apiece of computer time per day, but that hour was the absolute high point of their existence. The hard drive went on the fritz for two days last month, and Bernie was still having nightmares about it.
We bought the computer because we felt guilty that All the Other Kids Had Them, and maybe we weren't preparing our own children sufficiently for the computer age. In retrospect, I have doubts about our purchase. Okay, it wasn't nearly as foolish as the Stairmaster that's rusting away in our basement. But Derek and Bernie were just as happy—and more creative—doing the stuff they used to do before the computer came, like reading, playing catch, and drawing pictures of baseball players.
Even worse, now I was stuck listening to endless anecdotes about their computer experiences. Myself, I find computers incredibly uninteresting.
Although in truth, maybe my real problem was jealousy. How could my seven-year-old—heck, even my five-year-old—understand
computers better than I did? Every time I try to get information from the Internet, I end up with a headache.
Eager to change the subject from computers, I asked, "So how was school today, guys?"
"Fine," they answered in unison. Then they hurried back to their beloved machine, which had completely taken over Andrea's study—or as it was now called, "the computer room."
"Fine." School was only two days old, and already they were totally blasé about it.
Ah well, at least school wasn't traumatizing them, I comforted myself as I picked up the phone book and looked for Rosalyn's number. I doubted she'd be at home, though. She was probably at her boyfriend Sam's house, locked into some heavy discussion about Commitment and Children and "Are We Ready?" Sometimes it seemed like half of Andrea's unmarried friends were having that exact same discussion with their boyfriends, which Andrea and I privately called the "Marry me, asshole" conversation. After marriage, of course, it's replaced by the ever popular "You never tell me I'm pretty anymore."
But I guess Rosalyn and Sam were taking a break from the deep stuff, because she was home when I called. "Sure, I had Susan Tamarack," Rosalyn said. "She was in my Comp 102 class this summer. Why?"
"What was she like?"
"Don't know. She was pretty quiet, one of those students that always sit in the back. So you must feel pretty bad about your friend killing Susan's husband."
"I'm not so sure he did it. Listen, why was Susan Tamarack taking a community college course? Seems like an odd thing to do, when your husband is in the middle of a huge political campaign."
"Doesn't seem odd to me. Maybe she wanted to try a new thing, you know, something just for herself. I remember on the first day of class, when I had the students interview each other, she said she hadn't been working or going to school for ten years."
And now she wanted to get elected to Congress. Not a bad entry-level position. "She ever say anything about her marriage?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Anything."
There was a brief silence, then Rosalyn said, "I think she felt pretty fried, trying to take care of her kid and get her schoolwork done at the same time she was doing the whole politician's wife routine. But nothing really sticks out."