Extreme Unction: A Lupa Schwartz Mystery

by J. David Core

“Funny,” she said, “the old son-of-a-bitch was never so popular when he was alive.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said.

  “Some woman from the diocese called the other day to ask about him. She spoke with my mother.”

  “Your mother lives with you?” I said. This made sense. Schwartz had had Beverly make his calls for him, and when she had called she’d spoken with this woman’s mother.

  “Yes, she’s lived here for a year now almost,” the woman said.

  “What kind of questions did the woman ask Mrs. Dutton?”

  “She wanted to know if dad had needed last rites more than once. Something about a record keeping problem in the diocese office.”

  “And did he?” I asked.

  “Well, Mom couldn’t remember; which is understandable. She was under a lot of stress at the time. It’s not easy being a care giver for a loved one, as I am finding out. Actually, it’s not surprising that mom couldn’t remember. She had early onset Alzheimer’s at the time. It’s even worse now.”

  “Do you remember?” I asked.

  “Sure I do. He only needed it one time. In fact, he died the same night about an hour later. Hey, listen, I can understand why the diocese would need that information, but why would Gamut Magazine want to know that?”

  “Actually, I was just making small talk,” I said. “I was calling to find out if your father knew Vincent Hanson.”

  “Oh, this is about the Fr. Coneely case. You’ve made a mistake; Coneely wasn’t even the parish priest when my father died.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I just wanted to know about whether there was a connection between your father and Mr. Hanson.”

  “Oh, well, they knew one another, yes. They were in the Knights of Columbus together.”

  “Did Mr. Hanson visit your father at all during his illness?”

  “Well, you’d have to ask my mother that. But she wouldn’t remember something like that, I’m sure.”

  I continued working back through the list contacting either spouses or other surviving family members. Many said that they had received similar calls from the woman from the diocese inquiring about how long their loved one had survived after receiving the last rites. Most had said that they simply couldn’t remember that far back. Oddly though, not all were sure if their loved ones had had any contact with Mr. Hanson. Several were certain that they hadn’t known the man well at all, and those that had known him couldn’t recall if he’d come to visit their dying relative.

  After I’d finished my calls, I considered what I’d learned. It became clear to me that Schwartz had wanted for me to make these calls all along, though I couldn’t begin to determine why. Schwartz’s car time was nearly at an end, so I decided to meet him down in the garage.

  “Very good work,” I said. “You tricked me into retracing Beverly’s work, but I don’t think it accomplished anything. I wasn’t able to learn anything that she hadn’t already told you.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Schwartz said with a befuddled look on his smug face.

  “I called every one of the survivors that I could find, but not a one of them could link Mr. Hanson to their dead relative. That’s what you wanted isn’t it? For me to believe you had found a clue that you actually hadn’t been able to find, so that I’d make the same calls and find it for you.”

  Schwartz raised his shoulders in surrender. “Yes,” he said, “all right, that’s what I was hoping for. I may as well admit it. But since you say you got nothing new, I suppose it was all for nothing. I’m sorry I had to use you that way. Have you told Mr. Johns about my little deceit?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to call him before lunch.”

  “I’d prefer that you wait until after we’ve eaten. You can phone him from your cell phone as we drive to the coroner’s office. I have something more to tell you over lunch.”

  ***

  Beverly had prepared a light lunch of tomato and spinach bruschetta since we’d only recently eaten breakfast, and this way she could make an extra hearty dinner for us. As we ate, Schwartz informed me that he had decided that he actually did want for Jimmy to be the officer who was credited with the killer that Thursday night. Trevor had benefited from Schwartz’s crime solving prowess many times over the years, and it may very well have made his career. It was time to share the wealth. Besides, Trevor had already benefited from the case by establishing that Coneely had not been guilty. The church was placated, and that was politically significant for Trevor’s career. It was possible that naming the actual killer could be a political step backward for Trevor, but this was not the case where Jimmy Yitzosky was concerned. Schwartz wouldn’t elaborate on how this could be true, but he gave me his assurances that he would not steer me wrong on this point.

  We finished our meals and were soon on the road in Schwartz’s 1992 Bugatti EB110GT. I’d been there a week by this time, and we’d not taken the same car twice. In fact, I probably could have made that claim had the case taken a month. “Now,” Schwartz said, “if you want to call Officer Johns, be my guest. However, I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell him that I am trying to protect him by keeping him out of the case. It would be better for my relationship with him if he continues to believe that I think he made a bungle of the case. I don’t expect you to understand my reasoning. Women are a different relational archetype.”

  He was right, I didn’t understand his logic, but I played along anyway. I called Trevor and told him that I had decided to call the survivors mentioned in the obituaries. He agreed that it was a good idea, and he asked me for a complete report. I protested that it had been all-for-nothing since the survivors had all had memory lapses, but he insisted on a complete conversation-for-conversation report anyway. He probably wouldn’t have been so insistent if Schwartz would have just let me tell him that his ability was not in doubt, but I’d been sworn to keep that under my proverbial hat, so I had to accommodate the stubborn jerk while Schwartz drove on with yet another satisfied smirk on his grotesquely conceited mug.

  Chapter 28

  A few blocks from the coroner’s office, we pulled up at a red light, and Schwartz was distracted by an all-too-common sight. Two young men standing on a corner cautiously approached a car that had pulled up at a nearby corner. One of the young men ducked into the open driver’s side window as the other watched his back. The one in the window, brought his hand up from his pants’ pocket, brought the hand into the window, and a moment later returned the hand to his pocket. The young man came out of the window, and the car drove off leaving the two young men to await the next car.

  “If I could find a way to let the air out of those tires,” Schwartz said, “I’d really be doing the driver a favor. Some people find such stupid ways to fill the voids of fallen faith.” That last was a comment that I had never expected to hear from Schwartz. I was about to ask him to elaborate when another car pulled up, and this one seemed even more fascinating to Schwartz. “That car,” he said. “That’s the Fiero that was parked in front of my drive the other day.”

  I looked closely, and he was right. I recognized the license plate number. “Well, well,” I said. “Isn’t that interesting?” I watched trying to witness the exchange, but the young man’s hand never came up from his pocket. Instead, he indicated an alley across the street.

  The Fiero pulled out and drove to the alley that the dealer had indicated. The light had changed, and the car behind was beeping at us to move, so Schwartz pulled into the intersection and made a right. He made the next three possible rights and brought us back to the same intersection. I became nervous, since — after all — we weren’t exactly driving the most inconspicuous car on the block. The light was red again, and we were two cars back from the lead-car at the light this time. When the light changed, we moved up close enough to see the alley that the Fiero had pulled into. There stood the woman who had assaulted Beverly in Schwartz’s doorway that evening of infamy. She was watching as a third young man put a large bundle under
the front bonnet of her car. As we passed, I could barely see in my peripheral vision as she appeared to hand the young man a package in exchange. Schwartz drove on for half a block and pulled to the side of the road. Soon we were able to see the Fiero pull out of the alley and drive back the way we’d come. The light was red, and she had to wait, so Schwartz pulled into traffic and made the first right. He quickly drove to the next intersection where the light was just turning green. He passed several cars weaving through traffic until two blocks later I saw that the Fiero was just about even with us one block over. At the next corner, I saw that she’d slowed to turn left which brought her in our direction.

  Schwartz pulled over again after crossing the intersection, and she passed behind us. After the traffic broke, he backed into the intersection and made the left turn to follow the Fiero. We tailed her for several blocks, and she pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex. We passed, parked, and got out to reverse ourselves on foot to scrutinize her. We maintained a safe distance, but we could still see what she was up to. She’d opened her bonnet and removed a package wrapped in a large black plastic trash liner. She put it in a dumpster and then went into the building.

  “Either that’s just garbage, which makes no sense,” I said, “or she’s making a drop.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Schwartz said. “Watch my back.”

  I watched with clenched everything as he ran over to the dumpster and pulled out the bag. My stomach felt sick as he tucked his find under his shirt and walked it over to his own car. Trembling foolishly, I got in beside him. He started the engine, and we drove off. “Open the bag,” he said, “but don’t touch anything inside.” Breathing in tense staccato bursts, I pulled the opening back over the contents, and we found ourselves looking at several taped-up baggies of white powder. “We need a new trash bag and some gloves,” Schwartz said.

  We found a grocery store and bought duplicate trash bags and some rubber gloves, then we returned to the apartment building where we’d gotten the contraband. Schwartz took a fresh bag from the new box with his fingerprints shielded in the latex sheathes. I felt that my blood might burst my eardrums, my heartbeat was so loud. He bundled the package and carried it back to the Fiero. He lay on his back and shimmied under the car, where he shoved the package into the under-carriage; and I swore off salt forever. I was certain my blood pressure needed the break. “Since we’re helping Mia’s friend from narcotics get a homicide bust, we may as well duplicate the favor by helping your friend from homicide make a narcotics arrest. After we’ve closed the Hanson case tomorrow, you can call detective Johns and tip him about this case.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “And exactly how do I explain to him that we know there are drugs in her car?”

  “You’ll think of something,” Schwartz said. “You’re a very bright young woman.”

  ***

  Wanda Corwin had been expecting Lupa Schwartz that morning, but our escapade in the drug trade had delayed us. When we arrived in the afternoon, she seemed surprised but pleased. Her makeup had begun to fizzle, but you could still tell that she had gone to extra lengths to fix her hair that a.m. Schwartz had wanted simply to retrieve the medal, but Wanda had playfully insisted that since it was evidence, she had been keeping it in a safe place, her desk drawer under lock-and-key.

  “It’s not evidence,” Schwartz said. “The police have closed the case. They’ve pinned everything on a dead man, so there won’t be a trial, which means there won’t be any need for evidence.”

  “I see,” Wanda had said walking toward her office. I dropped back so that Schwartz could be alone with her, but he noticed, stopped short and indicated that I should keep up. “Well,” Corwin said, “if it’s not going to be used as evidence, then why do you even want it back? Is it possible that you have an ulterior motive for coming to see me?”

  “Souvenir,” Schwartz explained weakly. “May I have it please?” We’d arrived in Corwin’s office, and she opened her drawer and held the evidence bag out for Schwartz to accept. He grabbed the corroded medallion and placing it in his jacket pocket, thanked his benefactor and beat a hasty retreat. I called after him that I’d meet him in a moment, and I reached out to shake Wanda Corwin’s hand.

  “That was so embarrassing,” Wanda said. “I was sure that he’d been attracted to me the last time he was here. I was certain of it.”

  “I think he was — er — is,” I said. “He’s just got a strange attitude where religion is concerned.”

  “I suppose that could be it, but why should he let my atheism bother him.”

  “Your atheism?” I said in amused surprise.

  “Well, I am a scientist. A lot of us have a problem reconciling what we know of nature with the biblical…”

  I interrupted. “You’re an atheist?”

  “It’s not that terrible a thing,” Corwin said defensively.

  “But when we were here last, you said something along the lines that the one who killed Hanson was God.”

  “Did I?” she said. “Well, if I did, I must have been speaking figuratively. But if Lupa thought that I was religious, why is he bothered by that. After all, he’s the one with the superstitious attachment to that St. Christopher’s medal.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “that doesn’t make any sense, does it?” I stood and took hold of the sleeve of her overcoat. “Would you come with me please?” We walked out to the parking lot and found Schwartz sitting behind the wheel of his car. I tapped on the window, and he lowered it uncomfortably to speak with us. “Dr. Corwin was wondering if you’d explain to her why a Jewish atheist like yourself is so attached to a discontinued Roman-Catholic emblem. Can you explain that to us?”

  Schwartz lowered his head until he was looking at me through a filter of eyebrow hair. “Can we go now?” he said.

  “You’re an atheist?” Corwin asked.

  “Yes,” Schwartz said. “I’m sorry. That’s why I stopped our flirtations. I didn’t want to lead you…”

  Corwin jumped in, “I’m an atheist too. Well, humanist actually. We really do need to develop some kind of mixers or something, don’t you think?”

  “You’re an atheist?” Schwartz asked, but that was the last I heard of their conversation. I’d begun giving them some distance way back when Corwin had first asked Schwartz to confirm his dis-believer status. Ahh, heretic love.

  ***

  A county morgue is not the easiest place to find a bright and comfortable place to slink away to. There are bright places, but they aren’t all that comfortable, and the comfortable places (the ones that aren’t occupied) aren’t all that bright, if you know what I’m saying. So I circumnavigated the building a full rotation, and when I came back to the place where I’d started from, I found Schwartz’s car, but no Schwartz. I looked on the windshield for a note, but I didn’t find one. So I sat on the front bumper and waited. After a few minutes, my cell phone chirped, and when I answered, I was greeted by Schwartz’s pompous baritone. “Ms. Hoskin,” he said, “Dr. Corwin and I are having coffee inside. Would you like to join us?”

  The employee lounge was one of those antiseptic rooms with uncomfortable chairs that you would expect to find bolted down because the owners feared for their safety, there being such a high underground demand for particle-board slope-backed torture seats. But Schwartz and Corwin may as well have been seated in plush, ergonomically-designed sedan chairs for all of the reaction the pain-eliciting function of the chairs-from-hell were managing to get. The two of them were oblivious to the malodorous disinfectants, the over-cooked coffee, and the energy-draining lighting. Enraptured as they were by their mutual nerdishness, Corwin was actually laughing at Schwartz’s bad jokes, and he was actually unaffected by the faded lipstick and the sweat ring in the base makeup on her throat.

  “Ms. Hoskin,” Schwartz said, “I want to thank you for discovering my error concerning Dr. Corwin here. She’s a perfect delight. Are you aware that she has read both the Koran and the
I-Ching, and that she is working on a translation of the Bhagavad Gita which substitutes common American names to make the text easier to follow?”

  “No,” I said finding it surprisingly easy to mask my shock, “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Not only that, but she’s actually attended a pagan Samhain celebration.”

  Corwin blushed and said, “It makes it easier to argue religion with arrogant fundamentalists if you know the facts better than they do.”

  “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” I asked. “People have the right to hold different opinions.”

  “To hold different opinions, yes,” Corwin agreed, “but not to preach them when they don’t understand the other philosophies.”

  “Exactly,” Schwartz agreed. “Religious fervor without even a general understanding of parallel philosophies is dogmatic ostrich-ism. It derives from a reluctance to challenge one’s own beliefs because of a fear that some super-natural being will be offended by the lack of pure faith.”

  “It’s worse than dogma,” Corwin interjected. “It’s superstition.”

  “Absolutely!” Schwartz insisted.

  “So what do you call your need to take that medal back as a souvenir?” I asked. “Doesn’t that suggest that you have a romantic attachment to relics and icons?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Schwartz said, “I didn’t want this back for myself. It’s for Beverly.”

  “Beverly is his housekeeper,” I told Corwin. “But why would Beverly want somebody else’s old St. Christopher’s medal?”

  Schwartz hemmed and hawed a moment, and then he said, “It isn’t somebody else’s. It belongs to Beverly. I didn’t actually find it in the hole. I palmed it, and I put it in there when you were distracted.” I folded my arms across my chest, and he went on. “I needed for Detective Johns to believe that I had found fairly conclusive evidence that there had never been a Chlordane treatment done at the hall at St. Bartholomew’s Church. I didn’t want to lie to him, so I convinced you to believe that it was true, so that you could actually believe it when you told him. If you’ll think back, you’ll realize that I never told you that I’d dug up the medal. I never told anybody that I had dug up the medal.