Basket Case Read online

  When I finally work my way up the line to Cleo, I notice that she's switched to black contact lenses in honor of the somber occasion. She greets me as if we've never met.

  "Jack Tagger," I prompt helpfully, "from the Union-Register."

  "Oh. Right."

  I embrace her and say, "We really need to talk again."

  Cleo pulls free.

  "Oh, not now," I add solicitously. "Not today"

  "I'm leavin' for L.A., like, tomorrow," Cleo says. "Talk about what?"

  "Bad chowder. Bad autopsies." I smile. "Just a few questions. Won't take long."

  Cleo looks like she's got a hockey puck lodged in her gullet. "You ... no, g-g-get the fuck outta here," she stammers.

  "You're upset. I'm sorry—"

  Cleo turns to flag down the bald guy in the bomber jacket. "Jerry? Jerry, I wa-wa-want this g-g-guy outta here—"

  But already I'm moving for the door. There seems no point in asking if I can tag along on the boat ride for the scattering of James Stomarti's mortal remains.

  Outside in the parking lot, I catch up with Ajax and Maria as they're getting into a rented Saturn convertible. They inform me that they're legally not allowed to talk about the recent studio sessions with Jimmy Stoma.

  Maria says, "We signed a, whatcha call it, a confidentiality agreement. I'd like to help you, man, but I don't wanna get blackballed. I need the work."

  Ajax says, "Same here. I got a little girl at home."

  "Then forget the sessions. Tell me about Jimmy. What was he like?" St. Stephen's is emptying fast. The limo drivers forsake the shade of an ancient banyan tree and, stubbing out their cigarettes, hustle back to their cars.

  "Jimmy was real cool. A nice guy," Ajax says.

  "And Cleo?"

  Maria laughs acidly. "No comment, chico."

  "Ditto for me." Ajax says, disgustedly. "Why you even gotta ask? You saw the bitch with your own eyes. She's in it for capital M-E."

  "Think he loved her?"

  Ajax howls and starts up the car. Maria waves me around to her side. "You're gettin' a little carried away," she tells me, not unkindly. "We're backup singers. You unnerstand?"

  I watch them drive off. Then I go find my Mustang, toss the notebook on the front seat, crank up the air conditioner. I feel whipped, as I always do after a funeral service. But through the windshield I notice a scene that makes me grin—the widow Stomarti, clutching the brass urn on the steps of the church while being interviewed by Timmy Buckminster.

  I roll down all the windows and crank up the Slut Puppies full blast and roll out of the parking lot nice and easy.

  Rock on, Jimmy Stoma.

  8

  Janet Thrush opens the door and says, "Oh. You."

  "I come in?"

  "Look, lemme explain."

  "Not necessary."

  "About this getup," she says sheepishly. "I wanna explain."

  Janet is decked out in a Halloween-quality police costume: shiny black boots, dark blue slacks with a gray martial stripe down the sides, a starched white shirt with a cheap tin badge on the breast, and a holster with a toy pistol. Hooked over the top button of her shirt is a pair of plastic reflector sunglasses with neon-blue lenses. In her back pocket is a ticket pad. All that's missing is a set of handcuffs.

  "Sorry," I say. "Didn't know you had company."

  "I don't have company. Not exactly."

  She waves me in and signals me to keep my voice low. The small living room is lit as brightly as a TV studio, which evidently it is. She directs me to a corner and whispers, "I'll just be a sec."

  Janet slips on the sunglasses and runs a hand through her hair. Then she steps into the lights and, cocking one hip, squares to face a video camera no larger than a pencil sharpener. The camera is centered on a coffee table next to a personal computer. Lines of words appear in staggered bursts on the screen, but I'm not close enough to read them.

  Janet bends over the keyboard and punches out a message to her cybervisitor. Straightening, she announces, "Larry, you're still under arrest, so don't try anything funny. Call me back in twenty."

  Once more she taps the keyboard and the screen goes black. Then she steps around the aluminum tripod racks on which the hot photo lights are mounted and jerks the plug from the wall. She swipes the shades off her face and tosses them on the coffee table.

  "Wanna Bud?" she asks me.

  "Sure."

  "Or something stronger?"

  "Whatever you're drinking is fine."

  We move to the kitchen, where the temperature is at least fifteen degrees cooler. Janet hands me her last beer and pops opens a cola for herself.

  "See, it's Meter Maid-Cam," she says. "You know about this stuff? You on the Net? How it happened, I was sorta between jobs and this girlfriend a mine, about my age, tells me I can make real good money just by ... well, she strips, you know, all the way down to her birthday suit. Myself, I stop with my undies. Anyhow, my girlfriend helped set it all up, got me my own Web site and 900 number and so forth. Her deal is Convent-Cam, she and three other girls dress up as Dominican nuns. You mighta read about 'em in Salon."Janet tilts the Coke for a long drink.

  "The meter maid theme is good," I say supportively.

  Janet nods. "It was my idea. Because most guys got a thing for lady cops. Don't you?"

  "I try not to sleep with authority figures."

  "I bet you could." Janet's tone is clinical, not suggestive. "Anyhow, you probably think it's pretty sleazy, the whole setup."

  "I think it's none of my business."

  "Four bucks a minute, Jack, that's what these gomers pay me to give 'em a 'parking ticket.'"

  "In your bra and panties."

  "Yeah, but still ... "

  "It's good money," I agree.

  "This guy Larry"—Janet, cutting her eyes toward the living room—"he likes me to write him up for double-parking his timber rig in front of a massage parlor. That's his secret fantasy, I guess. He's calling all the way from Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, ask me do I care if he's whacking off in Fairbanks, Alaska, while he's staring at me in my underpanties on his PC? Not really, Jack. For four bucks a minute he can tie his cock in a knot and clobber a moose with it, far as I'm concerned."

  "Don't give him any ideas."

  Janet laughs. "I try not to think about what's going on at the other end, but half these guys, they do a play-by-play. I guess they learn to type with one hand or somethin'. Hey, you're not drinkin' that beer."

  "I went to your brother's funeral today," I say.

  "Oh." Janet adjusts the toy holster and sits down on a stool at the counter. "I couldn't pull myself together. I got dressed up all in black and gassed the car but I couldn't make the damn thing drive to the church."

  "I understand, believe me. You want a review?"

  "Just tell me Cleo didn't sing."

  "I'm afraid she did."

  Janet groans and slaps her hands to her cheeks.

  "Not that 'Me' song!"

  "It's probably best you weren't there."

  "Jimmy woulda puked. Don't tell me any more, 'kay?" Janet looks up at the wall clock.

  I say, "The reason I stopped by—"

  This is the ball game. Without Jimmy's sister I'm done. I'll never get the newspaper to go after the story.

  "—it's about the autopsy," I say. "Are you going to pursue it? Do you want to?"

  "How? I don't have enough to take to the cops." Janet shakes her head. "Anyways, I wouldn't know where to start."

  "I do."

  Her smile is grateful but sad. "You know, I haven't slept a night since he died. I can't believe it happened the way they said it did. Fact, I can't believe a word that greedy no-talent twat says."

  "Think she murdered him?"

  "Well, somethin's not right," Janet says quietly. "I honestly don't know. You're the reporter, what do youthink?"

  "Did your brother have any money?"

  "Any money left, you mean. Sure he did. Even in the bad old days Jimmy
was pretty sharp—whatever he blew on dope, he'd make sure to send the same amount to Smith Barney. For a junkie my brother was very disciplined. That's how come he could afford a place in the islands."

  "Speaking of which, you wanna go?"

  "Right." Janet, with a sarcastic sniff.

  In the living room, the computer clicks to life and beeps out a greeting.

  "Shit," she mutters. "My lonely lumberjack."

  "The Bahamas. You and me," I say. "We'll talk to the cops who investigated Jimmy's drowning."

  "You serious?"

  Behind her, the PC keeps beeping entreatingly.

  "Jack, I can't afford a trip to the islands."

  "Neither can I," I say lightly, "but young Race Maggad easily can."

  "Who's that? "Janet asks.

  "Please go with me. It won't cost you a dime. The newspaper will pay for everything." I'm not trying to sound important so much as convince myself that I can pull this off. For obvious reasons, the obituary beat doesn't come with an expense account.

  "How about it?" I ask Janet Thrush.

  "Damn, you areserious."

  After the fifth beep, she rises to attend to her caller.

  "Please," I say. "If I go alone, they'll just blow me off. They've never even heard of my newspaper in Nassau. But you're his sister, they've got to talk to you."

  "Doesn't mean they gotta tell the truth."

  "Sometimes you can learn more from a lie. Think about it, and call me later."

  "Might be late. After Larry I've got Doctor Dennis logging on from Ann Arbor and then there's Postal Paul from Salt Lake. My very first Mormon."

  "I'll be up," I say.

  As I'm backing the car out of the driveway, the camera lights flare on in Janet Thrush's living room. The drapes are lined so there's nothing to see but a hot white glow around the margins of the windows. From inside the house, though, I hear the beat of some jazzy music, accompaniment to the dance of the modern meter maid.

  My mother knows when my father died but she won't tell.

  "What does it matter? Gone is gone," my mother says.

  I'd like to know when my father died in order to avoid dying at the same age, which is my deepest fear. My mother disapproves of this obsession and therefore refuses to provide useful clues about Jack Tagger Sr., who stomped out the door when I was only three and never returned.

  "How did he die?" I've asked her many times.

  "Not of a heredity disease, I can assure you," she usually says. "So stop this ridiculous fretting."

  My mother kept only one photograph in which my father appears. He is tall and sandy-haired and bare-chested and, to my eye, radiantly healthy. In the picture he has a tanned arm slung around my mother's shoulders. They are squinting into the afternoon sunlight—this was on a beach in Clearwater, where my parents lived at the time. I am in the photograph, too, sleeping soundly in a stroller to my father's right.

  Once I asked my mother what my father did for a living, and she replied, "Not much. That was the problem." In the photo I would guess his age to be between twenty-five and thirty years old. That means if he were alive today he'd be at least sixty-eight and possibly as old as seventy-three. But he's not alive—on this point my mother wouldn't lie.

  After Jack Sr. skipped out, our lives moved briskly along. My mother worked long hours as a legal secretary but she always made time for me, and a social life. Although she seriously dated several men, she didn't remarry until after I'd finished high school. I went off to college, fell into the newspaper business and never thought much about my father until many years later, when I got demoted to the obituary beat at the Union-Register.It was then I started worrying unhealthily about mortality; my own, in particular. So I phoned my mother in Naples (where she and my stepfather retired for the golfing opportunities) and asked if my father was still alive.

  "No," she said evenly.

  "When did he die?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Just curious," I told her.

  "I'm not sure when it was exactly, Jack."

  "Mom, please. Think."

  "It's not important. Gone is gone."

  "How did it happen? Was it something congenital?"

  "For heaven's sake, don't you think I'd tell you if it was," my mother said. "Now let's drop the subject, please. It happened a long time ago."

  "But, Mom—"

  "Jack!"

  A long time ago.That clinched it. When my mother says "a long time ago," she means at least twenty years—which by my calculations would have made my father no older than fifty-three when he died, and possibly as young as ... well, that's the gut-gnawing, ball-clenching question.

  Was he thirty-five? Forty? Forty-six?

  One time I came out and asked my mother: "Was he older or younger than I am when he died?"

  "Don't be morbid," she scolded.

  "Come on, Mom. Older or younger than me?"

  Younger is what I wanted to hear her say, because that meant I was out of the woods. I'd skated through the year of doom.

  "What difference does it make, Jack? When God calls us, we go. Obviously your father got the call."

  "He was in his forties, wasn't he? He was exactly my age and you're afraid to tell me!"

  "This job isn't good for you, Jack. Maybe you should try something lighter, like a dining-out column?"

  Not knowing the specifics of my father's death keeps me up some nights. Whenever I speak to my mother I find myself prying a little more, which explains why she doesn't call so often.

  "Just tell me," I asked her recently, "was it natural causes?"

  "Of course," she replied soothingly. "Death is always natural."

  It was a monologue I'd heard before.

  "If a man falls off a twenty-story building," my mother said, "it's only natural he should die. Same thing if he lies down on the railroad tracks in front of a speeding train. Or a bolt of lightning strikes him on the thirteenth fairway—"

  "Okay, I get your point."

  "The heart seizes up, the lungs puddle, the brain shuts down. End of story."

  "Sheer poetry, Mom. May I borrow that for your eulogy?"

  Tonight, waiting for Janet Thrush to call, I impulsively decide to try again. My mother picks up on the first ring.

  "Oh hi!" she says. "I thought you might be Dave."

  Dave is my stepfather. He enjoys the occasional late poker game.

  "There's something I've been wanting to ask," I say.

  "Oh, not again."

  "Look, you don't have to tell me what happened or when, or whether it was a car accident or a heart attack or a brain embolism—"

  "Jack, I'm very worried about you."

  "—all I want to know," I say to my mother, "is howyou knew about it. I mean, the man had been gone all those years. Did you two stay in touch?"

  "We did not!"

  "Didn't he ever call or write?"

  "Not once," my mother declares. "Nor did I expect him to."

  "Then how'd you find out he died? From his family? The cops? Who called you?"

  "You're getting on a plane tomorrow, aren't you?" my mother says.

  "What if I am."

  "You always get weird like this before you go on a trip."

  "That's not true." I'm faking and my mother knows it.

  She says, "If it makes you feel better, your father didn't die in an airplane crash. Where are they sending you, anyway?"

  "The Bahamas."

  "Poor baby," says my mother. "I wish somebody'd send meto the Bahamas."

  "I'm going to look at an autopsy report. Wanna come?"

  "Yuk."

  "It's a seaplane. We land in Nassau harbor."

  "Airplane, seaplane, don't sweat it. That isn't how your father bought the farm."

  "Don't I have a right to know?"

  My mother laughs. "Maybe we should go on Sally Jessy, you and me. See who the audience cheers for."

  "Did I tell you I get a complete physical every month? Head to
toe."

  "That's a little extreme, Jack. Every month?"

  "And I mean a completephysical."

  "See, this is why Anne left you," my mother says. "This kind of craziness."

  As if I need reminding.

  "Who was it back then—Stephen Crane?"

  I grunt in the negative. "Scott Fitzgerald."

  "Right!" my mother exclaims.

  At the time they put me on obits I was forty-four, the same age as Fitzgerald when he died. I couldn't get it out of my head, couldn't sleep, couldn't stop talking about it—and I wasn't even a Gatsbyfan.

  At first Anne tried to help but eventually she decided it was no use. Then she left. On my forty-fifth birthday I instantly snapped out of it, but Anne stayed away. She said if it wasn't Fitzgerald it would be some other dead famous person, somebody new each year. Often I feel like calling her up and telling her how much better I'm doing at age forty-six, considering the heavy Elvis and JFK portents.

  "Anne was no Zelda," I hear my mother saying. "Anne was a grownup. I liked her. Her daughter was a wild one but Anne I liked."

  "Me too, Mom."

  "It's this godawful job of yours—writing about deceased persons every day. Who wouldn't start to unravel?"

  "I'm doing much better. Really I am."

  "Then why these phone calls, Jack?"

  "Sorry."

  "You could switch over to the Sports page. Write about the PGA. Or even the LPGA—maybe you'll meet a nice girl on the tour!"

  "All I'm asking," I say calmly to my mother, "is how you knew when my father died. It just seems peculiar, since you say you hadn't seen or heard from the guy all those years ... How did you find out about it, Mom?"

  My mother delivers one of her trademark sighs. "You really want to know?"

  "I do."

  "I'm warning you. There's an element of irony."

  "Fire away. I'm sitting down."

  "I read it in a newspaper, Jack," she says to me. "Your father's obituary."

  9