“Weren’t too broken up, uh, after your talk?”
“Do you want me to tell you about Iris and me? It’ll take about two minutes.”
“But you’re here,” Linda said.
“To bury her. You beat me to it.” Looking into quiet blue eyes, and those long lashes. “I didn’t know you were friends.”
“We met that night. We flew up together and roomed in the same house.”
“But you’re paying for her funeral.”
She glanced around. “I didn’t see anybody breaking down the door. I still owe three hundred, which I don’t happen to have at the moment.”
“I took care of it,” Vincent said. “I’ll give you a check for what you paid them.”
She said, “You don’t owe me anything. If you want to go halves on it, fine, I won’t argue with you.”
“You knew her two weeks,” Vincent said.
“Yeah? How long did you know her? You say you can tell me all about it in two minutes.”
“Don’t get mad.”
“I’m not mad. I’m in a shitty mood, that’s all.” Looking at the casket again. “It’s pathetic, the whole thing. The little party girl, looking for excitement-she gets two people at her wake.”
Vincent waited a moment. “What about Donovan? Hasn’t he been here?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Have you talked to him?”
“About what, Iris? Why would I? It’s an idea though. Shake him down, get him to pay his share.”
“She thought she was going to be a hostess,” Vincent said. “Is that an in joke in the casino business, a hostess?”
“She was a cocktail waitress.”
“During the day,” Vincent said, and paused. “What was she doing in that apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“She tell you she was going?”
“You know what we talked about, the few times we saw each other? Clothes. Iris borrowed things and never returned them.”
“A black wool coat,” Vincent said.
Linda didn’t say anything.
“You tell the cops it’s yours?”
After a moment she said, “I haven’t yet.”
“Why not?”
He could hear the silence, the sound increasing gradually, becoming the hiss of a radiator. She was staring again at the casket. Something to hold onto.
“Linda?”
Her hands in the pockets of the raincoat, her legs crossed. She wore narrow jeans, scuffed brown boots that were creased with age and looked wet. It was still cold in the room.
“You don’t need your coat?”
“They didn’t mention it,” Linda said, “when I talked to them. I guess they think it’s hers.”
“What was she doing in that apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“She see much of Donovan?”
“I have no idea.”
“Or talk about him?”
“I told you what we talked about.”
“You mentioned,” Vincent said, “I wondered why you called Iris a party girl. You said, ‘The little party girl, looking for excitement.’ “
Linda stared at the casket and he was aware of the radiator again, the steady hissing sound higher pitched than before. She turned to look at him and paused another moment, those nice blue eyes calm but narrowing a little. She said, “You’re a sneaky mother, aren’t you? I don’t know why I didn’t remember right away, as soon as you started asking questions… She talked about you on the plane. Not a lot but enough. How she was leaving this American who was so in love with her, this guy Vincent, the cop.”
“In Miami Beach,” Vincent said, “not here. Atlantic City I’m only a civilian.” He touched her arm and said, “But, Linda? I’ll bet I can help you.”
She said, “Now wait a minute-”
“You don’t have anybody to talk to. You need a friend,” Vincent said. “Tell me if I’m wrong. And you need somebody who can get you your winter coat, before you freeze your ass. Boy, it’s cold up here in New Jersey, isn’t it?”
Linda said, “If you can get the coat I’d love it. Beyond that, I don’t need any help.”
PARKED ON SEASIDE, Teddy had a clear shot of Bertoia’s, over there across a trashy vacant lot on Oriental Avenue. Place looked more like a neighborhood bar than a funeral home. A couple of black guys in leather coats had come past the car twice looking to find out if he was cool. He could see them without any trouble in state clothes, doing a loose shuffle across the yard. They’d be back. “Hey, brother, you got the time?” Half minute or so of bullshit and, “You looking to get high, my man?” Try and sell him some meth. This town was full of meth. Keep the suckers’ eyes open to play the games.
The taxi pulled up in front of the funeral home, a half block from him, and Teddy said, “All right,” out loud, and watched two figures in raincoats come out to the cab. He had called the funeral home and learned Iris was going to be cremated tomorrow. He’d like to see her first, what she looked like after falling eighteen stories, splat, but they probably wouldn’t show her. He wondered if he slipped the guy some money he’d give him a peek. If he slipped him enough. Only he was almost broke, shit, and his mom had tightened up since his last visit, changed into another person. It was amazing, in seven and a half years, to see the change in her: from a sweetiepie mom who would do anything for her sonnyboy, to a selfish old broad turned mean and tight as her arteries hardened and senility crept into her brain.
He waited until the taxi was a block up the street before putting his mom’s car in Drive and turning onto Oriental to follow.
Big yellow turd of a car, ’77 Chevy Monte Carlo that had lost its gleam to the salt air while traveling less than 20,000 miles, 19,681 on the odometer-she’d never wear the son of a bitch out, but she wouldn’t trade it in either. What he might do, run it off that low bridge to Somers Point; there were always people going off drunk into the channel. Long as he didn’t get trapped in it and go down with the turd. His luck was good and bad, starting and stopping. What he needed was to get on a roll with money to spend, operate on.
Teddy followed the taxi down Pacific Avenue, then left on Pennsylvania to the Holmhurst Hotel, a half block from the Boardwalk. It was one of those big old-timey frame buildings with a porch a mile long, even a glassed-in second-floor porch, kind of place where tourists used to spend their vacation in a rocking chair. Now you could almost hear the slot machines clanging over at Resorts International, the back side of it across a couple of parking lots.
The cop went into the hotel with his suitcase and the taxi stayed there. Now what? Teddy waited, parked down the street.
Trade this big yellow turd in. He liked that Datsun he had in San Juan. Be a good car in all this traffic, getting around the goddamn tour buses. Two thousand a day they came into the city, dropped the suckers off for six hours to lose their paychecks, their Social Security in the slots and then haul them back up to Elizabeth, Newark, Jersey City, shit, Philly, Allentown. Bring some more loads back tomorrow-like the Jews in the boxcars, only they kept these folks alive with bright lights and loud music and jackpot payoffs that sounded like fire alarms. A giant hotel billboard out on the highway said their slots paid out over 68 million dollars last month. Yeah? And how much of it did the suckers put back in? They didn’t say.
His mom said colored men were coming in the house and stealing things, somehow getting through the windows covered with grillwork or the triple-locked doors. He said, “Mom, there’s no way anybody could bust in here, even jigs I met who spent their lives doing B and Ees, pros. What would they want, your parrot dishes?”
His mom said, in a voice shaky but snippy, “Well, they took my best ashtray, they took my sewing basket, they took all my underwear. One of them, I saw him walking down West Drive with my mattress on his head, going toward Ventnor Avenue.”
Teddy said, “Mom, how could the jig steal your mattress when you’re always laying on it?”