“You want me to tag along?”

Ramirez took another look at the man, pulled off her sunglasses, and tossed her hair. “No thanks. I think I can handle this cutie-pie all by my lonesome.”

CHAPTER 8

IF KYLE BYRNE collected comic books, Laszlo Toth’s funeral would have been Detective Comics number 27, the first appearance of the Batman. If Kyle Byrne collected baseball cards, it would have been a 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco special. But Kyle Byrne didn’t collect comic books, or baseball cards or stamps or coins or blown-glass figurines. What he collected were funerals. Of a certain type.

Every day, after stumbling out of Kat’s spare bedroom at about noon or so, scratching his stomach, emptying his bladder, and scrounging for loose Doritos scattered around the empty beer bottles or the bong on the living-room coffee table, he gathered up the pieces of the newspaper, turned swiftly to the obituaries, and hunkered down for some serious study. He was scanning for old men, born between 1935 and 1950, men in the legal profession who had practiced in Philadelphia. Then he checked their fields of expertise. He didn’t want dour corporate types, in-house hacks, he didn’t want government bureaucrats, didn’t want the bankruptcy or patent-law specialists with their cramped codes and closed fraternities. But if the dead old man had practiced criminal or personal-injury law, or even some insurance defense, then he might take a second look. And if he had an Irish surname or grew up in North Philly or graduated from Temple Law, then Kyle would rip out the obituary, circle the time and date listed for the funeral proceedings, and fill in another line on his very open schedule.

He owned one suit. Gray and single-breasted, the lapels quite narrow. He wore it only to the f unerals. It hung all alone in the closet of the spare bedroom. Open the door of the closet and there it was, his gray two-piece, solitary and limp, waiting for adventure like the Batsuit. Add to it a white shirt, a narrow black tie, a black belt, argyle socks, black shoes. And then, as safely anonymous as any superhero in his mask and cape, he’d head off to the funeral parlor or the cemetery chapel or the grave site that was listed in the obituary. Off to stand apart and breathe in the air of bereavement, take in the expressions of brave grief, watch the condolences pool together into a sea of sorrow and loss.

For a son, every funeral before his father’s death is a rehearsal and every funeral thereafter is a memorial. As Kyle Byrne stood among the mourners in his gray suit and watched body after body of old dead lawyers being lowered into the ground, lawyers whom in all likelihood his father had known, he felt as if he were standing in for his father. When he signed the condolence books, he always signed his father’s name, not his own, and felt a strange exultation. His mother was dead, his past was obliterated, his present was bleak and his future was deeply in doubt, but in these moments he felt a connection to his father that induced in him an undeniable joy.

Sure, it was a little morbid, but hell, everybody needs a hobby. That was why Toth’s funeral was so special. There was no wondering if his father had really known this dear departed, Toth was his partner. And it was Laszlo Toth who had expelled Kyle from his father’s own funeral, instigating the events that Kyle seemed to replay in his heart during every funeral thereafter and that remained, puzzlingly, the proudest moment in his life. Of all the funerals he had attended, or would attend in the future, the sad little affair at the grave site of Laszlo Toth would be, for Kyle Byrne, the large-size 1979 Empire Strikes Back Boba Fett action figure of funerals, which is to say pretty much the ultimate.

The tears came unbidden, but not unexpectedly. It was why he had worn sunglasses. In a way, as he watched the priest deliver his eulogy over the casket and as he watched the grieving Mrs. Toth be comforted by his father’s widow—a woman who still had never acknowledged Kyle’s existence except when she had pinched his face fourteen years ago—in that special moment he felt closer to his father than he ever had in his entire life. As he lifted his head and surveyed the burial fields, through teary eyes he thought he spotted a mop of gray hair in the distance, and the mirage, instead of feeling like a sick joke of some sad sort, seemed perfectly natural.

“Nice day for a funeral,” said a voice from beside him.

So lost was he in the distant vision and the swell of his emotions, Kyle hadn’t noticed the woman who had sidled up to him. Slowly he turned his head toward her, but even then he couldn’t quite focus on who she was and the words she had spoken.

“Huh?” he said.

“The day,” she said. “It’s nice. That’s all.”

“Yeah, I suppose you could say so.”

She was pretty, actually, young and solid, with tawny skin, high cheekbones, and lovely brown eyes. And he liked her lips, full but not too thick. He wondered what they would taste like. And just that quick, the swell of emotions he had been feeling about his dead father were replaced with the swell of something more pressing. It might seem perverse, but Kyle had learned from his funeral hobby that nothing stirred a whole bouquet of hungers more than a hole in the ground.

“Were you crying?” she said.

“Uh, no,” he said, lifting his glasses with one hand and wiping his eyes with the back of the other. “Allergies.”

“It’s okay to cry, it’s a funeral. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Loss? What loss is that?”

“The deceased. Mr. Toth. I can see that you were close.”

“We weren’t, actually.”

“So you’re not a relative?”

“Not even distantly.”

“A f r iend?”

“Not exactly.”

“A friend of a friend?”

“You couldn’t really say that either.”

“So what are you doing here, just enjoying the day?”

“Yes, actually. You’re right, it is a lovely day. And who doesn’t enjoy a good funeral?”

“Is that what this is?”

“Well, I have to admit I’ve seen better. This one’s a little sparse on the attendance, and the words of remembrance are a tad generic, but the communal atmosphere has a certain piquant poignancy. I’d give it a solid six.”

“You sound like an expert.”

“Funerals are sort of a hobby of mine.”

“You should get together with my partner,” she said. “He loves funerals, too. Can’t get enough of them. Between you and me, I think he’s looking forward to his own.”

“Partner? What, like a life partner?”

“Thank heavens, no.”

“So you’re single?”

“Yes.”

“That’s such a coincidence,” said Kyle with a big old smile, “because so am I.”

“Are you hitting on me? At a funeral?”