“You going to keep the place going, Scott? It’s the last of the old neighborhood bars.”
He leaned against the doorframe. “Hell, yeah, I’ll keep it going. It’s all that’s left of what this neighborhood used to be—a bunch of Poles and Czechs who worked hard and drank harder. Three generations in my family, I’m not going to let it go under that easy.” He gazed up the street. “Clark’s changed, man. Changes more every year. The Hideaway stays the same.”
A flier stuck to the old wooden door read: SEE FOUR ON THE PORCH LIVE ALL SUMMER.
I pointed at it. “What’s Four on the Porch?”
“A band with one good-looking black girl who can sing and three drunk white guys with no apparent talents,” Draper said. “They’re fun, though.”
“So even the Hideaway’s not staying entirely the same. Live music is new.”
Draper gazed at the poster. “Yeah, it is. I’ve got to find some way to make money, though. Not enough of the old crowd left. Have to bring people in somehow.” He shifted his eyes to me. “And I guess you’re doing okay, with both of your businesses going. The gym and the detective thing.”
“I’m still afloat. That’s all I can ask for. How’d you know about the gym?”
He stopped looking down the street and met my eyes. “Ed told me. He kept tabs on you, as they say. Didn’t talk to you, maybe, but he knew your score.”
I gave that half a nod. “I had that feeling.”
My father’s funeral is on a Tuesday, and it rains. I have the week off for bereavement leave, but I’ve already decided to go back to work on Wednesday. Better to keep my mind occupied. The turnout is small, maybe because of the weather, or maybe because my father had been a fairly quiet man who’d kept to himself. My sister, Jennifer, is there, as is my father’s sister, his only sibling. Since flying in from New Jersey, she has spent most of her time telling me how proud of me my father was, how many times he called her and told her of this pride. I appreciate her effort, but it bothers me slightly, because I know she is not being honest. My father was proud of me. I know this. He would not talk of his pride, however—not to my aunt, to me, or to anyone else. It was not his nature. My successes are my own, and while he enjoys them, I know he wouldn’t speak of his pride in them. The quality I most respected—and envied—of the man was his humility.
We stand huddled together near the casket, staying close because it is hard to hear the voice of the minister over the rain pounding on the umbrellas. I don’t have one, and I’ve declined offers. After five minutes of it I am thoroughly soaked, my suit saturated, my hair plastered against my skull. I like the smell of the rain on the earth they’ve dug up to make room for my father’s bones. It is a fresh smell, one with some promise to it, and while it seems misplaced in this setting, I am grateful for it.
“Dear family and friends, please accept my sincere sympathy in your grief over the passing of Thomas Perry,” the minister says, struggling to make his voice heard. He is an older man, and he looks frail and ill. I wonder what it feels like to make a business of funeral speeches when you’re in such condition.
“Thomas was a devout man, one who knew his maker well during his time on earth, and I am sure Thomas knows Him even better today,” he continues. “We are aggrieved that we shall not see him again in his earthly being, except through the eye of memory. Today that memory brings sadness, because the pain of loss is so near. But I promise you that sadness will give way to the pleasant remembrance of him as he was in the fullness of his life, and someday, hopefully soon, the memories will bring a loving smile in place of an aching soul.”
While he speaks, my eyes wander. I do not wish to stare endlessly at the casket, and I cannot keep my eyes on the ground, as everyone else is doing. As I scan the cemetery, I become aware of a figure under a tree on a hill some fifty yards from us. He is the only person other than me who does not have an umbrella, but he stands tall, oblivious of the rain pounding at him. Surely, he cannot hear a word of what is being said, but he stands there anyhow, removed from the group, but present. He is a young man, average in height and build, and there is a familiar quality to him. I look closer, and he lifts his own face and meets my gaze. It is Ed Gradduk.
Four years have passed since I last spoke to Ed, and then it was in an interrogation room, him giving me cold eyes while I told him I couldn’t buy any more time—either he talked or went to jail. He went to jail. Stayed three years.
I stare in his direction for a while, then look back at the minister, who is concluding what he had promised would be a brief message. He said it would be brief because that was the unassuming nature of my father, but I think the ever-intensifying rain has played some role in the decision.
“With sure and certain hope, I commend Thomas Perry’s soul to the mercy of God, his creator. May he enjoy forever the company of God together with his loved ones who preceded him in death,” he says, and I think of my mother and smile for the first time in several days.
“In your loving kindness, please keep Thomas in your memory, as he kept you in his heart during his time with you,” the minister concludes. We file up to the casket then, one at a time, and drop a flower on its rain-soaked surface. I go last, and when I have laid the carnation on the casket, I turn my eyes back to the hill in time to see Ed Gradduk disappear over it, walking away without a word.
I call him that night and leave a message. He doesn’t call back. The next day I return to work.
CHAPTER 8
“But you say his boss didn’t seem particularly concerned,” Joe said.
I shook my head. “No.” I was back in the office, filling Joe in on my conversation with Draper and explaining my interest in locating Mitch Corbett.
“So maybe he’s a guy who’s been known to sleep or drink through a few workdays in the past.”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
Joe sat behind his desk with his feet propped up on the edge of it. “And maybe there’s more to it.”
“Either way,” I said, “I’d like to know where he is, because I’d like to talk to him.”
Joe nodded and swung his feet down from the desk, pulled his chair closer to the computer, and clicked the mouse a few times, opening up one of our locator databases, probably.
“I know you won’t want to hear it,” he said, “but learning that Gradduk was working on that house doesn’t do anything to help his case.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? It gives him a legitimate reason to be on the property the day the house burned.”
“Also gives him a reason to choose the house as a good place to dump a body.”
I hadn’t considered that. He had a point, but I shook my head anyhow.
“I’m convinced he didn’t burn that house, Joe. The tape would have been worthless in court with that twenty-minute lapse between the time he left and the time it went up in flames, and there’s a reason for that—too much reasonable doubt.”
“So if he didn’t burn the place, why’d he run when the cops came for him?”
“Panicked,” I said. “That’s my best guess.”
The printer began to hum and he pointed at it. “There’s an address match for the only Mitchell Corbett I could find in this city. Says here he is forty-five years old. Looks like he lives just off Fulton Road.”
“That sounds right,” I said. “Same neighborhood as Ed and Draper.” It felt as if I should include myself in that sentence, but several years had passed since I could. It wasn’t just that I’d moved out of the neighborhood, I also hadn’t so much as stopped by the Hideaway for a drink or even walked the sidewalks.