Chapter 29

THE GRAVESIDE CEREMONY WAS NO better than the one in the chapel. The minister, a mild thirty with a creaseless face and one of those heads of tightly curled hair that looked inflated with a bicycle pump, didn’t know Sean or the family and read the oratory and prayer directly from the book. The mourners sat in folding wooden chairs in front of the gray casket on its hydraulic rollers under a sky swept clear of clouds. Funerals on nice days had always depressed Doc, even when he didn’t know the deceased and happened to pass by the cemetery with its burial tent rippling in a warm breeze. The casket was shorter than he’d expected. It had never occurred to him how much smaller the dead seemed than they had in life.

Creed and Yarnell weren’t present. The Second Baptist Church, which had overseen most of the predominately black funerals in town for 150 years and all of the Marshals’, had scheduled the Epithelial Lewis services for the same time as Sean’s. The guests here included Jeff Dolan, enormous in a black suit with an almost nonexistent gray pinstripe, Charlie Battle in blue serge, Charlie Junior, a number of Neal’s friends from the dealership looking like dressed-up mechanics, the inevitable faces Doc couldn’t place, and the family, among them Doc and Neal’s father in his wheelchair wearing a white shirt buttoned to the throat, turquoise bola tie, and new slacks, and two aunts or cousins whom Doc only saw at funerals. The party had left behind three local television news crews at the chapel. Innocent children killed in drive-by shootings were a staple on the Six and Eleven O’Clock reports.

Someone, perhaps the minister, had brought along the yellow floral display mounted on an easel with a card signed by Alcina Lilley and Beatrice Blackwood. Doc hadn’t bothered to look around for them. They had seen Starkweather Hall buried under that name the day before and Doc had sent flowers.

In the chapel before the ceremony, he had sought out Battle, accepted his handshake distractedly, and asked him the names of the two undercover narcotics officers who had shot and killed Hall. The sergeant had looked at him as if he thought his mind had collapsed under the strain of grief.

“That’s confidential. These guys go by their own names on the street We don’t even give them to the media off the record.”

“It’s important You owe me one,” Doc added.

“What do you want with them?”

“First give them to me.”

“I can’t. It’s their lives. Hall wasn’t the only dealer they put out of business. The only reason I know their names is this case was mine.” And he had moved off to pay his respects to Neal and Billie.

Doc hadn’t approached the casket before or after the service. He knew the boy was wearing the gray suit his mother had bought him to wear to church for Easter, and that he would be lying there with his hair combed by someone else as if waiting to pose for a school picture.

When the procession was about to start, Doc escorted Joyce Stefanik to her car. She wore what was probably her only one-piece dress, a blue cotton shift with a single decorative pearl button at the throat. “Get in with me and I’ll drive to the cemetery,” she said in the parking lot. “I can miss one deadline.”

He opened the door of the Trans Am. “One graveside’s like all the others. I don’t think this sky pilot’s going to become inspired on his way to the cemetery.”

“Are you going to be all right?” She touched the cast on his left arm, which rested in a black sling around his neck. The plaster went almost to his shoulder to prevent him from trying to use the shattered elbow.

“Billie probably won’t try to break the other one in the car,” he said.

In fact she had attacked him physically at Detroit Receiving Hospital when he was recovering from surgery to pin together the fragments of his arm. One second she was silent, exhausted emotionally, wearing the face of a woman a generation older than her thirty-four years; the next she was lunging across the side rail of the bed, screaming and clawing for his face. Neal had gotten his arms around her and dragged her back before she could make contact with her nails. Later she’d apologized, but the words were vacant. She had called him a child-killer in a voice loud enough to carry two floors.

Joyce glanced around, then reached up and brought Doc’s head down and kissed him quickly. She left her hand on the back of his neck. “Call me later?”

“I might have a story for you when I do.”

“Story?”

“Only hitch is if everything works out okay you won’t be able to use it.”

“Doc, what are you doing?”

“I’ll call you.” He kissed her again and left to get into the limousine with Neal and Billie.

The 1975 Nova used in the shooting had been reported stolen from the driveway of a house on Baines. It was found abandoned on Riopelle in the warehouse district. The police had questioned and released two members of the Pony Down gang, aged eighteen and seventeen, who had exchanged loud words and occasional gunfire with the M-and-M’s in the past. Both had alibis for the time of the shooting and their prints matched none of those found in the car. The incident was being investigated as a battle over turf.

Maynard Ance left a cab waiting by the cemetery and joined the graveside service in progress. He wore one of his heavy-duty suits and a black knitted tie that looked new. Doc, seated in the front row between Neal and the old man in the wheelchair, turned to acknowledge him. The bail bondsman stood sweating in the sun with his hands folded in front of him. There was no room for him under the tent.

Afterward, Doc found even the minister’s handshake listless and uninspired. He thanked him anyway and went back to greet Ance while the other mourners filed past to commiserate with the rest of the family. Billie sat at the end of the front row in a black dress and felt hat with a brief veil. The shadows formed by the patterned lace scored fresh lines in her features.

“Sorry as hell I’m late.” Ance grasped Doc’s hand. “My third wife picks today to sic the cops on me for back payments. Cost me a hundred apiece to make sure they missed me.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Kids, shit, it ain’t hard enough to survive all that running into traffic and climbing on things and crap. Your brother need anything? Cash?”

“There was a college fund.”

“Christ. I never saw them bury an eight-year-old.”

Someone was crying in the direction of the grave. Doc didn’t think it was Billie. She hadn’t cried or said ten words in his hearing since the hospital. “I’ve been thinking about that partnership offer,” he said.

“Forget it. This ain’t the time.”

“I’m turning it down.”

“You’re not thinking right. There’s no hurry. I don’t figure to kick off in the next month or so.”

“I made the decision before—well, before,” Doc said. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you. I’m no bail man. My skin isn’t thick enough. I’d break us both in six months.”

“Hey, I wasn’t born like this. You got to give it time.”

“That’s my biggest fault, giving things time. A lot of things would be different now if I didn’t just sit back and watch.”

“You didn’t just sit back on the Hall deal. It wasn’t your fault it went sour.”

“By then it was too late. For a lot of people.”

“Well, we’ll talk,” Ance said. “Take a week off. I won’t need you in the office for a while.”

“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about before. I’m quitting.”

“Fuck that. Now I know you’re fucked up. Maybe I can get along without a partner, but I sure as hell need a driver. Fucking cabs are killing me. I’ll raise you a bill a week.”

Doc reached in his pocket and handed him a roll of fifties bound with a rubber band.

Ance took it. “What’s this?”

“That’s what’s left of the advance you gave me. Most of it’s there. I can’t keep it if I’m not going to be working for you.”

“Fuck it, I said. Take it back.”

Doc smiled and gripped the bail bondsman’s shoulder. “So long, boss. Thanks for a lot of things.”

“Doc.”

He’d turned to join the others. He looked back.

“How’s the arm?”

“Hurts like hell. They gave me some pills.”

“You going to be able to pitch again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what the hell.” Ance was stone-faced. “Grown man looks like a horse’s ass in a cap anyway.”

Doc got back in time to say good-bye to the cousins, or maybe they were aunts. Battle and his son were at the end of the line behind Jeff Dolan.

Neal said, “Coming to the house later?”

Doc glanced at his sister-in-law, holding hands with one of the aunts/cousins. “Should I?”

“Sure. Uh, you better not try to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry, Neal.” It sounded more inadequate than ever.

“She knows it wasn’t your fault. Hell, I was there too. You want to, you know, blame someone. Shit.” He ducked his head.

Doc turned quickly to shake Dolan’s hand. In a low voice: “Did you get anything?”

“Here?” The big Irishman looked around.

“If you’ve got it with you.”

“The only reason I’m doing this is I never could refuse a request from a man in a hospital bed.” Dolan reached inside his coat and handed him a sheaf of papers. Doc put it in his own breast pocket without looking at it. The suit was the one the state had given him. It was the only one of the two he owned that he didn’t mind slitting up one sleeve to make room for his cast “What is it?”

“Paper trail. That’s the only printout. I erased the disc.”

“Thanks, Jeff. Ance said you were the best accountant around.”

“Just don’t tell anyone where you got it.” He moved on to speak to Neal, who had recovered enough to thank him for coming.

Charlie Battle let go of Doc’s hand quickly and tried to walk past. Doc touched his chest, stopping him.

“I can’t tell you, Doc,” Battle said.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just nod or shake your head. Was one of them Antonio Lewis?”

The sergeant made no response, verbal or otherwise. He didn’t have to. Doc had made a career out of reading batters’ faces.