Scudder - Eight Million Ways To Die Part 68

Did anyone ever want to view a body? I walked over there and Jan walked beside me. Sunny was laid out in a brightly colored dress on a casket lining of cream-colored satin. Her hands, clasped upon her breast, held a single red rose. Her face might have been carved from a block of wax, and yet she certainly looked no worse than when I'd seen her last.

Chance was standing beside me. He said, 'Talk to you a moment?'

'Sure.'

Jan gave my hand a quick squeeze and slipped away. Chance and I stood side by side, looking down at Sunny.

I said, 'I thought the body was still at the morgue.'

'They called yesterday, said they were ready to release it. The people here worked late getting her ready. Did a pretty good job.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Doesn't look much like her. Didn't look like her when we found her, either, did it?'

'No.'

'They'll cremate the body after. Simpler that way. The girls look right, don't they? The way they're dressed and all?'

'They look fine.'

'Dignified,' he said. After a pause he said, 'Ruby didn't come.'

'I noticed.'

'She doesn't believe in funerals. Different cultures, different customs, you know? And she always kept to herself, hardly knew Sunny.'

I didn't say anything.

'After this is over,' he said, 'I be taking the girls to their homes, you know. Then we ought to talk.'

'All right.'

'You know Parke Bernet? The auction gallery, the main place on Madison Avenue. There's a sale tomorrow and I wanted to look at a couple of lots I might bid on. You want to meet me there?'

'What time?'

'I don't know. This here won't be long. Be out of here by three. Say four-fifteen, four-thirty?'

'Fine.'

'Say, Matt?' I turned. ' 'Preciate your coming.'

There were perhaps ten more mourners in attendance by the time the service got underway. A party of four blacks sat in the middle on the left-hand side, and among them I thought I recognized Kid Bas...o...b.. the fighter I'd watched the one time I met Sunny. Two elderly women sat together in the rear, and another elderly man sat by himself near the front. There are lonely people who drop in on the funerals of strangers as a way of pa.s.sing the time, and I suspected these three were of their number.

Just as the service started, Joe Durkin and another plain-clothes detective slipped into a pair of seats in the last row.

The minister looked like a kid. I don't know how thoroughly he'd been briefed, but he talked about the special tragedy of a life cut short in its prime, and about G.o.d's mysterious ways, and about the survivors being the true victims of such apparently senseless tragedy. He read pa.s.sages from Emerson, Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Buber, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. Then he suggested that any of Sunny's friends who wished to might come forward and say a few words.

Donna Campion read two short poems which I a.s.sumed she'd written herself. I learned later that they were by Sylvia Plath and Anne s.e.xton, two poets who had themselves committed suicide. Fran Schecter followed her and said, 'Sunny, I don't know if you can hear me but I want to tell you this anyway,' and went on to say how she'd valued the dead girl's friendship and cheerfulness and zest for living. She started off light and bubbly herself and wound up breaking down in tears, and the minister had to help her off stage. Mary Lou Barcker spoke just two or three sentences, and those in a low monotone, saying that she wished she'd known Sunny better and hoped she was at peace now.

n.o.body else came forward. I had a brief fantasy of Joe Durkin mounting the platform and telling the crowd how the NYPD was going to get it together and win this one for the Gipper, but he stayed right where he was. The minister said a few more words - I wasn't paying attention - and then one of the attendants played a recording, Judy Collins singing 'Amazing Grace.'

Outside, Jan and I walked for a couple of blocks without saying anything. Then I said, 'Thanks for coming.'

'Thanks for asking me. G.o.d, that sounds foolish. Like a conversation after the Junior Prom. "Thanks for asking me. I had a lovely time." ' She took a handkerchief from her purse, dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. 'I'm glad you didn't go to that alone,' she said.

'So am I.'

'And I'm glad I went. It was so sad and so beautiful. Who was that man who spoke to you on the way out?'

'That was Durkin.'

'Oh, was it? What was he doing there?'

'Hoping to get lucky, I suppose. You never know who'll show up at a funeral.'

'Not many people showed up at this one.'

'Just a handful.'

'I'm glad we were there.'

'Uh-huh.'

I bought her a cup of coffee, then put her in a cab. She insisted she could take the subway but I got her into a cab and made her take ten bucks for the fare.

A lobby attendant at Parke Bernet directed me to the second-floor gallery where Friday's African and Oceanic art was on display. I found Chance in front of a set of gla.s.sed-in shelves housing a collection of eighteen or twenty small gold figurines. Some represented animals while others depicted human beings and various household articles. One I recall showed a man sitting on his haunches and milking a goat. The largest would fit easily in a child's hand, and many of them had a droll quality about them.

'Ashanti gold weights,' Chance explained. 'From the land the British called the Gold Coast. It's Ghana now. You see plated reproductions in the shops. Fakes. These are the real thing.'

'Are you planning to buy them?'

He shook his head. 'They don't speak to me. I try to buy things that do. I'll show you something.'

We crossed the room. A bronze head of a woman stood mounted on a four-foot pedestal. Her nose was broad and flattened, her cheekbones p.r.o.nounced. Her throat was so thickly ringed by bronze necklaces that the overall appearance of the head was conical.

'A bronze sculpture of the lost Kingdom of Benin,' he announced. 'The head of a queen. You can tell her rank by the number of necklaces she's wearing. Does she speak to you, Matt? She does to me.'

I read strength in the bronze features, cold strength and a merciless will.

'Know what she says? She says, 'n.i.g.g.e.r, why you be lookin' at me dat way? You know you ain't got de money to take me home.' ' He laughed. 'The presale estimate is forty to sixty thousand dollars.'

'You won't be bidding?'

'I don't know what I'll be doing. There are a few pieces I wouldn't mind owning. But sometimes I come to auctions the way some people go to the track even when they don't feel like betting. Just to sit in the sun and watch the horses run. I like the way an auction room feels. I like to hear the hammer drop. You seen enough? Let's go.'

His car was parked at a garage on Seventy-eighth Street. We rode over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and through Long Island City. Here and there street prost.i.tutes stood along the curb singly or in pairs.