William Brown - The Undertaker

“Sure do. It's parked up Sedgwick, under that big oak tree in the middle of the next block, where he always left it.”

“And it's still there?”

“It was an hour ago, when I went by, ‘cause I don't think the lawyers know anything about it. It's dirty as sin, but it's still there. You can't miss it.”

“But why would he park it there?”

“With Pete, you never know. Most of the time he just sat there like a fat slug, but the man was no dummy. He knew that I knew about the Buick. I'd passed him on the street down there when he was getting in or out a couple of times. I asked him what the Hell he thought he was doing parking down there. He said he needed the exercise and then we really laughed. He shrugged and called it his “getaway car.” I figured he was jokin’ around again, but with them both dead now and you holding the papers, you might as well know where it is, ‘cause he ain't gettin’ away to anywhere anymore.”

“Thanks. First Ohio National really appreciates it. But how come you never told the lawyers about it?”

“Them? I have a strict “don't ask, don't tell” policy with cops and with lawyers, young man. They didn't ask, so I didn't tell.”

I walked back to the Bronco smiling, shaking my head. Who said all the nuts had rolled west to California? Some of them stuck and took root right where they dropped out of the tree.

Sure enough in the middle of the next block under a big oak tree sat an old midnight blue Buick Electra. I pulled over, parked a few cars down, and walked back. It had to be ten years old: dirty, covered with leaves, and the exterior rusting around the wheel wells. I glanced around, but the street was deserted. I looked inside. The interior was well trashed, with candy bar wrappers, coke cans, and old newspapers strewn about. I tried, but the doors were locked, all four of them. Interesting, I thought. For now, it was enough to know the car was there. But it might be fun to get inside and see what Pete's ”getaway” car held besides the old newspapers and trash.

The sun would not set for at least a half hour. Sickles Avenue was a four-lane commercial boulevard that proved to be no harder to find than Sedgwick. The 1800 block where Center Financial Advisors was located looked like it had once been a fashionable neighborhood commercial street back in the 1920s or 1930s, but that was a long time ago. Now, it was a badly run-down strip of small stores that wouldn't make it any place else. The surrounding residential area showed the first signs of gentrification, but the stores would take a lot longer. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven. The overhead wires sagged in long loops down the street and no one even tried to keep up with the gang graffiti. It would take a lot of gentries and a ton of city money before the Tae-Kwon-Do parlor, the second-hand clothing shop, the adult book store, two gritty neighborhood bars, and a boarded-up Baptist Mission became art galleries, boutiques, trendy restaurants, and a Starbucks.

Half the block was vacant and Center Financial Advisors sat in the middle. Why an accounting firm would locate in this seedy, eclectic mix was beyond me. Center? Of what? Advising whom? About what? Perhaps Pete moved his accounting business here so he could be in the vanguard of the commercial tidal wave soon to follow, but the image of the daring financial entrepreneur didn't exactly fit the slug that let the house on Sedgwick go to hell.

I parked the Bronco along the curb three doors beyond 1811 and walked back. The company name was stenciled on the door and on the front plate glass window. There were no curtains or Venetian blinds to screen the view this time. Looking inside, I saw someone had sanitized the accounting office as thoroughly as they had the house. It was empty from wall to wall, without a broken chair, a cardboard box, or a scrap of paper to be seen anywhere. If I asked around, I'd bet the same Allied van had hit them both.

I kept walking down the street, then turned and followed the cracked sidewalk around the corner. The side street looked even worse than Sickles. Weeds were sprouting through the uneven concrete. Old McDonalds bags, empty beer cans, and glass from broken wine bottles littered the small strip of bare dirt that passed for landscaping between the sidewalk and the curb. I walked to the end of the building and took a quick look around the corner before I turned and set off down the alley. It was cratered with deep ruts and potholes. Someone had tried to fill them with loose rock and pieces of asphalt, but that didn't accomplish very much. Off to my right I could see the rear yards of the two-story houses that fronted on the next street over. Most were cheap three and four flat apartment buildings with brick walls or tall wooden fences along the alley, as one would expect. Looking down the line, most of them looked badly run down, but every third or fourth building was being renovated. Signs of life? Too little and way too late for Pete.

On the left side of the alley, the rear walls of the stores that fronted on Sickles were another matter. This wasn't the high rent district. The few windows that remained and hadn't been bricked up were set high in the wall, opaque with years of crusted dirt, and covered with one-inch steel bars. The rear doors had been replaced with thick steel plates recessed deep into the doorways. Their hinges and locks were on the inside, where they would be difficult for a burglar to get at. Dumpsters lay at various odd angles up against the rear walls or jammed into the occasional alcoves. I looked over the top of several and saw most were half-filled with trash. When I got to the dumpster for 1811, I peered over the top and saw it was empty. Not just empty, this one was empty as if someone had got in and cleaned it out on their hands and knees. There wasn't a scrap of paper, a banana peel, not even a broken beer bottle to be found. Somehow, after everything I'd seen that day, it came as no surprise. The lawyers in the dark suits, the deputy sheriffs in their big brown cruisers, and even the men in the long, black hearses were nothing if not thorough. For a job like that, I wondered if the Junior Associates at Hamilton, Keogh and Hollister drew straws, or did they hire the work out.

There was nothing more to be gained in the alley, so I continued on to the far end and came back around to Sickles again. As I turned the corner, I saw a car stopped in the street next to my Bronco. It was that big, white, Lincoln Town Car, the one from the funeral home. Its engine was running and the driver's side door was hanging open. Between the Bronco and the Lincoln stood the big guy in the beige suit, blue shirt, and ponytail. I couldn't see his face, but there couldn't be two guys who looked like him in the State of Ohio, much less Columbus. As I watched, he cupped his hand and blocked the last rays of the setting sun as they reflected off the windshield as he looked inside the Bronco.

“Hey,” I shouted and ran toward him. “Wait a minute!” As I got closer, he shook his head and looked back at me, frowning, as if I were some minor irritant he'd found on his shoe. When I got within twenty feet, he slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out that big chrome. 45 automatic again. He didn't bother pointing it at me. That wasn't necessary. He simply let it hang down his pants leg with a casualness and skill that told me I had just made a very bad mistake. First, because he looked like he knew precisely what he was doing. Second, in that neighborhood no one would know or care if he did.

“That's close enough, Ace,” he warned.

“Who are you?” I demanded to know, bluffing, but figuring if he hadn't shot me yet I could at least ask.

“No. We're gonna try it the other way. Who the fuck are you?”

“You know who I am, I'm Peter Talbott, from Boston.”