William Brown - The Undertaker

“Hey, I didn't mean anything,” I quickly back peddled. “All I was doing was making sure this doesn't cost you anything, okay? And I apologize if you took it wrong, but I really do need your help.”

She stared at me a while longer before she finally relented. “Okay, I'll get that stuff for you,” she said. “I just can't believe I'm letting you drag me into this thing.”

“I didn't, Eddie did.”

“Men. You're all such bastards.”

“Probably,” I stood up. “But let's get out of here while we still can.”

She picked up a pen and scribbled a quick note on a pad of paper on the desk. “That's for old man Fantozzi. I told him I'm out shopping with his wife.”

“Won't he check?”

“Are you kidding? He got grabby in the storeroom last week and he knows if I say a word to his wife, she'd kill him.” She looked over at me long and hard once again. “Just remember, if you're bullshitting me, you'll wish I was the FBI.”

“With this honest face?” I gave her my best smile.

“Yeah, with your honest face and my total stupidity when it comes to guys, you figured me for an easy mark.” She handed back the flash drive. “Well don't get cocky. You may be bigger than me, but I still have the letter opener and I really do have a black belt. Touch me and you'll be in traction.”

“One more thing,” I asked. “Call me Peter, okay?”

She gave me a long, hard look. “Don't fucking count on it,” she said as she picked up her camera and her shoulder bag and headed for the door.

She walked next to me, but she kept her distance. When we reached the escalator, I stopped and stared down into the huge atrium. All I could see was the tops of the heads of as people walked around below. Too many heads. Too many dark suits, and I didn't like it. “Is there another way down?”

“Getting a little paranoid, Talbott?”

“Only when people are trying to kill me.”

“We could take the elevators.” She pointed to two high-speed, all-glass capsules that ran up and down the atrium wall. They were as exposed as the escalators. She looked around. “Or the service elevator around back. It'll take us down to the loading dock.”

“Perfect,” I said. It was around a corner, and it had solid walls and solid doors. “Besides,” I pointed at her short black leather skirt and lacy white blouse. “You'd be pretty easy to spot in that outfit.”

“Me?” her eyes flashed angrily. “You come in here dressed in plaid and old denim, like an ad for Cowboy Bob's Gay Bar in Arlington Heights, and you're giving me crap about my clothes?”

“I'm not giving you crap. It's lovely, bold, and very… distinctive.”

The elevator arrived and the door opened. She got in and stood in the far corner with her back to the wall. “You know, Talbott, one good thing about you saying all those dumb things you've been saying, is that you've finally convinced me you couldn't be all that bad. Dumb? Yeah. But bad? I don't think so.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And you lived in LA?” she asked. “Where? Under a rock?”

“I'm an engineer, Sandy. I work all day with computers.”

She looked me over again, from head to toe more slowly this time. “And there's no female touch out there to help un-geek you? No wife? No girlfriend?”

“There was a wife,” I answered. I looked away, but the elevator door was polished metal and there was no place to hide from her eyes. This was a conversation I didn't want to have with anyone, least of all an attractive young woman I barely knew, but I had no choice. “Her name was Terri. That was her obituary. She died a year ago of cancer.”

“Oh, Jeez, I'm sorry.” I saw her raise her hand to her mouth, legitimately embarrassed. “Me and my big mouth. Well, if you knew me, you'd know I didn't mean anything. I mean, I know you don't know me, but if you really did know me, you'd know I was just joking around. Not that I want you to get… Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Hey, it's okay, Sandy. You didn't say anything, honest.”

“I did, but I didn't mean to. I know a little bit about pain, too. Maybe that's why I'm always joking around, until some big guy steps in and scares the snot out of me.”

We rode the rest of the way down to the loading dock in silence. As we got out, I said, “Most of the people they buried were couples. They used my name and my wife's to bury the bean counter and his wife. That's what really pissed me off. They had no right to hi-jack her name and my memories of her like that. They're all I have left of her now.”

She stopped and stared at me, her expression softening. “Must be nice. I mean to have memories of someone you care about, good ones, that mean something to you.”

We walked outside through the service door. There were no gray sedans with black-wall tires and no goons in suits and sunglasses waiting for us, so we turned up the alley and headed north. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse and started pressing buttons.

“You better not use that thing. Tinkerton's people will be all over us in minutes.”

“No cell? Jeez, I'll be lost,” she whined, but she turned it off and dropped it in her shoulder bag. We continued west two blocks and then turned north before she spoke to me again. “Back there,” she finally asked. “All that stuff you about your wife, that wasn't more of your bullshit, was it?”

“No, unfortunately it wasn't,” I sighed. “Neither was the rest of it.”

“’Cause I'm a real sucker for stuff like that.”

“I wish it was a story. But you lost somebody too,”

“Yeah, but you didn't want to lose yours. Me? If Raoul from the Happy Pancake hadn't shot Eddie first, I would have.”

“Funny, one of the Kasmareks thought you did.”

“That bunch of shits?”

“She said that too. I think she was another in-law. She called him “little Eddie.”

“ Little Eddie?” she chuckled. “That was not one of his problems… Sorry.”

“If he was such a big jerk, why did you keep using the last name? It's been what? Almost a year now?”

“I suppose I could blame it on my photography business,” she shrugged. “I had just put new ads in the phone book and I would have had to buy all new business cards. They don't come cheap, especially when I'm not making much money to begin with, but the truth is I couldn't deal with it, with any of it.”

“Yeah, I know what that's like. I was frozen for months after Terri died. I couldn't even open her dresser drawers or look on her side of the closet, much less box up any of it up. I couldn't even touch her stuff.” I looked over and saw her staring at me with large, wondering eyes as if she was a kid on a field trip to the zoo and I was some strange specimen she found sitting in the back of a cage. “It took five months before I finally let a couple of her friends come over and clean everything out for me. All of it. If they hadn't, I'd still be sitting there in that house in California. I couldn't let her go.”

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked over at me. “Why do I think you've never talked to anyone about this before? I'm right, aren't I?”

I shrugged as I walked away. “I don't know. I can't explain it.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

“I'm not, it's just that you kept asking, and… maybe it's easier with a stranger.”

She caught up and gave me that puzzled look again. “You are a really strange guy, Peter Talbott,” she said, but this time the defensive wall and the hostility weren't there. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say more, then thought better of it and stopped.

When we reached Clark, I paused to look up and down her street. “Why don't we take the long way around,” I told her.