Cleary had been in Homicide when he retired, though I don't think he was ever teamed with O'Shea, but before that the older cop had been Vice.

  Rumor had it that in those days he'd often shield selected ladies from the consequences of arrest, taking their markers to be called in at his convenience later on, working police smokers and bachelor parties on the cheap. It was also rumored that he not only kept contact with these professional ladies but that, after retirement, he more or less formalized an arrangement with them whereby he continued to get them dates and social engagements, taking a percentage of their compensation to supplement his pension.

  This on top of helping out his son-in-law in the undertaking business, Cleary being one of them people who always likes to have several sources of income.

  It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that Delvin, once upon a time, had desired the tender mercies of some lady on occasion and had cut a deal with Cleary, trading favor for favor.

  I don't mention any of this to Mrs. Thimble, who was once the housekeeper for a priest and shouldn't know about such things, though she probably knows more about such things than me, being the housekeeper of a priest and then a politician of some fame.

  "Well," I say, "if he didn't say so in writing or give definite instructions to somebody he trusted, like yourself," I say, "I suppose Diversey's it'll be."

  She holds a finger in the air, marking something she's just remembered.

  "Mr. Delvin used to remind me practically once a day that if anything was to happen to him, I was to bring you the mahogany document box he kept in the chiffonier."

  "Let's see what we can see," I say, and follow her down the dark hallway to Delvin's bedroom, where, just as I expected, candles are burning at the head and foot of the bed in which he's laying with his hands neatly folded on his chest on top of a pile of blankets, like he'd been cold in the night like old people get no matter how warm it is.

  His eyes is closed, with two shiny copper pennies on them, which is an old custom. I swear to God it gives me the funniest feeling because one of the pennies ain't quite in line with the other and it looks like he's winking at me.

  The smell of burnt sage is heavier in this room and I'm afraid it's going to make me sneeze.

  I open the door to the chiffonier and nearly fall over backwards because I forget these old-fashioned pieces of furniture usually has a full-length mirror in the door, just like this one has, which gives me back the reflections of a solemn, tight-lipped old woman, a white-faced, red headed man, and a winking corpse propped up on pillows.

  I pick up the box on the floor of the bureau and says, "Let's take this into the parlor, where we won't be disturbed."

  Mrs. Thimble gives me a funny look like she's afraid I'm one of them what believes in ghosts. Or maybe she believes in ghosts, which is not unlikely, and thinks she's found somebody to talk about ghosts with.

  We go into the parlor, where the green shades are pulled down to the sills from the night before and let them up so we can have a little natural light in the room, pushing aside the lace curtains that smell of age and dust. Then I sit in the chair opposite the one in which Delvin always sat, the afghan for his knees still folded over the back, pull up an end table, make room for the box, set it down and open it.

  The smell of old paper money and tobacco hits me in the nose and I finally do sneeze.

  "God bless you," Mrs. Thimble says, and raises her eyes to the ceiling as though expecting God to answer back.

  Delvin turns out to be a very neat and orderly person. Everything anybody would need to attend to his affairs is there, filed in separate envelopes and pressed-cardboard report covers.

  Every envelope is labeled with a title, which I can tell was typed out on the old Corona he kept in his office. I can't tell you how many times I see him pecking away on it with two fingers, his nose almost on the keys.

  There's a fat envelope labeled "house inventory," another labeled "personal possessions," another that says "safe," and another that says "vehicles."

  There's one addressed to Mrs. Thimble. One for Father Dietrich. One for somebody named Jane Paboojian.

  I'm looking for a packet addressed to an attorney or a bank trustee but there ain't any.

  However there's two for me. One says "Jimmy Flannery" and the other says "James Flannery, Trustee."

  I don't know which one to open first. Then I figure the one to Jimmy is probably going to be a personal letter and the other all business, so I figure I got to take care of first things first.

  It gives me a funny feeling taking the pages out, like I expect to hear his voice scolding me for nosing into his private business before being invited.

  What the top page of a seven-page document says is that one Francis Brendan Delvin, being of sound mind, does name one James Barnabas Flannery his trustee and executor, such costs and fees for service to be calculated at ten percent of the appraised value of house and contents, stocks, bonds and other financial instruments, surrender value of insurance policies, cash in checking and savings accounts, plus cash in hand before taxes, but not including personal possessions, jewelry or paintings.

  A spillover will moves cash in hand and monies in a checking account into a living trust which had been drawn up by Tom Hawley, Attorney. It's pretty obvious that was housekeeping money and Mrs. Thimble's wages for maybe three or four months.

  A note paper-clipped to the page advises me that Hawley has already been paid his fee for services rendered and is standing by to give me any "ordinary advice," which warns me that I better watch what I ask him to do or the estate'll get hit with a bill.

  There was a page of bequests, at the top of which was the transfer of the deed to the very house in which I'm standing. The house, furnishings, and enough cash to cover transfer expenses goes to me, but only if me and my family actually occupy it for at least five years.

  I suppose Delvin remembers how his last housekeeper, Mrs. Banjo, left me a vacant lot when she died and how me and Mary decided to sell instead of building on it so we could go into a partnership with the people in our building what wanted to buy it so we could keep on being neighbors.

  Back then, there was the Recores, Mr. and Mrs. and seven kids, five daughters—Maureen, the oldest, a roller skater—and two sons—the youngest, Stanley, a special friend of mine—what lived across the hall.

  Just underneath my flat was Mrs. Warnowski, Mooshie Warnowski's widow, and next to her Myron and Shirley Shapiro, schoolteachers, and their little girl.

  On the ground floor was Miss King and her companion Mrs. Foran.

  The corner flat had been converted into a grocery store years ago and was owned by Pearl and Joe Pakula, who took care of their mother.

  But that was seven years ago and plenty has changed since then, not only the building but the neighborhood.

  The Recores still live there, the father retired and the mother marking time until she can talk him into moving out to California where three of her kids, two daughters and a son, are living. One of them, the oldest girl, the skater, was killed coming home from the skating rink. Shot in the head for the contents of her purse. They asked me to help find out who done it but neither me or the police ever could. Another daughter died of meningitis.

  Stanley still lives at home. He's eighteen years old now. The speech impediment which made him so funny and endearing went away and he don't talk much at all any more, being mostly sullen and out of work. His brother's in prison in Texas, busted for dealing drugs, and the mother and father are afraid Stanley might follow in his footsteps.

  They've had their share of troubles and sorrows, the Recores.

  Mrs. Warnowski left to live with her sister out in Cicero shortly after Mooshie was made Fireman of the Year in a grand ceremony on the steps of City Hall.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bilina moved in right after and then Mr. Bilina died.

  There was some fuss about getting him buried, him falling out of the coffin and all, being worshiped as a saint who had been seen to elevate right out of the grave, waving to the crowd on his way to heaven, and she still lives on the second floor across from the Shapiros.

  Mrs. Bilina put up some of the life insurance money for her share of the building when we bought it back in '89 to keep it from getting flattened for new development, but now she's talking about moving out before the neighborhood gets any worse than it is, the new development never getting off the ground anyway.

  The Shapiros also want a better place to raise their little girl. They've been looking for a buyer for their flat without any luck at all. The other day Myron told me he was ready to bail out even if all he could get was fifty cents on the dollar.

  Which is how depressed neighborhoods get trashed out in the first place. But they figure they fought the good fight to save the neighborhood and now it's time to face the facts.

  Both Miss King and Mrs. Foran is gone, passed away within two weeks of one another. Their ground-floor flat is rented by a black family, the Hensons. He's a police officer and she works down at the welfare office.

  Joe and Pearl Pakula's mother died last year but the brother and sister are still running the grocery store. I used to wash my car from a hose hooked up to their outside tap every Saturday afternoon. People would stop by and talk to me about their needs and troubles. It was like my office.

  But now that I'm the ward leader I use Alderman—woman—Janet Canarias's storefront once a week to meet with my constituents and listen to their complaints.

  I ain't got time to wash my car at the tap outside Pakula's grocery store. When the car really needs it, I take it over to a car wash and pay my five bucks for a plain wash, no vacuum or wax.

  Mary's forever saying things happen when they're meant to happen, which I don't believe but which I don't argue about. I believe stuff happens period, end of sentence, end of theory. Which is also not to say that I ain't also been thinking it's time to change our address. So, in that regard, this opportunity to move into a big house in Bridgeport is not altogether unwelcome, though I wished it didn't take the death of an old friend to get it done.

  One other thing in the letter from Delvin. If I accept the house and furniture, I got to waive the executor's fee, which will then be pooled with the other resources and distributed according to the remainder of the bequest list. Which is only fair.

  There's a knock at the front door. Mrs. Thimble don't seem to notice.

  "There's somebody at the door," I say. "You want me to get it?"

  "Oh, no," she says.

  She gets up and leaves the room.

  I put in a call to the Diversey Funeral Home.

  The young woman who answers the phone cuts the difference between being mournful and cheerful better than anybody I ever heard.

  When I tell her the name of the deceased, I can practically see her straighten up in her chair and I wonder if Cleary and Diversey have given her a list of names of people who may be calling on them for service any day.

  "Let me see if Mr. Diversey himself is available," she says.

  Dr. Squertsky comes in. He lives and has his office in his house just down the street, and he don't make house calls much anymore, so he's wearing his bedroom slippers and a cardigan sweater with a stethoscope poking out of the pocket.

  He gives me a nod and what passes for a hello. I give him the same, standing there with the phone to my ear.

  Squertsky goes back into the downstairs bedroom to give Delvin a quick once-over.

  Diversey, Cleary's son-in-law, who I've met more than once or twice, here and there, social functions such as funerals being right up there with weddings and christenings as social events where practically everyone gathers, gets on the line. He's got the voice of a professional mourner.

  "Mr. Flannery," he says. "Jimmy. Did my daughter get it right? Is it Chips Delvin who's gone to his reward?"

  "It is."

  "I'm devastated by your loss. Thank you for calling me. Let me tell you that I...we...all of us...will do our very, very best for that dear old man."

  You could call Delvin a lot of things but dear old man ain't among them. He'd have wrestled Diversey to the floor if he ever heard hisself spoken about like that.

  "Are you calling from the hospital or is it from the house of bereavement?" Diversey goes on.

  "Delvin died at home in his bed during the night."

  "Shall we come get him, then?"

  "If you would."

  "As soon as I can find my father-in-law. Lou's somewhere about. You know Lou Cleary?"

  "Indeed I do."

  "They were the best of friends, old Mr. Delvin and my father-in-law. You also know my brother-in-law, Francis O'Shea?"

  "I do."

  "It's like we're all family," Diversey says, and I'm half-tempted to ask him will the relationship be reflected on the bill.

  "We'll be waiting for you," I say.

  "Ahhh," Diversey sighs, like I just conferred the greatest courtesy on him. "Twenty minutes. And Flannery?"

  "Yes," I say.

  "Don't touch anything."

  I go back to the bedroom thinking that one over.

  Squertsky hands me the death certificate he's just filled out.

  "Heart. Wore out. Finally."

  He turns to Mrs. Thimble.

  "Are you all right?" he asks.

  She tears up the way people do when they're feeling fragile but think they got things under control until somebody asks them are they feeling all right. If you left them alone to deal with the crisis in their own way, they probably wouldn't cry, but if you ask them are they all right, it's like they got to show you they ain't all right even if they say they are.

  "Go to your room and I'll bring you a little something to make you feel better," he says.

  She allows herself to be led to the door with his hand on her shoulder.

  He turns to me and says, "I'll give her a mild sedative and then I'll let myself out, Flannery. Is there anything you want?"

  "I'm all right," I say, and feel tears welling up in my own eyes.

  "He's had a long journey," Squertsky said, looking at Delvin.

  "But you know what they say," I say.

  "What's that?"

  "There's no man so old he don't want another day."

  "Health and comfort permitting," Squertsky fires back, letting me know how foolish most such sayings really are.

  THREE

  It ain't twenty minutes before Cleary and Diversey arrive. It's more like an hour. I spend the time reading the rest of the instructions Delvin left for me in my capacity as executor trustee.

  He's a man what kept his affairs up to date.

  He's had the house appraised every two years. The last one, six months ago, values the house at a hundred thousand dollars.

  I know most of the furniture he's got and none of it's what you'd call valuable antiques. I figure all of it couldn't be worth more than ten thousand, the most, if it was sold at auction.

  Maybe I'm sounding like some sort of ghoul putting a price on what this old friend of mine left me, but it ain't that. I think maybe these chores you're left to do after somebody near and dear to you dies you do more carefully than most, paying attention to every detail, because it gives you a lot to occupy your mind while the grief settles in without busting you apart.

  Anyway, it's all there in separate folders, receipts for big pieces bought all the way back in 1936 and '37, when Delvin was a young man just married and setting up housekeeping. He didn't get a television set until 1962. There's a receipt for a new mattress he bought in 1975, which is, I think, right after his wife died.

  The instructions point me to folders which contain municipal bonds and zero-coupon federal securities with staggered dates of maturity and two single-premium annuities. He's got some preferred utility stocks and three savings account passbooks plus the active checking account used for everyday expenses.

  After I do a quick running calculation in my head, it all adds up to about two hundred thousand dollars, which may not be a fortune to some people but which looks substantial to me. All told, everything in the pot, it's well under the estate tax exemption of six hundred thousand dollars, which is apparently all the federal government figures you should have in your pocket when the trumpets call you home. After that, they want theirs, unless you're so rich that you can afford a team of lawyers and accountants to show you ways to duck.

  There's five pages of personal bequests. Little things. Personal mementos.

  His pocket watch (which it turns out don't run and can't be fixed) to Wally Dunleavy, which I wonder if it ain't a wry remark, Dunleavy being older than Delvin by somewhat. So if he's still alive when Delvin dies, he'll be getting a watch what can't count the minutes he's got left, which won't be many. It's the kind of thing Delvin would do.

  A Phi Beta Kappa key (who knew he'd ever had such an education?) to Janet Canarias, the lipstick lesbian what took the Twenty-seventh away from the party when she ran for alderman the time I refused to run at their request. It turns out that it's the real Phi Beta Kappa key, but it wasn't really his. He never made it past the eighth grade. He probably bought it for hisself in some pawn shop, a token of how good he thought he was or maybe another wry remark about how the honors society hands out don't always count for much when the chips're down. He kept the receipt for it, so he wasn't trying to fool anybody that he really earned it the old-fashioned way, by going to school. It also showed how much he thought about higher education, you could buy its prizes for thirty bucks.

  He leaves a leather photo album to the Chicago Historical Society. It's filled with photographs they'd be glad to get, going all the way back to when part of present-day Bridgeport was called Ducktown because it was flooded so much. Pictures of immigrant Irish and Germans at political picnics, men in bowlers and women in their Sunday bonnets.

  Looking at them I get the melancholy feeling I always get looking at old photographs, thinking how all these smiling people squinting in the sun are nothing but dust and bones buried in some old cemetery or maybe sleeping under the asphalt apron of a gas station or a parking lot.

 

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