Loe raamatut: «Silent Night Man»

At the funeral home the friend of the deceased was a big, richly dressed man who looked like a professional wrestler. He was wearing expensive clothing and a cashmere coat. He had olive skin, black eyes and wavy black hair that he wore in a long ponytail. He stood over the casket without saying a word. He looked aloof. He looked dangerous. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since he entered the building.

Tony Danzetta stared down at John Hamilton’s casket with an expression like stone, although he was raging inside. It was hard to look at the remains of a man he’d known and loved since high school. His best friend was dead. Dead, because of a woman.

Tony’s friend, Frank Mariott, had phoned him at the home of the man he was working for temporarily in Jacobsville, Texas. Tony had planned to stay around for a little longer, take a few weeks off from work before he went back to his real job. But the news about John had sent him rushing home to San Antonio.

Of the three of them, John had been the weak link. The other two were always forced to save him from himself. He fantasized about people and places that he considered were part of his life. Often the people were shocked to learn that he was telling his friends that he was on close terms with them.

Tony and Frank thought that John was harmless. He just wanted to be somebody. He was the son of people who worked for a local clothing manufacturing company. When the company moved outside the United States, they went to work at retail stores. Neither of them finished high school, but John often made up stories to tell classmates about his famous rich parents who had a yacht and their own airplane. Tony and Frank knew better, but they let him spin his yarns. They understood him.

But now John was dead, and that…woman was responsible! He could still see her face from the past, red with embarrassment when she’d asked him about one of their assignments at the adjunct college class they were both taking in criminal justice. That had been six years ago. She couldn’t even talk to a man without stammering and shaking. Millie Evans had mousy-brown hair and green eyes. She wore glasses. She was thin and unremarkable. But Tony’s adopted foster mother, who had been an archivist at the local library, was Millicent Evans’s superior and she liked Millie. She was always talking about her to Tony, pushing her at him, right up until the day she died.

Tony couldn’t have told his foster mother, but he knew too much about the girl to be interested in her. John had become fixated on her a couple of years ago and during one of Tony’s rare visits home, had told him about her alter ego. In private, he said, Millie was hot. Give her a couple of beers and she’d do anything a man wanted her to do. That prim, nervous pose was just that—a pose. She wasn’t shy and retiring. She was a party girl. She’d even done a threesome with him and their friend Frank, he’d told Tony in confidence. Don’t mention that to Frank, though, he’d added, because Frank was still embarrassed about it.

What Tony had learned about Millie Evans had turned him right off her. Not that he’d found her attractive before that. She was another in a long line of dull, staid spinsters who’d do anything to get a man. Poor John. He’d felt sorry for his friend, because John was obsessed with Millicent Evans. To John, Millie was the queen of Sheba, the ultimate female. Sometimes she loved him, John moaned, but other times she treated him like a complete stranger. Other times, she complained that he was stalking her. Ridiculous, John had told Tony. As if he had to stalk her, when she was often waiting for him at his apartment, when he got off from work as a night watchman, wearing nothing at all!

John’s description of the spinster was incomprehensible to Tony, who’d had beautiful, intelligent, wealthy women after him. He’d never had to chase a woman. Millicent Evans had no looks, no personality and she seemed rather dull witted. He never had been able to understand what John saw in her.

Now John was dead. Millicent Evans had driven him to suicide. Tony stared at the pale, lifeless face and rage built inside him. What sort of woman used a man like that, abused his love to the extent that she caused him to take his own life?

The funeral director had a phone call, which forced him to approach the silent man in the viewing room. He paused beside him. “Would you be Mr. Danzetta?” the man asked respectfully. The caller had identified him as tall and unconventional looking. That was an understatement. Up close, the man was enormous, and those black eyes cut like a diamond.

“I’m Tony Danzetta,” he replied in a deep, gravelly voice.

“Your friend Mr. Mariott just phoned to tell us to expect you. He said you had a special request about the burial?”

“Yes,” Tony told him. In his cashmere coat, that reached down to his ankles, he looked elegant. “I have two plots in a perpetual care cemetery just outside San Antonio, a short distance from where my foster mother is buried. I’d like you to put John in one of them.” He was remembering a hill in Cherokee, North Carolina, where his mother was buried and a cemetery in Atlanta that held the remains of his father and his younger sister. He’d been in San Antonio since junior high school, with his foster mother. He described the plots, one of which he intended for John. “I have a plat of the location in my safe-deposit box. If I could drop it by in the morning?”

“Today would be better,” the man replied apologetically. “We have to get our people to open the grave and prepare it for the service on the day after tomorrow, you understand.”

He was juggling appointments, one of which was with his banker about a transfer of funds. But he smiled, as if it was of no consequence. He could get the plat out of the box while he was doing business at the bank. “No problem. I’ll drop it by on my way to the hotel tonight.”

“Thank you. That will save us a bit of bother.”

Tony looked down at John. “You did a good job,” he said quietly. “He looks…the way he used to look.”

The man smiled broadly.

Tony looked at his watch. “I have to go. I’ll be back when I’ve finished my business in town.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If Frank shows up before I get back, tell him that, will you? And tell him not to go out for food. I’ll take him out to eat tonight.”

“I will.”

“Thanks.”

The funeral director walked out of the viewing room, pausing to speak to someone. Tony, his eyes resting sadly on his friend’s face, only half noticed the conversation.

He heard soft footsteps come toward the casket and pause beside him. He turned his head. And there she was. The culprit herself. She’d be twenty-six now, he judged, and she was no more attractive than she’d been all those years ago. She dressed better. She was wearing a neat gray suit with a pink blouse and a thick dark coat. Her dark brown hair was in a bun. She was wearing contacts in her green eyes, he imagined, because his foster mother had often mentioned how nearsighted she was. The lack of glasses didn’t help her to look any prettier. She had a nice mouth and good skin, but she held no attraction for Tony. Especially after she’d been responsible for his best friend’s death.

“I’m very sorry,” she said quietly. She looked at John with no visible sign of emotion. “I never meant it to end like this.”

“Didn’t you?” He turned, his hands in the pockets of his coat, as he glared down at her with piercing dark eyes. “Teasing him for years, playing hard to get, then calling the police to have him arrested as a stalker? And you didn’t mean it to end like this?”

She felt cold all over. She knew he’d worked in construction years ago, but there had been rumors about him since, whispers. Dark whispers. John had intimated that Tony was into illegal operations, that he’d killed men. Looking into his black eyes now, she could believe it. He wasn’t the man she’d known. What had he said about her teasing John?

“Don’t bother to lie,” he said icily, cutting off her question even before it got out of her mouth. “John told me all about you.”

Her eyebrows arched. What was there to tell, except that his friend John had almost destroyed her life? She drew herself up straighter. “Yes, he was quite good at telling people about me,” she began.

“I never could understand what he saw in you,” he continued, his voice as pleasant as his eyes were homicidal. “You’re nothing to look at. I wouldn’t give you a second look if you were dripping diamonds.”

That hurt. She tried not to let it show, but it did. God knew what John had told him.

“I…have to go,” she stammered. She was no good at confrontations. This big man was looking for a fight. Millie had no weapons against him. Long ago, the spirit had been beaten out of her.

“What, no urge to linger and gloat over your triumph?” He laughed coldly. “The man is dead. You drove him to suicide!”

She turned, her heart breaking, and met the tall man’s eyes. “You and Frank could never see it,” she replied. “You wouldn’t see it. Other men have infatuations. John had obsessions. He was arrested other times for stalking women—”

“I imagine you put the women up to reporting him,” he interrupted. “John said you’d accuse him of stalking and then be waiting for him at his apartment, wearing no clothes at all.”

She didn’t seem surprised at the comment. He couldn’t know that she was used to John’s accusations. Much too used to them for comfort.

She moved one shoulder helplessly. “I tried to make him get help. When I finally had him arrested, I spoke to the district attorney myself and requested that they give him a psychiatric evaluation. John refused it.”

“Of course he refused it. There was nothing wrong with his mind!” he shot back. “Unless you could call being infatuated with you a psychiatric problem.” He raised both eyebrows. “Hell, I’d call it one!”

“Call it whatever you like,” she said wearily. She glanced once more at John and turned away from the casket.

“Don’t bother coming to the funeral,” he said coldly. “You won’t be welcome.”

“Don’t worry, I hadn’t planned to,” she replied.

He took a quick step toward her, infuriated by her lukewarm attitude, his dark eyes blazing with fury.

She gasped, dropped her purse and jumped back away from him. Her face was white.

Surprised, he stopped in his tracks.

She bent and scrambled for her purse, turned and ran out of the room.

There were murmurs outside the room. He glanced back at John, torn between anger and grief. “God, I’m sorry,” he said softly to his friend. “I’m so sorry!”

He forced himself to leave. The funeral director was standing at the front door, looking worried.

“The young lady was very upset,” he said uneasily. “White as a sheet and crying.”

“I’m sure she was grieving for John,” Tony said nonchalantly. “They knew each other a long time.”

“Oh. That would explain it, then.”

Tony walked to his car and felt better. At least he’d dragged some emotion out of her on behalf of his friend. He got behind the wheel of his expensive sports car and revved it out of the funeral home parking lot, his mind already on his appointment with the bank.

Millie Evans sat at the wheel of her little black VW Beetle and watched Tony drive away, out of her life. She was still crying. His coldness, his fury, had hurt her. She’d had to deal with John’s histrionics and threats for two years, watching her life and career go down the drain while he told lies about her to anyone gullible enough to listen. He’d persecuted her, tormented her, made a hell of her daily life. Now he was dead, and Tony wanted to make her pay for driving his poor, helpless friend to suicide.

She wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. Poor friend, the devil! Perhaps if he and Frank had realized that John was mentally ill years ago, they might have made him get help. He might have straightened out his life and gone on.

Millie was secretly relieved that John hadn’t carried out his last, furious threat to end her life. He’d told her that she wouldn’t get away with rejecting him. He had friends, he told her, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her for the right amount of money. He had savings, he’d raged; he’d use it all. He’d make sure she didn’t live to gloat about pushing him out of her life!

She’d worried about that threat. The news was full of people who’d gone off the deep end and killed others they blamed for their problems, before killing themselves. It was, sadly, a fact of modern life. But she’d never dreamed that she—plain, prim little Millie Evans—would ever have something like that happen to her. Most people never even noticed her.

She’d wanted to be noticed by Tony. She’d loved him forever, it seemed. While his foster mother was alive, she’d coaxed the older woman into talking about her adoptive son. Tony had come a long way from North Carolina. He and his sister, both Cherokee, had lived with their mother and her abusive husband—but not their biological father—in Atlanta just briefly, but the man drank to excess and was brutal to the children. Tony and his sister went into foster homes in Georgia. After his sister, also in foster care, died, Tony’s nurturing foster mother moved him to San Antonio, where she had family, to get him away from the grief. She worked as an archivist at the public library in San Antonio, where Tony was a frequent patron; and where Millie worked after school and between classes while she went through college.

Millie had loved hearing stories of Tony as a boy, as a teenager, as a soldier. Sometimes his foster mother would bring letters to the library and show them to Millie, because they were like living history. Tony had a gift for putting episodes in his life down on paper. He made the countries where he was stationed come alive, and not only for his parent.

Millie had hoped that Tony might spend some time at the library when he came home on leave. But there were always pretty girls to take on dates. Frank Mariott worked as a bouncer in a nightclub and he knew cocktail waitresses and showgirls. He introduced them to Tony, who always had a night free for fun.

A library, Millie supposed, wasn’t a good place to pick up girls. She looked in her rearview mirror and laughed. She saw a plain, sad-faced woman there, with no hopes of ever attracting a man who’d want to treasure her for the rest of her life. It was a good thing, she told herself, that she’d stockpiled so many romance novels to keep her nights occupied. If she couldn’t experience love, at least she could read about it.

She wiped her eyes, closed up her purse and drove herself back to work. She’d forced herself to go and see John, out of guilt and shame. All she’d accomplished was to find a new enemy and hear more insults about herself. She knew that she’d never meet up with Tony again after this. Perhaps it was just as well. She’d spent enough time eating her heart out over a man who couldn’t even see her.

* * *

Tony made his funds transfer, got the plat from the safe-deposit box, had the bank copy it for him and replaced the original before he went back to the funeral home.

All the way, in the back of his mind, he kept seeing the fear in Millie’s face when he’d moved toward her. That reaction was odd. She might have been surprised by the speed of his movement—a lot of people had been, over the years. But she’d expected him to hit her. It was in her eyes, her face, her whole posture. He wondered what had happened to her in the past that made her so afraid.

Then he chided himself for that ridiculous compassion, when she’d caused John’s death. At least he’d made sure that she wouldn’t come to the funeral. That would have been the last straw.

He pulled up at the funeral home and locked his car. It was getting colder. Strange weather, he thought. First it was like summer then, in a matter of days, winter arrived. It was normal weather for Texas in late November, he mused.

As he walked into the funeral home, he saw some of John’s family gathered, talking among themselves. Frank spotted Tony and came out into the hall. They shook hands.

“I just have to drop this off,” he told Frank, lifting up the copy of the plat. “Then we’ll spend a minute talking to John’s people before we go out to eat.”

The funeral director spotted them and came forward. He took the copy of the plat, smiled at Frank and went back to his office.

“You may get a shock,” Frank murmured as they walked into the viewing room.

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, surprised.

John didn’t have much family. His parents were long dead. He did have a sister, Ida. She was there, dry-eyed and irritable. She glanced at the doorway and put on a big smile.

“Tony! How nice to see you again!” She ran up to him and hugged him. “You look great!”

“Sorry we have to meet like this,” Tony began.

“Yes, the idiot, what a stupid thing to do!” Ida muttered. “He had a life insurance policy worth fifty thousand dollars. I paid the premiums for him, me and Jack, and look what he does! Suicide! We won’t get a penny!”

Tony looked as if he’d been hit in the eye.

“Oh, there’s Merle. Sorry, honey, I have to talk to her about the flowers. She’s giving me a good deal on a wreath…”

John’s cousin Ben came forward to shake hands.

“What a mess,” he told the two men. He shook his head. “I bailed him out of jail. He didn’t exactly skip bond, but I’ll forfeit what I put up,” he added heavily. “Two thousand dollars,” he grumbled. “He swore he’d pay me back.” He wandered off, still shaking his head.

An elderly woman with dyed blond hair and wearing a hideous black dress, peered at Tony. She grinned up at him. “You must be that rich friend of Johnny’s,” she said. “He said you owned several islands out in the Atlantic and that you were going to give him one and a yacht, too, so he could get to and from this country.”

“That’s right, Blanche,” Frank said, smiling. “Now, you’ll have to excuse us, we’ve got an appointment. We’ll see you at the funeral.”

“I sure would like to see that yacht,” Blanche added.

Frank took Tony by the arm and propelled him out into the lobby.

* * *

They were sitting in a good Italian restaurant fifteen minutes later, having given in their order.

“I can’t believe it,” Tony said furiously. “His own family! Not one of them seems to be sad that he’s dead!”

“He was nothing but trouble to them,” Frank replied. “He didn’t work, you know,” he added, shocking Tony, who’d already had a few shocks. “He told the government people that he had a bad back and he fed liquor to two vagrants who signed sworn statements that they’d seen the accident that crippled him. He convinced his doctor and got a statement from him, too, and talked a lawyer into getting him onto partial disability.” He shook his head. “But it was barely enough to live on. He pestered his relatives for handouts. When he got arrested for stalking, this last time, he talked Ben into posting his bond. I warned Ben, but he said John had promised that his rich friend would pay Ben back.”

“I’ve known John since high school,” he told Frank. “You’ve known him since junior high. He was a good man.”

Frank paused while the waiter served them appetizers and ice water.

“He changed,” Frank said quietly. “More than you know. You only saw him on holidays, while your foster mother was still alive, and hardly at all in the past couple of years. I saw him constantly.”

“You’re trying to say something,” Tony murmured, eyeing the other man.

Frank toyed with his salad. “He made friends with some members of a gang a few months ago,” he said. “It really thrilled him, that he could kick around with people who weren’t afraid of the law. He hated cops, you know,” he added. “Ever since the arrest for stalking, when he went after—”

“Yes,” Tony interrupted him. “That Millie creature!”

“Creature!” Frank sat back, shocked.

Tony was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “She caused John to kill himself, remember?”

“Who told you that?”

“John did. He sent me a letter. Left me a letter.” He pulled it out of his pocket. It had arrived the day he got the news that John was dead, obviously having been mailed in advance of the suicide. “He said she tormented him…hell, read it for yourself.” He pushed it across the table.

“I can imagine what’s in it,” Frank said. He ignored the letter and finished chewing a bite of salad. “He accused women of teasing him when they were only trying to get him to leave them alone. Millie was more kindhearted than most—she kept forgiving him. Then when she refused dates, he started telling tales on her to her coworkers.” He glanced at Tony, sitting stiffly, still unbelieving. “You’ve seen Millie. Now, you tell me, does she really look like the sort of woman who’d lie in wait at John’s apartment wearing a French maid’s costume with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a champagne flute in the other?”

“It would be tough to imagine,” Tony had to admit. “Still, mild-looking women have done crazier things.”

“Yes, but Millie’s not like that.” Frank’s face softened. “She sat with your foster mother when she was dying in the hospital, before you could get home. She was there every night after work.”

“Sure, you’d defend her, when you did a threesome with her and John!” he snapped.

Frank gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”

The other man’s reaction made Tony even more uncomfortable. He fiddled with his water glass. “John told me about it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Frank burst out. “I’ve never done a threesome in my life, much less with Millie!”

“Maybe he made a mistake with the name,” Tony mumbled.

“Maybe he made a mistake telling you lies about me,” Frank shot back. “I’d give anything to have Millie notice me! Don’t you think I know how little I have to give to a woman with her brains? She has a degree in library science. I barely got out of high school. I’m a bouncer,” he added heavily. “A nobody.”

“Stop that!” Tony said immediately. “You’re not just a bouncer. It’s a rough job. It takes a hell of a man to do it.”

“I’m sure there are guys in New York City who place ads hoping to get hired as bouncers in bars,” Frank said sarcastically. “Here in San Antonio, it’s not exactly the dream job of most men.”

“You’re sweet on Millie Evans, so you’re defending her.”

“I’m sweet on her, all right. If the competition wasn’t so stiff, I might even try my luck. That’s what made John crazy. He couldn’t stand the competition, either. He knew he’d never replace that other guy Millie’s been in love with for six years.”

“What other guy?” Tony asked carelessly.

“You.”

It was as if time stopped and everything went around in slow motion. Tony put his fork down and looked across at Frank as if he’d gone mad. “Excuse me?”

“Do you think Millie needed courses in criminal justice to be a librarian?” Frank asked drolly. “She took those courses because your foster mother had told her you were taking them, in addition to your regular college classes, so you could get your degree faster. It was an excuse to be around you.”

Now, horribly, it made sense. He hadn’t even questioned her presence in the classes.

“Great,” Tony muttered. “The murderer of my best friend thinks I’m hot!”

“She didn’t kill him. But no jury would have convicted her if she had,” Frank persisted. “He got her fired, Tony. He went to her boss and told her that Millie was hanging out in bars to have sex with men for an audience. He told that to three of the library’s richest patrons, one of whom sat on the board of directors for the library. They demanded that she be fired.”

Tony watched the other man warily. “And how do you know it wasn’t true?”

“Because I went to a friend of mine at the local precinct and got John’s rap sheet and showed it to them.”

Tony was feeling ill. “Rap sheet? John had a rap sheet?”

“Yes. For fraud, defamation of character, petty theft, three charges of stalking and a half dozen other charges. I got a statement from the last woman he’d stalked, a receptionist for one of the dentists John went to. She swore in court that John had threatened her life. He convinced a lawyer that she was lying and produced a witness who heard her bragging that she’d get John arrested.”

Tony waited for the rest.

“The gang members testified in his favor and got the case thrown out of court. A couple of weeks later, the receptionist was raped. Nobody was ever caught or charged.”

Tony leaned forward. “Don’t tell me John was mixed up in that!”

“He never admitted it,” Frank replied heavily. “But I knew he was. A few months later, one of the gang members was pulled in on a rape charge and he bragged to the arresting officer that he could get away with it anytime he liked. He had alibis, he said. Turned out they were also members of his gang. Sadly for him, on the second rape case, the new gang member he bragged to was wearing a wire. He’s doing hard time now.”