Baby, It’s Murder

Epilogue

Nobody was left at the graveside but Pat and me, the two men who had loved her.

When I wrote my cases up for book publication, I left some things out. Nothing was omitted to make me look better, I assure you. Nobody in these accounts comes off worse than me except maybe those I liquidated, as the spooks would put it. Velda’s last name was one thing I left out of these accounts for the longest time, till she herself complained.

“Even Jane in the Tarzan books had a last name,” she said once.

“What was it?” I’d asked her.

“Well... I don’t remember. But she had one.”

“Porter.”

“What?”

“Jane Porter,” I said. “Till she changed it to Greystoke.”

She laughed and shook her head, the silver-tinged raven arcs swinging. “The damnedest things stick to that brain of yours, Mike.”

I held my hands out, palms up. “You want your name in the books, baby, you got it.”

And there it was, chiseled in granite —

— and the pun scolded me: too often, in those first years, I had taken her for granted. But that was the early days. After those seven years she was away, doing the CIA’s bidding in the wretched Soviet Union, I knew what a treasure I had in this woman. What a partner.

And now the best part of me was gone.

Lucky for the world, at least the evil shits in it, that I was an old man now. Or they’d be sleeping with one eye open.

“Quite a story,” Pat said.

We’d been standing in the gentle, almost tropical breeze on a gray day that should have felt colder, me telling Pat about those weeks in Long Island... even the bullets that had flown at that drug-lord confab at the Williams place and how I’d rescued Mikki from the clutches of that seemingly clean-cut short-haired beach boy of a villain at the bay cottage.

I left out only that Mikki had pulled the trigger on Second, taking for myself the credit and blame. Probably dangerous to be admitting such blatantly illegal things to a police inspector, even a retired one like Pat Chambers.

But not really.

The only friend of mine who had rivaled Pat was Jack Williams, who had given his arm to keep a Jap bayonet from ending me, and who had in common with Garrett Andrew Williams the First and Second only a surname. But even Jack faced stiff competition from Captain Chambers who had covered for me, and covered up for me, and had so often had my back in the “peacetime” combat my surly disposition had embraced like a sweet sickness.

“I know you need some time alone with her,” Pat said, and, impulsively, he hugged me — the only time I remember him doing that — and slapped his fedora back on and walked off into the gray afternoon.

“See you later, Pat,” I said.

Didn’t Randolph Scott say that once?

To Joel McCrea?

We spent just a few minutes together, Velda and I, and what I had to say, and what I imagined she said to me, is really none of your business.

And then I wasn’t alone.

No, it wasn’t Velda’s ghost... but almost.

She was at my side, the lovely girl — no, make that woman — who was my daughter, and looked at me questioningly.

“You talked to your friend,” Mikki said, “a long time.”

“I guess. Maybe I figure the longer I stay here, the longer she’s still with us.”

“She’ll always be with us. You know that.”

Behind us, at a respectful distance, in a dark suit and sunglasses and a trim beard, was Mikki’s husband of over twenty-five years. I admit I lost count. Today Brian Ellis ran motorcycle dealerships all around the east coast out of his Long Island headquarters.

I turned to look at her; Mikki was right there next to me.

“She was your mother, you know,” I said.

As casual as Pass the salt.

“I know,” she said.

I swallowed. “So I guess you know how I figure in this, too.”

Her big so-familiar deep brown eyes locked onto me. “I’ve known for a long time.”

It came like a gentle slap. But a slap nonetheless.

I asked, “Then why—”

“It needed to come from you.”

So now, as if that gray sky had come down low enough to threaten crushing me, I had decades to explain to this woman, all at once. I did my best.

I said, “I’ve made a lot of enemies in my time, kitten. I couldn’t have you out there on the firing line. And, anyway... it was her wish. Her call. She made me promise. It’s really just about all she ever asked of me.”

Only curiosity, not judgment, colored her expression. “And yet... all these years... you kept your word to her, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

She held her hand out to me. No black gloves to go with the mourning weeds. Her fingers were long and graceful and her grasp... it was so warm.

“Walk me,” she said.

We turned and started away.

Her husband nodded to me before falling in behind us. I walked her out of the cemetery toward where cars in the parking lot waited to take us away from all the death. For now.

“You kept it in you,” she said. “All these years.”

“I did,” I admitted.

“How could you?” she asked.

“It wasn’t easy,” I said.