Midas

PART ONE
1

“We’d like people to take their seats, please.”

Justin Westwood nodded at the usher, who had leaned over in his direction to make the polite request, but he made no move to honor it. The usher waited, swiveling his neck back and forth, as if his shirt collar was too tight. Then he moved on to tell other, more obedient people to sit down so things could get started.

Justin watched the mourners filing into the church. They were moving slowly; their tears and grief seemed to be weighing them down, preventing them from walking down the aisles at normal speed. In the three days since the explosion at Harper’s Restaurant, Justin Westwood had noticed a lot of people moving slowly. His sense was that the entire country was moving along in slow motion right now. People seemed to be in a state of shock after the explosion. There wasn’t the same kind of anger that was prevalent after the World Trade Center attack. This was different. There was something obscenely grand about that event, operatic in its horror, that made it all seem vaguely unreal to anyone outside of the city. September eleventh had heroes and villains and scope. This attack seemed small. It wasn’t just deadly, it was demeaning. It seemed to bring everyone down to the level of other countries, small countries. It made everyone feel vulnerable, which Justin knew was the worst feeling there was. So people moved slowly. They were in no rush to reach their destination, whatever it was, because that destination no longer seemed safe.

Justin, on the other hand, wasn’t moving at all. He was standing toward the rear of the room, leaning against the wall, facing the last pew. He was in mourning, too, but that didn’t affect his speed or his ability to move. Justin had learned long ago to use his grief to keep himself separate from normal activity. To stay one step away from whatever pain was due to come next.

He was standing, several feet from the rest of the crowd, because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know how to act or what to say to the people passing by. He was being counted on to be strong but he was not feeling much strength. What he felt was what he’d so often felt in the past: numb. He had spent years seeking to reach just such a state, to avoid any unnecessary emotion. After everything that had happened the previous year, he thought he’d finally passed beyond that point, thought he had crossed back to the side of the living and the feeling, but now the numbness was back again. And he understood that it wasn’t Jimmy Leggett’s death that had brought it back. It was his funeral.

Justin Westwood had sworn that he’d never go to another funeral. He didn’t believe in them. They did nothing for the dead, who were well beyond hearing or caring what was happening in a cramped little room filled with crying people. Funerals were for the living. They were to provide comfort and the hope of an afterlife; they were to ease the pain that came with loss. Funerals were to let people know that when their time came, they would not only be going to another place, a better place, there would be other people left behind to mourn them, to miss them, to grieve over their absence. To show them that they had been loved.

Justin knew better.

He did not have any faith in an afterlife. If there were such a thing, he was not willing to concede that it would be any better than what was here on earth. Justin thought that the world had been fucked over plenty. It didn’t give him confidence that those in charge could do any better elsewhere.

He also wasn’t comforted by funereal rituals. Nor did he think he could fill a church with mourners. Justin had long ago come to grips with the fact that there would be few, if any, people to grieve him or miss him. He had not felt much love in his lifetime. There was no reason to think he’d get much of it after he died.

Two people had truly loved him. That he knew. He’d missed one of their funerals. His eight-year-old daughter’s. He’d been in the hospital, shot up in the attack that killed her. He didn’t know she’d been buried until two weeks after she’d been put in the ground.

He did go to his wife’s funeral. Alicia had not coped well with the loss of their daughter. Justin knew that she blamed him, an accusation that had quite a lot of merit to it. He shared her belief. But Justin did his best never to blame his wife for her own death. One year after Lili had been killed, Alicia took Justin’s pistol out of his closet, put it in her mouth, and pulled the trigger. He blamed himself for that one, too.

It took him years after that to feel anything close to love. He thought it was happening about a year ago. With a woman in town, Deena, and her small daughter, Kendall. It turned out to be all sorts of things with Deena-friendship, passion, safety, compassion-but it wasn’t love. And on her part it was something else, too. It was fear. Fear of what was lurking inside him. Not the numbness. Fear of what was beneath the numbness.

They had given it their best shot. Dated for several months. But after a few weeks, there were signs. He would go to touch her unexpectedly, come up behind her and kiss her on the neck or stroke her bare arm, and she would flinch. The motion hardly noticeable. But he noticed. He could feel her discomfort when he was around Kendall. He was crazy about the little girl, and in some ways, separating from her was the hardest part to deal with. But when he understood that Deena was tormenting herself over the relationship-he had, literally, saved her life; she did not want to add to the pain of his life-he made it easy on her. He sat her down, said that he understood that it wasn’t working, gave her an out. And she jumped at it. He was surprised just how quickly she did jump. But he told her that if she ever changed her mind, he’d wait around for a time. It was a pledge he knew he could keep, but he also knew it was a pledge that would never come into play. Deena’s heart might waver, but her mind was unchangeable.

It was after Alicia’s burial that Justin had made an earlier pledge: never to go to another funeral service. But he couldn’t stay away from the church today. Jimmy had helped him when he most needed help. Jimmy had stood by him. They’d worked together for nearly seven years. And he still couldn’t quite believe that such a decent man had been killed in this random way. Like everyone else in the country, he was still stunned by the attack. And still waiting for some kind of explanation, something that would give it some kind of sense.

He’d gotten a phone call minutes after the explosion from a sergeant at the Southampton station, the largest station in the area, telling him what had occurred and telling him that all East End cops should be on alert in case they were needed at the bomb site. Eventually they were told their presence wasn’t necessary. By that time they were all aware that Jimmy hadn’t returned from lunch.

“Maybe he just can’t get back,” Gary Jenkins, a young cop, had said. “The streets are closed so maybe he’s just stuck over there.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Justin had said. But somehow they all knew.

At six o’clock, when Jimmy still hadn’t returned, Justin went to Duffy’s Tavern with Gary and a couple of the other guys and they watched the TV above the bar, stunned at the horror being shown and reported. The president addressed the nation, the vice president and the attorney general by his side, saying that evil had struck again but that, once again, it would be defeated. Justin wondered when the hell evil had ever been defeated, but he kept quiet. Nobody said anything about Jimmy, either. None of them wanted to be the one to jinx things. It turned out no jinx was needed. Justin got the call around midnight that night. It came from Jimmy’s son. The FBI had managed to tap into the restaurant’s computer records; they’d gotten the names of everyone who had a lunch reservation at Harper’s that day. Carolyn Helms was one of the women listed. She died in the blast. So did the person dining with her. Two of the cops at the station knew that she was Jimmy’s lunch date. Before Jimmy’s son hung up, he said that his mother would like Justin to speak at the service. Lying in bed at midnight, Justin had nodded at the son’s request, then realized that the man on the other end of the phone couldn’t see him, so he just said, “Sure,” because he didn’t know what else to say. And now here he was.

The service was about to begin. Justin started to move down toward one of the front pews but he felt a hand pulling on his arm. It was Jimmy’s wife, Marjorie.

“Why was he there, Jay? Why was he in that restaurant?”

Her voice was loud. And shrill enough that it resonated throughout the room. Justin answered quietly, hoping she’d follow his lead. “I don’t know, Marge. I really don’t.”

“I know what people think,” Marjorie said. “I know what everyone here is thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, Marge.”

“I want to know what happened, Jay. I want to know why this happened.”

“I just know what it says in the papers.”

“I don’t give a shit what it says in the papers. Or on television!” Her voice was very loud now, and shrill. Heads turned as she spoke. “I want to know what he was doing there. And I want to know why my husband is dead! I want you to find out for me! You owe me that. You owe him that!”

She realized she was being too loud, understood that she was on the edge of hysteria. Marjorie Leggett released Jay’s arm. Her hands hung down by her sides now, as if she no longer knew what to do with them. “I’m sorry.” She spoke almost too softly this time. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” she said, a whisper now.

“No,” Justin told her. “I don’t mean that it’s okay that you were yelling. It is okay that you’re yelling. It’s your husband’s funeral, you can do whatever the hell you want. I mean, okay, I’ll try to find out.”

She nodded, too drained to smile. Too exhausted even to say thank you again. She patted him lightly on the arm, then went to sit down.

Justin sat through three eulogies before it was his turn to speak. He went up to the pulpit, pulled out a piece of paper that had his prepared speech. He stared at the words he’d typed up, decided they were idiotic, that he couldn’t say them, then turned the paper over so all he could see was a blank page.

“I’m not very good at this kind of thing,” he began. “But I just decided to toss my little speech away. What’s written here suddenly seems so fake, like I’m talking about a stranger. So. . To be honest, I don’t know if there’s all that much to say about Jimmy, except that he wasn’t a stranger. At least to anyone in this room. He was a pretty normal guy. But maybe that’s what made him special. He wasn’t rich, he didn’t do things that changed the world. He was just decent. He worked hard and he liked people. Some people he loved. But whether he liked you or loved you or not, he did his best to help you. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so sad today. Because I don’t know all that many normal people who are like that.”

He hesitated, thought he should say something about Marjorie and the kids, maybe something a little more personal. He was distracted, though, by a muffled bang. It sounded like a thunderclap. Or a car crash. Everyone was on edge, half expecting another bombing, so most of the audience turned toward the back door or jumped nervously. This wasn’t an explosion, though, Justin knew. His guess was car crash. Some kind of collision. Maybe even something large falling off a truck. That clearly was the general consensus because the fear seemed to subside. People were turning back to face him now. The interruption was over.

And then he realized that a cell phone was ringing.

Two, three, four rings. Jesus Christ, talk about inappropriate.

A fifth ring. Then silence. He waited to make sure it really had stopped before he continued. He turned toward Margie, said one of the ways you judge good people is by the relationships they maintain with other good people. .

And there it was again. The ringing cell phone. He was about to say something, after the second ring he began to tell the person with the phone to get the hell out.

Then he realized it was his cell phone that was ringing.

His mouth dropped open in embarrassment. For a moment he almost had to laugh, it was just too awful, but he realized that laughter was even less appropriate than the call. It was ringing a third time now, at least two more to go before his voice mail picked up. He wondered if people knew where it was coming from, and, looking out at the sea of faces staring up at him, he realized they sure as hell did. Everyone knew. Every single person in the church. His mouth went dry. He couldn’t even name anyone who might possibly be calling him. Everyone he knew was at the goddamn funeral.

There it was-the fourth ring.

Justin looked out at the mourners, all of whom were staring at him in disbelief. He swallowed, coughed to clear his throat, and then he said, “I’m really sorry about this. Excuse me.”

Then he reached into his suit pocket, took out the phone, saw from the digital display that the call was coming from the East End police station, and he answered it.

“Jay, it’s Mike.”

Mike Haversham was the only cop who wasn’t at the funeral. Someone had to stay behind to mind the store.

Justin kept his voice low, put his hand over his mouth to muffle his words even further. “I’m in the middle of the funeral, you idiot.”

“I know. I know.” The young cop’s voice was trembling. “I’m really sorry. But it’s an emergency.”

Justin looked at the people in the pews. With his eyes and the briefest shrug of his shoulders, he did his best to convey that this wasn’t his fault.

“It better be a fucking emergency,” he breathed into the receiver. “What is it?”

Mike Haversham told him. Justin clicked off the phone, lifted his head to stare back out over everyone who was there to mourn Jimmy Leggett.

“I think Jimmy would understand this,” he said to the crowd. “At least I hope so.” He tapped the cell phone lightly against his forehead, then said what he knew he had to say. “But either way, I’ve got to go.”