“So you already saw the body?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“Then I’ll take your word that Jimmy’s dead.”
When Janet removes her sunglasses, I see she’s been crying. “That’s what they teach you in newspaper school?” she says. “To believe every damn fool thing you’re told? What if I’m lying?”
“You’re not.” Me, the wise old pro.
I follow her inside. Some guy who smells like rotten gardenias and looks like a used-furniture salesman sidles into the foyer, then recoils at the sight of Janet, with whom he obviously has interacted before.
“You cooked my big brother yet?”
“Pardon me?” The man wears a dyspeptic grimace.
“The cremation, Ellis. Remember?”
“In an hour or so.”
“Good,” says Janet. “I want to see him one more time.”
The funeral director, Ellis, glances at me warily. I know that look; he thinks I’m a cop. Possibly this is because my necktie could be an artifact from Jack Webb’s estate.
Ellis says, “Is there something wrong?”
Without missing a beat, Janet says, “This is the drummer in Jimmy’s first band. He flew all the way from Hawaii.”
Ellis is relieved. We follow him down a hallway to a door marked Staff Only. It is not, thank God, the crematorium.
Four wooden caskets sit side by side, each on its own padded gurney. In Florida, every corpse gets embalmed and every corpse gets a coffin, even for cremation. It’s a law that exists for no other reason than to pad the profits of funeral-home proprietors. Janet points to a blond walnut casket with an orange tag twist-tied to one of the handles. “Burn ticket,” she explains.
Ellis dutifully opens the top half of the bisected lid… and there’s Jimmy Stoma.
All things considered, he looks pretty darn spiffy. Better, in fact, than he did on some of his album covers. He’s so lean and fit, you wouldn’t guess he once outweighed Meat Loaf.
James Bradley Stomarti lies before us in splendid attire: a coal-black Armani jacket over a white silk shirt buttoned to the throat. A fine diamond stud glistens in one earlobe. His cropped brown hair, flecked with silver, shines with mousse.
Every dead rock musician should look so good.
As his sister steps closer, I’m thinking it’s fortunate that Jimmy Stoma’s body was recovered right away. Ellis, the funeral guy, undoubtedly has the same thought: One more day of floating in shark-infested waters under that hot Bahamian sun, and you’re talking closed casket.
Tightly closed.
“You did an awesome job,” I tell Ellis, because that’s what Jimmy’s geeky drummer friend would have said.
“Thank you,” Ellis says. Then, for Janet’s benefit: “He was a very handsome fellow.”
“Yeah, he was. Jack?” She beckons with a finger.
I ask Ellis to give us some privacy, and with practiced aplomb he backs out of the room. He will return later, I know, to make sure we didn’t spoil his Christmas by beating him to Jimmy’s earring.
“Diamonds won’t burn, you know,” I whisper to Janet.
“That’s Cleo’s problem. She’s in charge of wardrobe,” says Janet, making me like her even more.
“Well, it does look good. He looks good.”
“Yeah,” she says.
We’re standing together at the side of the coffin. Now that I’ve seen with my own eyes that Jimmy Stoma is deceased, the heebie-jeebies are setting in. I’m fighting the urge to bolt from the premises. The body reeks of designer cologne; the same cologne worn by Deli Boy in the elevator. Cleo’s favorite, I’m sure. Poor Jimmy will probably explode when they slide him into the flames.
Janet says, “What do you know about autopsies, Jack?”
“Come on. Let’s go.”
“You ever seen one?”
“Yeah,” I say. A few, actually.
“They yank out everything, right?” Janet says. “I saw a special on the Discovery Channel—they cut out all the organs and weigh ’em. Even the brain.”
Now she’s leaning over the coffin, her face inches from that of her dead brother. I am gulping deep breaths, endeavoring not to keel over.
“Amazing,” she’s saying, “the way they put him back together. You can’t hardly tell, can you? Jack?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Well, maybe they do autopsies different in the islands.”
“Maybe so,” I say.