She was wearing her PROPERTY OF THE DENVER BRONCOS sweatshirt and had the New York Post in her hand.
‘I think I have some bad news for you,’ she said, then seemed to reconsider. ‘Moderately bad news.’
He turned to her warily. Bad news should always come after lunch, he thought. At least a person was halfway prepared for bad news after lunch. First thing in the morning everything left a bruise. ‘What is it?’
‘The man you introduced me to yesterday at your buddy’s funeral — you said he was a car dealer in Connecticut, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I wanted to be sure because John Sullivan isn’t, you know, the world’s most uncommon —
‘
‘What are you talking about, Mary?’
She handed him the paper, which was folded open to a page about halfway into the tabloid.
‘They say it happened while he was on his way home. I’m sorry, hon.’
She had to be wrong, that was his first thought; people couldn’t die just after you’d seen them and talked to them, it seemed like a basic rule, somehow.
But it was him, all right, and in triplicate: Sully in a high-school baseball uniform with a catcher’s mask pushed back to the top of his head, Sully in an Army uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, and Sully in a business suit that had to hail from the late seventies.