urbane. Didn’t Tina always seem urbane?”
That’s right, Michael realized with a shock: Tina would have seemed urbane to Judy.
“Look good on his tombstone,” Conor said. “ ‘This was one urbane motherfucker.’ ”
2
St. Michael’s Cathedral, surprisingly imposing for so small a town, dwarfed the little congregation that had gathered for Anthony Francis Pumo’s funeral. From where the pallbearers stood Michael could see a handful of old women, half a dozen men with weather-roughened faces who must have gone to school with Tina, a few younger couples, single old men and women beautiful in their unreflective dignity, and a gaunt Asian man holding the hand of a beautiful child. Vinh and his daughter. At the back of the church stood a tall moustached man in a handsome suit, and another, younger man in an even handsomer suit whose roguish face looked vaguely familiar. Among the other pallbearers were a stocky, brusque man with a wider, less interesting version of Tina’s face, and a short powerful old man with heavy shoulders and hands like scoops: Tina’s brother, who managed a muffler shop, and his father, a retired farmer.
An angular old priest with shining white hair described a shy, eager schoolboy who had served “with great honor and distinction in Vietnam” and “proved his inner strength by triumphing in the turbulent waters of the restaurant business in the city that eventually claimed his life.” That was how it looked from here—one of their children had wandered into the forest of New York City and fallen prey to savage animals.
Out at the cemetery, Pleasant Hill, Michael stood alongside Judy, Beevers, and Conor while the priest read the service. Now and then he looked up at the dull grey granite clouds. He was aware of Tommy Pumo, Tina’s brother, staring at Vinh with outright hostility. Tommy was evidently a difficult character.
First the father and brother, then all in turn dropped clods of earth onto the lowered coffin.
As Poole stepped back from the edge of the grave he heard a loud voice coming from further down the hill. Near the row of parked cars, Tommy Pumo was waving his arms at the well-dressed man whose face had seemed familiar in the cathedral. Pumo’s brother took a furious, almost swaggering step forward. The other man smiled and spoke, and Tommy Pumo’s face twisted, and he stepped forward again.
“Let’s see what’s going on,” Beevers said. He began to move downhill toward the little group of people frozen near the cars.
“Excuse me, sir,” came a voice from just behind him, and Poole looked back to see the tall moustached man who had been in the congregation. Close up, his moustache was thick and lustrous, but the man conveyed no impression of vanity—he seemed easily authoritative, calm and commanding. He was an inch taller than Michael and very solidly built. “You are Dr. Poole? Mrs. Poole?”
Harry had stopped moving downhill, and was standing still, looking back up at the man.
“And you are Mr. Beevers?”
Beevers’ face went very smooth, as if he had just been paid some tremendous compliment.
“My name is Lieutenant Murphy, and I am the detective conducting the investigation of your friend’s death.”
“Aha,” Beevers said to Judy.
Murphy raised his thick eyebrows.
“We were wondering when we would meet you.”
Murphy took it in slowly, easily. “I’d like to have a short talk with you back at the father’s house. You were going there before you left to go back to the city?”
“We are at your disposal, Lieutenant,” Harry said.
Smiling, Murphy turned away and walked down the hill.
Beevers raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in Judy’s direction, wordlessly asking if Poole had told her about Underhill. Poole shook his head. They watched the detective reach the bottom of the hill and say a few words to Pumo’s father.
“Murphy,” Beevers said. “Isn’t that perfect? Talk about type-casting.”
“Why does he want to talk to you?” Judy asked.
“Background checks, filling in the blank spaces, getting the complete picture.” Beevers shoved his hands in his coat pockets and swiveled around to look back at the gravesite. Now only a few of the older people still lingered there. “That little Maggie didn’t show up, damn it. I wonder what
Beevers intended to say more, but he closed his mouth as another mourner approached them. It was the man at whom Tommy Pumo had shouted.
“Good cop, bad cop,” Beevers whispered, and turned away, all but whistling.
The man turned a lopsided grin on Poole and Judy and introduced himself as David Dixon, Tina’s lawyer. “You must be his old service friends. It’s nice to meet you. But haven’t we met before?” He and Michael worked out that they had met at Saigon several years ago.
Beevers had turned back to the group and Michael introduced everybody. “It’s nice of you to come,” Beevers said.
“Tina and I spent a lot of time together, working on various little things. I’d like to think we were friends, and not just lawyer and client.”
“The best clients do become friends,” Harry said, instantly adopting the professional pose Poole had seen in Washington. “I’m a fellow attorney, by the way.”
Dixon paid no attention to these statements. “I tried to get Maggie Lah to drive up here with me, but she didn’t think she could handle it. And she didn’t know if Tina’s family would know how to take her.”
“You have Maggie’s number?” Harry asked. “I’d like to get in touch with her, so if you do have it—”
“Not this second,” Dixon said.
Michael filled the silence by asking about the Vietnamese chef. He wondered if the man had gone back to the house with the other mourners.
Dixon guffawed. “He wouldn’t be very welcome at the house. Didn’t you see Tommy Pumo going nuts down there?”
“He must be taking his brother’s death very hard,” Judy said.
“It’s more greed than grief,” Dixon said. “Tina left everything, including the restaurant and his loft, to the person he felt had done the most to help him make his place a success.”
They were all attentive now.
“Who happened to be Vinh, of course. He’s going to keep the restaurant going. We ought to be open again just about on schedule.”
“The brother wanted the restaurant?”
“Tommy wanted the money. Years back, Tina borrowed money from his father to buy the first two floors of his building. You can imagine what happened to the value of the real estate. Tommy thought he was going to get rich, and he’s hopping mad.”
Down at the bottom of the hill, one of the two old couples who had lingered at the grave shyly approached Michael and said that they would guide him to the Pumo house.
As they drove up a long unpaved drive past thick old oaks toward a neat two-story farmhouse with a wraparound porch, the old woman, an aunt of Tina’s, said, “Just pull up next to the house alongside the drive. Everybody does it. Ed and I always do it, anyhow.” She turned to Conor, who held Judy on his lap. “You’re not married, are you, young man?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I want you to meet my daughter—she’ll be inside the house helping out with the food and the coffee, I’m sure. Good-looking girl, and named after me. Grace Hallet. You be sure to have a nice talk with her.”
“I’d be happy to help your daughter dispense the mead and sweet potato pie,” Harry said. “How about me?”
“Oh, you’re too famous, but this fellow here is just good folks. You work with your hands, don’t you?”
“Carpenter,” Conor said.
“Anybody can plainly see,” said Grace.
