Fashionably Late (For My Funeral) Pt. 05

"How many of these are also investors in the scheme?"

"I suppose that some of them would have been involved."

"I suppose that you didn't stop to think of the ramifications of the current series of arrests on these donations did you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Money obtained from illegal activities and donated to campaign funds is just as dirty as if it had come directly from the sale of drugs on the street."

"I hadn't thought of that, in fact the possibility of this situation arising never occurred to me, or to anyone else for that matter. There seemed to me to have been a very complex immune system in place."

"In what way?"

"If I was to turn and supply the prosecution with certain information would it be possible for my involvement in this to be minimized?"

"That's between you and the prosecution. I'm only involved in seeing that those involved are caught."

"I can name names and very important names at that."

"I believe you."

"There have been government agencies involved."

"Keep going."

"I want my lawyer present."

"I think I can allow that."

He picked up his phone and started to dial. "Stop."

"What's wrong?"

"What is your lawyer's name and phone number?" It was given. I dialed and when the receptionist at the other end identified the correct law firm I asked to speak to the lawyer in question. "I am calling on behalf of one of your clients. He wishes you to be present when he is arrested, can you be here in fifteen minutes?" I gave directions and received an affirmative response.

"Now, you were about to name names and organizations. Let's start with the CIA. I had reason to believe that the Area Director, Marshall Griffin, has a considerable interest in this operation."

"That I can confirm."

"I know of the DA's involvement, what about the DEA?"

"I suppose that you have already reached the conclusion that an operation of this magnitude could not possibly have any hope of success without the involvement of the DEA at a high level."

"Yes, and I have reached the same conclusion about the Customs Service."

"The same applies there. You could probably add the Coast Guard and Border Patrols to your list but I haven't proof of that."

"What about the FBI?"

"Yes."

Not a bad list there. "Thank you."

"What happens next?"

"You are to become the latest victim of the Avenger." I took a pen from the desk and signed the printout before tying him to his chair and gagging him. "I suggest that when your lawyer gets here he should take this tape," I took the tape recorder from my pocket and placed it on the desk. "And use it to plea bargain your way into a lighter sentence." I then called the security office in the building telling them to come to the office and to bring the Governor with them.

I left him to his fate. It caused something of a sensation in the afternoon and evening media. The shock waves were being felt right through the halls of power.

In Maine Ruiz, Phoebe and Sendi sat and talked. It was all that they could do at the time, all of them felt a little helpless under the circumstances. Ruiz had spoken to Felix who told him that the funeral arrangements were well in hand and that all that they had to do was to turn up at the funeral parlor.

Sendi was again crying. "Why did this have to happen?"

"He was aware of what could happen to him when he undertook this task. What you have to think about is that what he has done is bigger than all of us put together. What he has done has taken a lot more guts and determination than I have ever shown in my lifetime on the force."

"I know that what he's done was important, but why did he have to do it? Wasn't there someone else that could have done it?"

"No. Officially we had our hands tied. It took someone working outside the legal system to achieve what he has achieved."

"I know that. But all of that won't bring him back to me. You don't realize how much I have lost here?"

"I think we do." Phoebe was speaking quietly, seated beside Sendi and with her arms around her. "We have found ourselves in similar situations, not where we have lost a partner but where the potential was there to lose a partner. We know what you are going through. That doesn't make it any easier for you to handle, but it does make it easier for us to understand the pain that you are suffering right now, and to be able to give you the support that you need to get you through this most difficult time."

"Thank you. I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for the pair of you. Actually I do know what I would have done; I would most likely have attempted, hopefully successfully, to commit suicide. I don't know how I'll be able to live without him. I have never loved anyone as much as I've loved Jason."

"We know that, we only had to see the two of you together to see how much you loved each other. Your lives together would have been as perfect as ours is."

"I know that. You guys are an inspiration to me; you have so much strength for each other that you can overcome any situation."

"Almost any. I don't know what I would do if I lost Phoebe, probably the same as you."

"What are we going to do tomorrow?"

"We'll drive into New York early in the morning and go straight to the funeral. There can be no cremation or burial because there are no remains, so it is more ceremonial and symbolic than an actual funeral. I think that there will be an urn to signify the purpose of the ceremony and we are going to bring the urn back here, go down to the beach and scatter his, for want of a better term, ashes on the sea. He would have liked that."

"That's beautiful. I should be the one to do it."

"If you don't mind, I thought that we could each take part. There will be just the three of us here. It will just be between the three of us, no-one else within miles."

"I don't mind, in fact I think that Jason will approve. Thank you both for all of your support."

"It is what we came here for; it wasn't just to break the news to you although we wanted to do that before anyone else could. The main reason that we came was to support you, you are Jason's friend, and his lover, and his life, and we are privileged just to be part of that life."

"You said 'you are' as if he's still alive, do you think that it could be possible that he is?"

"No."

Ruiz told them stories about how I had first approached the precinct to seek permission to get background for my work. It had been granted and the patrols had made sure that I had been taken out on the messiest job, the rapes and brutal murders, so that they could witness me throwing up at the sight of the victims.

I had won their admiration by the way that I had persisted with my research and they had eventually begun to respect me. I wasn't one of those authors who sensationalized situations, choosing instead to portray the stark reality of the crimes in a factual way until they had experienced difficulty in differentiating between fact and fiction.

* **

It was a wet and miserable morning in New York City; the cynics among you would say 'what's new?' It was a perfect day for a funeral, so why should the weather be bright when the mourners needed to be miserable.

The room at the funeral parlor was packed to the rafters with my friends and the media, mostly the latter. Sendi and Phoebe both looked superb in their black long coats over black stockings and shoes with black hats and veils. The flash guns and TV camera lights were their constant companions as they made their way from the parked limo, black, into the building. There was a constant clamor for comment from them and Ruiz as they muscled their way through the crowd. "What was your relationship with Jason Feldham?" Sendi was asked a thousand times in the space of the two minutes it took to walk fifty feet. "No comment." Was the standard response to these thousand questions.

Inside Felix bustled around like a bride's mother at a wedding trying to make sure that everything was going to plan. He rushed over to Sendi as the three of them eventually broke free of the scrimmage and walked through the door. "Thank God you made it. I was so worried that you wouldn't. Isn't it murder outside? I had hoped that the media would have stayed away from this. (This was a lie; both Felix and the studio had conspired to ensure that the media was well represented.) Now Sendi are you sure that you want to speak here?"

"Yes. I want the world to know about how much he has affected my life and what a wonderful person he was."

"And you Captain Ruiz?"

"I'm ready."

"Then let's get this over with." He scurried off to tell the funeral director that the time had come to begin.

I arrived fashionably late, reasoning that the less time I spent there the less likely that I would be recognized. I mingled in the outskirts of the crowd outside the building. Even my best friend would not have recognized me, I had dyed my hair and promising beard red before cutting my hair short, leaving a stubble a quarter of an inch long all over my head.

I wore a long dark coat with the collar pulled up around my ears and my black hat, trousers and shoes completed the picture of a man in mourning. The funeral parlor had set up a public address system outside so that those like me could hear the service. I was moved by what I heard; I never thought I was that important.

Soft funereal music swelled up announcing that the service was to commence.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today, in this place, to pay our last respects to a great man. Jason Feldham was more than an author, he was a man who embodied the qualities that we all admire, and to which we aspire. I am going to call upon Mr. Felix Weisman, his agent to say a few words. Mr. Weisman."

Felix hesitated, looking at the crowded room. "Jason was to me the man I should have been, the son I didn't have, the brother I would have loved more than life itself, and the friend I would have liked to have been. It could be said that the world deserves more Jason's and if we could have more of them it would be a better place. We often spoke of the afterlife and the spiritual reward that awaited us when we left this world. Jason was convinced that he would never be able to go to meet his maker with pride because, in his eyes he had not achieved his full potential as a writer, or as a man. I wish that I could go to meet my maker and boast half of his accomplishments."

"As a writer he had few peers. He researched his books with minute attention to detail and wrote them with utmost realism. Not for him the blazing guns of modern police literature. His world was one where the spirit that we all have in us emerged to overcome the worst that this world could throw at us. It was one in which the despair that we could all succumb to if we allowed ourselves to, was a springboard from which we could achieve our goals."

"His life was not one of wealth and privilege. He was from a middle class family. His parents were doctors who believed that medicine was for all and not just those who could afford it. His parents died before their time and were not around to see their son use the character attributes that they instilled in him from a child, achieve his fame."

"He has suffered in his life. It wasn't all that long ago that his wife of three years, Melissa, died so tragically and I for one had thought that he would have been devastated by this. He was at first, but this devastation did more to strengthen his character than it did to drag him down. His work didn't stop in fact he attacked it with renewed zeal. I just wish that I could be half the man that he was."

"I consider myself fortunate that I have known Jason Feldham, and consider myself fortunate that he was my friend. What I consider to be most important in my life is that he considered me to be his friend. This was a privilege that I didn't deserve, and one that I will treasure to the end. Jason, if you can hear me, Thank you."

Outside I was feeling humble. More was to come.

"Jason Feldham was an author who considered reality to be more important than sensationalism and integrity to be the most important attribute that a man could have. In his quest for these he spent a great deal of time at the 5th precinct. Captain Ruiz is the officer with whom he was most closely associated. Captain Ruiz."

Ruiz walked to the podium. "What can I say that hasn't already been said? I have known Jason Feldham for some time and initially I thought that he was some kind of geek who was trying to find out what the other half did with itself. It was only after I had known him for some time that I realized that, in this man was the idealism that the world had almost succeeded in driving from my life."

"In this world of crime that I inhabit there are few truly meaningful things that remain and I am fortunate that I have those, or at least I had until recently when he was so cruelly and needlessly taken from me. No, that is being very selfish; he was taken from us, all of us. We are all poorer for this loss. He is, and I will talk as if he is still with us because I feel that his presence will stay with me forever, one of the most caring people that I have ever met. We, that is those of us that he associated with in the force, were skeptical at first so we made sure that he saw the lowest common denominator of life. We expected that he would put up with it for a short time and then find an excuse not to come back. Not only did this not work, but in reading the books that he wrote as a result of his research with us, we realized that not only did he have an acute understanding of life as we knew it, but that he had a way of making us realize that, what we had previously considered to be the flotsam and jetsam of humanity actually had a life and a dignity."

"Jason came to me recently with a problem. He had found out that he had become involved, without his knowledge, in something that he considered so evil that he sought my advice as to how to resolve the matter. We discussed it for some time and I tried to persuade him to leave it to the authorities. When the authorities couldn't or wouldn't act on the information, he took it on himself to get so much information that it would force the authorities to act. He didn't have to do it, and he was aware of the dangers in his actions, but he persevered. But before he began he made sure that those who were important to him were removed from the scene and to a safe place."

"He has known Sendi Soren for some time and has recently revealed to me that he and she have fallen in love. This has happened since his wife died, because it was totally out of character for him to betray his wife while she was alive. Sendi at first refused to leave him here, because she wanted to be with him no matter how dangerous the situation, but we were able to persuade her to leave and go to a place that they knew to be safe. My wife and I have spent the last few days with Sendi and we have come to realize just how much the love that they have for each other meant. Phoebe and I have also realized that we can only aspire to such a pure and driving love. We will, in memory of Jason continue in that aspiration."

"On our way into town we couldn't help notice the newspaper banners about someone called the Avenger. I can only assume that someone has been inspired by the work that Jason did and has decided to carry on where he left off. Go the Avenger. And Commissioner, if you don't like those sentiments, I resign."

Sendi moved to the podium. "I will try to get through this without collapsing in tears. I don't know if I will succeed, and I'm sure that I won't, so please bear with me."

"I have known Jason as a friend for some time. I met him in College and we almost became more than friends. We lost track of each other when he graduated and it wasn't until recently that we met again when we were thrown together by the Hollywood studio publicity mill. I have been around that particular scene for some time and have had some pretty horrendous experiences when these things go wrong."

"You can imagine my surprise when I was confronted with a man who thought so much of his wife that he didn't want to jeopardize his marriage by going to bed with me. At first I was angry and disappointed by this because I liked him, but then I was glad because, here was a man who I could go out with, and who I could spend the night with and know that we would do nothing more than talk, and support each other. I had some pretty serious problems back then and Jason helped me through them."

"Imagine how flattered I felt when, after his wife died he came to me for support. Even in his grief he was a tower of strength, and much as I would have liked to have been able to have done more for him at the time, I knew that this was to be neither the time nor the place for such things."

"In time we became even closer and have become lovers. We had planned to marry as soon as this mess was over, but that isn't to be . . . that isn't to be. I'm sorry." She paused to regain her composure. After a couple of minutes, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she started again. "It would have given me a great sense of satisfaction to have announced at this service that I was carrying his child, and that child would become a living reminder of my love for him, but that also isn't to be."

"What I will take with me on the rest of my journey through this life, is the knowledge that I have been privileged to have loved an amazing man, and had that love returned, totally, unconditionally. I feel sorry for those of you who have not been so touched by this man. Jason, my Darling, my eternal love, I will love you until the day that I can join you in Heaven. But for now my love, good-bye."

The representatives of the media were scribbling notes like mad and the enclosed atmosphere of the funeral parlor had become white from the lights of flash guns and television lighting. Here was something to write about. The tabloid headings were being written in the minds of the Journalists.

"Actress announces love for slain author."

"Actress' distress at not carrying author's love child."

"Actress to star in slain lover's films."

"Studio announces purchase of movie rights to all of slain author's work. Lover to star."

"Ghost of slain author to guide lover in movies."

I was not the only one moved by Sendi's words. People all around me stood silently in contemplation. I had the feeling that they had come expecting to hear the usual eulogies about how sad everyone was that I had died, they didn't expect the speakers to emphasize how they had been uplifted by having known me. I only hoped that when I did eventually go they would say the same things a second time.

I walked away from the funeral parlor deep in thought.

18

I had one final duty to perform. Life around the Costanzo Empire was not one of pleasant contemplation. Guido had the air of a person who was about to see the demise of the empire that he had worked so hard to build.

"What do I pay you imbeciles for? You come to me and tell me that everything that we have worked for over the years is falling down around me and that there is nothing you can do about it!" His voice went up several notches, "Get out there and find that bastard Ruiz. I want to hear from you that he and that slut of a wife of his is dead! Some of you were at that funeral and you come here and tell me that Ruiz was there. Now tell me why you didn't also tell me that he was dead?"

"But boss, it was a funeral." One of the men whimpered.

"Funeral! I can't think of a better place for someone to die than at a funeral!. When a sworn enemy is visible he becomes invisible. What could be simpler than that? Now get out there and find him before he disappears again."

He had sent men out and about to try to stem the tide of evidence that was building against him but these men were always a step or two too late. Those closest to him were moving further and further away from him, even his mistress who had pledged eternal loyalty was missing.