The Accidental Pallbearer Read Online Free PDF Page A

Utica as The Runner, who twice daily – at mid-morning and again in mid-afternoon – cruises Utica’s neighborhoods, rich and poor and in between, in jogs estimated to be each an hour long, though no one could say for sure, because who could have cared enough to follow and time him? Seven days a week and yet he’s no rail-like specimen of those who train for marathons. The Runner is stocky, average height, African-American, late forties (a Caucasian’s clueless guess). Speculation had it that he was a psychological casualty from Gulf War I.
    The observant Uticans gossip, Do you know him? No. Do you know his name? No. Do you know anyone who knows him? No. Where does he live? No idea. The Runner was more gossiped about than Silvio Conte.
Hut!
Eliot, who was home more often than not during working hours, has never heard or seen him on Mary Street. Why now at thishour?
Hut!
The Runner has been spotted twelve months a year through withering heat and knifing cold, over snow and ice, but in this monsoon?
Hut! Hut! HutHut!
as he moves through the pool of light beneath the street lamp opposite Conte’s house and while passing turns to look at the backlit hulk in the window as he, The Runner, raises both arms high in a grand gesture of greeting to the man in the window – “
Good mawnin’!
” Conte is hailed! He feels an almost irresistible impulse to bolt out there in slippers and robe and join The Runner – chanting with him through Utica’s rain-slick nighttime streets, chanting shoulder to shoulder with a mystery.
    Returns to his desk, sits, then rises immediately, ignoring the flashing light in order to consult each of his city directories and phone books, they go back twenty years, the year of his Utica return. Jed Kinter. Phone number, address. Rents the second floor apartment of the house adjacent to Castellano’s Artistic Flowers with Elizabeth Kinter and their child, Mary Louise. Tom Castellano is proprietor of the shop and also owner of the house where the three Kinters live and where Castellano occupies the first floor. Three different addresses: the current for three years, the earliest fifteen years back. No record of a Jed Kinter in the oldest phone books and directories. Until three years ago, Kinter lived alone.
    Conte dials the number at 2:35 A.M. After several rings, the answering machine picks up. Conte hangs up. Calls again at 2:40, several rings, hangs up. On his third call at 2:45 an angry male answers, cursing, only to hear a familiar, soft voice say: “I know who you are. I know where you live. Keep your son Mary Louise safe and have a nice day.”
    To the kitchen, a second cup of espresso, anisette again, but in a heavier dose, then back to the desk, hits play button and listens, statue-like. Saves the message, opens his laptop and finds the
Los Angeles Times
, takes notes, then the
Santa Ana Register
for the ugly version. No hoax. Listens to the message again, takes notes. Walks to the window facing the street, this back-lit hulk now weeping and shuddering for the first time in thirty years – not since he’d wept, also alone, as he drove away from his babies and wife for good.
    Conte believes his ex to be innocent of these crimes. He couldn’t say why. The name Ralph Norwald – out of the past from his UCLA days, he and Nancy newly married, but recalls nothing more than that. This Norwald sounded a bit mental. On the other hand, he thinks, that’s what talking to an answering machine might do to a normal person. Doesn’t really know if they can subpoena him for character testimony. If they can, he’ll fight it.
    Pacing, tries to retrieve the image of Catherine Cruz. Hopeless. He can only weep. Cannot distract himself. 3:50. Will not attend the funeral for Emily and Rosalind. Crawls into bed, not bothering to remove slippers and robe. Broods until 5:35 on himself, the person he least wants to think about, or be with.
    Four hours later, Eliot Conte is pulled up, slowly this time, from