The Subject Steve: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

he was still breathing. Somebody said that, later. I sat there with his bright enormous head in my lap.
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    "What words could even begin to capture the indomitable spirit of our beloved Cudahy?"
    I'd rented out a so-called intimately priced room in the basement of Ferguson's Funerary. Now I stood beside a wreathed easel festooned with snapshots slipped from a binder I'd found under Cudahy's bed. Shot-putters, mostly, a few light-damaged Latvian brides.
    "He was a huge man with a huge heart," I continued. "He had no coverage."
    I looked out to Fiona, my only fellow mourner, apart from Ferguson. Somebody else loomed up in the shadows behind her, a tight bloat of a man in aviator shades. He must have sneaked in while I'd been fussing with the easel. His shirt looked damp from the sink, his white-yellow hair tucked beneath a vintage derby. A great berry-colored stain fell down his cheek. Fiona's new beau? A far-flung colleague of Cudahy? Some wet brain weeping at the wrong bier? Ferguson had hinted he could hire grievers. Maybe this freak was on the house.
    "Welcome," I said. "Thank you for coming."
    The stranger gave a nod of grim salute and I resumed my address, but as I started talking I got the odd sense he was taunting me somehow. His eyebrows pogo'd up past his sunglass rims. He did some herky business with his elbows. Tremors, I figured, tried to ignore it, prattled on for a while about the birches and the beet fields and the moth cocoons. Most of it went dead in my mouth. This wasn't any kind of eulogy, more like a pitch, a campaign presentation. Sell the suits on how you mean to sell the legacy. Keep it punchy. Avoid the coy. I wished I had some graphics with me, visual backup, some fresh data, too. What was the mourning-Cudahy demo, anyway? His folks were dead and his family scattered. I sputtered onward into Cudahy minutiae-shoe size, culinary proclivities-groped for a grace note, a tag.
    "So long, Cud," I said.
    I signaled Ferguson, a tiny man with a sun-peeled nose. Ferguson made for the urn, a Florentine, he'd called it earlier, flourishing his line of them, but the stranger beat him to it, lifted the lid, peered in.
    "What the hell are you doing?" I said.
    "Not really what you'd call ashes. There's bone chunks in there."
    "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I said.
    "When, man?"
    "When what?"
    "When are you going to ask me to leave?"
    "Now," I said. "Leave."
    The stranger made a gentle scooping noise in his throat, prelude to a loogie.
    "Don't," I said.
    "Lovely service," he said. "Very moving."
    "You're in deep shit, son," said Ferguson. "I do cop funerals."
    "You don't scare me because you're so midgety," said the stranger. "Are you aware of how midgety you are?"
    "Please," said Fiona. "Please leave."
    The stranger regarded Fiona with not a little tenderness. He tipped his sunglasses down to maybe do something cunning with his eyes. The stain on his cheek had a glittery quality.
    "I'm Dietz."
    "Fiona," said my daughter.
    "Tell your father over there I have a message for him. The only cure is the disease."
    "All right," I said. "That's it. Get out of here. Go."
    "Relax," said Dietz.
    "I'll relax when I'm dead," I said.
    "That's original. Just remember what I said."
    "What did you say?"
    "Goddamn," said Dietz, and all his swagger seemed to drain from him at once.
    He smacked at his head with the heel of his palm.
    "You don't remember what you just said."
    "I told them I wasn't ready for the people world."
    "What are you talking about?" I said.
    "The fucking clusterfuck is what I'm fucking talking about."
    Dietz froze for a moment, then broke into a dead run out of the room. Ferguson locked the door behind him.
    "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "I thought he was a friend of the deceased."
    "It's okay."
    "If I'd known he was going to pull a stunt like that I would have booked him a seat on the pain train."
    "You?"
    "I used to be a jockey," said Ferguson. "It's all just in the knees. You should see what I can do to a