What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom on the ocean?
A good start.
****
The funeral was beautiful, and almost everyone was smiling.
The dead man's employers were smiling. They would never have to rely again on Mick Phelan's courtroom savvy, his encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago city politics, his ability to negotiate the twisted and labyrinthine world where law, corruption, and crime all met. They would regret his loss, but there were dozens of mob lawyers in Chicago, and Mick had been an unsavory sort even for them.
Plus, they wouldn't have to pay the bastard's bills anymore.
The dead man's enemies were smiling. They wouldn't have to watch, grim-faced and disgusted, as he twisted and abused the law for his own ends, and those of his clients; one more tool to amass obscene wealth and to keep murderers, extortionists, kidnappers, and thieves out of jail. A special envoy from the D.A.'s office was there. Just to make sure, it was said, that the fucking prick was actually dead.
The dead man's co-workers were smiling. They filed by the casket, one at a time, and if any of them shed a tear over the man who made their working days a misery and their holidays a hell, no one noticed.
The dead man's relatives were smiling, the ones who bothered to come. The ones who were sober enough to drive to the church. The ones who could stomach the charade. The ones who hadn't been broken by him.
Like Tom's father.
Tom Phelan sat in the pew beside his mother, his face carved from stone, as he remembered his gentle, decent father, who had been driven to drink, drugs, and death by the monster who now lay in a rosewood casket in a cathedral.
All Tom had left of Doug Phelan were photographs and memories.
He gripped his mother's hand hard as the bishop launched into a litany of Mick Phelan's imaginary virtues. His lips bent in a humorless smile as he wondered exactly how much money the sanctimonious bastard had been paid to say the funeral mass.
Why don't his vestments catch fire?
He wondered bitterly.
Why doesn't the cross itself burn rather than witness such an obscenity?
Beside him, a tear escaped Kathleen Morris Phelan's eye and hung, jewel-like, on her cheek below her black veil, and Tom knew she was thinking of his father, too.
Four years, Dad,
Tom thought.
If you could have just held on for four more years, you could be here with us.
But Doug Phelan, driven beyond the breaking point by his tyrannical father, had committed suicide with a bottle of pills in his office late one night, no longer able to endure the abuse heaped on him by his own kin, and unable, due to Mick Phelan's powerful connections, to break away and find work of his own.
Kathleen had finally done what Doug had been unable to do, removing herself entirely from Chicago and relocating to Iowa, where she found work as a librarian. Tom, then in his senior year at Northwestern, had taken the devil's bargain and his grandfather's money, and had entered law school the following year.
He grinned now in honest happiness.
If you knew what I intend to do with my degree you'd be screaming in hell, you old bastard.
Actually, I hope you're screaming anyway.
He realized that he had daydreamed through the end of the homily and the final hymn, and that the pallbearers were filing forward. He walked up to join them. He took his place at the middle of the now-closed casket, opposite his cousin, Scott, the smell of cheap whiskey around him like a cloud.
"OK, boys," whispered his only living uncle, Mark. "Let's get the old sonuvabitch to the cemetery and plant him deep. Otherwise he might decide to come back."
Tom shuddered. As one, the men lifted the casket and walked it down the aisle. He kept his eyes forward, but as they passed out of the nave and towards the vestibule, he saw her for the first time, sitting in the last pew.
She was dressed all in black, as most of the women at the service were. The dress, while severe in cut and shape, clung so closely to her finely-sculpted curves that it might as well have been painted on her body. Her hair was black, as dark as tar, and in fell like a waving river over her milk-pale shoulders to the middle of her back.
But it was her eyes that caught and held Tom's. Midnight blue, they watched him and the casket he held with a gaze that mingled hope and despair.
Tom shivered and wrenched his eyes away from her. Her eyes reminded him of drug addicts he had seen on the streets of Chicago. Hating their lives, fearing even more the idea of living without their dependency.
"Tom!" Mark hissed. "Pay attention, dammit!"
Tom started. Somehow his walk had angled toward the mysterious woman, and he had pulled the rest of the bearers off line. He quickly snapped his eyes forward and adjusted his stride, putting the casket back on track.
At the base of the steps the hearse waited, rear door open. Tom helped slide the coffin into it, then stepped aside. Mark closed the door firmly, and they all shook hands, already beginning to sweat in the unseasonable May heat. Around them, people filed out of the church and scattered to their cars.
One chapter ends, another begins,
Tom thought sourly.
At least we don't have to do this bullshit again at the cemetery.
The family had flatly refused to have another ceremony at the gravesite, and Mick Phelan would be interred with no one but gravediggers to keep him company.
He wandered over to his mother, who was accepting condolences from those who didn't know any better. As he approached, a fat man in an expensive suit was talking to her, his equally chubby wife at his side.
"...such a great loss to the legal community. And to your family, as well, I'm sure. May I offer my most sincere sympathies."
Tom's mother smiled stiffly, but he had caught the subtle lean backward, as if she was about to turn and run. He stepped forward quickly, his body firm against his mother's shoulder, subtly supporting her..
"Alderman Kroeger! What a surprise! I didn't know they let convicted criminals out of jail to attend funerals."
