after the cars have cleared out."
"Are you going to stay?"
"Yes. It'll give me a chance to talk to Spiro."
"I'm going to leave with the rest of the warm bodies. I'll be in the area if you need me."
I tilted my face to the sun and let my mind float through the short prayer. When the temperature dropped below fifty Stiva didn't waste time at graveside. No widow in the burg ever wore sensible shoes to a funeral, and it was the funeral director's responsibility to keep old feet warm. The entire service took less than ten minutes, not even enough time to turn Mrs. Mayer's nose red. I watched the old folks beating their retreat over the blighted grass and hard ground. In a half-hour they'd all be at the Mayer house, eating pencil points and drinking highballs. And by one o'clock Mrs. Mayer would be alone, wondering what she was going to do rattling around in the family house all by herself for the rest of her life.
Car doors slammed closed and engines revved. The cars drove away.
Spiro stood hands on hips, a study of the long-suffering undertaker. "Well?" he said to me.
I pulled the bag out of my pocketbook and handed it over.
Two cemetery employees stood on either side of the casket. Spiro gave the baggie to one of them with instructions to open the casket and lay the bag inside.
Neither man blinked an eye. I guess when you make a living dropping lead-lined boxes into the ground you aren't necessarily the inquisitive type.
"So," Spiro said, turning to me. "How'd you get the finger?"
I gave him the rundown on Kenny in the shoe department and how I found the finger when I got home.
"You see," Spiro said, "this is the difference between Kenny and me. Kenny always has to grandstand. Likes to set things up and then see how they play. Everything's a game to Kenny. When we were kids, I'd step on a bug and squash it dead, and Kenny'd stick it with a pin to see how long it'd take the bug to die. Guess Kenny likes to see things squirm, and I like to get the job done. If it was me I'd have gotten you in a dark, empty parking lot, and I'd have shoved the finger up your butt."
I felt my head go light.
"Just talking theoretically, of course," Spiro said. "I wouldn't ever do that to you on account of you're such a fox. Not unless you wanted me to."
"I have to go now."
"Maybe we could see each other later. Like for dinner or something. Just because you're a pain in the ass, and I'm a slime sucker, doesn't mean we can't get together."
"I'd rather stick a needle in my eye."
"You'll come around," Spiro said. "I got what you want."
I was afraid to ask. "Apparently you've got what Kenny wants, too."
"Kenny's a jerk."
"He used to be your friend."
"Things happen."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Like nothing."
"I got the impression Kenny thought we were partners in some sort of plot against him."
"Kenny's nuts. Next time you see him you should shoot him. You can do that, can't you? You got a gun?"
"I really do have to go."
"Later," Spiro said, making a gun with his hand and pulling the trigger.
I practically ran back to the Buick. I slid behind the wheel, locked the door, and called Morelli.
"Maybe you're right about my going into cosmetology."
"You'd love it," Morelli said. "You'd get to draw eyebrows on a bunch of old babes."
"Spiro wouldn't tell me anything. At least not anything I wanted to hear."
"I picked up something interesting on the radio while I was waiting for you. There was a fire on Low Street last night. It was in one of the buildings belonging to the old pipe factory. Clearly arson. The pipe factory's been boarded up for years, but it seems someone was using the building to store caskets."
"Are you telling me someone torched my caskets?"
"Did Spiro put any contingencies on casket condition, or do you get paid dead or alive?"
"I'll meet you over there."
The pipe factory was on a mean piece of land caught between Low Street and the train tracks. It had been shut down in the seventies and left to decay. On either side were flat fields of no value. Beyond the fields were surviving industries: an auto graveyard, a plumbing supply house, Jackson Moving and Storage.
The gate leading to the pipe factory lot was rusted open, the blacktop cracked and pocked, littered with glass and weathered