At the funeral home the friend of the deceased was a big,
richly dressed man who looked like a professional wrestler.
He was wearing expensive clothing and a cashmere coat. He
had olive skin, black eyes and wavy black hair that he wore
in a long ponytail. He stood over the casket without saying
a word. He looked aloof. He looked dangerous. He hadn't
spoken to anyone since he entered the building.
Tony Danzetta stared down at John Hamilton's casket with an
expression like stone, although he was raging inside. It was
hard to look at the remains of a man he'd known and loved
since high school. His best friend was dead. Dead, because
of a woman.
Tony's friend, Frank Mariott, had phoned him at the home of
the man he was working for temporarily in Ja-cobsville,
Texas. Tony had planned to stay around for a little longer,
take a few weeks off from work before he went back to his
real job. But the news about John had sent him rushing home
to San Antonio.
Of the three of them, John had been the weak link. The other
two were always forced to save him from himself. He
fantasized about people and places that he considered were
part of his life. Often the people were shocked to learn
that he was telling his friends that he was on close terms
with them.
Tony and Frank thought that John was harmless. He just
wanted to be somebody. He was the son of people who worked
for a local clothing manufacturing company. When the company
moved outside the United States, they went to work at retail
stores. Neither of them finished high school, but John often
made up stories to tell classmates about his famous rich
parents who had a yacht and their own airplane. Tony and
Frank knew better, but they let him spin his yarns. They
understood him.
But now John was dead, and that… woman was responsible! He
could still see her face from the past, red with
embarrassment when she'd asked him about one of their
assignments at the adjunct college class they were both
taking in criminal justice. That had been six years ago. She
couldn't even talk to a man without stammering and shaking.
Millie Evans had mousy-brown hair and green eyes. She wore
glasses. She was thin and unremarkable. But Tony's adopted
foster mother, who had been an archivist at the local
library, was Millicent Evans's superior and she liked
Millie. She was always talking about her to Tony, pushing
her at him, right up until the day she died.
Tony couldn't have told his foster mother, but he knew too
much about the girl to be interested in her. John had become
fixated on her a couple of years ago and during one of
Tony's rare visits home, had told him about her alter ego.
In private, he said, Millie was hot.
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