The Seal of Confession (part three)
Boston Outsider / Humor
I took a deep breath and did my best to calm down. Zack gave me the name of the hospital where Richie had been taken. I said goodbye to Zack, called the hospital, and spoke to a friend who worked in Admitting. She confirmed that a Richard G. Cattivo had been dead on arrival earlier in the evening, and I felt like crap thinking that my last conversation with the poor sad bastard had consisted of wisecracks.
A couple of days later, Richie’s next of kin, his sister Marie, came to the Bunker to collect a few items that were in his desk. Ted, our shift manager, led her over to my work station and introduced us. She was a pretty woman of about fifty, with pleasant blue eyes. Ted went back to his office and let us have a few words alone.
“According to the autopsy, Richie must have died of a massive heart attack that morning,” Marie said. “That thing with the snake was post mortem. Mildred is off the hook.” She smiled wryly, sniffing back tears. It looked as if there was still a joker left in the Cattivo family.
“He talked about you a lot,” she continued. “I found a metal box full of documents at his apartment, and there was a note saying that he wanted you to have something of his if anything ever happened to him.” She reached into her purse and took out a key attached to a plastic tag with the name and address of a storage facility on it. On the key itself was a number that I assumed was the number of a locker. She handed me the key, and then she asked if I would speak at a memorial service that was to be held for Richie the following Saturday.
“Sure, I’ll say a few words” I answered, thinking that Richie had probably alienated all his old friends during his race to oblivion. “And I’ll give this locker key back to you after I see what he left me.”
“Thank you,” she said, embracing me and softly brushing my cheek with a chaste kiss. “I gave all the information about the memorial service to your boss, Ted.”
After Marie left, I got to thinking about the storage locker. Had Richie hidden some loot to keep it out of the divorce settlement? What was in there? Gold ingots? Paintings from the Gardner Museum heist? I decided to go to the place right after work.
I found the storage facility easily enough. Richie's locker was good-sized, and from the outside it looked big enough to hold a couple of rooms of furniture. I unlocked the door and went inside.
There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place. Lining the walls were hundreds of piles of pornographic magazines. My curiosity outweighed my revulsion, and I inspected the goods. The collection was sorted by category. It did not include kiddie porn or bestiality, and it was all heterosexual in nature, but there was plenty of variety. There were publications featuring women with big augmented breasts, big natural breasts, and big miscellaneous breasts. There were pictures of midget women doing naughty things with humongous men. There were ethnocentric magazines such as Belgian Bazooms and Eskimo Ecstasy. There were several issues of a leather-fetish quarterly called Nazi Knockers.
I was left in a quandary. If Marie knew what was in here, and if there really was a note from Richie bequeathing all these riches to me, then Marie must have thought that Richie had passed the torch of lechery on to me after death. If Marie didn’t know what was in here, and if I returned the key without removing the locker’s contents, then her eventual discovery of the all the low-rent erotica might sully the memory of a departed brother. If there was no note from Richie, and if Marie was just too embarrassed or lazy to clean out the place, then she was really a piece of work. All Richie had ever told me was that he had one sibling, an unmarried sister named Marie, so I didn’t know what to think.
(to be continued)
