“I want to go see him. Take care of things. I’ll go get him.”

“Already taken care of,” Froehmer said. “Not a good idea to go see him. Wait for the funeral. Come on back. If you need something, let me know. But come on back.” He was worried. I could hear it. I wanted to tell him not to worry about me, but I wasn’t sure myself. You never know how someone is going to react to the news. Besides, I wasn’t going to go back, not yet. I was going to see Frank. I didn’t care what Froehmer said about that.

Somebody had to go see him, to stand over him the way they do in the movies. I’d stood over my father, watched him die in the hospital and stood over him after they pronounced him dead. “I’m sorry for your loss,” the nurse said after she took the stethoscope from his chest and turned off the machines and wrote down an official time. “Sorry for your loss,” she said and left me alone with him. I stood and looked at my father and thought how young he was, but how much older he was than my mother. I’d stood and looked down at everyone I’d ever loved. And now I was looking at Frank. They had him under the name he’d used for the job, not his own but the one on the driver’s license and credit cards he had in his pocket. It was stupidly comforting; I could pretend it wasn’t him. For a little while anyway. As long as it wasn’t Frank I didn’t have to think about how none of it made sense.