Alfred Hitchcock Might Have Liked This

“Are you — next of kin?” the middle-aged black man said quietly to the new arrival, holding out his large-knuckled right hand in welcome. Other than Mr. Padowski, the proprietor of the funeral home (who appeared as a totem pole ten yards away), the two men stood alone in a drab, tired-looking parlor before the corpse of J. Peter Dowdell.

He looked relieved to finally be able to talk to someone, anyone, other than Mr. Padowski. The new arrival, athletic-looking for his advanced age was impeccably dressed; a white man with a shock of neatly parted thick gray hair that, when coupled with his aristocratic Roman nose, made him distinguished looking. The old man reflected a moment before extending his hand. “No, just — a friend,” the new arrival said. “Bill Sikes’s the name. What’s yours? Where do you know Pepper from?”

“Pepper?” the first man replied, blinking. “I never heard Old Pete called Pepper before. I’m Augustus Sander, director of the school district.”

Sikes lifted an eyebrow and drew back, suggesting to Sander that he recognized his name. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Sander” he replied. “Pepper was his nickname at college when he was a national champion skier. He also won three letters in football as a tight end.”

“What?” exclaimed the director. “I never knew that, and I’ve known Old Pete for almost 15 years.” Sander examined the new arrival more closely. The stranger wore an expensive-looking high point worsted wool suit tailored to perfection and he carried a black leather valise bearing the gold-embossed monogram: WGSIII. Sander noted the case leather matched his belt and shoes. Italian made, Sander thought; expensive. Sander looked up and saw two jet-black eyes examining him intently.

“Yale, class of ’53,” Sikes said. “We were roommates.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Sander exclaimed. “Didn’t know Pete went to college, yet alone — Yale.” Sander knew that Dowdell’s body was clothed in an ill-fitting suit of a poor man, undoubtedly one provided by Mr. Padowski. Sander thought: what intrigue is this? Yale? He had never even seen Pete in a suit before today.

Sikes asked: “You and Pepper knew each other from his work at Grover Cleveland High School, which is in your district, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right. But how would you know this?”

“I know one of your school board members,” Sikes replied, “Reverend Rhashan Pemble. He mentioned you to me.”

“Where do you know the Reverend Pemble from?”

“As a lawyer I’ve had occasion to work with him in his prison chaplaincy,” Sikes said, “and I’ve found him to be quite an engaging fellow, a person who can truly reach out to everyone.”

“He’s been on our school board for maybe 30 years now,” Sander said, “and I don’t know what we would do without him. He is an alumnus of Grover Cleveland High School,” he added proudly, “one of our most distinguished.”

“I know.”

“In fact,” Sander continued, “this very morning the Reverend called me and asked me to meet him here an hour before the scheduled visitation. I’m waiting for him now. He said he wanted to talk to me about something important, but didn’t tell me what. He also said he wanted me here before family, students and faculty arrived.” Sander asked: “Is there family, do you know?”

Sikes shook his head indicating no and then said something curious: “As might be coming, anyway.”

The room lapsed into a silence.

Presently Sikes spoke again: “Pepper kept to himself, did he?”

“I reckon so. Old Pete — Pepper — absolutely refused to talk about himself, and we gave up asking years ago.”

“Who are we?” Sikes inquired.

“Everyone at the high school of course and also my district office. Old Pete mowed Grover Cleveland’s lawn, raked its leaves and plowed its snow. He had incredible energy for a man his age. He did the yard trimming work by hand, not using power tools. Very few knew,” Sander continued, “that Old Pete did all of this without pay, and even used his own lawn mower and snowplow. He wanted it that way. He pretty much kept to himself and was a fixture on our grounds on hot summer afternoons, as common as a squirrel. An old man hunched over a rider seat mowing a huge athletic field, wearing a straw farmers hat and bib overalls. Why, even the neighborhood gangs finally left him alone.”

For the first time Sikes smiled; he shook his head in wonderment and laughed heartily. “Straw farmer’s hat? Pepper Dowdell in bib overalls? I never heard that one! Precious!”

“Yeah, old and dirty, but chiseled and tough as nails. And he even paid for the gas,” added Sander. “He would typically work three or four days a week, always ten to twelve hours a day and then be gone for the rest of the week. When he took vacations, and he did take ‘em, weeks at a time, professional lawn services showed up and did his work for him. The school district never got billed. This was damn curious, but when I hired on, and again that was 15 years ago, I was told not to ask. I reckon Old Pete let it be known early on he didn’t want it asked. And after years of this, why would any teacher or administrator want to ask and risk kicking a gift horse? Know what I mean? If he was rich, he sure didn’t show it. The truck he drove to haul around his yard equipment was really dilapidated.”

Bill Sikes nodded.

“The story I heard is that sometime after Old Pete started this — ” Sander paused to find the appropriate word, ” — volunteerism, years ago, he created a big flap with the union. They didn’t want him to do it as it would eliminate paying jobs.”

A flicker of a smile briefly crossed Sikes’s face and Sander noticed it. Alarmed, Sander castigated himself mentally. Why had he mentioned the union? Did Sikes have knowledge of what had taken place when he became district superintendent? Sanders shuddered: was Sikes involved with those goons who showed up and threatened his life? Looking at the old man and assessing his harmless manner, Sander doubted there was a connection. Still, this was a subject to be avoided.

“What happened next?” Sikes asked, straight-faced.

“Don’t know exactly,” Sander said, “But everything got resolved amicably,” he lied. “The school board ultimately reaffirmed its earlier decision that Old Pete saved it a lot of money and equally important, that he was a great grounds keeper and an even greater person. Grover Cleveland High School is one of four high schools in my district. It benefited from this unusual arrangement for 25 years. “And more importantly — “

“Yes?”

“Of the four schools, Grover Cleveland is today the elite one.”

“How could he do this as just a grounds keeper?” Sikes inquired.

“Grover Cleveland legend holds that after a night football game during Pete’s first year, he stayed on to pick up trash. A gang of punks beat him to within an inch of his life. The school was enraged, of course, but stuff like that happened all the time. It was what Pete did the following week that blew everyone away.”

“What’d he do?”

“He checked himself out of the hospital and marched into our Friday morning school assembly. His face was so bruised he was the blackest person in a gymnasium filled with black people. He took the microphone and asked if anyone would help him pick up the trash that night.”

“Wow.”

“Fifty kids and ten teachers stayed after the game and it was the beginning of a school pride that continues to this day. The city around us could decay and other schools could bury themselves in their own refuse, but not Grover Cleveland High School, no sir. Pete and his followers started planting flowers. They watered, trimmed, weeded, painted, and hell, even spruced-up some of the corridors and classrooms. Pete did all of this without ever making a speech or taking a dollar.”

“You got it back, Pepper!” Sikes blurted, looking at the corpse of his friend, an expression of joy on his face. “You did what you set out to do, dammit!”

“Got what back?” asked Sander. “What you talking about, man?”

“Something he told me he was going to do years ago,” Sikes replied. Tears of joy welled in the old man’s eyes as the two stood in silence before the board-like figure in the casket. Sander stared at Dowdell’s corpse and had a different reaction: You may have got back whatever you got back, he thought, but I’m the last man standing, you SOB.

Sander turned to Sikes: “Tell me what you know about Mr. Dowdell.”

“Not now,” Sikes replied, fighting to regain his composure. “I don’t think — ” Sikes’s voice choked and he sobbed again. “I would however — appreciate a few minutes of your time — afterwards.”

“Please tell me now,” Sander pleaded. “Old Pete is a complete mystery and I suspect that you have some answers. We are alone now, that is, until the Reverend arrives. Now is as good a time as any.”

Sikes bleated: “He was once my best friend. We grew up together.”

The room lapsed into an awkward silence. “So?” Sander observed, pressing. “That tells me nothing.”

Sikes looked Sander in the eyes. “Will you keep a confidence?” he asked.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Pepper had more than a midlife life crisis,” he said. “He did something really bad. He hurt a lot of people who trusted him and went to prison as a consequence. He used to be a highly successful broker who defrauded clients, including me.”

“Continue, please.”

“There was no reason for Pepper to have done what he did. He was from a wealthy and well known family, and he was the beneficiary of large trust funds. He had a beautiful wife and two young children, and every door of New York society was open to him. This was in the mid-seventies, following the go-go sixties.”

“Alcohol and drugs?”

“Yes,” Sikes nodded. “Women, too. He also loved publicity. There are photos of him and his svelte-looking wife in Life Magazine dancing to disco at Studio 54. Pepper wore golden chains and his wife wore next to nothing. The next week they would appear in the New York Times at a big charity gala, her made up and dressed to perfection, complimented by his black-tie, suntan, coifed hair and killer smile. They were pretty people trying to stay young, trying to run with a crowd maybe a dozen years younger. It was sad, when one thinks of it. “

Sander held up his hand, signaling to Sikes he intended to make an observation. “What you describe sounds very superficial, Mr. Sikes. As his friend, did you not see through this?” He added: “I would have.”

Sikes reflected a moment. “Maybe I was too close. At the beginning of this behavior I had become one of the family’s lawyers, and no, I did not see through it. Pepper seemed totally in control when he worked professionally. Neither I nor any of my friends, all his clients, suspected anything. He contacted us regularly, and he was very knowledgeable about the financial products that he promoted. He sold interests in real estate limited partnerships that generated big tax write-offs.

“A Ponzi scheme?” Sander asked.

“No. But the general partner was a crook who received large kickbacks from building contractors. He shared a portion of this money with his salesman, that being Pepper. Pepper got both commissions that were disclosed and money under the table.”

Sander digested these words and his face twitched; he remembered the time several years back when Old Pete showed up unannounced at a school board meeting and pointed out the fact that the district had greatly overpaid on a janitorial services contract. This happening was explained away as embarrassing human error but the old man, this conman, had attempted to implicate management!

Sikes embellished: “When it fell apart, none of the investors were wiped out. Their investments were just tax dodges, after all, and fortunately nobody had their entire portfolio with him, like what happened with Bernie Madoff. That is why Pepper got only a 15-year sentence.”

“When did you first sense something was wrong?”

Sikes reflected. “In the late-seventies, I, as did others, began to think or at least suspect that something might be amuck. The damage had already been done by that time, of course. As I said, I was one of his family’s lawyers. Pepper was the discretionary beneficiary of a number of large irrevocable trusts that were controlled by a team of lawyers and accountants. Pepper started making demands for more money from the trusts; demands that were viewed as unreasonable by the fiduciaries. When I learned of this, of course I got suspicious.”

“Do you think he defrauded his clients?” Sander asked needlessly, “in order to fund a drug habit?”

“In hindsight, absolutely. Not only his drug habit, but also the habits of the many trendy friends he and his wife had. The drug of choice then was cocaine and it was expensive. Pepper was, well, let me just say, a generous guy. This came out at the trial.”

“How did the scandal break?” Sander asked. “How’d Pepper get caught?”

“An IRS audit of the limited partnerships. The Feds spotted something irregular and gave immunity to some participants in the fraud in exchange for their testimony.” Sikes continued: “When Pepper got caught the scandal became fodder for the press. The coverage of his trial was widespread and humiliating for his family. His wife found out about a number of extra-marital affairs that he had had and she divorced him. Of course she blamed everything on him and did so in front of the kids.”

“Wow. I now know why you laughed at the mention of bib overalls.”

“In prison, Pepper was depressed as hell. Forced to be clean and sober, he received no visitors, phone calls or letters. He had disgraced his family and they in turn disowned him. He had stolen from his friends and did so after becoming an Eagle Scout, a football team captain, a Phi Beta Kappa and president of several social clubs and even a learned society. Worse, the friends that he defrauded were made to look like tax-cheats, people who knew or should have known better. Their names, my name, leaked out in the course of the legal proceedings into the public domain. We were compelled to pay the IRS deficiencies, penalties and interest. Our degradation was far more than financial, I assure you.”

“Should you have known, Mr. Sikes, that this was a sham?” Sander was polite and did not point out the fact that the old gentleman appeared to be very knowledgeable in the ways of the business world; Sander’s tone, however, was moralistic.

A curious expression crossed Sikes’s face. Was it an expression of regret? “Each investor was given an opinion letter from the partnership lawyer to the effect that the tax treatment was grounded in the law, but yes, in hindsight I was eager to push the limits of propriety.” Sikes additionally admitted: “We weren’t prosecuted criminally but, yes, the tax position was far too aggressive.” He then added, oddly: “I’m glad you asked that question, Mr. Sander.

“Why?”

“Because it has nagged at me for a long time. I guess I’m no saint.” Looking at the body of his deceased friend, Sikes added: “But Pepper here paid for his sins more than others. He really did.” Sikes held out his arms toward the coffin when he said this and stared intently at Sander.

Sander responded: “It’s not my place to cast the first stone, Mr. Sikes.”

“Funny thing,” said Sikes.

“What?”

“Pepper told me you would say that.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Gospel reference. John, chapter 8, verse 7. The woman caught in the act of adultery that was saved by Christ from a mob wanting to execute her. Pepper told me that you always liked to quote Bible verses, Mr. Sander, particularly this one, which points to us all being sinners of sorts.”

“Old Pete told you that about me?” Sander asked, startled. “What else — did he say about me?”

Sikes looked the district administrator directly in the eyes and smiled kindly. “Pepper and I had long conversations in the hospital before he died,” he said, “and he told me lots about a number of people that I might meet at his funeral, including students, teachers and, yes, you, Mr. Sander. I am here in two capacities, sir, one to mourn the loss of my friend and two, as a lawyer, to handle some business arrangements involving the high school, business that I am confident that you will like. You have no reason to be concerned over anything Pepper may have told me about you, I assure you, or any others.” Sikes added, quizzically: “In this new long-term financial relationship, there is no short-term problem that cannot be immediately resolved.”

At ease, Sander returned the smile. “The mystery deepens!” he quipped, laughing.

Sikes chuckled and replied: “Not for long, I assure you.” Sikes’s black eyes shimmered happily as if reflecting light from soft pools of liquid pearl. “What is about to happen is going to be — ” Sikes momentarily stopped speaking to choose his words carefully, ” — something very beneficial for the community as a whole.”

“You’re teasing me. Tell me the details, man!”

Sikes nodded friendly agreement and continued: “Please first tell me how Pepper related with the students at Grover Cleveland High School and let me tease you a little more. I’ll tell you about Pepper’s transformation in prison, an event facilitated by Reverend Pemble.”

At the mention of Pemble’s name, Sander began to see the big picture. Had it been Pemble 25 years ago who steered Old Pete to Grover Cleveland High School? If so, why had Pemble never made this known? “Ah, ha!” Sander thought: the district would never have allowed a convict to associate with its students. Not being an employee, Old Pete never had to submit to a background check. Is this what Premble called to talk about today?

“Pete got close to some our students,” Sander observed.

“What do you mean by, `got close to’?” Sikes asked.

“I don’t know exactly how to explain it,” Sander replied, a quizzical furrow forming on his forehead. “It was nothing improper or anything like that. It’s just that, well — “

“Well, what?”

“He sought out and associated with — the good kids.”

“Continue please.”

“He talked to them, and they talked to him, that’s all. He sought out the ones who were not necessarily the brightest. And after they graduated he kept in contact with them and even tracked the progress of their careers. Sander added: “There is a rumor that he even paid some college expenses.”

“A rumor?”

“No student has confirmed it to me.”

“What attributes did these students have in common?” Sikes asked.

“That’s a good question,” Sander replied. “It wasn’t necessarily popularity, although these students were well-regarded, most certainly by their teachers.”

“Respected?” Sikes asked. “Is that what they were?”

“Absolutely. They didn’t hang out, if you know what I mean. In fact they were the ones who — ” Sander’s brow furrowed as he thought how best to explain. ” — volunteered. They worked side-by-side with Old Pete on his various jobs.”

“And that’s how he got to know, them, correct? Close observation in a hands-on hard work environment?”

“Yes, it was day-to-day over long periods of time.”

Sikes nodded his head signifying agreement. “That’s how Pepper told me it happened.” He added: “In regard to Reverend Pemble, it’s a straight forward story. Pepper got religion while in prison under the tutelage of the Reverend.”

Sikes turned to business: “Within the hour, four nominated trustees of the Grover Cleveland High School Charitable Trust and Foundation will be arriving at the airport to attend the funeral of the trust grantor. They are all graduates of the high school and good young men and women. These were Pepper’s best helpers.”

“Trust grantor?” Sander asked. “What’s that?”

“The person who donated the money to set up the charitable trust,” Sikes replied. “In this case the late J. Peter Dowdell.”

“So his family didn’t totally disavow him?”

“Yes and no. A deal was struck. If Pepper atoned for what he did, he would be given a modest allowance to live on and the ability to do something good at the end of his life through a limited power of trust appointment to charity. But he remained out of the family.”

“How much money are you talking about?”

Sikes smiled, an odd smile, a cold smile. “Pepper said you would ask that question.”

Sander stared into what now appeared to be two of the most reptilian eyes he had ever seen and shivered at what Sikes said next. Sikes spoke slowly: “It’s imperative that the trustees not get swindled in their future dealings with the school district.”

The blood drained from Sander’s face and its brown color lightened. “What are you talking about?” Sander gasped, knowing full well what the old man was talking about.

Sikes glanced at his wristwatch: “I followed you here and need to do what I’m going to do before Reverend Pemble arrives.”

Horrified and dumbstruck, Augustus Sander dropped his jaw and froze like a deer in the headlights.

“My real name is Mickey Bernardo and I’m really a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, class of ’53. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Sander, Pepper may have atoned for his past life, but he didn’t make his peace with God. We knew each other in prison and as for myself I’ve never been much concerned about God.” He then added: “Normally I don’t talk with my subjects, but Pepper was a friend and he wanted me to clue you in. He told me that you would know why he engaged me. You are a thief, sir, and this is a most sure way to prevent you from submitting bogus billings to the future trustees.” As Sander gaped, the old man added: “Pepper was in fact a graduate of Yale.”

With no concern for Mr. Padowski, who was still at the other end of the room, the gray-haired man screamed: “You stole from children, you sanctimonious bastard!” He yanked a .38 snub-nose revolver from his valise, pointed it at Sander between his eyes and pulled the trigger.


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