“We can finishBroad City.”
Larkin shook his head again.
“That new Indian place on Eighty-Ninth finally opened. Did you want try it?”
“Okay.”
“Seven thirty, then?”
“Yes.”
“Have a good afternoon.” Noah disconnected.
Larkin dropped his phone in his lap. He wiped his cheeks for a second time that day, picked up one of the Xanax, and dry swallowed it. A moment later, he swallowed a second.
People don’t want to know.
A search on his phone of the New York Public Library mobile site, with the keywords “death” and “mask,” had unearthed a book on the third page of results calledFunerary Rituals: Faces From The Other Side, A Brief Account of Effigies and Death Masks. The title was available for check-out at the Main Branch on Fifth Avenue, so Larkin submitted his personal patron details, and when the Xanax made it so he could no longer feel his heart jackhammering in his throat, he drove into Midtown to pick up the research book.
Upon returning to the precinct, Larkin sat down at his clean and orderly desk, took a moment to mentally block out conversations, phones ringing, and doors slamming, which was admittedly easier when riding a Xanax high, and then began to read.
The death mask, as we understand its importance today—tangible proof of rare and true greatness achievable by humanity, and that by surrounding ourselves with their likeness, we are reminded to strive for answers to the unknowns just as they once did—was not seen as valuable in and of itself, but as a means to an end: that being the effigies of royalty.
“Who the fuck moved the Hello Phone?” Byron Ulmer shouted from across the bullpen at 1:45 p.m. “I got a CI more skittish than a newborn colt calling in five fucking minutes!”
Throughout the Renaissance period, France’s and England’s utilization of death masks was that of a tool. Court painters applied the details of the recently deceased to a wax or wooden likeness of the king, but as he was known inlife, thusly confirming our previous account of being nothing but an instrument. The serenity of death was avoided at all costs in the full-bodied effigies—
“Grim.”
—but the death mask would eventually become treasured for what it was: realism artwork obsessive of the individual. The death mask would become the symbol of all that embodied the man. His face undying.
“Grim!”
Larkin put his finger on the sentence and raised his gaze to see Ulmer, the lox-stealing detective who looked more like a linebacker in a suit, moving up beside Porter’s empty chair and glaring down at him. He had a dark complexion, shaved head, goatee, and none of the patience seen in the squad’s veteran detectives. Ulmer was newly transferred and had been hard-pressed to become the face of Cold Cases—that was, until he’d come to realize that Larkin stood in his way of that career goal.
“Do you have the Hello Phone?” Ulmer demanded.
“Does it look like I have the Hello Phone,” Larkin answered in a subdued tone.
“What it looks like,” Ulmer began, puffing out his chest, “is that you went to a Scholastic fucking Book Fair and forgot to pick yourself up a Lisa Frank pencil on the way out.”
Larkin placed a bookmark on the page, calmly shut the library book, sifted through the cup of pens on his desk, then removed a pink pencil with hologram leopard prints stamped all over it. He tapped it absently against the desktop while staring up at Ulmer. “That’s because I already have one.”
“What the fuck. Those are for little girls.”
“I don’t believe there’s a particular age or gender demographic when it comes to a pencil.”
“It’sLisa Frank,” Ulmer stressed, like maybe if he said it a few more times, he’d make his point understood.
“Yes. My husband is a schoolteacher and children like bright colors.”
Porter was returning to his desk with a mug of coffee in the midst of the back-and-forth. He took a seat, the chair groaning under his weight, before saying, “We can hear your pissing all the way to the breakroom, Ulmer.”
“I need the fucking Hello Phone,” Ulmer snapped, glancing sideways at Porter. “And Grim is trying to lecture me on the fucking societal consequences of a grown man using a kitty-cat-themed pencil or whatever the fuck he’s on about.”
“They’re leopard prints,” Larkin corrected, raising the pencil up for Ulmer to see. “And I said there wasnoassociated age or demographic for pencil utilization. At most, we’re obligated to transition to blue or black ink pens due to the permanency and legality of adult careers, but otherwise, society hasn’t frowned upon me using my gay pencil—I believe that’s what you’ve been itching to say.”
Porter had the rim of his mug to his lips before he started laughing. A few drops of coffee splashed his pant leg.
