Champion of the Obscure - Scene #3

Los Angeles - November 1964

         Sutton opened the door and the beam from the porch light fell on two men, a uniformed police officer and a man in a rumpled suit.  The latter spoke.

         "Mr. Sutton?"

         "Yes?" he replied, bewildered.  A policeman on the doorstep at one in the morning usually meant trouble.

         "I'm Arthur Johnson, LAPD."  He flashed Sutton his detective's badge, accompanied by a picture of himself smiling.  He wasn't smiling now.  "May we come in?"

         "Certainly."

         Sutton tightened the belt of his robe as the two men's footsteps rang on the tiled floor.

         Detective Johnson took off his hat.  "Do you mind if we sit down somewhere?"

         Sutton led them into the living room.  As he seated himself across from them, he saw the uniformed officer look around as if he'd never been in a mansion before.

         Sutton crossed his pyjamaed legs.  "May I ask what this is all about?"

         "Your wife," replied Johnson.  "I have some bad news.  Her car went off the edge of Tower Road."

         Sutton sat forward.  "Is she all right?"

         "She's dead, sir."

         Sutton couldn't breathe.  Had he heard correctly?

         "It looks like she was killed instantly."

         Did you hear that noise?  It was the sound of my heart dying.

         "Mr. Sutton, is there anyone you'd like me to call?  A friend?"


         The two policemen stayed with him until Irv, his agent, and Paul and Diana Marx, close friends of Sutton and his wife, arrived.  Sutton was unplugged from everything going on around him, floating amongst it all, like flotsam on a calm sea.  The cops tried to get him to take a coffee.  They were still going to need someone to confirm the body's identity, even though Irene's driver's licence had been found with her purse in the car.  Sutton held little hope that it wasn't her, that she'd lent her car to a friend.

         He wondered what it had felt like.  The images of the accident kept flashing in his head like a loop of film, a continuous performance never ceasing.  Irene had left him in a huff.  They'd fought over something trivial - they'd been fighting more and more of late.  What was it?  Oh yes, he'd stupidly mentioned he didn't like the way she'd smiled at Oskar Schmidt, her tennis instructor.  It had all escalated out of proportion.  The last time he saw her, not three hours ago, she was pulling on her coat and heading through the front hall to the door.  "You can go to hell!" she said.  Slam.  Those were her last words to him - "You can go to hell!"  Again the movie began.  He rubbed his temples, hoping it would go away, that it would get caught in the projector's gate, melting the images from his mind.  An imagination wasn't a blessing.  It was a curse.

         Soon faces slid before his eyes.  A disembodied voice.  Irv, pale, trying to talk to him.  The agent kept repeating himself as if talking to a child.

         "Ted, do you understand me?  Detective Johnson needs someone to go down to the morgue and identify the body.  Paul and Diana are going to do it."

         Diana and Paul slid into view, standing before him.  Tears filled her eyes, pity had transformed his.

         "I want to go," mumbled Sutton.

         "Ted, I wouldn't recommend it," said Irv's voice.

         Paul was speaking.  "Ted, it's the least we can do for you."

         Diana nodded in agreement.

         "I want to go," repeated Sutton.  "As soon as possible."

         Irv shook his head, frowning.  "All right.  I'll come with you.  Paul, you and Diana stick around here."


         It was four a.m. when Johnson took them into the morgue, but the crisp night did nothing to clear Sutton's head.  The movie continued going around and around.

         Drawers lined one side of the tiled room.  A wall of the dead.  The light was painfully bright and the smell of antiseptic pinched Sutton's sinuses.  Johnson's shoes echoed the way they had in Sutton's front hallway.  Sutton saw the detective throw Irv an imploring glance.

         "Ted," said Irv, "you know I can do this for you."

         "No," said Sutton firmly.  "I want to do it."

         Irv shrugged his shoulders and Johnson spoke to the white-coated attendant.  "Irene Sutton."

         The attendant consulted his chart and walked to drawer 14.  The name Irene Sutton had been scrawled on a little card and inserted in the holder on the door.

         The sound of the drawer sliding open rang around the room.  Sutton couldn't take his eyes away from the sheet.  The attendant slowly lifted the shroud and Irv grabbed Sutton's arm to steady him.

         There she was.  Her fair hair surrounded her head like an aura.  It was caked with dried blood.  In her lacerated face one eye had been sliced and didn't sit properly in its socket.  A huge gash in her throat gaped open, showing something white - cartilage?  Bone?  It looked like she had two mouths.  Whoever had cleaned her up had done a hasty job.  Faint trails of blood streaked her face, smeared by the cloth.

         "Mr. Sutton, is this Mrs. Sutton?" prompted Johnson.

         "Yes," croaked Sutton.  "Yes, it is."

         The shroud fell back across her face.


         Sutton and Irv returned to the house, where Diana comforted Sutton as best she could, tempting him with something to eat.  But he had no appetite.  Irv and Paul tried to answer the police questions.  Sutton admitted to the argument.  He had waited for Irene to come back.  After an hour or so he had gone to bed.  Yes, this had happened once or twice before.  She would storm out during a fight, but she always returned in the morning.  By dawn, Irv had tracked down a doctor who prescribed sedatives.

         Irv and Paul also handled the funeral arrangements.  During the void that led up to the funeral, Irene's sister and father flew in.  Her father kept a stiff upper-lip, but her sister remained inconsolable, blaming Sutton for everything.  Sutton was never left alone except when he tried to sleep.  He'd lie on the bed, never knowing whether Irene's death had been a genuine accident, if she'd been suicidal or one of a hundred other possibilities.  Then the film loop would begin once again.  Screeching tires, the broken barrier, over the cliff, Irene through the windshield.  Over the cliff, through the windshield.  Over the cliff, through the windshield.

         At the funeral, Irv and Paul hustled Sutton into the church, past the crowd of gawkers.  Sutton remembered it as a quiet ceremony, but quite touching.  At the graveside, he felt as if he were watching the proceedings from outside his body.  It all seemed unreal somehow, like a performance of marionettes.  This was the first time Sutton had had to face the death of someone he loved.  When his father had died, it had only been a relief to him.  Now it was a hell.

         Once the funeral was over, Sutton disappeared into the bottom of a bottle, rendering 1965 a complete blank.