The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

  After they lowered the coffin into the ground, Barry and Beau and Stan and David walked together slowly. Stan noticed the Greenfields and Allyn Grant getting into a limousine ahead, and he knew that David noticed too but turned away. Stan looked back at the crowd.

  "I heard my father say once that when you get into your fifties you should start getting used to the idea of losing your friends to death one by one. But this is too soon for us," he said. "Too goddamned soon."

  "Especially for Mickey," Beau said. "He was just starting to make a life for himself."

  "I have to get going," David said. "Is that our driver?"

  "I'll go check," Beau said and walked away in the direction of the cars.

  "Listen, you guys," Barry said. "Why don't you come out to the beach on Sunday to my place and we'll have dinner?"

  "Sure," Stan said.

  "Yeah," David said. "Okay."

  Beau was waiting to tell them that she'd found their driver. The three of them walked together to join her.

  Nadine Lautner elbowed her husband, Barney, the columnist, when she saw Beau Daniels getting into the limousine.

  "Barney," she hissed to her husband. "That's some fancy group. That's Beau Daniels. Write it down. And Barry Golden. And Stan Rose from Stan Rose Presents . . . and that other guy with the red hair. Goddamn it. He's someone big, too."

  One of the secretaries from Hemisphere heard Barney Lautner's wife, and nudged her friend.

  "Those men," she said to her friend. "I think that they're big in the business."

  The friend looked at the three men who were getting into the limousine behind Beau Daniels. It must be true, they all looked so handsome and successful.

  "Listen," the second woman said wistfully, "when you're big in the business, what else is there?"

  The line of limousines pulled away from the curb and headed out of Forest Lawn and west toward Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Malibu.