“Couldn’t hack it. I told you when you answered the ad, Wesley, this job isn’t for everyone, but it’s necessary and honorable work.”
Wesley nodded solemnly, hoping he didn’t let the man down.
“So,” Coop said, turning the radio knobs, “your sister.”
Wesley looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah, what about her?”
“She’s cute.”
“You like her or something?”
Coop shrugged. “Just making conversation.”
“You should ask her out.”
Coop was quiet for so long Wesley thought he might have misread him. “Think she’d go?” he finally asked.
Wesley laughed. “No. She doesn’t date much and I don’t think you’re her type.”
“Let me guess—she’s into guys who wear moisturizer.”
Wesley thought a minute. “I guess so. The guy she was crying over all night is some preppie dude she dated, like, ten years ago. He dumped her.”
Coop frowned. “And she’s still crying over him?”
“No—I mean, she hasn’t seen him in years, but she ran into him last night and I guess it upset her.” He chewed on his lip, trying to decide how much of his life to divulge to his new boss. He didn’t want to come across as some kind of drama case. “My sister’s life hasn’t been easy.”
“How so?”
“She raised me since I was nine, and I’ve been kind of a shithead.”
Coop smiled. “What happened to your parents?”
Wesley looked out the window. “Long story, man.”
“Some other time then,” Coop said easily. “We’re here.”
Wesley’s pulse kicked up as the nursing home came into view. It looked more like a shabby brick apartment building than a medical facility. Coop backed the hearse into a parking place near the door reserved for ambulances, climbed out and straightened his jacket as he walked toward the entrance. “Stay close and do what I tell you.”
Wesley nodded. “Aren’t we going to take in the gurney?”
“I like to go in first and assess the situation, greet the family if there’s anyone around, maybe give them time to say goodbye while I make a trip back to get the gurney.”
Wesley digested the info, nodding. His stomach was pitching now.
When they walked into the facility, the first thing that Wesley noticed was the smell—old building, old paint, old people. Mothballs, mold and Metamucil. They stopped at the front desk where a woman in a nurse’s uniform stood at attention and smiled wide.
“Good mornin’, Dr. Craft.” She arched her back so that her boobs stuck out.
“Good morning, Sarah. Meet Wesley, my new sidekick.”
Wesley exchanged greetings with the woman, but she quickly turned back to Coop, her eyes alight with interest that seemed to extend beyond gladness that they were there to take a body off her hands. “That jacket looks nice on you, Dr. Craft,” she gushed.
Coop smiled. “Thanks, Sarah. I figured we’d have an audience.”
“That you do.” She handed him a folder. “Gentry Dunbar, third floor, room eighteen. The spectators are lined up in the hallway.”
“Any family?”
“A sister, Ilse Dunbar—she has a room here, too.”
“Thanks.”
Wesley followed Coop down a long hall of gleaming green linoleum tile and white walls, past a dining room full of old people, some in their pajamas, some dressed up for breakfast as if they were going to church. The scent of scorched coffee and prunes nauseated him further. They passed a few residents in the hall, shuffling toward their destinations, bent from bone disease and sheer weariness, he assumed. God, he hoped he never grew old.
He frowned. Of course, that meant dying young…
Coop walked past the elevator, pushed open the door leading to the stairwell and began the climb to the third floor.
“That nurse digs you,” Wesley said.
“You think?” Coop asked, looking amused.
“She called you doctor.”
“Yeah,” Coop said. “Sarah’s a good girl. It takes special people to work with old folks and kids. But I don’t mix business and pleasure, if you know what I mean.”
All Wesley knew was that if he had a busty girl throwing herself at him, he’d go for it, screw business.
When they reached the third floor, Coop opened the door onto a hall where the green linoleum floor was dull and gray, the scarred walls a grubby off-white. Dozens of old people lined the hallway, some sitting in chairs that they had pulled out of their rooms, some leaning against the walls, some sitting in wheelchairs.
“Here’s the body man,” a woman announced loudly, probably in deference to those who were hard of hearing or had dozed off. Everyone perked up, calling greetings to Coop and making sorrowful noises about “poor Mr. Dunbar.”
“He’s in there,” several people said, pointing to the only door on the floor that was closed.
“Thank you kindly,” Coop said, stopping to pat arms and shake hands.
“Ilse is in there with him,” a woman said sadly. “Poor thing has been sittin’ by his bed, holding his cold, dead hand all mornin’.”
Wesley suppressed a shudder as he waded through the spectators and followed Coop to the door. Coop knocked, then waited a few seconds before going in.
Wesley steeled himself for the sight of a cold corpse, then blinked at the empty bed. His gaze went to the man reclined in a ratty yellow La-Z-Boy chair, fully dressed in suit, tie and hat, as if he were going on a trip, his hands crossed over his lap, his eyes permanently closed. If the man in the recliner was ninety, the woman sitting next to him, her veined hand over his, had to be one hundred.
She looked up and smiled sadly at Coop. “How are you, Doc?”
“Fine, Miss Dunbar,” Coop said, walking closer. “I see that Gentry here is in a better place.”
She nodded, her eyes tearing up. “He told me he was going to die soon, but I didn’t believe him. This is his burying suit, so he must have known before he went to sleep last night that he wouldn’t make it ’til morning.”
Wesley hung back, feeling weird and tingly. The dead guy didn’t look real, more like a wax figure. Uneasily, Wesley looked to the ceiling and the corners of the room—he’d read something once about the spirit lingering for a while after leaving the body. Was the old man hanging around, watching them from the light fixture? He began to shake.
“You all right, Wesley?” Coop asked.
Wesley nodded curtly, put his hand over his mouth and inhaled deeply. He had to stop thinking about the dead guy. He was freaking himself out.
“God, how he loved that old chair,” the old woman said, smiling, giving the ancient yellow tweed chair a thump that dislodged dust motes into the air. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I used to take care of him when he was a little tyke. Our parents died when he was young, so we’ve always been close. Neither of us married, and the rest of the family has died off.” She gave them a watery smile. “We always looked out for each other. Now it’s just me.”
Coop touched her rounded shoulder. “You’re in a nice place, Miss Dunbar. There are a lot of people here who care about you.”
Wesley listened as Coop comforted the old woman, but he realized with the impact of hitting pavement that he could be looking at a future picture of himself and Carlotta—growing old alone, winding up in the same nursing home, for Christ’s sake. Until this moment, he’d never considered the possibility that their parents wouldn’t come back. The thought made him feel sick…and even more appreciative of Carlotta. Although, if he continued to get in trouble, how much longer would his sister stick by him? All the more reason to fix things, the sooner, the better.
“Has Mr. Gentry seen a physician recently?” Coop asked the woman.
“This morning, when Dr. Tessler came and pronounced him dead.”
“Before that.”
“About six weeks ago.”
“If the person hasn’t seen a physician w
ithin thirty days, an autopsy is automatic.”
Her mouth twitched. “Can we still have an open-casket viewing?”
“Of course—the medical examiner will be respectful, I promise.”
She nodded.
“Have you selected a funeral home, Miss Dunbar?”
The woman smiled. “Everyone here speaks highly of your family funeral home, Dr. Craft. I thought we’d have Gentry’s service there.”
Coop smiled. “Thank you. My uncle will take good care of him. We’re going to give you time to say goodbye. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She nodded, smiling. “Okay.”
They left the room and closed the door behind them. Wesley gulped non-dead air as their audience leaned in for details.
“Is he sure enough dead, Doc?” one of the old men asked.
“Sure enough,” Coop said. “But it looks as if he was ready to go.”
Agreement chorused through the hallway, and a few amens.
They threaded back through the crowd to the stairs.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Coop murmured.
Wesley frowned. “What do you mean? The guy even dressed up in the suit he wants to be laid out in. I wouldn’t think it could get any easier than that.”
“Ever tried to move a body in full rigor mortis?”
Wesley swallowed. “No.”
“Let’s just say that nothing bends.”
“But the guy is sitting up.”
“Exactly.”
Wesley grimaced, feeling like he could lose his eggs on the spot.
They passed Sarah, who angled a sly smile at Coop, and then they walked outside to the hearse. The fresh air revived Wesley a bit as Coop unlocked the rear door and pulled out the gurney.
Staring at the flat surface, Wesley asked, “So how are we going to get a guy frozen in a seated position to lie flat on the gurney?”
Coop sighed. “Good question. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have an audience, but a sheet’s not going to hide anything.” He scratched his head, then worked his mouth from side to side. “In the back seat, there’s a hand truck. Get it.”
Wesley did as he was told, and soon they were back in Gentry Dunbar’s room. His sister, sensing the end, was crying softly. Wesley’s heart went out to her and he wondered if the old man in the chair had put his older sister through as much hell as he had put Carlotta through.
Coop helped the woman to her feet and led her toward the door. “We need to move Gentry now, Miss Dunbar, but I was wondering—since he loved this chair so much, how about if we give him one last ride in it?”
Her eyes rounded. “You mean take him out in the recliner?”
“Yeah,” Coop said, as if it were perfectly normal. “We’ll make sure you get the chair back, of course.”
The old woman smiled wide. “He’d like that. And just give the recliner to Goodwill.”
“Fine,” Coop said. “We’ll be right out.” When she left, Coop handed Wesley a pair of rubber gloves and donned a pair himself. Then he turned to assess Gentry.
“He’s starting to smell,” Wesley said, covering his nose with his sleeve.
“The cells begin to break down the second the heart stops beating,” Coop offered calmly. He bent over and pried open the man’s mouth with two gloved fingers.
Wesley winced but couldn’t look away.
Coop made a noise in his throat. “Just as I suspected.”
“What’s wrong?” Wesley asked.
“The reason that Gentry here had prior knowledge of his death is because the old boy did himself in.”
Wesley’s eyes bugged. “Suicide?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“Look—his tongue is dry and flushed, probably an overdose of antidepressants.” He closed the man’s mouth, then walked over to a side table, opened a drawer and pulled out several prescription bottles. “Doxepin and trazodone—probably took a little of each, just enough to do the job.”
Wesley bit his lip. “His sister will be crushed.”
“She won’t hear it from me,” Coop said lightly.
“But won’t it be on the death certificate?”
“Only if the medical examiner notices.”
“You’re saying he won’t?”
“He, she, whoever is doing the autopsy. Gentry’s an old man who died in a nursing home and probably was being medicated for a number of ailments. His autopsy isn’t going to be a high priority in an office where hundreds of autopsies are performed every day.”
“But you spotted it right away,” Wesley said.
Coop was silent for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve been doing this for a while.” He covered the man with the sheet, tucking it in around the sides of the chair. “Okay, when I tilt the chair, slide the hand truck underneath.”
Wesley did and between the two of them, they managed to balance the chair on the hand truck. When they wheeled it out into the hall, there were guffaws of laughter, applause and an impromptu rendition of “I’ll be Seeing You.” Wesley couldn’t help but smile as they wheeled the old man out to the hearse.
Getting the recliner into the back of the hearse was another matter, but they managed. In the process, Wesley’s hand slid under the sheet and he accidentally touched the man’s stiff fingers. He flinched, then realized the skin felt more like a cold bar of soap than anything sinister. A few minutes later when he swung into the front seat and banged the door closed, he was feeling pretty good about himself. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said to Coop.
Coop gave him a lopsided smile. “Don’t get too cocky on me.”
“Do you get a lot of funeral home business this way?”
“Yeah,” Coop admitted. “There’s decent money in contracting body retrieval with the morgue, but to be honest, it also helps my uncle’s business. People get to know us. If they haven’t already selected a funeral home, nine times out of ten, they’ll go with us.”
A shrewd businessman, Wesley decided, and wondered how much Coop was worth. Death was probably a pretty lucrative business, since it never let up.
“So when do I get paid?”
Coop’s eyebrows rose and he laughed. “Jumping the gun a little, aren’t you? We haven’t even officially delivered the body to the morgue.”
Wesley gave an embarrassed little laugh. “I have a fine to pay off, man.” Not entirely the reason he needed the cash so soon, but it would do.
Coop nodded. “I hear you. I’ll pay you every Friday, twenty-five bucks for every body you help me move.”
Wesley nodded. “Sounds fair.” His internal calculator kicked in. Even if they moved only four bodies a day, that was a hundred bucks, seven hundred per week, and with the crime rate and traffic fatalities in Atlanta, he was probably being conservative. Business would probably be even better on weekends and holidays.
Wesley’s pulse began to drum with excitement. For the first time in his life, he was earning real money.
“You have to get that fine taken care of so you can clear your record and move on,” Coop said.
“Right,” Wesley said, half listening. With the kind of money Coop would pay him, he could eventually afford to buy into a high-stakes poker game. One big win would put him in the clear with everyone, and help him build a local reputation at the tables.
His promise to Carlotta that he would stop gambling rang in his head. Something akin to guilt stabbed him, but he shrugged it off as the familiar excitement of an impending card game began to build. He hated to go back on his word, but all he needed was one big win.
Just one.
12
“W ell, at least Wesley’s working,” Hannah said.
Carlotta sighed into her cell phone. “But he’s moving dead people.”
“Somebody’s gotta do it. I mean, when you think about it, it’s really kind of cool.”
“Christ, you sound like Wesley. All he talks about is how cool it is to ride around in the hearse, and how coo
l his undertaker boss is.”
“Is his boss creepy?”
Carlotta thought of the long-legged, funky-looking man who had seemed so comfortable at their breakfast table. “He’s not as creepy as you are.”
“Funny.”
“But how normal can the man be if he works around dead bodies all the time?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said dryly, “some days it sounds preferable to working with live ones. Fridays suck, don’t they?”
“Let me guess—trouble with your pastry-instructor lover?”
“Since we got back from Chicago, he’s cooled way down.”
“Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that he goes home to his wife every night?”
“Maybe.”
Carlotta bit her tongue to keep from scolding Hannah for taking up with yet another married man—the memory of kissing Peter Ashford two nights ago was still too fresh for comfort. What a hypocrite she was.
She looked up and nearly dropped her cell phone to see Angela Ashford charging toward her counter. Had she somehow conjured up the woman with her illicit musings of Peter? “Oh, shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asked.
“Gotta go,” Carlotta whispered, then disconnected the call.
Angela bore down on her, wearing the expensive black knee boots Carlotta had sold to her, black trench coat flapping. A paralyzing thought struck Carlotta: what if Peter had developed a guilty conscience and confessed the kiss to Angela? That vengeful-wife ass-kicking that she had been warning Hannah about for years might just be coming her way.
She swallowed and straightened her shoulders, and although her heart threatened to pound through her breastbone, she managed a shaky smile when Angela stopped in front of the counter. “Angela…hi.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” the woman slurred, her expression dark.
Carlotta drew back slightly at the woman’s flammable breath—another head start on her martini lunch, apparently. “What…what can I do for you?”
“Take it back,” she said, leaning into the counter.
A sharp inhale tightened Carlotta’s chest. “T-take what back?”
Angela swung a shopping bag onto the counter with a thud. “The man’s jacket you talked me into buying. It was all wrong.”
Body Movers Page 10
