The Undertaker

by William F. Brown

  I was watching his eyes. When I mentioned shoveling dirt up at Oak Hill and the moving truck, he did a double-take, and then paused and looked across at me with a new, wary appreciation. “I'm an attorney,” he finally said. “I don't clean offices, I don't empty dumpsters, and I don’t shovel dirt, Peter. If I may I call you that?”

  “That would be fine, Ralph. I haven't figured out all the ‘whys’ yet, but I've got most of the ‘hows.’ Eventually I will, and when I do, lawyer or not, you're going to the slammer. You, Greene, Varner, Dannmeyer, all of you.”

  With a heavy sigh, tired and exasperated, Tinkerton leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “All right, who sent you? Who are you working for?”

  “My wife sent me, Ralph,” I glared at him, feeling the anger building up inside. “Remember the Blues Brothers? Elwood and his brother Joliet Jake? Well, I'm not on a ‘mission from God,’ I’m on a mission from Terri, and my wife doesn't think much of you stealing her name for one of your two-bit scams. Neither do I. Those memories are all I have left of her. They have to last me a long, long time and I'm not going to let you put your greasy paws all over them. You got that?”

  My anger was white hot now, rolling across the room at him in waves. I could see he felt them, as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “For the longest time this morning, I couldn't figure it out. Why? I kept asking myself, ‘Why?’ A retired carpenter, an auto mechanic, an autoworker, a warehouse supervisor, and now a bean counter?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, boy?”

  “I'm talking about the Skeppingtons and the Brownsteins, the Pryors from Phoenix, Edward J. Kasmarek from Chicago, and whoever the hell it was you buried under my name up in Oak Hill yesterday.”

  I didn’t have to say any more. His mouth dropped open and I could tell those names were the knockout punch. To finish the big lawyer off, I pulled the copies of the obituaries from my shirt pocket and held them up for him to see.

  “See, it's all right here, Ralph, if you know what you're looking for, and I happen to be the World Champion on obituaries.”

  Tinkerton’s eyes went wide and his face turned beet red. Big-time lawyers are supposed to stand up and shout things like, “Objection!” whenever something happens they don’t like or don’t understand. However, there was no Judge Ito or even Judge Judy in this courtroom. No juries hanging on his every word. No reporters. Not even a TV camera. Only the eminent Ralph McKinley Tinkerton, Esq., and me.

  “At first, I figured this was the normal fun and games — you know, greed, theft, lust, maybe drugs and embezzlement, maybe a little kiddie porn. That’s the kind of stuff any good California boy can understand. The bodies? Was it kidnapping, murder for hire, or selling used body parts? I don't know and I really don't care.”

  “You should care, Peter.”

  “Nah, I figure you’re just a bunch of crooks burying people under somebody else's name, people you want to permanently disappear. But the cops can sort all that out later.”

  “The cops? You need to get a grip, my young friend.”

  “Yeah, well, that was my first reaction too, until I got a good look at you, at the building, the office, and that little shrine you've got over there in the corner. Now, I see I had it all wrong.”

  “How's that?” he asked as he slowly rose to his feet and walked out from behind the desk, his hard eyes never leaving me. “Exactly what is it you think you've got all wrong?”

  “Sit down, Ralph,” I said as I held up the other white bag, the one with the bottle of Doctor Brown’s Crème Soda. “I didn't walk in here stupid and I have nothing to lose anymore. Touch me and I’ll make a really big mess out of you and this end of the fourteenth floor, and Edna won’t like that very much.”

  He looked at me and at the second white paper bag and stopped dead in his tracks. Ever so slowly, he turned and went back around the desk and sat in his chair.

  I motioned to the photos on the wall. “I read your resumé in Martindale-Hubbell, very impressive.”

  “Martindale-Hubbell? My, my, you have been busy.”

  “Not as busy as you. The FBI? The US Attorney's Office? Special Counsel? Even Marine Corps Special Ops? Where did it all go wrong, Ralph?”

  “Go wrong?” he flared. “How dare you?”

  “That's real easy. But this isn't some petty little scam, is it? Oh, no. This isn't about money, or drugs, or even politics, is it? It’s a lot bigger than that kind of stuff, because you, Ralph McKinley Tinkerton, have the smell of a True Believer.”

  Tinkerton stopped, and chose his words carefully. “I owe you an apology, Peter. Like you said, you didn't come in here stupid and it would be a mistake to treat you as if you had.” He turned his head and looked at his shrine with an embarrassed smile, his voice turning softer and friendlier. “My ‘shrine’ as you call it may indeed be a bit ‘over the top,’ but I'm sure you recognize the faces, the names and positions. Those are people I worked for over the years, people I respect, people who could speak to the type of work I did for the government over the past twenty years, if you were to ask.”

  “I’m sure it makes for a nice resumé, Ralph, but why should I care?”

  “Why? Because you did indeed stumble into something, Mr. Talbott. Under the circumstances, I have no choice but to inform you that it is important and we hope you will cooperate with us because it deals with National Security.”

  “I’m shocked, Ralph. Shocked.” My mouth dropped open in feigned disbelief. “National Security? Who’d ‘a thunk it?”

  “I know,” he conceded with an embarrassed smile and a wave of his hand. “You’re an intelligent man and you’re absolutely justified in being skeptical. That tired old excuse of National Security had gray hair on it back in Iran-Contra and even earlier when Gordon Liddy botched that Watergate burglary job.”

  “Got him his own slot on talk radio though, didn't it?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Ollie North, too. Got him a new backyard fence and a run for the US Senate. Boy, oh boy, Ralph, you sure can't beat that old ‘National Security’ excuse, can you?”

  “Dead on, again, but I am being serious. Let us say for the sake of argument that no one sent you here, that you really are working on your own, and that you ferreted out these various tidbits all by yourself.” He leaned forward and spoke straight at me in his softest, most sincere lawyer voice. “This really is a matter of extreme National Security and the authorization comes from the highest level, which is government-speak for the White House or something damned close to it. That means Top Secret and we expect you’ll help us keep it that way. I need your help, Peter. A little cooperation. Will you give it to me?”

  I looked across at him. “Ralph, there’s only two things that grow in the dark on a steady diet of bullshit: good mushrooms and bad government. Whatever you cooked up here, it's wrong and it's in dire need of some fresh air and sunshine.”

  “Fresh air? Sunshine?” He shook his head sadly. “I take it you aren’t a big city boy, are you, Peter? Never spent much time in New York, Fifth Avenue, maybe?”

  “New York? No, but I spent a lot of time in LA.”

  “Well, they have a street hustle they play in the Big Apple called three-card Monte, the shell game. I know they play it in Chicago. Maybe they play it in LA too. Three cards on a cardboard box on the sidewalk. Try to guess which card is the Queen of Spades. It’s all sleight of hand, a fast shuffle, a little deception. Maybe you lose twenty bucks, but nobody gets hurt. That’s all we’re doing here. No harm, no foul.”

  “No harm? No foul? I don’t think so, Ralph. This thing smells.”

  “Smells?” he sighed. “Well, I guess we aren't going to be friends after all, are we? But it doesn’t matter. You turned over the wrong card. You have nothing.”

  “I have a lot more than that.”

  “No you don’t. It’s like those three cards on the box. The flashing fingers and the distractions have you confused. You’re seeing stuff that isn’
t there.”

  “Fingers? Funny thing about fingers. They leave prints. When the cops go up to Oak Hill and dig up your Peter Talbott, they'll find his fingerprints don't match the ones in my Army records. The body won't match either. And when they dig up Skeppington, Pryor, Brownstein, and all the rest of them, those bodies won't match their medical or dental records, either. What they will find, though, is your name, Greene's name, and Varner's name all over the legal documents that put them there. National Security or not, those are state crimes. Your big time Washington pals may not like it, but they can’t keep you out of a state pen.”

  Tinkerton sat silently, staring at me, his eyes turning cold and malevolent.

  “You can probably stare down a rampaging bull, Ralph, but when they get Greene, Varner, and Dannmeyer under the hot lights, they’re going to crack like spring ice. See, I haven't even gotten around to Jimmy Santorini yet.”

  I threw that one in blind, like tossing a hand grenade over a high wall to see what it might flush out. This time it flushed out plenty. Tinkerton came out of his chair sputtering. “Jimmy Santorini? You fool! What have you done?”

  “Not much, not yet, but I will. See, for an amateur I catch on pretty fast.” I rose and held the white paper bag in front of me with two fingers, like you’d hold a mousetrap with a dead rat dangling from it, and backed toward the door. “I'm leaving now. Don't try to stop me. If you do, you'll have a bigger mess than you could ever imagine.”

  That was when my curiosity got the best of me. I looked over at his little framed shrine and asked, “By the way, Ralph, ‘Zero Defects’? What's that supposed to mean? Some secret jarhead fraternity?”

  “It means we don't make mistakes. We can't afford any. And we don't tolerate people who make them.”

  “Well, you just made a real big one,” I told him as I opened the door and let it swing wide. Edna and the two associate bouncers stood outside, looking very serious and very nervous. I paused in the doorway and turned back toward Tinkerton. “See ya later, Ralph. Let's do lunch again sometime. Ciao.”

  Holding the bag high, I walked out between the Troll and one of the bouncers. I dropped the paper Bouncing Bagel hat on her desk, tossed the white apron over the first partition I passed, and walked straight through the office to the elevators. I hit the first floor lobby in full stride. As I passed the security desk, I reached out and carefully placed the white paper bag with the bottle of Dr. Brown’s on the security guard’s desk.

  “A delivery for Mr. Tinkerton on Fourteen,” I smiled. “Can you see it gets there? Thanks.”

  As I passed through the revolving doors, I wasn't sure what I had accomplished by going up there. Probably not very much, but I had rattled their cage and I felt damned good about doing it. I was alive and felt positively liberated for the first time in months.

  A piece of cake, I concluded. And I concluded one more thing, too. This snake had a head and that head was Ralph McKinley Tinkerton.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Personal preferences?

  I was on a roll and decided to go for the knockout. The Varner Clinic was located in the small town of Delancy, Ohio, about five miles north of Greene’s Funeral Home. How convenient, I thought. It was like one-stop-dying. In LA, they could add a Brother Bob's New Age Feel-Good Church, a drive-thru liquor store with an ATM, and sell franchises, but things weren't nearly that progressive here in the Great Outback of Central Ohio.

  Driving through town, Delancy appeared fairly prosperous. It was the County seat and featured a quaint ivy-covered college campus, a block or two of renovated Victorian shops, the courthouse, and no doubt the offices of that law enforcement giant Sheriff Virgil Dannmeyer. The town stretched out in each direction from the crossroads of Anderson Road and Main Street. Judging by the store-fronts, they specialized in antiques, residential real estate, books, and small restaurants that catered to the college crowd with vegetarian food, pizza, and too much coffee. I drove both streets and stopped at a BP station where I asked the attendant where I could find the Varner Clinic. He gave me a very odd look.

  “East on Anderson Road about a mile. You can’t miss it,” he chuckled. “If that’s where you really want to go.”

  He was right. I couldn’t. The building was a sprawling low-tech affair that someone had cobbled together from painted cinder blocks, narrow casement windows, and the occasional panel of cedar siding. It had a center core with a peaked roof, and three long, one-story wings that thrust out to the left, right, and rear. The building stood on a slight rise well back from the road, behind a gravel parking lot. A large, well-manicured lawn, no doubt somebody’s old bean field, dressed up with tall hedges and curved flower beds of roses and geraniums, surrounded it. Beyond the nearly empty parking lot stood a dense buffer of big oak and pine trees.

  It was about 2:30 when I turned into the clinic's driveway and parked the Bronco in the “Visitor’s Parking” space. I knew I shouldn't be doing this. When I left Tinkerton's office I should have driven straight to the State Police Headquarters, the State Attorney General, or even the FBI, but I couldn't. After the stunt with the delivery bags, Edna the secretary, and confronting Tinkerton in his own office, I felt I was invincible. I’d taken on Dannmeyer, Greene, and Tinkerton and they hadn’t laid a glove on me. All I needed was one solid chunk of evidence to wrap it up and tie a bow around it. I figured I’d find it in the Varner Clinic, since that was where the bodies started going cold. Besides, I was two steps ahead of them. There was nothing these clowns could throw at me I couldn't handle now. I was hot. What could Tinkerton do to me? A lawyer? Nothing.

  By the same token, what could I do to him? The sad truth was, not very much. The obituaries? The newspaper stories? They were interesting, but not nearly enough to get an indictment, much less a conviction. Without hard evidence or one of them talking, the State Police, the State Attorney General, and the FBI would laugh me out of town. Go up against a trio of local, stand-up guys like Ralph Tinkerton, Lawrence Greene, and Sheriff Virgil Dannmeyer on their home turf? The Michigan football team stood a better chance of getting a break here in Columbus than I would. Knowing they were dirty and proving it would be two very different things.

  That’s why I took a shot at Varner. He was a doctor, an M.D., for Chrissake. All the ones I knew were invariably risk-averse and not nearly as smart as they thought they were once they got outside medicine. Ever watched a doctor invest in real estate? A bar, an office building, or a trendy restaurant? They could lose money faster in oil well scams, cattle, or thoroughbred horses than they could possibly make it. Got something you want to unload? Find a doctor. Better still, find a group of them. You can’t lose. Yep, Anias P. Varner was their weak link, particularly if I could get him off balance and keep him that way. If he stonewalled me, I could try the State Police or give it up and turn the Bronco east, but I had to give it one last try.

  The exterior of the clinic looked cheap and poorly put together. The siding was grooved plywood paneling and the brick accents looked to be that cheap, glued-on, fiberglass stuff. As I walked across the lot, I saw a six-foot-high chain link fence running around the perimeter of the clinic grounds. It was tucked discreetly into the wall of oak and pine trees and painted black to be nearly invisible. It was the glint of sun on the white electric insulators that told me the fence was there and it was carrying some juice. There was also a row of small security cameras tucked up under the eaves of the building. Their overlapping fields of vision covered the entire perimeter, sides and rear. Interesting. With an electric fence and cameras, were they trying to keep people from breaking in, or trying to keep them from breaking out?

  The clinic's front doors were those new pneumatic, motion sensor, no-hands models that pop open when you get within five feet. Inside, they had decorated the clinic’s small lobby with the taste and sensitivity you’d find in the waiting room of a car wash. No Ethan Allen here, the walls were a practical light beige. There was thin blue carpeting, cheap faux-leather chairs, and framed pr
ints of Impressionist paintings from Wal-Mart on the walls. The chairs looked empty and unused, arranged in small, intimate groupings. The clinic must be real private, I thought, so private that the patients didn't get very many visitors.

  In the center of the far wall, I saw another set of double doors. They must be the entrance to the clinic itself. Through the small panes of glass, I could see a long, brightly lit corridor beyond. In the ceiling above the doors was another security camera, pointed right at me. I smiled. There was no sneaking up on these folks.

  To my left was a large, U-shaped reception desk with a very large blonde woman holding court behind it. She was dressed in a white nurse's uniform and she eyed me up and down like a St. Bernard in heat. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, but she was far too heavily made-up for my taste. And way too big. With her broad shoulders, long arms, and round, rosy cheeks, she could easily fill the heavyweight slot on the Russian women's wrestling team.

  I smiled. She smiled. “Hi, I wonder if I could see Dr. Varner.”

  “And, you have an appointment?” She cocked her head coyly to the side and asked in a deep, husky voice.

  “An appointment? Uh, no, I'm afraid I don't.”

  “Then it would be tres impossible,” she shook her head. “You see, Doctor Varner is on rounds now. After that, he has appointments and several surgeries that will run well into the evening. That's why the poor man never sees anyone without a referral and an appointment. I'm sure you understand.”

  “Ah, certainement! With his schedule, of course I can. But tell me, what is the Doctor working on now?”