The Comfortable Coffin

by Richard S. Prather

  He hauled the sacks of money out of the milk wagon and passed them through to me. I stowed them in the pine coffin. And as we worked, AL filled me in.

  He had forged a set of papers—death certificate, cremation permit, the works—for Andrew C. Cash, of Dorchmont, way out in the country. When we finished stowing the money, I was to take the milk wagon and drive it someplace eight or ten blocks away, leave it, and get back to my job. If the driver woke up and made a getaway, all right; and if he stayed out and got found, okay too. Al, who never left any loose ends, already had mailed an anonymous note to the cops telling them who pulled the robbery, so that in a day or so Marty and his whole gang would be in jail anyway.

  Al would stay with the hearse in the garage until about six a.m. Then he’d drive in a slow and natural manner to the crematory and around to the back. If he was questioned, which wasn’t likely, he’d say he started early from Dorchmont, wanting to get back early. The odds were a hundred to one no one would bother to insist on opening the coffin of a man who had died of “Diphtheria,” according to the death certificate.

  Once at the crematory we’d slide the coffin inside, unload the money sacks, and stow them behind supplies down in the storeroom, then I’d put the empty coffin through the furnace to get rid of it. Meanwhile, Al would drive the hearse to a garage where he had arranged to have it repainted, which would keep it out of sight for several days. In a week he’d come back, we’d reload the dough into another coffin, and he’d drive away, headed south with papers to show he was taking a body to New Jersey for burial.

  Of course, we’d split first, he said as an afterthought. And he added that of course I wouldn’t touch the hidden dough until he showed up again.

  I said of course. And I wouldn’t. Not when I knew that Al would be keeping an eye on me, even if I couldn’t see him, just in case I tried to leave town.

  It was a good plan, though I could think of simpler ones. Like most crooks who prided themselves on being so smart, Al had a tendency to like his own ideas so well that when he got hold of one, like using the hearse to avoid suspicion, he fancied it up. I asked why he couldn’t just leave the hearse where it was for a few days, then drive away. He jumped down my throat.

  “Because, Pete, with two million bucks missing the cops are going to be taking this island apart. They’ll search garages like this, warehouses, junk yards, any place they can think of. They just might find the money. After that they’d find me. Now do you understand?”

  I said I got it and Al calmed down. We finished stowing away Mr. Cash. He about half filled the big coffin.

  “I didn’t know how much room three million bucks would need,” AL said. “So I allowed enough. Now I’ll go make sure that driver is still out, and you can take the milk wagon away.”

  He started back to the adjoining garage, with me after him. He stooped to go through the hole, then I heard a solid clunk, and Al quivered like a poleaxed steer. He fell on his face. The other garage door opened, and feet went away from there, running. It was just like the sound effects on a radio mystery, and I could follow them just as easy.

  The driver of the milk wagon had come to. He’d either been waiting, or trying to sneak away quietly, when Al poked his head through die hole. He’d conked Al and taken wing. Would he be back? I didn’t think so. He probably couldn’t get in touch with Marty or anyone else for a long time, and for all he knew there might be five of us. Seeing that he had let the money get away from him, he’d probably keep running until he got to the Canadian border.

  I pulled Al back. There was a big split in his scalp and the blood was flowing. I did what I could with my handkerchief, holding it in place by tying Al’s necktie around the handkerchief and Al’s jaw, and it helped some but not much. He looked like Marley’s ghost.

  He came to as I was working on him, and staggered to his feet.

  “Sapped me!” he said viciously, having trouble talking, because he was groggy, and the tie around his jaw didn’t help. “I should have knocked his brains out in the first place.”

  He wobbled to the hearse.

  “Help me in,” he said. “We gotta change the plans. I can’t wait here. We gotta drive over to the crematorium now. Hide the dough, you fix me up and get me back to my room. Yeah, that’s what we gotta do. You drive, Pete, and keep vour fingers crossed we aren’t stopped.”

  I helped him in and he lay down beside Andrew Cash’s coffin full of cash. Then I drove the hearse out. We had to leave the milk wagon and the horse to be found. It was ten blocks to the crematorium. I kept my fingers crossed and everything else crossed. If a prowl car saw a hearse on the street this time of night…

  But nobody passed us. I pulled up behind the municipal crematorium with a sigh of relief that rattled my tonsils. I got out and opened up the back.

  “We’re here,” I told Al, and he pulled himself to his feet. He was no help, but I got Andrew C. Cash out and onto the rollers and into the receiving room inside. Al followed. The blood was coming out from under the handkerchief I had tied over his scalp and he looked like a front line casualty. His skin was a funny kind of color.

  “Now we got to get it hid,” he said, still giving the orders, as if I didn’t know we had to get it hid. “I’ll stay down in the storeroom until you can hide the hearse and get your car and—”

  “Is that you, Mr. Pete?” It was Danny’s voice coming toward us. I pushed Al behind a concrete pillar.

  “Stay out of sight!—Yeah, what is it, Danny?”

  Danny came shuffling in.

  “You have a good nap, Mr. Pete?” Then he saw the coffin and got interested. “Did a customer come in?”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Andrew C. Cash of Dorchmont. You got the reception room all cleaned?”

  “Oh, sure. Say, ain’t it pretty late to be receiving customers?”

  “Rush job,” I told him. “Family’s leaving in the morning. Now go sweep the chapel. Stay there until I call you.”

  “Okay, Mr. Pete.” He shuffled off again. By next day he’d have forgotten all about the late customer. That was one way Danny had it all over the rest of us. He lived a day at a time and forgot them as soon as they were gone.

  “All right, Al,” I said. “Al!” I was just in time to catch him as he fell. By the time I had him stretched out on the concrete floor, Al was dead.

  Fractured skulls act like that sometimes.

  I looked down at Al, and turned hot, then cold. Then I turned hot and cold both at once. There was a buzzing in my ears and my heart felt like a piston about to break loose from its shaft. There I was with three million dollars in hot cash, a cold corpse, and an unexplainable hearse, all on my hands at once.

  If I could juggle them fast enough, I was a millionaire. If I dropped anything, I was a goose cooked in the hot seat. Who would believe I hadn’t put the slug on Al myself?

  I mopped my face. Could I? Couldn’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Maybe I could grow wings and fly away? No, that wouldn’t do; they’d find me. I had to give it the old college try. Now if I could hide Al long enough to ditch the hearse someplace, then dispose of Al, then hide the cash and sit tight, the cops might never connect me with anything even if they found die hearse and tied it to Al who—

  I began to think I could do it. I could take Al down to the storeroom, then move the hearse…

  “Mr. Pete.” It was Danny, at the door. “There’s two cops asking for you.”

  Somebody answered. “Go tell them I’ll be right there.” It must have been me, but I didn’t recognize the voice.

  I got Al’s body out of sight as best I could and as fast as I could. Inside of sixty seconds I was trotting up front.

  O’Connell and Hunt, the prowl cops for the district, were waiting for me, looking grim. Had I heard anything unusual, they wanted to know.

  Danny was pushing his mop around my feet and trying to listen. Next to talking about the averages, Danny loved to listen in on other people talking. I told him to go find something useful
to do, and he shuffled off.

  “Yeah,” I told Hunt and O’Connell. “I heard sirens. Sounded like an air raid. Something big up?”

  “If you count two and a quarter million bucks big,” Hunt said. “Some mob in funny masks knocked over Dollar Delivery.” He seemed kind of pleased that it had happened, as if he liked the idea of somebody with so much dough losing it.

  “We got orders to check the whole island,” O’Connell said, and spat into an urn full of sand. He was a big, hard-eyed Irishman. “How we can do that, I don’t know, but that’s what they told us. Ask anybody you see if they heard or saw anything unusual, that was part of the order. You’re up, so we’re asking you.”

  “Just the sirens,” I said, and made with a yawn. “And a couple of cats carrying on out in the alley. Things are kind of dead around here at night.”

  “And at all the other times,” Hunt said, grinning because he’d played along with my joke.

  O’Connell shrugged. “Well, we can look in the alley, out back, then—”

  “As long as you’re here,” I said fast, “why not sample a little of the new embalming fluid we just got in?”

  They brightened up and followed me back to the office. I got a couple of paper cups and poured them bourbon from the special bottle I kept in my locker. Then I took a stiff one too; My stomach stopped turning somersaults. This was just a routine check. As soon as I could get rid of them, I could take care of the hearse, of Al, the cash—

  “Good.” O’Connell wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That stuff’ll keep the stiffs happy.”

  They refused refills. X passed out mints.

  “Got to get back and look for those two and a quarter million bucks,” Hunt said. “By now it’s thirty miles away, but you know the gag about the drunk who looked for the match under the streetlamp because the light was better there? That’s us.”

  They tramped out. They got in their car and tootled away. They’d forgot about looking in back, as I’d hoped they would. Now all I had to do was think fast and act likewise.

  My hand was still shaking, so I poured myself some more bourbon. Have you ever had two and a quarter million bucks? Well, I had it. Al would have been disappointed that it wasn’t three, but I was satisfied. It was all mine. As soon as I could arrange—

  I dropped the paper cup of bourbon.

  I heard something. A sound so familiar I hadn’t paid any attention to it at first.

  The sound of gas hissing in the cremation unit. Somebody had turned the furnace on.

  I started running and almost knocked Danny down outside the door.

  “It’s okay, you don’t hafta hurry,” he told me, cheerfully.

  “I took care of everything. You told me to make myself useful, so I went and processed Mr. Cash, because of how you said it was a rush job. His box is in the furnace now. We’ll have the ashes all ready for his family. It don’t matter how early they wanta leave.”

  I went and looked. A. G. Cash was in the furnace, all right. He’d been in there for ten minutes, while I fed liquor to those cops. Danny had done a good job of making himself useful. My stomach started to do some funny acrobatics.

  This time I drank straight from the bottle, a good stiff drink

  Danny scratched his chin.

  “Mr. Pete, on the tag on the box it just said A. G. Cash. What did the A. G. stand for, huh?”

  “All gone,” I told him. “That’s what the initials stood for—two and a quarter million bucks, all gone!”

  The Dollar Delivery boys got Marty and his mob all right, but they never would swallow the story that Marty didn’t know where the money was. They’re still looking for it. If you want to do them a favor, tell them they can find it in the urn on the top shelf, to the left of the door, in the storage room of the Middle City Municipal Crematorium. It has the name A. G. Cash engraved on a shiny brass plate on it

  I don’t imagine they’ll be able to do much with the two or three pounds of ashes in it, but tell them to be gentle with those ashes—they’re not only the most expensive ashes in the world, they’re also all that’s left of AL Thomas. When Danny had said there were cops outside, the only place I could think of to hide AI’s body fast was to unlatch the trick lid of the coffin, put Al in on top of the money, and latch it shut again. So Al and the dough went into the furnace together.

  Anyway, he died rich. And I like to think he made a liar out of all those jerks who go around saying you can’t take it with you. If anyone ever took it with him, AL did.

  The Faith of Aaron Menefee

  Stanley Ellin

  When the big black car came limping into the gas station I could tell that it was hurting inside, the way I hurt whenever old hot-spot jabbed into my belly. There was a chauffeur driving, and three people sitting in back: a discontented-looking girl and a weasel-like fellow, and in between them this man with the red face and the shock of grey hair. They all got out to look while I poked into the motor.

  “It’s the carburetor,” I told them. “Seems like it was just worked on, but whoever did it made a mess of it.”

  The red-faced man gave the chauffeur a look like a thundercloud coming up over old Turtleback Mountain.

  “How long will it take to fix?” he said to me. “And I mean a real good job on it. I’ve got to be in Cincinnati by early evening, and there’s still forty miles to go. I don’t aim to break down on the way again.”

  “I’ll fix it while you wait,” I said. “As for the kind of job it’ll be, you ask anyone around here, and they’ll tell you that if it’s a machine made by man and run by gas, Aaron Menefee’ll fix it right.”

  He looked around at the empty road. “Don’t seem to be many around here to ask,” he said, and then he laughed so that you had to like him on the spot “All right, Brother Menefee,” he said. “It’s my feeling that most folks are honest and willing. I’ll put my trust in you.”

  It took a little longer than I figured, but I finally had the motor tuned up and idling, sweet as a kitten purring. The red-faced man looked happy about that. When I told him the price he looked even happier. “Brother Menefee,” he said, “you’ve just boosted my high opinion of the human race one more notch.”

  And then it happened. And it happened in a way that I know was meant. Just as he was handing me the money, old hot-spot caught me a lick so fierce that I had to double over and hold my breath until the feeling eased up.

  “What is it?” the man said. “What’s wrong?”

  I felt ashamed at making such a fuss in front of people. “Nothing,” I said. “Leastways, nothing that can be helped. Doc Buckles says it’s an ulcer, and I’m on milk, potatoes, and prayer to heal it, but it looks like it’s here to stay.”

  He was interested. Not the way most people are, just glassy-eyed polite, but deep-down concerned. He looked at me from head to foot, and then he made a fist of one hand and beat it into the other a couple of times. Then he walked right around me as if he were measuring me for a suit of clothes, and the others just stood and watched us.

  “Brother Menefee,” he finally said, “you don’t know who I am, do you?”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Well, brother, my name is Oris Jones. Healer Jones they call me. Did you ever hear of that name?”

  “I guess I never did.”

  “You mean, you never followed my Faith Meetings on radio or TV? But I’m coast to coast, brother. Two hundred radio stations and eighty TV stations worth of coast to coast each and every Wednesday night of the year!”

  “Maybe so,” I said, “but I don’t bear with radio and TV. From what I heard there’s a load of sinful stuff on ’em. Stuff about women and drinking and killing and such. A man’s got to work hard enough fighting down the old Adam in him without looking on such temptations.”

  “There’s no sin and temptation on my programs, brother. All they show is the meetings where I carry on the work the Almighty empowered me to do. What work, you ask? Healing, brother—healing! In this
right arm here is the power to lift the sick from their beds, take the crutches from the maimed so that they can walk again, and restore a man to all the good fortune he can ask for on this everlasting earth! Do you have faith, brother?”

  “I have faith,” I said. “I’ve mortified the flesh. I’ve prayed until my knees were skinned raw, and I’ve still got faith to spare.”

  “Good. Because if you’ve got faith my power can take hold of you and cure you. If not, you’re just fooling yourself. Here, take hold of my hand, and see if you don’t feel the power just pouring into you. See if it don’t happen.”

  I took his hand, and, sure as I was standing there, old hotspot started to settle down as if it felt a couple of. Doc Buckles’s pills working on it. That was when I knew it had all been meant. The way he picked that old highway to travel, the car breaking down, and my being right on the spot with old hot-spot set to act up worse than usual.

  He must have known it was meant, too. He said, “You’ve got faith, brother. Tonight, you come to my Faith Meeting in Cincinnati, and I’ll turn all my power on you, and heal you from this day thenceforth. My daughter here’ll give you a card with the address, and I’ll expect to see you there, cleansed and ready. And pass the word along, brother. All are welcome, faithful and scoffers alike.”

  I took the seven o’clock bus to Cincinnati—sixty cents worth of riding each way—and got there just before meeting time. It was like nothing I had ever seen before—bigger than the circus and a lot more gratifying to the soul. A monstrous tent, white as snow, was pitched in the middle of the grounds with people swarming in from every direction. Ten big trailer trucks which, I figured, were used to carry the equipment for the meeting, stood in a line off to one side. Two other trucks were rigged up with power plants, and one of them had a spotlight on it which sent a beam straight up into the sky like a fiery sword.

  I bought a hymn book for a dime on the way into the tent, and when I was sitting there in the middle of maybe ten thousand people, I looked into it and found a card which said to fill out your name and address and infirmity and turn it in to an usher, so you could be called for healing right at the meeting. I did that, and then I joined in with the rest, and we sang some hymns from the book, with the Healer’s daughter leading us in a nice sweet soprano from the platform up front They were all good hymns, too. The kind to twist old Satan’s arm behind his back and bring him howling to his knees.