The Undertaker

by Brown, William

  The sun would not set for at least a half hour. Sickles Avenue was a four-lane commercial boulevard that proved to be no harder to find than Sedgwick. The 1800 block where Center Financial Advisors was located looked like it had once been a fashionable neighborhood commercial street back in the 1920s or 1930s, but that was a long time ago. Now, it was a badly run-down strip of small stores that wouldn't make it any place else. The surrounding residential area showed the first signs of gentrification, but the stores would take a lot longer. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven. The overhead wires sagged in long loops down the street and no one even tried to keep up with the gang graffiti. It would take a lot of gentries and a ton of city money before the Tae-Kwon-Do parlor, the second-hand clothing shop, the adult book store, two gritty neighborhood bars, and a boarded-up Baptist Mission became art galleries, boutiques, trendy restaurants, and a Starbucks.

  Half the block was vacant and Center Financial Advisors sat in the middle. Why an accounting firm would locate in this seedy, eclectic mix was beyond me. Center? Of what? Advising whom? About what? Perhaps Pete moved his accounting business here so he could be in the vanguard of the commercial tidal wave soon to follow, but the image of the daring financial entrepreneur didn't exactly fit the slug that let the house on Sedgwick go to hell.

  I parked the Bronco along the curb three doors beyond 1811 and walked back. The company name was stenciled on the door and on the front plate glass window. There were no curtains or Venetian blinds to screen the view this time. Looking inside, I saw someone had sanitized the accounting office as thoroughly as they had the house. It was empty from wall to wall, without a broken chair, a cardboard box, or a scrap of paper to be seen anywhere. If I asked around, I'd bet the same Allied van had hit them both.

  I kept walking down the street, then turned and followed the cracked sidewalk around the corner. The side street looked even worse than Sickles. Weeds were sprouting through the uneven concrete. Old McDonalds bags, empty beer cans, and glass from broken wine bottles littered the small strip of bare dirt that passed for landscaping between the sidewalk and the curb. I walked to the end of the building and took a quick look around the corner before I turned and set off down the alley. It was cratered with deep ruts and potholes. Someone had tried to fill them with loose rock and pieces of asphalt, but that didn't accomplish very much. Off to my right I could see the rear yards of the two-story houses that fronted on the next street over. Most were cheap three and four flat apartment buildings with brick walls or tall wooden fences along the alley, as one would expect. Looking down the line, most of them looked badly run down, but every third or fourth building was being renovated. Signs of life? Too little and way too late for Pete.

  On the left side of the alley, the rear walls of the stores that fronted on Sickles were another matter. This wasn't the high rent district. The few windows that remained and hadn't been bricked up were set high in the wall, opaque with years of crusted dirt, and covered with one-inch steel bars. The rear doors had been replaced with thick steel plates recessed deep into the doorways. Their hinges and locks were on the inside, where they would be difficult for a burglar to get at. Dumpsters lay at various odd angles up against the rear walls or jammed into the occasional alcoves. I looked over the top of several and saw most were half-filled with trash. When I got to the dumpster for 1811, I peered over the top and saw it was empty. Not just empty, this one was empty as if someone had got in and cleaned it out on their hands and knees. There wasn't a scrap of paper, a banana peel, not even a broken beer bottle to be found. Somehow, after everything I'd seen that day, it came as no surprise. The lawyers in the dark suits, the deputy sheriffs in their big brown cruisers, and even the men in the long, black hearses were nothing if not thorough. For a job like that, I wondered if the Junior Associates at Hamilton, Keogh and Hollister drew straws, or did they hire the work out.

  There was nothing more to be gained in the alley, so I continued on to the far end and came back around to Sickles again. As I turned the corner, I saw a car stopped in the street next to my Bronco. It was that big, white, Lincoln Town Car, the one from the funeral home. Its engine was running and the driver's side door was hanging open. Between the Bronco and the Lincoln stood the big guy in the beige suit, blue shirt, and ponytail. I couldn't see his face, but there couldn't be two guys who looked like him in the State of Ohio, much less Columbus. As I watched, he cupped his hand and blocked the last rays of the setting sun as they reflected off the windshield as he looked inside the Bronco.

  “Hey,” I shouted and ran toward him. “Wait a minute!” As I got closer, he shook his head and looked back at me, frowning, as if I were some minor irritant he'd found on his shoe. When I got within twenty feet, he slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out that big chrome .45 automatic again. He didn't bother pointing it at me. That wasn't necessary. He simply let it hang down his pants leg with a casualness and skill that told me I had just made a very bad mistake. First, because he looked like he knew precisely what he was doing. Second, in that neighborhood no one would know or care if he did.

  “That's close enough, Ace,” he warned.

  “Who are you?” I demanded to know, bluffing, but figuring if he hadn't shot me yet I could at least ask.

  “No. We're gonna try it the other way. Who the fuck are you?”

  “You know who I am, I'm Peter Talbott, from Boston.”

  “Is that so? Then who was the guy they buried?”

  “I don't have the slightest idea,” I offered meekly.

  His grip tighten on the pistol. For an instant, I thought he might raise it and shoot me, but he didn't. He just stared at me, angry and frustrated. “That bastard Tinkerton!”

  “Tinkerton? You're the one who brought me here,” I bristled. “I was minding my own business back in Boston until you squeezed your super-sized Soprano's suit into my front seat and got me all worked up over those obituaries last night. You wanted me to come here. You were baiting me, and you still are.”

  “Let's say I wasn't getting anywhere on my own and I thought having another one of you Talbotts show up in Columbus might make things interesting.”

  Standing up close like this, I could see he was even bigger and more muscular than he first looked. I was sure he only carried the automatic to scare off idiots like me and to keep them from getting themselves really hurt, because he could have snapped me in two with his bare hands if he wanted to.

  He was looking me over, sizing me up too, until he began to laugh. “This is rich,” he said with a loud roar. “This is fucking rich. Tinkerton brings in his Talbott and we bring in one of our own.”

  “Why? So you could get a big laugh out of it? Well, I'm not laughing.”

  “Neither was Greene or Dannmeyer.”

  “You've been following me, haven't you?”

  “Yeah, and I bet they crapped their freakin’ pants when you showed up. I'd have love to see Tinkerton's face, because mistakes like you ain't supposed to happen.”

  “What mistake? What are you talking about?”

  “You and your wife – one of you dead and the other one still alive.”

  “What's going on here? Are you going to tell me, or not?”

  “No. And believe me, you don't want to know,” he said as he slipped the automatic inside his jacket. “Besides, I'm not sure I could. It's all smoke and mirrors like a goddamned shell game.” He relaxed and leaned back against the side of the Lincoln. I would have suggested he be careful and not tip it over, but he still had his hand on that big cannon inside his coat.

  “Look, Ace,” he finally said. “I usually don't give free advice and I never give it twice, so you listen up, and listen good. Go back to Boston. I know I kinda lured you here with those two obituaries, but when you showed up they didn't panic or do nuthin’. In fact, they haven't done a damned thing, but blow you off, so that's it. Finito! Go back to Boston, because you're messing in some very serious shit here. Keep poking around and you're gonna end up in a box
next to that other Peter Talbott up in Oak Hill. Us or them, you're gonna get your ticket punched.”

  He turned and opened the driver's side door of the Lincoln.

  “Wait a minute,” I called out to him. “Who's we?”

  “You don't want to know,” he sighed.

  “Then who are you?” I dared to ask.

  He paused and thought it over before he answered. “My name's Parini, Gino Parini. Some people say I kill people for a living. I'm sure that's a major exaggeration, but you don't ever want me to see your sorry ass again. You got that?” He gave me one last long, hard look, then added, “By the way, it's good you got rid of that Rolling Stones shit. You ain't no freakin’ college kid no more.”

  “You're right, but I needed something more formal for my funeral.”

  “Still the smart ass, huh? Well, you keep doin’ what you've been doin’ and it still could be.” Then he got in the Lincoln, slammed the door, and drove away.

  Me? I stood there, glad I hadn't wet my pants.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Marion, madam librarian…

  In the morning, after a hot shower, I saw one of those homey, red-sided Bob Evans restaurants at the interstate interchange. Back home in Los Angeles, Terri would have insisted on our usual morning fare of yogurt, granola, bean curd, and green tea. I'd be hungry again an hour later, but it would have been a healthy hungry. Bob's menu had yogurt, granola, and some whole wheat, but I guess Ohio had never heard of bean curd or green tea, because there was none to be found. My baser instincts took over and I forced myself to down four cups of high-test coffee and a really big plate of country biscuits and gravy. Nope, you just can't beat that fine mid-western cuisine. The cholesterol took at least three months off my life, but that Ohio stuff would stick around all day; probably well into the next one, too.

  Over my last cup of coffee, I realized I had a ton of questions, but not very many answers. What about those obituaries? The identical names? The private funerals no one attended? Common graves at the cheap end of a country cemetery? A surly sheriff, a greasy mortician, and a lawyer? The empty house and office? Like any good engineer, the vacuum of an unanswered question, much less a whole flock of them, drove me nuts. If I couldn't compute something, measure it, or put a wrench on it, I couldn't ignore it no matter how hard I tried. Questions? Questions, but no answers. And when you have questions you can't answer, the best person to go see, is your friendly, neighborhood librarian.

  The phone book at Bob's counter showed that the main public library was downtown. It opened its doors at 9:30 A. M., and I was there. It was one of those big, neo-classic white marble affairs that had been surrounded by taller and more modern steel and glass buildings. I parked in the rear lot and went in the back door only to find the recently renovated interior was as modern and trendy as the exterior was classic. It was filled with primary colors, florescent lights, computer terminals, plastic chairs, and formica tables. From the directory on the entry wall, I saw the building contained a senior center, playrooms for kids, video tapes, audio tapes, CDs, an auditorium, meeting rooms, big civic displays, and a coffee bar. Somewhere in there, I figured they had to stock a few books.

  The Reference Room was on the third floor. I trudged up the open staircase to the reference desk wearing my most helpless smile and asked for directions to the newspapers. The lady librarian gave me the kind of look she usually reserved for slow third graders. She jabbed her yellow #2 pencil behind her ear, slipped off her tall stool, and escorted me back through the brightly colored techno-maze to the periodical shelves that lined the back wall, the last refuge of the reader. She explained they kept paper copies of the local dailies for the past three months, piled in neat stacks on the shelves. After three months they were recorded on microfilm, going all the way back to 1896, and were filed in a row of file cabinets near the bank of microfilm readers that ran down the center of the room. Looking at the stacks of newspapers and the storage cabinets, I figured the last three months would more than do for starters.

  I had no idea what I was looking for, but I knew I would find it in the obituaries and I knew the Greene Funeral Home would be at the bottom of it. Settling in at a table, I began with the current issue of the Daily News and started thumbing my way back, day-by-day, focusing on the local news, particularly any fatal accidents, and of course the obituaries. I went through the last week of newspaper stories and found nothing about a Peter and Theresa Talbott being killed in a bloody automobile accident out on the Interstate, or killed at a railroad crossing, by a cement mixer, at a bridge abutment, or any other place. Would that have been a big story in a town of a million and a half? Two dead in a bloody smash-up? Hard to say, but based on all the junk news they did carry, I couldn't believe it wouldn't at least have made the local section of the newspaper. There was an expose about cow-doping at this year's state fair, a story about the Governor's upcoming marketing trip to Tanzania, two pages on the Ohio State football team practice, and a big ad for the Cucumber Festival in Emporia, but the early and violent demise of that local accounting giant, Peter E. Talbott and his lovely wife Theresa did not appear to have made the editor's cut. If the funeral and the burial was a closed and very private affair, it looked like the automobile accident was too. Funny, but that was exactly what I expected.

  I neatly refolded the sections of the newspapers, returned the stack to the shelf, and carried the next few week's over to the table with a soft “Thump.” I sat down, wondering why libraries always bought the hardest chairs in town. They might be modern and trendy, but no human being could take more than an hour or so in one of them. My backside was used to a modern, ergonomic work station chair and trying to find a soft spot in one of these molded, hard-plastic monsters was hopeless. They probably special-ordered them from the Marquis de Sade Furniture Company. I gave a painful sigh and shifted my butt again, but this was going to be a long, painful morning.

  Day-by-day, week-by-week, I worked my way back through the month, poring over the obituaries. There must have been thirty to forty of them each day and I noticed there were at least a dozen different funeral homes in town plus their branches. Doing a rough count in my head, the Greene Funeral Home in Peterborough must handle maybe five to ten percent of them. Throw in the services, the coffins, the embalming, the flowers, the wakes, the hearses and limos, and the burials, it made a nice piece of business, I thought, enough to keep Lawrence Greene in colorful silk ties for the duration. Each time I came across his name, I paid particular attention to the details. After all, next to air currents over airplane wings and non-linear dynamics, if I had read anything over the past year it was obituaries.

  I read them and reread them. The devil was in the details, but I saw nothing odd about the dozens of funerals Greene had handled, how the people had died, where they buried them, or the causes of death. Like the other funeral homes in the area, most of Greene's clients were quite old, in their seventies and eighties, and that wasn't what I was looking for. They came in every size, race, occupation, and background. You had to give him that much. Greene was an equal-opportunity mortician. He did old people and young, children and young adults, men and women, white and black, and the written obituaries were as varied as the people described in them.

  Some of the obituaries ran to several paragraphs, some even longer, listing all the civic groups that the deceased had belonged to and listing the sometimes numerous surviving relatives, best friends, military records, hobbies, dogs, cats, and anything else the family could think of. Sometimes they mentioned charities and memorials where donations could be made in lieu of flowers. Usually that was a clue as to how someone died. From the names and titles, I could see these people had died from every conceivable cause, with memorial donations recommended to every charity in town. In stark contrast, some of the obituaries were a brief two or three sentences. Other than that, I saw nothing unusual in the ones for Greene's. No pattern. No hint of anything out of the ordinary in any of them. And as the morning slowly pass
ed, I began to think I was the one who was nuts, a crank and a paranoid who was looking for goblins under the bed when there weren't any there to find.

  In fact, I had to go back a full eight full weeks before something unusual did catch my eye. It was just one more obituary in the long line of the hundreds I had scanned over the past hour and a half, but this one jumped right off the page:

  SKEPPINGTON, RICHARD C., age 52, of Columbus, died Tuesday at the Varner Clinic following a tragic automobile accident. Mr. Skeppington, formerly of Atlanta, was a warehouse supervisor with a local trucking company. By authority of Ralph Tinkerton of Columbus, Executor. (See also SKEPPINGTON, JUDITH M., wife, accompanying). Funeral services for both at 10:30 AM today, Greene Funeral Home, 255 E. Larkin, Peterborough. Internment, Oak Hill Cemetery, following.

  That sounded eerily familiar, and his wife's death notice was just below:

  SKEPPINGTON, JUDITH M, age 48, of Columbus, died Sunday at Varner Clinic following a tragic automobile accident. Loving wife of Richard (See also SKEPPINGTON, RICHARD C., above.) Retired after thirty years as a schoolteacher in the Atlanta area. By authority of Ralph Tinkerton of Columbus, Executor. Funeral services for both at 10:30 AM today, Greene Funeral Home, 255 E. Larkin, Peterborough. Internment, Oak Hill Cemetery, following.

  Interesting, I thought. And not very original. The language was almost a boilerplate to Terri's and mine. Another automobile accident. Husband and wife, both dead. Again, the ever-popular Varner Clinic and the Greene Funeral Home. Burial at Oak Hill Cemetery by the authority of that eminent local barrister Mr. Ralph Tinkerton of Columbus, Executor. Suddenly, the hard plastic chair wasn't nearly as uncomfortable. I leaned back, positively clucking to myself now. I had found something. Amazing. And with that happy realization, the frustration seemed to melt away. I eagerly pulled down the next stack of newspapers and waded into them at a more leisurely pace, knowing that I had found the link and convinced that I would find a whole lot more if I kept at it.