The Undertaker

by Brown, William

  “Sometimes you can be an idiot, Virgil. That's the whole point.” Tinkerton snapped. “Now see to it!” He looked up and turned his attention to Varner who was cowering in the corner, giving him an equally hard look as he motioned toward me. “Doctor, if you please.”

  Above me, I saw Varner's worried face come into view. He held a hypodermic needle in his fingers. Carefully, he swabbed my arm with a cotton ball and alcohol before he stuck the needle in.

  Dannmeyer laughed. “Alcohol? You gotta be kiddin’, Doc. The guy's going to be dead by midnight and you're worried about him getting some germs?”

  Varner looked flustered. “Don't tell me that! I don't want to know what you're doing, Dannmeyer. Just get him out of here. I'm sick of this whole business.”

  “You? You're sick of this whole business, Doctor?” Tinkerton's voice lashed him. “How unfortunate. We'll have to do something about that, won't we, Sergeant?”

  “No, no,” Varner quickly shook his head. “That was only talk, Ralph. That's all. I'm scared. You never told me I'd be involved like this. Not like this.”

  Tinkerton stared at him for a long moment. “You are absolutely right, Doctor. You weren't supposed to be involved “like this”, but now you are. In for a penny, in for a pound. I hope you understand that, I really do, for your sake. Now send the ambulance around to the service door. I want him run down to Greene's and I want it done now.”

  “Yeah, Doc,” Dannmeyer added. “Larry Greene ain't nearly as squeamish about doin’ what he's told. And personally, I like his clientele one hell of a lot better than I like yours.”

  Within minutes, I was out like a light. No hollow pipe. No echoing voices, either. I was out and I remembered nothing of the ride. The next thing I knew, and only dimly at that, was when the two ambulance attendants dropped me on my head. They had backed the ambulance to the rear loading dock of Greene's Funeral Home. None of the outside lights were on and I was lying on a stretcher. The two attendants carried it out the back door of the ambulance onto the dock when I heard a husky male voice say, “Oops!”

  “Christ, Ernie, I can't believe you did that.” another male voice said.

  “Yeah? Well, I can't believe they didn't turn on the goddamned lights out here.”

  “You dropped the guy right on his head.”

  “My hand slipped, George. So what? It's a stiff. It ain't like he's gonna sue us or anything, is he?”

  “Help me get him back on the stretcher,” George fumed. I felt hands lifting me up and turning me over. That was when I groaned.

  “Christ, he's still alive!” Ernie jumped back and dropped me again as the service door opened, flooding the loading dock with light.

  I opened my eyes and blinked. I was lying on my side on the bare concrete and everything was spinning around in big looping circles. I saw the side of the ambulance, a pair of white pants, some white shoes, white shirts, and white faces, all disjointed, bent over and staring down at me. Then I saw other legs come into view wearing black pants and shiny black leather shoes.

  “Hey, Mr. Greene, this guy's still alive,” Ernie said, astonished.

  “He groaned and his eyes opened. He's still alive,” George added.

  “Yes, we know all about it, George,” I heard a familiar, syrupy voice answer. “Rest assured, we shall take good care of him. You gentlemen may leave now.”

  “But Mister Greene,” the white legs closest to me said uncertainly. “Don't you think we oughta run him over to the hospital?”

  “Yeah, he don't look so good.”

  “As I told you, everything is perfectly fine here.” Greene's measured voice tried to reassure them. “The gentleman is in good hands. We'll see he is well taken care of.”

  “Mr. G., no offense, but this is a funeral home.”

  “George, do us a favor and do what you're told,” Greene tried to silence him, tried to regain control. “Wasn't it Doctor Varner who told you to bring the fellow over here?”

  “Well, yeah, but...”

  I heard their feet shuffling and saw the white pants slowly back away. Other hands picked me up and tossed me back on the stretcher, none-too-gently. I tried to focus on them, but I couldn't. I tried to speak, but my lips wouldn't move as they picked up the stretcher and carried it toward the building.

  “You two have made some other “special” deliveries here before, haven't you?” Greene asked. “You've transported — how shall I put it — some of Doctor Varner's more “unusual” and “delicate” patients. And you know things are not always what they appear. Some of his patients want very private work done, so that's what we provide, George.”

  “Yeah, but ...”

  The service door opened again. I turned my head and saw the towering hulk of Ralph Tinkerton step between Greene and the two ambulance attendants. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said. “Let us have no more, “Yeah buts”. If the two of you can no longer honor our little requests, then I'm certain Doctor Varner can find some new employees who will be more than willing to do the job.”

  “Uh, no, no, Mister Tinkerton, we didn't mean nuthin'.”

  “Good, very good.” Tinkerton stepped even closer, intimidating them with his presence. “See you keep it that way, or the next time your ambulance shows up out here, you might be the ones riding in the back. Better still, Doctor Varner might keep you right there at the clinic and try out some of his “personal preference” surgery on the two of you. How does that sound?”

  I heard the quick shuffling of feet on concrete as the doors on the ambulance opened and slammed shut. The ambulance's engine started up with a loud roar as I was carried through the doorway on the stretcher. The thick, metal service doors of the mortuary closed behind me and I wanted to scream, but I couldn't. My tongue wouldn't work.

  “Take him downstairs,” Tinkerton ordered.

  “Uh, look, Ralph,” I heard Greene whisper. “Given all that's happened lately, I was thinking ...”

  “Larry, you aren't doing that again, are you? Thinking? Like those two moron drivers of Varner's? I thought we agreed you'd leave the thinking to me, because you know what it does to your stomach.”

  “But Ralph...”

  “Do what you're told, Larry. Take our mouthy “friend” downstairs, then you and your people can go home. I'll handle the rest of it.”

  “But Ralph...”

  “Go home, Larry.”

  I never heard them finish the argument, if they ever did. Tinkerton's voice faded away into the darkness, taking the sound of the ambulance along with it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Keep out of reach of children…

  The next thing I felt was a numbing, shivering cold. I opened my eyes and tried to focus, but the room wouldn't stop spinning. My head pounded like an angry bass drum. I relaxed and laid there for a few moments before I tried to raise my arms, but they wouldn't move. Slowly I realized I was lying flat on my back on something hard and cold, and my arms wouldn't move because they were strapped down to the table. My legs were strapped down too. That was when I felt panic grab me by the throat. I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax. Calm down. Forget the straps. Take a few deep breaths. Inventory the body parts, one at a time. See if anything's dented, broken, or missing. As I did, the room began to stop its spinning, the fog began to lift, and slowly I felt myself coming out of it.

  My fingers and toes were all there. I could wiggle them and count them. I could feel my legs, my arms, my shoulders and my back. All of the moving parts seemed to be where they were supposed to be, so I opened my eyes again. This time they managed to focus. The floor was a clean, light-gray linoleum. The walls were white ceramic tile. And I found myself staring up at a stark white, acoustical-tile ceiling. I blinked and realized my head wasn't hurting as severely now. At least the back side where Dannmeyer had clubbed me wasn't. This time it was my forehead that hurt like hell. I frowned. My forehead? That was when I remembered George and Ernie, the two klutzes from the ambulance who dropped me on the concrete loadin
g dock.

  I raised my head a few inches and looked around. Whoa! No wonder I was cold. I was lying flat on my back, stark naked, on a long, stainless steel table, and it was ice cold on my bare butt. How odd. The table had a deep, rounded gutter and a raised lip that ran all the way around its outer edge. I looked around. The rest of the room was still fuzzy, probably from whatever was in the hypodermic needle Varner gave me. Varner! There was a hot corner of hell reserved for quacks like him.

  I tried to get up, but there were three wide, leather straps holding me down to the table. One ran across my chest, one across my waist, and one across my knees. The one across my waist passed under my forearms and had two separate buckles that held my wrists down, rendering my arms immobile. The one across my knees held my legs down. I struggled with them for a few minutes and found I could raise my shoulders, but that was as far as I could get and I stopped. It was no use, anyway.

  But where was I? I strained my ears, listening for any sound, but all I heard was the soft humming of the air conditioners. My nose twitched. What was that smell? Soap and disinfectants? Yes, but underneath I swore I smelled was the sugary-sweet aroma of flowers. My head dropped back on the stainless steel table with a painful “Clang.” I tried to think. As I did, I realized my head was slightly higher than the rest of me. No, that wasn't quite right. It was the table. The top was sloped. The far end where my feet were was three or four inches lower than my head.

  Then it hit me. My head shot up and I looked around the room in stark terror. I knew exactly where I was. I was in the in the embalming room in the basement of Greene's funeral home, strapped to an embalming table. I strained at the straps in earnest, thrashing and flopping back and forth like a cod on the deck of a Gloucester fishing trawler. I tugged with all my might, but it was no use. A Clydesdale could pull a line of beer wagons with one of those leather straps and there was no way I was going to break free from them.

  There was a large, round clock on the wall. It showed 9:20. But 9:20 when? Morning? Night? I had no idea how long I had been lying there unconscious and I found it strangely unnerving to have no idea whatsoever what time or even what day it was.

  To my right were two other embalming tables. They were identical to the one I was strapped to, except the far table, where I saw my clothes, all neatly folded in a stack. On the far wall, beyond the other tables, was an elevator and a short flight of stairs that went up and turned to the right before it passed out of sight. To the right of the stairs stood a row of stainless steel refrigerator doors designed to hold a half-dozen bodies. No matter how cold I felt lying on that stainless steel table, I knew I'd be a whole lot colder if I ended up inside one of them.

  Twisting around and looking back over my shoulder, I saw a row of tall, white enamel cabinets lining the wall. They had glass doors and glass shelves. In the first cabinet, I saw a gruesome array of brightly polished scalpels, scissors, saw-toothed knives, augers, forceps, and clamps of all sizes, lying neatly on clean, white towels. In the next cabinet, were large-bore needles, coils of rubber tubing, bowls, basins, sponges, jars, and tubes of makeup, combs, hairbrushes, and sprays. Well, you sure can't beat Larry Greene for a good time, can you?

  I turned and looked the other way. High above my left shoulder, my eyes were drawn to two tall metal cylinders clamped to the wall. Clear, plastic tubes ran down from the top of the cylinders and plugged into a metal box that sat on a small stainless steel table below. The box had dials and switches and it plugged into an electric outlet. I figured it had to be a pump of some kind and there was a second yellow-rubber tube coming out the front, with a nasty looking, big-bore needle at its end. I tried to read the label on the cylinder closest to me. It was upside down, but it had a line of cute green and yellow daises running across the top, the name “Nature's Own,” and the word “Formaldehyde” in red. Below that was a black skull-and cross-bones emblem, the word “Poison” and the warning “Keep Out of Reach of Children.” Can't argue with that one, I thought. Too bad they didn't keep it out of the reach of me too, because I had a good idea what Greene had in mind for that tank of “Nature's Own” and for that big, ugly needle.

  “Excellent! You finally woke up,” I jumped as I heard Tinkerton's loud, west Texas twang call to me from the bottom of the stairs. He wore the same dark business suit he had worn in his office. “For a moment there, I thought Varner gave you a bit too much of his “joy juice.” He's such a quack, you know. He doesn't appreciate you nearly as much as I do and it would have been so very unfortunate if you had left us prematurely, Pete.”

  “I couldn't agree more, Ralph.”

  “Ah, that's the ticket. You're regaining that irrepressible sense of humor of yours. And that's a good thing,” he said as he walked across the room toward me. “Bright-eyed. Bushy tailed. With all your faculties intact. That is marvelous, because I will have your undivided attention when we have our important, but somewhat brief conversation.”

  I jerked at the straps again, wishing I could wrap my undivided attention around his throat. “Look, Ralph,” I forced a smile. “I can take a joke as well as the next guy...”

  “A joke? Is that what you think this is?” he said as he circled the embalming table, looking down at me.

  “You've made your point, okay?”

  “And what would my point be, Peter?”

  “That I should mind my own business and get the hell out of town.”

  “Oh, you'll be doing that,” he chuckled. “You'll be getting out of town soon enough. I have no doubt about it. And you'll be happy to know that Larry Greene has picked out a lovely spot for you in the back row up at Oak Hill, right next to the other Talbotts and your old pals from New Jersey.”

  He stopped at the far end of the table near to my feet as he looked down at my body from toe to head with a cold, professional eye. “You have my compliments. You are in excellent physical condition. Trim. No fat. Good muscle tone. Nice coloration.”

  “Gee, thanks. You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”

  “Well, the body is God's temple, you know.”

  “And God doesn't think much of you tying his temple down to this table, Ralph.”

  “Probably not, but most of Larry's customers don't try to get up and run away.”

  He turned toward the intercom on the far wall and punched one of the buttons. The sparking notes of a Mozart Piano Concerto filled the room. “I hope you like that,” he said as he closed his eyes and drank it in. “You have no idea how much I detest that crap they play upstairs.”

  Tinkerton opened one of the lower drawers in a supply cabinet and pulled out a starched, white surgical gown. “You know, when you cut away all the flowers, the organ music, and all that other sanctimonious crap, even Larry Greene admits it's a pretty simple process – cut and flush, that's about it.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket and hung it on a peg near the cabinet. “Any amateur can perform one, really.” He pulled the smock on over his white shirt, pausing to look at the big, solid-gold Rolex on his wrist. “The night is young,” he said as he turned toward me. “And you and I have all the time in the world.”

  “I'm afraid you've lost me, Ralph. What are you talking about?”

  “What am I talking about?” He paused and looked down at me with a puzzled expression. “Why, the embalming process. That should be obvious by now.”

  “Embalming?” I asked, not knowing whether to laugh or scream.

  “Precisely. It is crucial that you understand what is going to happen. Once you do, and once I begin, you are going to tell me everything you know. Everything. In fact, you'll be so damned eager to tell me, the truth will come gushing out of you like shit from a Christmas goose.”

  “You can't be serious.”

  “Can't I?” he answered, smiling at me as he buttoned the smock. Even now, I think that was the coldest and most malevolent smile I had ever seen, before or after. “I'm as serious as lung cancer, boy. In fact, you've never met anyone in your miserable, little life who is hal
fway as serious as me. You see, when you showed up yesterday, you caused a great deal of consternation, not with me, because I know what I'm doing. I believe in our mission and I know it's right, but you really spooked the others. I'm sure that was exactly what you had in mind, but now it is my turn. Simply put, I want to know why you are here, why you're bothering us, Mr. Whomever-you-are. I want to know what you know, everything you know, and who you're working for.”

  “Who I'm working for?”

  “Is it Jimmy Santorini's people or Rico Patillo's? If it isn't one of them, maybe it's someone at Justice or the FBI who suddenly developed a queasy stomach over our little operation. Is that it? Or, are you really working for the local snoops downtown, as you said you were? Which is it?”

  “You can't get away with this.”

  “Peter, Peter,” he looked down at me, amused and disappointed. “Do you have any idea how many times I've gotten away with ‘this’? No, you couldn't, could you? Well let me assure you that the handful of graves you found up in Oak Hill with those grease balls from the Santorini mob in New Jersey, they are only the very small and most recent tip of a very large iceberg.”

  “I'm going to be missed, Ralph.”

  “By whom? We've tracked back on all your cell phone calls, the ones you made and the ones you received. And we've analyzed every piece of plastic in your wallet, your bank records, and every credit card charge you've made for the past year.”

  “My phone calls? My credit cards? What ...”

  “Every dime you've spent and everything there is to know about your pathetic little life — where you've been staying, what you had for breakfast, your shoe size, where you had your car fixed, everything you've bought, every bill you paid, everything.”

  I was stunned. And I'd never felt more alone in my life.

  “As a fellow professional, I must admit that the legend they wove for you — all the background and documents -– they are first class, as good as I've ever seen. Someone went to an amazing amount of trouble to put you in place. Unless of course you really are who you say you are.”