by Gideon, John
“It most certainly is a concern of mine!” she shouted, leaning defiantly toward Stu’s tree-trunk frame. “You cannot possibly know all that’s at stake here. That young woman’s body must not be allowed to lie unattended in its present state. I’ll say it but one final time, Stuart: Do your duty as an officer of the law, or I shall be forced to do mine as a lawful resident and taxpayer.”
“If you’re threatening me, Hannie—”
“If I must bring a lawsuit to ensure that the law is carried out, that is indeed what I shall do!”
A bolt of intuition hit Carl, owing to Hannie Hazelford’s curious reference to the dead Lorna’s present state. “Miss Hazelford,” he said, “you might be interested in—”
“Hannie. Please call me Hannie.”
“Uh—Hannie. You might be interested in knowing that Lorna is to be cremated. That’s what she always wanted.”
“Cremated?” The old woman’s turquoise stare bore into Carl’s own, and her frown weakened. “And when is this to be done, may I ask?”
“Very soon. We plan to make the arrangements this afternoon, after I see my son. Tomorrow at the latest, I’d guess.”
“Cremated,” she said again, her eyes narrowing as though visualizing the actual procedure. “And you intend to have this done very soon—tomorrow at the latest?”
“The sooner the better,” said Carl, watching relief pour into Hannie’s face. “It’s what Lorna would’ve wanted.”
“I see. Well, if she’s to be cremated, there isn’t much point to an autopsy, is there?” She drew her orange slicker around her tiny body and turned slowly toward the door of the lobby. “Forgive my making such a nuisance of myself, Stuart. I do hope you’re not angry.”
“I’m not angry, Hannie. It’s been a bad weekend.”
“Yes, quite.” She turned back toward Carl when she reached the door and paused before pushing it open. “You will see to the cremation, won’t you?”
Carl felt a chill but shook it off. “Yes, Hannie,” he promised. “I’ll see to it.”
The old woman smiled feebly, then pushed through the door and headed for her Jaguar.
Mitch Nistler pressed his tongue against the interior of his broken lip and tasted blood. He watched through the window as Corley the Cannibal Strecker roared away in his new four-wheel-drive Blazer, with its huge tires and blinding chrome roll bars, the ice-haired Stella DeCurtis seated next to him.
“Fuck you!” Mitch screamed, now that they were safely out of earshot, spattering the glass with bloody spittle. “Fuck you and that silly cartoon cunt of yours! Fuck you both!”
He turned from the window and winced. His rib cage ached. He hoped that Strecker had merely bruised his ribs and not broken any. The son of a bitch had gone King Kong on him, had actually slammed him against a wall and treated him like a punching bag.
Cannibal was a strong believer in violence. He considered pain the Great Persuader, and he felt no compunction about using it on someone half his size if a point needed proving. Even on someone like Mitch Nistler, an old friend.
As usual, the persuasion worked. After catching two cement-hard fists to the solar plexus and one more to the jaw, Mitch had agreed to share in Strecker’s “good fortune,” which meant becoming a partner, as Strecker euphemistically termed it, in the crack business.
Some partner: In reality Mitch would become a throwaway, a low-level courier of drugs and cash between Greely’s Cove and Seattle. Every week he was to take a load of processed crack and cash (the proceeds from Strecker’s retailing in Greely’s Cove and surrounding towns) across the Puget Sound to an alley off Seattle’s Pike Street, there to meet other throwaways who worked for Strecker’s unnamed distributor. He would deliver the money and receive a load of unprocessed cocaine, which he would carry to an old house near his own place on the outskirts of Greely’s Cove. There, in their newly outfitted “laboratory,” Strecker and Stella DeCurtis would convert it to crack.
Mitch, of course, was not entitled to a percentage of the take, even though he would bear the lion’s share of risk in transporting cash and drugs; his compensation would be a measly $250 a week, since he was a mere serf in the feudal world of cocaine peddling. Just as Strecker was a vassal of his lord, the distributor, who himself owed fealty to an even higher mandarin.
“Hey, what the fuck are you screamin’ about?” Strecker had bellowed after hearing Mitch’s complaint about the piddling money. “That’s thirteen large a year, little man. You’ve never seen that much green in your whole life, I bet. And don’t tell me you couldn’t use it. How much is that old sleaze undertaker paying you, anyway? Eight grand a year, maybe ten, to sink your hands into dead people’s guts? I’m more than doubling your income, you little shit. You should be kissing my ass with gratitude.”
Mitch moaned.
Maybe Strecker was right. In some ways Mitch was as much old Matt Kronmiller’s slave as he had been Cannibal’s in Walla Walla. His job paid shit, a good share of which went back to Kronmiller as rent for this tottery old house, with its weed-infested yard, swayback roof, and clanking pipes. And when Kronmiller shouted, which was often, he jumped, just as he had jumped for Cannibal back in D Block.
Mitch still fantasized now and then about working hard and learning enough about undertaking to gain entry into a prestigious institution like the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, but he knew in his heart that his job as Kronmiller’s embalming assistant was a dark and certain dead end. He could never aspire to full membership in the profession, for he’d read in one of Kronmiller’s textbooks that “practitioners of mortuary science,” as they called themselves, must be super Boy Scouts—energetic, modest, cooperative, cheerful, brave, clean, reverent, neat, tasteful in dress, and the possessor of a strong face. Christ almighty, he often lamented, even the Boy Scouts don’t demand a strong face! Mitch’s criminal record alone, never mind his alcoholism and severely inferior face, shattered any hope for admission to a mortuary-science school.
Maybe he should be kissing Cannibal’s ass: The extra money might get him out from under Kronmiller’s thumb. By exercising a little thrift, he might be able to score a real apartment someday, a place with a telephone and a dishwasher, maybe even a hot tub. He might be able to unload his pathetic, rusting-out El Camino for a real car, something like a Camaro or a Trans Am. He might actually achieve a smidgen of respectability.
Oh yeah, respectability.
Who am I trying to kid? he asked himself while making his way painfully to the bathroom. Do you get respectable by being a throwaway in the crack business, by being so low on the totem pole that your arrest and cooperation with the police can’t hurt anybody important, because you don’t know anybody important? By earning $250 a week, helping to turn teenagers into drooling, twitching addicts? By letting yourself be terrorized into violating your parole rules and joining a criminal enterprise?
Oh, a few years of this, and I’ll be up for president of the Rotary.
Mitch splashed his battered face with water from a corroded faucet, then stared at himself in the cracked mirror of his medicine cabinet. The face that stared back was in every way inferior: hooded, inert eyes; sunken, stubbly cheeks; colorless lips stretched taut over crooked teeth. In the thirty-three years he’d owned it, this face had disserved him amply. This face had been no ally.
Lindsay Moreland hated funerals, and she hated mortuaries. She wasn’t wild about morticians, either. The trappings and rituals of funerals, tinged as they are with superstition and unspoken dread, grated against her rational view of the universe. The Chapel of the Cove was everything she hated about mortuaries. White antebellum columns. Gothic windows with panes of amethyst, ruby, and amber. Saturnine silence.
Matthew Kronmiller, Practitioner of Mortuary Science, epitomized the smoothly predatory undertaker, which was why Lindsay was glad she had refused to let her mother come along on this trip to the chapel. Nora Moreland would have been putty in Kronmiller’s hands.
He was
a potbellied, mustachioed man of seventy, whose demulcent voice flowed like oil, whose expensive chalk-striped suit had pressed-in creases that looked sharp enough to draw blood. His left eye was of glass, and he had longish, silver hair and hanging jowls that nearly covered his gold collar pin. His words carried the authority of a man who had staged thousands of funerals, who knew better than anyone what was “right and proper” in the handling of the dead. Best not to
argue, the authoritative tone suggested. Best to shut up and pay up.
“You understand, of course, that even though Mrs. Trosper will be cremated, she will nonetheless require a casket,” he intoned, folding his hands on the polished mahogany table of the elegant consultation room, gazing with his one good eye into Lindsay’s face. “Many of our friends who choose cremation”—Lindsay noted his use of friends rather than clients—“find that casket selection is still very important, because it’s the final opportunity to express love and appreciation for the departed in a material way.”
And that “final expression” had better be a rich one, or you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life, Lindsay wanted to add. Or worse, the offended corpse might climb out of that cheap, uncomfortable coffin before it’s cremated and crawl into bed with you in the wee hours, just to teach you a lesson. But she merely nodded, pretending to agree.
“And of course there’s the matter of a vessel for the cremated remains, together with a suitable memorial,” added Kronmiller.
“You mean an um and a plaque?” asked Lindsay.
The old undertaker cleared his throat and smiled indulgently. “Yes, that’s essentially what we mean, Miss Moreland. We’re certain that you’ll want to select these items very carefully. They are, after all, forever.”
He rose from his padded chair and ushered her into the sumptuous selection room, where a dozen caskets stood on display like islands of comfort in a cool sea of voluptuous blue drapery and gray carpet. The caskets boasted wood and satin, or copper and velvet, all set off in the warm hues of life.
“A suitable casket for Mrs. Trosper might be this one,” said Kronmiller with heavy solemnity, indicating a gorgeous hardwood model with white satin upholstery and brass handles. For a moment Lindsay’s mind doted on the pleasant image of Lorna at rest in this work of art, comfortable at last in billowy white satin. But then she shook herself awake.
“How much?” she asked, interrupting the mortician’s litany of this model’s features.
“Only seventy-six hundred,” assured Kronmiller.
Lindsay blinked and caught her breath. “No, I don’t believe that one would be suitable at all.”
“Oh, but it’s such an elegant piece—”
“My sister was not an elegant woman, at least not in that way. The thought of burning a casket like this would’ve revolted her. She’d want something simple, unostentatious. Do you have anything like that?”
Within the next five minutes Lindsay had selected a gray model of light wood. Simple cotton upholstery instead of satin. Stainless-steel handles instead of brass. Three hundred dollars instead of seventy-six hundred. Five minutes more and she had chosen a small urn from a collection encased in glass, and a simple wooden plaque with a brass plate, upon which would be engraved Lorna’s name, birthdate, and date of passing.
Mitch Nistler’s El Camino swung off Sockeye Drive into the shaded brick access road of the Chapel of the Cove. Parked in the front portico of the white-columned funeral home, sheltered from the steady beat of rain, was a blue Saab Turbo that Mitch had never seen before. He continued around the side of the building to the employees’ parking area, where sat Matt Kronmiller’s brown Mercedes.
He let himself in through the garage and sidled between a pair of massive, sin-colored hearses. A few steps down an interior corridor brought him to the preparation room, which had tiled walls of apple green, a floor of immaculate white, and an array of glistening equipment that included two operating tables with “flush receptors” for draining away human fluids. A framed sign hung on one wall, a little reminder to promote reverence:
“Regard Every Body As Though It Is Your
Most Beloved Relative.”
Taped to the frame of the sign was a note addressed to M. N. in Kronmiller’s unmistakable bold cursive. Mitch’s heart fluttered as he took it down and unfolded it, for this would surely be the old batfucker’s final word to him, the long-anticipated walking papers. Mitch had played hooky the night before and had been late this morning, so the final word would come as no surprise, not after his many transgressions. That he had lasted six years was something of a miracle.
But the note did not contain the final word. Actually it was quite civil. Apparently written sometime the previous afternoon, it informed Mitch that Mrs. Lorna Trosper’s family had called and specified cremation without open-casket viewing, making embalming unnecessary. Therefore, Mitch need not prepare the remains for embalming. He was off the hook. Kronmiller probably didn’t even know that he hadn’t shown up yesterday.
He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief. For once in his life, the fates had favored him. He still had a job.
Voices came to his ears: Kronmiller’s hushed baritone and the more direct contralto of a woman. Mitch slipped out of the preparation room and down the carpeted corridor, following the voices to the nearest of two slumber rooms, where many a bereaved family had beheld the cosmetic triumph of the embalmer.
Mitch grasped the handle of the service door that gave access to the slumber room and shoved it open a crack. Standing with Kronmiller was a young woman who seemed radiant in the pietistic light streaming through the Gothic windows. She had flaxen hair that swept back in a wave from a noble forehead, over the ears and down the neck almost to her shoulders. She had eyebrows thick with fine blond hair, deeply set eyes of startling size and blueness, and severe cheekbones that could have used a bit more flesh. Her body was lithe and tall, her shoulders square under a knitted pullover of bright green. She wore loose, pleated trousers of beige wool and sensible Reeboks on her feet.
Mitch thought her beautiful beyond belief and vaguely familiar.
“As I told you on the phone yesterday,” the young woman was saying in a slightly irritated tone, “we don’t wish to view the body, and we don’t want a traditional funeral. One of Lorna’s close friends has suggested a casual get-together in the park for anyone who wants to come, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. We’ll have some of her favorite music on tape, some light refreshments, and a little good, old-fashioned, heart-to-heart conversation. In other words, Mr. Kronmiller, we won’t need your slumber room here, and we won’t need your chapel for a service. All I want is for you to put the body in a casket, cremate it, and send me the bill. Can you do that for me?”
Kronmiller seemed nonplussed, which pleasured Mitch immensely, and after clearing his throat loudly, he said, “As you wish, Miss Moreland. We must caution you, however, that the weather this time of year can be very unstable, and a rainstorm could very well ruin your gathering in the park. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to—”
“The park has a covered barbecue area, Mr. Kronmiller. I estimate that we could squeeze fifty to sixty people into it if we had to. Now, please excuse me. I have a crowded schedule this afternoon.”
After signing the necessary release forms, Lindsay Moreland retired through an adjacent chapel with Kronmiller gliding after her, through the selection room with its rows of caskets, and finally out the front door of the funeral home to her Saab. Every step of the way, Kronmiller effused assurances that things would be done exactly as Lindsay had specified, that she was not to trouble herself in any way whatsoever.
Mitch was pretending to inspect the floor of the preparation room for dirt as his boss returned. Kronmiller had jettisoned his bedside manner and now wore a black scowl.
“What are you doing here on a Sunday?” he bellowed. “Didn’t you see my note yesterday? And what the hell happened to your face?”
“Hi, Mr. Kronmiller,”
answered Mitch, reflexively touching the lip that Cannibal Strecker had fattened. “I just came by to see if you wanted anything done about the Trosper cremation.”
The old man blinked with his good eye, and his wrinkled visage softened a bit. “Good God, some people don’t know the meaning of the word respect,” he growled, apparently having lost his concern over Mitch’s lacerated mouth. “The woman who just left was Lorna Trosper’s sister. Won’t pay for a closed-casket viewing before cremation and doesn’t even want a service in the chapel, for the love of Pete. A ‘casual get-together in the park’ is what she wants, with a ‘little good, old-fashioned conversation. ’ That sure as hell isn’t my idea of respect for the departed. It was all I could do to sell her a three-hundred-dollar box! I’m glad we don’t get many of those, Mitch, because if we did, it wouldn’t pay to turn on the lights in this place.”
And you’d be forced to survive on your income property and your stock portfolio, thought Mitch. Poor baby.
“As long as you’re here,” said Kronmiller, “you might as well cremate her. Use display casket number nine, since we don’t even stock those plain wooden jobs anymore. Then put the ashes in one of these.” He handed over a slip of paper with the model of a “vessel” written on it. “I’ll take care of the engraving on the memorial tomorrow.”
He headed for the rear door, then paused and turned back to Mitch. “I’m going home to watch golf on TV. No matter what happens, don’t bother me for the rest of the day, understand?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Kronmiller.”
The old man went out the door, leaving his assistant alone in the hushed funeral home, and Mitch set about his chore, feeling almost lighthearted.
Cremating a corpse is not hard work, and requires few skills: Dump the body into a casket that’s suitable for burning; roll the casket into the committal room, and rig it onto the catafalque, a mechanized slab that inserts the casket and remains into the retort; start a fire in the retort, which is no more difficult than turning on a gas kitchen range, and wait ninety minutes, checking the draft every now and then to ensure maximum temperature. The process reduces a dead body to about six pounds of ashes and bone fragments—“suitable for bottling,” Mitch always said to himself with a laugh whenever he handled cremation chores.
