If there are funds, the public administrator honors the wishes of the will or of relatives. When no one speaks for the deceased, the office is partial to two fairly dismal, cut-rate cemeteries in New Jersey. It prefers the total expense to come in under $5,000, not always easy in a city where funeral and burial costs can be multiples of that.
Simonson Funeral Home in Forest Hills was picked by Susan Brown, the deputy public administrator, to handle George Bell once his identity was verified. It is among 16 regulars that she rotates the office’s deaths through.
George Bell’s body was hardly the first to be trapped in limbo. Some years ago, one had lingered for weeks while siblings skirmished over the funeral specifics. The decedent’s sister wanted a barbershop quartet and brass band to perform; a brother preferred something solemn. Surrogate’s Court nodded in favor of the sister, and the man got a melodious send-off.
The medical examiner was not having any luck with George Bell. The cold calls to doctors and hospitals continued, but as the inquiries bounced around Queens, the discouraging answers came back slowly and redundantly: no George Bell.
In the interim, the medical examiner filed an unverified death certificate, on July 28. The cause of death was determined to be hypertensive and arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with obesity a significant factor. This was surmised, based on the position in which the body was found, its age, the man’s size and the statistical likelihood of it being the cause. Occupation was listed as unknown.
City law specifies that bodies be buried, cremated or sent from the city within four days of discovery, unless an exemption is granted. The medical examiner can release even an unverified body for burial. Absent a corpse’s being confirmed, however, the policy of the medical examiner is not to allow cremation. What if there has been a mistake? You can’t un-cremate someone.
So days scrolled past. Other corpses streamed through the morgue, pausing on their way to the grave, while the body presumed to be George Bell entered its second month of chilled residence. Then its third.
In early September last year, a downstairs neighbor complained to the public administrator that George Bell’s refrigerator was leaking through the ceiling and that vermin might be scuttling about.
Grandma’s Attic Cleanouts was sent over to remove the offending appliance. Diego Benitez, the company’s owner, showed up with two workers.
The refrigerator was unplugged, with unfrozen frozen vegetables and Chinese takeout rotting inside. Roaches had moved in. Mr. Benitez doused it with bug spray. He plugged it in to chill the food and rid it of the smell, then cleaned it out and took it to a recycling center in Jamaica. A few weeks later, Wipeout Exterminating came in and treated the whole place.
Meanwhile, the medical examiner kept calling around hunting for old X-rays. In late September, the 11th call hit pay dirt. A radiology provider had chest X-rays of George Bell dating from 2004. They were in a warehouse, though, and would take some time to retrieve.
Weeks tumbled by. In late October, the radiology service reported: Sorry, the X-rays had been destroyed. The medical examiner asked for written confirmation. Back came the response: Never mind, the X-rays were there. In early November, they landed at the medical examiner’s office.
The X-rays were compared, and bingo. In the first week of November, nearly four months after it had arrived, the presumed corpse of George Bell officially became George Bell, deceased, of Jackson Heights, Queens.
Cold out. Streaks of sunshine splashing over Queens. On Saturday morning, Nov. 15, John Sommese settled into a rented hearse, eased into the sparse traffic and drove to the morgue. He owns Simonson Funeral Home. At age 73, he remained a working owner in a city of dwindling deaths.
At the morgue, an attendant withdrew the body from the drawer, and both medical examiner and undertaker checked the identity tag. Using a hydraulic lift, the attendant swung the body into the wooden coffin. George Bell was at last going to his eternal home.
The coffin was wheeled out and guided into the back of the hearse. Mr. Sommese smoothed an American flag over it. The armed forces had passed on a military burial, but George Bell’s years in the Army Reserves were good enough for the funeral director, and he abided by military custom.
Next stop was U.S. Columbarium at Fresh Pond Crematory in Middle Village, for the cremation. Mr. Sommese made good time along the loud streets lined with shedding trees. The volume on the radio was muted; the dashboard said Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” was playing.
While the undertaker said he didn’t dwell much on the strangers he transported, he allowed how instances like this saddened him—a person dies and nobody shows up, no service, no one from the clergy to say a few kind words, to say rest in peace.
The undertaker was a Christian, and believed that George Bell was already in another place, a better place, but still. “I don’t think everyone should have an elaborate funeral,” he said in a soft voice. “But I think burial or cremation should be with respect, or else what is society about? I think about this man. I believe we’re all connected. We’re all products of the same God. Does it matter that this man should be cremated with respect? Yes, it does.”
He consulted the mirror and blended into the next lane. “You can have a fancy funeral, but people don’t pay for kindness,” he went on. “They don’t pay for understanding. They don’t pay for caring. This man is getting caring. I care about this man.”
At U.S. Columbarium, he steered around to the rear, to the unloading dock. Another hearse stood there. Yes—a line at the crematory.
Squinting in the sun, Mr. Sommese paced in the motionless air. After 15 minutes, the dock opened up and the undertaker angled the hearse in. Workers took the coffin. Mr. Sommese kept the flag. Normally, it would go to the next of kin. There being none, the undertaker folded it up to use again.
The cremation process, what U.S. Columbarium calls the “journey,” consumed nearly three hours. Typically, cremains are ready for pickup in a couple of days. For an extra $180, the columbarium provides same-day express service, which was unneeded in this case.
Some 40,000 cremains were stored at the columbarium, almost all of them tucked into handsome individual wall niches, viewable through glass. Downstairs was a storage area near the bathrooms with a bronze tree affixed to the door. This was the Community Tree. Behind the door cremains were stacked up and stored out of sight. The budget alternative. Names were etched on the tree leaves. Some time ago, when the leaves filled up, doves were added.
Several days after the cremation, the superintendent stacked an urn shaped like a small shoe box inside the storage area. Then he nailed a metal dove, wings spread, above the right edge of the tree. It identified the new addition: “George M. Bell Jr. 1942-2014.”
On alternate Tuesdays, David R. Maltz & Company, in Central Islip, N.Y., auctions off 100 to 150 cars; other days, it auctions real estate, jewelry and pretty much everything else. It has sold the Woodcrest Country Club in Muttontown, N.Y., four engines from an automobile shredder, 22 KFC franchises. Items arrive from bankruptcies, repossessions and estates, including a regular stream from the Queens public administrator.
In the frosty gloom of Dec. 30, as a hissing wind spun litter through the air, the Maltz company had among its cars a 2011 Mustang convertible, multiple Mercedes-Benzes, two cars that didn’t even run and George Bell’s 2005 Toyota. Despite its age, it had just over 3,000 miles on it, brightening its appeal.
In a one-minute bidding spasm—“3,000 the bid, 3,500, 35 the bid, 4,000 . . .”—the car went for $9,500, beating expectations. After expenses, $8,631.50 was added to the estate. The buyer was Sam Maloof, a regular, who runs a used car dealership, Beltway Motor Sales, in Brooklyn and planned to resell it. After he brought it back, his sister and secretary, Janet Maloof, adored it. She had the same 2005 model, same color, burdened with over 100,000 miles. So, feeling the holiday spirit, he gave her George Bell’s car.
In a couple of weeks, the only other valuable possession extracted from th
e apartment, the Relic watch, came up for sale at a Maltz auction of jewelry, wine, art and collectibles. The auction was dominated by 42 estates put up by the Queens public administrator, the thinnest by far being George Bell’s. Bidding on the watch began at $1 and finished at $3. The winner was a creaky, unemployed man named Tony Nik. He was in a sulky mood, mumbling after his triumph that he liked the slim price.
Again after expenses, another $2.31 trickled into the Bell estate.
On a sun-kindled day a week later, six muscled men from GreenEx, a junk removal business, arrived to empty the cluttered Queens apartment. Dispassionately, they scooped up the dusty traces of George Bell’s life and shoveled them into trash cans and bags. They broke apart the furniture with hammers. Tinny music poured from a portable radio.
Eyeing the bottomless thickets, puzzling over what heartbreak they told of, one of the men said: “Depression, I think. People get depressed and then, Lord help them, forget about it.”
Seven hours they went at it, flinging everything into trucks destined for a Bronx dump where the rates were good.
Some nuggets they salvaged for themselves. One man fancied a set of Marilyn Monroe porcelain plates. Another worker plucked up an unopened jumbo package of Nike socks, some model cars and some brand-new sponges. Yet another claimed the television and an unused carbon monoxide detector. Gatherings from a life, all worth more than that $3 watch.
A spindly worker with taut arms crouched down to inspect some never-worn tan work boots, still snug in their box. They were a size big, but he slid them on and liked the fit.
He cleaned George Bell’s apartment wearing the dead man’s boots.
The people named to split the assets in the will were known as the legatees. Over 30 years had passed since George Bell chose them: Martin Westbrook, Frank Murzi, Albert Schober and Eleanore Albert. Plus, there was a beneficiary on two bank accounts: Thomas Higginbotham.
Elizabeth Rooney, a kinship investigator in the office of Gerard Sweeney, the public administrator’s counsel, set out to help find them. By law, she also had to hunt for the next of kin, down to a first cousin once removed, the furthest relative eligible to lay claim to an estate. They had to be notified, should they choose to contest the will.
There was time, for George Bell’s assets could not be distributed until seven months after the public administrator had been appointed, the period state law specifies for creditors to step forward.
Prowling the Internet, Ms. Rooney learned that Mr. Murzi and Mr. Schober were dead. Mr. Westbrook was in Sprakers and Mr. Higginbotham in Lynchburg, Va. Ms. Rooney found Ms. Albert, now going by the name Flemm, upstate in Worcester.
They were surprised to learn that George Bell had left them money. Ms. Flemm had spoken to him by phone a few weeks before he died; the others had not been in touch for years.
A core piece of Ms. Rooney’s job was drafting a family tree going back three generations. Using the genealogy company Ancestry.com, she compiled evidence with things like census records and ship manifests, showing Bell relatives arriving from Scotland. Her office once produced a family tree that was six feet long. Another time it traced a family back to Daniel Boone.
Ms. Rooney created paternal and maternal trees, each with dozens of names. She found five living relatives: two first cousins on his mother’s side, one living in Edina, Minn., and the other in Henderson, Nev. Neither had been in contact with George Bell in decades, and didn’t know what he did for a living.
On the paternal side, Ms. Rooney identified two first cousins, one in Scotland and another in England, as well as a third whose whereabouts proved elusive.
When that cousin, Janet Bell, was not found, protocol dictated that a notice be published in a newspaper for four weeks, a gesture intended to alert unlocated relatives. With sizable estates, the court chooses the New York Law Journal, where the bill for the notice can run about $4,000. In this instance the court picked the Wave, a Queens weekly with a print circulation of 12,000, at a cost of $247.
The cousin might have been in Tajikistan or in Hog Jaw, Ark., or even on Staten Island, and the odds of her spotting the notice were approximately zero. Among thousands of such ads that Mr. Sweeney has placed, he is still awaiting his first response.
Word came that Eleanore Flemm had died of a heart attack, on Feb. 3 at 66. Since she had outlived Mr. Bell, her estate would receive her proceeds. Her heirs were her brother, James Albert, a private detective on Long Island who barely remembered the Bell name, along with a nephew and two nieces in Florida. One did not know George Bell had existed.
Death, though, isn’t social. It’s business. No need to have known someone to get his money.
On Feb. 20, a Queens real estate broker listed the Bell apartment at $219,000. It was the final asset to liquidate. Three potential buyers toured it the next day, and one woman’s offer of $225,000 was accepted.
Three months later, the building’s board said no. A middle-aged couple who lived down the block entered the picture, and, at $215,000, was approved. Their plan was to fix up the marred apartment, turn their own place over to their grown-up son and then move in, overwriting George Bell’s life.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sweeney appeared in Surrogate’s Court to request probate of the will. Besides the two known beneficiaries, he listed the possibility of unknown relatives and the unfound cousin. The court appointed a so-called guardian ad litem to review the will on behalf of these people, who might, in fact, be phantoms.
In September, Mr. Sweeney submitted a final accounting, the hard math of the estate, for court approval. No objections arrived. Tallied up, George Bell’s assets amounted to roughly $540,000. Bank accounts holding $215,000 listed Mr. Higginbotham as the sole beneficiary, and he got that directly. Proceeds from the apartment, other accounts, a life insurance policy, the car and the watch went to the estate: around $324,000.
A commission of $13,726 went to the city, a $3,238 fee to the public administrator, $19,453 to Mr. Sweeney.
Other expenses included things like the apartment maintenance, at $7,360; a funeral bill of $4,873; $2,800 for the cleanout company; $1,663 for the kinship investigator; a $222 parking ticket; a $704 Fire Department bill for ambulance service; $750 for the guardian ad litem; and $12.50 for an appraisal of the watch that sold for $3.
That left about $264,000 to be split between Mr. Westbrook and the heirs of Ms. Flemm. Some 14 months after a man died, his estate was settled and the proceeds were good to go.
For the recipients, George Bell had stepped out of eternity and united them by bestowing his money. No one in the drawn-out process knew why he had chosen them, nor did they need to. They only needed to know him in the quietude of death, as a man whose heart had stopped beating in Queens. But he had been like anyone, a human being who had built a life on this earth.
His life began small and plain. George Bell was especially attached to his parents. He slept on the pullout sofa in the living room, while his parents claimed the bedroom, and he continued to sleep there even after they died. Both parents came from Scotland. His father was a tool-and-die machinist, and his mother worked for a time as a seamstress in the toy industry.
After high school, he joined his father as an apprentice. In 1961, he made an acquaintance at a local bar, a moving man. They became friends, and the moving man pulled George Bell into the moving business. His name was Tom Higginbotham. Three fellow movers also became friends: Frank Murzi, Albert Schober and Martin Westbrook. The men in the will. They mainly moved business offices, and they all guzzled booze, in titanic proportions.
“We were a bunch of drunks,” Mr. Westbrook said. “I’m a juicer. But George put me to shame. He was a real nice guy, kind of a hermit. Boy, we had some good times.”
In the words of Mr. Higginbotham: “We were great friends. I don’t know if you can say it this way, but we were men who loved each other.”
They called him Big George, for he was a thickset, brawny man, weighing perhaps 210 pounds. Later, his ravenous appetite
had him pushing 350.
He had a puckish streak. Once a woman invited him and Mr. Higginbotham to a party at her parents’ house. Her father kept tropical fish. She showed George Bell the tank. When he admired a distinctive fish, she said, “Oh, that’s an expensive one.” He picked up a net, caught the fish and swallowed it.
One day the friends were moving a financial firm. After they had fitted the desks into the new offices, George Bell slid notes into the drawers, writing things like: “I’m madly in love with you. Meet me at the water cooler.” Or: “There’s a bomb under your chair. Your next move might be your last.”
Dumb pranks. Big George being Big George.
Friends, though, found him difficult to crack open. There were things inside no one could get out. You learned to suppress your questions around him.
He had his burdens. His father died young. As she aged, his mother became crippled by arthritis. He cared for her, fetching her food and bathing her until her death.
He was fastidious about his money, only trusted banks for his savings. There was a woman he began dating when she was 19 and he was 25. “We got real keen on each other,” she said later. “He made me feel special.”
A marriage was planned. They spoke to a wedding hall. He bought a suit. Then, he told friends, the woman’s mother had wanted him to sign a prenuptial agreement to protect her daughter if the marriage should break apart. He ended the engagement, and never had another serious relationship.
That woman was Eleanore Albert, the fourth name in the will.
Some years later, she married an older man who made equipment for a party supply company, and moved upstate to become Ms. Flemm. In 2002, her husband died.
Distance and time never dampened the emotional affinity between her and George Bell. They spoke on the phone and exchanged cards. “We had something for each other that never got used up,” she said. She had sent him a Valentine’s Day card just last year: “George, think of you often with love.”
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 Page 30