Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  Most of Big Al’s customers were self-admitted geeks. The patrons were mostly men who spent more time on their hobbies than they did on their wives, kids, or full-time jobs, if they were lucky enough to have any of them. But if you needed a new rotor on a remote control helicopter or an artist easel or the latest philatelic collection book, Big Al’s was the place, and Big Al himself was the man.

  The king of pricing and selection, Big Al was the pauper of organization. Products lined his store in haphazard fashion, the shelves burgeoning, towering to a full height of ten feet. Big Al, a name that was anything but a misnomer, had long taken to hiring local teenagers who were both spry and coordinated enough to scurry up the ladders he kept in the store to pull items off the acrophobia-inducing shelves. And while the owner may have been too large and too old to climb the ladders himself, he knew where virtually every item in the store was located. The secret was easy. Everyday before he left for home, Big Al pushed his considerable waistline through the aisles and read the contents of every shelf to himself out loud. It was inventory by rote, and that suited Big Al just fine. It was as precise as his accounting method which had generated two decades of favorable tax returns.

  Paul Cannon parked his car at a meter, half a block from Big Al’s. He glanced around the street and back at his car as he fed a quarter into the meter, and then walked briskly towards the direction of the hobby shop. He had ten minutes to decide what to get, and his mind was already racing through the hodgepodge layout of his favorite store. Paul Cannon, the brilliant NASA mind, knew the contents of Big Al’s hobby shop almost as well as its owner. And he knew that the metric conversion calculator in the glass counter in the back of the store was a must have. A gift any eight-year-old, son of a NASA scientist, would appreciate.

  Big Al was half-perched on a stool behind the register counter when Paul Cannon threw open the door.

  “Good afternoon, Paul,” Al said. His closely cropped white beard was trimmed to perfection. His face was red, the capillaries bringing blood to the surface of the skin as it tended to do for those who favored their after-work sauce. “Can I help you find something?”

  “No thanks, Al. I only have a few minutes. Got the kid’s birthday in less than an hour and don’t even have a card.”

  “Saw your robot on the news today. Pretty cool stuff.”

  Paul paused long enough to smile. “Thanks. We’re all pretty excited.”

  “What’s on the boy’s wish list?”

  “According to his mother, he wanted a clown.”

  “I’m all out of clowns this week.”

  “Then I guess I‘ll have to look around,” Paul retorted, turning the corner of the far aisle that led to the do-it-yourself chemistry kits aimed at high school students but suitable for the son of a genius. Paul, his khaki pants and blue oxford wrinkled from three consecutive days of wear, pulled several kits from the shelf. He barely noticed the other customer slide past him in the aisle. It was the wake of her perfume that caught his attention. Box in hand, Paul Cannon turned as the woman stopped to gaze at various batteries locked in a standing glass case.

  Paul Cannon stole a glance at the woman’s recently curled and highlighted hair and admired her well-figured profile. As his eyes went from her hair to her waist to her stockings and back up, Ariana’s face turned towards her stalker.

  Paul Cannon’s eye’s jumped before gradually turning into an inquisitive squint. “Don’t I know you?”

  Ariana didn’t flinch. She slowly turned back towards the glass case of expensive batteries, her attention still focused on the man next to her, his reflection in the glass case more than clear enough for her to identify him.

  “Are you sure I don’t know you?”

  “No,” Ariana said tersely, almost in a whisper.

  Paul Cannon would not relent. Being right was hardwired into his ego, particularly his ego with regard to memory. And his ego wouldn’t let it go.

  “Wait … I got it! I may not remember your name, but I definitely remember you from…”

  “Not another word,” Ariana hissed. Her dark eyes were soulless, her voice on the verge of evil. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me.” Ariana, turned her back and continued down the aisle in the direction of the door.

  By the time Paul Cannon regained his composure, Ariana had exited the store and was on the way to her car.

  Ten minutes later, Paul Cannon left the store with his metric calculator and chemistry kit encased in generic floral wrapping paper. He made his way to his BMW, threw his presents in the trunk, and got behind the wheel of the vehicle that had been nothing but trouble.

  Across the street and down the block, Ariana watched from behind her oversized sunglasses as Paul Cannon drove down the street in the direction of home. With twenty minutes until clown-time he never once looked in the rear-view mirror.

  Chapter 44

  The three hearses were parked in the back of the Money & Ceasar Funeral Home as Clark pulled into the otherwise empty lot. He straightened his tie in the rear-view mirror, a fashion offering to the deceased in case he had the misfortune of running into one on their home turf.

  An old black man washing the cars dipped a brush into a bucket of sudsy water and nodded to Clark as he passed.

  “How often do you wash those?” Clark stopped and asked out of curiosity.

  “Every other day if the weather is nice and they’ve been in service. If they haven’t been out from under the carport, I don’t clean em.’”

  “You wash them by hand in the winter?”

  “I take ’em to the car wash when it gets really cold, but I try to wash ’em by hand most of the time.”

  “This isn’t really cold?”

  “Really cold is anything below freezing. Can’t wash a car with ice. We are near forty-five today. Gives me something to do.”

  “I guess everyone’s last ride should be in a clean car,” Clark joked.

  “You got that right. Can’t be driving the dead around in dirty cars. Bad for business. Bad for karma.”

  “Washing them every other day is bad for the finish.”

  “No worrying there. The owner buys a new one every few years.”

  “Which owner, Money or Ceasar?”

  The man looked up at the sign on the back of the building. “Hell, old man Ceasar died forty years ago. The only one left is Money.” The man in the black overalls lured Clark closer with a flick of his head.

  “You here for a service? Did someone pass?”

  “No, I’m here for some information.”

  The old man looked around as if he were about to spill a state secret on embalming. “You know what the family calls these vehicles when they think nobody can hear them?”

  “No idea.”

  “Money wagons.”

  “Jesus,” Clark said, catching himself in mid-blasphemy.

  The old man laughed in a deep baritone. “Money likes his money. Hell, I don’t even think Money was his birth name. Probably just liked the sound of it. But I tell you this, you’ll hear all kinds of things whispered at Money family gatherings. Things that will make your skin crawl, make you lose your dinner, and get you thinkin’ about cremation.” He finished with another laugh and Clark wasn’t sure whether to believe the man or not.

  Clark knew the funeral parlor business had a bad reputation. Over the years, news reports on the expose beat had included the funeral parlor business with increasing regularity. At the top of the sin list was price fixing on coffins and screwing over the elderly with exorbitant service add-ons that were free to those with tighter reigns on their faculties. Death was good business, unless you had a funeral parlor in a “regentrified” area of town. Yuppies just weren’t prone to kicking the bucket fast enough to break-even.

  “How many funerals do you have a week?” Clark asked.

  “Depends on how many people have been dying. You get a bad year with the flu and we have a lot of elderly pass. Two services a day is not unusual in the winter.”
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  “You drive the cars?”

  “Wash them and drive them.”

  “You ever get used to it?”

  “What’s that?”

  Clark paused as an image of his father flashed through his mind. “Death. Dealing with dead bodies.”

  “I guess it takes some gettin’ used to. It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure. Had a young man a couple years back who only made it through one day of work. He had a problem locking the legs on the casket carrier and when he went to pull the casket from the car, bam! The casket popped open and out fell a body about the same age as the employee. The deceased had been in a car accident and gone through the windshield. Shook the boy up pretty good.”

  “Poor guy.”

  The old man nodded in silent agreement and then added, “But he should have locked the wheels, like I told him to.”

  “That thought will haunt me all day.”

  “You know, the problem people have with death is that they don’t think it is going to happen to them. Funeral services, funeral homes, cemeteries … they are places people try to avoid. Trying to avoid thinkin’ about the unavoidable. I try to remind my kids that there isn’t one person left on Earth who was here one hundred and twenty-five years ago.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Just food for thought.”

  The old man dipped the brush back into the water and gave his full attention to the back wheel. Clark took the change in focus as a hint and headed up the sidewalk towards the back door.

  The door opened silently on well-greased hinges and Clark stepped into the main hall and proceeded slowly across the burgundy carpet. A large chandelier hung overhead, the sparkling crystals compensating for a room with a permanently somber mood.

  There were four viewing rooms off the main hall. All of them held caskets. Clark wondered if they were full or if the funeral parlor used them as showrooms to drum up business in an industry where demand is determined by God and not the consumer opening their wallet.

  There was a grand staircase to the far end of the main hall, and Clark walked forward slowly as if trying not to disturb the air.

  “Good afternoon. May I help you?” a voice echoed through the hall.

  Clark visibly jumped.

  “My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Phil Money, a week past his fiftieth birthday bash, stepped from the small office near the front door and walked towards Clark, hand extended. He was wearing a dark suit, not quite black, but in the neighborhood of the darkest charcoal. The suit was accentuated with a subdued blue tie, knotted in a double Windsor. Clark saw a thick gold watch dangling from the cuff of his wrist and he thought about the old man washing the cars outside in the middle of winter. Money likes his money.

  “My name is Clark Hayden. I wanted to have a word with you, if I could?”

  “You are the young man who called this morning.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Please. If you would step into my office,” Phil Money said, gesturing with an open hand.

  Clark walked into the office and found a seat on one of the two sofas near the bay window looking out the front of the building.

  “May I interest you in some tea or coffee?”

  “Tea would be fine.”

  Money opened a cabinet on the far wall and removed two cups and saucers. He opened the cabinet next to the cups and the shelves burgeoned with tea alternatives. “We have Earl Gray, Darjeeling, green tea, caffeinated and decaffeinated, ginseng, chamomile, and oolong...”

  “I’ll have Earl Gray,” Clark answered, unsure he would recognize any further choices.

  “Fine selection. I will have one myself.” Money flipped the switch on a modern white Braun water heater that fit the décor of the room. “It will only be a moment.”

  “Thank you,” Clark answered, trying to remain as polite as his host. It was a tough act to follow. Money’s delivery was polished, his manners impeccable, his grooming exemplary, his selection of tea unmatched. What looked like an office could have passed as a Far East tea den.

  “What may I help you with this morning, Mr. Hayden?”

  “I’m looking for a contact name and number for a neighbor who recently passed away. I was told that you don’t give out information over the phone on former customers, and I didn’t have a fax machine to put the request in writing.”

  “Yes, I do apologize for our policy here at Money & Ceasar. We try to avoid getting involved in the circumstances of our customers, as you put it. Society is so litigious these days. Money & Ceasar tries to avoid being used as a pawn in the affairs of the deceased. Gold diggers and money grubbers come out of the woodwork when there has been a death in a family, particularly when there is an inheritance to squabble over. As a rule, we avoid giving out personal information.”

  Clark tried to diffuse the suspicion. “The deceased was a neighbor. His name was Allan Coleman. I was unfortunately out of the country when he passed, and have been unable to locate his family.” Clark had a momentary feeling of guilt for lying about the timing of the death and his trip overseas, but forged ahead. “I wanted to pass along my condolences to his family.”

  “I see,” Money said without moving. “You were close to this neighbor?”

  “Not super close, but he was a neighbor. He lived on the next street over.”

  “And none of the other neighbors have forwarding information?”

  “I asked, but it seems that Mr. Coleman was a bit of a recluse.”

  Money gave Clark the once-over and decided that the young man was trustworthy. “You are looking for next-of-kin?”

  “I’m looking for someone to whom I can send a condolence card.”

  The hot water heater beeped once and Money stopped what he was doing to pour the water and steep the tea. He placed a cup on the table in front of Clark and excused himself to the inconspicuous laptop that was on the corner of his desk. He typed in Allan Coleman and a one page file filled the screen. He took a sip of his tea and said, “His brother’s name is Greg Coleman, and he lives in Warrenton, Virginia. Shall I write down the address?”

  “Please,” Clark said. “That would be super.”

  Money wrote on a memo pad with the company letterhead, the gold pen tracing out the address in perfect cursive letters.

  “There you are,” Money said, handing the paper to Clark as he rejoined his guest on the opposite sofa.

  Clark folded the paper and put it in his front pocket.

  Money took another sip of his tea and cleared his throat slightly. “So Mr. Hayden, have you considered purchasing a plot or making other post-life decisions? You’re never too young to consider your post-life future.”

  Clark swallowed hard to refrain from spitting his tea on the table.

  Greg Coleman answered the phone groggily even though it was three in the afternoon.

  “Mr. Coleman?”

  “Speaking,” the gruff voice said on the other end of the phone.

  “Mr. Coleman, my name is Clark Hayden and I was a neighbor of your brother, Allan.”

  Silence filled the line for a moment before Greg Coleman spoke. “Yes.”

  “I wanted to extend my condolences to you and your family for your loss. Your brother was a good neighbor.”

  “Clark was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I appreciate your call, Clark, but I know the neighborhood didn’t think highly of my brother. It took him two years and three trips to the Town Council before he could get a permit to build that monstrous addition on his house.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. Your brother lived on the next street over from my parents’, well, my mother’s house. I grew up there, but I have been living at school until recently.”

  “Thank you, then. I appreciate the phone call.”

  “Before you hang up, I wanted to ask another question,” he blurted.

  Greg Coleman was thinking about his brother, the wounds still fresh. He didn’t want to have a conversation on
the topic. He certainly wasn’t ready for what Clark was about to say.

  “What’s your question?”

  “Did your brother have an autopsy done before he was buried?”

  Greg Coleman’s hand gripped the phone and the blood coursed through the tightening veins in his neck. “What the hell is this, a prank call?”

  “No, sir. Not at all. I wish it were. I lost my father last year and I wouldn’t jerk you around on the death of your brother.”

  “Then why the questions? Nothing is going to bring my brother back. Let him and our family rest in peace.”

  “Please, Mr. Coleman. It’s important. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”

  Greg Coleman grunted a little. “No, we didn’t have an autopsy performed. My mother was against it. As you probably know, my brother wasn’t in the best of health. The police found him dead on the floor with his heart medication spilled on the desk. It didn’t take Einstein to figure out what happened. He was two-hundred pounds overweight, didn’t exercise, smoked, and had a plethora of medical ailments that were trying to kill him. He died because he didn’t take care of himself.”

  “I understand,” Clark said, feeling the sorrow over the phone. “But I think there is a chance your brother didn’t die of natural causes.”

  Chapter 45

  The two-woman flight attendant team marched down the aisle in their light blue uniforms giving orders like a female Gestapo unit. Tray backs were pushed forward and seats snapped into their upright position. A high-school student watching a DVD on his laptop grudgingly shut it off after his third warning, the last of which implied the use of an in-flight emergency exit for non-compliance.

  Clark stared out the window as the plane banked towards his side of the aircraft. He looked down at the city below, the high-rise buildings in the business district stretching upward, the tallest structures for hundreds of miles. Beyond the center of town, the city expanded in nearly symmetrical blocks — a river, train tracks, and the occasional highway dissecting the geometric perfection. The flight attendants found their seats as the captain made an announcement for final approach, “We will be touching down in Kansas City in approximately ten minutes and should have you at the gate five minutes ahead of schedule.” Clark looked at Lisa who was asleep, and had been since before the plane left the Reagan Airport runway.