Even the Butler Was Poor

by Ron Goulart

  H.J., fists clenching, forced herself to take a more careful look into the coffin. "Yes, that's Buggsy sure enough," she said. "He looks dead, too."

  "Let's leave him be, Helen Joanne, and head for—"

  "No, I've come this far and I intend to carry this through. Can you tug him out of there, Ben?"

  "Might be easier to just reach in there and—"

  "But Buggsy's legs are hidden by the lower half of the coffin lid," she said. "No, you're going to have to get hold of the little guy by his armpits and give him a good hefty tug."

  "That's what you are going to have to do. I'm only an accessory, not the perpetrator."

  "Honestly, you can be such a geek at times." Nudging him aside, she stepped closer to the coffin.

  "Ah, I'm very glad to see this."

  H.J. stopped still, then brought her forefinger up to her nose, sniffling. When she turned to face the newcomer to the room, she seemed to be crying. "It's so sad," she managed to say.

  "He's had so few visitors, which is why I'm delighted to find you two here paying your respects." The man was in his forties, small, fresh-shaven, smelling of flowers and furniture polish. He wore a grey suit and a grey tie. "I'm Lynn Gerstenkom, one of the partners in the Wee Chapel," he explained as he approached them. With a sad smile he handed Ben an embossed business card. "Should you ever need our services." He smiled even more sadly as he gave H.J. a card.

  "My husband and I were dear friends of Mr. McAuliffe," she explained, sniffling while she dropped the card into her black purse. "And of little Buggsy, too."

  "Let me, now you've mentioned him, ask you something." Gerstenkom rubbed at his temples, then rubbed his hands together. "Does the dummy look—how shall I put it? Does he look tastefully laid out?"

  "Very much so," responded H.J. "Don't you think so, dear?"

  "Yes, yeah. He looks very natural. You'd almost think he was alive."

  "We debated long and loud, my partners and I, as to whether or not it was good taste to allow the dummy to share the coffin," said the funeral director. "There's also the question of provoking unwanted levity. Still, it was Mr. McAuliffe's wish, and in his day, so. I've been led to understand, he and the dummy were a well-known team."

  "You've arranged everything quite beautifully," H.J. assured him. "Now, I wonder if my husband and I might be alone here to pay our last respects to them both."

  "To be sure, certainly. I'll simply go sit down over there in the last row," said Gerstenkom. "This, you know, is my favorite of our six minichapels. I always bring myself here at day's end for a period of quiet meditation."

  H.J. asked, "How long a period?"

  "Oh, usually a half hour."

  Near to Ben's ear she said, "We'll have to come back later, damn it." Moving back, she smiled sweetly at the funeral director. "Why don't you, Mr. Gerstenkom, show the flowers and their cards to my husband. I want to go freshen up before we leave."

  "Flowers?" said Ben, watching her start down the aisle alone.

  "Yes, you know how interested you are in that sort of thing. Kind of flowers, sentiments expressed, who from and so on."

  "I fear there aren't as many floral tributes as one might have expected for a performer of Mr. McAuliffe's supposed status at one time," said Gerstenkom apologetically. "Do let me show them to you nonetheless."

  "That would be," said Ben, "very nice."

  A few minutes shy of midnight a light, misty rain started to fall. H.J. gave Ben a poke in the ribs. "The place's been empty for a half hour. We can make our move."

  Yawning, he sat up a bit straighter on the car seat and peered down across the weedy hillside field toward the Wee Chapel in the Glen Funeral Home. It sat a quarter of a mile below the wooded area where they'd been parked for the past few hours. "What you're contemplating is called breaking and entering."

  "We're not going to break in," she said, reaching up to flip the switch on the overhead light so that it wouldn't flash to life when she opened the door. "I already told you that, while you were chatting with Mr. Gerstenkom this afternoon, I slipped that folded up business card of his in a side door so that it wouldn't close completely."

  "There's still the question of illegal entry."

  "Well, a funeral chapel is pretty damn close to being a church, and you can enter a church anytime you want." Turning the handle, she inched the door open. "That's known as the law of sanctuary and it's been in effect for hundreds of years."

  "Looting a coffin, on the other hand, is still frowned on by the majority of the world's faiths." Yawning twice more, scratching at his lower ribs, he stumbled out into the new rain. "Suppose there's a burglar alarm?"

  "There isn't. I made sure of that this afternoon." She strode across the wet sidewalk and entered the grassy field. Stuck in her purse was the flashlight she'd bought that afternoon. "The cops who patrol this area won't roll by again for another twenty-two minutes."

  He followed her. "You logged their car every time it passed down there?"

  "I'm fairly efficient, a fact that you never fully appreciated."

  "You sure used to manage your affairs efficiently—"

  "We better go the rest of the way in silence, to be on the safe side."

  "Folks," he said in his sincere testimonial voice, "I went from respected actor to detested ghoul in just twenty-four hours. You can, too."

  "Hush up."

  The rain drizzled on Ben, insinuating itself down his collar and under his cuffs. There was a musty, earthy odor rising up from the weedy ground.

  A single light showed at the front of the slant-roofed chapel, illuminating a few of its imitation stained glass windows. H.J. made her way along the shadowy rear of the building and then around to the far side. She slowed, then stopped beside a wooden door. "Here's the one we want." Reaching out, she took hold of the knob to turn it slowly and carefully.

  The door opened inward silently. The wadded up business card hit the hardwood floor with a faint tick. She hesitated and then, like someone balanced on the edge of a high board, took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

  Ben slipped into the dark corridor behind H.J. and shut the door at his back.

  "Here, you use this." She slapped the flash into his palm. He snapped it on. "Minichapel 3 is this way."

  H.J. took hold of his arm and they moved ahead, following the yellowish beam of the brand new flashlight.

  The night rain made faint pattering noises on the shingled roof. The shadows in the hall gave off the familiar flowers and polish smell, with the scent of some sort of harsh chemical added.

  At the entrance to the small chapel where McAuliffe and his dummy lay, H.J. took back the flash and shot the beam in the direction of the coffin stand.

  "Oh, shit," she remarked after a few seconds.

  Buggsy was no longer sharing the coffin with the ventriloquist. He was now spread across the floor, ripped into several jagged pieces.

  Chapter 9

  On her hands and knees, making disgruntled noises, H.J. sifted through the remains of Buggsy. "No trace of anything," she said finally, resting on her heels. "Not that I know what the hell I'm hunting for anyway."

  "Something small and valuable." Ben was crouched beside her, holding the flashlight on the fragments of the dummy.

  "Well, it looks like the competition—whoever they are—beat us to the prize." She picked up one of the dummy's detached legs, started to tap it angrily against her thigh.

  "Notice that somebody took a knife to Buggsy and used it pretty enthusiastically." He played the beam around, pointing at the scattered parts.

  "Damn, and we were so close, too," she said, tapping the little wooden leg against her leg. "They must've followed us over from Connecticut. Maybe that jerk with the cap was a—"

  "Even if they followed us, which I don't think they did," he said, "that wouldn't have told them to rip up Buggsy to look in his hollow leg."

  She said, "That's right, Ben. They couldn't have known about Buggsy unless . . . unless they mad
e Rick talk some before he managed to get away from them."

  "That's probably what happened, yeah."

  "But then why did they search my house? If they already knew what they wanted was stashed inside this dummy."

  Ben said, "Suppose what they're looking for is something that can be duplicated? Documents that can be photocopied, photographs, something like that."

  "Sure, then they'd have to make certain not only of the originals, but of any copies Rick might've passed around."

  He stood, tapping her shoulder. "We'd best depart before the law makes its next pass by here."

  She got up, shaking her head. "I was sitting up there watching this damn funeral parlor for hours, while you were dozing, and I didn't see anybody suspicious," she said. "They must have broken in from the far side of the place as soon as the last employee went home."

  He started for the doorway. "The people we're competing with have more experience in burglary than we do, H.J."

  When they were halfway up the rainy hillside, she said, "Jesus, I brought this leg of Buggsy's along with me." She raised her hand to fling the thing off into the darkness, but then stopped. "Ben, this leg is sort of heavy, relatively speaking. Turn on the light for a second."

  After glancing around, he clicked the flash on. "What do you mean?"

  Rolling up the tatter of checkered pants leg that was still attached to the wooden limb, she rapped it with her knuckle. "This leg is solid wood, not hollow," she said. "You couldn't hide a damn thing in it—and I imagine the other leg must be the same. Hell, we misunderstood Rick's dying clue." Dropping the leg in her purse, she resumed climbing toward the car. "I feel exceedingly dumb."

  He turned off the light, following her. After climbing a few paces in the night rain, he snapped his fingers. "Of course." She scowled back over her shoulder.

  "Of course what?"

  "The photo on the wall," he replied.

  "You're sure about this?"

  "Yes, there are two of them in the framed picture Mrs. Farber has on her living room wall."

  "Two different Buggsys. I only met one, far as I know."

  "He probably kept the extra one wrapped away in his trunk."

  "Then the second one, the spare, must be the Buggsy with the hollow leg."

  "It's worth checking."

  "How come, by the way, you're willing to do this, Ben? Up until now you've been urging me to quit."

  "It has something to do with seeing that dummy all slashed up at the funeral parlor."

  "More evidence that these guys are vicious."

  "It occurred to me that they might not give up on you even if they do find what they're hunting for."

  "Meaning they might come back and rough me up—just for the fun of it?"

  "Like the paint tubes, and Buggsy."

  "So if we can get to the second Buggsy ahead of them—"

  "Then we may have something to use to expose them. Once they're arrested, tossed in jail, they can't hurt you."

  "That's touching, Ben, very thoughtful."

  "They also won't be able to hurt me." He parked down the block from the old actors home.

  The rain was heavier now, coming down enthusiastically. There was only one street light near, old and dim.

  "I can sneak back in and search McAuliffe's room," H.J. offered. "I know the house, after all, and in case there's some trouble, Mrs. Farber likes me."

  "Nope, I'll do it. Have you finished drawing the floor plan?"

  Working by the light of the flash, using a ballpoint pen on the back of a yellow garage bill she'd found in his glove compartment, she was sketching out the layout of the second floor of Mrs. Farber's establishment. "Okay, first you shinny up that fire escape on the right side of the house," she said. "Then you climb in the second floor window—it's always open a few inches because Mrs. Farber believes fresh air is important at night. Marvelo told me that during one of my visits here with Rick. McAuliffe's room is this one. I've marked it with an X."

  "That's a Z."

  "I'm a professional artist. I guess I can draw a damn X when the occasion arises. Marvelo has the room right here."

  "Judging from our conversation with him this afternoon, he likes to eavesdrop on what's going on around him."

  "Right, so be extremely quiet while you're ransacking the trunk," she cautioned. "Mrs. Farber has a room at the back of the first floor someplace, so she isn't likely to hear anything."

  Nodding, he took the flashlight from her and clicked it off. "Slide over into the driver's seat once I leave. In case we need to make a hurried getaway."

  "You're trusting me to drive your car? In times gone by you were an extreme fussbudget about—"

  "See you shortly." He eased out into the rainy 1:00 AM darkness. Ducking low, he hurried along the cracked sidewalk. He felt as though he were doing an impression of Groucho Marx or possibly Chuck Berry.

  There was a single dim light showing in the bow window of the living room, another up on the third floor. The rest of the big old Victorian house was dark.

  Ben squeezed through the gap between sprung-iron gate and the fence. Crouching even lower, he started through the high, wet grass, trying to avoid trolls, elk, and other obstacles.

  Suddenly he tripped over something and fell to his knees, losing his grip on the dark flashlight. A sharp pain started spreading from his left knee and he had the impression he'd bitten into his lower lip when he hit the ground. He stayed kneeling for a few seconds. Then, in his Lionel Barrymore voice, he quietly told himself, "You can walk again, lad. Get up and do it for old Dr. Gillespie."

  Ben rose and then bent to start feeling at the ground for his lost light. He put his hand into something soggy he hoped was only a discarded melon before he located the light and retrieved it. Then he went tottering ahead. A whooshing gust of wind threw extra rain onto him.

  He had made it over to the side of the house and was searching for the fire escape ladder when he walked into it. Taking hold of a rung with one hand, he looked upward. One story above him somebody was climbing rapidly down the same metal ladder.

  Chapter 10

  Pressing back against the side of the house, with the rain slushing into his upturned face, Ben watched the dark figure descending. It was someone wearing black jeans, a navy blue pullover and a black ski mask. As the person climbed quietly down toward the ground, something clacked against the metal ladder. That had to be, he was certain, Buggsy being carried down from McAuliffe's room.

  Hidden in the shadows, he narrowed his eyes and tried to get a better look at what the burglar was making off with. As the dark figure dropped from the final rung to the wet ground, Ben caught a glimpse of Buggsy's red hair. The dummy was tucked up under the intruder's left arm.

  Without pausing to contemplate what he was doing, Ben leaped forward and tackled the retreating figure around the lower legs. They both fell, skidding on the wet grass. Ben got a strong, and unexpected, whiff of a sultry floral perfume. He also, as they wrestled over the ground, realized he had tackled a woman.

  Be that as it may, he grabbed for the dummy. He got a good grip on him, yanked, and succeeded in tugging him free of the masked woman. Thrusting Buggsy up under his own arm, he swung out with the flashlight in his other hand. It hit the woman in the midsection and she let go of him. He broke free and started running.

  "Come back here with that!"

  He kept running and made it almost to the flagstone path before he tripped. As he fell, the woman got to her knees and started shooting at him with a handgun.

  When she saw the flash of the shots, H.J. sat upright, exclaimed, "Oh, my god!" and turned the key in the ignition. Releasing the brake, she stared out into the rainy night. The windshield was smeared with rain.

  "Wipers," she said as she poked at various buttons to the right of the steering wheel. Nothing much happened, and the windshield wipers didn't start functioning.

  "Well, screw them." She gunned Ben's car out of its space and into the street. Up ahead she
saw somebody come hopping off the curb. She then remembered the headlights and found the right button on the second try.

  The beams showed her Ben, with what looked to be Buggsy hugged to his chest, running toward her. Rising up out of the high grass several dozen feet behind him was a masked figure with a gun.

  H.J. floored the gas pedal. Hunching low, she swung the car between Ben and the person with the gun. She hit the brake, flung the door open and yelled, "Get your ass in here, Ben!"

  He dived inside as she slid clear of the driver's seat.

  "We got him." Tossing the dummy in her lap, he grabbed the flapping door shut and sent the car barreling out of there. A parting shot slammed into the rear window, making a loud thunking, crackling noise and spreading cobwebby lace patterns all across the glass.

  "Hell," said Ben, "how am I going to explain that to my insurance people?"

  "I feel like I'm seducing a midget," observed H.J. as she tugged off Buggsy's checkered trousers. The car was now fifteen miles dear of the actors home and no one was following them.

  Ben concentrated on driving, but glanced occasionally over at the dummy resting across his ex-wife's lap. "Any sign of a secret compartment?"

  She had the lit flashlight resting on the open door of the glove compartment, illuminating the dummy. "Yes, in his right leg here. A section seems to have been cutout and then glued back in. I don't suppose you've got a knife?"

  "Nope, I don't. Until you came back into my life I didn't have any need for burglary tools or weapons."

  "I'm not talking about a switchblade, Ben, but just a little dinky pocket knife so I can pry . . . Never mind." She commenced searching in her purse. "You're really certain that was a woman who swiped this from McAuliffe's room?"

  "I am"

  "Does that make sense?"

  "As much as our breaking into a mortuary at midnight."

  "No, I mean if this is a gang of loan sharks we're competing with, it seems odd. Do they have female loan sharks?"