To speak for the dead

by Paul Levine

  Charlie Riggs cleared his throat. Small talk was not his forte. "Miss Corrigan, you know what we want to do."

  "Yes," she said. "Jake told me on the phone. Did you bring the papers?"

  "I prepared an affidavit," I said, "but it's not going to be much good. I asked Melanie to sign it, too, to get permission from both of you, but she refused."

  Susan flung the towel onto the wet pool deck. Her eyes blazed. "You did what! She killed Dad or at least helped Salisbury do it. Why would you ask her?"

  "As the surviving wife and the personal representative of the estate, she technically has the right to say yes or no," I said. "And you might be wrong about her." I recounted my meeting with the widow, again leaving out the snuggling stuff.

  "So," I said, "both of you accuse Roger Salisbury of poisoning your father. But she won't give permission to exhume the body. Says to let it go, she doesn't want to be involved."

  "And don't you find that suspicious?" Susan asked as if I were a simpleton.

  "Maybe if she hadn't tipped me to Roger in the first place, it would be suspicious. But now, I don't know."

  She fastened me with an angry look I was coming to know too well. "I tipped you to Roger Salisbury. And now I authorize you to do the autopsy. If you won't do it, I'll go to the state attorney. He can get a warrant or something, right?"

  "Right," I said. "A court order. But then you lose control of the investigation. The coroner will do it. You and Charlie and I will be out in the cold. In fact, if you tell them that you've got the succinylcholine and traces are found in the body, you'll be suspect number one."

  Her eyes were flaming behind the tortoiseshell glasses. "Then what do you propose we do?"

  I looked at Charlie Riggs and he looked at me. We both were thinking the same thing. We looked at Susan Corrigan, whose short black hair was dripping little puddles onto the patio. We didn't say a word but she caught on.

  Great minds think alike. But maybe slightly addled ones, too.

  "There are some things we'll need," I said.

  "I have everything back in the Glades," Charlie Riggs said.

  "Tonight?" Susan Corrigan asked.

  Charlie and I both nodded.

  I went home to change. A charcoal suit with burgundy pinstripes is fine for lawyering, but it wouldn't do at all for my new avocation.

  The saw made a frightful noise. Powered by a small gas motor, it was biting through the concrete seam of the crypt, tossing dust everywhere and making a racket that jack-hammered off the marble walls. Susan Corrigan stood guard outside the mausoleum, keeping an eye out for the night watchman.

  I had second thoughts about bringing Susan on such a grisly assignment, but she was the only one who could bring us right where we needed to be. Charlie and I shouldn't be stumbling over gravestones after midnight looking for the right tomb. That was Susan's argument, anyway. Now that we were here, I saw it would have been hard to miss. Built on the top of a small knoll, the Corrigan mausoleum commanded an impressive view of a lake and the Palmetto Expressway in the sprawling southwest suburbs. I should have figured it. Even in death, Philip Corrigan adhered to the three rules of real estate: location, location, location.

  I was muscling the power saw through the concrete. Charlie Riggs held a portable lamp that threw our shadows across the marble floor and up a decorative wall into which were inscribed the names of all the Corrigan shopping centers and condo projects, even the ones that resulted in class action consumer lawsuits.

  I put the saw down for a rest. "This place raises ostenta-tiousness to new levels."

  "De gustibus non est disputandum," Charlie said.

  "Gesundheit," 1 said.

  Charlie shook his head and grimaced. "There's no accounting for taste. Or your abysmal lack of training in Latin. Didn't you learn anything in law school?"

  "Only not to draw to an inside straight," I admitted.

  We went back to work. Twenty minutes later we were still watching our shadows dance up the wall when Charlie said, "Help me with this. The top's ready to move."

  I got my hands into the seam and tried to lift the top. No dice. It must have weighed five hundred pounds. I put my shoulder against it and tried sliding it off. It moved two inches and sent a grinding noise up my spine.

  Suddenly I heard padded footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer. A whisper from behind me, "How's it going?"

  "Okay, okay," I said. "Next time, Susan, call before you drop in."

  "Ignore him," Charlie said. "He's a little spooked."

  I kept pushing the top of the crypt, but no traction, my sneakers slipping on the marble floor. It was like trying to move a blocking sled on a rain-slicked field with John Matu-szak and Hulk Hogan sitting on top. Another inch. Nothing more. Just that damn grinding sound that maybe wouldn't bother someone used to opening tombs after midnight with the wind whistling through the gravestones.

  Charlie lent me a shoulder. Another two inches. Susan pitched in and we got it going and then couldn't stop it. The concrete lid crashed to the marble floor and broke into a thousand pieces. The explosion echoed in my ears. Clouds of dust covered us and rose toward the ceiling. Someone sneezed. I hoped it was Charlie or Susan. I shined the light inside the crypt. Charlie leaned over as far as he could and patted a wooden casket.

  "Good, very good indeed," he said. "Dry as toast."

  I looked at Susan. "Why don't you wait for us by Charlie's truck?" Why ask her to watch as you dig out her father's body, two years in the grave. She gave me a look that said she was just as tough as me and probably a good deal more so, but she left anyway. Charlie and I went back to work. Both of us leaned on a crowbar to open the casket, a task we did in the dark because the portable light was now on the floor. The body was three feet below the top of the crypt, and since I was taller and stronger than Charlie, I was appointed as the retriever.

  I leaned over, the concrete crypt folding me at the waist. I reached for what I thought would be shoulders and came up with a handful of mush.

  "Yuck."

  "What's the matter?" Charlie asked.

  "Feels like I just stuck my hands in a barrel of apple butter."

  "Mold," Charlie said. "That'd be his face. Even in a dry tomb, that'd happen."

  I wiped off my hands, reached lower, found some shoulders and lifted. Lighter than I thought. Charlie put the flashlight down and held open a zippered body bag, and in a minute we were traipsing across the dew-laden grass, Charlie Riggs toting his tools in a burlap sack, and me with a body bag slung over my shoulder. Transylvania's favorite couple.

  "That LA detective was wrong," I said, as we neared the truck.

  "How's that?" Charlie Riggs asked.

  "Marlowe, Philip Marlowe. In one of the books, he said dead men are heavier than broken hearts."

  "So?"

  "The former Philip Corrigan is a bantamweight."

  "Bodies lose weight after death," Charlie said, as if everybody knew that.

  "The ultimate diet," I concluded.

  Charlie mumbled something to himself and kept walking, his scientific mind still on duty after our all-nighter. We were ten yards from the truck when Charlie stopped in his tracks. Susan Corrigan was crouched on her haunches at the rear of the pickup waiting for us, alone with her thoughts.

  "Let's ID the subject," Charlie said, sounding like a homicide detective.

  He unzipped the bag and popped the light into it.

  "Uh-oh," I said.

  "What's wrong?" Susan asked, joining us, a tremble in her voice.

  "Was your father buried in a yellow chiffon dress?"

  "Oh God," she said. "That's Mom and the dress is pink, or at least, it was."

  "How the hell!" I shouted, nearly dropping the bag.

  "I'm sorry," Susan said, her voice tight. "It's my fault. I told you the crypt on the left, but that's looking out, not in. 1 got turned around."

  We sat down on the wet grass, as much to rest as to figure out what to do next. We used a flattened
headstone for a conference table, and like a good lawyer, I called a meeting. Moonbeams were bouncing off the pale tombstones, casting a gauzy, soft focus over Susan's features. Mood lighting.] looked at her, wondering. How could she make that mistake? Did she really want us to dig up Dad? I was thinking about what Charlie had said, homicide in the family. But] looked at Susan Corrigan in that misty moonlight and thought I saw tears in her eyes.

  Crazy. A night without sleep hauling ass through a graveyard and the mind starts playing tricks. Susan Corrigan could no more kill her father than, than…

  "Not much time," Charlie Riggs said, gesturing toward the east, where pink slivers of sky were beginning to show.

  "Right," I said. "Let's put Mom in the truck and get Dad."

  Like most things in life, grave robbery is easier the second time around. If we kept up our two-a-day practices like the Dolphins in August, we'd be able to purloin a body in forty-five minutes flat. This time the corpse wore a dark suit and was heavier to tote. I had it over my shoulder and was just leaving the mausoleum when I heard something, a soft singing.

  Esta tarde vi llover, Vi gente correr, y no estabas tu.

  Leather soles were scraping the marble in the foyer. Charlie and I backtracked into the mausoleum just as a flashlight poked around the corner. The night security guard.

  Charlie Riggs flattened himself against a back wall. I heard his rasping breaths and hoped he wasn't going into cardiac arrest. I ducked into a shadow behind the smashed crypt, but there wasn't room for my dead buddy. Crouching like a catcher behind the plate, I gripped the seat of Philip Corrigan's pants. He stood, shakily, leaning against me like a friendly drunk. The flashlight illuminated the floor, clouds of pulverized concrete still rising from it. The dust tickled my nose, and I fought off a sneeze.

  The beam bounced oif the walls, and I caught sight of the guard. Private security, over sixty and overweight, probably working for minimum wage on a twelve-hour shift. The graveyard shift. In a footrace he couldn't beat Philip Corrigan.

  The flashlight beam struck Corrigan's black shoes and inched up his body, finally coming to rest on a waxy, moldy face, a nose that melted into soggy cheeks.

  "Madre de Dios," the guard murmured.

  I was holding my breath, then had to inhale. More dust, then without warning, "AH-CHOO!"

  The sound came from me, but all the guard could see was Philip Corrigan, his head flopping forward as my grip loosened.

  "Don't worry," I whispered from the darkness. "Dead men don't sneeze."

  The guard took a step backward. "Jesus Cristo!"

  I raised one of Corrigan's arms, stiffly pointed a rotting hand at the waxy face and said, "No way Jose. Yo soy el anti-Cristo."

  The flashlight clattered to the floor and the guard took off. A moment later, so did we, Philip Corrigan draped over my shoulder, Charlie Riggs hustling behind me, chuckling. Whistling past the graveyard.

  The black night had turned to silvery morning and the early commuters were heading north on the Palmetto, tiny shafts of headlights cutting through the mist. We loaded the truck and joined in but headed south. The expressway dumped us onto South Dixie Highway, U.S. 1, the road that starts in Maine and ends at Key West. We aimed that way, past a hundred gas stations and fast-food joints, chintzy strip shopping centers with pet stores and scuba shops, boarded-up small businesses, a thousand broken dreams. Down through Kendall and Perrine, past mango groves, strawberry fields, and packing houses, through Homestead by the Air Force base, over the Card Sound Bridge, through Key Largo and south some more.

  None of us said a word, not the three of us jammed into the cab up front, and certainly not the two reunited in a zippered bag in the back. The Corrigans probably hadn't been this close since their honeymoon.

  I handled the driving. Susan sat next to me, the closest she'd been since I tackled her on the practice field. Charlie Riggs was slumped against the passenger door, snoring peacefully. Near Tavernier, Susan's head dropped onto my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. This time, she didn't give me the boot. I thought she was sleeping, but a moment later she whispered, "Thank you, Jake."

  I looked down at her, not knowing where she was headed.

  "I was wrong to be so petulant when we first met," she said. "I was hurting so much. Losing Mom, then Dad marrying that woman, and Dad dying that way…"

  "I understand," I said, feeling her soften under my arm.

  "You've taken a big risk. I know you want to learn the truth about what happened, but I know you did it for me, too. And every time you try to get through to me, I put you off. I won't do that anymore."

  I started to say something, but she put a finger to my lips. So I kissed the finger, steered with my left hand and tried not to put the truck into the Atlantic on the east side of the road or the Gulf on the west. Then I felt her face against my neck, and she nuzzled me with her upturned nose, looped her right arm around my chest and gave me a good squeeze. A fine and dandy squeeze.

  The sun was well up in the eastern sky by the time we pulled into the dusty road on the Gulf of Mexico side of Islamorada. The shutters were open in the small wooden house and the aroma of strong coffee and sizzling bacon greeted us. We parked in the sand under a jacaranda tree that had lost its flowers for the winter. A royal tern sat in the tree, staring at us from under its black and white cap.

  "Look what the cat drug in," Granny Lassiter said from the front porch. "Jake, you look like the loser in a mud rasslin' match." Granny sat in a pine rocking chair drinking coffee from an oversized mug. She wore khaki pants and a colorful Mexican serape. A high-crowned sombrero rested on her upper back, the drawstring tied under her chin. Her features were still strong, high cheekbones and a pugnacious chin. The hair that had been jet black when I was a boy was streaked down the middle with a bright white stripe like the center line on the highway locals call Useless 1. Granny's buddies called her "Skunky," but only after downing a gooc portion of her home brew.

  I introduced Doc Riggs to Granny. He bowed formally complimented her south-of-the-border outfit, and recounte(one of his visits to the pyramids of the Yucatan with graphic description of Mayan hieroglyphics and burial prac tices.

  "It's a pleasure to have a man of learning and culture in my abode," she said, swiping at some loose strands of her hair. "Perhaps you could be a good influence on that wastre mouthpiece kin of mine."

  "Granny, please," I pleaded.

  She ignored me and turned her attention to Susan Corri gan, whose dark eyes were puffy from a sleepless night bu still fetching. "And you must be the gal Jacob's been telling me about. Uh-huh, I see why. You're a keeper."

  "Granny!" I bellowed, warning her.

  "Pay him no mind," she said. "Like most men, he don't know which end is up. After some breakfast, they'll do their work, and we'll drop a line in the Gulf and do some talking. Tell me, girl, you see anything in Jacob worth losing sleep over?"

  "He's got potential," Susan allowed.

  Granny laughed. "That boy's gonna grow old having potential."

  I had heard enough. "Maybe we should get to work," I suggested.

  "Sure 'nuff," Granny said. "The beer cellar's chilled 164 down all the way, just like you said. Plus I got this filled with ice."

  She pointed at a fish box that came from her old Bertram. It could easily hold both bodies.

  Charlie Riggs eyed the box. "Forty-seven degrees would be perfect. That's what we keep the coolers in the morgue. Too cold is no good. Can't let the tissues freeze." "So let's get started," I suggested again. "No hurry, Jake," Charlie Riggs said, beaming at Granny. "No hurry at all."

  Granny straightened up the front porch, swiping leaves off the wicker chairs with a palm frond. Then she poured everyone coffee, starting with Charlie Riggs. "Say Doc, I recognized you right off from the TV. The case of the capsized dory. Off Saddlebunch Key. You haven't changed a bit." "Twenty years ago," Charlie said, shaking his head. "Tempus fugit," Granny said, and Charlie's eyes lit up as if he'd found a long
lost friend.

  We all sat on the porch and Granny made a fuss over Charlie, who sat there reminiscing with his feet propped on the fish box that now held the Corrigans. Told us about the man whose wife drowned when their dory overturned, striking her head. The water had been calm, and the husband was a strong swimmer.

  "So why didn't he save her?" Susan asked, snatching the bait like a hungry grouper.

  A sly smile and Charlie continued. "Maybe his lifeguard's carry was weighted down by the million-dollar double indemnity policy he just bought on the lady's life." Aha, we all said.

  "He let her drown," Susan offered.

  Charlie shook his head. "Worse than that."

  "How'd you prove it?"

  Another smile. "I put one of those department store mannequins in the dory facing front, just where the wife had been sitting. Sat in the back where the husband had been, stood up and smacked the mannequin with the oar. Left a mark the exact size and location of the bruise on top the dead wife's head."

  The man got ninety-nine years, Charlie a TV interview.

  Granny put her arm around Susan and steered her into the house. I hauled the body bag into the darkened room Granny called her beer cellar. The room was actually on the first floor, it being hard to dig a cellar when your house is built three feet above sea level. Inside were vats and bottles and the odds and ends used to make the home brew Granny gave away to neighboring fishermen. Two old air-conditioning units were turned on full blast and water dripped down the walls.

  I suggested we cut first, eat breakfast later. I couldn't imagine doing the job on a full stomach. Charlie said he understood, then grabbed an old brown satchel from the cab of the truck. He unbuckled the worn leather straps and looked lovingly at half a dozen scalpels glinting in the light of the midday sun.

  14

  DEAD MEN DON'T BLEED

  "The skin is macerated and there's mold on the face, but all things considered, not bad, not bad at all," Charlie Riggs said. He was washing off the body with a hose. The remains of Philip Corrigan were spread out on an old work table in Granny's beer cellar. "Before we do any cutting, let's examine the body."