Coffin Corner, fiction by James McCrone
In a small corner of Philadelphia, a funeral director steals a man’s car as payment on a debt…
“Where’s my fucking car?” Joey shouted over the phone.
“Where’s my fucking money?” Dean shouted back.
“You can’t just—”
“But I did,” said Dean interrupting him. “I need the money you owe me.”
“You don’t understand,” Joey implored.
“This ain’t a fucking charity, Joey.” And he hung up.
Dean Sassuolo tossed his cellphone onto the stainless-steel table next to him and went back to preparing Mrs. Chalmers for embalming. As he tied the rubber apron around his substantial girth, the phone buzzed angrily on the table, resonating with the steel. Joey again. He could wait. Friendships, good intentions. That’s what fucks you, he thought.
Not that Joey was a friend. Not really. His father, Old Joe Tedesco, had been someone Dean looked up to, and for Old Joe’s sake, he had tried to be kindly with Little Joe, had agreed to work with him when he was short on funds for burying his mother Antonella the month before. Publicly, Dean would have said that Mrs. Chalmers, lying there so small and quiet on the steel table, was also “a friend.” But he’d never liked her.
Even as a young woman, he reflected, she had been an overbearing, sore-headed, busybody. And tiny. Barely five feet tall. A lot of menace in that little frame, he reflected. For the family viewing, he was tempted to see if he could settle her mouth into the grim, resentful sulk with which she had met the world. He placed a finger and thumb at either corner of her mouth and drew the papery skin downward. He stepped back and smiled. She looked more natural that way. Then, thinking that he wouldn’t do that to Bobby, her husband, he massaged away the dimpled frown and tried to coax a smile from her. Even in death, the biddy couldn’t muster it.
No issue with her family paying, he thought. Bobby Chalmers was doing it up right, spreading a good deal of money around, the kind of opulent show meant to cover the fact that Bobby was probably relieved she was gone. Whatever the motives, Sassuolo Funeral Home was making a tidy sum from the Chalmers family. Which would keep the wolf from the door for at least another few months. Though the wolf was never far away these days. In this corner of Northeast Philadelphia, Dean knew just about everyone he worked on, and they represented a shrinking number. Many whom he had counted on were now dying out of state, not buried by Sassuolo.
He thought about his younger brother, who hadn’t gone into the family business. He had recently overseen the winding down of a middling-sized company, meeting with everyone in the office who was getting laid off. “Severance,” he had called it. The brother had said that the strangest part of the job was painting himself into a corner, knowing that his last action for the company would be to sever himself. As Dean pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, he hoped that his own funeral arrangements would not be the last such for the Sassuolo Funeral Home.
Nadine Sassuolo, Dean’s daughter, 32 years old and heir apparent to the ailing business, opened the door to the embalming room and stuck her head inside. “Was that Joey you were yelling at?” she asked.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” He started spraying disinfectant across the body.
“I could hear you in the front parlor, Dad. Unbelievable.” She stared at him, slowly shaking her head. They had talked about his volume before. “Good thing there was no one else here,” she added. “We’re going to have to send Joey to collections. Did you tell him that?”
“I took care of it,” he said.
“By yelling?”
“I took his car.”
“What?”
“I was driving by the house,” Dean said.
“His house?”
“Yeah. He’d been gone for days, and I worried he might’ve skipped. Anyway, he lives right nearby, and ya know, I thought I’d just stop by and remind him. And, maybe, I noticed that the garage door was open. Old Joe always kept a spare key under the garbage can inside. I thought, ‘I wonder if his son does the same thing?” He grinned. “The acorn don’t fall far from the tree, hon.”
She looked back along the hallway towards the parlor, making sure no one had come into the building. Then she stepped into the room and closed the door. “You stole his car?” The blank dismay in her face registered just how much distance she wanted from this mighty, twisted oak.
“Yeah. I need him to take this seriously.”
“You stole his car?”
“I seized it. As collateral. Now it’s parked in our garage, blocked in with the old Cadi hearses, front and back. It ain’t going nowhere unless I want it to.”
“Dad, he could have you arrested!”
“Pfft!” Dean scoffed. “The neighborhood don’t work like that.”
“Dad,” Nadine began with elaborate patience, “when you let him slide on the upfront fees, I said it was a mistake. But you said we were a neighborhood business, that if we didn’t help out Little Joe that word would get around, that we’d look like assholes—your words—and we’d lose customers.”
“Right,” he said, his tone suggesting that she was proving his point, so what was she mad about?
“You don’t think this isn’t going to get around?”
“I hope it does! We did the right thing for a longstanding neighborhood family—that’s good for business. And now he’s trying to burn us. So I took his fucking car until he comes up with the four grand.”
“Four thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two dollars,” she corrected him.
“Fine, you’re the numbers gal. But people will know—the people who count—that I was within my rights.”
“Dad, you take him to collections if you want your money back.”
“This ain’t Bucks County, hon, it’s Philly. I know you’re taking all these courses in business accounting and marketing through the Association. Which is good, don’t get me wrong. But you gotta learn some other things before you take over. Not just a bunch of corporate, WASPy bullshit that only goes so far. Collection agency? C’mon, hon. Then we’ve got lawyers, fucking letters, payment schedules—and we’ll only be getting some small percentage back. Not the whole nut. People would expect me to do this man-to-man.”
“At least we’d get something, Dad.”
“Right. A whole bunch of extra work, so I can get paid less than I’m owed? No. My way, for half an hour’s work, and we stand to get it all, including our profit margin. Which, I don’t have to tell you, we really need.” He glanced at the naked body of Mrs. Chalmers. “Did her daughter drop off the clothes they wanted?”
“I’ll get them,” she said, but her eyes said, ‘this isn’t over.’
She closed the door behind her.
“Bucks County bullshit,” he muttered to himself. Dean made a quick check of the drainage tubes and turned on the embalming machine. It whirred and wheezed as he leaned back against an empty prep table. He folded his arms, monitoring the progress. This used to be a good business, he mused.
He was reaching for the disinfectant bottle again when Nadine knocked at the door. The same as before, she opened it only enough to put her head in. “I have her clothes here.” She held a dress on a hanger in a dry-cleaner bag. She pushed it through the half-open door and swung it around onto the hook on the inside of the door, like a mother giving options in a fitting room. “Let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll help get her dressed. Also…” she began, as a man barged past her into the room.
“Whoa! How about some respect.” Dean pointed at Mrs. Chalmers, her arteries pulsing at the hands and neck as embalming fluid surged. Dean reached down and adjusted the jugular drain tube. The pat-pat of blood increased to a dribbling stream.
Dean looked back at the man: young, early thirties; trim, assured, with dark features. He could have been Latin or Arabic. Dean wasn’t sure. But whoever it was, he seemed confident, the kind of guy who looked perfectly at home wherever he stood. Most “civilians” would’ve freaked out a little or backed out of the room. The smell alone took some getting used to, and the site of a naked cadaver being plumped with fluid was not something most people were used to.
This guy didn’t even blink. “Excuse me,” he said, inclining his head toward the late Mrs. Chalmers. He then fixed his full attention on Dean. “But you and I need to talk. Now.”
“This isn’t exactly something you can stop and start,” Nadine said from behind him.
“Come back in an hour,” said Dean. He looked at the man, gauging him.
“Now,” he said.
“And I said—”
“You’ve got something of mine. You didn’t know it,” he added equably. “I realize there are complications, but you and I need to straighten this out. Now. Quietly.”
Nadine glared at her father from behind the man’s back.
Dean untied the apron. “Nadine, you stay with her, okay?” He tugged off the gloves. Slowly. Not taking his eyes off the intruder.
Nadine pushed past the intruder and began putting on the protective gear. Stabbing her hands into the too-big gloves, her eyes blazed. The corners of her mouth turned downward in a bitter scowl, like the living face of Mrs. Chalmers. Had Sassuolo been at all reflective, he might have considered that the grim looks he found so often in others were less about who they were generally, and more disdain for him specifically.
The stranger’s face held no expression at all, no contrition at having barged in, no revulsion at the cadaver, no anger at whatever the problem was that he was here to solve, no wise guy glibness or bluster. But he was “connected.” Not to anyone Dean knew. He’d buried those wise guys, with all the fanfare, years ago. Made out nicely, thank you. This guy represented something new. Sassuolo could feel it.
“Let’s talk in the hallway,” the man offered.
Outside, he turned to Sassuolo, and said, “I need Little Joey’s car back.”
“Did Little Joe send you? He owes me money, almost five thousand dollars.”
“No, he didn’t. And that’s between you two. Nothing to do with me. Except that what’s mine is locked away in his car. I need it.”
“What the fuck is Little Joe doing with something of yours?”
The stranger scratched at his chin but didn’t answer. Finally, he said, “You know, it’s funny, if you hadn’t taken his car, he might’ve been here tomorrow paying you off. I gathered that he agreed to do this thing for me so he could settle a debt. I didn’t ask him about it because it’s not my problem and none of my business. Except now it is.”
“So you want me to let you in to get your…?”
“No. I need the car, too. And I need the spare key.”
“And then I’m no better off than where I was,” said Dean.
“You could be a lot worse.” The Wise Guy, or whatever he was, looked around, his appraising gaze taking in the hallway, the aging equipment pushed against a wall, the newly re-done lobby. He had that hangdog, wouldn’t-it-be-a-shame look that the guys who sold protection used.
He finished his look around and fixed Sassuolo with a piercing stare that included him in the catalogue of things that it would be a shame to lose. Over the man’s shoulder, Dean noticed that Nadine had opened the embalming room door a crack and was listening in. She would presumably be part of the same, shameful collateral damage. Should it come to that.
Down the years, as the mob had faded into memory, Dean would sometimes indulge friends who spoke in rosy, wistful tones about how things used to work, how you knew where you stood, how women could walk safely anywhere. But standing in front of this fucking guy, Dean remembered just how rotten it had been.
“You gonna pay me anything?” Dean asked.
“For what?”
“For giving you Joey’s car. You said he planned on squaring our debt with whatever it is he was gonna do for you.”
“Mr. Sassuolo, I’ve been pretty decent. So far. I figured you were old school, someone who would understand the situation he’d inadvertently stepped into, and he’d gladly take the chance I’m giving to put it right.”
“Put it right by giving up the only security I have? We’re up against the wall here, Pal. I laid out my own money, and I need it back.” Dean could still see his daughter, watching and listening through the open door.
“Not my problem. And we’re wasting time. Here’s what’s going to happen,” the man said. “You’re going to give the car back to Little Joey.”
“Like hell!”
“He’s going to do a job for me, and when it’s done, I’ll pay him off. And he’ll pay you off.”
Sassuolo glared at the ground. “Tell you what,” said Sassuolo. “I’ll go along with Little Joe to whatever delivery it is that he has to make. And I’ll stick to him until you pay up.”
“That’s not…” he looked impatient but then seemed to reflect for a moment. “Okay.”
“So, what’s happening? What’s going down?”
“I’ll let Joey tell you, but we need to leave now. Can the little gal handle things until you get back?”
“She’s my daughter. And yeah.”
#
The Wise Guy left, and Dean stepped back into the room where Nadine was working on Mrs. Chalmers.
“There’s no way you should go through with this,” she said. “He’ll have both of you together…in his sights. Let Joey do the job, and then we’ll see what we get back.”
“You’re being hysterical,” he said.
“Am I?”
“I gotta have my security,” he said. Things could go any which way.”
“Yeah, they could. And none of it good.”
It took some time for Dean to move the hearses out of the way. When he arrived at the house, Joey was sitting on the edge of the front porch smoking. There were half a dozen cigarette butts on the steps and the walk. It was a cool fall evening, but he glistened with sweat. As he stood and wiped leaves and ash from his trousers, he drew hard on the cigarette. Then he stamped it out on the walkway. “Let’s go,” was all he said.
Dean handed over the keys and they climbed into the car, a newish Honda CR-V. “Watch behind you,” he said as Joey put the car in reverse.
“It should be simple,” Joey began, “We’re going to drive to the Irish pub over there near the Septa station and park in that lot. We’re going to leave the spare key on the front left tire and go hoist a few.”
“Who’s buying?” Dean asked.
He sighed. “Me, I guess. We’ll stay there for about an hour and then we’re going to walk back to my place. On account of how drunk we are.” He made air quotes when he said drunk. “When I come back in the morning, I’ll discover that the car’s been stolen. Which is when I call the cops.”
“Cops?”
“Yeah, I’ve got replacement insurance, but I need a theft report and incident number.”
“It’s going to take months for them to pay off! I need my money—”
“You need it now. Yeah. I know. Probably by the time we’re getting to my house, when our friend is satisfied that everything’s good, some courier who looks like he works for Amazon or UPS will show up with a package. My money—”
“My money.”
“Our money will be in the package.”
“How much are you making on this?” Dean asked.
“That’s for me to know.” He tried to have some bluster in his voice, but all that registered was sullen regret, like maybe there wouldn’t be much left over. Dean caught the petulant tone and was glad he was savvy enough to have insisted on coming along. He didn’t want Little Joe to start thinking that he wasn’t making enough for his trouble, and that maybe he could go light on what he owed. Dean pulled out his phone and started texting.
“What’re you doing?” Joey asked.
“Texting the details to Nadine. A little insurance. She told me to do it. And why couldn’t you have just unloaded the trunk? Is it fucking drugs?”
“Of course it’s fucking drugs, Dean! There’s no real money in anything else anymore…”
Dean nodded.
“It’s stuffed inside the doors. Dani’s pissed that he had to get involved at all. For everything, he likes there to be an option, like two steps removed. There are always ‘intermediaries,’ he calls them. Like the trip I took down south—that’s where I was—I left the car in the hotel garage, left the spare key. They picked it up—I never saw them—took it apart, stuffed the body and panels and then put it back. I drove home.”
As they rolled past the pub, Little Joe swore under his breath.
“What?” asked Dean.
“That Beamer we just passed. It looks like Dani’s car. He’s watching the handoff.”
“You said he only used intermediaries.”
“Yeah. Unless this is different.”
Dean texted Nadine. “His name is Danny?”
“Short for Danilo.”
They drove past the pub and Joey turned the car into the parking lot, one of those dusty, sordid, make-do places common in Philadelphia, a liminal space occupying overlapping city, Septa, Amtrak and DOT land. It lay at the foot of a steep hill leading to train tracks on one side. On the other, past weeds and debris, was an on-ramp for I-95. Already, the sun was setting, and the lot grew dim.
As the car bounced across ruts and depressions, Joey glanced into the rearview mirror. “Jesus, they’re already here.”
Dean glanced over his shoulder through the rear window and watched a sun-bleached Celica follow them in. To Dean, the front of the Celica dipped and rolled like the shoulders of a big cat stalking its prey. The Celica was now between them and their exit.
Joey pulled into an empty spot near the back and killed the engine. Before Dean could reach for the door handle, Joey grasped his forearm. “What if this isn’t going down the way I was told?” he said. “What if with all this fucking around and you and me having contact with Dani…What if it means that they don’t need us? That they don’t want us?”
“Like not pay us?” Dean asked.
“Like don’t want us around. Right now, one of those guys could plug us both. He drives the car away, they take it apart, get the drugs out and dump our bodies somewhere.”
Dean took a deep breath. Exactly what Nadine had said.
Joey sat for a moment longer, still resting his hand on Dean’s arm. “We’ll get out of the car at exactly the same time,” he said. “Then we split wide. You head to the on-ramp side, and I’ll hug the other side. But we gut it out. Maybe this is all ok, right? And we don’t want to make it worse.”
“Okay,” said Dean.
“I’ll hold the keys in my hand so they can see ‘em. Make eye contact with one of them and then drop it on the ground as soon as we’re past the car. I don’t want to take the time fucking around with putting on top of the wheel.”
Dean and Little Joe walked past the Celica. Joey dropped the key in the dirt. They walked with deliberate calm, a tight, mechanical walk. At the road, though there was no traffic to beat, they sprinted across to the pub as though their beers had already been poured and were now getting warm. Neither looked back.
Had they looked around, they would have seen Dani smoking at the corner, standing in the shadow of the Interstate overpass. Dani had watched them drive in, had seen the Celica follow them in. Now, he watched as both cars left the lot and headed north. He threw his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his shoe.
“How long until you get the all-clear?” Nadine asked.
Dani tried not to register his surprise. “About fifteen or twenty minutes,” he blurted.
“I need you to come back to the shop and wait,” she said.
“Shop? You mean the funeral home? No.”
“Well, it might be a little more pleasant than standing around here.”
“Pleasant?”
“I need to be sure my Dad’s going to get his money, and make it home. No funny business. I need to make sure you aren’t going to stiff us.” She giggled.
“Why is that funny?”
“Because in a way, I just stiffed you.” She glanced back along the street, still smiling. “If your courier doesn’t show at Little Joe’s place”—she glanced at her watch—“in half an hour, let’s say, I’m going to call the police and say there’s an unresponsive, old woman in the backseat of your car and that you drove off really fast when I tried to help. I have the license plate too.”
He stared at her blankly.
“You didn’t lock your car when you got out,” she explained, “and I put Mrs. Chalmers in the back.”
Danilo looked at her appraisingly. “You boxed me in, didn’t you? Yes, let’s go back to the shop. I think you and I might have a lot to discuss.”
# # #
The new McCrone"? I like the snappy dialogue. Good cadence and captivating tale. I always thought Philly funeral directors were a bred unto themselves.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDeleteGood read! Thank you for pulling this online.
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