“Maybe,” I said. “But first maybe we should blow some smoke down into the burrow and see what comes running out.”
He thought and nodded. “Now I see why you want to do what you’re doing. I won’t say it has much chance of working. But it’ll sure stir things up.” He gazed at Jan. “Miz Bannon, I know it’s a great and sad and tragic loss. And doing something about it can make a person feel better somehow. But don’t aim all of yourself at that one thing, of paying somebody back. Revenge. Because it can turn a person sour through and through.”
“I don’t care what I turn into, Judge,” she said.
He met her dark gaze, then opened his menu and said, “We better get our order in.”
I went alone to Ingledine’s Funeral Home and arrived at quarter of two. It was on a lateral street, and was a small version of Mount Vernon, set between a Savings and Loan branch and a used car lot. I asked for Mr. Ingledine and the stealthy, earnest, unctuous young man told me that Mr. Ingledine had retired, and that he was Mr. Farris, Junior, and that he and his father owned and operated the establishment, and how could he help me, sir.
We tiptoed past an arched doorway where, under a rose-colored spotlight, a waxy pink and white old man rested, propped up in his bronze box, with floral offerings concealing whatever the box rested upon. Two old women sat on a couch on the other side of the room, holding hands and murmuring to each other.
Mr. Farris, Junior, opened a desk drawer in a small office and took a folder out, and extracted the death certificate signed by the County Medical Examiner.
“We obtained the vital statistics from available local records, sir. You might check them over for accuracy.” Brantley B. Bamzon, and the age looked right, and he had the next of kin right. The doctor had listed it as accidental death. I asked about it and he said that in the absence of any suicide note or any witnesses, and in view of the fact that he could have been working on the diesel engine, it would have been unfair to assume suicide.
“Would you care to… uh… view the remains, sir? I would not advise it. It’s quite a… an extensive and nasty mutilation. There is absolutely no possibility of any reconstruction of the features. And I think it would be wise for you to discourage the widow from viewing the deceased. A memory like that would be… difficult to forget.”
“What work have you done?”
“Well, a great deal of the blood was gone, of course. We trocared the rest of it as best we could, and the body fluids and so on, and by clamping some of the major vessels in the chest and throat area, we did manage to embalm to a certain extent. Let me see. Oh, yes, we were able to make positive identification so that we do not have to trouble anyone about that. They had at one time sold sandwiches and coffee at their marina, and the County Health Department requires a health card with a photo and thumbprint, and the Sheriff’s Department verified the identity by taking a print from the body.”
“You’ve been very efficient.”
His smile was shy and pleased. “I am sorry, but I do not quite understand… what your function is in this, Mr. McGee?”
“Friend of the family, you could say. Here is a limited power of attorney, notarized, empowering me to make the arrangements in the name of the widow.”
He looked at it with a faintly pained expression. “There’ll be no services here, I would assume?”
“No. You can expect shipment instructions within the next few days.” He led me back into the display room. The lids were propped open, the linings glossy, the handles burnished. They ranged from two twenty-five on up: I picked a three-hundred-dollar box. We went back into the office.
He said, “I’d recommend that we take the remains out of the storage vault and place the body in the casket and seal it, sir.”
“I suggest you leave it right where it is, Mr. Farris, under refrigeration, until you get shipment instructions. And then please don’t make a permanent seal. There could be an insurance question, on an accident indemnity clause.”
“Oh. I see. But you should know that storage is costing eleven thirty-three a day. That’s with tax, of course.”
“Of course. Now may I see your statement on this?”
He took the statement from the folder and took it into the next room. I heard the slow tapping of unskilled typing. He brought it back and handed it to me. He had added the box and two more days of vault rental. The total was seven hundred and fifty-eight dollars and thirty-eight cents.
“Mr. McGee, I am sure you will understand our position when I point out that it is our information that the deceased was a bankrupt, and we will have to have some assurance that…”
The certified check for a thousand dollars that I placed in front of him stopped him abruptly. I said, “Is this top copy mine? Just acknowledge the receipt of a thousand dollars on it, Mr. Farris, and when the body leaves here, deduct any further charges from the credit balance and mail your check to Mrs. Bannon, To-Co Groves, Route Two, Frostproof. And I see you have a photocopy of the death certificate, so you can let me have the original? Thank you.”
He went with me to the front door, through the ripe smell of flowers in full bloom, through the muted organ music.
He put his pale hand out, smiled his pale smile, and said, “Please express our sympathy to the bereaved.”
I stared at his hand until he pulled it back and wiped it nervously on the side of his jacket. I said, “Junior, you could make a tangible expression of your sincere sympathy.”
“I don’t believe I follow you.”
“Before you send her the check for her credit balance, just refigure your bill. She’s a young widow with three boys to raise. You padded it by at least two hundred and fifty dollars. I think it would be a nice gesture.”
His face went pink. “Our rates are-”
“Ample, boy. Real ample.”
Outside I took a deep breath of Shawana County air, but there was something vaguely industrial in it, some faint acid that rasped the back of my throat.
We were moving in, stirring them up with a blunt stick. The old judge, with good law and good timing, was snatching the ten acres right back out of the hands of LaFrance, just when he thought he had his whole deal lined up. And soon he would know a stranger was moving into the game, buying some chips, asking for somebody to deal. When in doubt, shove a new unknown into their nice neat equations and see how they react.
Hungry men think everybody else is just as hungry. Conspiratorial men see conspiracy everywhere. I strolled through industrial stink toward the bank.
Six
WE GATHERED again in the bank president’s office at two thirty. Sanders had the Bannon file on his desk, and a Mr. Lee, an attorney for the bank, sitting near his left elbow. Lee had a round, placid face and a brushcut. He could have been thirty or fifty or anything in between.
With obviously forced cordiality, Sanders said, “Well, Mrs. Bannon, the bank has decided to accept your payment and mark the mortgage account current and in good order.”