A Grave Undertaking Read online

  It was exactly what Jake did think, but he didn’t say so. He pulled up a chair.

  “All right you’re twenty-one. You been here about a year and���”

  “Three months,” Jake said in a sort of desperate whisper.

  “Shut up,” Dewey said. “I’m doing the talking. Anyway, you’ve been here three months. You’ve covered a few luncheons, you’ve filled in on a couple of beats, you’ve gone to a fire or so. You’ve-but the hell with it. The point is this. You can’t write and God knows maybe you will never be able to write. But it doesn’t matter. In this town a newspaperman doesn’t have to know how to write. I don’t expect anyone to know. And even if you did know how to write it wouldn’t matter. Until you learn how to be a newspaperman, nothing else is important. Now, what is a newspaperman?”

  He stopped, staring at Jake with a bitter eye.

  “Why I suppose���”

  “Shut up. I said I’m doing the talking. A newspaperman is just what the word says. It’s a man who knows how to get news. Now, I have a staff here���” he hesitated, lifting his head and looking around at the room which suddenly became a beehive of industry. “I have a staff of meat heads, of experts, of geniuses, of God only knows what. But I don’t have any newspapermen. They don’t make newspapermen any more. They make journalists or columnists or critics or��� Anyway, the point is this. You come in here this morning and you ask for an assignment. You ask for an interesting assignment.”

  His voice rose to a near bellow on the last few words. Again he swung his eye around the room, but again there was a studied effort to avoid that poisonous gaze.

  “An interesting assignment,” he repeated. “There is no such thing. And if there was, I’ll be double damned if I would give it to some young cub who is still wet behind the ears. But I am going to give you something else.”

  Jake felt the blood leave his face. This was going to be it. The bastard, he thought, can’t he just fire me? Do I have to get the lecture thrown in for free?

  “I’m going to give you a piece of forgotten information and then I am going to give you a week to act on it. And if at the end of the week you don’t come back with an interesting story from an interesting assignment, you don’t have to come back at all.”

  The sudden reprieve came with such a shock that Jake heard his own voice, the words coming quite free from any conscious desire to speak.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Dewey looked at him sharply and then half nodded.

  “The information is this,” he said. “A real newspaperman doesn’t have to wait for news-he finds news. And that, son, is exactly the difference between these journalism school graduates who have merely learned how to parse a sentence and accept a free handout from some press agent, and the legitimate article. A newspaperman who is worth his salt goes out and finds the news. He makes the news. He digs! Damn it he���”

  Carlton Dewey stopped talking and shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his seat.

  “O.K.,” he said, his voice suddenly tired. “You are going to have your chance. You got a week. Go where you want, do what you want. You can even have a few bucks a day expense money. You can try City Hall, you can try a police station, you can go down to the morgue, you can go up to the Waldorf and find Adolf Hitler hiding out as a waiter. I don’t care. You got a week. A complete seven days. At the end of that time, I expect a story. A real story. An interesting story, as you say. And if you haven’t found one by then, why you’ll never make a newspaperman anyway. So now get the hell out of my sight.”

  Jake stood up.

  “Can I get the expenses in advance?” he asked.

  Dewey squinted his eyes and then for the first time his face broke into what might have passed for a smile.

  “Maybe you’ll make a newspaperman after all,” he said.

  Ten minutes later and Jake Epstein, the Blade’s newest cub reporter, was on a bus heading downtown. He had a cousin who was interning down at Bellevue who might be able to help him in some way or other.

  5.

  Shortly before eight o’clock on the morning of May fifth, a Monday, Dr. Martin Jordan told the prettiest girl in Sandusky, Ohio, that she had an Oedipus complex.

  The girl was by no stretch of the imagination neurotic and Dr. Jordan was not a psychiatrist. Dr. Jordan was merely a man who had suddenly lost his temper and the girl was Jane Mercer, his fiancee.

  The scene took place at the back right-hand booth of the Rexall Drugstore while the two of them were having a hurried breakfast. It had to be hurried of necessity as Dr. Jordan was due back at the hospital within fifteen minutes and the hospital was very strict about its interns. Even though the intern might be a particularly brilliant young man who had only another three weeks to go before he was scheduled to accept an exceptionally fine opportunity as a resident physician at a famous Edinburgh hospital.

  It also had to be hurried because Jane Mercer, who was indeed the prettiest girl in Sandusky, and very possibly in Ohio and most of the Midwest as well-because Jance Mercer was due to report to work at eight-thirty. She was the private secretary c; the president of one of the biggest banks in town. One of the reasons that she was able to hold this important position at the tender age of twenty was because of her trustworthiness and respect for punctuality.

  There was no question about it, that is what he said.

  He said she was suffering under an Oedipus complex and, to compound the insult, added that it was about time she grew up and faced reality. It is quite sure that Dr. Jordan would never have made these remarks if he hadn’t been suffering under extreme tension and a complete loss of temper. However, the moment the words left his mouth, Dr. Jordan realized he had gone too far.

  Jane Mercer’s small body suddenly went taut and the blood drained from her lovely, childlike face. She shook the dark, curly hair from her eyes.

  “So!” she said. “So!”

  The word had a certain frightening significance and Dr. Jordan opened his mouth to say something, to try and undo the damage before it was too late. But she didn’t give him the opportunity.

  “So, Martin Jordan,” Jane said. “Because I love my father, because I want to keep the very last promise I ever made to him, I have an Oedipus complex. I���”

  “Now, darling���”

  “Don’t you ‘darling’ me. Just because I refuse to suddenly up and marry you and go off to God knows where���”

  “God knows where Scotland is,” Dr. Jordan said.

  Her mouth opened slightly and she stared at him and then quickly her body relaxed and her face broke and she closed her eyes tightly. A small sob escaped from her throat and Dr. Jordan quickly reached across the table and took her by the forearms.

  “Oh,” honey,” he said. “Please try to understand. I’ll be leaving in three weeks. I want you to come with me, can’t you understand? We’ll be married in another few months and I can’t see why���”

  Her eyes snapped open and she shook off his hands.

  “I’ve told you why, Martin,” she said.

  Her voice was cold and concise and he shrugged and looked a little desperate.

  “I have explained to you. I promised Daddy. The very last thing he said, that night he came into my room before he left. The last thing. He said, ‘And, baby, I will be back. You must wait here and by the time you are a big girl, by the time you are twenty-one, I’ll be back.’ “

  Dr. Jordan sighed.

  “But, Jane,” he said, “we’ve been over it so many times. That was five years ago. Five long years during which you have never heard from him. And you yourself have told me a hundred times that he was sick. That he had had a breakdown. That he probably had no idea of what he was doing or saying. You have to be sensible and face the truth. Five years. You know as well as I do that there is almost no chance he is still alive. Think of the money your mother spent looking for him before she died. The police, the people at the university, everyone. And you
have never had one word. Not one single word. Now honestly, darling���”

  Jane shook her head and wiped at her eyes and interrupted him.

  “I know, Martin,” she said. “I know. But don’t you see, dear, it doesn’t matter. It isn’t a case of whether they ever find Daddy or not. It is a case of my promising. I told him I would be here waiting and he told me that he would be back by the time I was twenty-one. And so I am going to stay right here and wait. Stay at the old house and wait.”

  She leaned forward and this time she took one of his big square hands in both of hers.

  “Try to understand,” she pleaded. “I have to. If I didn’t-well, I would just never feel right again. And you know, darling, that I will come. The day I am twenty-one, I’ll put the old house on the market and I’ll take the first jet plane. To Scotland or to the ends of the earth for you.”

  They left the drugstore some five minutes later and Jane let Dr. Jordan know that she had forgiven him for his outburst of temper in the most pleasant way possible.

  She stood on her toes and lifted her face to be kissed. He blushed at the lack of privacy, but it didn’t keep him from accepting the offering.

  “You’ll pick me up at the bank for lunch?” she asked as she turned to go.

  “Not today, honey,” he said. “I have to be sitting in on an autopsy-but I’ll see you tonight, as soon as I can get away.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  1.

  Mario Gallucci’s grandfather, one Salvatore Gallucci, had been an undertaker and stonemason in the old country. A decent, sober, hardworking man, he had been fairly successful in spite of the poverty of the particular section of the country in which he lived and worked. He had had a connection with the church, since his brother was the local priest, and this had helped a great deal. When anyone died in his; village, he buried him, and if the family had any extra money at all, he sold them a carefully chiseled stone to mark the grave.

  Mario’s father. Giuseppi Gallucci, had followed the family calling, coming to the United States shortly after the advent of prohibition to establish a small mortuary on the lower East Side in New York City. Giuseppi, who was anything but a hardworking and sober man, had a connection with the Maffia and this had been a big help in his business. In spite of a passion for strong liquor and gambling, the senior Gallucci had attained a certain prosperity. He was a jolly, happy man, large both in body and in spirit, and he had a following.

  In the early nineteen fifties, he had moved to a new location in the West Eighties, just off Amsterdam Avenue. He had purchased the building outright. It was an old brownstone, the second house from the corner on the west side of the street. The business continued to thrive and by the time Giuseppi Gallucci finally died-the result of a combination of gastric ulcers, high blood pressure, and cirrhosis of the liver-his son Mario had been taken in as a partner and was already sufficiently experienced in the profession to be able not only to inherit the establishment but to take care of the final needs of his deceased parent.

  Mario was typical of the second generation of immigrant. He was Americanized, but retained certain very definite characteristics of his father. He spoke Italian as well as he did English, had attended grammar school, high school, and four years of college, and had studied his profession not only as a journeyman in the family business, but in academic institutions designed to turn out modern-day, streamlined morticians. He knew how to dress properly, how to handle the family, how to cope with the body from the moment of its arrival in his establishment. But he also had learned a great deal about advanced business methods and efficiency. He was up to date.

  He was also, in many ways, a throwback to his staid and respectable grandfather. He had disapproved of his own parent, believing that his profession called for a serious, dedicated outlook on fife. He neither drank nor gambled and long ago had been forced to give up cigars as his doctor had told him that they probably contributed to his chronic indigestion.

  Mario Gallucci had ambitions and an almost maniacal desire to become a tremendous success. He was confident, once his happy-go-lucky father was dead and out of the way, that he, Mario, could make Gallucci’s Funeral Home one of the biggest operations of its type in the city.

  Mario’s first move, once his parent was safely laid away, was to run down to the main office of the Citizen’s National Bank, which was the trustee of his father’s estate. He talked with a second vice-president and outlined his plans. Mario Gallucci was going to expand. He wanted to purchase the building next door, the structure which was on the corner and adjoined his own, and completely rebuild it after tearing out the insides. He would install a small private chapel with a cathedral ceiling, stained glass windows, and an electric organ. There would be several reception rooms and smaller parlors for his less prosperous clients.

  The two elderly hearses and the ancient flower car would be junked and he would purchase new and modern vehicles which would be in keeping with the luxury of his refurbished establishment. He would purchase half a dozen long black limousines.

  The funeral home would be completely refitted and brought up to date.

  Mario had his facts and his figures. He knew to the penny exactly how much money he would need and he had already made overtures to the owners of the property that he wished to acquire.

  The bank had a rather complete dossier on both Mario and the business which he had inherited and they were more than willing to go along. Not only did they consider the sixty thousand dollars which they were prepared to lend an excellent investment, but they had the additional security of a first mortgage on both the new property and the old as well.

  Mario progressed rapidly with his plans. He bought shrewdly and personally oversaw all construction and work as it was being accomplished. He was equally meticulous in seeing that there was no waste.

  Upon completion of the expanded facilities, he used what was left in his depleted bank account on an advertising campaign.

  According to all of the laws of finance and business, as well as the laws of basic justice, he should have been imminently successful. But he wasn’t. He was a complete failure.

  The tragedy lay in one simple fact, a fact which in itself was an utter contradiction of nature, so to speak.

  Mario Gallucci looked like exactly what he was-an undertaker.

  His father had looked more like a race-track tout or a vaudeville actor than a mortician, and the people had loved him. They even liked the simplicity of his establishment, its lack of pretense and show. They were old-fashioned people for the most part, first-generation Americans, and they distrusted anything new and modern. They liked the elder Gallucci because, with his sunny disposition, he was able to cheer them up in their time of trouble. They liked a happy undertaker the same way that the Irishman likes a bottle of strong spirits at his wake. And they simply could not stand young Mario, with his long sad face, his funereal manner, and his doomsday approach.

  The live ones stayed away in droves and they took their dead with them-to other funeral homes.

  At the end of four years, Mario was in dire trouble. The Citizen’s National Bank very likely would have foreclosed on him at this time but for one factor. The board of directors had recently decided to open a new West Side branch and they felt that a location in the neighborhood of the West Eighties and Amsterdam Avenue would be extremely suitable.

  The building which Mario had purchased and turned into a small chapel, being on the corner, made a perfect spot for the new branch. It was a simple matter to readjust Mario’s delinquent loan by taking title to the structure and then also taking possession.

  Within no time at all, the cathedral ceiling was torn out, the electric organ was sold to a second hand dealer, and the builders were busy installing the iron cages, the long counters, and the ersatz marble floor which would lend tone to the newest branch of the Citizen’s National Bank.

  The same vice-president who had arranged the original loan for Mario, also suggested that he might do wel
l by selling off the recently purchased hearses, limousines and flower car, but Mario sadly informed him that there was a certain lag in the market for this type of transportation and he hung onto them.

  Later, after the branch bank opened, Mario would stare over at it from his own place of business, unable to keep a certain bitterness out of his heart and mind.

  He grew more melancholy then ever.

  Had it not been for the physical fact that the branch was standing there, next door to him where he must look at it a hundred times a day, it is doubtful if Mario Gallucci would ever have consented to the plan which his cousin Joey had presented to him. That he would have agreed to cooperate with Earl Cradle in what would be the very first criminal act of his entire life.

  He was thinking this very thought as the doorbell rang.

  2.

  Earl Cradle sat on the side of the stainless steel drain table in the center of the white tiled room and stared hard at Mario Gallucci.

  “And you are sure,” he said. “Absolutely sure. The second Monday of each month?”

  Mario looked at the small pile of ashes which Earl had carelessly dumped on the cement floor and frowned.

  “Mario knows what he’s talking about,” Joey said.

  “Right,” Mario said. “Always the second Monday. I’ve been over there in the vaults a dozen times. Been there when it happens. Every second Monday. About three o’clock the armored car drives up and the dough is moved. Taken down to the main vaults in midtown, I suppose. As near as I can guess, the branch just chooses that day once each month to move the surplus dough. Maybe they get big deposits during the first few days of each month-I don’t know. But I do know that there is between a half and a million moved each month. On that particular day. The manager himself once mentioned it to me.”

  Cradle nodded.

  “O.K. So it gives us exactly one week. A week from today. Not a lot of time. Now about the passage. Go over that again.”

  “It’s like I said,” Mario said. “At one time this building and the one next door were a single structure. The two buildings shared one basement. There was a wall put up when the buildings were separated and later, when I had both buildings, before the bank took over, I had the passageway cut through. It made it easier to move the bodies���”