Билл Пронзини - The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Back in the cabin, I put in a long distance call that got picked up right away. “I changed my mind,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that contract offer after all. But it’ll cost you seventy-five.”

“For you I don’t argue,” Frank Carbone said. “Seventy-five it is. But how come you changed your mind? You told me before you’re never leaving that retirement place of yours.”

I didn’t have to, now. Didn’t have to worry about having enough money to last me the rest of my life, either. But all I said was, “Send somebody up with the cash in a couple of days. I’ll have proof the job’s done in exchange.”

“A couple of days? How you going to do it that quick?”

“That’s my business.”

“Sure, sure. Same old Griff. Trade secret, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Trade secret.”

Listen to me. Please listen. Everything I’m about to tell you is the gospel truth.

I can’t live with this terrible secret any longer. It’s been thirty-five years, but I’ve never stopped thinking about what I did. Not for a single day. It’s all there, every detail burned into the walls of my mind. It could’ve happened yesterday, that’s how clear it is.

I see him alive, not just that night before the bullets tore into him, but the way he was when he had the power. Big man, bigger than life, bigger than death everybody thought, shouting words and slogans, promises and lies in his giant’s voice. King of Labor, King of the Long Labor Con. The job action. The sitdown strike. The secondary boycott. The sick-in. All of that and so much more until they threw him in the slammer for jury-tampering.

James Earl Hoffa, that’s right.

And then came the Nixon pardon that set him up for another run at the Union presidency. He should’ve known it wasn’t going to happen. No one was stupid enough other than Brother James Earl himself to think he’d get the deal past his successors, as hard-nosed a bunch as he was. Should’ve known they’d take him out by any means necessary.

I was the means.

I picked him up that night in my car. Just me and him, nobody else. He thought we were going to a secret hush-hush meeting with some bigwigs in Rutherford—

Sure, I know he was last seen in the Detroit area, but that was the day before.

They set him up by calling him back to Jersey on the QT. Nobody but Big Billy and me and a couple of others knew that the only meeting he was going to was with God or the Devil.

So anyhow, I drove him to the closed-up garage I owned. That’s where I emptied my Colt automatic into him, six shots grouped in his chest like it was a bull’s-eye target.

Then I put on overalls and gloves, dragged his body down into the grease pit, and dismembered it with a hatchet and a hacksaw. Awful job. Awful. But that was the way the big boys uptown wanted it done, don’t ask me why.

I can still see him lying there dead after I put those six rounds into his chest. Still see the pieces of him after the butchering was done, all the bloody pieces, all the King’s parts: legs, arms, torso, head — my last view of the Great Man before I stuffed the pieces into six separate plastic bags and put the bags into the trunk of my Buick.

Jimmy H. alive, Jimmy H. dead, Jimmy H. in pieces. Nothing left but chopped-up clay, the torso weighted with lead pellets, bouncing and thudding in the trunk as I raced along the Turnpike to the new Meadowlands stadium.

That’s what I said, the Meadowlands.

How did I get in? I had a key to the gate, that’s how. Back then I had connections, guys who’d do me a favor without asking questions and then keep their mouths shut. The refineries five miles to the south would have made quicker work of the remains, but butchering him was bad enough, I couldn’t burn him up too. The Meadowlands was better. Home base. Burial instead of cremation.

The State of New Jersey is where America comes to die. You don’t think so? Remember Paul Simon? The cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, each filled with people in search of America. I was one of them that night, in a Buick with a dismembered slab of America in my trunk and the rising yellow clouds from the refineries staining the night around me.

Oh, I remember, all right. Every detail after three and a half decades. Arriving at the deserted stadium site. Opening the Buick’s trunk in the moonlit dark to get the shovel. Digging six holes all across the south end zone—

Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. I’m telling you just what I did: dug six holes, six little graves for the six pieces of Jimmy H.

If New Jersey is where America comes to die, then the end zone was the perfect burial spot for Brother James Earl. Hell, it would have been perfect for the Wobblies, Mother Jones, the ’37 Ford strikers, hundreds of others like them. You see what 1 mean?

Once the bags were planted, the holes covered up and smoothed out, I stood leaning on the shovel, gasping in the cold, like an exhausted actor taking an involuntary crooked bow after a command performance. Thinking that the whole business hadn’t been so bad, that I’d gotten it all done pretty quick. A speed run from the killing to the cutting up to the driving to the burying. Thinking that was the end of it.

But it wasn’t. Not for me. I should have known it wouldn’t be because even then I could see the pieces spread out deep under the end zone turf, as if I had X-ray vision. The flesh that would decay in summer heat and winter ice. The scattered bones that would crumble to dust.

I didn’t stay there long. It was almost dawn and the almost finished stadium was glowing in the restless early light. Soon there’d be workers, traffic. I couldn’t afford to be seen in the area.

I drove the Buick straight back to the garage, backed it inside, and took care of the clean-up. Washed the blood down the grease pit drain with a hose. Used some solvent to remove a couple of stains in the trunk. Burned the overalls and gloves and my filthy clothes in the incinerator out back. When I was done, there wasn’t a trace left.

My house was half a mile from station. Jane was waiting for me when I got there.

Where were you all night? she said.

Never mind, I said. It’s none of your business.

You look terrible, she said. What have you been doing?

Nothing, I said. What else could I have said to her? Oh, nothing much, babe, just out murdering the boss, cutting up the boss, burying the boss.

I walked past her, heading toward the shower. This is a filthy place, I said then. It’s always filthy. Why don’t you ever clean it up?

She didn’t like that. She hadn’t liked anything about me for a long time. Even thirty-five years later I can feel her contempt, her suspicion. I guess I can’t blame her. Living jammed close together in that little house, not just her and me but the kid too, none of us getting along with each other, fearing Big Billy and the uptown boys, torn apart by secrets. She left me not long after that night, you know, just as soon as the kid got out of high school, and for all I know she’s dead now. The kid, too — I haven’t seen or heard from him in twenty years.

But I’m getting off track. After I had my shower and put on some of my better threads I drove into the city to report to Big Billy.

Disposing of Jimmy H. was the nasty part of the assignment, but facing Big Billy wasn’t much better. You remember him? Sure. He’s long gone now, most of the uptown boys are long gone, but back then he was a force. I did a lot of jobs for him before that night, but none like the one with Brother James Earl. None that was even close.

An hour later I was standing in Big Billy’s office, surrounded by concrete, his hard little eyes boring into mine.