Howard Engel: Dead and Buried

Norman Caine finished his Campari in a gulp, which didn’t look right with that kind of drink, and then he was on his feet. “Before you go, Mr. Caine, will you tell me this: Is there still a dimension in this I haven’t discovered yet? I’m only asking.”

“In a word, yes. Good-afternoon, Mr. Cooperman.” And he walked out of the bar towards the elevator and pushed the button.

I walked out of the hotel trying to recall where I’d left the car. Parked in front of the door was a black limousine with its back door open and a heavy-set man sitting in the back seat. While I was wondering which local moneybags looked like a hood from a Warner Brothers gangster movie, a voice in my ear brought me back to earth:

“Mr. Cooperman?” The voice belonged to a beanpole wearing a brown leather jerkin and cavalry twills. He was smiling like I was an old friend. I tried to place him as I admitted that I was indeed the man he was looking for. As soon as I said that, he caught me under the arm and scooped me into the car. It took less than a second, it seemed. He got in after me and no sooner was the door slammed shut than the car took off with a lurch. I hadn’t seen the driver in the front seat.

“Hey! I don’t want a ride!”

“Don’t worry, it’s not far,” said the big fellow to my left. Somehow, that didn’t assure me. The car had turned down Yates Street. It was still going at the speed limit or faster. I could feel my back pressing into the car seat.

“But I brought my car with me to the hotel! Let me out, I’ll be right back.” This seemed to strike them as funny, although nobody used it as a moment to crack wise at my expense. When I looked out the windows again, I was lost. I knew we were somewhere west of Ontario Street, but I couldn’t say exactly where. “Look, you guys, I know your boss. I just got through talking to him. You better check with him about this.” It was as if they were deaf, all three of them. I tried to gauge whether I’d be able to get over the beanpole’s knees to reach the door. I’d have to wait for a traffic light. That was the trouble with a town this size; I couldn’t remember a single light this side of Ontario Street. I kept thinking how stupid I’d been to walk out of the hotel without taking even simple precautions. I could have used the side door, or come out the back way through the kitchen. Damn it, give me a chance to replay the scene!

The car turned sharp left just as I could glimpse Montecello Park under the trees. We were behind an apartment building, heading down a ramp with a metal door at the bottom. The driver pointed a black box at the windshield and the grey metal door began to slide open. Without altering its speed, the car moved smoothly under the opening door without scratching the roof. The car looped around the underground garage while the driver looked for a free space. That was a good sign; it seemed to mean parlay of some kind and not summary execution. The car came to a stop with the same lurch that it had started up with. I felt it in my neck.

“Okay, here we are,” said the beanpole as he got out. I would have tried to run, but I could feel the breath of the big fellow on my neck. We had come to a stop beside an elevator door. The driver had already summoned the car by the time we caught up to him. The driver was a short man with blond hair and a full set of exploded blood vessels on the end of his nose. He was wrapped in a cheap raincoat that smelled mouldy when he stood beside me. The beanpole pressed the button marked “PH” and up we went. There was a chance that a stop at the main floor might save me; but we shot past it. Residents wouldn’t be visiting back and forth, so I couldn’t hope for a stop before we reached PH. When the car stopped and the doors opened, the shortish guy got out and pointed the way. The other two were right behind me. The leader rang the bell and we all waited. In about twenty seconds, the slowest third of a minute I’ve ever known, the door of the penthouse opened and pressure on my shoulder invited me to step in.

The man who opened the door had a sallowness that was almost green. He was wearing a dirty Irish sweater. “Glad you could come,” he said, as though I didn’t know about irony for God’s sake.

“Okay,” I said, shaking off my friends from the car, “this has gone far enough! I want to talk to whoever’s in charge!” I was buttressed by the kind of anger that goes with the idea of selling your life as dearly as possible. I was going to make a lovely fuss before I was finished.

“That would be me,” said a familiar voice. I looked up from the Adam’s apple of the green-faced acting-butler into the face of my friend and neighbour Frank Bushmill.

“Frank! What are you doing here?”

“Such as it is, Benny, this is my home. And you are right welcome.”

“What? I don’t get it.” I was led, still confused, from the hall, relieved of my coat, into a large front room which was full of people talking and drinking. “What the hell’s going on here?” I said to Frank as I recognized faces in the crowd. There was Bill Palmer from the Beacon. There were Anna and her picture-collecting father. Anna was sitting in a big overstuffed chair next to Eric Mailer, my friend from Secord, fresh from his herbarium and old newspapers. Pia Morley, a woman I once suspected of killing a few people, gave me a peck on the cheek. I repeated my question to her and was ignored. Talk continued uninterrupted. Glasses clinked and bottles were lifted. I wasn’t even the guest of honour. Nobody even looked at me. In the middle of the room was an enlarged photograph of my friend Martin Lyster. Then, of course, it hit me. How stupid of me not to guess. Like that writer fellow in The Third Man played by Joseph Cotton, I’d been kidnapped all right, but not to be bumped off. I’d been snatched so that I wouldn’t miss the wake for poor Martin! I wasn’t going to die after all. I wasn’t going to have to take as many of them as I could with me.

“Here, Benny, take this glass. There’s plonk enough in this room, but I’ve got some of the real stuff left in the kitchen.”

In the movie, Joseph Cotton ended up on a platform facing a room full of earnest Austrian readers thirsty for fresh blood asking questions like: “And where would you put Mister James Joyce?” I felt my knees beginning to desert me for the kitchen where the real stuff was hidden. Frank was talking at me again.

“Let go of me, will you,” meaning my grip on his arm that was spilling some of the real stuff on his broadloom. I couldn’t get over it. The wake was for Martin. It wasn’t my funeral. I emptied the glass in my hand without tasting anything. Frank looked on, marvelling. He’d never seen me drink anything so fast in all the years he’d known me. Including water.

“I didn’t bring any snuff, Frank,” I said, when I got my breath again. “What’s a wake without snuff?”

“Ah, there’s no lack of it, Benny. Rest assured. Wally Lamb has some, for one.” I looked across the room now that I had a name to go with the familiar face. Lamb was a local painter. The room was full of semi-strangers. We’d all been pals of Martin’s, but we hardly knew one another at all, unless those factors that tend to throw people together in a small town surfaced. For instance, I recognized a couple of professors from Secord. I didn’t know their names. One was telling the other about a happy working sabbatical in Texas. When he finished, the other began telling a long story about interviewing the head of the Greek Orthodox Church at a dinner in Istanbul. A third learned head, this one with a red beard, moved into the group and began asking questions about movies on videotape.

I was going mad, of course. It was all in my imagination. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t I being taken for a ride by Tony Pritchett’s boys? This couldn’t be a real wake for Martin Lyster. Maybe I’d passed out. Maybe this was all I was going to get of my life passing before my eyes as I slowly bled to death in a ditch. It was the pressure of Anna’s hand on my arm that brought me back to the world of acid rain, skinheads and unleaded gas.