Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

I was muscling the power saw through the concrete. Charlie Riggs held a portable lamp that threw our shadows across the marble floor and up a decorative wall into which were inscribed the names of all the Corrigan shopping centers and condo projects, even the ones that resulted in class action consumer lawsuits.

I put the saw down for a rest. "This place raises ostenta-tiousness to new levels."

"De gustibus non est disputandum," Charlie said.

"Gesundheit," 1 said.

Charlie shook his head and grimaced. "There's no accounting for taste. Or your abysmal lack of training in Latin. Didn't you learn anything in law school?"

"Only not to draw to an inside straight," I admitted.

We went back to work. Twenty minutes later we were still watching our shadows dance up the wall when Charlie said, "Help me with this. The top's ready to move."

I got my hands into the seam and tried to lift the top. No dice. It must have weighed five hundred pounds. I put my shoulder against it and tried sliding it off. It moved two inches and sent a grinding noise up my spine.

Suddenly I heard padded footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer. A whisper from behind me, "How's it going?"

"Okay, okay," I said. "Next time, Susan, call before you drop in."

"Ignore him," Charlie said. "He's a little spooked."

I kept pushing the top of the crypt, but no traction, my sneakers slipping on the marble floor. It was like trying to move a blocking sled on a rain-slicked field with John Matu-szak and Hulk Hogan sitting on top. Another inch. Nothing more. Just that damn grinding sound that maybe wouldn't bother someone used to opening tombs after midnight with the wind whistling through the gravestones.

Charlie lent me a shoulder. Another two inches. Susan pitched in and we got it going and then couldn't stop it. The concrete lid crashed to the marble floor and broke into a thousand pieces. The explosion echoed in my ears. Clouds of dust covered us and rose toward the ceiling. Someone sneezed. I hoped it was Charlie or Susan. I shined the light inside the crypt. Charlie leaned over as far as he could and patted a wooden casket.

"Good, very good indeed," he said. "Dry as toast."

I looked at Susan. "Why don't you wait for us by Charlie's truck?" Why ask her to watch as you dig out her father's body, two years in the grave. She gave me a look that said she was just as tough as me and probably a good deal more so, but she left anyway. Charlie and I went back to work. Both of us leaned on a crowbar to open the casket, a task we did in the dark because the portable light was now on the floor. The body was three feet below the top of the crypt, and since I was taller and stronger than Charlie, I was appointed as the retriever.

I leaned over, the concrete crypt folding me at the waist. I reached for what I thought would be shoulders and came up with a handful of mush.

"Yuck."

"What's the matter?" Charlie asked.

"Feels like I just stuck my hands in a barrel of apple butter."

"Mold," Charlie said. "That'd be his face. Even in a dry tomb, that'd happen."

I wiped off my hands, reached lower, found some shoulders and lifted. Lighter than I thought. Charlie put the flashlight down and held open a zippered body bag, and in a minute we were traipsing across the dew-laden grass, Charlie Riggs toting his tools in a burlap sack, and me with a body bag slung over my shoulder. Transylvania's favorite couple.

"That LA detective was wrong," I said, as we neared the truck.

"How's that?" Charlie Riggs asked.

"Marlowe, Philip Marlowe. In one of the books, he said dead men are heavier than broken hearts."

"So?"

"The former Philip Corrigan is a bantamweight."

"Bodies lose weight after death," Charlie said, as if everybody knew that.

"The ultimate diet," I concluded.

Charlie mumbled something to himself and kept walking, his scientific mind still on duty after our all-nighter. We were ten yards from the truck when Charlie stopped in his tracks. Susan Corrigan was crouched on her haunches at the rear of the pickup waiting for us, alone with her thoughts.

"Let's ID the subject," Charlie said, sounding like a homicide detective.

He unzipped the bag and popped the light into it.

"Uh-oh," I said.

"What's wrong?" Susan asked, joining us, a tremble in her voice.

"Was your father buried in a yellow chiffon dress?"

"Oh God," she said. "That's Mom and the dress is pink, or at least, it was."

"How the hell!" I shouted, nearly dropping the bag.

"I'm sorry," Susan said, her voice tight. "It's my fault. I told you the crypt on the left, but that's looking out, not in. 1 got turned around."

We sat down on the wet grass, as much to rest as to figure out what to do next. We used a flattened headstone for a conference table, and like a good lawyer, I called a meeting. Moonbeams were bouncing off the pale tombstones, casting a gauzy, soft focus over Susan's features. Mood lighting.] looked at her, wondering. How could she make that mistake? Did she really want us to dig up Dad? I was thinking about what Charlie had said, homicide in the family. But] looked at Susan Corrigan in that misty moonlight and thought I saw tears in her eyes.

Crazy. A night without sleep hauling ass through a graveyard and the mind starts playing tricks. Susan Corrigan could no more kill her father than, than…

"Not much time," Charlie Riggs said, gesturing toward the east, where pink slivers of sky were beginning to show.

"Right," I said. "Let's put Mom in the truck and get Dad."

Like most things in life, grave robbery is easier the second time around. If we kept up our two-a-day practices like the Dolphins in August, we'd be able to purloin a body in forty-five minutes flat. This time the corpse wore a dark suit and was heavier to tote. I had it over my shoulder and was just leaving the mausoleum when I heard something, a soft singing.

Esta tarde vi llover, Vi gente correr, y no estabas tu.

Leather soles were scraping the marble in the foyer. Charlie and I backtracked into the mausoleum just as a flashlight poked around the corner. The night security guard.

Charlie Riggs flattened himself against a back wall. I heard his rasping breaths and hoped he wasn't going into cardiac arrest. I ducked into a shadow behind the smashed crypt, but there wasn't room for my dead buddy. Crouching like a catcher behind the plate, I gripped the seat of Philip Corrigan's pants. He stood, shakily, leaning against me like a friendly drunk. The flashlight illuminated the floor, clouds of pulverized concrete still rising from it. The dust tickled my nose, and I fought off a sneeze.

The beam bounced oif the walls, and I caught sight of the guard. Private security, over sixty and overweight, probably working for minimum wage on a twelve-hour shift. The graveyard shift. In a footrace he couldn't beat Philip Corrigan.

The flashlight beam struck Corrigan's black shoes and inched up his body, finally coming to rest on a waxy, moldy face, a nose that melted into soggy cheeks.

"Madre de Dios," the guard murmured.

I was holding my breath, then had to inhale. More dust, then without warning, "AH-CHOO!"

The sound came from me, but all the guard could see was Philip Corrigan, his head flopping forward as my grip loosened.

"Don't worry," I whispered from the darkness. "Dead men don't sneeze."

The guard took a step backward. "Jesus Cristo!"

I raised one of Corrigan's arms, stiffly pointed a rotting hand at the waxy face and said, "No way Jose. Yo soy el anti-Cristo."

The flashlight clattered to the floor and the guard took off. A moment later, so did we, Philip Corrigan draped over my shoulder, Charlie Riggs hustling behind me, chuckling. Whistling past the graveyard.

The black night had turned to silvery morning and the early commuters were heading north on the Palmetto, tiny shafts of headlights cutting through the mist. We loaded the truck and joined in but headed south. The expressway dumped us onto South Dixie Highway, U.S. 1, the road that starts in Maine and ends at Key West. We aimed that way, past a hundred gas stations and fast-food joints, chintzy strip shopping centers with pet stores and scuba shops, boarded-up small businesses, a thousand broken dreams. Down through Kendall and Perrine, past mango groves, strawberry fields, and packing houses, through Homestead by the Air Force base, over the Card Sound Bridge, through Key Largo and south some more.