Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

"What'd you do?" Susan asked, always the inquisitive journalist.

"Rented a Burger King refrigerated truck," Charlie said. "Talk about a meat wagon. We stacked the bodies inside, put the truck in a parking lot by Jackson Memorial. Next thing you know, somebody hijacks it. Probably thought there was forty grand worth of burgers inside. Would have loved to see their faces when they busted open the trailer."

Charlie Riggs was into his storytelling. Finally, as the day wore on, the activities of last night caught up with all of us. Charlie took a nap, dozing on the front porch, mouth open, wheezing like an old Chevy. I curled up on a couch in the Florida room. A cool breeze from the Gulf whispered through open shutters. Granny tucked me in with a homemade quilt, just like the old days. Maybe later she'd drive me to Little League practice. I was halfway to dreamland when a second body joined me under the quilt.

"I'm too tired to race you to the goal line," I murmured.

"No hurry," Susan Corrigan said. "Take your time."

She kissed me very gently and then rubbed my chin with her fingertips. "You need a shave," she said. She stroked the stubble against the grain and kissed my neck. She pulled up my polo shirt and started kissing my chest. Wait a second. When I grew up, it was the guy who did the tussling with the clothes, the discovering of body parts. But I was not about to object. It would have been overruled. And I was enjoying the attention. When I tried to take the offensive, she gently pushed me down, gave me a just relax order with her eyes, and went about her business.

I was on my back, my clothes on the floor when she slipped out of her things, her small breasts tracing circles on my chest. From nowhere she produced a condom, as indispensable as lipstick to the modern woman. She slipped it on me without either snapping it like a slingshot or gouging me with a fingernail. Then, strong legs astride me, she eased downward, taking me in, tightening onto me. She exhaled deep surging breaths, all the time raising and lowering herself like a lifter doing squats.

I was liking it, liking her. But all the time watching her, and not just the curve of the hips. Watching her face, thinking about her and Roger Salisbury and Melanie Corrigan. And very rich, very dead Philip Corrigan. And who did what to whom.

Always thinking, damn it! Instead of just feeling. Thinking about the hacked up body a few feet away. Why not just enjoy the thrusting and the swampy heat rising from amidships? Damn it to hell, Lassiter.

I slept some more and when I awoke it was dark in the little house. Susan Corrigan purred next to me, stretched a leg until the calf muscle peaked, then curled up again. I thought about her. Smart and sassy. Part of the new breed. Toughing it out in a man's world. Elbowing past male reporters to get the best quotes in a locker room. Ignoring the wiseguys-what happened to sportswriters who pissed standing up?-dishing it out as well as taking it. This was the Susan Corrigan I knew. Which only made me realize I didn't know her very well at all.

I got up without disturbing her and poked around in the dark. No sign of Charlie or Granny. I found some smoked mackerel in the refrigerator and, still disoriented, tried to remember if this was dinner or a late snack. The house was quiet, the only sounds the palm fronds outside, slapping against each other in the breeze from the Gulf. I padded around to Granny's bedroom. The door was open a crack, a hurricane lamp burning by the night table. I should check on her. As she checked on me a thousand nights. She was there, under her own tufted quilt, sleeping peacefully, breathing steadily, her arms wrapped around the happy, slumbering hulk of Charles W. Riggs, M.D.

No cops waited to arrest me at my little house off Kum-quat Avenue; no reporters paced in the waiting room of my office. For a while, I thought The Great Graveyard Robbery might have been a dream. I was sitting at my desk Monday morning, sipping black coffee, peaceful as a monk, when I found the story on page 7 of the Local section:

Vandals destroyed a double gravesite and removed two bodies from the Eternal Memories Mortuary and Mausoleum over the weekend, Metro police reported yesterday.

The bodies of Philip R. Corrigan and Sylvia Corri-gan, his wife, were taken from a private crypt at the southwest Dade cemetery, according to police spokesmen. Mr. Corrigan, who died in 1986, was a well-known builder whose projects often were opposed by environmental groups. His wife died two years earlier.

"This looks like the work of the Conch Brigade, " said Metro Sgt. Joaquin Castillo, referring to the radical Keys group that advocates violence to stop construction in environmentally sensitive areas.

Because the Conch Brigade refuses to identify its members, no one with that organization could be reached for comment. Police estimate the damage to the crypt at $50,000.

Wacky. So far off that, weirdly, it was not far wrong. The Conch Brigade consisted of vicious terrorist Granny Lassiter, part-time septic tank cleaner Virgil Thigpen, and two unemployed shrimpers who could be found fishing for snook in Hell's Bay when not in jail for public drunkenness.

The newspaper made no mention of the recent malpractice trial and said nothing about the security guard seeing anything suspicious. I figured the cops made no connection with Salisbury, and the guard wasn't about to describe his close encounter with a moldy ghost. No suspects except a phantom group.

There wouldn't be much of an investigation. A penny-ante crime in Dade County, particularly on the weekend a DEA agent got hit in the head with two hundred pounds of twenty-dollar bills. Sent him to the hospital with a concussion and he couldn't even keep the money. It was evidence against a North Miami drug dealer named Guillermo Montalvo. When federal agents surrounded his house, Montalvo tossed the money-trussed up like a bale of hay-out a second story window. It glanced off the head of the agent, who wore a bulletproof vest but no hockey helmet. How much money is there in two hundred pounds of twenties? Exactly one million, eight hundred thousand, one hundred eighty dollars, according to the feds, who often weigh the take because counting it takes so much time.

The same day another federal agent got shot in the gun. Not the gut, the gun. After selling a kilo of cocaine in a sting operation, the agent drew his nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer semiautomatic handgun. The stingee, one Angel Morales, did the same thing. Morales shot his weapon first, and his bullet lodged in the agent's gun barrel. Morales had little time to enjoy his marksmanship. Four Hialeah cops who had been lurking in the bushes emptied twenty-two rounds into Morales, then kicked him in the groin for good measure.

So with everything going on, the police couldn't be expected to worry about a little old-fashioned grave robbing. I did wonder, though, if Roger had heard about it. And Melanie Corrigan. Surely the police would call her. Maybe we should put a tail on her, see if she and Roger have a tete-a-tete to talk it over. My musings were interrupted by Cindy, buzzing me.

"Some bimbo for you on two, su majestad."

"She have a name?"

"Sure, and a voice like melted butter."

"Please, Cindy, I'm not in the mood for Twenty Questions. Been a hard weekend and a crummy day."

"Mis-sus Philip Corrigan, and she asked for Jacob Lassiter."

Uh-oh.

I decided not to be expecting the call, but not to be surprised either.

"Jake," she said when I gave her a flat-toned hello, "I'm afraid there's been some trouble."

She waited a moment. I let her wait some more, then said, "I saw the story in the-paper. What's going on?"

"I don't know but it's tearing me apart. You can't imagine the pain. I just keep thinking about him desecrating Philip's tomb, stealing the body, it's so terrible."