“Is that what you did, drive the hearse?” Which would be unfortunately removed from any connection with Charlie Brody’s body.
“At first. But Mr. Merriweather took an interest in me, and so I suppose did Mrs. Merriweather. At any rate, he was training me to be his assistant, eventually perhaps his partner. So I wound up doing general work for him, just about everything there is to do in a funeral home.”
“And then he fired you?”
Brock again combined the smile and shrug. “The more I learned about the business,” he said, “the less I was enthralled by it. On the other hand, I wasn’t at all ready to leave that employment, which is why I phoned him today, to see if he’d calmed down and would take me back.”
“Had he?”
“I didn’t have a chance to find out.”
All things considered, Engel was willing to guess there was more to the story than Brock had told, and his further guess was that the rest of the story had to do somehow with Mrs. Merrieather. Had Brock been doing a little extracurricular work there? Or had Mrs. Merriweather merely tried too hard to be helpful to Brock with her husband, with or without Brock’s request that she do so? It was something like that anyway, and Engel was pleased with himself for figuring it out, but on the other hand, it wasn’t getting him any closer to Charlie Brody and that goddam blue suit, so he said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Brock, I don’t know a thing about the undertaker business, and now with Mr. Merriweather murdered I’ve got to do some learning. I’ve got to know the routine, the methods, what Mr. Merriweather’s normal day was like, you see what I mean?” Engel, saying all this, could barely keep a smile of pleasure from spoiling the whole effect. It was just that he was working with his own memory of interviews with cops in order to try to sound like a cop himself, and he was proudly sure he was doing just fine.
Apparently he was. Brock leaned forward in an attitude that declared his desire to help, and said, “Anything I can tell you, Mr. Engel, I’ll be glad to.”
“I tell you what,” said Engel. “Let’s take the last body you worked on, you and Mr. Merriweather, you tell me everything that’s done from beginning to end.”
“Well, not everybody likes that kind of detail, Mr. Engel.”
“I don’t mind. In my business...” Engel let the sentence end with his own smile-shrug combination, then said, “We’ll just take the last body you worked on. What would that be?”
“The last client?”
“Client?”
Brock’s sudden smile this time was slightly sardonic. “That was Mr. Merriweather’s word,” he said. “He’s a client himself now, isn’t he?”
“All right, who was the last client you worked on?”
“That would be the retired policeman, O’Sullivan. He was buried this morning.”
Engel covered his disappointment. “Of course,” he said. “That was the last one you worked on.”
“Of course,” said Brock, “I didn’t deal with him all the way through, I got fired first, but I could tell you what part I did, and then what Mr. Merriweather did after I left, it’s all standard stuff.”
“I’d rather,” Engel told him, seeing a ray of hope, “you told me about a client you actually worked on all the way through. Who would that be, the one before O’Sullivan?”
“Yes, that would be another man, a Mr. Brody.”
“Brody.”
“Yes. Heart attack. I think he was a salesman of some kind.”
Engel settled more comfortably on the chair, and said, “Fine. Tell me about him.”
“Well, it was the widow who called. Some business associate of her husband’s had recommended Merriweather, I think. I went out with the pickup car, made the initial arrangements with the widow and met with the doctor, and the pickup team with me put the client in the travel box.”
“Travel box,” said Engel.
“That’s what we call it. Looks pretty much like a regular casket, but with handles coming out of each end, like a stretcher. I think the city boys use a wicker basket, which would be more practical for cleaning and everything, but families might get upset if they saw a client stuffed away in a basket, so we use the travel box.”
“Sure,” said Engel.
Brock seemed to consider. “Nothing special about the Brody case,” he said. “Well, one thing. There’d been an accident of some sort, he was burned rather badly about the head, so there wouldn’t be any viewing. Actually, there’s the whole area of cosmetology we didn’t get into with Brody, maybe I ought to pick a different client to tell you about.”
“No, no, that’s fine, we’ve started with this man Whats-isname—”
“Brody.”
“Right, Brody. We’ve started with him, let’s finish with him. Then, if there’s anything different you’d do normally, we can go back over it again.”
Brock shrugged and said, “If you think that’s the way to do it.”
“I do.”
“Then fine. All right, we brought Brody back and put him in the icebox overnight. In the morning the widow came in — with some friends of her husband’s, I think — and they selected the casket, worked out the arrangements; I remember it struck me it was a surprisingly big funeral they were setting up for a little salesman, whatever he was.”
“Then what?”
“Then we embalmed him, of course. Or actually we did it the night before.”
“Embalmed.”
“Yes. We drain the blood out of him, and put the embalming fluid in.”
“In the veins.”
“And arteries, yes.”
Engel was beginning to feel slightly less than well. He said, “Then what?”
“Then of course we clean out the internal organs and—”
“Internal organs.”
Brock motioned at his own torso. “Stomach,” he said. “All that.”
“Oh.”
“Then we fill the cavity with cavity fluid and—”
“Cavity?”
Brock made the same motion as before. “Where the internal organs were.”
“Oh,” said Engel. He lit a cigarette and it tasted like a barn in summer.
“That’s all done the night before,” said Brock. “When we get the client. Then we wait till the next morning for the restoration.”
“That’s when Brody’s wife came.”
“Well, that’s what’s happening upstairs. Downstairs, usually, there’s the restoration. Cosmetics, you know, this and that, we make the client look as though he’s sleeping. Sew the lips shut, use make-up for any little deformities, any little problems—”
“Yeah, fine, that’s fine.”
“Of course, with Brody we didn’t do all that, because there wasn’t a viewing.”
“Right.”
“We did some of course, the normal embalming procedures, but there was hardly any face there to put make-up on, you know. And no lips to sew.”
Engel swallowed and put his cigarette out. “Yeah, well, then what?”
“Then we arrange the client in his casket. Well, no, first he goes back in the icebox till the viewing, or the wake, whatever you want to call it. Then we arrange him in the casket and bring him upstairs for the viewing. With Brody there was a wake, but no viewing. Closed casket. He got a pretty big crowd anyway, a lot more than I expected. I can’t figure out what he sold, to get that kind of crowd at his wake.”
“Who does that part?” Engel asked. “Putting him in the casket, getting him ready for the viewing.”
“Well, either Mr. Merriweather or me. Sometimes I’d do the whole job on a client myself, sometimes he would, most times one of us would do one thing and one would do another.”
“What about Brody? As an example, I mean.”
“Well, I went and got him, had the first discussion with the widow. Then Mr. Merriweather had the second discussion with the widow. I did the embalming, and he arranged the client in the casket and set up the casket in the viewing room.”