“I’m not arguing that. But death hasn’t occurred yet. I just want to get my money back before it does.”
“You don’t want to do that,” the veep said gently. “You’re just trying to avoid facing the inevitability.” He clasped his hands piously. “It’s only a matter of time before your mother passes over. Then you’ll be glad that you had the foresight to plan ahead.”
“I’m trying to plan ahead right now,” Penny said, thinking of the urgency of getting the money back and returning it before going to jail in Pennington P. Potter’s body. “That’s why I have to have a refund.”
“Well, only the owner of Perma-Sleep has the authority to give you a refund.”
“Then I want to talk to him.”
“He’s a very busy man. Death takes up his whole life. I couldn’t possibly disturb him for a matter as insignificant as this.”
“Now, you just look here!” Penny leaned over the desk and spoke very earnestly. “If I don’t get in to see him—-and very soon too-—I am going to do several things in rapid succession. First I am going to sneak into one of your coffins and the next time one of your salesmen brings a prospective customer around to look at caskets, I am going to pop up and scare that prospective customer clear to the nearest crematory! Secondly, I am going to pass among the mourners at any one of the dozen funerals currently in progress here, and I am going to spread the rumor that your morticians drink embalming fluid and have necrophiliac orgies. Thirdly, I’m going to sneak into your cemetery some dark night soon—maybe tonight — and switch the headstones around and maybe scrawl obscene words on some of them. Fourthly-—”
“All right! All right!” the veep granted. “You’ve made your point.”
A few moments later Penny was being conducted into the inner office of the owner of the funeral home. The veep performed the introductions—“Mr. Potter, this is Mr. Perma-Rest; Mr. Perma-Rest, Mr. Potter”—and left.
Mr. Perma-Rest was a very large and well-muscled black man in his late thirties. He had the physique of a boxer. On the wall behind his desk hung a framed photograph of him standing in a prize-fight ring, wearing trunks, and standing over another boxer stretched out on the floor. He noticed Penny looking at the picture. “I used to be a professional fighter,” he told Penny.
“Really? Then how come -” Penny waved a hand vaguely to indicate the surroundings.
“How come I went into the kickoff business? Well, when they took my title away from me—”
“Title? What title?”
“I was Overweight Champion of the World. Of course I’ve slimmed down since then. I don’t have to make the weight since I don’t compete anymore.”
“Oh. Why did they take your title away?” Penny wondered.
“For picketing Jack Dempsey’s restaurant.
“Why did you do that?”
“It wasn’t kosher.”
“But what did that have to do with you?” Penny was confused.
“I’m Jewish.”
“You are?” Penny was surprised. “You don’t meet very many Negro Jews.”
“Black.”
“Huh?”
“Not Negro. Black.” Mr. Perma-Rest wagged a finger in Penny’s face to drive the point home. “But why are you so surprised? If Sammy Davis can convert, why shouldn’t I?”
“Well, it’s really none of my business anyway . . .”
“That’s true. But you asked me how I got into this racket and I was explaining. You see, after they took my title away—-that Jack Dempsey! refusing to serve kosher food! rank discrimination!—anyway, after that, I decided that the only way to make it in the WASP society was to be as materialistic as the average WASP. So I asked myself, well, where is the real profit going to be in the days to come? I listened to what my black brothers were saying and it added up to a lot of corpsey white folks. I mean, there’s going to be a well-deserved bloodbath. Yep, there’s going to be a river of white blood. The one sure way to cash in on that river is to be where it’s running out. That’s why I went into the funeral business. And believe me, what with summer on us, business is picking up already.”
“You sound like you enjoy your work,” Penny observed.
“Well, who doesn’t dig retribution? Still, even now, it’s possible that I guessed wrong. There’s still time for the whites to act fast enough so there won’t be any bloodbath, and then I’ll have picked the wrong business. It’s a calculated risk. Nothing I can do but take my chances and go by past performance.” Mr. Perma-Rest shrugged and smiled crisply at Penny. “Now, what’s your beef?” he asked.
Penny explained about wanting the money back.
“Why should I let you off the hook?” Having listened, Mr. Perma-Rest came straight to the point.
“Because I can show you a profit in it,” Penny told him. “Maybe more of a profit even than if the arrangements went through.”
“Show me.”
“All I want back is ten thousand dollars in cash,” Penny said desperately. “You can keep the rest and cancel the deal.”
Mr. Perma-Rest looked at Penny shrewdly and thought about it for a moment. “Done!” he decided.
A short time later Penny left the funeral home, Pennington P. Potter’s attache case dangling from one hand. Potter had left the attaché case there on his previous visit, telling the funeral director with whom he’d dealt that he’d be back for it. The funeral director had reminded Penny of it. Now the attache case contained the ten thousand in cash and the ledgers Potter had taken from the Fuller office. Evidently, Penny deduced, Potter had at first planned to juggle the books so that the theft wouldn’t show. But as his depression deepened, he must have changed his mind and decided not to bother, decided to kill himself instead.
Now Penny intended to return the money—and the ledgers as well. The problem was how to do it without being detected. Penny thought about that sitting in the back of a dark bar across the street from the building in which the Fuller offices were located.
The work day ended and the people poured out of the office buildings like ants fleeing a complex of Flit-bombed anthills. Dusk began to settle over the neighborhood and the streets emptied as quickly-—and more completely— as they’d filled. Penny left the bar and crossed over to the building. It was necessary to be inside before the building was locked up for the night. Penny ducked into the men’s room in the lobby and waited some more.
After about an hour Penny peered out into the hallway. One of the maintenance men was stationed in front of the bank of elevators. The lobby itself had been darkened, the doors to the building locked. The maintenance man was perched on a stool, reading a newspaper, his back to Penny. Keeping a tight grip on the attaché case, Penny crept along the wall away from him until a stairway entrance was reached. Once through the door leading to the steps, Penny moved more freely going up them.
Fourteen flights later Penny decided to stop smoking. The attaché case hadn’t seemed so heavy before, but now it weighed a ton. Penny crawled through the doors to the Fuller Lawn Manure Co. and staggered to A. K. Fuller’s office.
Luck was with Penny. The safe was empty and so it had been left open. Penny took the ten thousand out of the attaché case, put it inside, and locked the safe. The attaché case, opened so that the ledgers would be found easily, was left on Fuller’s desk. Then, freed of the burden, Penny started out.
It was done! Surely Fuller wouldn’t bother prosecuting now that the money had been returned. Penny had been fortunate. There had been nobody around to interfere with the returning of the money. And then, suddenly, Penny’s luck ran out.
What Penny didn’t know was that after the theft A. K. Fuller had hired a night watchman to guard the company premises. When Penny had entered, the watchman had been attending to a call of nature and so Penny hadn’t been detected. But now, as Penny started to leave, the watchman spotted the intruder and sprang into action. “Stop! Thief!” he called without too much originality, yanking his pistol from his holster and firing a warning shot into the air. “Stop! Thief!” he repeated.