“I worked with the director in Ogunquit two summers ago,” Maria was saying, “so I think I’ve got a really good shot at the part.” She rolled her lovely blue eyes, stuffed some dangling spaghetti into her mouth and said, “I’ve got my fingers crossed.” She was wearing a low-cut print better suited to the Costa Smeralda than Little Italy, emerald earrings dangling from her ear lobes—not for nothing had Maria Hochs lived for two years with a stockbroker later indicted for fraud. “The part is a nurse,” she said. “Do you think I’d make a good nurse?”
“I think you’d make a fantastic nurse,” I said.
“I’m serious, Ben.”
“So am I. You’ve got all the qualifications. Sympathy, compassion, tenderness, an air of efficiency, and a beautiful behind.”
Henry Garavelli came into the restaurant just then, immediately located our table, and walked over to it.
“Excuse me for interrupting your meal,” he said.
“Sit down, Henry,” I said. “I see you got my message.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. He pulled out a chair and sat. In public places, he always sat facing the entrance doorway, a carry-over from his youthful gang days when, at any given moment, the members of a rival gang might burst in and begin shooting.
“Maria,” I said, “this is Henry Garavelli. Henry, Maria Hochs.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Henry said, and shook hands with her while glancing into the low-cut front of her dress. “What’s up?” he said to me.
“The body’s been returned,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Somebody dropped it off in a lot on Tyrone and Seventh.”
“Mm,” Henry said. “Any idea who done it?”
“None at all.”
“Mm,” Henry said. “So what does that mean? Is the case closed?”
“Yes.”
“Mm,” Henry said. ‘That’s too bad, Ben, because it was beginning to get a little interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I been asking around ever since you were in the shop this morning, and I come up with some stuff that’s got the boys on the street completely mystified.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Ben,” he said, “do you know how many funeral parlors were busted into last night?”
“How many?”
“Four. And all down around Hennessy Street.”
“Are you telling me four other corpses were stolen last night?”
“No, Ben. Nothing was ripped off. That’s what’s got the boys mystified. If somebody goes to all the trouble of breaking and entering, he’s got to have some kind of crime in mind, don’t he? And if he cracks a funeral parlor, he knows what to expect in there, right? He’s going to find dead bodies in there and coffins and maybe some floral arrangements and a candlestick or two in the chapels. I mean, it ain’t like he’s going to find a television set and the family silver. So if a guy busts into a place like that and don’t take anything, why’d he bust in to begin with?”
“How’d he do it, Henry?”
“Amateur night in Dixie. He forced the back doors with a crowbar.”
“Have you got the names of the places he hit?”
“Yeah, I made a list for you. I figured you might be interested.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out first a bill from the electric company, and then a lined sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook. He handed the sheet to me. On it he had carefully lettered the names and addresses of the four funeral parlors. I glanced quickly at the addresses. All of them were located within a rough twenty-block radius of the Gibson residence on Matthews Street. I folded the sheet again, and put it in my notebook.
“I still ain’t got a line on the hoods who were muscling this Gibson,” Henry said. “You want me to keep trying?”
“No,” I said.
“So what do we do now?” Henry asked. “Just retire from the field?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Our client’s satisfied, Henry.”
“Mm,” Henry said. He looked suddenly disappointed. “Are you satisfied?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
“Well,” he said, “let me know if you need me again. Maybe when you think this over, you’ll get some kind of inspiration. I figured at first we were maybe dealing with an international ring of body snatchers here. But there were stiffs in all those places, and whoever busted in didn’t take so much as a fingernail. Well, who knows?” he said, and shrugged, and stood abruptly. “I got to get back to the shop.”
“Henry,” I said, “let me know how many hours you’ve put in on this, will you?”
“Yeah, yeah, no rush,” he said. He glanced casually into the top of Maria’s dress, said, “Nice meeting you, Miss Hochs,” and walked away from the table. He still affected the cool, shuffling walk of a gang fighter, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coveralls, shoulders slightly hunched, chin ducked. His eyes, which I couldn’t see from behind, were undoubtedly covering every corner of the room as he walked toward the door, anticipating imminent attack. A good man, Henry.
“Is this too low-cut?” Maria asked abruptly.
Nine
I dropped Maria off at her apartment, and then drove three blocks west to one of the entrances to the road that ran through the park. As Henry had suggested, I began thinking over the information he’d given me, but I failed to come up with any sort of inspiration, brilliant or otherwise. The first possibility I examined was what I chose to call the Five Thief Theory, for lack of a better label. The Five Thief Theory worked on the premise that a thief driving a red-and-white Volkswagen bus had entered Abner’s mortuary at three in the morning and stolen Anthony Gibson’s corpse, while at different places within a twenty-block radius, four other thieves (working independently and without knowledge of each other or of the thief who’d stolen Gibson’s body) were breaking into four separate funeral parlors from which they took nothing. Even though I knew the important role coincidence played in the resolution of seemingly baffling crimes, I dismissed this theory as too far-fetched.
It seemed to me that the five break-ins had to be linked. The thief had to have been looking for something he couldn’t find in the first four funeral parlors, and only later found at Abner’s. But if he’d been looking for something specific, and in this instance, the something specific seemed to have been Anthony Gibson’s embalmed body, then why had he later dropped it off in a vacant lot? It didn’t make sense.
Without warning, something suddenly smashed into my windshield. My instant reaction was to duck away from what might become a deadly fusillade, cutting the wheel sharply at the same time, swerving up onto the grass bank beyond the shoulder of the road, and hurling myself flat on the front seat. Nothing else came. I waited a respectable three minutes and then lifted my head and peeked up at the windshield. The glass hadn’t imploded, it hung in a spiderweb pattern to the metal frame. There was no bullet hole at the center of the web. Instead, there was a whitish powdery circle about three inches in diameter. Had someone thrown a rock at the car? I crawled across the front seat and opened the door opposite the wheel; if someone was gunning for me (even with rocks), he’d expect me to get out on the driver’s side.