Death Kit (17 page)

Diddy has let matters get out of hand. Something mysterious going on. Why should Incardona have wanted to be cremated? The man at Floral Gardens mentioned instructions that were in a will, but maybe he was misinformed. Wouldn't someone named Incardona be a Catholic, whose church prohibits cremation? Maybe the man at the funeral home—the undertaker's assistant?—was lying. Or in ignorance of the truth. Perhaps it was the New York, Boston & Standard that wished the body disposed of in this irrevocable way. Or even Incardona's wife. Something they or she wanted to hide, which an extant corpse might reveal?

Suppose the telephone voice wasn't lying or misinformed. Still peculiar for a youngish laborer with only a high-school education to have drawn up a will. Unless Incardona had some presentiment of an early death. And cremation seems particularly implausible. Where would a lout like Incardona have gotten such an affected notion about the disposal of his body after death?

No doubt any longer in Diddy's baffled mind that he can't leave things as they stand, trusting telephone voices and misleadingly headlined newspaper stories. Diddy the Gullible will have to do some investigating of his own. See the widow, the railroad officials, the crew of the train, as many fellow passengers as can be traced. A number of interviews will be needed just to straighten out what happened, leaving Diddy still nowhere near the precise reckoning of guilt and innocence. But it's a beginning. Diddy's agitation starting to subside (now). A glimpse of the sense of mastery. Is it frustration that's making him feel more active, less inert?

What's sure is that Diddy does feel intensely frustrated by this latest news. For all his waverings about going to the police, he'd always expected that, eventually, an inquiry into Incardona's death would take place; for such an inquiry an intact body, or semblance thereof, is required. So assumed that Incardona's funeral would be the usual interment. Must be. The workman's body being stored away. Kept against future use, some use.

Some day, if not (now) or soon, they were bound to hold an autopsy. He'd always thought so; had imagined it clearly. The fecal smell of the autopsy room. A long steel table. Metal cabinets with glass shelves filled with rows of stoppered bottles, labeled in purple ink, containing remnants and trophies of tissue adrift in Formalin. The bullet-riddled organs of several notorious criminals cut down in gang wars. Body fragments from famous airplane crashes of the last decade. Rows of larynxes, cross-sectioned to reveal the gimmicks of death: a shrimp, a thumbtack, a piece of steak, a half dollar. Rows of embryos in every stage of development. Poisoned brains, narcotized nervous systems, tranquilized hearts, gassed lungs, ground-glass ruptured linings of stomachs.

Diddy is waiting. A Negro in white jacket and pants, reeking of vomit, brings in a body on a wheeled stretcher and pulls off the blanket. Four men are waiting, the Chief Medical Examiner and three deputies. The chief slips on his tight translucent brown rubber gloves, takes up a bright metal tool, makes one incision the length of Incardona's torso, from clavicle to pubis, and then another the whole width of his abdomen. (Now) he has put down the tool and stands with hands plunged in the cadaver's innards, gaze politely averted. The others watch attentively.

Any death which is sudden, unattended by a doctor or medically unsupervised; any death which is traumatic; any death which is at all suspicious, must be investigated by the coroner's office. Isn't that the law? Please continue the examination. Please look. Why don't you look? Don't rush to designate “no case.” In New York City, Diddy knows, the coroner's office is also required to certify all requests for cremation. Had an autopsy already been performed on Incardona? But perhaps there's no such rule in this city. Just as in many cities a coroner doesn't even have to be an M.D.

An experienced public coroner, it's said, works intuitively. He can smell a homicide. Also a question of reasoning, correct reasoning. A coroner ought to be a skilled pathologist, backed up by six floors of laboratories: histology, chemistry, serology, X ray, micro-physics, and toxicology. But there's so much evidence, more than one can handle. An autopsy may uncover several possible causes of death. Besides the damage done by Diddy's cowardly blow, besides being trampled by the Privateer, Incardona may have had a bad heart, cirrhosis of the liver, an undiagnosed ulcer, syphilis. Which one is responsible? Maybe the death looks like foul play, and wasn't. Or maybe it doesn't, and was. If someone is hit by a train, whose fault is it? Everyone agrees that one can't bring charges against the iron monster, which has only done its job, behaved exactly as it was designed to behave, speeding forward along the tracks on its lethal wheels. But then people often talk about themselves in a similar way, as if they were designed or made to order; their line of self-exoneration the same, too. Is the chief engineer in some remote way culpable? Or any member of the train's crew? And besides the vaguely-outlined question of naming, and then apprehending the murderer, if indeed the death is a murder, other issues are at stake. The amount of the insurance and the money from workmen's compensation going to the widow and fatherless boy will vary according to the manner of Incardona's death. Not to speak of a more general matter: the detection of any failure in the safety procedures set up by the railroad to protect its workers.

Murder stinks. That's the clue. Out of what inappropriate delicacy does the coroner avert his gaze? Isn't he thoroughly hardened to the horrors of his profession? If anyone is capable of fearless vision, it would be such a man.

But it hurts to look.

Incardona lies with his head thrown back. His body is split open, and all his organs carefully scooped out. The flesh of his torso hangs over the sides of the metal table in two brownish flaps, exposing his spinal column from neck to pelvis. The coroner wields his flashing knives.…

*   *   *

Late Wednesday afternoon, Diddy goes straight to Hester after leaving the plant. A brief visit before embarking upon his evening's sleuthing. He comes empty-handed. Being too impatient to buy anything but an unconsidered hasty bouquet at the florist's in the hospital lobby; not knowing what, other than flowers, to bring. Happily, Mrs. Nayburn's not there. As he comes in, Hester raises her head. Can she see anything from behind the dark glasses? And what manner of distasteful, impersonal tests have the doctors been subjecting her to? She seems all patience, but surely that's deceptive. Like him, she must be either vibrating with hope or stilled with despair.

He tosses his coat over the chair at the foot of the bed.

“Don't say. I know it's you,” says Hester. She smiles. Diddy happy (now). Quickly comes over to embrace her; then sits close in the other chair, moving it against the frame of the bed. Clasps her left hand in his; with his right hand, reaches up to stroke her cheek. She brings his hand down to her mouth, kisses his fingers. He bends over to kiss her hair and mouth.

The dialogue of intimacy sustained, even when they begin to talk. Hester seems less guarded and enigmatic. Sitting upright (now); knees bent and drawn together, her spine curved like a bow. They are holding something like an ordinary conversation, the kind Diddy often finds insufferable, but which he finds soothing, reassuring (now). He sketches the history of Watkins & Company; outlines the company's present situation, borrowing from Jim's view as well as giving his own; describes the physical plant; conjures up the first three days of this week's conference, both text and sub-text, tedious round-table discussions and barely audible politicking. What could Hester find engrossing in the fumbling fortunes of the firm, in the genteel drudgery of Diddy's job?

In a controversial memorandum on standards of craftsmanship drawn up by industry spokesmen and circulated at this morning's meeting?

In the third-quarter statement?

In the antics of Gus Rike, the firm's lawyer?

In the new government contract jubilantly disclosed by Reager yesterday—the thought of which is haunting Diddy—for special instruments to be used in the Army's biological warfare laboratories?

In Watkins' latest feud with Reager?

In the mishandling of the sale of thirty Scope 21's to the University of Lima?

But even if Hester is only humoring him by listening so well, by acting interested, he's warmed by her graciousness. By her desire to please. Diddy wishes that what's scheduled for tonight after he leaves the hospital weren't happening tonight; because it's preventing him from being wholly present with Hester this afternoon. Open to her, nourished by her. Diddy trying to be in this room only, but he can't. He's already rehearsing in some remote bastion of his mind how he will enter the next space.

It's almost six.

“Did you come earlier because you have an appointment this evening?”

Diddy, found out. It seems impossible ever to conceal from Hester the diluting or vacating of his attention. “Yes,” he said.

“Business?”

“No. A personal matter. It's someone I've never met before.”

By giving such an answer, mysterious yet informative, doesn't Diddy invite Hester to question him further? Is that what he wants? Yes. Then is he disappointed when, quite firmly and noticeably, no more questions are asked?

Diddy starting to feel uncomfortable. The redundant white of the hospital room is imprisoning; stillness and immobility reside here, while Diddy knows himself to be free. He has permission to leave, doesn't he? A body suitably clothed to appear on the street, eyes to see where he is going. Whereas this room is static, a private cell, the arsenal of mortality. Monday's flowers know: they're beginning to languish. Can Hester sense his flowers' drooping, minuscule crawl toward death? When does death become perceptible? How far along toward death do flowers have to travel before their odor fades, their flesh stiffens and turns dark? Where's the boundary line?

Six o'clock. Hester must feel Diddy stirring restlessly in the white Leatherette chair, must understand the token plaint of his sweating palm in hers. But does she know exactly how edgy and upset he is? In all respects? Because she can't see him, she can't observe that his uncertainty about how to conduct himself later this evening is mirrored in an untypical confusion in his clothes. Diddy is wearing the wrong tie for that shirt, the wrong shirt for that jacket, the wrong shoes for those trousers. Except for mismatched socks, a sample of almost every conceivable sartorial error. Nothing felt right today.

Lonely as well as evidently attached to him (now), Hester wants him to stay on. Diddy doesn't mean to arouse further marks of affection on her part by his uncontrollable detachment tonight. Not the kind of man who'd try manipulating a woman he desires by playing cool. The attraction Diddy feels to Hester is something he'd like to show. But this isn't the right time. Either that feeling is more potential than actual, or it's one that circumstances require deferring. Better to leave the hospital. Get on with it.

Diddy is walking along a narrow mean street, holding a slip of paper with the address he's copied from the newspaper clipping in his wallet; past rows of nearly identical two-story frame houses. Like the houses seen out of train windows that one rejects, interiors unseen, without ever inhabiting them. Stops before one of the houses, number 1836. The right house (now). A stocky buxom woman answers the doorbell. Wearing gold sandals, bell-bottom Op Art slacks, and a yellow sateen blouse; cigarette in hand.

“Mrs. Incardona?”

“Whatcha want?” The woman plainly on her guard. From the hallway visible behind her, a gust of stale smoke and the smells of frying.

“Myra Incardona?”

“What's it to ya?”

“I'm from the railroad.” Diddy removes the wrong hat. “I'm sorry to bother you with more questions about … your late husband.…”

“Oh…” The woman's flabby cheeks swelled into a smile, flaunted a mouthful of bad teeth. “Come in.” She seems pleased. How many investigators have preceded him? “Tommy!” she shouts in another, raucous voice. “Shut off the goddamn TV. A man from the railroad is here.” Turning to Diddy: “Here, doncha want to take off your coat?” Diddy surrenders coat and hat, which she drapes over the bannister of the uncarpeted staircase leading up to a second floor; follows her into the overfurnished parlor. Clouded with smoke. The stench, identifiable as cigarettes, fish, and cooking oil, seems to trisect the air in layers. Across the room, down in the lower layer, fish, Diddy sees the boy kneeling before the dying image. If it's true, as the
Courier-Gazette
reported, that he's eleven, he seems small for his age. Certainly undersized, considering his parentage. “This is—”

“Mr. Dalton,” said Diddy.

“Say hello, Tommy.” The boy looks up briefly, then lowers his head without acknowledging Diddy, perhaps awaiting a sturdy phantam image that will miraculously reappear on the small-screen TV. “He should be in bed by now or doin' his homework. You hear, Tommy?”

“Is the railroad going to give us some money, Mom?”

“My boy is very upset, Mr. Dalton. What with the funeral only yesterday. Don't pay no attention.”

“No … please,” says Diddy, flustered. The child doesn't resemble his father, at least not the man Diddy remembers. He's puny, fair-skinned, freckled, with a long V-face and glittering light-brown eyes. Incardona's build was thick; he had dark skin, a heavy squarish jaw, and black eyes and hair. His wife looks typically Scots-Irish and her eyes are light, though her hair, a garish copper hue, must be dyed; one can't determine its true color. Diddy looks around the squalid room, hoping to spot somewhere a photograph of the dead husband and father. Covering a patch of the flowered wallpaper? No. On the mantelpiece, with the souvenirs from the World's Fair? No. Not even on top of the TV, alongside the little plaster Child of Prague.