Death Kit (19 page)

Diddy the Disconcerted. Assaulted by disconnected sensations. As if there's something wrong with his eyes, his skin. He needs a buffer—a slab of hard, featureless, impersonal material to hold between himself and this oozing, prattling woman. Well, he doesn't have to look at her when he's talking. Only Diddy's losing the thread again. Must painstakingly reconstruct where they are (now) in this conversation. Myra Incardona may get lost, and not care. But Diddy cares. Imperative to stick to facts. A fact: Angelo—Joe—Incardona didn't mind having had an unhappy childhood. “But your husband's brother felt differently, is that right?” Diddy continued aloud.

“Charlie? I'll say! You should hear him, Mr. Dillon. He's got a wicked tongue. People sure think twice before they mess with him!”

“Then am I right in understanding, Mrs. Incardona, that you let your brother-in-law make the arrangements for the funeral? That after he arrived, he took care of everything?”

“Well, when Charlie come right out Sunday night and offers to pay for everythin' I couldn't argue, could I? I mean about the cremation. It was his money, see. Though I gotta admit I never thought he'd come through and offer. He and Joe wasn't all that close. I mean, seein' they was brothers. When he first said he'd do it, I razzed him for bein' an old souse. I guess I'd had a few myself. It was an awful long evenin'.”

“You said your brother-in-law lives in Massachusetts. What kind of work does he do?” Diddy, suddenly aware that he sounds like prying, fatuous Mrs. Nayburn on the train; but it can't be helped. This is an emergency, and no time to be fastidious about whatever helps. As long as Diddy went on asking questions, Myra Incardona looked less mammoth in size. Empty words have their use after all.

“He's a bricklayer. They make good money, bricklayers, did ya know that, Mr. Dillon? See, their union fixes it so that in cold weather they—”

Diddy intervened faster this time. “Then if it had been up to you, Mrs. Incardona, you would have had your husband buried in a casket, in consecrated ground, with all the rites of the Church. Is that right?” Diddy had to interrupt, because he is feeling faint. Didn't speak in order to know anything. To this question—and by (now), to many more—Diddy already knew what answer the woman would make. No solutions to his enigmas here. Each promising lead destined to be quickly overthrown.

“Say, what are you gettin' at?” said the woman. In an unpleasant tone that startles Diddy, who had been getting used to the inexhaustible flaccid genial one. “You tryin' to say that Joe couldn't of been buried proper, if he wanted to? I know what you're trying' to do. Put words in my mouth. It's because of that goddam newspaper story, where it says that somebody from your fuckin' railroad said that Joe mightta killed himself. Of all the nerve! There's a law against sayin' things like that, you know? I bet I could sue that paper for a hundred thousand bucks for slandering my poor dead Joe. And the railroad, too. My Joe was a good Catholic, so how the hell could he of done somethin' like that?”

Diddy had tried to interrupt this tirade several times, without success. The woman had stopped (now), set in her indignant look.

“Mrs. Incardona, you're just wasting your anger. I can understand your feelings about what was in the newspaper story, but that wasn't at all the point of my question. Honestly. All I'm trying to get straight is how your husband came to be cremated. So I asked you a simple, straight question. I asked whether, if it had been up to you, you would have preferred to have your husband buried, in the way Catholics ordinarily are.”

But she still doesn't like that question. “Listen, Mr. Dillon!” The woman crossed her arms and looked peeved. “I got a feelin' you don't understand somethin'. Now I was educated by the sisters, God bless 'em, and I been a Catholic all my life and I'm gonna die a Catholic. And if my Tommy ever comes home and tells me he wants to marry an un-Catholic girl, I'll whale that kid within an inch of his life. He won't know what hit him when I—”

“Look,” Diddy interrupted again, “I just need to know about the circumstances of your husband's funeral.”

“Well, what d'you think I'm telling you,” she exclaimed sourly. “Don't be in such a hurry. Where's the fire?”

“Mrs. Incardona, I appreciate your hospitality and your honesty. But I do have a job to do.”

“I know, I know,” she sighed. “You work for the railroad. Just wait a minute, I wanna get another beer. Sure you won't have one with me? Okay.” Diddy leaned back in his chair while she was out of the room, closed his eyes. Myra Incardona's returning footsteps. “Listen,” she said, settling in the chair again, “I wanna get something straight. You come in here and ask me a lotta questions and I don't act formal or anythin', and seein' as I got nothin' better to do I'm talkin' to you. But one thing I wancha t'know is that every word outa my mouth, every last word, is the God's honest truth, so help me God. Are you with me?” Diddy nodded sleepily. “About this whole goddamn cremation business, for instance, that you seem so interested in, though why the railroad should care what happened to what was left of poor Joe I'll be damned if I can figure out. You wanna know if I was for or against it. Or maybe why I didn't stop it. But I'm not tellin' you, though you're a perfect stranger to me, any different from what I told Father McGuire down at Immaculate Heart today. You know that man had the nerve to start bawlin' the daylights out of me, just this afternoon? And what for? I'll tell ya. For lettin' Joe be cremated. He told me that Joe's soul would rot in Purgatory forever and that he wouldn't be able to rise up at the Last Judgment and lotsa spooky stuff like that. Trying to make me feel bad. Like I done somethin' awful to Joe.”

“I'm sorry,” Diddy said. He really was.

Myra didn't even seem to hear Diddy's words, but sailed on. “And I told him, Father McGuire, I says, beggin' your pardon, Father, but you've got no right to talk to me like that. I didn't have no control over that funeral, I told him. Charlie's the one, and if you want to tell somebody off and make 'em feel bad, you get ahold of Charlie. Boy,” she laughed, “would I like to see that! Charlie'd make mincemeat out of him. But Charlie's gone back to Massachusetts already. So I had to handle him all by my lonesome. And I did. Father McGuire is a young priest, see, and when they haven't been long out of the seminary they get ideas. He's sort of serious, takes everything very hard, know what I mean? A little wet behind the ears. But I set him straight. He understands now.”

Diddy sighed. Talking with this woman was like drowning. Just a bit more, then he'd leave and maybe go to the movies. But he hadn't got everything quite straight in his mind about Incardona and his family. For example, the situation between the brothers. Diddy sent up a probe. “How would you describe your husband's attitude toward the Church?”

“Say, can I have another cig? The brand I smoke is lousy. Thanks … Now what was that you said?… Oh, about Joe … Well, he had his gripes, you know. Like Charlie. Joe could go on somethin' awful when he wanted to. He was always talkin' against the Church, makin' fun of me and Tommy goin' to mass every Sunday regular as rain, while he lay around the house in his underwear swilling beer or gin, yellin', cursin', carryin' on.”

There's the Incardona Diddy met. Things beginning to fall into place.

“Was he … Mr. Incardona … a very violent man?”

“Not what you call violent. But sort of mean, when the mood took him. I'm not talkin' about what he did to me. I can take care of myself if I have to. But Tommy is somethin' else. I told you that. Joe never did fancy kids much, though you'd think he'd like his own boy, wouldn't you? But he and Tommy never hit it off.”

“Was Tommy afraid of him?”

“That little fellow? Not on your life. Stand right up to him, he did, big as life. How many times I seen it—Joe takin' off his belt to wallop the daylights out of Tommy for somethin'—the kid's got a lot of the devil in him, but he doesn't mean no harm. And Tommy, full of spunk, sayin', Go ahead, Pop. You dish it out and I can take it.”

“Did he really say that?” said Diddy enviously.

“Well, not just those words. Tommy's got a temper, too. Takes after his dad, I guess. He'd call Joe some pretty dirty names. They made me laugh, but Joe didn't like 'em.” She laughed, brought the beer can to her lips. “Oh…”

More vividly than before, Diddy envisaged the family in its squalid smoky nest. Grouped in a snapshot pose: the big brutal father, the sexy slob of a mother, the harum-scarum kid. All changed, because of him. But he's getting lost (now) in sentiment, in subjective guilt. That isn't why he came. It was to affix objective guilt and innocence if he could; and incidentally to find out what had prompted the cremation. Forget about that. The conversion of Angelo Incardona into ashes had, apparently, no more than a trivial significance for his family. Though, to Diddy, it seemed a terrible, frustrating judgment. Among other things, an invitation to amnesia. Diddy must not allow Incardona's reality to become flimsy, dubious. The workman existed and he was dead; even though the evidence of his body had been miniaturized and dissipated.

“Hey!” It was Myra Incardona waving her hand in Diddy's face. “Boy, you were really off on Cloud Nine that time. I thought you was in such a terrible hurry. Remember? When you couldn't wait to ask me questions?”

Is the woman starting to have doubts about who he is? “I am in sort of a hurry,” Diddy said. “It's my job. I have to make one more call this evening, and then go home and write some reports before I can get to sleep.”

Myra Incardona didn't seem to be listening to much of what Diddy was saying, either. Probably catches about one word in three, and makes up the rest in her own head. All she seemed to have heard of his generous florid lie was the bare word: job. “I know you got a job,” she began, with a slack half-smile. “You work for the railroad.”

Diddy nodded.

“But boy, I'll tell ya one thing. You sure don't look like anybody
I
ever seen who held down a job with the railroad. The clothes you got on are too smart. Your pants ain't cut wide, like the way railroad men wear 'em. And I never saw a railroad man wear a nifty tie like that. Now that I take a good look at you, you look to me like somethin' in an ad or somethin'. And your face. I can see you never had acne when you was a kid. Why, I can tell a lot just from the way a man shaves himself.” She paused. “You're a real good-lookin' guy. Here's to you.” The woman saluted Diddy with her beer can. “Good lookin'. D'you know that?”

Diddy shrugged his shoulders. Suddenly realizing what was going on: all that beer she's washed down beginning to take effect. He'd better clear out fast before the woman starts peeling off those slacks.

“Oh, Myra can tell.” Her speech was becoming slurred, her head looked unsteady on her shoulders. “I'll bet lotsa girls have told you that. So it probably don't mean nothin' to you when an old bag that's pushin' forty tells you. Isn't that right?”

Diddy has decided not to answer. Concentrated on summoning the energy to rise from the chair, and get from there to the front door. Out of this house. But meanwhile Myra Incardona's wandering libido has settled, who knows for how long—a matter of seconds? months?—into friendlier, less pointedly seductive behavior. Endowed with more energy than Diddy. He's only thinking of getting up; she has already darted out of the room again. Getting still more to drink?

Probably from the kitchen, calling, “Say, what's your name? Your first name, I mean. I keep gettin' mixed up on your last one.”

“Paul.”

“Whad'ya say? Wait, I heard. That's a nice name.” The voice (now) is further away, though Diddy can just make out the words. “I used t'know a Paul. Paul Follet, his name was. Big fella, real strong. Lived near here. Ever know him?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” Myra, with two more cans of beer, at the threshold of the parlor. “He was a swell guy. You might of liked him.” She sat down. “No, come to think of it, you wouldn't.” This time Diddy the Gentleman didn't take over. Myra using the opener herself; drinking straight from the can. “How old are you, Paul?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three?” She slapped her thigh. “You're kiddin' me! Gee, you don't look that old. You're gettin' gray, I can see that. But it's comin' in pretty even, and I always say gray hair looks sexy in a man. But your face ain't lined at all. You look, well, about twenty-eight.” A rapid glance. “Yeah, I'd say twenty-eight.” Putting the can of beer down; looked Diddy over slowly. “Hey,” she grinned, “I got just the job for you. With them clothes and the way you talk and your face, you shouldn't be workin' for the railroad. They're a bunch of slobs. You should be in an insurance office or a bank. That's the best idea, a bank. Or maybe, if you wanted to earn more dough, you could go to school nights and study for a CPA.”

Diddy puzzled. Is the woman becoming suspicious of him, or is this part of a seduction? Though his instincts tell him it's probably the former, he can't decide. Why can't he decide? Why does he just smile, inanely, affably; as if nothing's going on. Wait, something is happening. Diddy rescues Myra's lit cigarette which had toppled from the rim of the ashtray onto the coffee table. “Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Incardona, I don't really work for the railroad—”

“You don't?” she yelled and was on her feet without Diddy having seen her stand up. Diddy alarmed and mystified. “Then what the hell are you doin' in my house? Is this a gag or somethin'? If it is, mister, you're gonna be right out on your ear before you can turn around!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Diddy. “Calm down, Mrs. Incardona, you didn't let me finish my sentence. I was about to explain that I actually work for an insurance company that investigates accident claims for the New York, Boston & Standard. I was telling you,” he smiled feebly, “because you said I didn't look like a railroad man. That's why. I'm not.”