Tales From Gavagan's Bar (21 page)

             
I went over to Columbus to give my speech about "Salesmanship and American Ideals" to Rotary there, and afterwards I was in a bar with a couple of the boys from Columbus Rotary having a little drink before I had to hit the
road again, when this fellow stepped up to me. He had on a blue serge suit and a white shirt with a polka-dot tie and he said: "Pardon me, but I'm sure I've seen you before."

             
I said maybe he had at that, and told him who I was, and he said his name was Francis X. McKenna and bought a round of drinks. All the time he kept giving one look and then another, as though he had my name all right, but wondered who the hell Fred Moutier was. Finally it seemed to hit him; he pulled me off a little to one side and said: "I remember now. You're the one who posed for that wonderful presentation by Leroy Brown in
the
Living Mortician.
Look here, Mr. Moutier," he said, "I know you have your own business and you're not a professional, but if you'll spare half an hour of your time letting me build a presentation around you, I'll make it well worth your while."

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The white-haired man gloomily finished his drink and motioned for another.

             
"What did you do?" asked Witherwax.

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Do? I was so sore I could have let him have it right in the puss, but I thought, no, that wouldn't be good for Rotary, so I just walked
away. Well, that was only the beginning of it. It seemed I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without having one of them show up, handing me his card and asking me to call on him, or just sitting there staring at me. They used to come to the agency sometimes, and I got so I could tell when a prospect wasn't listening to me at all, just standing there on the floor looking at me; he wasn't interested in the Olds, he was just another damn undertaker. I've even had them follow me on the street. You know how you get a little prickly feeling in the back of the neck when somebody's looking at you behind your back like that? I know there are some people say it's a superstition, but I'm telling you it happened to me. Anyone from Indianapolis will tell you that my reputation for telling the truth about things like that is A-l. Absolutely A-l.

             
Well, the worst of it was when I got an invitation to give
my speech at the Queen of Heaven Association in Chicago. I thought it was some sort of religious group, so I went, but when I got there, it was a whole roomful of these undertakers, sitting around the lunch tables and staring at me, some of them taking notes. It was so bad I couldn't even give the old speech. I had to fake I had a bellyache and get the hell out of there.

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"Wait a minute," said Keating. "It seems to me that you could save yourself a lot of trouble with a thing like that by just relaxing. If you're so valuable to undertakers that they want to use you as a model all the time, why don't you just have some
pictures taken and sell them to them? That's all they want, isn't it?"

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Yeah [said Moutier] that's what the looney-doctor said when the little woman sent me to him. My friend, let me tell you there are a couple of difficulties about that program.
In the first place, it wouldn't look good for a member of Rotary to have his picture plastered all over every undertaker's shop in the country, looking as if he was dead and all laid out in a casket. The little woman wouldn't stand for it, and I wouldn't blame her.

             
And in the second place, it's a lot more serious being a—uh—subject for an undertaker than you might think. I told you I wasn't seeing Leroy B. Smith any more; but the little woman, she kind of kept up the connection with Elise Smith, and they used to gab at each other in the back yard. You know how women are. Well, about a month after this Queen of Heaven Association luncheon in Chicago, the little woman tells me at dinner one night that Elise has some news. She says Tony Passone has bought out the Weizmann undertaking shop over on Third Street.

             
I said: "What the hell do I care? The less I hear about undertakers the better."

             
She said: "You needn't be rude. Elise was just trying to do you a favor."

             
I said I didn't want any favors from undertakers or their
families, and maybe we had a little argument, but after she quieted down, she told me that this Tony Passone had been one of these gangsters in Chicago, but decided to go into the undertaking business—burying the stiffs other people made instead of making them himself, ha, ha. Only it wasn't very funny when I got to thinking that maybe this Tony Passone had been in the audience at the Queen of Heaven Association, if you get it.

             
Well, I was right. This Passone hadn't been in town for more than a week before I got a circular from him, you know the kind undertakers put out, with photographs of tombs and stone angels. I didn't pay any attention to it. There was nobody dead in the family and I didn't want anybody to be. But about a week after that I got a phone call. The voice at the other end said this was Passone's Sympathetic Service, and Mr. Passone would like to have me call. I said I didn't want any service from Mr. Passone and hung up; but after I hung up, I got to worrying about it, so I went around to the police station and asked them for protection.

             
When they asked me who I wanted to be protected against, and I told them, they just laughed and said that Tony was a legitimate businessman now and the only way to be protected against an undertaker was to stay alive. That's the way things are with this Raw Deal administration they have in Washington, and the next thing I knew, there was another call from this Passone, saying I better come around and see him.

             
Well, I didn't go, but about three days after that, when I had finished demonstrating the Olds for a man who lived about twelve miles out and was coming back alone in the car, another car pulled up alongside me at a red light, with a couple of guys that had hats down over their faces, and somebody took a shot at me. If I hadn't been nervous about this undertaker business and seen his hand coming up, and if the Olds didn't have such wonderful pick-up, he might have hit me, too.

             
Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that I'd be just as good to Tony Passone dead as I would be alive, and the
police still wouldn't believe that he was after me, so I just said to myself, Fred Moutier, you're getting out of here, so I gave up the agency and sold my house and came here. And you can see why I get nervous when somebody says I'm a perfect subject. . .

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Moutier had been showing a tendency to run his sentences together. Now his words went down to a mumble, and as though the bones in his legs were melting, he folded gradually and gently to the floor.

             
"Ah, the poor felly, now," said Mr. Cohan. "I ne
ver should of given him that last one. But with him talking along and all, I thought he was all right."

             
Jeffers and Keating bent to help the prostrate figure but, before they could get him upright, a voice said: "Let me assist him. I assure you I will take very good care of him, very good."

             
They looked up and saw a man in a sober blue serge suit, with a white shirt and a polka-dot tie. He wore an expression in which eagerness combined with melancholy, and his fingers were twitching slightly.

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Mr. Cohan brought a roll of currency out of his pocket, peeled off the topmost bill, and handed it to the priest. Then he drew a glass of beer and slid it across the bar to Jeffers.

             
"It's like this Spinoza says," said Witherwax, "when I read it in a book. You ain't got no right to say something is bad just because you don't like it personally. You gotta consider other people. If there wasn't no ocean there, how could you get to Europe?"

             
The priest had turned toward them and appeared to be listening. He had sharp blue eyes behind rimless glasses, and there was an air of easy-going competence around his mouth.

             
"That hasn't got anything—" began Jeffers, and broke off to stare at a man who came trotting through the double doors and up to the bar with:

             
"Whiskey. I don't care what kind. A shot."

             
Mr. Cohan's eyebrows went up, but he poured out the dose. The man, a burly fellow in a shabby suit, slightly in need of a shave, tossed it off, set down the glass and tapped it with a forefinger to indicate a refill, then gripped the edge of the bar in large hands, breathing a little hard and contemplating his reflection in the mirror as though it might have been that of a stranger.

             
Witherwax took a drink of his Martini. " 'Smatter, brother, see a ghost?" he asked.

             
The burly man was dealing more slowly with his second shot.

             
"I dunno, mister, but I'm afraid that's just what I seen. In church, too." He shuddered. "Huh? Tell us about it."

             
The priest's foot tapped and the burly man appeared to become aware of his presence. "No offence meant, Father, but I seen something."

             
"You may have seen the appearance of something. To the uninstructed eye, the world has the appearance of being flat."

             
"Look, Father, maybe you can help me out on it. I'm over at St. Joseph's, see? And the priest there, he's a little, dark priest I ain't seen before. He was starting to go round the church lighting the candles. Only he don't light them, see? They start lighting themselves up before he gets to them. Well, I'm up toward the front of the church, and I seen him go past, and he's praying in Latin when he goes out and his hands are shaking."

             
Mr. Cohan said; "That'll be Father Palladino, now, won't it? At St. Joseph's? I did hear he was just back from retreat."

             
"I'm afraid you're right." The priest's blue eyes held an expression that was less displeasure than unhappiness. He held out a hand to the burly man. "My name's McConaghy. It is not our place to question the means God uses to effect His purposes, but this is a rather dark business."

             
The burly man said; "My name's Czikowsky. Pleased to meetcha, Father."

             
"What goes on here?" said Witherwax. "Spooks in a Catholic church? That don't seem right."

             
"It isn't," said Father McConaghy.

             
"I think we should be telling them about it, Father," said Mr. Cohan. "It's better they be hearing it from us than from anyone else."

             
As the priest hesitated, Witherwax said: "How about a drink, Father? Indulge?"