Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places Page 10

  • • •

  People who didn’t know that Umberto Fugurello was a great artist tended to mistake him for a comical old man. Outside his shop, his was a rheumatic figure smaller than the average in a tight black coat buttoned at the neck and a gray Homburg perched atop wild gray hair like an egg in a nest. Below that were gold-rimmed spectacles, a tight, lipless mouth, and a chin that usually wore a Band-Aid to remind him that one can get only so many shaves out of a razor before it becomes a lethal weapon.

  In the shop, he was a professional in leather apron and shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up past corded forearms ending in large hands cracked and discolored by the many stains and acids with which he worked. The walls and benches twinkled with mallets, chisels, miters, and wood augers of spotless nickel steel, no two of which were designed for the same purpose. Their handles were worn to fit the contours of Umberto’s calloused fingers and no one else’s.

  Umberto Fugurello made caskets. So had every previous male Fugurello back to Great-Great-Grandfather Filberto Gugliano, who, legend said, crafted the final resting place of Catherine de Medici. Since then, many another famous figure had gone to his reward in vessels fashioned by the Stradivari of caskets, and Umberto, had he been a boastful man, could point with pride to mausolea and family vaults throughout both hemispheres in which resided the evidence of his clan’s skill.

  But it was generally agreed within the closed ranks of the world’s casket makers that Umberto was the best of his line. Who could forget the Egyptian-style sarcophagus he had designed for the eminent archaeologist Professor Simon Broderick, dead of a hitherto unknown Middle Eastern strain of venereal disease, or the gold inlays around the lid of the box in which Dirk Crandall, the motion picture star, was buried after his wife caught him rehearsing a love scene from his latest movie with a studio switchboard operator, or the lion motif Umberto had created for famed animal trainer Hugo von Rasmussen, following that tragic episode involving a young Siberian tiger the performer had mistaken for an aging Bengal? There was in addition the double-decked piece he had built on commission for a local Syndicate chief, but that was known only to Umberto himself, and he was not one to brag.

  In any case, past triumphs meant nothing to him. He lived in the present. And why not, in view of the fact that he was working on his masterpiece?

  It lay across two sawhorses in the back room of the shop, a lozenge-shaped construction of forbidden hardwood from the Brazilian rainforest without a nail or a corner or a sharp edge anywhere. The handles were solid gold, the lining deep blue satin. The crowning touch—the Fugurello family crest, a hammer in a mailed fist framed in a coffin—was assuming definition even now at the point of Umberto’s chisel. It surpassed all his earlier achievements, and certainly nothing would ever rival it in the future.

  For this was to be his own casket.

  The imminence of death hardly saddened him. He was seventy-eight, after all, and more aware than most that no one lived forever. His only regret was that he would be unable to observe the reaction to his last and greatest work when it was unveiled at his funeral. He was lamenting this necessary disappointment when the little bell mounted on the front door of the shop announced a visitor.

  “Uncle Umberto?”

  Bastardo.

  The old man drew a tarpaulin over the casket just as his nephew, the mortician, entered through the curtain that separated the two rooms. The visitor was tall and thin—one was tempted to say “cadaverous”—and wore his dark hair fashionably long. Recent cosmetic surgery on his nose had left him with average features dominated by ice blue eyes that matched his suit.

  “Good morning, Antonio.”

  “Tony.” Something like annoyance edged the young man’s cool tone. “Tony Farrell. I had it changed, remember?”

  “Who could forget?” The decision to forsake the honored family name had undoubtedly contributed to the early demise of Antonio’s father, brother of Umberto. “What brings you to my shop on a Saturday morning?”

  “You mean my shop.”

  His uncle said nothing. That had been a great mistake, his deeding the property over to his brother’s son on the occasion of his birth. Umberto had not touched wine since that night.

  Antonio said, “A fellow has a right to inspect his possession from time to time. What’s this, another masterpiece?” Before Umberto could stop him he reached over and pulled off the tarpaulin.

  For a moment the beauty of the thing struck even his nephew. But he recovered himself quickly.

  “What good will that do anyone when he’s in the ground? What did I tell you about throwing money away on materials we don’t need?”

  “My money, not yours. The materials come out of my savings.”

  “And whose time did you spend on it? I heard you were turning down business, but I didn’t believe it until now. That’s the family crest on the lid. What were you going to do, enter it in some fool exhibition put on by those graveworms you call your colleagues?”

  Umberto made no reply. In a twinkling, Antonio’s manner went from hot to cold. “We’ll talk about this later. I came down here to tell you I’m selling the shop.”

  “Selling!” The old man pronounced it as if it were an unfamiliar word.

  “Lock, stock, and casket. I’m liquidating the inventory and putting the building and property on the open market. That includes your little project here. It should bring several thousand once we scrape off the engraving.”

  “The Fugurellos have been in this business for—”

  “Too long. It’s called moving with the times. No one does business with independents any more. They go to the big supply houses, where they can get machine-made models for a fraction of what you charge. This is a prime location for a parking garage. Of course, that means tearing down the building, but that shouldn’t cost too much. A swift kick will do it. I’ll make a killing.”

  “And me, Antonio?”

  “Tony.”

  “Will you tear me down too, or sell me along with the inventory?”

  His nephew smiled—a mortician’s smile, blandly obsequious.

  “Certainly not, Uncle. You’ve worked hard all your life; you’ve earned a rest. I’ve made arrangements with the Waning Years Retirement Home. You move in next week.”

  “But I don’t want to retire!”

  “What you want or don’t want is not an issue. As your only living relative, I can have you declared incapable of caring for yourself and commit you to a state institution. Instead, I’ve elected to place you in private hands. You should be grateful.”

  “I’ll fight you! I’ll hire a lawyer.”

  “And what will you use to pay him? You don’t even own these tools—which, by the way, I have a buyer for, if you can provide a list of what you have here. If you can’t, I’ll just make one.” He produced a pad and pencil.

  “I have rights.”

  “Not if you’re senile, and that’s what I’ll prove in court if you insist upon making things difficult. This is a young man’s world, Uncle. If you hadn’t been so busy making your petty boxes you’d know that. Now, try to stay out of my way while I inventory this equipment.” He started counting the braces and bits on the wall behind the lathe, tallying them into his pad.

  Umberto glared at his nephew’s back. Then his eyes fell to his masterpiece’s unfinished crest, and as always when he contemplated a project, all other cares receded. He picked up the No. 5 hammer he’d been using, thought better of it, exchanged it for a heavier No. 3 with a shiny neoprene grip, and brought it down with all his might, squarely into the center of Antonio’s fashionable hairstyle.

  The Fugurello sanity hearing is in the records for anyone who cares to review it. Following conflicting testimonies by the psychiatrists who had examined the defendant, a harried judge ruled him legally insane and unfit for trial and committed him to the state mental institution for treatment. This failed to cheer Umberto, who was depressed by his inability to attend his nephew’s celebrated funeral. />
  The centerpiece was the talk of his profession for weeks. Under a rose-colored spot, the casket’s eggshell finish threw off a high gleam that put the flowers to shame. Everyone agreed that Antonio had never looked better, and when the service was over and the top half of the lid was lowered, exposing the ornate crest, the guests were moved in spite of the solemnity of the occasion to applaud.

  After eighteen months, authorities at the institution agreed that Umberto could be trusted with tools once again, and he was granted permission to perform light work in the shop. These were happy days for Umberto, who had been cheered by his colleagues’ letters and telegrams of congratulation upon his masterpiece; doing work he loved, he no longer thought about death or its proximity. The doctors had, in fact, given him a clean bill of health, which he attributed to freedom from the responsibility of earning a living.

  Then came the untimely passing of the institution’s director and a special request for Umberto to craft a vessel for the remains. Material posed a problem in the face of bureaucratic cutbacks, but with effort he managed to obtain some good cedar and recycled brass for the handles and fittings. Making something worthwhile out of such second-class stock was a challenge he welcomed.

  He rubbed the last irregularity from the surface and stood back to survey his workmanship. The trimming glittered like gold against the deep red-brown of the wood. He frowned appreciably at his reflection in the finish. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was still good craftsmanship, and that was something money couldn’t buy.

  Diminished Capacity

  I grew up among members of the Greatest Generation, and always felt closer to them than to my fellow boomers. There’s just something about underestimated old age that brings out some of my best stories… .

  • • •

  I was halfway through my third ham sandwich when the intercom on my desk razzed. Angrily, I choked down the mouthful I was working on and punched the speaker button, which was too small for my rather large thumb.

  “Sharon, I thought I told you never to interrupt my lunch.”

  “Sorry, Matt.” The mechanical voice coming from the speaker didn’t sound sorry. The inference was that a man in my condition could afford to have his lunch interrupted now and then. “Seth Borden is here to see you. I thought you might be interested.”

  I sat back for a moment, frowning. A trip to Las Vegas for Dickens’s venerable Miss Havisham was easier to envision than a visit from Seth Borden. He was the last person in Roseacre I would have expected to need an attorney.

  “Herd him in.” I rewrapped the uneaten portion of my sandwich and put it away in the file drawer, sweeping crumbs in after it off the desk top. By that time my visitor was standing awkwardly just inside the door.

  Seth was older than the woodwork in the office and looked it. Little and wizened—“elfin,” the Sunday supplement writers would call him—he wore gold-rimmed spectacles on a bent nose, a white shirt, and fuzzy gray pin-striped trousers under a leather apron streaked liberally with grease. His face and his white tousled hair and his hands were no cleaner, the hands calloused and stained a permanent brown from the many compounds and acids with which he worked. He looked out of place, as he would anywhere but amid the general disarray of his little workshop on Main Street.

  I winched myself out of my chair and took his hand. It was warm and a little sticky. “Hello, Seth. Have a seat.” I indicated the client’s chair on his side of the desk.

  He shook his head. “Can’t stay. Got me some glue drying on two sticks of white pine and can’t let it set no longer’n ten minutes. I come to hire you, if you’re in the mood for it.” He fished a scrap of paper out of an apron pocket and handed it to me.

  It was a subpoena ordering him to appear in court in two weeks to show cause why he shouldn’t be institutionalized under the law regarding diminished capacity, filed by his daughter. Her name was typed at the bottom of the sheet: Mrs. C. Burton Scott. I gave it back. “What brought this on?”

  “It’s her husband put her up to it,” he said. “When I refused to sell my shop to that developing firm of his, he got himself a lawyer and between them they cooked up this thing that says I’m crazy and should be committed. June always did do what Burton told her, so he got her to sign this here complaint. Once I’m out of the way, the shop’s hers, and they can do what they want with it.”

  He seemed more sad than angry, which was like him. People like Seth Borden live their lives never believing they’ll get hurt. They get hurt a lot.

  The scenario made sense. No one who lived in Roseacre could recall a time when Seth’s shop wasn’t there. Dwarfed though it was by skyscrapers, the little brick structure occupied a substantial part of the business district and was worth hundreds of thousands to the developer fortunate enough to acquire it. Knowing what I did about C. Burton Scott, I wondered why I hadn’t seen this coming.

  Not that no one had tried before. Twenty years earlier, Bedelia Borden, Seth’s sister and partner by grace of their father’s will, had tried to bully Seth into selling her his half so that she could make a bundle from a man who wanted to buy up the block and build a department store. Her constant browbeating had made her brother miserable and may have led to his wife Ruth’s fatal heart attack at age forty-two. Bedelia might have won, having thus broken her brother’s spirit, had not a severe recurrence of her childhood asthma forced her to abandon her interest and move to a dryer climate. No one had heard from her since and it was believed that she had died out West. Now the property was worth ten times what had been offered then.

  The worst part was that in our state, the mere question of a person’s sanity raised by his heirs was sufficient to go to court. Then it was a matter of which psychiatrist was more eloquent in expressing his opinions. Neither medicine nor the law is an exact science.

  “Any reason to doubt your sanity, Seth?” I asked.

  He shrugged; a gesture not calculated to win a lawyer’s confidence.

  “I forget things. Who don’t? But I pay my bills and I run my business and I don’t keep my socks in the icebox like my Uncle Ralph started doing just before he died. You think I’m crazy?” His eyes were sharp behind the spectacles.

  “I’m not a psychiatrist. But I think I can help you. First I think we should discuss my fee.”

  Before I could continue, the old man reached into another pocket, brought out a fat handful of greasy, dog-eared bills, and dumped them on my desk. I counted them. They came to twenty-three hundred dollars in twenties and fifties.

  “I was saving up for a new delivery van,” he said. “I’ll be in the shop when you want me.” He left, presumably to see to his two sticks of wood.

  Mr. and Mrs. C. Burton Scott lived north of the city along Route 22, in one of a string of neat little homes with neat little lawns and a big car in every driveway. I swung my Japanese puddle-jumper in behind a blue Seville and climbed out, sweating as soon as I left the air-conditioned interior. It was late August and fat men were out of season.

  June Borden Scott answered the door on my second knock. She was a small woman of thirty, attractive enough, but there was too much of her Aunt Bedelia in her face to suit me. As a boy I had seen the old harridan once or twice and gone home feeling chilled. “Yes?” Her voice was thin, almost nonexistent.

  I said, “I’m looking for Mr. Scott. Someone at his office said he was having lunch at home. I tried to call, but your number’s unlisted. Matt Lysander. I think your husband remembers me.”

  He remembered me. Three seconds after June withdrew, he came storming up with fists clenched and stuck his big chin in my face. The rest of him was big, too, but I had eighty pounds on him, not that I cared to use them; he was all muscle. The shiny blue suits he always wore gave him an armored look. I’d noticed that in court, the day I persuaded a judge to fine Scott Developments fifty thousand dollars for using substandard materials in its construction. His appeal was still pending.

  “What the hell do you want?”

 
“Relax; this visit won’t cost you a cent.” Twisting the knife is one of my specialties. “I’m representing Seth Borden. Let’s talk.”

  His expression changed from belligerent to uncertain. At length he stepped aside to admit me.

  The living room was sunken, professionally decorated and, I suspected, soundproof. I sat down in a brown crushed-leather chair without waiting for an invitation and stood my briefcase—an expensive prop—on the floor next to it. Scott took a seat beside his wife on the sofa opposite, but he didn’t relax. He sat on the edge as if crouched to spring; that a man should do that in his own home I’d always found significant. Mrs. Scott looked like a frightened hamster in his presence. She’d inherited nothing of her Aunt Bedelia’s overbearing manner.

  I began without preamble. “Mrs. Scott, what makes you think your father is senile?”

  Her husband started to answer for her. I held up a hand and he closed his mouth.

  “He’s—well, he has lapses,” she began haltingly. “I invite him to dinner and he doesn’t show up. When I called him to ask why, he says he never received an invitation.”

  “How many times has this happened?”

  “I don’t know. Three times, I guess. Perhaps four. All in the past couple of months.”

  “That hardly indicates failing faculties,” I said. “I’ve forgotten my share of invitations, mainly because I was too polite to say I didn’t feel like going.”

  “Oh, but that’s not all! Just last week when I was shopping, Father walked right past me on the street without stopping to say hello. I had to call him twice before he recognized me. His own daughter!”

  “Perhaps he was preoccupied.”

  Scott snorted. “What’s he got to be preoccupied in his work?”

  I ignored him.

  “Let me ask you this, Mrs. Scott. Were you concerned about your father’s mental condition before you related these incidents to your husband?”

  “Don’t answer that!”

  Scott was standing, his beefy face red and turned upon me. “You can leave here on your own two feet or head first, Lysander. Your choice. I don’t have to listen to this sort of thing in my own house.”