Elmore Leonard - Bandits

EVERY TIME THEY GOT a call from the leper hospital to pick up a body Jack Delaney would feel himself coming down with the flu or something. Leo Mullen, his boss, was finally calling it to Jacks attention. You notice that? They phone, usually its one of the sisters, and a while later you get kind of a moan in your voice. Oh, man, I dont know whats the matter with me. I feel kind of punk.

Jack said, Punk, I never used the word punk in my life. When was the last time? I mean they called. Wait a minute. How many times since Ive been here have they called, twice?

Leo Mullen looked up from the body on the prep table. You want me to tell you exactly? This is the fourth time Ive asked you in the past almost three years now. Leo wore latex gloves and a plastic-coated disposable apron over his vest, shirt, and tie. He looked like a man all dressed up doing the dishes.

Jack Delaney stood in the open double doorway of the tiled room, about five feet from the head of the porcelain table-tilted slightly toward the sink-where Leo was preparing the body. It appeared to be a short balding man with a lot of body hair. The poor guy, his feet down at the other end pointing in at each other, a tag wired to his left big toe. Jack would never walk in here and look directly at a body. Hed take quick glances to guard against shockers, accident victims, sights that could remain vivid in your mind forever. This one seemed to be safe. Jack looked. Oh, shit. And looked away again. The guy must have been in a car wreck. He wasnt balding, hed been scalped in front, given a sudden receding hairline through a car windshield. Jack ran a hand through his own hair. Then dropped his hand before Leo noticed and might tell him to get a haircut. He kept his eyes on Leo, who was squirting Dis-Spray, a disinfectant, into all of the guys orifices, his nostrils, his mouth, his ears, all of his dark openings.

All three times they phoned the times before, Leo said, I seem to recall you came down with some kind of twenty-four-hour bug. Thats all Im saying. Am I right or wrong?

Jack said, Ive been to Carville. When I worked for the Rivs wed go up there once or twice a year, tune the organ. One of em, usually Uncle Brother, would be on the console hitting notes, Im up in the loft by the pipes, way up on a shaky ladder making the adjustments on the sleeve. I was the one with the ear.

Leo looked like he was tuning the organ of the guy on the prep table, lifting his private parts to spray down in there good, Jack watching, thinking the guy mightve been proud of that set at one time. A little guy, but hung.

Jack said, Have I mentioned Im sick or not feeling too good?

Leo said, Not yet you havent. They just called. He picked up a plastic hose attached to the sink and turned on the water. Hold this for me, will you?

I cant, Jack said, Im not licensed.

I wont tell on you. Come on, just keep the table rinsed. Run it off from by the incision.

Jack edged in to take the hose without looking directly at the body. Therere things Id rather do than handle a person that died of leprosy.

Hansens disease, Leo said. You dont die from it, you die of something else.

Jack said, If I remember correctly, the last time Carville had a body for us you had a removal service get it.

On account of I had three bodies in the house already, two of em up here, and you telling me how punk you felt.

Jack said, Hey, Leo? Bullshit. You dont want to touch a dead leper anymoren I do.

Jack Delaney could talk this way to his boss because they were pretty good friends and because Leo was his brother-in-law, married to Jacks sister, Raejeanne, and because Jacks mother lived with Leo and Raejeanne part of the year, the four or five months they spent across the lake, at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Leo was the last of Mullen & Sons, Funeral Directors, the fifty-year-old grandson of the founder; he had gone to work for his dad and an uncle and was now on his own, the end of the line. In ten years hed sell and retire to the Bay, put out crab nets, and read historical novels. In the meantime he would appear dedicated, offer words of comfort, lead rosaries if he had to, and never duck upstairs for a drink until the bereaved had gone home. There were bartenders who thought Leo was Jacks uncle. Jack said to him one time at Mandinas, You should never have been an undertaker. And Leo said, Now you tell me.

Jack Delaney was all of a sudden forty but looked younger. His mother called him either her fine boy or her handsome son. She never mentioned Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where her boy had served thirty-five months working in cotton and soybean fields and clearing brush. Jack told his mom they had brush brought in from Mississippi when they ran out. His mom had seven framed photographs of him on her dresser, several of them shed cut out of the paper when he appeared in fashion ads for Maison Blanche. She had one photo of Raejeanne, her daughters Dominican High graduation picture. Girls loved Jacks mussed sandy hair, his slim build, his hint of a nice-guy smile. They said, Oh, wow, when he told them hed been a fashion model, sportswear mostly. They said, Oh, my Lord, if he happened to mention hed served time. The girls would wrinkle their noses, wondering what this cute guy could have done to be sent to prison. Hed tell them it was a long story but, well, he had been a jewel thief at one time. Theyd want to hear it and hed tell about some of the scarier situations, low key, having learned there were girls who were turned on by presentable ex-cons.

While he was living in medium-security at Angola it was Leo who did the most for him. Leo talked to some of the right people in Baton Rouge, told them his brother-in-law was a little wild, immature. You know, thought he was a hotshot, every girls dream. Leo explained that Jack was intelligent but had lacked proper discipline as a boy; his dad had died in Honduras working for United Fruit when Jack was in the ninth grade at Jesuit High. Jack was the kind, hed always been full of the devil. Like hed go over to Manchac and hunt snakes and dump them into country-club swimming pools. But not poisonous ones. Leo told the people in Baton Rouge hed give Jack Delaney a job in a profession that offered daily reminders of lifes realities, its consequences, and get him straightened out. That is, once Jack spent some time in state rehabilitation, one month shy of three years out of the five to twenty-five of his sentence.

So going to work for Mullen & Sons, 3600 Canal Street, was part of Jacks parole deal. He didnt see working with dead people any more a career opportunity than picking cotton at Angola; but here he was living on the second floor of a funeral home, down the hall from the embalming room, driving a hearse, picking up bodies at hospitals and parish morgues, watching the door during visitation hours, sticking flags on cars in the procession Jack had said to his brother-in-law when he hired him, You sure you know what youre doing? And Leo said, I know it isnt good for either of us to drink alone.

Leo said now, If you havent been to Carville since you worked for the Riv brothers it must be six or seven years.

Longern that, Jack said.

Theyre not sure how you contract leprosy-I mean Hansens disease-though Ive read you can get it from an armadillo. So stay away from armadillos.

Jack didnt say anything.

I know none of the sisters ever got it and theyve been there since the place opened, almost a hundred years ago. The same ones that are at Charity Hospital. You recall if you met a Sister Teresa Victor?

Jack didnt answer or say anything because he was staring at the face of the man on the prep table, recognizing familiar features beneath the lacerations, realizing he knew him, even without the dark hair that used to curl down on his forehead. Jack said, Thats Buddy Jeannette, isnt it? Surprised, but quiet about it, a little stunned. Jesus Christ, it is, its Buddy Jeannette.