The Undertaker

“You think we can stand around in our underwear waiting for the clothes to dry?” Sandy poked me. “I'm game if you are, but we might be noticed.”

“Well, I might be.”

“Talbott, you must love bruises, don't you?”

“No offence meant, ma'am.”

“Don't you know, petite women don't like being teased about sizes and physical inadequacies? Especially by someone who took so much delight from them just a few short hours ago,” she said, as her right claw dug a painful inch into my side.

The laundromat was painted stark, institutional white and it was lit as bright as day. The only customer was a dumpy, older woman in a housedress who sat in a chair in front of the washers, knitting. She had three large, empty laundry baskets on the floor, and a half-dozen tall stacks of clothes on the table in front of her. Behind her there was another load thumping around in a drier.

We walked up to the woman arm in arm and I gave her my friendliest, most pathetic smile. “Pardon me; I wonder if you could help us out?”

She looked at us and our clothes and the dried mud smeared on Sandy's legs and probably thought we were homeless. “I ain't got no money, Mister,” she said.

“Money isn't our problem,” Sandy said as she looked down at our muddy clothes. “We were walking in the Common and got chased by some kids, some muggers. We got away, but we took a tumble down a big hill. Look at us,” she laughed. “I am humiliated.”

“Yeah, humiliated. I can see that,” the woman looked at her, still wondering.

“If I take her home like this,” I added. “Her old man will kill me.”

“Yeah, I got girls. I'd kill you too,” the woman said, starting to laugh. “So, what do you want? You want to use a washer?”

I looked at the piles of clothes on the table. “I've got a better idea. That's your kids stuff, right? How old are they?”

The woman frowned. “I got five — three girls and two boys, sixteen to twenty-four, and my husband Theo. You can add him to that list too. But why do you care?”

“Are any of them about our sizes?” Sandy asked.

The woman looked us both over, up and down. “Yeah. Maybe. Why?”

I pulled out the money I had taken from the goon's wallet and peeled off three crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills. “How about you sell us some of your kid's stuff — we'll pay double what you paid for them — and you can have our dirty clothes. It's all new. Deal?”

The woman plucked the three hundred from my fingers, and tucked it into her bra. “Lena's Clothes Emporium is now open for business, Mister. Show me what you want.”

It took less than a minute to pick out some jeans and a maroon pullover shirt for me and some faded blue jeans and a dark-blue MIT sweatshirt for Sandy. None of it was exactly our size, but it was close and that would be good enough to get us out of town. I even got her to trade her kid's nylon windbreaker for my gray herringbone sports coat plus ten dollars to have it dry cleaned.

We slipped into the restrooms to wash up and change. When I came out, Lena was standing by the washing machine pushing our stuff in, adding the soap. I waited by the restroom door for Sandy. When she came out, I noticed there was a pay phone on the back wall. “I'm going to call Billingham.”

“At this hour? You don't think he's still there, do you?”

“No, but I can leave him a message and that might start him thinking.” I dialed Area 212 Information and asked for the phone number of Steiner, Ernst, and Billingham. Before they shunted me off to the computer, I even got the NYNEX operator to give me the firm's address, not a small task when you are dealing with trained, phone company, customer service representative. Through years of illegal lab experiments, secret in-breeding, drugs, chemicals, and electro-shock therapy, call centers had elevated rude and dumb to near-Darwinian perfection.

When they connected me to the law firm's phone number, I found myself trapped in one of those multi-layered answering machines that let me dial the first four letters of the last name of whomever it was I was foolish enough to be calling. I punched B-I-L-L and after the Beep, I said, “Charlie? This is Peter Talbott. A mutual friend, Gino Parini, told me you had Jimmy's ear. To be perfectly frank, I need some help. I'm in the City and I'll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can get together and talk things over. Ciao. Who loves ya, Baby?”

“You had to say that, didn't you?” I smiled, embarrassed. “But what did calling him accomplish?” Sandy asked.

“Well, now we know he's real and that he hangs his hat there. And now he knows I'm real too.”

We turned and walked out the front door. “Thanks, Lena,” I waved.

“Hey, Mister, she's a cute little thing. Next time you get her dirty, you come back here and see old Lena.” She waved.