The Undertaker

“Precisely. It is crucial that you understand what is going to happen. Once you do, and once I begin, you are going to tell me everything you know. Everything. In fact, you'll be so damned eager to tell me, the truth will come gushing out of you like shit from a Christmas goose.”

“You can't be serious.”

“Can't I?” he answered, smiling at me as he buttoned the smock. Even now, I think that was the coldest and most malevolent smile I had ever seen, before or after. “I'm as serious as lung cancer, boy. In fact, you've never met anyone in your miserable, little life who is halfway as serious as me. You see, when you showed up yesterday, you caused a great deal of consternation, not with me, because I know what I'm doing. I believe in our mission and I know it's right, but you really spooked the others. I'm sure that was exactly what you had in mind, but now it is my turn. Simply put, I want to know why you are here, why you're bothering us, Mr. Whomever-you-are. I want to know what you know, everything you know, and who you're working for.”

“Who I'm working for?”

“Is it Jimmy Santorini's people or Rico Patillo's? If it isn't one of them, maybe it's someone at Justice or the FBI who suddenly developed a queasy stomach over our little operation. Is that it? Or, are you really working for the local snoops downtown, as you said you were? Which is it?”

“You can't get away with this.”

“Peter, Peter,” he looked down at me, amused and disappointed. “Do you have any idea how many times I've gotten away with ‘this’? No, you couldn't, could you? Well let me assure you that the handful of graves you found up in Oak Hill with those grease balls from the Santorini mob in New Jersey, they are only the very small and most recent tip of a very large iceberg.”

“I'm going to be missed, Ralph.”

“By whom? We've tracked back on all your cell phone calls, the ones you made and the ones you received. And we've analyzed every piece of plastic in your wallet, your bank records, and every credit card charge you've made for the past year.”

“My phone calls? My credit cards? What ...”

“Every dime you've spent and everything there is to know about your pathetic little life — where you've been staying, what you had for breakfast, your shoe size, where you had your car fixed, everything you've bought, every bill you paid, everything.”

I was stunned. And I'd never felt more alone in my life.

“As a fellow professional, I must admit that the legend they wove for you — all the background and documents -– they are first class, as good as I've ever seen. Someone went to an amazing amount of trouble to put you in place. Unless of course you really are who you say you are.”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“Ah, but that's the problem, isn't it? We need to find out which is true.”

“People know I'm here.”

“Who? Your friend Doug in Boston? If that's who he really is, then that's one more loose end we'll have to take care of, all in due time of course, but it will be taken care of. A little “collateral damage,” I think they call it.”

I pulled hard again on the straps holding me down, desperate to find some wiggle room, but there was none.

“Please understand, I will get the whole story out of you before this evening is over, in about twenty minutes, I suspect. As “Old Blue Eyes” sang, “Set 'em up Joe, there's no one in the place, except you and me.” Nooo-body, Pete, nobody except you and me.”

He circled the table again, staring down at me with that same thin, sadistic smile. “You know what the men in our little detachment down in El Salvador and Nicaragua called me? They called me the undertaker. Funny, isn't it? Here we are in Larry Greene's funeral home and I'm the one they call the undertaker,” Tinkerton chuckled. “It started as a little joke Sergeant Dannmeyer came up with. We were part of an ecumenical little group that was tasked to liaison with the local counter-insurgency people. Liaison, my ass. Our job was to eliminate the communist infrastructure in the villages. Eliminate, disappear, call it what you like, it was a polite way of saying we killed people. We needed information and we made people talk to get it. That is what I do. I pry the truth out of people and I'm quite good at it. Yes, before the end comes tonight, as you feel yourself slipping away into that dark forever, you'll start to talk, all right. You'll talk, and you'll talk, and you'll talk, until you can't talk anymore.”

“Look, Ralph...”

He dismissed the protest with a wave of his hand. “All in good time. All in good time. I just wanted you to appreciate where we are headed, that's all. Like a good vintage wine, a little terror helps one focus the mind.”

He opened the door of one of the glass cabinets and examined the knives. “What marvelous toys. When I was in counter- intelligence, we never had nifty tools like this. Just coat hangers, penknives, electric cords, pliers, and our boundless imaginations, of course. But this stuff of Larry's is great.”