I Woke Next to the Corpse by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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I guess Margie was sure that I wouldn’t be around long enough to get retribution.

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No Matter How You Slice It

I used to bury the dead for a living. It’s a growth business and a duck soup job. It pays reasonably well, and you usually have to know and owe someone important to get it. In my case, Tony (Toro) Calabrese arranged it for me, without my asking. In fact, I initially objected, citing my fear that he would expect something in return, which I didn’t want to be obliged to provide. He told me that he wasn’t looking for any reciprocation, and just thought that it would help his old pal out, and that being newly made, it was useful for him to register some influence in his world. He said; “You give them orders, and they get used to taking them. Az men git dem tayvl a hor, vil er di gantse bord.”

Migliaccio’s Funeral Home needed a director, and proprietor Anthony Migliaccio was a would-be highbinder. He had minor political aspirations, like becoming the town Mayor and thereby bagman-in-chief. Anthony had someone else in mind for his director, but found it more important to curry favor with the mob as represented by made man Tony (Toro) Calabrese, as he, an outsider understood it, to enhance his mayoral pursuit. The first time I met him after my appointment I saw that he was a very average man, no more than five feet nine and hardly weighed more than a butcher's thumb. He had tight brilliant eyes that

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wanted to look hard, and looked as hard as oysters on the half shell. He wore a double-breasted dark gray suit that was too wide in the shoulders and had too much lapel. We sat in his office, and while he rattled on about what he expected of me, I shrugged to show disinterest. This was a semi-no-show type of job, and all that was required of me was to see that the uncontacted employees did what they were supposed to. After I was there no more a few minutes I got a beezer lousy with that dying flower scent. Someone must have just made a “fresh” stiff delivery already inundated with dead bloom arrangements. It brought back unpleasant memories of when my maternal grandmother died much too young.

I Woke Next to the Corpse