6

Almost a month earlier, soon after Miguel had entered the United States illegally, he had attempted to buy funeral caskets to be used for transporting his two intended kidnap victims to Peru. The plan had been developed well before his arrival on the scene and Miguel assumed their purchase could be accomplished quickly and quietly—a simple matter. He discovered it was not.

He had gone to a funeral home in Brooklyn, wanting to spread out his activities rather than confine them to the Little Colombia area of Queens, his operating center at the time. The establishment he chose was near Prospect Park—an elegant white building labeled “Field’s,” with a spacious parking lot.

Miguel entered through heavy oak doors which opened onto a lobby with golden-beige carpeting, tall potted plants and paintings of peaceful landscapes. Inside he was greeted by a decorous middle-aged man wearing a black jacket with a white carnation, black-and-gray-striped trousers, white shirt and a dark tie.

“Good morning, sir,” the sartorial paragon said. “I am Mr. Field. How can I be of service?”

Miguel had rehearsed what he would say. “I have two elderly parents who wish certain planning to be done about their eventual … er, passing.”

With an inclination of his head, Field conveyed approval and sympathy. “I understand, sir. Many older people, at the sunset of their years, wish to be comfortable and assured about their future.”

“Exactly. Now, what my parents would like …”

“Excuse me, sir. It might be more suitable if we stepped into my office.”

“Very well,”

Field led the way. Perhaps intentionally, they passed several salon-type rooms with settees and armchairs, one with rows of chairs prepared for a service. In each room was a corpse, gilded with cosmetics and propped on a frilly pillow in its open casket. Miguel noticed a few visitors, but some rooms were empty.

The office was at the end of a corridor, discreetly hidden. On the walls were framed diplomas, much as in a doctor’s office, except that one was for “beautification” of dead bodies (it was adorned with purple ribbons), and another for embalming. At Field’s gesture, Miguel took a chair.

“May I ask your name, sir.”

“Novack,” Miguel lied.

“Well, Mr. Novack, to begin we should discuss the overall arrangements. Do you or your parents have a cemetery plot chosen and obtained?”

“Well, no.”

“Then that must be our first consideration. We ought to get that for you right away because it’s becoming difficult to obtain a plot, especially a choice one. Unless, of course, you are considering cremation.”

Miguel, curbing his impatience, shook his head. “No. But what I really want to talk about …”

“Then there’s the question of your parents’ religion. What service will be required? And there are other decisions to be made. Perhaps you would care to study this.”

Field passed over what resembled an elaborate restaurant menu. It included a long list of separate items and costs such as, “Bathing, disinfecting, handling and cosmetizing of deceased—$250,” “Special care for autopsied cases—$125” and “Clerical assistance in the completion of various forms—$100.” A “full traditional service” at $5,900 included, among other things, a $30 crucifix placed in the deceased’s hands. A casket was extra, ranging up to $20,600.

“It’s the caskets I came to discuss,” Miguel said.

“Certainly.” Field stood up. “Please come with me.”

This time he led the way down a stairway to a basement. They entered a display room where the carpeting was red and Field went first to the $20,600 casket. “This is our very best. It’s of 18-gauge steel, has three covers—glass, brass and quilted brass—and will last and last and last.” Elaborate ornaments adorned the casket’s exterior. The inside was lined with lavender velvet.

“Maybe something a little simpler,” Miguel told him.

They settled on two caskets, one smaller than the other, priced at $2,300 and $1,900. “My mother is a tiny lady,” Miguel explained. About the size of an eleven-year-old boy, he thought.

Miguel’s curiosity had been piqued by several plain, simple boxes. When asked about them, Field explained, “They are for religious Jews who require simplicity. The boxes have two holes in the bottom, the theory being ‘earth to earth.’ You are not Jewish?” When Miguel shook his head, Field confided, “Frankly, that is not the kind of repository I would choose for my own loved ones.”

They went back to the office where Field said, “Now I suggest we go over the other matters. The burial plot first.”

“That’s not necessary,” Miguel said. “What I would like to do is pay for the caskets and take them.”

Field looked shocked. “That isn’t possible.”

“Why not?”

“It simply isn’t done that way.”

“Perhaps I should have explained.” Miguel was beginning to see that this might not be as simple as expected. “What my parents would like is to have their caskets now, in their present home, placing them where they can be seen each day. That way they can get used, so to speak, to their future accommodation.”

Field appeared devastated. “We couldn’t possibly do that. What we arrange here is—if I may use that word—a ‘package.’ It would be possible for your parents to come to view the caskets they will eventually rest in. But after that we would insist on keeping them until the need arose.”

“Couldn’t you …”

“No, sir, absolutely not.”

Miguel had sensed the other man losing interest, even possibly becoming suspicious.

“Very well. I’ll think about it and perhaps come back.”

Field escorted Miguel out. Miguel had not the slightest intention of coming back. As it was, he knew he’d already left too strong an impression.

The next day he tried two more funeral homes farther afield, making his inquiries shorter. But the response was the same. No one would sell him caskets separate from “the package.”

At that point Miguel decided the attempt to move away from his operating center had been a mistake and he returned to Queens and his Little Colombia contacts. After a few days’ delay they sent him to a small, drab funeral home in Astoria, not far from Jackson Heights. There he met Alberto Godoy.

In terms of funeral establishments, Godoy’s was to Field’s what K mart was to Tiffany—geared to a down-scale clientele. Not only that, but shabbiness prevailed, extending to the proprietor himself.

Godoy was obese, bald, with nicotine-stained fingers and the bloated features of a heavy drinker. Food stains were conspicuous on his undertaker’s uniform of black coat and gray-striped pants. His voice was raspy and punctuated by a smoker’s cough. During the meeting with Miguel, which began in Godoy’s tiny, cluttered office, he smoked three cigarettes, lighting one from another.

“My name is Novack, and I’ve come for information,” Miguel had said.

Godoy nodded, “Yes, I know.”

“I have two elderly parents …”

“Oh, is that the line?”

Miguel persisted, repeating his earlier story while Godoy listened with a mixture of boredom and disbelief. At the end his only question was, “How will you pay?”

“Cash.”

Godoy became a shade more friendly. “This way.”

Once more a basement provided the setting for sample caskets, though here the carpeting was dull brown and worn, with the choices fewer than at Field’s. Expeditiously Miguel found two suitable caskets, one of average size, the other smaller.

Godoy announced, “For the regular size, three thousand dollars. For the child’s, twenty-five hundred.”

Though the “child” reference ran counter to his story and was dangerously near the truth, Miguel ignored it. Also, while convinced the $5,500 total was at least twice the normal price, he agreed to it without discussion. He had brought cash and paid in hundred-dollar bills. Godoy asked for another $454 for New York City sales tax which Miguel added, though he doubted that the city’s coffers would ever see the money.

Miguel backed his recently acquired GMC truck to a loading dock where, under Godoy’s watchful supervision, the caskets were wheeled aboard. Miguel then took them to the safe house where they were stored until their later transfer to Hackensack.

Now, almost a month later, he had returned to Alberto Godoy’s establishment in search of one more casket.

Miguel was uneasy about going back because of the risks involved. He remembered Godoy’s offhand reference to the second casket being for a child. So was there a chance, Miguel wondered, that Godoy had connected yesterday’s kidnapping of a woman and boy with the earlier purchase of the caskets? It wasn’t likely, but one reason Miguel had survived so long as a terrorist was by weighing every possibility. However, having decided to transport the third captive to Peru, at this point there was no alternative to Godoy. The risk had to be taken.

Slightly more than an hour after leaving the United Nations, Miguel instructed Luís to park their hearse a block from the Godoy Funeral Home. Again Miguel used his umbrella in the pouring rain.

Inside the funeral home a woman receptionist spoke to Godoy via an intercom, then directed Miguel to the proprietor’s office.

From behind a cloud of cigarette smoke the fat man regarded Miguel warily. “So it’s you again. Your friends didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“No one knew.”

“What do you want?” Whatever Godoy’s motivations in doing business with Miguel in the first place, it was clear he now had reservations.

“I’ve been asked to do a favor for an elderly friend. He’s seen the caskets I bought for my parents, likes the idea, and asked if I would …”

“Aw, cut it out!” An old-fashioned cuspidor was beside Godoy’s desk. Removing his cigarette, he spat into it. “Listen, mister, don’t waste time with what both of us know is a potful of crap. I said what is it you want?”

“One casket. To be paid for as before.”

Godoy peered forward through shifty eyes. “I run a business here. Sure, sometimes I oblige your friends; they do the same for me. But what I want to know from you is: Am I setting myself up to land in some shit?”

“There’ll be no shit. Not if you cooperate.” Miguel let his own voice take on menace and it had an effect.

“All right, you got it,” Godoy said, his tone more moderate. “But since last time the price has gone up. For that same adult model, four thousand.”

Without speaking, Miguel opened the pressboard wallet José Antonio Salaverry had given him and began counting hundred-dollar bills. He handed forty to Godoy who said, “Plus two hundred ’n’ fifty New York tax.”

Re-tying the tape of the the pressboard wallet, Miguel told Godoy, “You and New York go fuck yourselves.” Then: “I have transport outside. Get the casket to your loading dock.”

On the dock, Godoy was mildly surprised to see a hearse appear. The two previous caskets, he remembered, had been taken away in a truck. Still suspicious of his visitor, Godoy memorized the numbers and letters on the hearse’s New York license plate and, when back in his office, wrote them down, though not really knowing why. He pushed the piece of scratch paper into a drawer and promptly forgot it.

Despite a belief that he had been involved in something it would be safer not to know more about, Godoy smiled as he put away the four thousand dollars in an office safe. Some of the previous cash his recent visitor had paid a month ago was also in the safe, and not only did Godoy have no intention of paying New York sales tax on either transaction, he did not intend to declare it on his tax returns either. Juggling his business inventory to make the three caskets disappear from his books would be easy. The thought so cheered him that he decided to do what he often did—go to a nearby bar for a drink.

Several of Godoy’s cronies at the bar welcomed him. A short time later, mellowed by three Jack Daniel’s whiskeys, he related to the group how some punk had bought two caskets and put them—so he said—in his parents’ home, ready for the old folks to croak, and then come back for another casket, all of it like he was buying chairs or saucepans.

As the others roared with laughter, Godoy further confided that he’d outsmarted the dumb punk by charging three times the caskets’ regular price. At that, one of his friends added a cheer to the laughter, prompting Godoy—all his worry now dissipated—to order another round.

Among those at the bar was a former Colombian, now a U.S. resident, who wrote a column for an obscure Spanish-language weekly published in Queens. On the back of an envelope, using a stub of pencil, the man wrote the gist of Godoy’s story, translating it to Spanish as he did. It would make a good little item, he thought, for next week’s column.