Voice made it a question.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone, then Hagen's voice said very quietly,

"Yes." There was a click and the phone went dead.

Bonasera was sweating. He went into the bedroom and changed his shirt and rinsed

his mouth. But he didn't shave or use a fresh tie. He put on the same one he had used

during the day. He called the funeral parlor and told his assistant to stay with the

bereaved family using the front parlor that night. He himself would be busy in the

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laboratory working area of the building. When the assistant started asking questions

Bonasera cut him off very curtly and told him to follow orders exactly.

91

He put on his suit jacket and his wife, still eating, looked up at him in surprise. "I have

work to do," he said and she did not dare question him because of the look on his face.

Bonasera went out of the house and walked the few blocks to his funeral parlor.

This building stood by itself on a large lot with a white picket fence running all around

it. There was a narrow roadway leading from the street to the rear, just wide enough for

ambulances and hearses (hearse [h∂:s] – катафалк, похоронные дроги). Bonasera

unlocked the gate and left it open. Then he walked to the rear of the building and

entered it through the wide door there. As he did so he could see mourners already

entering the front door of the funeral parlor to pay their respects to the current corpse.

Many years ago when Bonasera had bought this building from an undertaker planning

to retire, there had been a stoop of about ten steps that mourners had to mount before

entering the funeral parlor. This had posed a problem. Old and crippled mourners

determined to pay their respects had found the steps almost impossible to mount, so

the former undertaker had used the freight elevator for these people, a small metal

platform, that rose out of the ground beside the building. The elevator was for coffins

and bodies. It would descend underground, then rise into the funeral parlor itself, so that

a crippled mourner would find himself rising through the floor beside the coffin as other

mourners moved their black chairs aside to let the elevator rise through the trapdoor

(люк, опускная дверь; trap – ловушка, капкан; /вентиляционная/ дверь /в шахте/).

Then when the crippled or aged mourner (скорбящий; to mourn – скорбеть,

оплакивать /кого-либо/) had finished paying his respects, the elevator would again

come up through the polished floor to take him down and out again.

Amerigo Bonasera had found this solution to the problem unseemly (неподобающий,

непристойный) and penny-pinching (мелочный, скаредный, экономящий на копейке;

to pinch – щипать; сжимать; скупиться). So he had had the front of the building

remodeled, the stoop done away with and a slightly inclining walk put in its place. But of

course the elevator was still used for coffins and corpses.