Fear Nothing

moment in indecision.
        From beyond the door came a voice I recognized. Sandy Kirk said, “So who is this guy I'll be cremating?”
        Another man said, “Nobody. Just a vagrant.”
        “You should have brought him to my place, not here,” Sandy complained. “And what happens when he's missed?”
        A third man spoke, and I recognized his voice as that of one of the two orderlies who had collected my father's body from the room upstairs: “Can we for God's sake 'just move this along?”
        Suddenly certain that it was dangerous to be encumbered, I set the suitcase against the wall, freeing both hands.
        A man appeared in the doorway, but he didn't see me because he was backing across the threshold, pulling a gurney.
        The hearse was eight feet away. Before I was spotted, I slipped to it, crouching by the rear door through which cadavers were loaded.
        Peering around the fender, I could still see the entrance to the cold-holding chamber. The man backing out of that room was a stranger: late twenties, six feet, massively built, with a thick neck and a shaved head. He was wearing work shoes, blue jeans, a red-plaid flannel shirt-and one pearl earring.
        After he drew the gurney completely across the threshold, he swung it around toward the hearse, ready to push instead of pull.
        On the gurney was a corpse in an opaque, zippered vinyl bag. In the cold-holding chamber two years ago, my mother was transferred into a similar bag before being released to the mortician.
        Following the stone-bald stranger into the garage, Sandy Kirk gripped the gurney with one hand. Blocking a wheel with his left foot, he asked again, “What happens when he's missed?”
        The bald man frowned and cocked his head. The pearl his earlobe was luminous. “I told you, he was a vagrant. Everything he owned is in his backpack.”
        “So?”
        “He disappears - who's to notice or care?”
        Sandy was thirty-two and so good-looking that even his grisly occupation gave no pause to the women who pursued him. Although he was charming and less self-consciously dignified than many in his profession, he made me uneasy. His handsome features seemed to be a mask behind which was not another face but an emptiness-not as though he were a different and less morally motivated man than he pretended to be, but as though he were no man at all.
        Sandy said, “What about his hospital records?”
        “He didn't die here,” the bald man said. “I picked him up earlier, out on the state highway. He was hitchhiking.”
        I had never voiced my troubling perception of Sandy Kirk to anyone: not to my parents, not to Bobby Halloway, not to Sasha, not even to Orson. So many thoughtless people have made unkind assumptions about me, based on my appearance and my affinity for the night, that I am reluctant to don the club of cruelty and speak ill of anyone without ample reason.
        Sandy 's father, Frank, had been a fine and well-liked man, and Sandy had never done anything to indicate that he was less admirable than his dad. Until now.
        To the man with the gurney, Sandy said, “I'm taking a big risk.”
        “You're untouchable.”
        “I wonder.”
        “Wonder on your own time,” said the bald man, and he rolled the gurney over Sandy 's blocking foot.
        Sandy cursed and scuttled out of the way, and the man with the gurney came directly toward me. The wheels squeaked-as had the wheels of the gurney on which they had taken away my father.
        Still crouching, I slipped around the back of the hearse, between it and the white Ford van. A quick glance revealed that no company or institution name adorned the side of the van.
        The squeaking gurney was rapidly drawing nearer.
        Instinctively, I knew I was in considerable jeopardy. I had caught them in some scheme that I didn't understand but that clearly involved illegalities. They would especially want to keep it secret from me, of all people.
        I dropped facedown on the floor and slid under the hearse, out of sight and also out of the fluorescent glare, into shadows as cool and smooth as silk. My hiding place was barely spacious enough to accommodate me, and when I hunched my back, it pressed against the drive train.
        I was facing the rear of the vehicle. I watched the gurney roll past the hearse and continue to the van.
        When I turned my head to