Let’s face it. A musical career simply can’t pay the rent regularly, unless you’re one of the micro percentage of successful and/or signed artists. I was none of the above.. So Norm got me into more than a few side jobs of a not so musical character. These are what really saw to aforementioned rent. See, his bar was conveniently located near the East River in Greenpoint, and there was plenty of privacy at river’s edge for a delightful menu of freelance transactions.
Aside from contraband transfers, on one fateful day Neck also needed help disposing of a dead body that had been deposited in his basement by someone in the mob that he owed a couple of gigantic favors to.
That got messy. One has no idea how difficult is to get rid of a body until you have some ripe, starting to stink, 14 hour vintage corpse lying directly under your nose. Norm had been in a panic on that first one when he got me over to the bar.
"Jesus, Weasel, I can’t just throw him in my trunk and drop him over the docks! The cops have been all over the riverfront ever since they found that dead crack whore in the back seat of that Blue Chevy wreck over by Kent Street."
"Why not? Or we could jimmy open the trunk of one of the cruisers and just drop it in there while the officers are catching up on their sleep. Chrissake, the cops on that duty are happier than pigs in shit anyway. They wouldn’t even be here at all if the papers hadn’t spilled a lake’s worth of ink on the dead hooker-"
"Weasel! Shut the fuck up!"
"-it ain’t like they’re working. This area has virtually no crime, except the real underground stuff, which always kept the petty crime under control in the first place. And that can be staged plenty of other places. Nothing on that duty but nappy poo time and payoffs up the kazoo-"
"This is murder you idiot. We could be packing ass for twenty years on this shit. Shut the fuck up!"
What are they getting for looking the other way on the after hours action alone? And what do you mean by ‘we,’ Lone Ranger?"
"Quit jerking around Weasel! I called you in on this because I know you know how to think. So start thinking fast. Did I happen to mention there’s a couple of grand in it for you?"
"How many couple?"
"None if I’m assfucked, pal. But how about three large?"
"Five and you’ve got a deal."
"I thought we were friends Weasel. Friends don’t gouge friends. I’m only talking about maybe two days work at most. And what the hell do you have on your social calendar anyway? If it weren’t for my gigs, you’d be doing nothing but the finger sonata with your god dam peepee. Take four with two up front now, or maybe you’ll eat a bullet on the way out. What’s another corpse as far as I’m concerned?"
"Neck, no need to get so cold about it. Only kidding. We’re on. Do you still have that old bathtub in the basement?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Here’s how we’re going to do this. First let’s get this meat out of the back room and down into the basement. Who’s in the bar?"
Norman’s Nautical had once been a speakeasy, and as such had all kinds of architectural foibles designed to get people off the premises rapidly. Unfortunately they did not contribute to ease of transporting a corpse into the basement without going out of one of the side entrances. I did not like the idea of our disposable dead guy seeing the light of day. The easiest route would have been to throw him out the back room’s steel side door into the bar’s back yard/parking area, and then pitching him down the basement entrance that beer was delivered through.
If it were not for the fact that the corpse in question was already halfway stiff and stinky, I would have opted for waiting till closing and taking our chances on that route with the cover of darkness. However, this was starting to smell urgent. It had just gone past the musty stage and was beginning to take on the aroma of rotting garbage interlaced with excrement and glue. I figured we were about ten hours or less away from unspeakable overpowering stench.
Our only other possible route would require humping Mr. Dead Guy down a narrow flight of rickety wooden stairs that led from the kitchen to the basement. The only way from the back room to said kitchen was through the bar.
"What the hell was Manny thinking when he dumped this on me?"
"Who gives a shit? Make up some errand for that wet brain, Al, you have working the days here and let’s get this thing moving, Neck. The only way to get him down there is through the bar."
To shorten the story it was two three hundred dollar excursions to Home Depot and a couple of close calls later that I was seven and a half kilo bucks richer, and we did another for Manny that pulled me ten. In both cases we drained the bodies in the tub and dismembered them using both an ax and a hacksaw. That got tricky.
"Give me a hand roping his hands to the fucking joist, Neck!"
"Don’t worry man, just dislocate the fuckers from the shoulders. It’s not like he’s going to be using them again.
Neck was surprisingly lacking in intestinal fortitude. This is a man who dislocated shoulders for a living as a kid. Before we were even halfway into the job he had lost his breakfast, lunch and whatever he had for dinner the night before.
"First thing we need to be on top of is getting rid of the guts. It’s already smelling like a sack of shit in here." It was a logical enough notion, but opened a hell of a can of worms.
By this time I’ve gotten him hung from the basement joist by what’s left of his wrists and shoulders. I’ve crazy glued his bulging Italian browns shut, cause that dumb staring shit you get from a corpse is a real nerve bender.
I grabbed the sharpest knife I could find, which happened to be a 9 inch survival bayonet we used to sharpen for fun on slow nights at the bar. Then I rammed that sucker into his diaphragm with the simple intention of cutting down to his pelvis and letting the guts out into the tub. Running water and elbow grease would mop up the details. Such ill laid plans led to catastrophe.
The muscles in there had stiffened to Kevlar rivaling strength. I jammed down as hard as I could to no effect other than slipping on unidentified flying floor goo and slashing open a coagulated abdomen. I found myself looking up at a distended slab of yellow fat already putrefying to a delicate lime green. A half hour of hacking and sawing later finally spilled the Mafioso’s guts proper. This garbage ain’t going down the drain easily with a little soap and water.
"Norm, just get another Hefty bag!"
"Christ how could one man have so much stuff in him."
"Screw your eyes back in and get another pair of rubber gloves, Neck. These tore.
"He’s in the mob you moron, he’s been saving it up for years!"
"Neck, just get the hell over to Home Depot and pick up some more Clorox and Hefty bags. This fucking stuff is dense. And this ain’t football. No time outs!."
"I don’t know how I knew, but you really are the only one who could have pulled this off. Weasel, you’re one professional sick fuck."
"Not really, Neck, it’s just that hillbilly Ozark trash like me has been born and raised with the stink of death. Everything from dead skunks to burying people too poor to have it done the right way with all the expensive formalities. My kind know why they have so many flowers at a wake. And it sure ain’t cause they look pretty."
The fact was I was putting up the best front I had. Dismembering a human being is like nothing I ever had done or imagined before. It was only my god or devil given ability to improvise along with a basic background in gutting and butchering deer carcasses that was carrying the ball here.
Both the trickiest and the most disgusting part was disposing of the guts. When you cut the abdomen open the gases, shit and half digested food, combined with coagulated blood is enough to send you into a tailspin of dry heaves. Up close like this, two hundred and twenty pounds of dead meat all in one body does not simply smell, it is a full scale assault on all five senses, and makes you think about a sixth one as well.
Just as in battle, when you are disposing of a corpse, the humanity you see before you is something you have to disassociate from your own sense of being human. Once involved with the process, your survival is as intertwined with this object as in any kind of mortal combat. You are an accessory to murder after the fact. Failure is not an acceptable option.
But unlike combat you become incredibly intimate in your knowledge of the naked meat you see. You’re going to take this body, naked as it was coming into the world, and unjoint it piece by piece. Every aspect of what comes pouring into my eyes feels like an abomination and perversity that I allowed to suck me into some sort of moral and experiential black hole.
And then there is the assault on one’s nostrils. Once you are intimate with a corpse it does not simply stink. Its aroma represents a symphony of repulsive aromas which commute between your nostrils and your taste buds.. There is the coppery smell of the blood which penetrates you so deeply you can taste it like a filthy copper penny at the back of your mouth.
You will swear you can smell it in your urine for a week. Repulsive gases which remind you of the smell of shit but which taste bitter as they too penetrate your body and insinuate themselves into your tongue. It’s like you’re bathing in it
I start tripping on how I’m snapping and cutting the hands that have been attached to the wrists ever since they formed deep inside the belly of the mother. I still had to hacksaw the wrist tendons, and while hacking said saw I see:.
Hands that reached out for the love of Mommy and the shield of Daddy. Hands that built model airplanes and caressed a lover. Hands that pointed upward to set the mind on the stars, or squeezed a trigger to put a rival thug six feet underground.
Hands that are one of the greatest of the differences between man and animal, and the primary tools of our cultural and artistic accomplishments, now nothing but meat for the lowest forms of animal life. A feast for maggots and flies.
After I cut the body back down to the tub, I made a point of keeping him face down. The more I could look at the body as a thing, the faster I could hold down my gorge and get the job done.
Nevertheless, a body is a lot tougher than one likes to think. Getting the femur out of the hip socket is a project in itself. The trick is to dislocate it and then sever the tendons. Then it’s back to sweating with the saw again after flipping the body for what seems like the thousandth time.
By this time we’ve also done the obvious.
"Put a hefty bag on that mother fucker’s head. I hate those staring brown eyeballs."
And if you slip on the wrong shit the wrong way in the tub, you know you’ll be shaking hands with this bastard in hell.
Nevertheless, small victories ultimately wrest great ones. My scientific approach was paying off. The body now separated into distinct arms, legs, feet, hands and torso, had become much easier to work with.
"Norm, hold this thing steady while I snap the shin at the kneecap."
"Stop barfing and now just fold them up and drop them in the bag."
"Now put the brick in the other bag and drop that bag in the bag."
Finally we get to the piece de resistance. The guy’s head was particularly tough. For someone who had clearly gotten himself killed as a consequence of not using it, he remained surprisingly attached to it.
"Holy shit Norman! We’re down to the last hacksaw blade. We can’t afford to snap the motherfucker yet. I need you to get up off your knees and hold the torso down while I give the head a couple of turns."
"Jesus Christ, I just slashed my pinky on this guy’s upper partial."
"Bastard got his money’s worth out of his Dentist. Fucking work outlived him to end up biting me!"
There are three stages to any significant human endeavor. The first is usually the hardest and involoes task after task with no eye cast towards an end. After the second stage one entitles oneself the luxury of taking stock of the progress of the matter at hand, seeing the end in sight, and admittedly taking a moment’s pride at what one has almost wrought.
"Norm, who would have thought three and a half hours ago, that we could have made it this far?" We have one: hands and feet bag, re-bagged with brick. Two: left leg assembly rebagged with brick. Three: right leg assembly rebagged with brick. Four: left arm assembly rebagged with brick. Five: right arm assembly rebagged with brick. Six: head. Seven, eight and nine: gut bags. "
"So all we need to do is split the torso in two, and we’re pretty much good to go!"
"No longer capable of vomiting, Norm spews a long, ragged, tearing fart, and whispers, "Jesus, what the hell are we going to do with all these bags?"
"Norm, stop worrying and get the sledgehammer."
Splitting the torso lengthwise made no sense, the sternum wouldn’t budge. However, after flipping it over, one good shot with the sledge about at the middle vertebra, snapped it like the proverbial twig. Four bags and two bricks later, and we were as neatly packed as any pair of Shriners headed for a convention.
It really turned out to be easy later that night, when we dropped the parts off at random around the city.
The bag for the hands and feet went in first at Central Park’s Pond.
"That’s his hand bag Neck. Too bad it isn’t Gucci."
The three gut bags went in the East River right by Carl Shurtz Park.
"Here in the shadow of Gracie Mansion. I wonder what the mayor would think?"
"Probably knows him."
"Hell, maybe he ordered the hit. I can see it now, ’Officer, we’re just doing our civic duty!’"
Then we drove over the 59th st Bridge to Astoria Park and threw the arm assemblies into the East River by the Hellgate Bridge. The leg assemblies went into the bay by LaGuardia Airport, which had a convenient Gas Station and rest area just off the Grand Central Parkway. The head wound up in Alley Pond.
This excellent looking business venture aborted on the second iteration because Manny had neglected to mention that the second corpse in question happened to be an undercover RICO Federale.
Although we had dropped each of his hands and feet, as well as his semi crushed head in separate Gravesend mailboxes, Greenpoint got hot as a pistol anyway, courtesy of one of the FBI Forensic propeller heads. I took the hide in plain sight route, and Norman the Neck, known as "Neck" because he seemed to have none separating his bulldog head from his fire hydrant torso, opened a new bar after the other place happened to burn to the ground at four a.m. one rainy Tuesday morning.
I chose not to play there. Confucius say, "man with career in toilet should avoid sewer lines."