The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  “I can hear you all right,” said Johnson. Then he said, “I thought there was a catch in this.”

  “It isn’t much.”

  “O.K. Shoot.”

  “Will you see if you can get me Mike Paletta’s telephone number?”

  “Hell!” Johnson’s voice sounded excited. “Is he in this? That’s easy. I got his number here, in my little black book.” There was a pause. “Good old black book. Mike Paletta, Superior 7736.”

  “Thanks,” said Crane. “I’ll be seeing you in a little while.”

  “In less than that,” said Johnson.

  Crane called the Superior number and a strange male voice answered. “Who do you want?”

  “Tell Mike that William Crane, the private detective, wants to speak to him.”

  At last Paletta came to the telephone. “I don’ care,” he said when Crane told him that he had recovered the body of Miss Ross. “I ain’t innarested.”

  Crane said, “But aren’t you going to thank me for bringing your wife back to you?”

  “Ha, ha, ha.” Mike Paletta laughed as though his stomach hurt him. “Thas big joke you pull on Mike las’ night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bringin’ a dame like that up to my ’partment—a dame I don’ even know.”

  “What! Wasn’t that your wife?”

  “Naw, she ain’t my wife.”

  Crane blinked his eyes, chewed his lower lip. At last he said, “Well then, don’t you want to come down to the morgue and take a look at Miss Ross? She may be your wife.”

  Mike Paletta repeated, “I ain’t innarested,” and broke the connection.

  Crane rubbed the back of his neck, swore vigorously. He recounted the conversation to Courtland, said, “This is getting cockeyeder and cockeyeder.”

  Courtland agreed and then said, “Before you make another call I’ll telephone Uncle Stuyvesant at the Blackstone. He’ll want to know we’ve found the body.”

  In two minutes he came out of the booth, his eyes round. “Uncle checked out of the hotel about an hour ago,” he announced.

  Crane looked at the clock with the cracked glass. It read 2:15. “The hell! Why would he check out at one in the morning? Did he leave any word for you?”

  Courtland shook his head. “The clerk says he simply got in a taxi and left.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, Crane went into the phone booth, called the Liberty Club. Frankie French’s voice was unexcited when Crane told him he had Miss Ross’s body at the morgue. “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” the gangster said calmly.

  Crane hung up the receiver and said to Courtland, “Well, we got one bite.”

  It was nearly 3:40 by the cracked clock when Williams and O’Malley returned with Udoni. Water dripped from the clothes of all three, and Udoni’s face was milk pale.

  “Where’s Mrs. Udoni?” asked Crane.

  O’Malley said, “She’s disappeared. She checked out of the hotel on Wilson Avenue yesterday and left no forwarding address. I don’t know how we’re going to find her.”

  Udoni was suspiciously examining Johnson, the City Press reporter, and Courtland. “Who are these men?”

  “Two of our operatives,” said Crane. He took Udoni’s arm. “Let’s take a look at the girl.”

  The morgue attendant’s name, they had discovered, was Barnes. Dr. Barnes. He was an intern at the County Hospital. He led the way down the winding steel stairs, opened the door to the windowless receiving room and switched on the powerful overhead light.

  Udoni screwed up his eyes, stared at the sheet-covered forms on the white-enameled operating tables. “Which one …?” Seven of the twelve tables bore bodies.

  The attendant flipped the cover off Miss Ross with a flourish. Udoni moaned, “Oh, my God!” The lipstick on the girl’s lips was as bright as fresh paint. Hands suddenly shielding his eyes, Udoni swung around from the corpse, tottered five steps to the calcimined wall, leaned his elbows against it. The attendant replaced the sheet, said in quick alarm, “Is he going to be sick?”

  Crane shook his head, waited for a moment, then asked, “Is that her?”

  Udoni’s voice was cracked. “Yes.”

  “Well, thank God,” said O’Malley. “I was beginning to think she was the sister of the unknown soldier.”

  The attendant got down to business. “Are you willing to pay the expenses of her burial, Mr. Udoni?”

  Udoni took his hands from his face and nodded. His eyes were wild.

  “Good,” said the attendant. “I’ll make a report to the coroner in the morning, and you can have the body as soon as he signs a release.” He turned to Crane and said, “I guess that ends it.” His voice was friendlier.

  “Yeah, except that we’ve got at least one more person coming down here,” Crane said. “He, or they, may be relatives, and you know that relatives have first claim on the body. Mr. Udoni isn’t a relative.”

  “But he’ll bury her if they don’t claim her, won’t he?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.” The attendant winked humorously at Williams and started for the stairs. He halted to let two men come into the room. One of the men was Frankie French, and the other was the squat driver of the car which had taken Crane and Courtland to the Liberty Club. Johnson, recognition in his eyes, moved forward as though he were going to say something, but Crane caught his arm.

  “Good evening,” said French. He bowed to Crane, nodded to Courtland. “I have come in response to your telephone call.”

  There was an alarmed expression on Udoni’s face. He moved along the wall to the inside door, said, “I better go now.”

  O’Malley looked questioningly at Crane.

  “Take him upstairs, and see if you can get an idea where Mrs. Udoni could be,” Crane said. “Then you can let him leave.” As Williams and O’Malley followed Udoni out the door, Crane put a detaining hand on O’Malley’s elbow. “Follow the guy. Maybe he’ll go to his wife.”

  French cast a quick, curious glance at the musician as he disappeared up the steel stairs. The attendant asked, “These the relatives you were expecting?” He made a thrusting motion with his thumb at French and his companion.

  “They’d like to look at the body,” said Crane.

  “Okay. The more the merrier.” The attendant pulled the sheet off the body for a second time. “Take a good look.”

  French’s handsome, fierce, somber countenance was impassive as he looked down at Miss Ross’s delicately tinted face. The overhead light outlined the scar on his right cheekbone, made his green suit bright as spinach cooked with soda. For fully thirty seconds his golden eyes rested on the body. Then he shook his head, said, “I have never before seen this girl.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Crane.

  Frankie French nodded.

  The attendant put back the sheet and walked to the door. “Turn out the light when you come up. I gotta get back to my work.”

  Crane waited thirty seconds, then asked, “Does this girl look anything like Verona Vincent?”

  “Not a bit.” French straightened his maroon tie. “Now let me ask a question.” There was red polish on his fingernails. “Is this the girl who was originally in the morgue?”

  “It’s the same one, all right,” Crane replied. “Isn’t it, Johnson?”

  “You bet.” Johnson’s food-spotted necktie had become loosened and it no longer hid the fact that his collar had no button. “We both had a good look at her.”

  “One more question.” French’s long fingers caressed the edge of the table upon which Miss Ross lay. “How did you manage to bring the body back here without attracting the attention of the police?”

  “The attendant doesn’t know who the girl is,” said Crane. “We told him her name was Anna Temple and that her body had been left with an undertaker by someone who had then disappeared.”

  “Very clever.” French’s teeth were white and even. “There will be no discovery until the attendant makes his
report to the coroner in the morning.” He smiled again. “Very clever, indeed.”

  The driver seemed to be nervous. “We better be going, Mr. French,” he said. His neck bulged over his frayed collar.

  French turned to Courtland. “I would like to express my admiration for the manner in which you rescued Crane, Mr. Courtland. Not many wealthy young men would display such courage.” He smiled at Crane. “I am sorry you had such an unpleasant experience with us, Mr. Crane. It was purely a matter of business. I wanted to find Miss Vincent, and I believed you had possession of her body. I see now that I was mistaken.” He held out a slender hand. “I’m sure you bear me no personal animus.…”

  “The hell I don’t,” said Crane. “If I ever catch you out of your own backyard, you greasy Dago, I’ll take a good sock at you.” He scowled at the gangster.

  Warningly, French shook his head at his driver, who was clawing for a pistol under his coat, and smiled at Crane. “I can well believe you would. You have already made an excellent start—the X-ray pictures show you broke three of my ribs.” He paused at the door. “I shall try to keep out of your way.” His face, suddenly cheerful, was gone.

  Johnson said, “Not such a bad guy.”

  “Yeah?” said Crane, bitterly. “You ought to have him lock you up in his back room sometime.”

  Courtland yawned. “What’s next on the program?”

  Crane’s face was blank. “I’m damned if I know.”

  “Then how about letting me break the story that the girl’s been found?” asked Johnson.

  “Wait till eight o’clock.” Crane sighed heavily. “I have a feeling that the solution is only a few inches out of my brain, but I can’t get it. I’d like to be able to explain who she is when the story breaks.”

  “Christ! It’ll help you find out who she is if you let the papers have the story,” argued Johnson. “Besides, if you hold off until eight the A.M.S won’t get the story at all.”

  “What do you care, as long as you have it exclusive? There’s plenty of afternoon papers, anyway.” Crane held the inner receiving-room door open for them, and then turned off the light and followed them up the steel stairs. Williams was seated on one of the waiting benches, his eyes half closed. Crane asked him, “Get anything out of Udoni?”

  “Naw. He says he don’t know where his wife is, and he’s got no idea where she might be.”

  “That’s funny.” Crane sighed again, added, “Well, O’Malley is tailing him, and if he does go to his wife he’ll get her.”

  “Why do you want to find her?” asked Johnson.

  “I don’t know,” said Crane. “I think she’s cute. And I’d like to know why she had that hair tint in her room.” He bent over and rubbed a spot off his right sport shoe. “Look! I want to see her very much.” He took out a pencil, wrote on the back of an envelope. “Here’s a couple of places where you might find some trace of her.”

  He gave the envelope to Williams, who asked, “Ain’t you coming along?”

  “Hell, no.” Crane made a fanning, negative motion with his hand. “I’m sticking right here. I had plenty of trouble finding that body downstairs, and I’m taking no chances of losing it again.”

  Courtland’s face was tired. “I don’t feel so well. I think I’ll go home pretty soon.”

  Williams handed the envelope on which Crane had written to Johnson. “Where in hell is that last address?” he asked.

  The reporter eyed the envelope, his face puzzled. “Which address?” he asked. Then he said, “Oh yeah, Banks Court. That’s a little street just off Astor. On the North Side.”

  “Can you find it, Doc?” asked Crane.

  “I guess so.”

  “You better scram.” Crane looked out the windows facing the court of the County Hospital, saw only reflected flashes of lightning. “It’s let up a little outside.”

  “O.K.,” said Williams, picking up his hat.

  “You mind if I go along?” inquired Johnson. “I might be able to help you find some of those addresses. You’ll be back in a couple of hours, won’t you?”

  “I hope so,” said Williams. “Sure, come along.”

  As they started toward the corridor Courtland said to Crane, “I’ll stick around for five or ten minutes and then beat it.”

  “Sure,” said Crane; “stick around. I need company.” He called after the others, “Make it as snappy as you can.”

  The cracked clock over the attendant’s head read 4:05. The attendant had apparently worked himself into a state of complete exhaustion. He was sound asleep at his desk, his head pillowed in his arms. Water dripping from the roof of the morgue fell plop-plop-plop into a lake beneath the big windows in the waiting room.

  Courtland asked Crane, “What about those gangsters? Have you given up the possibility that the dead girl is Mrs. Paletta?”

  “I’m damned if I know.” Crane handed Courtland a Lucky Strike, took one himself and lit them both. “If Paletta isn’t interested in Miss Ross it proves he knows where his wife really is.”

  “Yes, that would be true if Paletta really wasn’t interested.”

  “You think he might have been lying?” Crane let the smoke roll out of his mouth. “Yes, he could have been.” Startled, he whirled around, faced Courtland. “That would mean he is planning to do something about the body—maybe come down here and take it away.”

  Courtland nodded. “French could have lied, too. It seemed to me he was terribly pleased about something down there in the receiving room.”

  “My God!” There was horror in Crane’s face. “He might be coming back, too.”

  “Somebody is likely to come back,” said Courtland. “Whoever stole the body in the first place proved to be a desperate person, and he still has reasons for wishing to get the body out of the morgue again.”

  “Christ!” exclaimed Crane. “Maybe I should have kept Williams and O’Malley here.”

  Courtland blew out a long stream of smoke. “Look,” he said suddenly; “why don’t we hide down in the receiving room? Then when the fellow comes to get the body, I mean if he comes, we could grab him.”

  “I don’t know,” said Crane. “It’s pretty dangerous.”

  “The hell!” Courtland dismissed the danger with a flat, pushing motion of his hand.

  “All right.” Crane stood up. “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”

  He glanced at the attendant, saw that he was still sleeping. He followed Courtland down the stairs and into the receiving room. The powerful overhead light lit the big room brilliantly, made the long sheets over the seven occupied tables white. Miss Ross’s body was in the center of the chamber, and past it, near the second door, opening into the driveway, was a vacant table, sheet folded neatly across one end. The room was without furniture, except for a white, instrument-filled cabinet, and there was no place to hide.

  “We’ll have to lie on a table,” said Courtland, “and pull the sheets over us.” He indicated the empty table fifteen feet from the driveway door. “You take that one, and I’ll lie on the one by this door. In that way we’ll be on both sides of the body and have the door guarded, too.”

  “It’ll be good practice for being dead,” said Crane, starting for the further table. Halfway across the room he noticed a third door. It opened into the windowless room used by the coroner’s physicians for autopsies. He switched on the light, saw there was no other door in this room and switched off the light. As he closed the door Courtland asked, “What’s in there?”

  Crane told him and added: “Nobody can get in here from that way.”

  Courtland was spreading the sheet over his table. “I’m right beside the light,” he said, “And I’ll turn it out. You get fixed.”

  The sheet was heavy and coarse, like the canvas on a sailboat. Crane spread it out and gingerly climbed on the table, moving carefully so it wouldn’t slip away from him on its rubber-tired wheels. He pulled the sheet over his body, over his head, and said in a muffled voice: “O.K. Douse the glim.” He
wished the county provided the corpses with pillows.

  Tarlike darkness followed the click of the switch. From across the room came the swish of cloth being moved. Courtland’s voice called, “Sleep tight.” Clammy air flowed slowly through the room.

  Crane said, “I wish I was tight.” His voice echoed hollowly.

  He thought how lonely it must be to be dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE STORM sounded as though it were moving back over the city. The grumbling of the thunder was louder, more irritable, more often increasing to cymbal-like crashes of noise; it was weird in the window-less room because it was followed by no flashes of lightning. It sounded like stage thunder, like tin being beaten with a hammer and then muffled with cloth.

  Crane tried to relax on the metal operating table, but he couldn’t loosen his muscles. His stomach felt upset. His skin was covered with goose pimples. This was because of the steady, slow movement of clammy, conditioned air in the room. It couldn’t be because he was frightened. There was a curious odor about the air: sweet, musty, sickish; an odor of slow decay. He supposed the odor came from the corpses, from the seven corpses in the room with him. The enameled surface of the operating table was hard on his back; the sheet was rough against his skin. The sheet smelled strongly of disinfectant, and he wondered if it had been washed since it had last been used to cover a body. He hoped so.

  A clatter of thunder set his muscles vibrating. His face was damp with sweat; he felt as though the sheet were choking him, choking him.

  He waited until the next long roll of thunder, then slipped from the table, toed the cement floor, held his breath in an interval of silence. As the thunder rumbled again he gave the table a tentative push. It moved noiselessly on its rubber-tired wheels. Resting one arm on the table top, he leaned over and pulled off first one shoe and then the other. He put them on the sheet. Next, stockingfooted, he cautiously pushed the empty table toward the wall in movements synchronized with the thunder, pushed it until it touched another table. His searching fingers encountered cold flesh on the new table. Involuntarily he jerked his hand away. He abandoned his table, wheeled the table with the corpse on it to approximately the position on the floor his table had originally held.