Ladyfingers

by Shepard Rifkin

  I went downstairs. Altman was lighting a cigarette and idly watching an attendant ram one of the body drawers into a closed position as if it held a hundred and fifteen pounds of cured bacon instead of a young girl who had taken thirty barbiturates in an effort to solve her problems.

  "I don't see you much these days," Altman said. He held the cigarette in his bloody rubber gloves. I had a brief glimpse of the girl's lovely face and nodded at her. Altman shrugged. "They pumped out her stomach in Bellevue," he said, blowing the smoke straight upwards with his head tilted back. "Too late. I opened her up to make sure it was only pills and nothing else."

  There was a time when I would have turned my head aside from the bloody gloves. I forget when that was.

  "I don't see you much anymore," he repeated.

  "I don't shoot anybody much," I said. That was true. If I could reach them I preferred to slam them with my pistol barrel on the side of the head.

  "Come around more often," Altman said. I never cared for his labored humor.

  "Yeah," I said. "You know the finger they sent up yesterday?" He nodded.

  "Was she alive when it was cut off?"

  He took it out of the icebox. "That I can't tell you. No way of knowing." He held the finger to his nose and ran it back and forth, as if it were an expensive cigar he was judiciously appreciating before he would smoke it.

  "It doesn't smell of formaldehyde," he said. "That only means it wasn't pickled in some medical school. But dead? Can't tell, can't tell."

  The doctor was a little sadistic. What disgusted me was his trick of lighting a cigarette and smoking it with the bloody gloves. That was his little specialty.

  When I was a cadet and we came around from the Police Academy on the regular tour of the morgue, it was Altman who took us with pleasure into the autopsy room without any warning. Some guy was lying there with his internal organs spread over the table and Altman was delighted with the cadets' reactions when he pulled on the gloves and shoved a pencil through a bullet's path through the liver to show us the angle of entry. One of the cadets slid to the floor and three or four others looked sick. I controlled myself by saying to myself, "You lousy son of a bitch" a few times. Then Altman took a rib where one bullet had lodged and snapped it in two. The bullet toppled out. Altman scratched his initials in it and the detective on the case did so too. It would become important evidence at the trial. I think it was then I wanted to make detective. The detective looked bored and competent. That's what I wanted to be then in the autopsy room, bored and competent, instead of horrified and nauseous.

  I asked him if the woman had had a general or local anesthetic at the time the finger was removed. Altman said he couldn't answer. What he could do, he said, was tell me whether she had had either one.

  "Two different substances," he said. "I can only test for one."

  "I don't get it."

  "I don't have enough meat to test for both," he said. "I have to make a destructive analysis. That is, I have to grind up the finger."

  "Grind it?"

  "Like a hamburger," he said. "Then I can test for a general anesthetic. But then it'll be spoiled for anything else. So if you want to test for another substance you better make your choice now."

  "Test for local."

  "O.K.," he said. He picked up the finger and moved towards a machine that looked exactly like a meat-grinder.

  "I'll sit this one out," I told him, and I went upstairs and sat at Tully's desk and read the Daily News. I once asked him why he never read the Times. "Why should I?" he answered. "They ever run pictures of cops?"

  Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Altman. He said it was my lucky day. She had been given an injection of Novocain.

  Lucky, was I? Instead of a possibility she had been alive at the time of the amputation, I now had a probability. Why else should there be Novocain? Now it was no longer a case of a medical student's idea of a joke. It was a madman's idea of a joke.

  So all I had to do was find a madman who lived close enough to Grand Central Post Office to mail two little packages. He lived in the city. Or he lived in a small town whose postmark could be checked against a postal clerk's remembrance of two small packages mailed on two consecutive days, a rare enough coincidence for the clerk to remember the mailer. So the guy had to live close enough to New York so that travel to the city would not be a serious problem.

  Let's say he lived within fifty miles of New York. That meant all I had to do was to pinpoint my madman out of thirteen million people. I sure was lucky.

  I asked Tully for the fingerprints and the photographs.

  "No chance of tracing them, I suppose," I said.

  "Unless you got a comparison print, no," he said.

  "No harm trying," I said.

  "Suppose you wanted to trace her from these two prints," Tully said, taking back his Daily News. "We send the prints down to the FBI in Washington. We tell them it would be appreciated if they could trace her. Know what they'd tell you? They'd tell you they'd put all their staff on it, and they'd work all week, twenty-four hours a day, for-get a load of this-for thirty years. Then they would find it. If her prints are there. Because there are lots of people who haven't been printed."

  "What's Little Orphan Annie up to these days?"

  "Listen," he said, "ever since I figured out that she must be like fifty-five years old I really haven't had much heart to follow her any more. Take your prints and go."

  I signed a receipt for the lady's finger, which I now carried in a lead box. I went out and took a deep breath when I hit the street. As usual the air was full of carbon monoxide, dust, and gas fumes, but the fact that I could still smell it meant I was alive. It was something I always did unconsciously when I came out of there.

  I looked at my Olds. I checked my condition. My hand hurt like hell, I needed sleep, and my mind was like an engine that had been run too long without oil. It felt as if it had been seized. If I were to drive I was sure to pile up the Olds.

  I got a cab in nothing flat. That's one advantage of coming out of the morgue. There's always some crying woman getting out of a cab at some hour like 3:00 a.m.

  "Someone in your family in there?" the hackie asked. He was bored and wanted to chat.

  "Just part," I said.

  "Huh?"

  "Just part," I said. "We just held services."

  "Whacha talkin' about, Mac?" he asked. I put a stop to that by opening the lead box and letting him look. He drove quietly to the police lab.

  Kelsey was in one of the labs. He had some brown fluid boiling in one of those screwy-looking flasks. He was looking at it intently. It smelled like tea.

  "Back for your sugar?" he asked, grinning. He nodded towards the paper bag I had bought a few hours ago for twelve thousand bucks.

  "What you got in there?" I asked. "It looks like Clypsidion."

  I always made up some scientific-sounding name for his mysterious potterings.

  "Tea," he said. He poured it out into a mug and took some of my expensive sugar.

  I put everything down on the marble table. Boxes, wrapping paper, string, ring finger, gold ring with identification tag, bloody cotton batting.

  "I got you a real mystery," I said.

  "Like Conan Doyle?"

  Kelsey is an M.D. who got so interested in forensic chemistry they'll only carry him out of the lab when he's ninety. He even has a cot stuck in a closet there for when he's hot and excited. I told him briefly what the situation was.

  His eyes widened.

  "I'm going home and sleep," I told him. "I'll be back in six hours."

  "Four."

  "Four it is."

  I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. I hailed a cab and fell asleep in it. When I got to my sloppy little bachelor apartment, East 74th near Lexington, the hackie was very gentle about waking me up. He must have noticed the .38 in my hip holster. There are some advantages in being a cop.

  3

  I THREW MY WORK CLOTHES INTO A CORNER, shave
d off my sideburns, and held my hand outside while I took a shower. I ate four aspirins, drank a double scotch, and fell into bed.

  Twenty minutes later the pain had throttled down enough so that I could sleep. After a sound sleep of ten minutes the phone rang.

  One of the disadvantages of being a cop is that when the phone rings in a situation like this you can never say, "Goddammit, what do you want?" The guy calling might be a sensitive stoolie with a good tip; or maybe my lieutenant; or maybe Inspector Hanrahan; or even, God forbid, my new friend, the PC.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Where the hell were you last night?"

  Irene. My stomach began to ache. I didn't know whether it was the diet of quick sandwiches and the liquor I'd been forced to drink in all those bars and cocktail lounges while I was gaining confidences and worming my way up the junkie scale to Lo Scalzo, or whether it was a general tension because of the finger situation, but it was having itself a good burn. The hand began to join in, too. I guess I needed something stronger than aspirin.

  I told Irene I had been in a bar with two very suspicious guys who were going to take me somewhere for the buy I'd been working for all that time. I added, "All I needed was for them to see me go make a call."

  "The least you coulda done was phone me," she said.

  "Honey, I couldn't make it."

  She kept going on about how all she needed was a phone call.

  "Honey," I said. I honeyed her a lot. But it wasn't much use. "Honey," I said, "I'm beat. I'll call you when I wake up."

  "That's another thing," she said. "It gripes my ass I can't plan anything definite."

  Besides being stupid, a good cook, and amiable about being sent home all the way back to Queens in a cab, she has this great delicate tongue.

  I crawled some more but she was spoiling for a fight. One word led to another and then I told her off and she told me off and slammed down the receiver.

  Cross off one girlfriend. I'd survive. I met her when I was staking out someone in Forest Hills. The chances were I'd meet another cop-crazy dame. They're all around. I got up and took too many aspirins and fell asleep again.

  I slept through the alarm. The phone rang again and it was Kelsey. I said I'd be right down. I dressed decently this time, with a belt holster, a gray tweed suit, and good brown shoes with crepe soles. When you're on your feet a lot and you may suddenly have to sprint, it pays. Maybe not individually fitted like the PC's, but still a $35 pair.

  Someone once said I looked like an English department instructor from a good liberal arts college. I decided to take it for a compliment. Hanrahan, with his sensitive way of putting it, said I looked like a fag. I don't think I look like a fag. I weigh one eighty-five. I'm five eleven. My eyes are blue. That surprises people who find out my name is Sanchez. My people came from northern Spain, where there's a lot of blue-eyed blonds. My hair is black and my wrists are not noticeably limp and I don't wear slave bracelets. Nor do I wear male perfume. I walk slowly and thoughtfully. I go to pistol practice once a week, although I don't have to go that often. I'm a good shot with either hand. I also have to pay for all the bullets I fire at practice. That comes to fourteen cents a bullet. That's why most cops don't like to practice. But I'm naive. I believe the more I practice the better I'll be, and some day that little bit better will give me an edge. And I want all the edge I can get, especially in a racket where I don't get overtime.

  I spent ten minutes looking for my car before I realized I had left it outside the morgue. I took a cab down and naturally found a fifteen-dollar ticket under the windshield wiper even though I left the Department magazine displayed prominently on the front window ledge. I tore up the ticket. Let them sue me.

  I drove to the lab. When I got out and locked up I saw my hands were trembling. That's what ten aspirins in four hours will do for you. I went into a luncheonette across the street from the lab. I was eating a roast beef sandwich and trying to figure out how to stop the trembling when Schneider sat down opposite me. He was a detective 3rd grade on the Mendicant Squad.

  Right away he started in. A great gossip, Schneider. "I hear Hanrahan has a finger up your ass," he said.

  "In more ways than one," I said. "Reach me the mustard."

  "Aw, Pablo, relax. They shift you here, they shift you there, maybe they're lining you up for a big promotion."

  "Sure."

  He looked at my hands. He reached over and ate my two olives without my permission.

  "Have some olives," I said. The irony went over him.

  "Yeah, thanks. Like in the State Department, a year here and a year there. It's good for you."

  "Sure," I said, "they'll give me a consular post out in Staten Island."

  I stood up and told him he could have my pickle. The son of a bitch would start telling people that I was getting nervous. Word would get to Hanrahan and he would feel pleased. It wasn't going to be a very good week that I would have ahead of me. But one thing was sure. I was going to earn my salary. Every civil service cent of it.

  4

  WHEN I WALKED INTO THE LAB THE RING WAS lying on the marble-topped table. Kelsey was staring at the string which had attached the identification tag to the ring.

  He picked it up. He smelled it. He put a powerful light on it and looked at it some more through a magnifying glass. He put the glass down and looked out the window. He drummed his fingers on the table top.

  I asked him if I could look. He handed me the glass. I saw nothing but a yellowish stain about a quarter of an inch long.

  "How'd that yellow stain get there?" he asked.

  "I don't know."

  He wanted to know if I had squeezed any lemon juice on it. I said no. He asked a somewhat indelicate question next. I said no, I hadn't been doing that since I shifted from diapers to pants.

  "Anyone along the line handle anything yellow?"

  "I don't think so."

  I picked up the ring. Inside it was stamped "22k." There were no other marks. I put it in my pocket.

  "Where you going with that?"

  "Up to Forty-seventh Street." Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 47th Street is full of wholesale jewelry merchants.

  "It's your feet. Personally I think you're wasting your time."

  "What else am I going to do? Hang around here watching you play mad scientist?"

  Kelsey disregarded that. He had the string under his nose as if he were trying to inhale it. "You can sack out on my cot," he said. "You look as if you can use some more sleep."

  I told him I'd bite his pillow to shreds.

  "O.K.," he said. "Come back in three, four hours. I might have something." The phone rang. He lifted it, cocked an ironic eye at me, and said, "Tell him he's not here." He hung up.

  "Hanrahan?" I asked.

  "Yes. You look as if you don't want to talk to anybody."

  "You read me right."

  I waited for the elevator. Three cadets came by with their neat uniforms and seriously polished shoes and their heavy notebooks. They were talking about the Police Academy dance scheduled for next week. One of them had no date and the others were trying to line him up with a blind date.

  "How do I know she's not a dog?" he demanded.

  "Don't worry," they told him.

  She lived in Staten Island.

  "Staten Island!" he wailed.

  They warned him they wouldn't fix him up unless he promised to take the girl home.

  "Suppose we don't get along?"

  I left them in the lobby arguing. The kid sure had a big problem.

  5

  I PARKED ON 48TH, AND PUT SPRING 3-1000 IN the middle of the front seat. Nobody could miss it.

  The first person I saw was Silver Dollar. He was looking over his shoulder in a thoughtful way and he bumped into me. He is a very good jewel thief. He got the name Silver Dollar because he always carries one for good luck.

  The jewelry district has more cops and detectives in it than a Holy Name Communion breakfast.

  "He
llo, Mr. Sanchez," he said. I asked him how he was. He was angry about something. "I'm cuttin' across town from Grand Central readin' the Telegraph," he said.

  "I was on Forty-seventh by accident and McCartney made me. He sent me up for five once when you was only a third grade."

  "Yeah?" I asked, sympathetic. One of the interesting things about the way we play cops and robbers is that we follow each other's careers with interest.

  "He's eatin' in a luncheonette and he drops his bagel and comes chargin' out like gangbusters. He takes my arm and asks me did I winter good in Miami. I never told him I was in Miami. He says I got a nice tan. I tell him I see his nephew made two touchdowns last October against Notre Dame. He asks me was the ponies good to me and all of a sudden I look around and say, 'What the hell am I doin' out on Fifth Avenue?' He leaves me and then I meet you."

  Silver Dollar owed me a favor. But there was nothing I could draw on him for right now. I said good-bye and left him with regret.

  McCartney was sitting down at his table when I looked in. He saw me right away and beckoned me over. He had a red round face that looked like a Halloween mask, and short red hair.

  He did not look intelligent and he was one of the best men on the Safe and Loft Squad. I had a cup of coffee while I watched him work out on a bagel with lox and cream cheese.

  "I hear you caught a big one," he said. I told him about it. I needed a friendly ear.

  "Let's see the ring," he said.

  He turned it around a few times.

  "You planning to go the rounds with it?"

  I nodded. "Forget it," he said. I must have looked stubborn, for he went on. "You got any idea how many wedding rings they sell each month in this block? And then you'll have to go to each jeweler the wholesalers sell to. And then when you wind this block up you're gonna have to go down to the downtown diamond district, you forget that?"