“Hold it. Slow down,” Konig says, half rising off his chair, then falling back. “Will you for Chrissake tell me what the hell’s on your mind?”
“This story,” the Deputy Mayor splutters, “this goddamned newspaper story.”
“Oh, you mean this dismemberment thing on the river?”
There’s a pause full of consternation and puzzlement. “What dismemberment thing?” the Deputy Mayor whines piteously. “I don’t know anything about any dismemberment thing. It’s this goddamned body-snatching thing.”
“Body snatching?” Now it is Konig who pauses, bidding for a bit of time.
“It was all over the late editions of the Post yesterday. Pages two and three. I’ve been with the Mayor all morning. He’s furious. Fucking furious. Repeat, furious.”
“What’s it say?”
“What’s what say?”
“The story.”
Konig can hear the Deputy Mayor panting incredulously. “You really haven’t read it?”
“I haven’t seen a paper.”
Another pause full of bafflement and rage. “You really ought to read the newspapers, my friend. Keep abreast of things. You’re a public official. It’s always helpful to know what’s going on in your own agency.”
“All right, Maury, spare me the sarcasm.”
“Your own backyard, so to speak.”
“Quit the cute stuff, I said. If you mean that someone in this office—”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“—peddled a few names—”
“A few names?”
“—to some sleazy mortician for a few bucks—”
“A few bucks?” A loud, scornful laugh shatters through the receiver. “A million bucks a year the Post says. One million bananas. The City’s being ripped off to the tune of a million a year. You’re very casual, I must say.”
“What’s a million?” Konig’s voice suddenly booms. “Peanuts. Consider the annual rip-off budgets of the Welfare Department, the Highway Department, the Realty Board, and the Bureau of Acquisitions or whatever the hell they call themselves.”
“This is no time for frivolity, my friend.”
“Who’s being frivolous? I’m telling the truth. We’re peanuts. Absolute pikers when it comes to municipal rip-offs.”
“Paul, I will not sit here and listen to a lot of smart-ass talk. I tell you, the Mayor is—”
“Furious. I know. Repeat, furious.”
“Okay, my friend.” A long sigh and the Deputy Mayor crumbles in defeat “I have stuck my neck out for you a half-dozen times in the past five years. This is it You’ve had it. A cover-up of this proportion—”
“You’re right there. I did cover up. I knew about the situation for at least three years and did nothing about it. That was very sloppy of me. I was wrong. I’m sorry—”
“Very noble, very magnanimous,” the Deputy Mayor whines gratingly. “None of that, you realize, mitigates one iota the fact that you are now up to your ass in a cover-up scandal that’s cost the City—”
“Fine. I plead guilty. What does the Mayor want me to do? Resign? Very well. I resign.”
“I didn’t say anything about—”
“I’m a doctor. Not a policeman. If the Mayor wants a policeman to supervise the ethics of the personnel in this office, let him goddamned well hire one. I’ll serve him gladly. He’ll have my complete loyalty and affection.”
“Paul, for Chrissake—”
“And my pity, I might add. I’ve had it with fiscal budgets, requisition forms, bureaucratic Neanderthals, hack politicians, retrograde morons—”
“Paul, listen to me—”
“—petitioning the City in triplicate for pencils and paper clips. I’m a doctor. I’m a—”
“Paul—Carl Strang is in the Mayor’s office right now.” There’s a pause in which both men listen to each other breathing. Konig can feel a pulse beginning to drum at his temple. “So?”
“They’ve been closeted for half an hour.”
Rue and anger rising in his gorge, Konig suddenly has an image of Strang, unctuous and sycophantic, telling his tale, spilling his guts to the Mayor. He can see the hand-wringing, the breast-beating, hear the woeful litany of such typical Strang adjectives as “regrettable,” “deplorable,” “unfortunate.” And Strang sitting there before the Mayor in the leather-mahogany sanctum sanctorum of City Hall, bowing and scraping, genuflecting like a mandarin, dizzy with adulation, and Uriah Heeping before that exalted personage, His Honor the Mayor.
“Was he summoned?” Konig spits the words out. “Or did he just show up on the doorstep?”
“A little of both, I’m afraid. The Mayor called him early this morning, after he’d read the story. Suggested offhand that they might chat at some vague, indefinite time in the future. About two hours later, Strang walked through the front door. Paul—this man is no friend of yours.”
Another pause in which Konig drops a ball of wadded paper from his fist. “Thank you, Maury. Thank you for telling me that. And if it’s any consolation, you may tell His Honor the Mayor that the man responsible for leaking the names of unclaimed bodies has been relieved of his duties. I will also have a complete list of all those morticians and funeral parlors in question on the Mayor’s desk tomorrow morning.”
No sooner has he slammed the phone down than it rings again.
“Konig here.”
“Dr. Konig?”
“Speaking.”
“Bill Tracy at the Times. You’re a tough man to reach.”
“Been busy.”
“I’ll bet you are. I was wondering about your reactions to the Post story.”
“What story is that?”
“Story in yesterday’s Post.”
“Haven’t read it yet so I’ve got no reactions. Is that all?”
The baffled pause that follows produces in Konig a mild lift of pleasure.
“Well,” the reporter plods on, “do you know what it’s in regard to?”
“You mean the body-snatching thing?”
“Right.”
“What about it?”
“Is it true?”
“Oh, sure—we’ve been in the body-snatching racket here for years. Been selling the stiffs to fertilizer manufacturers.”
“Fertilizer manufacturers?”
“Sure,” Konig rants on spitefully. “Good money in stiffs. Too bad some loudmouth had to go blow the whistle and ruin it for all of us. Supported my drug habit for years.”
Another baffled pause. Konig lights his cigar with mounting fury.
“I see,” says the reporter, a note of chill creeping into his voice as he catches the gist of Konig’s quirky humor. “Is it true that you’ve been aware for several years that people in your office have been selling names of unclaimed bodies to local morticians?”
“Who says so?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose my sources of—”
“Never mind,” Konig snaps, “I know who. Well, if Strang says so, it must be so. Strang’s an honorable man.”
“Well, I didn’t mean, sir—”
“Quite all right,” Konig says. “I know exactly what you meant.”
Another pause. Konig can almost reach out and touch the puzzled consternation at the other end.
“Well, I was just wondering—” the reporter struggles on. “There’s a rumor going around—”
“Rumor? What rumor? I never listen to rumors.”
“I don’t either—but this one is pretty solid.”
“Solid?”
“Impeccable sources. It’s about the DA’s office.”
“DA’s office?” Konig’s ears perk.
“According to a report we’ve had here, the DA is planning a full-scale investigation of the Medical Examiner’s Office.”
“Full-scale investigation?” Konig mumbles, all former levity gone.
“Yes, sir. According to well-placed sources, you’ve been in collusion—”
“Collusion? What in God’s—”
“Yes, sir—with several people in your office. Demanding kickbacks from morticians for the names of unclaimed bodies, knowing full well these bodies were being buried at public expense, and that you plotted to conceal—”
“Plotted to conceal—” Konig mumbles the words without comprehending them.
“Yes, sir—and that you were fully aware that—”
Konig quietly places the receiver on the cradle. For several moments he sits at his desk, numb, spent, musing distantly while the cigar expires in a smog of smoke between his fingers. A variety of emotions churns within him, none of which he is able to define. But fear—fear is not one of the emotions he is feeling. He is not afraid of the District Attorney, or the Speical Investigator, or the Mayor, or public chastisement from the press. What he is feeling principally is shame.
A sudden vision of old Bahnhoff rises before him, the stern, iron-gray visage glowering at him—he who has brought shame on the Office. Body snatching, faked and shoddy protocols, deliberate concealment of wrongdoing. What would Bahnhoff have done about such shenanigans during his own tenure? The old German would have rooted them out mercilessly. There would have been excoriations, public hangings, all hell to pay, but the Office would have been cleansed.
The phpne rings again, jarring his ruminations. A picture of Lolly flashes through his mind as he snatches it up, expecting to hear her voice, or her captors demanding money.
“Konig here.”
“Where the hell you been?” Flynn’s voice comes pant-ting and susurrant out of the receiver. “Been tryin’ to reach you for hours. Listen—I’m over in Jersey. That Doblicki job. You were right. Gotta hand it to you. The Jersey boys finished with him a couple of hours ago. Pulled a thirty-eight-caliber slug outta the inside of the head. Reason you guys missed it was the goddamn thing was all buried and covered with ash. In the back, just like you said. How the hell didja know it was the back of the head?”
“Never mind, Flynn. Just get on with the story.”
“I am—I am,” Flynn whines. “For Chrissake, gimme a chance, will ya? What I’m tryin’ to say is they got the guy dead drunk, shot him in the back of the head, doused him with gasoline, dumped him into a car along with a lot of gin bottles, and set the whole thing on fire. Then they pushed the car over an embankment to make it look like he drove off drunk. The guy was a big lush anyway. So they figured it would all look pretty plausible.”
“They? They?” Konig snaps. “Who’s they? Did you get the bastards?”
“Relax—relax,” Flynn goes on, barely able to suppress the triumph in his voice. “I’m comin’ to that. It was the goddamned brother. Got him dead to rights. Soon as we had the autopsy report from your pal Weinstein, we marched right over to the wife with the remains of the bullet. The brother’s right there”—Flynn giggles spitefully—“just happened to be spendin’ the night. Consolin’ the newly bereaved widow, don’tcha know? Soon as we laid it on him, he put the whole blame on her. Then she put the blame on him. Ain’t love grand? There was a hundred-thousand-dollar straight life policy plus a double-indemnity rider on Doblicki’s life. These two bastards were gettin’ ready to ride off into the sunset with nearly a quarter of a mil. How d’ya like them apples?”
Konig laughs. It’s a harsh, vindictive laugh. Full of a kind of fierce merriment. An unpleasant sound. But it’s over in a moment, then once again he’s all business. “What about the heads, Flynn? You promised me some heads—”
“I got no heads,” Flynn says apologetically. “But I got something almost as good.”
“Fingertips?” Konig feels his spirits leap. “Some of those missing tips for prints?”
“No—no missin’ fingertips. I got underwear.”
“Underwear?”
“Yeah—in the shack. From all that crap we cleaned outta there. Found a dirty pair of boxer shorts, Army issue—”
“So what?”
“So what?” Flynn cries, his voice full of astonishment and hurt. “There’s a serial number stamped in the waistband—that’s what. RA 12537744—pretty faded, but we got it. Sent down to Washington this morning. Oughta be hearin’ somethin’ pretty—”
“Jesus Christ,” Konig snarls once more. “That’s great for you. What about me? I can’t verify any identifications without heads—”
“I can’t find no heads, goddamnit. We been up and down that shoreline ten times, two miles each way, and still—”
“What about the shack?”
“We been through the shack with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Under the shack, I mean. Did you pull up the goddamned floorboards?”
There’s a baffled pause in which Konig can hear the detective thinking hard, stalling for time.
“Pull up the floorboards, goddamnit,” Konig shouts. “Listen, you.” Flynn’s high spirits suddenly snap. “You quit your goddamned shoutin’ at me, you hear? I ain’t been to bed in forty-eight hours. Runnin’ my ass all over the place in Jersey and—”
“I don’t care where you’re running your ass. I don’t care if you never go to bed. You get me those heads, Flynn, or I’ll have your head. And you know I’m just the one who can do it. Now pull up those goddamned floorboards.”
For a long time after, he sits there in the gloomy, cluttered shadows of his office. It is twelve-fifteen and everyone has gone to lunch. Thinking he will get a cup of soup somewhere, he starts to rise, then falls back in his chair, riveted to the spot, a cold gnawing in his bowel, as if he had to void himself. “Dr. Konig,” a quiet voice whispers in his ear. Suddenly, in his head he hears that loud, wrenching scream, hears it just as he heard it early this morning, as if through a phone receiver, anguished, frightened, like a small stricken animal. Then that lewd, awful giggle. He hears it over and over again, exactly in that order—the quiet voice, the scream, and then the giggle. Over and over again.
His forehead glistens with cold domes of sweat. He feels the knot tighten in his chest, the fist closing over his heart, and his hand fumbles in the lower right-hand drawer for the small phial of amyl nitrite kept there for just such occasions.
He continues to sit there in those shadows heavy with the odor of formalin and cigar smoke, and he waits.
The last time Lolly called the office was four days ago at noon. Somewhere around this hour. If he sits there now, glued to his phone, perhaps she may call again. Or her captors may attempt to make contact. Sitting in sodden, rumpled clothing, he waits, convinced the phone will ring at any moment. He even believes that by bringing the immense power of his concentration to the thing, he can will it to ring. He concentrates on the sound of a ringing phone, but the silence in the room is deafening, and the phone never rings.
Two hours later when he gets up, ready to descend into the mortuary where work awaits him, he is nearly beside himself.
»26«
“We’ve got all the lower limb articulations correct.”
“Good. What about the casts of the hip joints and femora?”
“Appear to match perfectly.”
2:15 P.M. MORTUARY.
McCloskey is glowing as he makes his report to the Chief. The others, assembled about the trays, are all busy at individual tasks.
“You boys really burned the midnight oil last night, didn’t you?” Strang smiles expansively.
“Radiographs are beautiful, Paul,” says Pearsall. “Beautifully clear articulations.”
“Absolutely no doubt,” says Delaney, gazing up at the ghostly gray-white bone configurations on the screen. “Those are perfect limb assignments.”
“Any serology yet?” Konig mutters, disregarding all the glowing chatter.
“We’ve got a Type O and a Type AB,” Hakim reports. “Which is which?”
“The long set is O and the short AB,” says McCloskey. “Toxicology?”
“Negative,” Bonertz replies. “No drugs. No appreciable alcohol levels. Gas chromatograph picked up reserpine traces in the liver of the short set. Pr
obably hypertensive.” He’s about to go on but Konig cuts him short. His manner is rude and abrupt. Konig has a number of unpleasant traits, but rudeness is not one of them. He has never been known to be rude to a colleague. Now, this sudden churlishness has them all puzzled and wary. Uncertain what to expect next Konig’s bleary eyes are once again scanning the trays and the partially reconstructed corpses. “Any progress?”
“We’ve made preliminary assignments on both sets of humeri, Paul.” For the first time in their relationship, McCloskey is emboldened to use the first name. After all, last night, during dinner and throughout work, they had been more than merely colleagues.
“Oh?” Konig replies and there is something clearly cold and admonitory in the tone of that single syllable.
The young pathologist, however, doesn’t detect it. He runs right on, absolutely glowing, full of professional pride and enthusiasm. “We’ve dissected out the ligament and muscle tendon surrounding the shoulder joints, the sockets on the scapulae, and the ends of the humeri. Then we—”
“What’s this pin doing in the scapula?” Konig cuts him short. There’s a moment of portentous silence.
“I put it in,” McCloskey murmurs, beginning to sense something awry.
“You put it in?”
“Yes, sir. You see, I thought I’d try one of the shorter humeri first—the way we did the other night—and the—”
“So you forced the head in and busted the goddamned acromion—right?”
A hot pink suffuses the young man’s face. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid so.”
“You’re afraid so?” Konig jeers. “You’re afraid so? Couldn’t you see it was all wrong? Are you a fool? Are you blind? If you’ve got the longer pair of femora fitting the hip joints of your trunk, you ought to goddamned well know that it’s the longer pair of humeri that should fit at the shoulder.”
“I did, sir. I was merely trying to eliminate any other possibility—”
“And in doing so, eliminated the acromion. In fact, you busted the goddamned thing.”
Young McCloskey appears shattered. His eyes have grown watery; his cheeks are scorched with the shame of public denunciation. “But, Dr. Konig, I do have the longer humeri now fitted in place and the articulations seem perfect.”
City of the Dead Page 16
