“Right.” Konig nods emphatically. “I know that already. Anything else?”
“X-ray examination of the foot showed that the first phalanx of the left big toe was deviated outward.”
“Ah, exostosis of the first metatarsal bone.” Konig scribbles hastily into his pad. “Hallux valgus.”
“Right,” says Bonertz. “And that’s about it.”
“Good. Every little bit helps, gentlemen.” Konig glares around, snaps his pad shut and starts to turn.
“Paul,” a voice calls after him.
Konig turns and stares into the faintly mocking eyes of Carl Strang.
“Will you clear up a problem for us?”
“Problem?”
“Yes.” Strang saunters forward now, jaunty, self-assured. “A few of us are still a bit confused as to the sexing of Ferde.”
“Why?” says Konig, seemingly perplexed. “It’s a male cadaver.”
“Yes.” Strang nods. “We know you’ve said that, but it has the classic dimensions, musculature, bone formation of a female. What made you tag it male?”
Konig gazes quietly at Strang. He can hear the taunt and challenge in the voice, read the smirk of cocky self-assurance on the face. His gaze now swings around at the others, who all appear to be watching him rather closely. Alert, vigilant, looking for a falter, a fatal hesitation, that first sign of weakness in the Chief.
“In all honesty, Paul,” Pearsall says almost apologetically, “it is ambiguous.”
“Ambiguous? How so?”
“Well, as Carl said, all evidence of sex in this cadaver seems to come down more heavily in favor of a female than a male.”
“Oh?” says Konig. A small pulse begins to throb just beneath his eye. “Such as?”
“Well,” says Pearsall, “since we don’t have any primary sexual organs with this trunk, the skull, the larynx, the limb bones—”
“You used Pearson’s tables for sexing the limb bones?” Konig asks.
“Yes, sir,” McCloskey blurts out. “I did all that.”
“And?”
“I found that the lengths of both upper and lower limbs were much closer to the female average than the male.”
“They are.” Konig smiles. “But what about the heads of those limb bones?”
“The heads, sir?”
“Right. The heads of the humeri and femora. Did you also measure those?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid I—”
“Perfectly natural oversight.” Konig’s voice is suddenly soft, unnaturally gentle. As if he had a need now to make amends for the inexcusable attack on McCloskey the day before. “That’s a mistake a lot of older, more experienced pathologists than you still make. That’s because length of limbs is so frequently enough to make a fairly accurate sexing of skeletal remains. But in this case, it isn’t. You’re absolutely right, Tom. The sex of this cadaver is ambiguous. Highly ambiguous. I went through all the same measurements you did—skull, larynx, limb bones. But because it was so ambiguous, I also did the heads of the humeri and femora.”
As Konig speaks the men have drawn almost unconsciously around him, until they encircle him. A hush has fallen over the place, the levity of a few moments before all gone, and once again he, Konig, is the teacher and they the students.
“I found a vertical diameter in the humeral head of 48.7 millimeters and a transverse diameter of 44.6 millimeters. For the femoral head I found a vertical diameter of over 48 millimeters. Those are distinctly male scores.”
There is a stir in the room. Murmurs of approval. Only Strang is scowling.
“Still, Paul,” he persists, “you’re not suggesting that those measurements by themselves are sufficient to impute male sex?”
“Certainly not, Carl.” Konig smiles, more expansive than ever. “And I appreciate your passion for thoroughness and accuracy.”
Now it is Strang who can hear the ring of mocking irony in the Chiefs voice.
“So, in the absence of more conclusive proof,” Konig goes on, warming wonderfully to the subject, “I also measured the sternum of this cadaver. As you very well know, Carl, the proportion of the two main sections of the sternum is also influenced by sex. The upper part—the manubrium—is larger in proportion to the middle part in the female than it is in the male. The average proportion in the male varies from 1 : 2.0 millimeters to 1 : 2.6 and in the female from 1 : 1.4 to 1 : 1.9. You know that, of course, Carl.” Konig’s eyes have narrowed and they are glowing like ingots. He is using his voice like a whip. “I measured the sternum of this cadaver and found a proportion of manubrium to middle section of 1 : 2.3. And as you, above all, Carl, know very well, that is the score for a male, not a female, sternum.”
By this time Strang’s features have turned a pasty white. And the cocky smirk he wore so self-assuredly only moments before has turned into a look of positive queasiness.
“But let’s skip all the fancy stuff, boys,” Konig goes on, more expansive than ever, for he’s flying high right now, zeroing in for the kill. “Just go over and look at the hand on that cadaver. Look at the fingernails with the pretty polish that makes you all think it’s a female; then look at the way that polish has been applied. Then tell me what woman you know has ever applied her nail polish widthwise on the nail rather than lengthwise. In forty years of practicing medicine, and nearly sixty-five years of life, I have never seen nail polish applied to a woman’s nail in that fashion. Women simply don’t do that. It would be like buttoning your fly from the top button down.”
There’s a burst of laughter and a bit of scattered applause.
“No, gentlemen,” Konig continues, “that badly battered, pitifully mutilated cadaver over there, the one I call Ferde, is male—a young boy, eighteen or so, slight, frail, with a fairly common sexual hang-up. He liked to wear fingernail polish, and I’d be willing to bet he also enjoyed dressing up like one of the girls.” The Chief beams about at his staff, then suddenly, his mood shifting, his stem gaze falls on Strang. “Now, Carl, if you don’t mind, I’d like a word with you. Upstairs in my office, please.”
»41«
“Leukocytic infiltration.”
“Where?”
“Precisely where you’d expect to find it—the wounds about the head.”
“I see... What do we do now?”
“We?”
“Me. You. Whoever. What do we do?”
“We do nothing. The ball’s out of our court, Carl. It’s now in the DA’s hands. I gather the story will hit the papers tomorrow. Then all hell breaks loose. I’m afraid all we can do now is sit and wait.”
5:30 P.M. KONIG’S OFFICE.
“I take it I’m to be the sacrificial goat, the chief villain of the piece.” Carl Strang sits stony and bitter opposite Konig, a broad slab of late-afternoon shadow slanting across his face.
“The press wouldn’t be too far from wrong if it did draw that conclusion, would it, Carl?”
Konig awaits his reply, but it doesn’t come. So he continues. “Be that as it may, the press doesn’t have the foggiest notion who handled the Robinson autopsy. Nor does the Mayor, nor the Deputy Mayor, nor the District Attorney. As far as I know, no one who really matters knows either. And I for one do not propose to tell them.” For a moment hope, relief, even gratitude, flare in Strang’s eyes. Still, his gaze, narrow and darting, is as wary as ever.
“I’ve made that perfectly clear to the Deputy Mayor,” Konig continues.
“Thank you, Paul. That’s really extremely decent—”
“No—please—” Konig’s hands rise before him, almost a defensive gesture. “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing this for you. That has always been the policy of this department ever since the days when Bahnhoff ran it. Except in cases of gross incompetence, such confidences are to be protected.”
“I agree.”
“I have always seen the value of that policy and see no reason to change it now.”
“No.” Strang nods compliantly. “Certainly not.”
&
nbsp; “However,” Konig goes on coolly, “I will have to go now to the DA’s office, and in the face of Carslin’s extremely damaging report, I will have to lie. Oh, I won’t actually lie. But I’ll have to do something even more despicable to me—I’ll have to weasel.”
“But, Paul—”
“No—please—” Konig’s hands fly up again. “Let me finish. I will have to weasel and fudge this thing—not to save you, which is totally unimportant to me, but to save the reputation of this office, which is everything to me.”
Strang’s eyes drop to the floor. “I’m very sorry, Paul.” He has the look of a chastened boy. But if he is chastened, truly redeemed, it is to Konig a sham redemption, too fast, and too easily won.
“However, Carl,” Konig says in the next breath, “I think it only fair to tell you that as far as this department is concerned, you’re finished.”
“Finished?” Strang leaps to his feet, yelping the word like a small dog violently struck. The hurt, chastened eyes of a moment before are raging now with indignation.
“Sit down, Carl.” Konig’s tone is ominously quiet. “I’m not through yet.”
Mute, baffled, Strang sits, or rather tumbles backward into his chair, his jaws working restively.
“I know that you think of yourself as my successor,” Konig goes on softly. “So do a number of people in very high places. I confess, at one time, I also thought of you in those terms. I must now tell you I no longer do.”
“Now see here, Paul.”
“Will you please let me finish? Then you can have your say. Understand—I don’t ask for your resignation. You can stay on here as long as you please. Do autopsies, research, whatever you want. The facilities here are at your disposal. Or, if you wish to go elsewhere, I’ll give you decent recommendations. That’s all up to you. But I must make it perfectly clear to you now, lest there be any misunderstanding later on, if you do stay here, you will never be any more than what you are today.”
Strang, arms crossed, sits there rigid, fuming. His eyes blink rapidly and his dry tongue darts out lizardlike along his lower lip.
Konig watches him coolly, evenly. A magnificent calm has overtaken him. “All right, Carl, I’m finished. Your turn now.”
“You bet it is.” Strang’s voice is a dry rattle. “And I have plenty to say. But not to you. I’ll say it to the people who matter.”
“Like the Mayor or the Deputy Mayor, whom you went to see yesterday about this body-snatching business that’s cost the City a million dollars a year and which you tried to blame on me.”
“Right, right,” Strang shrieks. “I did go there. I don’t give a goddamn how many of your spies told you.”
“My spies?”
“Spies. Informers. Whatever the hell you call them.
I went to the Mayor because I found the situation here intolerable. And I did blame it on you. You were perfectly willing to let this shabby bilking of the City go right on, just to protect an old man—”
“That’s correct,” says’ Konig, a bit startled and unnerved to find that Strang knows about Angelo. “That old man has given more than twenty years of devoted service to this office. In the last few years his luck has gone against him. He had big expenses and he made a few mistakes. I preferred to overlook them.”
“You preferred to overlook them?” Strang twitches in his chair. “Well, I’ve given fifteen years of devoted service to this department. Thankless, bitter, ‘poorly paid years. And I made one mistake too. I admit it. I made a mistake. Why don’t you prefer to overlook mine?”
A small smile crosses Konig’s lips. As if Strang has asked him precisely the question he’s been waiting to hear. He leans back in his chair now and sighs. “Had yours been merely the simple mistake of omitting to do those tissue studies, Carl, we would never be having this conversation now. I would have had a few cross words with you, then tucked the matter away somewhere forever. But you really fouled your nest when you went to Emil Blaylock’s office on the seventh and eighth of March, then came in and performed the Robinson autopsy on the ninth, neglecting to do those studies. That—for whatever promises Blaylock made you—I find unforgivable.”
Konig leans back in his chair now, rocking slightly and awaiting the explosion. But it doesn’t come. The initial shock of the Blaylock bomb, which he felt certain would strike like a thunderbolt, seems scarcely to have fazed Strang. In fact, he’s even smiling. Then, incredibly, much to Konig’s dismay, laughing openly. Sitting back in his chair rocking with laughter. And all the while he laughs he is looking at Konig. It is a look of solid admiration, the way one looks at a wily and absolutely brilliant adversary.
“Very good, Paul. Excellent. Hats off to you. You’re a man after my own heart. Only a man like me could appreciate a man like you.”
Konig smiles in spite of himself. “True—it takes one son of a bitch to know another.” He starts to laugh and for a while they’re chuckling together like old friends.
“But, Paul,” Strang says, suddenly serious and wiping his teary eyes, “I must tell you that I don’t share your gloomy views on my prospects for the future. There are several people in very high places in this Administration who are determined to see you out as soon as possible and me in as the new Chief ME.”
“I don’t doubt that, Carl.” Konig smiles wearily. “There have been for the past twenty-five years. Blaylock for one.”
“Blaylock among others.” Strang smiles back maliciously. “So I’m afraid, Paul, you’re not the last word on this question.” He starts to chuckle again softly.
“No, not the last, Carl.” Konig chuckles lightly. “The first. And I can assure you, with what I have in my files now on Blaylock and you, the question of your advancement will never get any further than that.”
For a long while after Strang’s departure, Konig sits in the close gathering shadows of his office, gazing with an oddly rapt expression at Lolly’s painting of Ida and the beach house in Montauk. It is comforting to sit there quietly in the partial dark, letting the throbbing at his temples gradually subside. It is comforting to sit there looking at the painting of Ida and Montauk and think of nothing else.
“Good night, Doctor.”
Konig’s reverie is jolted by Carver’s husky, lilting voice. Poking her head through the half-opened door, she waves at him.
“Good night, Carver.”
“You go on home now, Doctor,” she exhorts him. “Don’t you hang around here all hours. Get some rest.”
“I will. I will.”
She starts to turn, then turns back. “Oh—you had a call while you were downstairs this afternoon.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Oh?” Konig’s ears cock. For some reason he can feel his bowels turn. “Any message?”
“No. Only that he’d call you at home tonight. Very nice, soft-spoken gentleman. Lovely voice.”
»42«
“Hah?”
“Janos.”
“Hah?”
“Janos Klejewski.”
7:00 P.M. AN APARTMENT BUILDING IN ASTORIA, QUEENS.
“Your son—Janos,” Frank Haggard barks at an ancient, doll-like figure stooping on the other side of a chained door. He is standing in a dimly lit hallway redolent of boiled cabbage and cauliflower.
“Oooh?” she asks, craning her hag’s neck up at him, blinking through the narrow open space.
“Janos,” Haggard nearly bellows. “Janos.”
“Oh—Janos.” She blinks into the shadows, peering at the badge he holds in his hand.
“Your son,” Haggard barks again, leaning toward her cocked ear, extending the badge through the opening. “May I have a word with you?”
“Hah?”
“I said may I have a word with—”
The door starts to squeal closed and he just barely snatches his hand out of the narrow space before the door slams. “It’ll only be a minute, Mrs. Klejewski,” he shouts through the closed door, thinking she’s lock
ed it on him. But in the next moment he can hear the chain scraping through the brass slide and several locks being turned. He can see the knob rotate and in the next moment the door creaks open. Standing there before him in the half-light is a stooped, wizened creature with bright little gimlet eyes and white frizzed hair, some of which has fallen out in great unseemly clots, revealing the pale, blotchy scalp beneath.
This then is what has brought the detective here on a tip from Wershba. This sticklike little crone in black bombazine, with a voice like a scraping violin. She is the mother of Janos Klejewski, confidant and first lieutenant to Wally Meacham. The detective has come to this shabby block of huddled, crumbling structures across the river in Astoria, Queens, another one of those old-world neighborhoods forged out of the 1900’s when countless immigrants, fleeing hardship and persecution, flocked to these shores as a haven of hope.
Then it was a neighborhood made up of working-class people—Irish, Germans, Poles, Jews—hardworking, brawling, pious, stolid people who managed somehow to reconcile differences and live in peace. They had no time to prey upon one another. Hardship and struggle were their common enemies, occupied all of their waking moments. Now suddenly that same neighborhood, like so many others throughout the city, has had to undergo the upheaval of a whole new wave of integration, that of the blacks and the Hispanics, as well as a flood of addictive drugs. And now change has come swiftly to this neighborhood, change often attended by violence.
Where once there was O’Malley’s corner saloon, now one finds the fried chicken kiosk and the bodega with the odors of burned gizzards and cuchifritos drying in the window. The German pork butcher’s is now an all-night check-cashing establishment. And the kosher delicatessen has become a storefront Pentecostal iglesia with a crude, almost childlike, crucifix limned on its windows.
The building that Janos Klejewski had grown up in is of a fairly common 1910 vintage. Six stories, red brick, fire escapes running up and down its rear face above an alleyway where wash flutters disconsolately in the balmy evening breeze. Its residents used to pride themselves on its solidity and safety. Also its eminent respectability. Now, entering the murky, dimly lit shadows of the hallway, with its peeling plaster and its single naked light bulb glowing eerily up ahead, one must be wary. Very wary indeed.
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