City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  Then back to Lolly’s room. The Fieldston High School yearbook. Flipping hectically through the pages. Girls all listed together with photographs in one section. “Where is she? What the hell was her name?”

  Back and forth he goes, several times. Then suddenly, at last, a bright, round, rather cherubic face. Blond hair, laughing eyes.

  ALCOTT, VIRGINIA

  NICKNAME: Beanie

  MOTTO: Might’ve been a headache but I never was a bore.

  AMBITION: Law

  SCHOOL: Barnard

  Konig dashes back to his bedroom, snatches the phone book, flies through the A’s. Alcott, Nathaniel. Oxford Avenue, Riverdale. Only Alcott in Riverdale. Breathless, in a sweat, he dials. Three rings, then the voice of an operator asking him what number he dialed, then informing him the phone’s been changed to the following number in Hartford, Connecticut. Scribbling the number down he breaks the point of his pencil, and in his fury literally carves the number into the pad with the broken stump.

  Then dialing again, that same mad, furious haste, making his fingers fly across the dial, jamming them into the holes.

  A man answers. A gruff, coarse, but not uneducated voice. At that hour he, too, like Mrs. Haggard before him, is wary.

  “Ginny? Christ. Do you know what time it is?”

  Konig, frantic, thinks to himself, Good God, he thinks I’m a suitor. Apologizes. Tries to explain, realizing he’s made a botch of it. Sounds demented. “Dr. Konig,” he says once more. “Lauren Konig’s father.”

  “Lauren’s father?” A significant pause.

  “Yes—must talk to your daughter.”

  Another pause, this one in which Konig can almost hear the consternation and puzzlement in the man. Then the sound of a woman’s voice in the background and the muffled whispers of them both. The man has evidently covered the receiver with his hand.

  “One moment, Doctor. My wife will be right with you.” Another pause while Konig’s heart slugs unevenly in his chest. Then the woman.

  “Yes, Dr. Konig. Remember you very well. Anything wrong?”

  “Lauren—missing—Yes, almost six months. Yes—I’m afraid so. Yes. Mrs. Konig passed away. Oh, you heard?

  Yes—over a year ago. Yes.”

  He tries frantically to explain about Lolly. Once again it’s all garbled. Incoherent. “Thought possibly Virginia might know something. Might’ve heard something. Closest friend, you know.”

  “Yes, of course. But I don’t think they’ve seen each other in a few years. Not since graduation anyway. Ginny’s in St. Louis now. Married. Baby coming.”

  Konig tries to say something apposite. All he wants, needs though, is her number.

  “Do you think I might call her?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “It’s very late, Doctor. I hate to alarm her.”

  “It’s sort of—an emergency.”

  She can almost hear him pleading.

  “Yes, of course,” she says finally, reluctance overcome and a little frightened herself. “Just one moment. I’ll get you the number.”

  Then, once again, in a feverish sweat, dialing. The wires singing a third of the way across the continent. The voices of operators and the intermittent chatter of distant strangers caught momentarily in crossed wires. Then a rather flat, curious buzzing sound denoting a phone ringing almost one thousand miles away. At last, the startled, rather anxious voice of a young lady he knew as a child, a little girl in his kitchen, in his backyard, hanging upside down on a Jungle-gym. Watched her, along with his own child, graduate high school, college, now mother-to-be.

  “Virginia? Hello, Virginia.” Struggling to contain the tremor in his voice, he sounds almost cheerful. “Virginia Alcott?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “This is Paul Konig.”

  “Who?”

  “Lauren’s father.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Laughter. Relief. But apprehension is still there. “Dr. Konig. How are you?”

  “I’m fine... Virginia, don’t be alarmed,” he says gently, recalling the hour and the girl’s condition, then realizing his very efforts to calm her have evidently alarmed her even more.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. You see, Lauren—”

  “Lauren?”

  “Yes—I’m afraid she’s missing.”

  “Missing? Oh, my God.”

  He struggles to tell it sanely this time, present the details in meaningful sequence, and he can hear it registering clearly with the girl.

  “She hasn’t tried to contact you? You haven’t had a call or a letter? Anything at all?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken with her in about two years. And she was still living at home then.”

  “Yes, of course,” he murmurs, crushed, the disappointment so heavy in him, although he never really believed for a moment that he would get anything at all out of the girl in the way of useful information. For a moment he considers telling her about the other thing... the Meacham business... the screams on the phone. Spilling it all. Sharing the load with someone else. But he cannot inflict that on this girl now. Especially since he can hear distress in her voice already.

  “I just can’t believe she’s run off like that,” the girl goes on agitatedly. “Without a letter. An explanation. So unlike her. Have you notified the police?”

  “Yes, of course. Well...” His voice trails off. “Thank you, Virginia.”

  “Nothing I can do?”

  “No. Afraid not. Just pray,” he says, and is surprised at himself for saying it.

  “She was always so good, so kind,” the girl says, unconsciously slipping into the past tense. “Could always talk to Lauren. Like a sister to me. Are you sure I can’t help?” He is touched by the sudden unashamed swamp of her emotion.

  “No—nothing,” Konig says, struggling with his own voice. “Nothing to do. Nothing to do.”

  “She’ll come back. I know she will.”

  “Yes—I think so too,” he says.

  The girl is now crying openly. And suddenly, so is he. The two of them together on the phone. The removal of great distance making it easier for them both. Sharing their grief.

  “So good. So kind. Like a sister to me.”

  “Didn’t mean to upset you like this.”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sorry I can’t—”

  “Heard about the baby. Congratulations.” He laughs idiotically. “Go back to bed now. Need your rest.”

  “Yes—sorry. Sorry.”

  “Go to bed.”

  He can still hear her crying when he hangs up the phone.

  At 2 a.m. Haggard arrives. Dirty raincoat over his pajama tops. Trousers pulled on hastily. Fedora sitting absurdly on the back of his head. He swings past Konig into the library.

  “Good Christ. What an hour. You got a drink?”

  Not speaking a word, they sit there for the first few minutes drinking large shots of undiluted Scotch. Konig has three in rapid-fire succession, trying to deaden pain as one does for a massive toothache.

  “Tell me what he said,” Haggard finally says, seeing the Scotch take hold in the slackening of tension around Konig’s jaws.

  “Didn’t say anything.”

  “Nothing? No money? No ransom?”

  “Nothing. Just the screaming.”

  Emanating from partial shadows, Konig’s voice sounds distant.

  “Have another drink.” The detective tilts the bottle and splashes another massive shot into Konig’s glass. “Didn’t stay on long enough for that tracing device to work, did he?”

  “No more than a minute or so.” Konig gulps down his Scotch with a shudder. “Called twice.”

  “Twice?”

  “I hung up once.”

  “You hung up?”

  “Couldn’t take that screaming. That goddamned screaming. Couldn’t take that.” Konig gulps deeply and reaches for the bottle, this time pouring his own drink. Haggard, sit
ting there looking ludicrous in fedora and pajama tops, studies him closely.

  “That screaming—”

  “What about it?” Konig grumbles, his voice and manner growing more vague, diffuse.

  “Could be a phony, too, you know.”

  “A phony?” The word jolts Konig out of his daze.

  “Sure. One of the girl friends screaming into the phone on cue. Just an act. Make you think it’s her. Just to soften you up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Konig laughs harshly, a bit of the old truculence coming back in him. “Well, I’m softened. I’ll pay. Just let ’em tell me what they want and where. I’ll pay. Christ—I’ll pay anything. I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “Okay.” Haggard stands. “Whyn’t you go up to bed now?”

  “Bed? What the hell do I want with a bed? My kid’s out there and—” Konig’s voice cracks and he turns sideways, back into the shadows. “Hurting her like that. Sons of bitches. No need—no need—”

  Embarrassed, the detective turns away and saunters up the length of the library, eyes riveted upward at the shelves of books, pausing every now and then, pretending to study titles, pretending not to hear the sad noises coming out of the shadows.

  “Come on,” he says after a moment “Go on up to bed. You look awful. What the hell did you do to your mouth? Looks like somebody smacked you in the chops. Go on now. I’m gonna sit right down here and drink Scotch. I don’t get such good Scotch at home.” He starts around the desk where Konig sits and reaches for the slumped, slightly stuporous figure. “Come on. I’ll take you up.”

  “Take your goddamned hands off me. I’m not going to bed.”

  “Come on. Come on.” Haggard laughs and hauls the hefty, lumpen figure to its feet.

  “Lay offa me. Lay offa me. I’m not going to bed, I tell you.”

  The detective laughs louder, taking the great, stumbling hulk of the man hard against his hip.

  “You son of a bitch,” Konig bawls as he’s dragged gently to the stairway, then up. “Take your hands offa me. Take your goddamned hands offa me, I tell you.”

  “’Atta boy, Tiger.” Haggard’s hearty Irish laughter roars upward through the gloomy silence of the house. “That’s my boy talking now.”

  »45«

  MEDICAL EXAMINER LINKED TO COVER-UP IN TOMBS DEATH; MAYOR TO SEEK MAJOR CLEAN-UP

  The New York Times

  BODY SNATCHING: THREE MIL $ RIP-OFF AT THE NYME

  Daily News

  THURSDAY, APRIL 18. 9:15 A.M.

  MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE.

  Paul Konig sits numb and listless, gazing down at the morning papers. They’re strewn across his desk exactly where he’d tossed them at 7:15, when he’d first arrived there, driven by Haggard, who had spent the night with him in Riverdale.

  “Medical Examiner Linked to—” Once again his eyes glance over the front-page story in the Times. His picture is there and he scans it perfunctorily, with a kind of dull, limp indifference, as if the face were that of someone else, a perfect stranger, a silly ass who’d gotten himself in a God-awful mess. Even the frequent recurrence of his own name on the page has a curiously alien look. He cannot associate it with himself.

  He had not slept the night before. Haggard had put him forcibly to bed, turned out the light and shut the door. But even with nearly a half a fifth of Scotch in him, he didn’t sleep. Dozed fitfully, for a few minutes at best, but didn’t sleep. Early in the morning there was a drenching downpour. He lay there for some time in the predawn hours listening to it drilling on the ground outside; then later, after it stopped, to the doleful dripping of the trees around the big old Tudor house. But nothing, no sound, could stop, or even muffle, the screaming that persisted in his head. All he could do was lie there, constricted in his sheets, laved in a cold sweat, a great pulse thudding at his temples, trying not to hear the screams, and waiting for the first gray streaks of dawn to poke through the chinks of the window blinds.

  At 5 a.m. he rose, unrested, unrefreshed, stripped off the clothes he hadn’t changed since Tuesday, then showered and dressed. Downstairs, he found Haggard asleep in a chair, his raincoat spread over him, the gray felt fedora tipped forward over his eyes and nose, his mouth slung open just beneath it.

  They made some coffee and at 6 a.m. they were on the road, motoring downtown in Haggard’s car. The detective had dropped him off at the office and then had gone home for a fresh shirt and tie.

  “You get another of those calls, you lemme know,” he urged just before driving off. “Don’t try anything on your own.”

  Konig mumbled something and went inside.

  When he got to his office, there amid the copious mail were messages taken by the night man to call Newsweek and New York Magazine, the latter wanting to do a two-part story on the “body-snatching racket at the morgue.” Channels 2 and 5 wanted to come down there and take his picture, presumably to lambaste him on the evening news for the “cover-up at the Tombs.”

  “Medical Examiner Linked to—Once again his eyes glide ruefully over the banner head of the Times, but he is long past caring.

  Limp, groggy, the way one is after a bout of drinking and massive doses of Librium, he has been dimly aware of the increasing tempo of the workday outside his door, the building coming to life. He decides now to take a stab at the mail, but his hands tremble so that he cannot get the envelopes open. Still, he riffles through all the envelopes, each and every one, thinking something will be there. A message with instructions. Something about Lolly.

  But there’s nothing there. Only the bills, notices of medical conferences going on halfway around the world, the interminable flow of letters from colleagues seeking his advice, universities and foundations petitioning his services. Then, a long, white envelope, expensive bond with a richly embossed letterhead: Graham, Dugan, La-mont, Peabody. A Madison Avenue law firm representing the family of Lionel Robinson, serving the Medical Examiner’s Office and the City of New York with a $3 million lawsuit for damages. “Modest, aren’t they?” Konig mutters. “Christ, these lice move in fast.” He jams the first cigar of the day into his mouth.

  Carver bustles in now with his coffee, an anxious, wary look on her face. She knows something’s wrong. She knows nothing about Lolly, but she too has seen the papers this morning. “You want to talk to them people?”

  “What people?”

  “The TV people. They called again.”

  “Tell ’em to shove it.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Tell ’em I’m not in. Tell ’em I’m at the dentist.”

  “Dentist?”

  “That’s right. Broke my tooth. Got an appointment for this morning.”

  “You not gonna be here this mornin’?”

  “That’s what I just said, didn’t I?” he growls at her, but in twelve years of serving him, she’s learned not to take his growling seriously.

  “What about the others?”

  “What others?”

  “Those newspaper people.”

  “Tell ’em all to shove it.”

  “What about Flynn?”

  “What about him?”

  “He called too.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I did.” Muttering, fuming, she marches around the desk, plucks out of the chaos scattered there a small piece of memo paper and pokes it at him.

  “Oh,” he blusters, “—well, you could’ve told me.”

  “Well, goodness—I just did, didn’t I?” She groans wearily. “Been sittin’ right there under your nose all this time.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “What’s he want?” She gasps at him incredulously. “Now how would I know what that man got in his head this hour of the day?” she asks and suddenly she can see how tired he is. “Whyn’t you go on home. I’ll take care of all this—” She waves disparagingly at the mess on his desk.

  “He say he’d call back?”

  “In a half-hour, he said.” The phone on her desk rings. �
��That’s probably him right now.” She starts out toward the ringing.

  He jams the cold, unlit cigar back into the center of his mouth and lifts the phone. “Konig here.”

  “Mornin’, Chief. Just been readin’ all about you in the funnies..”

  “What’s on your mind, Flynn?”

  “That’s a pretty picture the News ran of you.”

  “Skip the gags, will you? Just get on with it. I’ve got no time this morning.”

  “Tut, tut, no time?” Flynn clucks into the phone. “Soon as these people get famous, with their faces plastered all over the papers, they’re suddenly too busy for old friends, got no time. Listen, I spoke to Bragg this mornin’.”

  “Oh?”

  “Them prints I sent down there that were s’posed to be Browder’s?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They weren’t.”

  “Weren’t?”

  “That’s what I said. People at Bragg checked them against Browder’s file and they’re not his prints.”

  “Swell,” Konig mutters wearily. “So we’re right back where we started.”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?” Flynn laughs, suddenly coy and playful. “Those prints you took off them sexy, pretty painted lady fingers?”

  “Yeah? What about ’em?”

  “Are you sittin’ down?” Flynn taunts merrily.

  “Come on, Flynn. Will you cut the crap? Get on with it.”

  Again Flynn laughs. There is a hard edge to his laughter. More like a triumphant jeer. “Those prints you lifted belonged to a chap by the name of Ussery.”

  “Ussery?”

  “Private Billy Roy Ussery from Seven Parishes, Louisiana. Also, like Browder, late of Company G, 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”