Back to Bo. "I promise you I'll go to my grave without an earring. Remember that later."
"Whew. Everything's changing, you know. Hardly can figure out what to think or do any more. Unless you go to one of young Father Czerwonka's sermons. It's inspiring, to hear someone that sure."
He's younger than I am, you say."
Bo nodded.
"Give him a few more years in America. He won't be so irritatingly sure any more."
"Yeah. It is irritating. I mean, what does he know about Mary Margaret and me never hearing anything at home but the kids squabbling and the dogs barking, and we're supposed to-- Oh, God, that crazy fool Buttinsky! Did you see how he cut in front of me? And nothing but ice slick right here. Look at him, tooling along like he's in the right."
Bo's vehicle swept by the offending minivan, his fist punching a horn blast. "Damn asshole ... By God, it's a woman!" His invective sputtered out from sheer shock.
Matt had tuned out the plaint of the middle-aged blue-collar-guy-who-meant-well, but-the-world-was-making-it-hard-for-him-to-understand-it.
Places had an attitude their people reflected, Matt thought. Bo's was pure Chicago Sandburg, brash and decent and worried he might not be. He would never have trousers to wear rolled or unrolled, only jeans or pants. He would never have a red suede vintage sofa. He would never have any rest until he died, confused but hopeful that it was all true, the bit about heavenly reward and what ye sow ye shall reap, and what he had mostly sown had been kids, and he was mostly pretty damn proud of how they had turned out, earrings or not.
Matt kept his face to the window and the dark. He was beginning to half recognize intersections and storefronts. He was getting closer. He was coming home.
Chapter 27
"Cold and White and Even..."
"You're making a big mistake," Temple told Kit when they were back at Cornelia Street, safe and warm and tired from hiking six blocks for a cab.
"Nonsense. I'm reporting possible evidence to the police."
"I'm telling you, you'll be sorry."
"I'm doing my duty as a citizen. I will have no regrets."
Tossing her head and assuming a Sidney Carton-going-to-the-guillotine pose, Kit dialed the precinct station number on the card that Lieutenant Hansen had handed around generously.
No one on the case was available, but, Kit said later, "A very nice desk sergeant took down my name and number and the fact that I might know who the dead man is."
Temple shook her head and went to gaze out the living room's glassy prow. What a view! If only New York had a touch more neon, like Las Vegas, that would be a show! Every building here was so . . . gray and staid. Not a neon flamingo in sight. And if some backstreet storefront windows offered a clutter of sleaze, you had to be passing by to notice it.
True, the city glittered in a starry sprinkle of little yellow light bulbs, the ones Temple called fairy lights. But the buildings were so high, the main avenues so wide and the other streets so narrow, that this modest dusting of glitz paled against the cold, wet-asphalt-gray of a December day in the Big Apple.
If so many yellow cabs didn't populate the streets, New York would be positively gloomy. She wondered if Matt would have a good Christmas in Chicago, where it might be colder, but at least it would be a white Christmas.
"Aren't you changing for bed?" Kit asked as she breezed by, lowering the blinds on the windows. "We don't have to retire right away, but we can at least get into our comfy jammies."
"Auntie, that is a loathsome scenario. Here I stand in the most sophisticated city in the world, and I am being urged to get into my jammies at only three-something p.m. by a female aunt. Couldn't we at least go listen to Bobby Short at the Carlyle Hotel?"
"One does not just crash that kind of venue. But why don't you want to change out of your street clothes?"
"Because we're going to need our street clothes very soon."
"I just told you; we're not going out this evening."
The phone wheedled for attention.
"Yes we are," Temple said dourly, "and it won't be a hot spot like the Carlyle Hotel."
"Yes?" Kit crooned to the phone. She always answered it as if she were in a play, and Noel Coward might be on the line's other end. "Yes, Lieutenant."
Kit turned and nodded significantly to Temple, one of those "You see?" nods that Hardy was so expert at bestowing on Laurel.
Hardy's smugness, of course, always meant a great fall.
"This afternoon?" Kit's limber voice stretched the three syllables into an incredulous four.
"Now? But--I see. Yes, I am very certain that I know the Santa Claus victim. He was a poor soul with no living family that we know of. A few of us looked after him, and he was at my place just four days ago. Well, I don't know. I've never seen a corpse before that wasn't still alive. I mean, my previous corpses have all been onstage. Yes, I've been to a funeral home or two, but those corpses are made up to look like someone else much better looking than the deceased. All right."
Kit hung up. "What a rude man. Can you imagine hauling us out on instant notice like this to the city morgue?"
Temple nodded. "I was trying to tell you. You can't call a police station saying you think you know who an unidentified corpse is. They get very interested, even if it is Sunday afternoon. And I think most morgues are called medical examiner's offices nowadays."
"Blast!" Kit began to look worried. "I don't really want to see Rudy in . . . that condition."
"Dead?"
"Dead and not prettied up. Have you ever seen a corpse on a police slab?"
"I doubt the process is that crude. Matt saw his corpse in a special viewing room."
"Matt Devine saw his own corpse?"
"No. His stepfather's corpse. The one he was looking for."
"The stepfather ... or the corpse?"
"The stepfather. The stepfather just happened to be a corpse by the time Matt found him. Supposedly. Anyway, the morgue had a viewing room, so Matt was standing somewhat above it--"
"Like in a theater balcony?"
"Not that high, and not nearly that distant. He described a picture window with a curtain. When the curtain was drawn, he looked down on the body of his supposed stepfather, lying on a gurney."
"Euuuh. Not much showmanship there. Yank and gawk."
"Matt couldn't make a positive identification."
"Whoa! You just said the corpse was his stepfather."
"I said maybe. Matt said that death had . . . changed everything. The muscles relax, you know."
"Well, of course I know! I'm an ex-actress, we are used to visualizing. How relaxed? Jaw agape and all? Or bandaged shut like Mar-ley's ghost?"
"I don't know. I guess you'll just have to find out."
"We'll just have to find out."
"I don't know what Rudy looks like."
"Of course you know what Rudy looks like. You met him right here at the front door."
"In Santa guise, remember? You're the only one who can identify the unadorned body."
"If I can . . . identify the body. Temple! Why did you let me call the stupid precinct?"
"I tried to warn you."
Kit gazed at her half-closed blinds. "It's so cold and damp out, and we've already been tramping through a substandard housing arrangement."
"You mean the romance of a railroad flat?"
"Oh, do shut up. I know this bossy lady lieutenant you talk about is going to be some savage, six-foot-tall Amazon from Brooklyn, whose father was a pipe fitter or a stevedore or something."
Temple kept mum. Lady cops weren't all cut from the same mold, that was for sure.
"You will go with me, won't you, dear? I mean, you're the expert in these matters."
"Lieutenant Hansen would not be happy to hear that. I'll go, but you had better keep your mouth shut about my brushes with homicide in Las Vegas. I suspect that Hansen got enough dirt from Molina without your chiming in."
Kit nodded meekly. Even her hair seemed pal
er in the lamplight. Going to see your first body was never a great pre-Christmas experience.
For once Temple blessed New York City's native attributes. The continuous rush of traffic through the overcast afternoon was like a mountain stream that is heard but not seen, distracting and even refreshing.
She and Kit arrived at an anonymously blockish sixties-built building at Thirtieth Street and First Avenue right off the East River. Tall, anorexic aluminum letters announced this as the "Office of the Chief Medical Examiner." Up the few steps they glided, under an entrance accented with blue tile work. In other words, they would hardly know they were entering a morgue, if they hadn't known it.
The reception area was empty due to the imminent closing. A man in a dark green-brown all-weather coat was hunched over the reception desk, arguing about them with someone they couldn't see, Kit and Temple retreated quietly to some chairs to wait.
They're not relatives, but they saw the guy only three days ago. They say he has no known family. Listen. I know it's almost closing time. I'm on OT myself. But it's worth a shot. If the photo isn't a positive, I'll have to take them downstairs. Lieutenant Hansen is very anxious for a break in this case. It involves some highly placed citizens. You know the neighborhood; it isn't exactly the Bronx."
Apparently, the petitioner won, for the man turned and looked toward the entrance.
"Here we are!" Kit could never stand not being the center of attention. She waved and scooted over to him. Temple, mortified, followed.
"You're Miss Carlson?"
The man sounded surprised, but he couldn't have been more surprised than they were. Standing straight, he loomed well over six feet, making Temple and her aunt feel like pygmies.
"Detective Ciampi." He eyed them with equal dismay. His dark eyes hesitated on Temple. "And this is--?"
"My visiting niece, Temple Barr."
"She saw the deceased as well?"
"Oh, yes." Kit's eyes were disingenuous behind her enlarging lenses. She wanted an escort into the heart of darkness that she knew better than this looming, gloomy detective who had the face of a kindly bloodhound.
Temple could feel Kit's tightening fingernails through the ribbed cuff of her jacket. Kit was worse than toting Louie around!
"Better fill these out." He handed them clipboards with a form. "Since you're not relatives, you won't need two pieces of ID, but I'll want to see one from each. You can sit down, if you like."
He looked at his watch and then at the thin-lipped woman he had persuaded to admit them.
"Golly, Temple," Kit said as they hurried to the chairs. "I don't need to see Rudy's body that bad."
Temple checked her wristwatch. "Twenty-five to four. Plenty of time to do our civic duty."
Detective Ciampi tried not to hover, but he was too big to avoid it. He collected their forms and Temple's driver's license. Kit was humiliated to discover that she had no photo ID but her AARP credit card.
"I don't like to flash that," she confided to Temple when he had left them.
"But you can get one of those when you turn fifty. You're much older than that."
"Shhhh! Even the dead have ears."
"Having ears doesn't mean hearing anything."
The detective returned their IDs and something else: a Polaroid photo of the deceased.
He handed it to Kit. "This do it for you?"
"Is it good enough for identification, you mean?" She stared at the small, ruddy face. "It looks like him, but I usually saw him standing up."
"That's no longer possible, ma'am."
Kit cast Temple a pleading glance.
"You'll have to decide for yourself if that's enough to go on."
"No. No, it isn't possibly. I'm sorry."
Ciampi smiled sadly. Temple had a feeling New York cops had a lot of reason for that. "Don't be sorry, but you will have to see the body in person. She necessary for a second opinion?"
His eyebrows indicated Temple.
"No." Kit clutched Temple's wrist harder. "For moral support. She's done this before."
"Oh, she has." Ciampi sounded like he was humoring a four-year-old. "All right, ladies, let's get this show on the road."
He headed for the admissions desk, Temple and Kit following like orphans of the storm.
'That's interesting," Temple said. "I assumed visitor's badges would be required, but apparently not."
"We're not really visiting anyone," Kit complained, her voice low but vehement. "Not anyone who can talk back, anyway."
"No, but it is a restricted facility. This will be a new experience."
"I thought you'd done it before?"
"No, I've heard about it, from Matt."
Kit dropped her arm. "What kind of moral support are you, then.'"
For answer, Temple thrust a tube of lip balm at her aunt.
"I don't want a breath mint."
"It's not a breath mint. It's a medicinal lip balm."
"I don't need a lip balm. My knee may be shaking, but my lips aren't aren't chapped."
"Put some on your nose."
"Why should I put smelly Vaseline on my nose? I may be seeing the dead, but I don't wish to look like a kook while doing it."
"The medicinal smell will deaden the . . . dead smell."
"You think we'll be close enough to smell a dead smell?"
"I think it's pretty pervasive around these places, even if they have a viewing room."
"Oh. Is there a ladies' room--?"
"I don't think you want to linger here."
"But I can't sniff anything here."
"Good. Keep up the good work when we go inside and 'downstairs.' "
Kit only had time to give her niece a horrified look before Ciampi came to escort them past the reception room and into the bowels of the ME's office.
Everything was businesslike and sterile. Temple had a feeling their route avoided such areas of prurient interest as autopsy rooms.
The elevator to the basement was nondescript and silent.
Detective Ciampi took the lead as they left it.
"I still don't smell anything," Kit whispered to Temple, having commandeered her wrist again.
"Good. Try not to detect any undertones."
"Undertones. Like with perfume?" Kit defied all advice and sniffed madly, bunny-rabbit-style, until her nose twitched. "Oh!" She reached for the lip balm in Temple's hand and jammed the open tube into her nostrils like an addict sniffing cocaine. "Sorry. Want some?"
"I used it in the cab."
"My. You do know a trick or two. I'm sure the corpse won't care that I reek of Mentholatum, and I don't have a significant other at the moment. . . nor am I likely to if the odor lingers as you say."
The room to which they were led at last was not empty. A stiff figure was waiting for them, but it was upright and reasonably alive.
"You're on duty? I've got an identification to make." Detective Ciampi pulled out a notebook to give the figure clad in the gruesome green baggies of an operating room some numbers.
The trio were led to a row of huge metal file drawers.
"Just like on TV," Kit whispered.
"Open the locker," Ciampi said.
And just like on TV, the attendant pulled one out. The unveiling was an eerie, silent process, revealing a body inch by inch.
Kit knew her role in all this and edged in front of Detective Ciampi's great bulk to see better. Temple did too. The skin was still highly colored; at least they were spared a ghastly pallor. Temple looked carefully. With the beard and accouterments removed, Santa had lost all his inflated good cheer. He was a thin, red-faced man, and the body beneath the fabric was slight.
"Oh, yes," Kit said. "I knew him."
Temple kept waiting for the "Horatio" that should end that line from Hamlet, but for once Kit was unaware of the theatrical antecedents of her words.
Her head tilted to a different angle, as if by altering her perspective, she might alter the inescapable fact. "Rudy Lasko. He was at my apartm
ent only . . . three? . . . nights ago. He was doing Macy's."
"You're sure?" Ciampi's voice was an official monotone.
Kit nodded as bravely as any widow. In the overbearing light, her nostrils gleamed.
"Yes. Oh, yes. I don't know if the redness is from his Santa makeup or . . . what happened, but other than that, it looks just like Rudy."
"You have an address?"
She gave it in a firm, clear voice, adding, "I can refer you to several other people around town who dealt with Rudy recently. He was sort of our cause. We tried to look out for him. I guess we didn't do a good job."
Ciampi nodded at the attendant. The drawer slid shut with the ball-bearing efficiency of a greatly burdened file drawer, gave a final click and stayed shut; the man on the unseen tray stayed dead.
Detective Ciampi took Kit's arm to guide her from the room. "You ladies did all right. The reason most IDs are handled by Polaroid from the reception desk is that we had too many relatives screaming and fainting and the ME's office doesn't have the staff or space to tend to them." He glanced at Temple as they reached the door to the entry area. "Good trick with the VapoRub, or whatever. Tried it myself the first time."
Temple felt a certain undergraduate glow, but Kit was silent as they left She even let Temple--Temple!--hail a cab.
They got the B-movie-variety driver, the veteran Brooklynite who not only spoke English, but spoke it continuously.
"Downtown.' You sure you wanta go downtown? Lucky it's Sunday. And youse ladies know where you were standin' in front of?
City morgue. Back up a few steps and you woulda been right in there with all the stiffs. Not a good place to end up on a Sunday afternoon, huh? All the way down in the Village, you want to go? O-kay. Open a window if this cigar bothers you. Drivin' a hack is a heart-attack special, I get what relaxation I can. You been to any good places in town? The Met? Guggenheim's pretty interestin'. What about the Statue-a-Liberty?"
And so it went. Temple was beginning to regard Cornelia Street as Home, Safe Home. She and Kit sighed in unison when they were back inside her condominium.
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