Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

“None.” Konig shakes his head. “Straight lead poisoning.”

Ozokawa nods his great glabrous dome of a head, then continues. “Peruda, Miguel. Age twenty-three. Dexedrine, Benzedrine, I suspect also lysergic acid, though it was not detectable.”

Konig makes note of that on his pad. “Must have been on the ceiling most of the time.”

Ozokawa’s head nods sleepily.

“Kowalski, Peter. Age eighteen. DOA. Alcohol in blood and urine, .3 percent. Amytal, seven grams. Cooper, Margaret. Age forty-one. Lysol infusion—self-administered.” Ozokawa grimaces and makes a queasy face. The noise of horns and traffic drift up from below. “Campbell, Eugene. Age twenty-nine. Oh, here’s an interesting one. At first it looked like acute alcoholic poisoning. Nearly .5 percent ethyl alcohol in the blood and urine—phenomenal. Then we came up with acetoarsenite of copper.”

“Paris green—pretty fancy.”

“Caught it in the kidneys and bone tissue.”

“Hair and nails?”

“All over.”

“Thought something was funny about those ileocecal ulcerations.”

“Soon as I read your report I tested for arsenic. Somebody slipped him something.”

Konig grunts and makes a notation on his pad to call Flynn. “Go on.”

“Oh, yes. Let me see now…” Ozokawa’s drowsy eyes move up and down his list. “The chap whose car rolled over the embankment and exploded—”

“Oh—Doblicki.”

“Yes, your human torch.”

“Not too much left to work with there, I’m afraid.”

“Serology was able to get us a blood sample. About four cubic centimeters. Levels of .4 percent of ethyl alcohol—”

“Surprised he was able to get behind the wheel and drive, little less get the goddamned car over the embankment. What were the CO levels?”

“None.”

There is a pause in which the Chiefs eyes rise slowly to Ozokawa’s. “None?”

Baffled, Ozokawa looks down at the card again. “Troopers’ report says they found liquor bottles in the wreck. Tests show the man was certainly drunk.”

“I know he was drunk, and I don’t care what the goddamned troopers say.” Konig’s voice rises. “But you can’t die in a fire without having CO levels in the blood appreciably elevated. Unless, of course—”

Ozokawa’s bilish eyes seem perplexed.

“—you weren’t breathing at the time.”

“I’m almost certain, but I can go back and check. There was no appreciable CO in the blood.”

“There wasn’t any soot or cinders in the larynx or trachea either.” Konig’s on his feet now, nearly shouting, barging from the room.

Baffled, Ozokawa rises, trailing after him. “Where are you going?”

“To try and get that body back.”

“Where is it?”

“New Jersey. Someone out there claimed it. I’ve got to see it again.” Suddenly he laughs harshly. “The bastards nearly got away with it. That guy Doblicki was dead before he ever got into the goddamned car.”

“You mean you’ve known about this all along?”

“For at least three years.”

“And you’ve done nothing about it?”

“Done? What should I have done? Torn the office apart? Ferreted out the man? Had a public departmental hanging for you and The New York Times? ”

Gathering shadows. The day drawing to a close. The Chief’s voice ringing on the thick, dusty air. “Answer me, Carl. What should I have done?”

Strang sits cross-legged, glacial, unflinching, across the desk, the high slope of dusty mortuary records behind him. “When did you find out?”

“I told you. About three years ago. And goddamn it, don’t take that smug, stuffed-ass tone with me.” Konig flings a wad of papers across the desk. “Why do you go on with this innocent, babe-in-the-woods routine, Carl? Like some goddamned Boy Scout. You know this racket as well as I do. The phony friend routine. The phone petition for pauper’s burial. The phony put-up by some sleazy mortician looking for an unclaimed stiff he can bury at City expense. Five hundred clear for him and maybe kick back fifty, seventy-five bucks—”

“For some scab working right here,” Strang snarls. “In this department. Supplying the guy with a monthly list of unclaimed bodies. That’s what bothers me. Don’t you see what you’ve got here, Paul? It’s a body-snatching operation. Going on right under our noses. The City’s being bilked for thousands and we’re in complicity with these morticians. If the papers ever got hold of this—”

“If they do—” Quiet settles over the room. Konig’s voice is suddenly very calm. “If they do, I’ll have a pretty good idea who their source of information was. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Carl?”

“Now just a min—”

“Not the first time your outraged sense of propriety would’ve prodded you into sending private little memoranda to the newspapers or to the Mayor’s office.”

Strang flinches. The hooded lids flicker and a bright flush creeps upward above his collar to his throat. “I’m afraid it’s out of my hands, Paul.”

“What do you mean—out of your hands?”

“I mean this man marched in here this morning—” Flustered, Strang struggles to regain his composure. “Came all the way from Salt Lake City. Wanted to claim his cousin’s body.”

“His cousin?”

“Kaiser.”

“The one they found last week in a doorway?”

“Right. He was a lush. A bum. Drifting from one flophouse to the next. Who’d have thought anyone would’ve bothered to claim the remains?”

“This man, the fellow from Salt Lake City. What’s his name?”

“Wilde.”

“That’s right—Wilde. How’d he find out?”

“About Kaiser? Says he saw the notice published in a local obit. How the hell those things get into the papers twenty-two hundred miles away—Anyway, he got right on the phone the minute he read it. Hopped the first plane out and came right over from the airport. Still had his suitcase with him.”

The Chiefs eyes narrow shrewdly behind the lenses of his spectacles. Nodding, he listens to Strang’s story with disquieting calm.

“Said this Kaiser—his cousin—had been missing forty years,” Strang rushes on. “Just got up one morning and walked out on his wife, his family, his job. Said they gave up looking for him years ago. Just assumed he was dead, until they saw that notice. He said all he wanted now was to take the body back and bury it in the family plot in Salt Lake City. Then when I told him somebody else, a ‘friend,’ had already claimed the body, went through the routine procedure for burying mendicants at City expense, the guy almost went through the roof. Kaiser was no mendicant. Apparently the family’s pretty well heeled and they want the body. Demanded I call up the ‘friend’ right then and there. Find out who he was—”

“And so of course you called the name listed on the petitioner’s application”—Konig leans backward in his chair, the tips of his fingers arching together to form a bridge—“and had the so-called ‘friend’ tell you he never knew anyone by the name of Kaiser.”

“Right. That’s right, Paul. And I can tell you right now, this man Wilde’s no pushover, no fool. He’s not going to be bullied and conned.”

“We’ve never bullied or conned people. We’ve always tried—”

“I didn’t say we did. I was only saying that this man is not going to sit still for any kind of run-around. He was red in the face when he left here and on his way to the DA’s office.”

“You probably gave him the address.”

Silence settles over the moiled and troubled air.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”