Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.