Макс Коллинз - True Crime

All this humanity, if you want to call it that, was being overseen by a handful of cops, uniformed guys still lacking their uniforms due to the heat wave, badges on their light blue blouses; but the caps and guns and nightsticks were still there. These were cops, no mistaking ’em.

I walked up to a burly Irish flatfoot in his forties, with red cheeks and light blue eyes; I didn’t know him, and hoped he didn’t know me — and would maybe take my reddish-brown hair as us having a bit of the Blarney in common.

“What’s the chance of getting in past this crowd?” I asked him.

He smiled and shook his head. “Slim and none.”

“What if I just wanted to talk to a morgue attendant and didn’t care about getting a view of the stiff?”

He scratched his head, still smiling. “Might be done. But they’re greedy lads, those boys.”

“Think you could pave the way for me?”

“Might be done.”

“Thanks,” I said, and shook his hand; mine had a buck in it. For a while.

He led me through the crowd, saying, “Make way, make way,” and introduced me to a pasty-faced, pencil-mustached, skinny fellow named Culhane. White-smocked Culhane had eyes like a gingerbread man and was about as animated. We were in a big reception area on the first floor, where the lines of people coming through the door turned into a mob, a vocal one, waiting to be let down the stairs by a police guard, who was only letting ten or so at a time go. There was no air conditioning and the place smelled stale and bad; body odor was on a rampage. Culhane curled a finger and led me to a corridor, where we were alone.

His voice was soft and oddly seductive. “I can take you downstairs and inside the cubicle with him.”

“Swell. How much?”

He pursed his lips and the tiny mustache went up at either end. “There’s a group down there right now that gave me fifty dollars.”

This wasn’t a morgue, it was a whorehouse.

I said, “How many in the group?”

That threw him momentarily; then he said, “Five.”

“Then I’ll give you ten.”

Being a man of science, he could hardly argue with my logic. But he was pouting as he led me back into the big reception area and through the noisy, pushing-and-shoving crowd, where at his nod the cop let us down the steps into the basement. We moved past and cut through a single line of curiosity seekers that extended down the corridor. Culhane led me through a door into a larger room, where the smell of formaldehyde sliced through the air and made me nostalgic for the body odor upstairs. The smell was so overpowering you didn’t notice at first that the room was refrigerated. Or that along the walls were rows of corpses, in open vaults, one atop the other. Most of the tenants — running to old folks and down-and-outers — had died of the heat; hell of a way to get into an air-conditioned room.

Culhane led me into a small adjacent chamber off the main room and there, with four men and a woman crowded around him, was the dead man, propped up at a forty-five-degree angle on the slab, his body partially covered with a sheet, his face completely covered by a damp white mass. The man applying the damp white mass, a heavyset brown-haired man about forty, wearing a towel like a bib, looked up nervously and said, “We’re from Northwestern University, officer. We got permission to do this.”

The other four, including the rather pretty girl, who had a cute brunette bob, were young, in their early twenties; they looked at me apprehensively.

“I’m not a cop,” I said, and Culhane whispered to me, “They’re making a death mask for the Northwestern Museum of Crime.”

I’d never heard of any such museum, but couldn’t have cared less.

“I need a look at him,” I said to the heavyset man, presumably the professor to these apparent students.

“Oh, but we can’t remove the moulage yet,” he said, still nervous.

“I don’t need to see his face,” I said. “I’ve seen his face.”

I lifted the sheet back. Glanced at the body; noted various scars. I had company: through a glass panel just a few feet away from me, the openmouthed spectators were slowly filing by, pointing fingers, taking pictures. Their jabbering was faintly audible through the heavy plate glass; it sounded like swarming insects.

Before I left, I looked at the heavyset man and said, “If you’re from Northwestern, why does your towel say Worsham College on it?”

He glanced down at the bib and swallowed. “We — we, uh, frequently exchange ideas with the Worsham faculty.”

“And towels?”

He swallowed again, and I pulled a confused-looking Culhane by the arm out into the larger room, where stacked stiffs seemed to eavesdrop as I said, “Worsham’s a trade school for morticians. Those people in there are having a little practice session at your expense.”

“Oh my...”

“Better clear ’em out. Letting somebody from Northwestern play footsie with your prize corpse isn’t going to get you in trouble; but some yo-yos from an embalming society using him to make practice death masks, that could lose you your job.”

He nodded gravely, and I followed him out into the hall, away from the formaldehyde smell and the cool air, and up the stairs into body-odor heaven. He found a spare cop, told him to evict the embalming students and their prof, and the cop went off to do so. Then Culhane turned and looked at me, with some irritation, his little mustache twitching over a puckered mouth.

“Are you still here?” he said. It wasn’t a question that wanted an answer.

“Least you could do is say thanks.”

“Thank you. You’ve had your ten dollars’ worth. Now go away. Shoo.”

I put my arm around his shoulder and walked him toward that private corridor; he pouted, but seemed to like it.

“Mr. Culhane,” I said, “I have another request. I also have another ten dollars. As a matter of fact, I have twenty dollars.”

He began nodding. His puckered lips smiled.

I removed my arm from around his shoulder; enough’s enough. I said, “I’d like a look at the autopsy report.”

He thought that over. Then he said, “Why?”

“Why not?”

He thought some more. “Who are you? A reporter?”

“I’m a guy with twenty dollars.”

He held out an open palm. “If you want it, it’ll cost a lot more. There’s only two carbons, you know.”

I put a sawbuck in the open palm. “I don’t want a copy. I won’t even make notes. I just want to look at it, for a couple minutes.”

He thought again, but not for long; closed his hand tight over the sawbuck, touched my sleeve with his free hand and said, “Don’t move from this spot.”

I didn’t, and soon he was back with three sheets of paper. Handed them to me.

It was a carbon copy of the coroner’s protocol, two pages of which were a form, the final page of which was a separate typed sheet, elaborating on the wounds and condition of the dead man’s organs. Fairly detailed, it took me five minutes to read and absorb, while Culhane stood there like a skinny stone. Then I handed it back to him, gave him the other sawbuck and walked ahead of him out into the reception area, pushing through the noisy, smelly crowd.

A fat blonde in a polka-dot dress was scrunched beside me, putting on her lipstick, looking in her compact’s mirror, as we moved through the sea of flesh; she managed to put the lipstick on without mishap, as well as make a comment.

“I’m disappointed,” she told me. “He didn’t look like his pictures in the paper. He looked like any other dead guy. But what the heck — I think I’ll get back in line and go through just once more.”

“Good idea,” I said, and we burst out through the door into the hot, fresh air. The guy in the orange cap and orange tie was back with a fresh tray of ice and juice. I couldn’t help myself: I bought a cup and swigged it down. It was cool and tasted good. Spending time in a morgue can make you appreciate the little things.