Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

Charlie Riggs cleared his throat. Curly didn't look up. Making sure the county got no bargains on his minimum wage.

I rapped my knuckles on the kid's desk.

"Yeah?" A tone of mild annoyance, a face that needed a prescription for Retin-A.

I would have said, Whatever happened to may I help you? Charlie is more circumspect. He said, "We're here to see some tissue samples Dr. Kalian left for us."

Curly scowled. "Gotta name?"

I figured him for about twenty-one. If they're still sullen and whirxy when they pass nineteen, they probably always will be. Another half century of bitching and moaning about bosses and girlfriends and how the other guys got all the luck.

"Riggs. Charlie Riggs."

Curly dropped the skin magazine and looked at a clipboard. "No stiff name of Riggs. Got a Rawlings."

Charlie smiled. "No, I'm Riggs. Dr. Charles W. Riggs."

The name meant nothing to him. Probably never read a newspaper, didn't know the building had a plaque honoring his nighttime guest. The kid likely was one of the astounding number of young people who can't name the century in which the Civil War was fought, much less the battlefields. On geography tests, they list Montana as an island in the Pacific.

"The deceased is Susan Corrigan," Charlie Riggs said, far more politely than the kid deserved. "Dr. Kalian was kind enough to make some slides of skin tissue."

Curly looked back at the clipboard. The month's guest list.

"Corrigan," he said. "Sure, Number eight-nine-dash-two-fourteen. Third cooler, first row."

His vacant eyes brightened. "Hey. Black-haired bitch. Love a dark bush, myself. Best looking piece of meat we've had…"

Charlie had a lot of quick left in him. Stepped wordlessly between us. I brushed him aside with a gentle forearm. Then my left hand found its way to the kid's neck, covered his Adam's apple, and squeezed, lifting him out of the chair. I didn't tell the hand what to do. It just squeezed and lifted. At the same time, the right hand balled itself into a good-sized fist and started coming over the top toward his pointy chin. From a deep tunnel, I heard the faraway voice of Charlie Riggs, "No, Jake!"

The right fist stopped short, uncoiled itself and slapped the kid hard. Once, twice, three times, red splotches shooting across his face. Eyes wide and white now, a scared rabbit. His feet were six inches off the floor when the left hand let him go. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the desk, clipboard clattering at my feet. Charlie helped him up, mumbling apologies.

I walked away, head down.

Big hero.

Big tough guy.

Slapping around a pimply punk with a noodle neck and a garbage mouth. Wrapped a little too tight, are we now?

The two cops had watched it all without moving. Where they come from, an assault doesn't mean much unless automatic weapons are involved. I paced in the reception area, trying to close the spigot on the adrenaline flow. One cop looked at me and shrugged. Midnight in Miami, the crazies out. Anyway, what harm could a guy do in the morgue? Wake the dead?

The cops resumed talking, bellyaching about arresting hookers with AIDS.

"Ain't gonna wear gloves," one said. "Don't help, they bite you in the ankle."

"I hear you can't get it from somebody giving you a blowjob."

The first cop laughed. "What cocksucker told you that?"

The kid hadn't moved, but his eyes followed me across the reception area. Charlie finished apologizing and led me through the doors into a huge, brightly lit, cool room with a faintly antiseptic smell. The walls were covered with blue tile. Steel dissecting tables on wheels were rolled up to sinks. Hoses were coiled at regular intervals along the walls, and the tile floor was marked with drains.

Charlie was poking around in a refrigerator loaded with body parts and various tissues and liquids. Along one wall were five huge coolers loaded with corpses.

"What now?" I asked.

"I saw something on the skin sample I made at the scene. But my microscope isn't powerful enough, so I couldn't be sure. Dr. Kalian was my assistant for fifteen years. He took some other samples from the shoulder area, and… here they are."

He pulled out half a dozen slides and walked me through the procedure. If he could make a positive ID through the scope, we wouldn't have to enter Cooler Three, Row One. If he couldn't find whatever it was, we'd have to bring Susan's body out and make new dissections. My mind conjured up her body, already butchered in the autopsy, the parts tucked back inside. I told myself it wasn't Susan in the cooler, just the package that had held her spirit.

Charlie led me to an adjoining lab, where he climbed on a high laboratory stool, took off his cockeyed glasses, and peered through the lens of a high-powered microscope. Seconds later, he shook his head. He tried another slide. Noth-mg.

"What did you see in the samples you made?" I asked.

"I don't know, Jake. Something microscopic that disintegrated in the heat on my slide. It could be something that proves it was just a drowning. I just hope I'm not creating something from nothing-ex nihilo nihil Jit-maybe trying too hard to prove it was an accident, to give you some peace."

He loaded another slide, took a long look, then exhaled a deep breath until it was nearly a sigh. "I thought so. Take a look, Jake."

I did. But I didn't see much, a tiny hair particle or nearly invisible twig magnified thousands of times.

"So?" I asked.

"It killed Susan," he said softly.

I looked again. "The hell is it?"

"Physalia physalis, one of your coelenterates, or all that's left of the one that killed Susan."

"I still don't get it."

"What you're looking at is a nematocyst, a tiny dart. Plus the remains of the sac that held the toxin. Each dart is invisible to the naked eye. She would have been stung by thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, really. The toxin is similar to cobra venom. Just about as powerful. A bad enough sting, the person goes into shock and drowns. Lots of drownings oif the coast are the result of these stings. If you look at the body, nothing. No marks. So it's listed as accidental drowning. Which it is, of course. But the cause is the venom of the Physalia physalis."

I looked back through the barrel of the microscope. A tiny speck, that's all. But if Charlie Riggs says it's an animal's deadly dart, it is. All these years in Florida, snorkeling, scuba diving, windsurfing, and I'd never heard of a Jil-sailya…

Charlie was still lecturing. "I don't think anybody ever got stung in a swimming pool before. Best I can figure, the Corrigans keep the water circulating from the bay. We can check it, but I'll bet there's no screen on the intake pipe. The pipe sucked water in, brought a couple of these creatures along. Susan goes for a nighttime swim. Can't see worth a darn without her glasses and swims right into one. Happens in the ocean all the time. Why not a saltwater pool? Pool bottom is painted blue. Wouldn't see the Physalia's big blue sac."

Something was scratching around in the back of my mind. "What blue sac?"

"The floating sac. It stays above water. The tentacles trail underneath. They contain the darts, and when they uncoil, they shoot the toxin into the victim. The pain is intense. Horrible, really. Paralyzing. It can cripple the respiratory system and throw the victim into shock."

"A blue sac. Charlie, that sounds like a Portuguese man-of-war."

"Same thing. Forgive me for using the Latin, but it's such a beautiful language. To my ear, Physalia physalis sounds so much better than man-of-war or blue bottle, as we sometimes call them. Close relative of the hydroids, jellyfish, stinging corals, sea anemones."

"Man-of-war," I repeated, digging up a memory.

Charlie patted my arm and said, "I hope it's better, knowing it wasn't a murder. As Virgil wrote, felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Happy is he who learns the causes of things. Even if it can't bring you happiness, Jake, maybe peace."