City of the Dead

»9«

“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.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Konig’s voice lowers with contrition. “I apologize. I had no business saying that. I’ve had a lousy day and—”

“Tell me something,” Strang cuts him short. “Do you at least intend to find out who it is here leaking information to these morticians?”

Konig’s eyes lower once more to the tiny figures and ruled lines of the departmental fiscal budget. “I already know who it is.”

Eyes still lowered, nevertheless he can sense Strang sitting there, open-mouthed, gaping at him. He turns his pencil once more to the budgetary sheets, shortly hearing Strang rise and the sharp, percussive click of his feet striding swiftly from the office.

The phone rings. Konig jumps. His pencil snaps, and while the phone continues to ring, he carves large, fierce circles over the face of the budget with the shattered edges of the pencil.

“Hello.”

“Hello—Chief? That you there?”

“No. I’m home. You’re talking to a recording. What the hell do you want, Flynn?”

“Listen. You gotta get down here.”

“No way. It’s after six. I’m not—”

“You gotta. We turned up a graveyard. Regular butcher shop. Arms. Legs. Balls. The works.”

“Forget it. I’m on my way home.”

“You can’t,” Flynn gasps breathlessly. “I mean you just can’t. The place is right down at the river’s edge. The tide’s risin’. I’m afraid we’re gonna lose half the goddamned stuff. Somebody who knows somethin’ has gotta look at this stuff right here before we can move it. Don’tcha have someone up there you can send?”

“Everyone’s left. It’s after six. What the hell do you think this is here—an all-night car wash?”

A stand-off pause. Both men listen to each other breathing. Finally Konig breaks the silence. “How far down’s the stuff?”

“Not far. Two, three feet. Might’ve been deeper once, but the tide’s been workin’ on it pretty regular. We’re findin’ it all over the place and I’m just afraid we’re gonna lose—”

“Okay—okay,” the Chief sighs. “Where the hell are you?”

“Coenties Slip. Right off Water Street—on the river.”

“Okay. Send a car.”

“It’s probably out front there right now,” Flynn’s voice smirks. “I sent it about twenty minutes ago. Pick me up on the corner of South and Cuyler’s. We’ll go in together.”