City of the Dead

»22«

“Basically it’s a ball-and-socket arrangement. Ball of the humerus to the scapula socket; ball of the femur to the acetabulum socket.”

Konig and young McCloskey hunch over the trays shuffling long bones around, attempting to match one of the two sets of limbs to the reconstructed trunk. They work on, rapt, intent, unaware that as they have labored through the afternoon, the others, one by one, have gradually departed. They are not now even aware of those departures. It is just them together and the job at hand. Nothing else.

“It’s a trial-and-error thing,” Konig rattles on. “It’s a bitch. Time-consuming. Hardly worth what you get for it at the end. But that’s the only way to do it.”

For the past several hours they’ve been trying to match a set of arms and a set of legs to a single trunk—the reconstituted trunk—for that’s the only one complete with two shoulder sockets and two hip sockets. The other trunk portion is only half complete, only the upper trunk. To that, hopefully, they will be able to match a pair of arms. But they will have to wait for the men still digging on the river near Coenties Slip to unearth a pelvis and lower torso, to which, hopefully, they will be able to assign a pair of legs.

So they have juggled bones for the past several hours, sorting them on the basis of general appearance, texture, and dimension. Then in turn trying to match each limb segment in pairs of rights and lefts.

“The articulations have to be completely harmonious,” Konig muses aloud as he shuffles bones, lifts them, hefts them two at a time, using his own hands like a pair of scales. “You can’t force anything in this. The moment you have to force you know you’re wrong.”

McCloskey watches the skilled, deft motion of the older man’s hands, rather like a child watching an old magician at some dazzling feat of prestidigitation. With long cotton swabs he reams out the acetabulum socket of the right hip into which he is about to insert the ball of a right femur. “Every reasonable doubt has to be eliminated.”

During the course of that afternoon, while one by one the others had slowly drifted off, McCloskey and Konig have drawn closer to each other, some mutual obsession holding them there long past the hour when common sense has told them to quit and go home, seek warmth and light, respite from the day, a comfortable room, a few genial friends.

But no, they’re still there, shuffling bones, both having fallen unconsciously into the attitudes of student and teacher—yet, perhaps, not quite so formal. There’s also a touch of intimacy here; two strangers startled and delighted to discover they share a common passion.

“See that left acetabulum?” Konig whispers, and the young man stoops to peer into the hip socket on the reconstituted trunk.

“Busted up pretty badly.”

“Right. Femur’s obviously been yanked out by force.”

“It’ll be hard to fit it,” says McCloskey. “Maybe we oughta start with the right instead.”

“Good idea,” Konig snaps. “Hand me those two right femora.”

Konig holds both femora in his hands thoughtfully, as if he is weighing them. Getting the heft of them. One is clearly shorter than the other, and both femur heads are clearly different in circumference. When Konig inserts the smaller of the femora into the right hip socket, it slips easily in and can be moved around in all directions. It is just as easily withdrawn.

“A little loose,” McCloskey remarks.

“Let’s try the longer one.”

They do, and with a little manipulation the larger head belonging to the longer set of limbs can also be made to enter the socket and fit snugly there.

“More like it,” Konig mutters, quietly pleased. “But just to make sure, we’ll dissect out all the remaining ligaments around this hip joint and make a plaster cast of the acetabulum for comparison with the femur head. Then tomorrow morning, when the cast has hardened, we’ll measure the vertical diameter of the cast with calipers on a vernier scale. Hopefully the correspondence between the size of the cast and the femur head’ll be pretty even—You seem skeptical.”

“I just can’t get it out of my head that we might be dealing with more than two bodies. What if—”

“—we should find an odd part that can’t be matched to either the long or short set?” Konig smiles. “Then we can toss out everything we’ve done so far. The minute one odd part like that shows up, the mathematical odds of numbers of bodies we’re dealing with jumps to approximately seventeen and that means we haven’t even begun to salvage a quarter of the parts buried somewhere along the river. Too grim a notion to contemplate. Wipe it from your mind, Thomas, my boy.” The Chief cocks an amused eye at the young man. “Anyone waiting for you at home?”

“Waiting for me?”

“A wife? A concubine? A small dog? Anything?”

“No, sir.” McCloskey laughs. “I’m not married.”

“Well then, how about a break for supper? My treat.”

And so they pause for a bright, warm hour in a small Italian restaurant where, under the spell of two martinis and a well-chilled bottle of Verdicchio, Konig waxes more expansive.

Somewhere near 9 p.m. they are back again in the sub-basement level of the mortuary. Returning with a jug of Chianti and some paper cups, they post themselves once more before the trays of bone and tissue, the gobbets of flesh, all waiting to be sorted out.

Alcohol and a bit of companionship have brought a roseate glow to Konig’s cheeks. Not only has he grown more expansive, he is, curiously, even more lucid. Alcohol seems to have sharpened his perceptions, honed the dexterity of his fingers to a remarkable pitch. “Now, Thomas”—his voice fairly lilts—“hand me that long left femur.”

In the next hour or so they manage to fit the left femur to the badly broken left hip socket, so that the reconstituted trunk now sports a full set of thighbones. Their next job is to match a pair of patellae to each. All of the four kneecaps they have still bear loose portions of flesh and tendon, making the job of identifying a pair more difficult. In the next hour or so Konig and McCloskey go about the business of sorting out these strips of tissue and cleaning the margins of the patellae. Then, finally, Konig fits a kneecap to the right and left femora respectively. “Voilà,” he cries out when he sees the ease with which they both articulate. “We’re now ready for the lower legs.”

And so, before the night is over, somewhere around midnight, two complete sets of lower limbs are reconstructed, and one set attached to the reconstituted trunk. Both sets have been matched by such factors as dimension and texture, as well as by the careful measurement of the bones of individual segments. Once reassembled, the two sets of lower limbs are so manifestly different in length that it is now easy to think of them in terms of the shorter and longer set. Already, each set is able to divulge crucial nuggets of information regarding age and stature; even, but somewhat more vaguely, the sets tell something of the racial history of their former owners and how, possibly, they met their ends.

It is well past midnight when Konig glances up from his work and catches the young pathologist suppressing a yawn. “Call it a day?” The wicked, slightly mocking grin crosses his features. The “I can work you under the table, kid” look that McCloskey knows so well.

Konig stands and stretches. “First thing in the morning we’ll X-ray both sets of limbs, make sure the articulations at the hips and patellae are correct. Those acetabulum casts ought to be ready by about ten a.m.” He thumps the young man on the back. “Oughta be able to start on the arms tomorrow.”