The Lady in the Morgue (2 page)

“I'm a married man, and I don't like your accusations, Mister Johnson,” said the morgue attendant with pretended indignation. “You know I wouldn't touch one of 'em except in the way of business.”

Johnson said, “Not much, you wouldn't.” He faced Greening. “That's what the coroner says, too. But I notice he finds some business down here every time they get hold of a pretty girl's body.”

The attendant giggled. Mister Johnson was right. Mister Johnson certainly knew the chief. “She don't even have to be especially pretty,” he added.

Greening watched them with circular blue eyes. His mouth had dropped open and he was breathing through it.

“It's a wonder he hasn't been down to see that little honey they brought in this afternoon,” said Johnson. “She must have had plenty on the ball.”

“Plenty!” The attendant rubbed the back of his hand across his face. “She's the best I seen since that nightclub singer was carved up by her Mexican boy friend.” He wiped the sweat from his hand to his white coat. “I don't understand why nobody has been able to identify her.”

The curtains ballooned again in the hot air. In the distance a woman began to utter clear, high-pitched peals of mirthless laughter, unhysterical and unhurried, like one of those laughing phonograph records, except in her case there was not even an intent to be funny. She laughed, caught her breath in gasps, laughed again.

The morgue attendant paid no attention to the noise. “They carried a front-page story about her in every paper in town,” he continued. “You'd think somebody that knew her would have seen it.”

“Lots of times, when they commit suicide, they go as far away from home as they can,” said Johnson. “They don't want to disgrace their families.”

Greening pursed his thick lips. “That's probably what she did. My editor says that Alice Ross is an assumed name. Too short. That's why he wants me to get the name of everybody who asks to see her. Maybe we can trace her that way, he says, even if somebody who knows her decides not to identify her.”

“Editors always tell you that,” said Johnson.

The attendant said, “It's goddamn funny, anyway. That girl had class, yet she was living in that honky-tonk hotel.”

“Maybe she was trying to hide herself,” said Johnson. He pulled an unlabeled pint whiskey bottle half filled with pearl-cloudy liquid from his hip pocket. “Maybe she was going to have a baby or something.”

Eyes on the bottle, the attendant said, “When they posted the body they found she didn't have no baby.”

Johnson uncorked the bottle, wiped the mouth on the seat of his blue serge pants and drank, ignoring the attendant.

“She was broke and couldn't get a job,” said Greening. “They only found four dollars in her room.”

The woman was laughing again, louder this time and higher-pitched and jangling, as though she were being tortured by having her feet tickled. The sound was off key and chalk-on-blackboard shrill.

A man's head appeared above the back of a bench at the rear of the morgue office. “Holy Kar-rist!” he said. “What in hell's that?” His name was William Crane, and he was a private detective; he had been sleeping on the bench for three hours, his gray flannel coat under his head.

The morgue attendant said over his shoulder, “It's a crazy dame in the psychopathic hospital. She's been there three days and she laughs all the time. They gotta dope her up to keep her quiet.”

Johnson supplemented, “They pulled her out of a Wilson Avenue cat house.”

Crane sat up on the bench. “I wish they'd slip her a shot,” he said. His shirt, where he had been lying on it, clung to his chest, and his regimental striped tie was twisted around so that it hung over his back. “She gives me the creeps.” His face was clear-skinned and young and tan: he rubbed his eyes vigorously. He looked about thirty, and was thirty-four.

Sliding over the rail dividing the office from the waiting room, Johnson offered Crane the bottle. Crane accepted it with interest, lifted it to the light, smelled it, then quickly handed it back. “Never drink when I'm on a job,” he lied, and asked, “What's in it, anyway?”

“Alky and water. I don't fool around with sissy drinks like whiskey and gin.”

Crane pursed his mouth, blew air softly through it.

Greening joined them. “Are you the detective who broke the Westland case?” he asked. His stare was curious, unoffensive.

Johnson said, “This is Greening of the
Herald-Examiner
. He relieved the fellow who was here when you came.” He put the bottle back in his hip pocket. “His uncle's an attorney for Hearst.”

“An attorney for Hearst,” repeated Crane, impressed. “That's pretty important.”

“My uncle didn't have anything to do with my getting this job,” Greening said to Johnson, “And anyway, what if he did?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

The clock with the cracked face struck three times.

Crane said, “I've been asleep since twelve.”

The morgue attendant said, “And how! I was just getting ready to move you downstairs to the cold-storage room.”

“I read all about the Westland mystery in the papers,” said Greening. “What do you attribute your breaking the case to?”

Crane said, “I ate two heaping dishes of Post Toasties for breakfast every morning.”

Johnson said, “I'd a hell of a lot rather be in that cold-storage room downstairs than up here. It must be ninety.”

The attendant looked at a table thermometer set in ivory-painted celluloid. “It's ninety-one.”

“Why don't they cool the whole morgue, instead of just the downstairs?” Crane asked.

“The stiffs stink,” said Johnson; “while we just suffer without doing anything objectionable.”

“It stinks up here,” said the attendant; “with the wind coming right over the stockyards.”

The madwoman was laughing again.

“I've got an idea,” said Johnson. “It's a game I used to play when I was first on this West beat.”

Crane said, “Anything to keep from hearing that dame.”

“But how did you find the pistol in the Westland case?” Greening persisted. He edged around in front of Crane, peered into his face. “The papers said you did it with a stop watch.”

Crane said, “A little bird told me.”

“The idea is this,” said Johnson. “We go down into the vaults where they keep the stiffs and start at one end. One guy takes white men, one takes buck niggers, and the other gets both white and black women. There's a dime on each vault. That is, if Crane here had the white men, and it was a white man, the other two would owe him a dime. Sort of like golf syndicates.”

“I'll take women,” said Crane. “I like women.”

The attendant flicked the sweat off his yellow forehead. “I remember that game. I lost plenty of dimes at it.”

“Yeah,” said Johnson indignantly. “You did until you went and shifted all the bodies around one night and won every syndicate.”

The attendant giggled reminiscently.

“We'll keep him out of it,” Johnson said to the others. “He's a professional.” He started to pull out the whiskey bottle, overcame the impulse. “Just us three'll play.”

“I don't know,” said Greening. “I …”

“Aw, come on.” Johnson slid over the rail. “Augie, here, will let us know if anything happens.”

Crane and Greening followed his thin back across the marble-floored waiting room, past mahogany-colored benches, a sign reading MEN, a drinking fountain, and down a narrow flight of metal stairs. The heavy air became moist as they neared the bottom, and there was a musty odor of decomposition, as in the basement of a deserted house. Johnson pushed a row of electric-light buttons on the cement wall, unlatched and swung open a heavy steel door, motioned them inside.

Brilliant white light from a long row of bulbs on the ceiling of the room made their eyes blink. Their nostrils sucked in the sweet, sharp, sickeningly antiseptic smell of formaldehyde. Icy air caused their shirts to stick clammily to their flesh. The steel door shut with a muffled thud, and all three of them momentarily experienced a feeling of being trapped.

“Creepy place, ain't it?” observed Johnson.

The plaster walls of the room had been painted oyster white, and there was in front of them a corridor between two long rows of black metal cabinets, something like those in the locker room of a golf club.

“Usually forty or fifty dead ones down here,” said Johnson. “They hold 'em for a month before they let the county bury them.”

“That means a guy could lose four or five bucks at this game,” said Crane.

“It generally balances up pretty close,” said Johnson. “There are more white people killed than niggers, but more people come to claim the white ones, too.”

The sound of their voices seemed to circle the room, echoing from several places, as though searching for a way to escape.

“How about it, Greenie?” asked Johnson. “Shall we flip to see who gets what?”

Greening had to swallow twice before he was able to speak, and then his voice came out falsetto. “Sure,” he said.

Crane was odd man and he selected women. Greening took white men and that left Johnson with the buck niggers.

“Let's begin here,” he said, “and work down this side. That's the way the numbers run.” He started to pull out the drawer marked with a brass 1 on the upper part of the first cabinet to the right.

“Wait a minute,” said Crane. “How about Mexicans? Do they count as white or black?”

“I'm taking money out of my pocket,” said Johnson, tugging on the drawer, “but they count as white.”

In the drawer, which slid out quite easily on roller bearings, was a middle-aged white man. They could tell he was white, even though his skin was a dirty blue and his face was covered with half-inch stubble. His cheeks were hollow, and his lower lip hung down, showing blackened teeth. He had been blind in one eye.

“A bum,” Johnson said, closing the drawer. “Probably got hold of some wood alcohol. That's one for Greenie.”

Number 2 drawer in the bottom part of the same cabinet was empty, and Johnson hurriedly closed Number 3 when it revealed a man's bloated face. “Drowning,” he said. “Two up for Greenie.”

Number 4 was interesting. It was a large white man who had either been stabbed or shot in the left eye. He must have been a sailor because there were tattoo marks all over his chest. Johnson pulled the sheet down so they could see better. Near the neck was a pink-and-blue mermaid, under which was written in black letters, Jeanne; while across the chest, in order, were an American flag, two naked women dancing, a kewpie doll, and a setting sun. But the masterpiece was on the stomach: the battleship Maine being blown up under Morro Castle in Havana harbor. The flames from the explosion were done in vermilion and they soared magnificently up the lower part of the man's chest, almost scorching the feet of the dancing women. There could be no doubt the work was intended to represent the Maine disaster, because below it was printed: “Remember the Maine.”

Crane said admiringly: “They ought to stuff him and hang him in the Art Institute.”

Johnson said, “That makes Greenie three up.”

After that there was more variety in color. Negro men alternated with white men, and finally Crane recouped most of his losses with a dazzling run of four women: two middle-aged black ones, a very old and very withered white one, and a young one, either Mexican or Italian. Then Johnson won a syndicate with the largest Negro Crane had ever seen; he must have weighed 350 pounds, which Crane thought was unusual for a black man; and then they came to Number 27.

“I guess this is mine without looking,” said Crane.

Johnson said, “Miss Alice Ross.”

Greening pressed forward. “Oh, this is the lady we're waiting for them to identify.” He had recovered some of his spirit. “I'd like to see her.”

“Open it up, then,” Johnson said.

Alice Ross had hair the color of a country road after a long dry spell. It was too pale to be called gold and too rich to be compared with honey. Her eyelids were a delicate violet, and she had that tragic look some women have when they close their eyes. Her lips were gentle, and there was a dark line about her neck where the rope had bruised the skin.

Johnson jerked the sheet off her body. “Nice, eh?”

She was slender, not with the stringy slenderness of a boy, but firmly rounded, and her skin was like cellophane which had been tinted the color of a cherry stone clam. It had luster and depth, and its texture was fine.

Greening touched her shoulder with his finger tips, drew them away. “Cold!” he said. “Cold.” His voice was surprised.

They stared at her in silence until the morgue attendant came downstairs and called:

“There's a guy up at the desk wants to see you, Johnson.”

“Me?”

“He said the reporters.”

“I guess that means you, too, Greenie.” Johnson winked at Crane. “Don't let me scoop you.” He led the way along the corridor, out the door, Greening following at his heels.

The attendant was looking at the girl's body. “I wonder how long a guy would live if he had a wife as swell as that?” He ran a yellow hand over her smooth hip.

“You'd get used to her after a while,” said Crane.

“I'd like to try.” The attendant's sharp yellow face was wistful. “I'd be willing to trade my wife in if I could get a model like this. I suppose it'd take a lot of money to keep her in clothes, though.”

“Plenty.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Crane said, “I think I'll go up and see what that fellow wants with the reporters. He didn't say, did he?”

The attendant's face was oblivious. The bright light thinned the wispy gray hair on his head, showed a vivid purple scar across the top. He paid no attention as Crane moved away.