The Lady in the Morgue (28 page)

Crane and O'Malley carried the body into the garage, shoved her on the flat stretcher in the hearse, and climbed in beside her. Mr. Barry stepped on the hearse's starter and the engine roared like a tractor. “You guys follow us,” shouted Crane to Courtland and Williams. With a jerk the hearse leaped from the garage, raced down the alley. Mr. Barry crouched over the wheel like a monkey. Water made a noise like a falling tree against the four fenders of the hearse. Mr. Barry switched on the siren, the red-and-blue headlights.

The new morgue attendant was a young man with a pale skin, patchy black whiskers and practically no chin. He opened the door to the receiving room, turned on the driveway light and said, “Bring her in.” He rolled one of the white-enameled operating tables toward them. “Stick her on this.”

They carried Miss Ross's body through a rectangle of rain, through the door, and laid her on the table. The rain had dampened her cheap dress, made it cling to her slender hips, her long legs.

“The hell!” The attendant's voice was outraged. “You can't bring an embalmed body in here.”

“The hell I can't.” Mr. Barry launched on a long explanation.

The idea was that some dirty so-and-so—Mr. Barry said “so-and-so,” not son of a bitch—had brought the body to him and had promised to pay for its burial. But the dirty so-and-so had never showed up again, and when Mr. Barry had looked up the address the dirty so-and-so had given him the fellow didn't live there at all. And did the morgue attendant, or the County of Cook, for that matter, think that he, Mr. Barry, was going to pay out sixty bucks to bury the girl? If they did they had another think coming.

The attendant finally agreed to let them leave the body in the receiving room. He took Mr. Barry's name and address. “I'll have to make a report to the coroner,” he said.

“Yeah, get the coroner,” Mr. Barry urged. “I'll talk to the coroner.” He hopped up and down in front of the attendant's worried face. “Get him right now.”

“At two o'clock in the morning?” The attendant was horrified. “Not much, I won't. I want to keep my job. I'll report to him in the morning.”

“O. K.” Mr. Barry winked at Crane. “Then I'll leave the girl here.”

The attendant found a sheet and tossed it over the girl's body, and rolled the operating table away from the alley door. A gust of wind blew rain into the room, but as Crane moved to close the door Williams and Courtland appeared.

“It's about time you got here,” said Mr. Barry. He turned to the attendant. “You been pretty good about this girl, so I'm going to do you a favor. These men work for me, that is, all but this one—” he indicated Williams, “—and we may be able to find somebody to take care of the girl tonight. This fellow—” indicating Williams again “—thinks he knows some people who know the girl. I'm going to have him find them tonight and bring them down here to look at the girl. Then, if they do know her, they can claim her.”

“Why don't he claim her?” asked the attendant.

“Do you think I'm going to pay out a hundred bucks to bury some dame I think I seen once before?” Williams pulled his mustache. “I ain't that dumb.”

“All right.” The attendant's eyes were watery. He shrugged his shoulders. “Bring 'em down, and I'll let them take a look at her. That's what this place is for.” He started through the door leading to the stairs and the storage vaults where Miss Ross had originally been. “Close the alley door when you leave.”

When the attendant had gone Mr. Barry said gleefully, “Well, that's that. I'm going home.”

“You did swell,” said Crane. “Now, I'll telephone French and Paletta and have them come over here. Doc, you and O'Malley better go and get Udoni and Mrs. Udoni. You can take the dog back to the Cavern and look for Udoni there. Do it as quick as you can.”

Courtland asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“You might as well stay here with me. I might need some help.” Crane shook Mr. Barry's hand. “We wouldn't have been able to do this without you.”

“Aw, hell,” said Mr. Barry. “I'm always glad to oblige Doc.”

“Yeah,” said Williams, “we been buddies ever since we run a load of liquor down from Canada in a hearse and cleaned up five grand.”

Chapter Twenty-One

THE ATTENDANT looked at them moodily as they approached the oak rail dividing his office from the waiting room. “You guys still here?” The clock with the cracked glass read 2:12. Outside it continued to rain, lighten, thunder.

“We let the others go for the people to look at the body,” said Crane. “We don't want to get our feet wet.”

“Well, you needn't think you're going to sit around and bother me,” said the attendant. He moved papers about the surface of his desk. “I got work to do.”

“Go right ahead,” said Crane. He grinned at Courtland. “We wouldn't think of disturbing you.” He crossed the marble floor to the public telephone booth and looked up the number of the City News Bureau. It was State 8100. He dropped a coin in the slot and called the number and asked for Johnson. Jerry Johnson. The man at the switchboard said Johnson was covering west police and would probably be at the Canalport Station. He gave Crane the number.

Johnson was at the Canalport Station. He said, hell, yes, he remembered Bill Crane.

“Look,” said Crane, “I've got a good story for you, but you'll have to agree not to break it until I give the word.”

“What have you done?” Johnson's voice was eager. “Found the girl?”

“How about your word?”

“O.K. I won't bust the story until you give me a nod. What is it?”

“You better come over to the morgue.”

“I'll be right over.…”

“Wait a minute.” Crane was afraid Johnson had hung up. He spoke loudly. “I want you to do me a favor first.”

“I can hear you all right,” said Johnson. Then he said, “I thought there was a catch in this.”

“It isn't much.”

“O.K. Shoot.”

“Will you see if you can get me Mike Paletta's telephone number?”

“Hell!” Johnson's voice sounded excited. “Is he in this? That's easy. I got his number here, in my little black book.” There was a pause. “Good old black book. Mike Paletta, Superior 7736.”

“Thanks,” said Crane. “I'll be seeing you in a little while.”

“In less than that,” said Johnson.

Crane called the Superior number and a strange male voice answered. “Who do you want?”

“Tell Mike that William Crane, the private detective, wants to speak to him.”

At last Paletta came to the telephone. “I don' care,” he said when Crane told him that he had recovered the body of Miss Ross. “I ain't innarested.”

Crane said, “But aren't you going to thank me for bringing your wife back to you?”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Mike Paletta laughed as though his stomach hurt him. “Thas big joke you pull on Mike las' night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bringin' a dame like that up to my 'partment—a dame I don' even know.”

“What! Wasn't that your wife?”

“Naw, she ain't my wife.”

Crane blinked his eyes, chewed his lower lip. At last he said, “Well then, don't you want to come down to the morgue and take a look at Miss Ross? She may be your wife.”

Mike Paletta repeated, “I ain't innarested,” and broke the connection.

Crane rubbed the back of his neck, swore vigorously. He recounted the conversation to Courtland, said, “This is getting cockeyeder and cockeyeder.”

Courtland agreed and then said, “Before you make another call I'll telephone Uncle Stuyvesant at the Blackstone. He'll want to know we've found the body.”

In two minutes he came out of the booth, his eyes round. “Uncle checked out of the hotel about an hour ago,” he announced.

Crane looked at the clock with the cracked glass. It read 2:15. “The hell! Why would he check out at one in the morning? Did he leave any word for you?”

Courtland shook his head. “The clerk says he simply got in a taxi and left.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Crane went into the phone booth, called the Liberty Club. Frankie French's voice was unexcited when Crane told him he had Miss Ross's body at the morgue. “I'll be down in a few minutes,” the gangster said calmly.

Crane hung up the receiver and said to Courtland, “Well, we got one bite.”

It was nearly 3:40 by the cracked clock when Williams and O'Malley returned with Udoni. Water dripped from the clothes of all three, and Udoni's face was milk pale.

“Where's Mrs. Udoni?” asked Crane.

O'Malley said, “She's disappeared. She checked out of the hotel on Wilson Avenue yesterday and left no forwarding address. I don't know how we're going to find her.”

Udoni was suspiciously examining Johnson, the
City Press
reporter, and Courtland. “Who are these men?”

“Two of our operatives,” said Crane. He took Udoni's arm. “Let's take a look at the girl.”

The morgue attendant's name, they had discovered, was Barnes. Dr. Barnes. He was an intern at the County Hospital. He led the way down the winding steel stairs, opened the door to the windowless receiving room and switched on the powerful overhead light.

Udoni screwed up his eyes, stared at the sheet-covered forms on the white-enameled operating tables. “Which one …?” Seven of the twelve tables bore bodies.

The attendant flipped the cover off Miss Ross with a flourish. Udoni moaned, “Oh, my God!” The lipstick on the girl's lips was as bright as fresh paint. Hands suddenly shielding his eyes, Udoni swung around from the corpse, tottered five steps to the calcimined wall, leaned his elbows against it. The attendant replaced the sheet, said in quick alarm, “Is he going to be sick?”

Crane shook his head, waited for a moment, then asked, “Is that her?”

Udoni's voice was cracked. “Yes.”

“Well, thank God,” said O'Malley. “I was beginning to think she was the sister of the unknown soldier.”

The attendant got down to business. “Are you willing to pay the expenses of her burial, Mr. Udoni?”

Udoni took his hands from his face and nodded. His eyes were wild.

“Good,” said the attendant. “I'll make a report to the coroner in the morning, and you can have the body as soon as he signs a release.” He turned to Crane and said, “I guess that ends it.” His voice was friendlier.

“Yeah, except that we've got at least one more person coming down here,” Crane said. “He, or they, may be relatives, and you know that relatives have first claim on the body. Mr. Udoni isn't a relative.”

“But he'll bury her if they don't claim her, won't he?”

“Sure.”

“That's all I wanted to know.” The attendant winked humorously at Williams and started for the stairs. He halted to let two men come into the room. One of the men was Frankie French, and the other was the squat driver of the car which had taken Crane and Courtland to the Liberty Club. Johnson, recognition in his eyes, moved forward as though he were going to say something, but Crane caught his arm.

“Good evening,” said French. He bowed to Crane, nodded to Courtland. “I have come in response to your telephone call.”

There was an alarmed expression on Udoni's face. He moved along the wall to the inside door, said, “I better go now.”

O'Malley looked questioningly at Crane.

“Take him upstairs, and see if you can get an idea where Mrs. Udoni could be,” Crane said. “Then you can let him leave.” As Williams and O'Malley followed Udoni out the door, Crane put a detaining hand on O'Malley's elbow. “Follow the guy. Maybe he'll go to his wife.”

French cast a quick, curious glance at the musician as he disappeared up the steel stairs. The attendant asked, “These the relatives you were expecting?” He made a thrusting motion with his thumb at French and his companion.

“They'd like to look at the body,” said Crane.

“Okay. The more the merrier.” The attendant pulled the sheet off the body for a second time. “Take a good look.”

French's handsome, fierce, somber countenance was impassive as he looked down at Miss Ross's delicately tinted face. The overhead light outlined the scar on his right cheekbone, made his green suit bright as spinach cooked with soda. For fully thirty seconds his golden eyes rested on the body. Then he shook his head, said, “I have never before seen this girl.”

“You're sure?” asked Crane.

Frankie French nodded.

The attendant put back the sheet and walked to the door. “Turn out the light when you come up. I gotta get back to my work.”

Crane waited thirty seconds, then asked, “Does this girl look anything like Verona Vincent?”

“Not a bit.” French straightened his maroon tie. “Now let me ask a question.” There was red polish on his fingernails. “Is this the girl who was originally in the morgue?”

“It's the same one, all right,” Crane replied. “Isn't it, Johnson?”

“You bet.” Johnson's food-spotted necktie had become loosened and it no longer hid the fact that his collar had no button. “We both had a good look at her.”

“One more question.” French's long fingers caressed the edge of the table upon which Miss Ross lay. “How did you manage to bring the body back here without attracting the attention of the police?”

“The attendant doesn't know who the girl is,” said Crane. “We told him her name was Anna Temple and that her body had been left with an undertaker by someone who had then disappeared.”

“Very clever.” French's teeth were white and even. “There will be no discovery until the attendant makes his report to the coroner in the morning.” He smiled again. “Very clever, indeed.”

The driver seemed to be nervous. “We better be going, Mr. French,” he said. His neck bulged over his frayed collar.