“Fuck ’em all, Doc,” he said. “No one’s telling me what to do. If I want to work a case, I’ll goddamn work it.”
He tapped an ash and seemed very pleased with himself.
“I don’t want you fired or demoted,” I said.
“They can’t demote me no lower than I am,” he said with another lightning bolt of anger. “They can’t make me less than a captain, and there’s no assignment worse than I got. And let ’em fire me. But guess what? They won’t. And you want to know why? Because I could go to Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, you name it. You don’t know how many times I’ve been asked to take over investigations in other departments.”
I remembered the unlit cigarette in my hand.
“A few of ’em have even wanted me to be chief.” He hobbled further along his Pollyanna path.
“Don’t fool yourself,” I said as menthol made its hit. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m doing this again”
“I’m not trying to fool anyone,” he said, and I could feel his depression moving in like a low-pressure front. “It’s like I’m on the wrong planet. I don’t know the Brays and Andersons of the world. Who are these women?”
“Power gluttons.”
“You’re powerful. You’re a hell of a lot more powerful than them or anybody I ever met, including most men, and you aren’t like that.”
“I don’t feel very powerful these days. I couldn’t even control my temper this morning on my own driveway in front of my niece and her girlfriend and probably a few neighbors:” I blew out smoke. “And I feel sick about it:”
Marino leaned forward in his chair. “You and me are the only two people who give a flying fuck about that rotting body in there.”
He jerked his thumb toward the door leading into the morgue.
“I bet Anderson don’t even show up this morning,” he went on. “One thing’s for damn sure, she ain’t gonna hang around watching you post him.”
The look on his face sent my heart out of rhythm. Marino was desperate. What he had done all his life was really all he had left, except for an ex-wife and an estranged son named Rocky. Marino was trapped in an abused body that most assuredly was going to pay him back one of these days. He had no money and awful taste in women. He was politically incorrect, slovenly and foul-mouthed.
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” I said. “You shouldn’t be in uniform. In fact, you’re rather much a disgrace to the department. What’s that on your shirt anyway? Mustard again? Your tie’s too short. Let me see your socks.”
I bent over and peeked under the cuffs of his uniform pants.
“They don’t match. Óne black, one navy,” I said.
“Don’t let me get you into trouble, Doc:’
“I’m already in trouble, Marino,” I said.
11
0ne of the more heartless aspects of my work was that unknown remains became “I’he Torso” or “The Trunk Lady” or “The Superman Man:’ They were appellations that robbed the person of his identity and all he’d been or done on earth as surely as his death had.
I considered it a painful personal defeat when I could not bring about the identification of someone who came under my care. I packed bones in bankers’ boxes and stored them in the skeleton closet, in hopes they might tell me who they were someday. I kept intact bodies or their parts in freezers for months and years, and would not give them up to a pauper’s grave until there was no more hope or space. We didn’t have room enough to keep anyone forever.
This morning’s case had been christened “The Container Man.” He was in very grim shape, and I hoped I would not have to hold him long. When decomposition was this advanced, even refrigeration couldn’t stop it.
“Sometimes I don’t know how you stand it,” Marino grumbled.
We were in the changing room next to the morgue, and no locked door or concrete wall could completely block the smell.
“You don’t have to be here,” I reminded him.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”