I was passing my building on Franklin when my pager vibrated against my side. I slipped it off and turned on its light so I could see. I had neither radio nor phone yet, and made a quick decision to turn into the OCME back parking lot. Letting myself in through a side door, I entered our security code, walked into the morgue and took the elevator upstairs. Traces of the day’s false alarm had vanished, but Rose’s death certificates suspended in air were an eerie display. Sitting behind my desk, I returned Marino’s page.
“Where the hell are you?” he said right off.
“The office,” I said, staring up at the clock.
“Well, I think that’s the last place you ought to be right now. And I bet you’re alone.
You eaten yet?”
“What do you mean, this is the last place I should be right now?”
“Let’s meet and I’ll explain.”
We agreed to go to the Linden Row Inn, which was downtown and private. I took my time because Marino lived on the other side of the river, but he was quick. When I arrived, he was sitting at a table before the fire in the parlor. Off duty, he was drinking a beer. The bartender was a quaint older man in a black bow tie, and he was carrying in a big bucket of ice while Pachelbel played.
“What is it?” I said to Marino as I sat. “What’s happened now?”
He was dressed in a black golf shirt, and his belly strained against the knitted fabric and flowed roundly over the waistband of his jeans. The ashtray was already littered with cigarette butts, and I suspected the beer he was drinking wasn’t his first or last.
“Would you like to hear the story of your false alarm this afternoon, or has someone gotten to you first?” He lifted the mug to his lips.
“No one has gotten to me about much of anything. Although I’ve heard a rumor about some radioactivity scare,” I said as the bartender appeared with fruit and cheese.
“Pellegrino with lemon, please,” I ordered.
“Apparently, it’s more than a rumor,” Marino said.
“What?” I gave him a frown. “And why would you know more about what’s going on inside my building than I do?”
“Because this radioactive situation has to do with evidence in a city homicide case.”
He took another swallow of beer. “Danny Webster’s homicide, to be exact.”
He allowed me a moment to grasp what he had just said, but my limits were unwilling to stretch.
“Are you implying that Danny’s body was radioactive?” I asked as if he were crazy.
“No. But the debris we vacuumed from the inside of your car apparently is. And I’m telling you, the guys that did the processing are scared shitless, and I’m not happy about it either because I poked around inside your ride, too.
That’s one thing I got a big damn problem with like some people do with spiders and snakes. It’s like these guys who got exposed to Agent Orange in Nam, and now they’re dying of cancer.”
The expression on my face now was incredulous.
“You’re talking about the front seat passenger’s side of my black Mercedes?”
Yeah, and if I were you, I wouldn’t drive it anymore.
How do you know that shit won’t get to you over a long time?”
“I won’t be driving that car anymore,” I said. “Don’t worry. But who told you the vacuumings were radioactive?”
“The lady who runs that SEM thing.”
“The scanning electron microscope.”
“Yeah. It picked up uranium, which set the Geiger counter off. Which I’m told has never happened before.”
“I’m sure it hasn’t.”
“So next we have a panic on the part of security, which are right down the hall, as you know,” he went on. “And this one guard makes the executive decision to evacuate the building. Only problem is, he forgets that when he breaks the glass on the little red box and yanks the handle, he’s also going to set off the deluge system.”
“To my knowledge,” I said, “it’s never been used. I could see how someone might forget. In fact, he might, that his death isn’t a random crime motivated by robbery, gay bashing or drugs. I think his killer waited for him, maybe as long as an hour, then confronted him as he returned to my car in the dark shadows near the magnolia tree on Twenty-eighth Street. You know that dog, the one who lives right there? He barked the entire time Danny was inside the Hill Cafe, according to Daigo.”