“Don’t you be trying to go up no chimneys. You’ll get stuck for sure.”
“Hell, you could look out the top of a chimney and still have your feet in the fireplace. You still growing?”
“Not as much as you are, man. What you weighing in these days?” Terry thumbs through the dental charts Marino brought in. “Well, this won’t take long. He’s got a rotated right maxillary second premolar, the distal surface lingual. Annnndddd… lots of restorations. Saying this guy”he holds up the charts”and your guy are one and the same.”
“How about them Rams beating Louisville?” Marino calls out above the drumming of running water.
“Were you there?”
“Nope, and you wasn’t either, Terry, which is why they won.”
“Probably true.”
I pluck a surgical knife off the cart as the phone rings.
“Sam, you mind getting that?” I ask.
He trots to the corner, snaps up the phone and announces, “Morgue.” I cut through the costochondral cartilage junctions, removing a triangle of sternum and parasternal ribs. “Hold on,” Terry says to whoever has him on the line. “Dr. Scar-petta? Can you talk to Benton Wesley?”
The room becomes a vacuum that sucks out all light and sound. I freeze, staring, stunned, the steel surgical knife poised in my bloody, gloved right hand.
“What the fuck?” Marino blurts out. He strides over to
Terry and snatches the phone from him. “Who the hell is
this?” he yells into the mouthpiece. “Shit.” He tosses the receiver back into the cradle on the wall. Obviously, the person hung up. Terry looks stricken. He has no idea what just hap- pened. He hasn’t known me long. There is no reason for him to know about Benton unless someone else told him, and apparently no one has.
“What exactly did the person say to you?” Marino asks Terry.
“I hope I didn’t do something wrong.”
“No, no.” I find my voice. “You didn’t,” I reassure him.
“Some man,” he replies. “All he said is he wanted to speak to you and he said his name was Benton Wesley.”
Marino picks up the phone again and swears and fumes because there is no Caller ID. We have never had occasion to need Caller ID in the morgue. He hits several buttons and listens. He writes down a number and dials it. “Yeah. Who’s this?” he demands over the line to whoever has picked up. “Where? Okay. You see someone else using this phone just a minute ago? The one you’re talking on. Uh huh. Yeah, well, I don’t believe you, asshole.” He slams down the receiver.
“You think it’s the same one who just called?” Terry asks him in confusion. “What’d you do, hit star sixty-nine?”
“A pay phone. At the Texaco on Midlothian Turnpike. Supposedly. I don’t know if it’s the same person who called. What was his voice like?” Marino pins Terry with a stare.
“He sort of sounded young. I think. I don’t know. Who’s Benton Wesley?”
“He’s dead.” I reach for the scalpel, pushing the point down on a cutting board, snapping in a new blade and dropping the old in a bright red biohazard plastic container. “He was a friend, a close friend.”
“Some squirrel playing a sick joke. How would anybody know the number down here?” Marino is upset. He is furious. He wants to find the caller and pound him. And he is considering that his malevolent son may be behind this. I can read it in Marino’s eyes. He is thinking about Rocky.
“Under state government listings in the phone book.” I begin cutting blood vessels, severing the carotids very low at the
apex, moving down to the iliac arteries and veins of the pelvis. “Don’t tell me it says morgue in the goddamn phone book.” Marino starts up his old routine again. He is blaming me.
“I think it’s listed under funeral information.” I cut through the thin flat muscle of the diaphragm, loosening the bloc of organs, freeing it from the vertebral column. Lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, and spleen shimmer different hues of red as I lay the bloc on the cutting board and wash off blood with a gentle hosing of cold water. I notice petechial hemorrhages, dark areas of bleeding no bigger than pin pricks scattered over the heart and lungs. I associate this with persons who had difficulty breathing at or about the time of death.