“We don’t got a clue.” He smooths back hair that at this stage in his life is nothing more than gray fringe gelled to the top of his broad bald pate. He would look much better if he would just shave his head. “Nobody in the area says they’ve ever seen him before, either, and none of my guys think he looks like anybody we’re used to seeing out there on the street.”
“I need to look at the body now.” I get up from the table.
Marino pushes back his chair. Berger watches me with
penetrating blue eyes. She has stopped spreading out her paperwork. “Do you mind if I come along?” she asks.
I do, but she is here. She is a professional. It would be un- thinkably rude for me to imply she might not act like one or to suggest I don’t trust her. I step next door to fetch my lab coat from my office. “I guess you’ve got no way of knowing whether it’s possible this guy might have been gay. I guess it’s not an area where gays might cruise or hang out.” I quiz Marino as we head out of the conference room. “What about male prostitutes in Mosby Court?”
“He has that look, now that you mention it,” Marino replies. “One of the cops said he was sort of a pretty boy, that buffed kind of workout build. He was wearing an earring. Like I said, though, I ain’t seen the body.”
“I do believe you win the prize for stereotypes,” Berger comments to him. “And I thought my guys were bad.”
“Oh yeah? What guys?” Marino is a millimeter from being snide to her.
“At my office,” she says in a blase way. “The investigative squad.”
“Oh yeah? You got your own personal NYPD cops? Ain’t that sweet. How big?”
“About fifty.”
“They work in your building?” I can hear it in his tone. Berger threatens the hell out of him.
“Yes.” She does not relay this with any sort of condescension or arrogance, but simply reports the facts.
Marino walks ahead of her and tosses back, “Well, ain’t that something.”
The removal service attendants are in the office chatting with Arnold. He looks stricken when I appear, as if I have caught him in the middle of something he shouldn’t be doing, but then, this is simply Arnold. He is a timid, quiet man. Like a moth that has begun to turn the color of his environment, he is wan with an unhealthy gray tint to his skin, and chronic allergies keep his eyes red-rimmed and runny. The second John Doe of the day is in the middle of the hallway, zipped up in-
side a burgundy, deep-pile pouch that is embroidered with the
name of the removal service, Whitkin Brothers. I suddenly remember the names of the attendants. Of course, they are the Whitkin brothers. “I’ll take care of him.” I let the brothers know they don’t have to roll the body into the cooler or transfer him onto a gurney.
“We don’t mind,” they are quick to nervously offer, as if I am implying they are lollygagging.
“That’s all right. I need to spend a little time with him first,” I say, and I push the stretcher through double steel doors and hand out shoe covers and gloves. It takes a few moments for me to do the necessary housekeeping of signing John Doe into the autopsy log, assigning him a number and photographing him. I smell urine.
THE AUTOPSY SUITE GLEAMS BRIGHT AND CLEAN, DE-
void of the usual sights and sounds. The quiet is a relief. After all these years, the constant clamor of water running into steel sinks, of Stryker saws, of steel clacking against steel still makes me tense and tired. The morgue can be surprisingly noisy. The dead are loud in their demands and gory colors, and this new patient is going to resist me. I can already tell. He is completely rigorous and not about to allow me to undress him or open his jaws to look at his tongue or teeth, not without a struggle. I unzip the pouch and smell urine. I pull a surgical lamp close and palpate his head, feeling no fractures. Blood smeared on his jaw and drops on the front of his jacket indicate he was upright when he was bleeding. I direct the light up his nostrils. “He’s had a nosebleed,” I report to Marino and Berger. “So far, I’m not seeing any injuries to his head.”