The unlighted tenements and warehouses loomed larger, and seemed almost to bend toward the woman from above. Lang had disappeared from the frame, but the witness had not. He could still be seen standing in the right background, one hand in the air, talking excitedly to a figure who had been cut away.
The next five shots were in steadily tightening close-ups of the woman herself. The first had been taken only a few feet from her right side, and her long slender body stretched almost across the entire length of the frame. Her fingers seemed to curl around the right edge of the photograph, her feet to press back against its left wall.
The second concentrated on the face, the flattened nose held slightly up, the chin pressed against the rough street, the rain-soaked hair sprayed out in all directions, the puffy, half-opened right eye staring dazedly into the flat gray surface of the pavement.
The third had been taken from the opposite side. The face disappeared behind a curtain of drenched and matted hair, the legs severed at the ankles, her feet stretching beyond the edge of the frame. Her arm was now in full relief, and Corman could see the needle marks which ran up and down it, the cluster of raised purple dots which gathered like a tiny village in the pale valley of her elbow.
The fourth shot was from above. As he looked at it, Corman could easily tell how it had been taken. Shepherd had not used a ladder for this one. He had straddled the body at the waist, bent forward, set his line of vision, and pressed the button. To Shepherd, it must have seemed right at the time, a tight close-up, taken from directly overhead. But now it looked awkward, unsteady, oddly faked, the product of an urge to do more than record. It was as if, just for a moment, Shepherd had fallen victim to a different calling, decided to pump his picture up with a touch of drama, a pinch of trendy grief. He’d tried to find an angle that would weep a little, sputter into art, but he’d only gotten something that looked staged,“ as if the street had just been hosed by the technical crew, the rain blown by large fans shipped in from Hollywood, the woman about to get up, dry her hair and sprint to the waiting trailer for a line of coke.
The last photograph was taken from even further above the woman’s body. It was the one Corman had seen Shepherd take from the ladder. It showed almost the entire body. The head was in the foreground, with the trunk and legs stretching backward, like the stern of a boat shot from some position above the forward deck.
“Those yours?”
It was Grossbart, and Corman didn’t have to look up from the photograph to know it. Grossbart had a distinctive voice. It seemed to come from the ground.
“Shepherd’s,” Corman said. He slid the pictures over to Grossbart.
Grossbart looked at the photographs one by one, concentrating on each in turn. “Why’d he take this one?” he asked after a moment. “What’s he trying to do, impress his girlfriend?”
Corman glanced at the photograph. It was the one Shepherd had shot as he’d straddled the body. “He got carried away,” he said.
“I don’t like bullshit,” Grossbart said. He slid the photograph under the others. “Not much of a mystery,” he growled.
Corman pressed the tip of his cigarette into the small tin ashtray on the table. “She had a college diploma,” he said. “Barnes heard it was from Columbia.”
Grossbart was unimpressed. “So? Even smart people get depressed.”
“And the Similac,” Corman added. “She had cans of it. She was feeding it to the doll.”
Grossbart leaned forward very slightly. It was hardly perceptible, just a small inching toward the edge of the table.
“At the same time,” Corman told him pointedly, “she was starving.”
“How do you know?”
“The way she looked.”
“Hypes don’t put on much weight,” Grossbart said. “You know that.” Again there was the slight inching forward, a subtle, stalking movement, silent, cat-like. “What’s your point, Corman?”
Corman shrugged. “It’s interesting, that’s all.”
Grossbart did not seem amused. “You trying to make a mystery out of this thing?” he asked. Before Corman could answer, he waved his hand dismissively. “Forget it. This one’s not a mystery.”
Mystery was common police slang for a murder that would probably never be solved, but Corman knew Grossbart meant more than that. He meant something about the woman, the doll, the dark fifth-floor landing, all that must have finally gathered together in order to get them there. That was the greater mystery, the one that was always less dense and immediate than who did what to whom. It had a mood of aftermath which clung to it like a faint, dissolving odor. While the body lay fresh and soft, the mystery was solid, tense, compelling. But after it had been scooped up, after the blood had been washed away, the walls repainted, sheets changed and carpeting replaced, the intensity of it drained away, and the other mystery settled over the interior space of the room, the street, the mind. It was ghostly, intangible. No one could go at it anymore, drag it down, cuff it, toss it into the paddy wagon. It had become faceless, impossible to contemplate without disappearing into it yourself. Everybody knew that. In Corman’s estimation, it was perhaps the only thing on earth that absolutely everybody knew.
Grossbart’s right index finger shot out toward the pack of cigarettes on the table. “Mind if I have one?”
“No.”
Grossbart snapped up the pack, shook one out and lit it. “Had a hell of a mess on Essex Street this morning,” he said. “Guy strung a couple cats onto the clothesline of his building. Just let them dangle in the goddamn airshaft.” He looked at Corman. “Why would a guy do that?”
Corman shook his head.
“Something eating him, I guess,” Grossbart said. His eyes drifted down toward the pictures. “Some people go out a window, some string up a cat.” He shrugged. “The way it is,” he added, groaning slightly as he drifted back into his chair.
Corman leaned forward slightly. “I could use a little help, Harvey,” he said.
Grossbart looked surprised, as if he thought Corman was about to ask for a handout. He said nothing.
“I need to find out some things about this woman,” Corman told him.
“Why?”
“I’m trying to work up a story.”
Grossbart shrugged. “It’s not my case. You need to talk to Lang.”
Corman shook his head.
“You got something against him?”
“The way he is,” Corman said.
“The perfect combination,” Grossbart said with a slight sneering smile. “Stupidity and corruption.”
Corman nodded.
“But the way it is, you got to work with everybody,” Grossbart said. “Like a friend of mine said, ‘Birth ain’t a screening process.’”
Corman smiled.
Grossbart took a draw on the cigarette. “What are you after?”
“Just call it a gig,” Corman said. “I want to track her down a little.”
Grossbart shrugged. “So go ahead. It’s a free country.”
“How could I find out who she was?” Corman asked.
“Well, the only guy besides Lang who’d know about her ID right now would probably be Kellerman at the morgue. He’d have to have a confirmed ID before he could release the body.”
Corman nodded.
Grossbart looked at him curiously, with a hint of disappointment.
“You never struck me as the grab-for-the-brass-ring type,” he said.
Corman thought of Lucy. “Depends on the ring, I guess,” he said as he gathered up his things and headed for the subway and the morgue.
Sanford Kellerman was the assistant ME in charge of the morgue.
Kellerman nodded as Corman stepped up to the table. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
