China-town, bearing the dead from the Tong Wars, or later, piles of bodies, frozen together like stacks of ice cubes during the Blizzard of ’88. And later still, Lazar himself had come—stricken, his right arm clinging to Corman’s shoulder as the two of them slammed through the red double doors.
It began to rain lightly again. Corman tucked the camera beneath his coat and peeped around the edge of the ambulance.
A couple of female orderlies came out of the building. One of them was crying, and the other one was comforting her as best she could, touching her arm once in a while as she spoke. Corman drew his camera out again. Through the lens he could see their faces clearly. They both looked Filipino, something like that, and the older woman could easily have been the mother of the younger one. They had the same, slightly flattened noses and large, almond-shaped eyes. The young one kept shaking her head frantically, until the older one stopped it by drawing her face up tight against her chest. For a time, they remained locked in that position. Then a man stuck his head out the door and waved them back into the building. They followed his orders immediately, the young one dabbing her eyes as she walked back inside.
Kellerman strode out onto the loading ramp a few minutes later. He was dressed in a long white lab coat, and he was pulling a pair of rubber gloves off his hands. His head made a slow turn until he caught sight of Corman. Then he tapped the face of his wristwatch and nodded crisply.
Within seconds the hearse from the funeral chapel arrived. It was dark gray instead of black, with sleek chrome lines running front to back. It made a wide turn in the lot, moving slowly, its long black windshield wipers sliding rhythmically across the glass, stopped for a moment, then headed backwards until its rear door reached the loading ramp.
Corman lifted the camera and began shooting.
Two men got out of the hearse. They were dressed in black suits. One was tall, black, very broad-shouldered. The other one looked Hispanic. He was short and stocky, with thick legs and small feet. They walked up the short ramp to the rear doors and disappeared behind them.
Corman replaced the lens cap, drew the camera back under his coat and waited.
The doors at the back of the morgue opened suddenly a few seconds later, and Corman jerked himself back to attention and began shooting as a long stainless steel stretcher came out, pushed from behind by the black attendant. The Hispanic walked behind him until they neared the end of the ramp. Then he bolted forward quickly and opened the back of the hearse. The other man maneuvered the stretcher into place, then the two of them loaded the body and returned to their seats in the hearse.
Corman continued shooting, concentrating on the hearse, the two men whose dark outlines could be seen hazily behind the rainswept windshield. For a time they sat solemnly, then the Hispanic turned toward the other man, said something, and they both laughed.
Corman had taken ten more pictures before Kellerman finally walked through the doors, then slowly down the loading ramp. For a time, they talked through the open window of the hearse, then they shook hands and the car pulled away.
“Well, did you get what you needed?” Kellerman asked as he walked across the cement lot toward Corman.
Corman recapped the lens and tucked the camera beneath his coat. In the distance, he could see the taillights of the hearse as it disappeared around the corner of the building.
“Not much, was it?” Kellerman said. “No relatives. Nothing.”
Corman stepped out from behind the ambulance, his eyes still watching the driveway, the traffic on Second Avenue. “You know the address of the chapel they’re taking her to?”
“Sure,” Kellerman said. “We do some business. They always leave a card.” He drew the card from his pocket and read off the address: “247 East 68th Street.”
Corman wrote it down in his notebook and glanced back toward the avenue. He could see the little Italian restaurant where it had happened, hear Lazar’s voice rumbling through the subdued light, then the sudden halt, the look in his face, the single word he’d managed to say before the left side of his mouth had twisted downward: “Corman.”
“So, you like being a shooter?” Kellerman asked.
Corman looked at him. “What?”
“I mean, it must be a killing grind, right?” Kellerman said.
Corman started to answer, but the crackle of his police radio interrupted him. He dialed up the volume and listened. There was some sort of disturbance on Broadway at University Place. A patrol car was requested.
“I think I’ll check this out,” Corman said quickly.
“Yeah, sure,” Kellerman said. He looked faintly envious. “It must be nice once in a while,” he said. “Dealing with the live ones.”
A small crowd had already gathered at the corner of Broadway and University Place when Corman got there. It formed a kind of jagged semicircle around a taxi and a police patrol car. Two patrol-men stood next to the cab, listening silently as a well-dressed elderly man addressed them.
“I’m not interested in being treated special,” the old man declared loudly. “I have never asked for that. But by the same token, I refuse to be abused.”
A slightly overweight man leaned idly against the cab. He wore a fishnet T-shirt despite the chilly fall air, and his eyes looked slightly puffed, as if from lack of sleep. “I didn’t abuse you, pal,” he said to the old man.
The old man’s body jerked upward. “I am not addressing you, sir,” he cried. “I am not addressing you.”
“Okay, okay,” one of the patrolmen said to him. “Just tell me what happened.”
Corman readied his camera and subtly elbowed himself more deeply into the crowd, searching for a position from which he could get the whole small drama into his lens. By the time he found it, the old man was talking again, while the man in the T-shirt remained silent, his arm draped protectively over the roof of his cab.
“I know the ordinances of this city,” the old man said. “I make it my business to know them. And when this … this … I don’t know what I should call such a person.”
“Call me Dominic, pop,” the driver said with a laugh.
One of the patrolmen glanced at him irritably. “Don’t make it worse, buddy,” he said.
The taxi driver shrugged, turned away and idly picked his teeth with a matchstick while the old man continued.
“As I was saying, I know the ordinances,” the old man began again, “but that doesn’t mean that I want to be treated special. But when it rains, I’m like a great many people. I want a cab.” He brushed his nose quickly with his hand, and Corman noticed that he held a leather strap. He followed it downward to where a large seeing-eye dog sat calmly on the sidewalk, its large pink tongue hanging limply from its mouth.
“This man refused to take me,” the old man cried with a sudden, wrenching vehemence. “Refused to accept me as a passenger.”
The driver’s eyes shot over to him. “Not you, pal,” he said. “The dog. I don’t take no animals in my cab.”
“This is a trained dog,” the old man shouted. His finger wagged in the air. Corman focused on it and shot.
The driver waved at the finger dismissively. “Yeah, well a trained dog gets fleas and shit just like any other dog.”
The old man’s face lifted in offense. “This dog does not have fleas, sir,” he declared.
The driver’s face tightened. “How the fuck do you know? You couldn’t fucking see them if it did!”
The old man’s body stiffened. He seemed on the verge of lunging toward the driver. “I was blinded by the Japanese, sir,” he screamed. “On an island called Iwo Jima. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it.”
The driver laughed. “I seen the movie with John Wayne,” he said. Then he winked good-humoredly at the crowd, which only stared back at him resentfully.
“Yes, well I was not with John Wayne, sir,” the old man fired back. “I wasn’t making movies. I was protecting this country!”
“All right, all right,” one of the patrolmen said. “Let’s everybody calm down here, okay? Let’s just everybody cool it.”
The second patrolman moved closer to the driver, motioned him forward, then whispered something into his ear.
The old man drew in a deep breath. “Anyway,” he said, “I asked this gentleman …” His hand swept out,
