was home by 10:30.
I pulled into the drive and sat for a minute. My gut was still throbbing. I got out of the car carefully, swinging my legs out the door first and then pulling myself to my feet with my hands on the doorsill. The pain didn’t get any worse; it couldn’t have. Stooped over, I made the door, unlocked it, and got inside. I went in the bedroom, pulled off jacket and tie, and opened my shirt and checked my torso in the bathroom mirror. Two dark red bruises the size of dollar pancakes formed a sideways figure eight at the bottom of my rib cage. The one-eyed man could hit.
I got the Ben-Gay out of the cabinet and went back in the bedroom. Rosie was scratching the back door, so I put the bottle on the night table and groaned my way to the back door. He was so happy to see me he jumped up on me and gave my a sloppy kiss. His paws hit me right at ground zero and added new pain to my aching gut.
“Jesus,” I yelled. He jumped back, looking like I had whacked him on the rear.
“It’s okay,” I said, and got down on my knees and held my hand out to him. He came over and leaned against me, and the heat of his body felt good against the bruises.
“The old man took a bit of a beating,” I said.
I fed him, gave him a bone, left the back door open, and went back to the bedroom. I lay down on the bed and eased my pants off. The Ben-Gay burned as I carefully spread it over my abdomen, but then it began to work its magic. I lay there looking at the ceiling until the pain eased. I don’t know how long I lay there, thirty minutes maybe, long enough for Rosie to finish with the bone and come back in. He put his front paws up on the bed and looked down at me, his nose twitching from the pungent odor. I scratched him behind the ears and took deep breaths and waited for the ache to subside.
When I could move I got up, locked the front door, got the Canadian Club and a water tumbler, dropped a cube of ice in the tumbler, and went back to the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed, poured myself a half-glass of whiskey, rolled a cigarette, and lit up. Just inhaling hurt.
Rosie sat at my feet, looking concerned. I patted the bed.
“Come on up,” I said. He jumped on the bed and sat down and looked down at me with concern.
“I’m okay, pal, nothing broken,” I told him. That seemed to satisfy him and he went to his side of the bed, did his little circle thing, and lay down.
My trip had earned me more than a sore stomach. I was sure now that the Wilensky woman’s death was no accident.
I swallowed half the drink, smoked awhile, finished off the drink, and doused the cigarette. The whiskey soaked up a little more of the pain. I lay down on my back, worked my way under the sheet, and turned off the light.
It had been a very long day. I was asleep before Rosie started to snore.
CHAPTER 17
I t was 7:15 when the phone woke me up. I don’t know how long it had been ringing. I rolled over to reach for it and I felt a hot wire slash across my stomach.
“Oww!” I yelped. Rosie jerked awake as I reached across him and picked up the receiver.
“Yeah,” I moaned.
“That you, Zeke?” I heard Bones say on the other end of the line.
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s the matter, you sound all in. Have a rough night?”
“You’ll never know just how rough,” I groaned.
“Want to stop by the morgue on your way in? I got the post-mortem ready for you.”
“Right. Thirty minutes.”
“No hurry,” he said gleefully. “None of my patients is going anywhere.”
“Cute,” I said, and hung up. I called Ski and told him I was running a little late, and to call the precinct and tell Ozzie, who handled the radio, that we had to stop off at the morgue on the way in.
“How’d it go up there?” he asked.
“I’ll give you a report when I see you,” I said, and hung up.
I struggled out of bed and went into the kitchen to let the dog out, then realized I had left the back door open all night. Rosie was in the yard, watering the trees and shrubs. I went into the bathroom and turned the hot water as high as I could take it and let it wash over me for about ten minutes. Then I shaved; dressed in my tweed jacket, dark gray flannels, a dark blue shirt, and black tie; set out Rosie’s food and water for him; and left to pick up Ski.
“What happened to the window?” was the first thing he said when he got in the car. Then he took a closer look at me and added, “What happened to you? You’re as pale as white bread.”
“I met Captain Culhane,” I said.
“What’d he do, hit you with a sledgehammer?”
“That’s about right,” I said, and gave him a quick report as we headed downtown.
“It’s a bust,” I finished. “We can forget Verna Wilensky. Nobody up there is going to help, and legally we haven’t a case for a subpoena.”
“You going to let him get away with rocking you like that?” he said angrily, the blood rising to his face.
“Oh, I did my share,” I said, and told him how the fight had ended, and about putting the gun and badge in the bag.
“The old man’s gonna want to do something about this,” Ski said. “He’ll be mighty pissed off that a cop did that to another cop, especially to one of his.”
“I made my point,” I answered. “I don’t want to hear the name Culhane or San Pietro or anything like it for the rest of my life.”
“We could go back up there and make life miserable for him,” the big man said.
“Ah, we’d be outnumbered. Of course, it seems like he only hires the handicapped. On the other hand, the one-eyed guy didn’t need both eyes to damn near break me in half.”
“I’d like to have a piece of the son of a bitch,” Ski said. “You shoulda taken me with you, partner.”
“You probably would have killed one of them. The last thing we’d want to do is spend twenty years in that place.”
You can add morgues to a high place on the list of things I hate. Perhaps it’s the smell of formaldehyde, blood, and alcohol that permeates the sterile confines of what Bones calls “the coolest place in town.”
The room was white-tiled, with a bright light hanging from the ceiling over each of the tables, and a butcher’s scale hanging from the ceiling beside the lamp. Each table had a ridge running all the way around it, and a sink at the foot into which water, blood, and any other unwanted material was channeled. A spigot hissed aerated water into the sink. The mixed odors of alcohol, blood, disinfectant, and death permeated the cold air in the room. There were half a dozen stretchers, elevated at the head and sloping down to the foot. Beside the table, a stenographer wearing a face mask sat at a wheeled desk, equipped with a shorthand writer. In the corner, almost inaudibly, a record player was providing something by Bach.
A large woman’s corpse lay on its back on one of the tables, her dark hair showering over the raised end of the table. The body was the color of spoiled meat, and was split open from chin to Venus mound. Bones, in a white butcher’s apron and wearing yellow gloves, was leaning over the corpse, digging around in the cavity, and dictating to the stenographer. He looked over the top of his glasses when I stuck my head through the swinging doors of the examination room.
“Zeke, m’boy,” he said cheerily. “Want to take a look? See what cyanide does to the innards?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
He stopped what he was doing and told the steno, whose name was Judith, to take a break. She stood primly, straightened her skirt, and left the room through a door on the far side. Bones peeled off the gloves, turned off the light over the table, and pulled off his gown. He dropped gown and gloves in a large trash bin near the door.
“Feelin’ any better? You look like hell,” he said.
“I sprung a couple of ribs,” I said.
