"Three Stations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

6

Immense and unshaven, Willi Pazenko shuffled around the morgue like a woolly mammoth in an operating gown. A cigarette hung from his lips, a glass of antiseptic alcohol from his hand. At school he had been called Belmondo after the French actor for his style with a cigarette. Arkady had been his classmate but now Willi looked twenty years older.

"I can't do it. I'm not up to it. Doctor's orders."

"You could do it with your eyes closed," Arkady said.

Willi waved a glass at the cadavers. "Don't you think I would like to dive in?"

"I know you do."

"Some of the work that comes out of this place you wouldn't believe. Butcher's work at a butcher's pace. A real abattoir. They dig out the heart and lungs, slit the throat and pull out the esophagus. No finesse. No analysis. Run a saw around the skull. Pop the brain. Dig out the organs. Bag them, weigh them, dump them 'tween the knees and finish in less time than it takes to dress a rabbit."

"They must miss things."

"Do they ever! But I'm retired. On the sideline."

Arkady declined a friendly glass of vodka rather than blunt his insomnia. The time was 3 a.m. Insomnia was all he was running on.

Willi said, "I've survived two massive heart attacks. I have angina. Blood pressure that could lift a manhole cover. I could keel over from blowing my nose. So I do not rush."

"What do the doctors say?"

"To lose weight. No smoking or drinking. And avoid excitement. Sex? I haven't seen my dick in years. Some days I can't even find it. Maybe you'd prefer a sparkling wine? I have some cooling in a drawer."

"No, thanks. So you really have moved in? You squared this with the director?"

"The director is a pompous ass but not a bad guy at heart. He found me a spare utility room with a sofa. I'm not supposed to operate anymore because if I expired in the middle of an autopsy, that might lend the impression that the director was not running a tight ship. You not only want me to perform an autopsy, you want it right away." Willi wiped his chin. "My doctors wanted to restrict me to my apartment. Why? To lead the life of a vegetable? Sit alone and watch idiots on television until I expire? No, this is a better solution. Here I still help out with odds and ends. Stay in the social mix. Friends come by, some of them alive, some of them dead, and when I drop there will be no need for an ambulance because I'll be right here."

"That should be appreciated."

"They tore down my building to make room for a spa. They think they're going to live forever. Are they in for a surprise."

There was a queue of sorts. Other tables held a young male so drained of blood he was white as a marble statue, a barbecued torso of undetermined sex and a bloated body with the last laugh, farts that topped off a general atmosphere of spoiled meat and formaldehyde. Arkady lit a cigarette and drew hard enough that the tobacco sparked and still he tasted bile in his throat.

"Listen to him." Willi indicated the flatulent corpse. "He sounds like he's learning the clarinet."

"What are you now, a music critic?"

"If I was caught performing an autopsy-"

"What could they do to you? They've already got you living in a closet. Are they going to give you a dog bowl next? Whatever happened to Dr. Willi Pazenko? Whatever happened to Belmondo?"

"Belmondo," Willi recollected. "You don't know how lucky you are." Willi handed Arkady a rubber apron and surgical gloves. "Our assistants are Tajiks or Uzbeks, and when they take the day off for a wedding, everyone else uses it as an excuse to come to work late. Usually this place is humming. Someday the Tajiks are going to take over. They do all that high steel work. Nimble people. But how would you like to fall a hundred stories? All that time to think on the way down."

Arkady declined a surgical mask; masks got clammy and didn't block the smell. Besides, Willi didn't use one. Back in harness, he was thoroughly in command.

"Are you a virgin?" he asked Arkady.

"I've attended."

"But never got your hands dirty, so to speak?"

"No."

"Always a first time."

The external half of the examination of Olga was a search for identifiable features and signs of trauma: birthmarks, moles, scars, needle tracks, bruises, abrasions, tattoos. Willi filled out a chart and body map as he went.

Arkady's job was simple. He lifted Olga as Willi directed. Shifted, posed, positioned her body while Willi snipped an eyelash and a lock of her hair, dug under her fingernails, swabbed and studied every orifice under a UV lamp. Arkady felt like Quasimodo pawing a sleeping Venus.

When the external part of the examination was over, they broke for a cigarette. Fumo ergo sum, Arkady thought.

Willi said, "Not a bruise or a scratch. You know that we aren't supposed to open them up unless there are signs of violence or strange circumstances."

"Isn't it strange when a young woman is found half naked and dead?"

"Not when she's a prostitute."

"And the clonidine?"

"This is where your theory falls apart. Clonidine makes a good knockout pill, but it's a messy poison; essentially you throw up and choke on your vomit. I examined her windpipe. It was clean. All you need do is look at her face. She didn't die gasping for air; she just closed her eyes and died."

No one just dies, Arkady thought. You can be killed by a bullet or a skip in your heartbeat or a vine that starts winding around you on the day you are born, but no one just dies.

Willi was warming to the subject. "Any way you look at it, death comes down to oxygen or the lack thereof. Sometimes accomplished with an ax, sometimes with a pillow and almost always leaving evidence. Manual strangulation, for example, is so personal, so over-the-top. Lots of anger and bruising and not only of the neck. I mean, murder is murder, but manual strangulation brings out the worst in people."

"Do you think she removed her panties before or after she died?"

"The panties again?"

"They caught Victor's eye too."

"The last time I saw Detective Orlov he was asleep on a bench on the Boulevard Ring in the middle of the day."

"He's dry tonight."

"So he'll screw up tomorrow and take you down with him, as if you needed any help."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me, since when does a senior investigator back up a detective sergeant? Does Prosecutor Zurin know what you're up to?"

"It's Victor's case. I'm just along for the ride."

"If Zurin hears about this you've cut your own throat. Well, you can always be my personal assistant."

"Doing what?"

"In case I drop and anyone tries to resuscitate me, shoot him."

Willi started at Olga's left shoulder, drawing the scalpel under the breast and up to the sternum. He shuffled around the table and made a similar cut from the right shoulder. In one masterly stroke, Willi sliced her from the sternum down, opening her all the way to the tattoo.

She looked aside, deaf to the rattle of hardware on the instrument tray: knives and scalpels of different lengths, forceps, UV flashlight and rotary saw. Willi spread open the soft tissue of her chest and selected a garden pruner with curved blades.

"Maybe I should do this," Arkady said.

"When I want an amateur to touch my work, I'll let you know."

Taking that for a no, Arkady reviewed the chart. Sex: female Name: unknown Residence: unknown Height: 82 cm. Weight: 49 kg. Hair: brown Eyes: blue Estimated Time of Death: by core temperature and start of rigor approximately 2 to 3 hours previous

Her ribs snapped with the sound of green wood cracking Arkady read on. Observations: The deceased was delivered at 0216 dressed in a blue jacket of synthetic material and a white cotton bustier. Two plastic bags arrived with the body. Bag A contained items found on site: a blue denim skirt with decorative stitching and knee-high red boots of faux leather. Underpants were retrieved from an upper bunk in the trailer. Bag B held personal effects that included cosmetics, pepper spray, diaphragm, douche and an aspirin bottle that contained a yellow powder that preliminary toxicological examination has tentatively identified as clonidine, a blood pressure medication sometimes abused as a "knockout" pill.

UV radiation was used to examine the body, jacket and bustier for fingerprints, semen or blood. The result was negative. No bruising, stains or signs of forcible sexual entry. No signs of strangulation either manual or ligature. Bands of pale skin indicated the recent removal of rings from the 3rd, 4th and 5th fingers of the left hand and the 3rd and 4th fingers of the right. The deceased exhibited superficial dirt on her hands and face.

Body in excellent physical condition. Distinguishing marks: tattoo on cusp of left hip. No scars or birthmarks or occupational calluses. No evident lacerations or contusions. No signs of struggle or defensive wounds. No hypodermic needle tracks. No body piercing except earlobes. Material under fingernails was unremarkable.

Willi paused to ask Arkady, "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Arkady was eight years old on his first visit to a morgue. His father took him to toughen him up. Arkady remembered the general slapping a dead man on the ass and declaring, "He served under me in Kursk!" Some men could saunter into a morgue and browse autopsy tables like a garden show. Arkady had never attained such sangfroid. After twenty years as an investigator he was still as embarrassed by an eviscerated body as if he had caught someone undressed.

With the ribs out of the way Willi detached the girl's heart and lungs and put them together, en bloc, into a pail held by Arkady. In other pails went other organs, wet and glistening as strange sea creatures.

Next, up or down? Up it was.

Olga's hair was thick and vigorous, but with a hairbrush and comb Willi created a part from ear to ear, retraced the part with a scalpel and peeled the top half of the face down to the chin from a red skull and startled eyes.

While Willi sawed, Arkady's mind wandered. He thought about vodka, about Victor's limitless thirst and the half-empty bottle found with Olga. A dirty mattress in a workers' wagon didn't seem appealing even for a prostitute. Yet they hadn't run in and out. Olga and her friend had opened a bottle and stayed long enough for one to dope the other. A toast! How do you toast without glasses? Arkady thought about the tattoo's deep colors and distinct lines, the work of a professional, not a prison camp lifer working with an unsterilized needle and paid for in cigarettes. What species was Olga's butterfly? The writer Nabokov had always been enchanted by "blues," a category of butterflies that were small and drab until they flew and then their wings were iridescent.

Willi repaired the damage. He sewed the body together with twine and the scalp together with black sutures although the girl was largely a hollow, her organs set aside in buckets and bowls and her brain deposited in a jar of formalin to harden enough to slice, which would take at least a week. Quite a night for Olga, Arkady thought. First she is killed and then she is rearranged. Maybe cannibals lurked around the corner.

Soaked with perspiration, Willi dropped onto a stool next to the table, two fingers monitoring the pulse in his neck, giving Arkady a few seconds to worry about Zhenya. Was he running with a street gang? Arrested for hustling? Beaten to death by a sore loser? With Zhenya, anxiety was on tap twenty-four hours a day.

Willi shook his head. "Steady as a Swiss watch."

"Do you really want to die in the middle of an autopsy? Why don't you just run around the block?"

"I hate exercise."

Willi poured more alcohol and this time Arkady joined him. It went down smoothly and then set his throat on fire.

"Needs lemon."

Voices came from the hall of body drawers and Willi straightened up. When the sound subsided he asked Arkady, "Is there anything you want to add to the chart? Anything I missed?"

Since pathologists were used to having the final say, Arkady chose his words carefully.

"You mention the dirt under her fingernails but you don't mention that her nails are manicured. Same with her toenails."

"Women paint their nails. Since when is that worth mentioning?"

"Her clothes."

"She dressed like a slut."

"Her outfit was shabby but it was new. The boots were poor quality but they were also new."

"You're thinking far too much about this girl."

"Then there's the lack of bruises and scratches, the wear and tear that a person accumulates from having sex with nasty customers in alleyways and trailers."

Willi blew a smoke ring in Arkady's direction. "Old friend, take it from a man with one foot in the grave, everything is contradictory. Stalin was good then bad then good again. Once I was thin as a reed and now I'm a human globe with a belt as my equator. In any case, don't be distressed over a dead prostitute. There's a new one every day. If she isn't claimed she will make some medical student very happy, and if someone claims her, I'll let you know. This was my last autopsy."

"Too bad it was a failure," Arkady said.

Willi reacted as if slapped. "What do you mean by that?"

"An autopsy is supposed to determine the cause of death. You failed."

"Arkady, I found what was there. I can't manufacture evidence."

"You missed it."

They were interrupted by the arrival of the morgue director and a woman in a black shawl. The director was surprised by the sight of Willi and Arkady but regained enough poise to lead her around the autopsy tables with the smoothness of a maitre d'. She strode. She was one of those women who seemed to have been bronzed at her peak, forty going on thirty, in dark glasses and shadowy silk. She gave Willi and Arkady no more than a glance.

The director led her to the table of the suicide and after a sympathetic cough asked if she could identify the body.

The woman said, "This is Sergei Petrovich Borodin. My son."

Even drained of color, Sergei Borodin was handsome, with longish hair that still seemed damp from the bath. He was about twenty years old, lean through the chest and muscular from the waist down. His mother's emotion was hidden by her dark glasses but Arkady assumed grief was involved. She took her dead boy's hand and turned his wrist to a decisive slash.

Meanwhile the director explained the cost of generating a death certificate for a bathroom fall. The paramedics who found the body would have to change their reports. They would expect to be rewarded. In the meantime the morgue was willing to store the body for a fee.

"To rent a drawer?"

"A refrigerated drawer that size…"

"Of course. Go on."

"In these circumstances I would suggest a generous donation to the church for a service in his name and a Christian burial."

"Is that it?"

"And your son's certificate of residence."

"He had no certificate of residence. He was a dancer. He stayed with friends and other artists."

"Even artists must obey the law. I'm sorry, there will be a fine."

She turned her son's wrist to the director. "I won't make a fuss if you sew this."

He was eager to redeem himself. "It's no problem. Is there anything else we can do?"

"Burn him."

The director paused. "Cremate him? We don't do that here."

"Then arrange it."

Like a thunderclap, Willi sneezed. The woman's attention snapped to him and then to Arkady. She removed her dark glasses to see better and her dry eyes were more naked than anything else in the room. Then at full speed she was gone, the director at her heels.

"I'm sorry," Arkady said. "I'm afraid I put you in a bad spot."

"The hell with it. I hate sleeping on a sofa." Willi was in surprisingly high spirits.

"And, besides your heart problems, now you have a cold?"

"No. Something tickled my nose. Something penetrated this atmosphere of putrefaction and formaldehyde. A trained nose is important. Every schoolboy should recognize the smell of garlic for arsenic and almonds for cyanide. Hand me the lungs. Let's discover what your lady friend last breathed."

Arkady transferred from pail to tray the girl's heart and lungs still attached, a fist of muscle between two spongy loaves. He smelled nothing that penetrated the usual miasma until Willi sliced the left lung and released a sweet whiff.

"Ether."

"Ether exactly," Willi agreed. "It's taking a while to dissipate because she didn't breathe again. So it was in two stages: clonidine to knock her out and ether to anesthetize and kill her, all without a struggle. Congratulations, you have a murder."

Arkady's cell phone chimed twice only, and by the time he freed himself from the autopsy apron and dug the phone out of a pocket, he had missed a call from Zhenya, the first communication from the boy in a week. Arkady immediately returned the call but Zhenya didn't answer, which struck Arkady as a fair example of their relationship.

Or that whatever Zhenya had called about was fleeting and unimportant.