I didn’t say anything to that. As we came over the crest of a last fetid hill, he eased off the gas. About a hundred yards ahead of us was a huddle of official-looking vehicles: two black and green patrol cars, a ridiculously conspicuous unmarked police car, a city ambulance, a bulldozer, and a few Department of Sanitation vehicles. There was another car parked there too, one that was foreign to me: a black or dark brown station wagon with blackened back windows.
“What’s that car there?” I asked.
“The meat wagon,” he answered as if those two words explained it all. I suppose they did. The Galaxie came to a stop. “Listen, Moe. The first time is a little rough. It’s rougher when it’s someone you know. You sure you wanna do this?”
Of course, this wasn’t my first time. There was Billy O’Day and Abdul Salaam. “No, but I’m gonna do it anyway,” is what I said. “You didn’t drive me all the way here to have me sit in the car.”
“This kid, Lids. He’s not my case, you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t my crime scene either. After we spoke the other night, I put the word out on your friend and I got a call this morning. These guys called me as a courtesy. The detectives will want you to take a look before they contact his parents.”
“Okay.”
“You listen to what the detectives tell you. Your friend, he’s in pretty rough shape. That’s what they told me over the phone. You understand what that means?”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.”
When I opened the door, I got smacked full in the face with that rotting garbage smell. The odor was acrid and sour and sickly sweet all at once. It was burnt rubber and curdled milk and rotted vegetables and decayed flesh blended together. And it was worse than just a smell. It hung heavy in the air like a film, tainting my exposed skin, my clothes, my lungs. I could taste it too. It was meat spoiling on my tongue, maggots and beetles sliding down my throat as I swallowed. I didn’t make it five feet before I bent over at the waist and heaved up my breakfast. Man, was I happy I’d only had toast. Looking up, I noticed a group of older men — some in uniforms, some not — having a good laugh at my expense.
“Don’t sweat it, kid,” one of them said. “Welcome to the club.”
Then, having had their laughs, the old men turned back around to whatever was the focus of their attention. It wasn’t hard to guess what that was. Detective Casey stood me upright, urging me forward. Above our heads, set against a steel gray sky, swirling gyres of feathered scavengers chirped and cawed and wailed, raining stained white streaks of feces down on the piles of garbage below. What from a distance looked so poetic, so much like an aerial ballet, was raw and feral, a thing much more menacing and desperate from where I now stood. Nature red in tooth and claw. I think I finally understood what that meant.
I walked up just behind the line of uniforms. Casey stopped me, asking me one more time if I was ready for this. I wanted to ask him if anybody was really ready for this. Was he? How could anyone be ready for this? Some people were. Some people had to be.
“Malone,” Casey called out.
“That you, Casey?” a voice asked from beyond the line of uniforms.
“Yeah.”
“Hold your water, I’m comin’.”
A few seconds later the line of uniforms parted, and through them stepped a rotund, bald man in a cheap, ill-fitting overcoat. He couldn’t have closed the buttons on that thing for all the money in the world. He was smoking the shit out of a cigar that wiggled like a hula dancer when he moved his lips. Never in my life had I so welcomed the smell of cigar smoke.
“You Casey?” Malone asked, holding his hand out to the man who brought me. He jerked his head at me and spoke as if I wasn’t there. “This the friend?”
Casey nodded yes, shaking Malone’s hand.
“Over here, kid,” Malone said, tugging me by the arm. We climbed up a low mound of churned up garbage. “He don’t look so good, your friend.”
“I know, Detective Casey warned me.”
“Look out, Phil,” Malone barked at his partner standing over the body. “The vic’s friend is here.”
Malone walked me over to where the other detective had been standing. The body was nude and the colored parts of his eyes had gone kind of milky white. His skin was a waxy gray-white in most places, but it was battered and bruised in others. There was a really nasty ring of bruises around his neck. Jagged spikes of broken bones jutted out through the skin of his left thigh and right arm.
Malone seemed to anticipate my question. “The bones stickin’ out like that probably happened after he was dead. They found him when the bulldozer was pilin’ up the garbage. We think it was the bulldozer that done the damage to him like that.”
“But not the bruises?”
“No, kid. The murderer done that.”
I was okay until a bug crawled out of one of the body’s nostrils into the other. After that things got hazy there for a second and my knees got rubbery. I felt arms holding me up.
“Easy, kid, easy.”
“It’s not him,” I said. “He’s the right height and age and everything. His hair’s the right color, but it’s not him.”
“It’s not who?” the other detective, Phil, shouted at Malone.
I shouted back. “It’s not Lids. It’s not my friend.”
“You sure about that, kid?” Malone asked. “Fifteen seconds ago you was so lightheaded I thought you was gonna take a dive. Take another look to be sure.”
Even though I knew it wasn’t Lids, I looked again. “Sorry, Detective Malone. It’s not him.”
Phil wasn’t happy. “Ah, shit! Just what we needed, another John fucking Doe.”
“Okay, kid,” Malone said. “Thanks. You done yourself proud. You can get outta here now.”
The line of uniforms stared at me in anticipation as I walked back toward them. I just shook my head. While they didn’t seem disappointed, they didn’t seem pleased either.
“It’s not him, Detective,” I said to Casey.
Casey didn’t ask me if I was sure. “Let’s split. I swear if I have to breathe this stuff in another minute, I’m gonna throw up everything I ate since I was ten years old.”
I was all for leaving. I was relieved to be getting away from the stench and away from the birds. I was relieved that the body wasn’t Lids. I was relieved, sure, but I wasn’t exactly happy, either. Whoever John Doe was, he had a family too. Somewhere they were worrying themselves sick, and someday only grief would end their worry. And then I had a sadder thought: What if his family didn’t care? What if there was no one to worry about him? I think I learned more about life in those few minutes in the Fountain Avenue dump than I had during the rest of my time on earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I knew I had to get in to see Bobby, but the first thing I did was go home and take a hot, soapy shower. And even though I got the film and smell off me, I couldn’t get it out of me. I brushed my teeth so long I was in danger of wearing away the enamel. I dipped a Q-tip in a Dixie cup of Aqua Velva and stuck it up my nostrils. It stung like hell and it proved to be a waste of time. The sting lasted longer than the relief and when the alcohol evaporated the stink of the dump filled up my head once again. I would’ve burned my clothes in the building’s incinerator if I could have afforded to. Instead I gave my mom my clothes to wash.
“I just washed these,” she yelled, shaking them at me. “They’re fine.” I thought she was going to puke when she put them to her nose to prove me wrong. She didn’t yell at me after that.
When it came to my Converse All-Stars and my pea coat, I didn’t have many options. Hell, they smelled even worse than the rest of my clothes. Even if I’d been willing to hold my nose and put them back on, there was no way they’d let me in to see Bobby, smelling like the Fountain Avenue dump. So I did what any red-blooded American male would’ve done in my situation — I stole from my brother.
Although he was slimmer than me, we both had monkey arms and I could usually squeeze myself into things like Aaron’s sports jackets, coats, and sweaters. We did wear the same shoe size, at least. The thing was, Aaron treated all of his possessions with the same sort of obsessive care with which he treated his car. Whereas my sneakers looked like they’d been robbed off the feet of a Bowery bum, Aaron’s looked new out of the box. In fact, he kept them in the box with the tissue paper still stuffed inside. And when it came to his coats, Aaron stored them in his closet in the cleaners’ plastic bags. I didn’t figure he would kill me for “borrowing” his sneakers. They only cost eight bucks. It was his shearling jacket that worried me. That jacket was his most prized piece of clothing, which, when it came to my brother, was really saying something. There would be no forgiving me if I somehow messed it up. Thank goodness Aaron was still at his girlfriend’s house, or I would have had to go to the hospital in a bundle of sweaters and my silly dress shoes. As it was, Miriam nearly sounded the alarm when I snuck out the front door past my mom and dad.