"He must have bled to death," the redheaded cop surmised.
"Don't think so," Dr. Allen said.
"Bet he drowned," said the other cop.
"No, sir," said Dr. Allen, who was probing into the lungs by now. Dr. Allen wasn't crazy about people gawking over his shoulder while he worked. It made him feel like he was performing onstage, a magician pulling little purple treasures out of a dark hole. He didn't mind having medical students as observers because they were always so solemn during an autopsy. Cops were something else; one dumb joke after another. Dr. Allen had never figured out why cops get so silly in a morgue.
"What's that greasy stuff all over his skin?" asked the redheaded detective.
"Essence of Stiff," said the other cop.
"Smells like coconuts," said the redhead. "I'm serious, Doc, take a whiff."
"No, thank you," Dr. Allen said curtly.
"I don't smell anything," said the assistant coroner, "except the deceased."
"It's coconut, definitely," said the other cop, sniffing. "Maybe he drowned in pina colada."
Nobody could have guessed what actually had killed Sparky Harper. It was supple and green and exactly five and one-quarter inches long. Dr. Allen found it lodged in the trachea. At first he thought it was a large chunk of food, but it wasn't.
It was a toy rubber alligator. It had cost seventy-nine cents at a tourist shop along the Tamiami Trail. The price tag was still glued to its corrugated tail.
B. D. "Sparky" Harper, the president of the most powerful chamber of commerce in all Florida, had choked to death on a rubber alligator. Well, well, thought Dr. Allen as he dangled the prize for his proteges to see, here's one for my slide show at next month's convention.
News of B. D. Harper's death appeared on the front page of the Miami Sunwith a retouched photograph that made Harper look like a flatulent Gene Hackman. Details of the crime were meager, but this much was known:
Harper had last been seen on the night of November 30, driving away from Joe's Stone Crab restaurant on South Miami Beach. He had told friends he was going to the Fontainebleau Hilton for drinks with some convention organizers from the International Elks.
Harper had not been wearing a Jimmy Buffett shirt and Bermuda shorts, but in fact had been dressed in a powder-blue double-knit suit purchased at J. C. Penney's.
He had not appeared drunk.
He had not worn black wraparound sunglasses.
He had not been lugging a red Samsonite.
He had not displayed a toy rubber alligator all evening.
In the newspaper story a chief detective was quoted as saying, "This one's a real whodunit," which is what the detective was told to say whenever a reporter called.
In this instance the reporter was Ricky Bloodworth.
Bloodworth wore that pale, obsessive look of ambition so familiar to big-city newsrooms. He was short and bony, with curly black hair and a squirrel-like face frequently speckled with late-blooming acne. He was frenetic to a fault, dashing from phone to typewriter to copy desk in a blur—yet he was different from most of his colleagues. Ricky Bloodworth wanted to be much more than just a reporter; he wanted to be an authentic character.He tried, at various times, panama hats, silken vests, a black eyepatch, saddle shoes, a Vandyke—nobody ever noticed. He even experimented with Turkish cigarettes (thinking it debonair) and wound up on a respirator at Mercy Hospital. Even those who disliked Bloodworth, and they were many, felt sorry for him; the poor guy wanted a quirk in the worst way. But, stylistically, the best he could do was to drum pencils and suck down incredible amounts of 7-Up. It wasn't much, but it made him feel like he was contributing something to the newsroom's energy bank.
Ricky Bloodworth thought he'd done a respectable job on the first Sparky Harper story (given the deadlines), but now, on the morning of December 2, he was ready to roll. Harper's ex-wives had to be found and interviewed, his coworkers had to be quizzed, and an array of semi-bereaved civic leaders stood ready to offer their thoughts on the heinous crime.
But Dr. Allen came first. Ricky Bloodworth knew the phone number of the coroner's office by heart; memorizing it was one of the first things he'd done after joining the paper.
When Dr. Allen got on the line, Bloodworth asked, "What's your theory, Doc?"
"Somebody tied up Sparky and made him swallow a rubber alligator," the coroner said.
"Cause of death?"
"Asphyxiation."
"How do you know he didn't swallow it on purpose?"
"Did he cut off his own legs, too?"
"You never know," Bloodworth said. "Maybe it started out as some kinky sex thing. Or maybe it was voodoo, all these Haitians we got now. Or santeria."
"Sparky was a Baptist, and the police are calling it a homicide."
"They've been wrong before."
Ricky Bloodworth was not one of Dr. Allen's favorite newspaper reporters. Dr. Allen regarded him as charmless and arrogant. There had been times, when the prospect of a frontpage story loomed, that Dr. Allen could have sworn he saw flecks of foam on Bloodworth's lips.
Now the coroner listened to Bloodworth's typing on the end of the phone line, and wondered how badly his quotes were being mangled.
"Ricky," he said impatiently. "The victim's wrists showed ligature marks—"
"Any ten-year-old can tie himself up."
"And stuff himself in a suitcase?"
The typing got faster.
"The victim was already deceased when he was placed in the suitcase," Dr. Allen said. "Is there anything else?"
"What about the oil? One of the cops said the body was coated with oil."
"Not oil," Dr. Allen said. "A combination of benzophenone, stearic acids, and lanolin."
"What's that?"
"Suntan lotion," the coroner said. "With coconut butter."
Ricky Bloodworth was hammering away on his video terminal when he sensed a presence behind him. He turned slightly, and caught sight of Skip Wiley's bobbing face. Even with a two-day stubble it was a striking visage: long, brown, and rugged-looking; a genetic marvel, every feature plagiarized from disparate ancestors. The cheekbones were high and sculptured, the nose pencil-straight but rather long and flat, the mouth upturned with little commas on each cheek, and the eyes disarming—small and keen, the color of strong coffee; full of mirth and something else. Skip Wiley was thirty-seven years old but he had the eyes of an old Gypsy.
It made Bloodworth abnormally edgy and insecure when Skip Wiley read over his shoulder. Wiley wrote a daily column for the Sunand probably was the best-known journalist in Miami. Undeniably he was a gifted writer, but around the newsroom he was regarded as a strange and unpredictable character. Wiley's behavior had lately become so odd that younger reporters who once sought his counsel were now fearful of his ravings, and they avoided him.
"Coconut butter?" Wiley said gleefully. "And no legs!"
"Skip, please."
Wiley rolled up a chair. "I think you should lead with the coconut butter."
Bloodworth felt his hands go damp.
Wiley said, "This is awful, Ricky: 'Friends and colleagues of B. D. Harper expressed grief and outrage Tuesday ... ' Jesus Christ, who cares? Give them coconut oil!"
"It's a second-day lead, Skip—"
"Here we go again, Mr. Journalism School." Wiley was gnawing his lower lip, a habit manifested only when he composed a news story. "You got some good details in here. The red Royal Tourister. The black Ray-Bans. That's good, Ricky. Why don't you toss out the rest of this shit and move the juicy stuff up top? Do your readers a favor, for once. Don't make 'em go on a scavenger hunt for the goodies."
Bloodworth was getting queasy. He wanted to defend himself, but it was lunacy to argue with Wiley.
"Maybe later, Skip. Right now I'm jammed up for the first edition."
Wiley jabbed a pencil at the video screen, which displayed Bloodworth's story in luminous green text. "Brutal?That's not the adjective you want. When I think of brutal I think of chain saws, ice picks, ax handles. Not rubber alligators. No, that's mysterious,wouldn't you say?"