The opened body seemed less human than the ones upstairs. It was a carcass with no face, or a face without features, a store mannequin. Ryan stared at the man’s head and realized he was looking at the bare skull. The skin and hair had been peeled, pulled down, and lay inside-up over the man’s face. That’s why he seemed featureless. The attendant with the power saw had been cutting into the man’s skull. He removed a wedge-shaped section. The brain was exposed for a few moments before the attendant pulled it out of the skull and placed it on the autopsy table.
“Who is it?”
“See,” Dick Speed said, “the medical examiner, if he’s got any doubt at all what killed the guy, he takes samples from the stomach, the liver, drains out some pee-pee, takes a piece of the brain-where you going?”
Ryan went down the steps and over to the foot of the tray table, not looking at the man’s open body, keeping his gaze down and seeing only the yellowed, slightly bent legs and the bare feet pointing at him, like the man was stretching them out and in a moment the feet would relax to a normal position. Ryan didn’t want to touch him. He was careful reaching for the tag and turning it over to read the words written in blue ink.
Unknown Man No. 89.
Behind him, Dick Speed said, “Now positively identified by his prints as Robert Leary, Jr., age thirty-five. Also known as Bobby Lear.”
“You know who it is,” Ryan said. “How come the number?”
“Before we know who it is, we got to call him something.”
Ryan, staring at the tag, let his gaze move up the yellowed legs, past the man’s darker-shaded organ and thick pubic hair to the violent red opening. The assistant was doing something, scooping Robert Leary’s stomach and internal organs into a clear plastic bag. He dropped the bag into the open cavity, working it in to make it fit, and laid the slab of ribs on top.
Unknown Man No. 89.
He might as well keep that, Ryan was thinking. He wasn’t worth anything as Robert Leary, Jr. Not to anybody.
“Found dead at the Montcalm Hotel,” Ryan said.
“Room 312,” Dick Speed said. “You were getting close, weren’t you? How’d you find out?”
“His wife. Turns out she’s the wine drinker with the blond hair.”
“Where’s she live?” Ryan told him, and Dick Speed said, “We’ll have to get hold of her for the disposition. Not to mention asking a few questions.”
“She was in the bag last night,” Ryan said. “She didn’t want to see him, have anything to do with him.”
“That’s something in itself, isn’t it?” Speed said. “Married to the guy, but doesn’t want to see him. So maybe she gets somebody else to see him.”
Ryan watched the autopsy assistant lacing Robert Leary together, using a hook and what looked like heavy cord.
“How was he killed?”
“With a shotgun. Dead center, twice. Also, yesterday evening out in Pontiac,” Speed said, “you remember the faggy-looking guy was with Tunafish? At the methadone clinic. Lonnie, the drug snitch with the hair and the shoes. Same thing, with a shotgun. Twice.”
“So you think it’s the same guy.”
“I’d bet on it,” Speed said. “Get a match of the buckshot, the gauge, we’ll know.”
The autopsy assistant was at the opposite end of the tray table now. He replaced the skull section and-as Ryan watched-carefully pulled the hair and scalp up over the skull, revealing the face a little at a time, a man appearing, features forming, as though the assistant were fitting the lifeless skull with a Robert Leary mask.
Ryan stared at the face, the mustache, the closed eyes, the round cap of coarse black hair.
He said, “Jesus… look. The guy’s black.”
“He’s black all right,” Speed said. “That’s what colored guys are, they’re black.”
“Jesus,” Ryan said.
“You didn’t know that? You’re looking for a guy, you don’t know what color he is?”
“I don’t know why,” Ryan said. “I guess I should’ve, the people he hung around with, at least some of them. But the thing is-you see, his wife is white.”
Dick Speed waited. “Yeah?”
“I mean she’s white.”
“You mean very white, uh?” Dick Speed said. “Is that it?”
Ryan wasn’t sure what he meant.
It was nearly ten by the time he got to her apartment, with the vitamins and the milk and stuff. He’d see how she was, talk to her, and then give Dick a call.
The place was really bad. The hallway dingy with dirt and soot, the linoleum worn out, peeling. He knocked on her door twice and waited, listening in the silence. She was probably still asleep. He hoped so, as he turned the knob quietly and walked in.
The daybed was empty. The bathroom door was open. The light was still on in the kitchenette.
Denise Leann Leary was gone.
10
“SNOWING,” MR. PEREZ SAID. “Nearly the middle of April, it’s still snowing.”
“It’s just flurries,” Ryan said. “That kind of snow, it doesn’t stick to the ground at all. It’s a wet snow.”
“I remember, coming in from the airport there was still some snow, very dirty-looking snow, patches of it along the highway, with all the rain you’ve had.” Mr. Perez stood in the alcove of the floor-to-ceiling window looking out at the gray mass of sky and the light snow swirling in the wind. “You certainly have a long winter,” he said.
“Or you can look at it as kind of an asshole spring,” Ryan said. He didn’t believe it-sitting here talking about the weather. “It’s great for the skiers, though. Up north, I heard on the radio, they’ve still got a fifteen- to twenty-inch base,” Ryan said-if the guy really wanted to talk about it.
Maybe he was finished. Mr. Perez came away from the window and sank into his favorite chair-the Spanish governor of a colony, member of an old, titled family, who’d been sent out here and was pissed off about it, but kept it locked up inside. Ryan was here to give his report.
He was sitting on the couch this time instead of a straight chair, figuring they would have quite a bit to discuss. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. Near the door was a room-service table pushed out of the way. So Mr. Perez had eaten his noon dinner. Everything on the menu, it looked like, the way the table was cluttered with dishes, empty wineglasses, those silver dish covers and messed-up napkins. The man had a noon dinner, he had a dinner. He still seemed too skinny to be a big eater. Or else the white shirt, the collar, was a couple sizes too large.
“You find out he’s colored,” Mr. Perez said. “How does that change anything?”
“Didn’t you think he was white?”
Mr. Perez nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did, judging from his name. It wasn’t Amos Washington or…Thurgood Marshall, one of those. But now Mr. Leary’s deceased and we know he has a wife.
What’s her name?”
“Denise. Denise Leann. But she goes by Lee.”
“And you talked to her.”
“Yeah, but not knowing, as I mentioned, she was his wife. The way I got it, she was like an ex-girlfriend.”
“An ex-something, huh? Well, now we contact the wife, who we’ll presume is his legal heir, and deal with her. You say she’s gone. But she doesn’t have any reason to hide, does she?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And you know what she looks like.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you shouldn’t have any trouble locating her. Do you see a problem?”
“There’s a couple of things,” Ryan said. “More than a couple. Something I didn’t tell you. He’s black, but the wife, Lee, is white.”
“Up here, I’m not too surprised,” Mr. Perez said.
“The other thing, she’s an alcoholic.”
Mr. Perez thought about that a moment.
“I like alcoholics. I’ve had a few. They’re very easy to deal with, very cooperative. What kind of an alcoholic is she?”
“What do you mean, what kind? What does she drink?”