Hiding Among the Dead

by Chris Bauer

  “The timeline all fits, the door left open, you and I in the house downstairs, busy reviewing the scene, not knowing if anyone else wandered in…”

  “Yeah, sure, I agree, all plausible, but who’s corroborating it?”

  “Me.”

  Philo blinked hard at her, speechless.

  “Don’t act so surprised, Mr. Trout. It could have happened just the way he said it did.”Her close-talker persona returned, staring him down again from her disadvantaged height, like when they’d first met, but this time it was so he’d hear her speaking in a lower voice. “Although we know it didn’t. How did this evidence get in the house? A question for another day. Something we want to ask him, but without an attorney present.”

  “The attorney never showed. Why not ask him today?”

  “Yes and no. He did show, just had trouble getting past the desk sergeant. Seems whatever held him up got straightened out soon as you guys left, out the back door. What are the chances of that timing? Pretty wild, right?”

  What was he hearing? Something bigger going on here? “Right. Wild.”

  “They want Mr. Stakes back, Trout. They need to know when he left that evidence, and under what circumstances. Someone from the Sixth will call to arrange it.”

  No shit. The cops had decided the cannibalism claim was a setup, with Patrick the mark.

  “One more thing. No one needs to know about my text to you. Someone might think it was to give Mr. Stakes a heads-up so he could prepare for the interrogation, know what I mean?”

  26

  Front and center in the Blessids’ living room, Grace was in a hospital bed, a red and white Phillies bandana tied around her head.

  “Why—the FUCK—didn’t you tell me, Philo?”

  Between her gulps of oxygen and the fire she was breathing, Philo worried her face might ignite.

  Patrick tried to take the bullet. “Ma’am, it’s my fault, see—”

  “Quiet, Patrick, I’ll get to you in a minute. But you, Philo…”

  She took chest-size swallows of air from the tank through a plastic mask. After three or four tokes she ripped the mask away from her mouth, still fuming, then lifted the cannula tubing up from her neck and reinserted it in her nostrils like she was going to snort it whole.

  “I thought we had a good thing going here, Philo. A decent, respectful working arrangement. And now (cough) you’ve got Patrick (cough) lying to the cops?”

  “But it was just a white lie, ma’am,” Patrick said.

  “Patrick, QUIET!”

  Grace coughed and sputtered, her face a throbbing, deepening shade of purple; Hank found a bottle of water for her. She grabbed it, sucked some of it down, then tossed the bottle back at her husband. “I want to hear from you, Philo, now.”

  “Then you need to calm down, Grace, otherwise, we’re not talking.”

  “Philo, goddamn it!” Grace’s ample chest inflated to the max then slowed its heaving when she didn’t get her way, her breathing settling into a low wheeze, then a controlled purr, then eventually approached normal; the flush in her cheeks subsided. While she calmed, Philo grabbed an armchair and sat.

  He explained. “What went on with the police—what Patrick told them—it was the only way, Grace.”

  “Pardon me for fucking up your victory lap with the cops, Philo, but that’s just bullshit.” The cannula tubing was out of her nose again, followed by an oxygen mask munch. “Patrick doesn’t—need (cough)—to lie. He never went near that place!”

  “Grace, chill, honey,” Hank pleaded. “You’ll stroke out.”

  “Shut up, Hank!”

  No one moved. She continued to fight for air, gulping, wheezing, more gulping, repeat, until, finally, she was purring again.

  Philo waited her out, her calm returning. Her struggle for breath subsided, her air intake normalized. He’d need to drop the bomb now.

  “The problem, Grace, sorry to say, is that he did go near that place. Sometime after the slaughter and before the police arrived. He compromised the crime scene, and the cops found out about it. That’s why they were interested in him. Except now, after he provided them with an explanation, it looks like they aren’t. At least not as a suspect. Crisis averted.”

  Philo launched into it, confessed everything he and Patrick had kept from them, the reason for Patrick’s trespass, the fingerprints, the woman he saw, his sleepwalking, the white lie. Grace, nearing tears now at the revelations, dropped back against her pillow, pissed and exhausted.

  “You should have trusted me, Philo, damn it,” she said.

  “It was never a question of trust, Grace, it was a question of how you’d react, and your condition; your temper.”

  “All right, fine, I get it, but don’t pull that shit again. Now that we sold the business, Patrick’s all we’ve got, right, Hank, honey?”

  “Yes, sweetie, yes. Try to relax.”

  She started to drift off then rallied. Her eyes heavy-lidded, she reached for Patrick, patted his hand. “So you sleepwalk, Patrick?”

  “Yes, ma’am, sometimes. Maybe. Not much. A little.”

  “I never knew.” Done with him, she suggested he go back to his place. After he left, she swiveled her head. “Philo.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Something about the cop interrogation doesn’t sound right.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can’t put one past you, can we, ma’am?”

  She held out against her exhaustion, listened as Philo explained his take on Patrick’s visit with the police, that Detective Ibáñez hinted the cops believed the crime scene was a setup, an attempt at redirecting attention from what these doctors were doing to get body parts for the black market. Which made the next discussion Philo needed to have with her as duplicitous as it would be difficult. And to top it off, Philo would need to shade the truth with her yet again because Wally Lanakai had gotten back to him. There was a plan, but she’d hear nothing about Wally’s part in it, or the bare-knuckles fight, scheduled for three Saturdays from now.

  Instead she heard about regional military organ transplant lists, and how a military medical tribunal had reviewed her records. How she’d been found acceptable as a transplant recipient sponsored by navy veteran Philo, and sooner rather than later because of her dire condition, and about how they’d work toward making it happen when an acceptable donor became available.

  “In other words,” she said, “we’re waiting for someone to die. An organ donor who is a veteran.”

  “Won’t work any other way, Grace.”

  “Hank, doll,” she reached over, patted her husband’s hand, “you get with Philo and ask all the appropriate questions for me. I need a nap.”

  “Will do, honey.”

  “And Philo?”

  “Yes, Grace?”

  “You better not be fucking with me. If I find out anything’s funny about this, I promise I’ll wake the fuck up on the operating table and walk out before I let the transplants happen.”

  She nodded off. Hank covered her with a blanket, resettled her bandana and kissed her on the cheek, lingering close to her a moment, watching her sleep.

  Philo could see this more clearly now; Hank would be no trouble when he told him the truth. He thumbed Hank in the direction of the door. “We need to talk.”

  Hank heard the parts that were real and the parts that had been bullshit. Regardless of the inauthenticity, the scam became an easy sell. Hank wanted her to get relief, wanted, needed her to live, and he didn’t care how. Philo answered his questions.

  “What is this ‘regional military transplant list’?”

  The list was bullshit. There was no such thing.

  “Her records were reviewed by a military medical tribunal?”

  Nope. No such tribunal.

  “The lungs will come from where, then?”

  The black market. Or “red market,” if the name made Hank feel any better, which was what journalists had coined as an identifier for economic transactions related to the human
body. Black market or red, Hank said he flat-out didn’t care.

  “There could be no leap-frogging other deserving recipients on a list. This is important to Grace.”

  True fact, there wouldn’t be, considering there was only one potential recipient on this particular list: Grace.

  “We’ll need a doctor’s name, his credentials, and we’ll need to meet him.”

  A name and creds were doable. Arranging a meeting would be a little dicey. Philo would get on that.

  “Where would the surgery be?”

  A sterile operating theater inside a TBD urgent care facility, somewhere in Center City. The facility would be fully equipped, including a heart-lung machine; that was the promise. They wouldn’t know the location until the last minute. She might need to go to where the donor was for the organ hand-off rather than the reverse.

  “Any guess how soon two lungs would be available?”

  A quid-pro-quo deal was in progress. Its consummation would be after Philo provided a certain reciprocating service. Three weeks at the earliest, pending someone dying.

  “Cost?”

  A bartered transaction. Zip, zero, not one fucking dime, from them or from Philo. Her health insurance would need to cover her aftercare.

  Philo opened up. “You guys have been troopers during this transition, Hank, especially Grace, ignoring how ornery she can get. I owe her, and I owe you.”

  The front door to the house whooshed open and closed, the home health aide letting herself into the vestibule. Hank and Philo needed to close out the discussion. He ushered Philo into the kitchen. “Tell me about this ‘bartered transaction.’”

  Philo decided a little truth wouldn’t hurt. “Ever hear of Philo Beddoe, fictional movie character?”

  “Can’t place him. Maybe.”

  “Look him up. Bare-knuckles boxing. Clint Eastwood character. In three weeks that will be me, earning some extra cash the same way. The organs were tossed in to make me close the deal.”

  “Tossed in? What the hell, Philo, this needs to be real. No screwing around here. It needs to be professionally done, with real doctors, and nurses, and in a safe environment. This is my Grace we’re talking about.”

  “It will be, Hank. This red market activity goes on every day, whether we like it or not. So the question is, can you sell this arrangement to her?”

  Hank watched the aide enter the living room. They heard her rouse Grace from her nap to have her take some meds, also heard Grace fight through the agony of simply trying to catch a breath.

  “Yes,” Hank said. “Fuckin’-a, I can sell it.”

  27

  Patrick got the call from the Sixth District detectives when he and Philo were heading to a small job, an apartment over a store in Philadelphia’s Glenwood section, within walking distance of Frazier’s Gym and Hump’s neighborhood. Patrick ended the detective’s call with “Sure, sir. After work today. Bye.”

  In the van were Patrick and Philo only, Hank taking a breather, Grace taking a breather also, but in her case a poor choice of words. Miñoso was to be a late addition, Hump to send him along to the apartment address. The job was a crime scene cleanout after a decomp had already been removed. They arrived at a detached building with a shuttered bodega on the first floor, the building in a horrible state of disrepair. The job would be a slam dunk, four or five hours tops.

  The van idled. “This new visit with the detectives, you’ll need to tell them everything, Patrick, so they can piece things together. They’re trying to build a case.”

  “I know, sir. No white lie, sir. The truth, sir.” In particular, the truth about the call luring him to the Elfreth’s Alley house, plus the burner phone number it came from; about the body in the hot tub, and the woman—“the airplane lady”—who entered the house before him.

  The police wouldn’t have him retract his other statement; it gave him a cop-corroborated reason for his prints being there. For them, what Patrick would offer would be new territory. Leads they could run down, to help move the case in the direction it needed to go: illegal organ harvesting and trafficking, not roving cannibalism.

  An Asian woman left a storefront across the street from where they parked and met them out front of the bodega. “I call you. I am landlord. Follow me.”

  The second-floor apartment had a first-floor entrance facing the street, a single door next to the bodega storefront. The door opened to a narrow stairway; she filled them in on their way up the steps.

  “One body found in kitchen. Cops take him away Monday, won’t clean up, say not their problem, give me your name. How long dead, don’t know. He was new tenant, three weeks only. Tây ban nha,” she said, paused, caught herself. “How you say, was Spanish. No, Latino. Nice man. Not like crazy man other tenant who had gun. Crazy man left fast, no pay rent.” At the top of the stairs she waved her hand in front of her nose. “Place stinks. Dead body. Horrible.” Inside the upstairs door, she flipped a switch for the lights.

  The apartment was filled with cheap, trash-day-confiscated furniture sitting on throw rugs atop worn wooden floors. In the kitchenette, a fridge, a hotplate, a microwave, and a small table and chairs.

  “Leave appliances, clean everything else out, take it away. Another new tenant moving into apartment next week.” She threw her hands up. “No time for this. Send me bill. Bye.” After she about-faced, she retraced her steps downstairs and out the front door.

  Philo walked the apartment. A sitting room, kitchenette, and bedroom, five hundred square feet plus or minus. Torn couch, a listing futon in the bedroom. Broom clean except for a few dead roaches. Peeling wallpaper, with water stains on the ceiling in the small parlor, the room damp with a mold smell, plus the death odor, maybe more. Patrick produced his phone in the sitting room and started taking snapshots, for “before” and “after” job validation. Philo stood in front of the kitchenette, absorbing the scene.

  Blood stains covered the linoleum floor behind the kitchen table, between the table and the white refrigerator. There was a blood splat on the fridge itself, against the top door, the one for the freezer, a puncture there too, the blood dripping south, all the way to the floor. He opened the refrigerator door. No exit hole on the inside. With the door closed he shined a flashlight inside the puncture. Gray matter clung to the jagged edge. No slug fragment in there, far as he could tell.

  On the hotplate sat a small pot with a handle, food caked inside. Near the edge of the kitchen table was a lone cereal bowl. In it, a porridge, maybe oatmeal, hardened, some of its tan color retained, but now it was mostly black. A spoon jutted from the bowl’s center, anchored in the brick-like mixture like a sword in a stone.

  For Philo, a memory trigger from the other side of the world. An unattended bowl and spoon; the blood-spattered carnage of an Afghan family he’d helped extinguish. His heart pounded, his head sweeping side to side on instinct, looking for automatic weapons that could be here, had to be here, were always here. In Afghanistan, yes, they were there in the room where the terrorist family had been executed, but here, no, nada, no weapons, only the days-old bowl of oatmeal and a spoon and blood and gray matter.

  A cleansing breath evened him out, helped him embrace the calm so he could process the before and after of the crime scene. The short victim had stood up from the table, faced an intruder head on, and was blown away.

  “Patrick,” he called. “Over here. Get a picture of this bowl for me, please.”

  Planked kitchen table, cereal bowl, spoon standing at attention, and desiccated oatmeal. Not a photo with any marketing value for the website. Worthy more so, and perhaps with no other value, for a study of the human condition.

  Oatmeal with Spoon: A Still Life, Before the Annihilation.

  Click went Patrick’s phone camera.

  In the alley behind the store’s basement, the pieces were piling up pending a biohazardous furniture cleanup Philo would arrange for later. The red hazmat bags they’d filled with enzyme-soaked rags would leave with them in the truck
when they were finished. Patrick winged the last piece of the broken futon atop the pile, where it landed just short of the bodega’s rear window. They were nearly finished, and could now set up an ozone machine to eliminate the odors in the apartment.

  Patrick removed his mask, stretched himself upward on his toes to inspect the glass of the window he nearly shattered with his futon toss. “Black windows, sir. See ’em?”

  “Yes. The store’s empty, the basement probably is, too. Painted windows keep the curious away.”

  “Just like at the car dealership, sir.”

  “Patrick—relax, bud. Not every abandoned property in Philly is hiding organ traffickers. People sometimes paint or whitewash them while they’re doing remodeling. Less of a street audience that way.”

  “They also paint them when they’re meth labs, sir.”

  A possibility in this neighborhood. Philo’s experience cleaning meth labs was exactly zero, no occasions so far during the transition of the business. Curious, he tried the rear door to the basement, then circled around to the bodega’s front door at street level, confirming they were both locked.

  “I’ll get a meth test kit from the truck, sir. We can test the apartment. Won’t take long, sir.”

  Upstairs, Patrick shook the glass ampule from the kit and mixed the chemical reagent. The liquid changed color, from clear to amber. “Ready to test some room samples, sir.”

  They wiped the surfaces around the apartment with the collection sample papers, the walls, window frames, and around light switches and doorknobs, separate papers for each wiped space. After the samples were collected, Patrick removed the cap from the dropper end of the ampule.

  “What color are we looking for, Patrick?”

  “Blue means meth, sir.”

  He dripped the reagent onto each paper. After five minutes, every paper showed a powder blue, some fainter than the others, but blue nevertheless. The place was contaminated, but that could happen from one occurrence, one person smoking one pipe in the area, just one time. “We should take one more sample, sir.”