Morgue Drawer Four

by Jutta Profijt

  But as Martin was rattling off his story about the girl from the grocery store checkout line, my warning bells suddenly went off. The bouncer wasn’t making a particularly affable impression, but he wasn’t really acting like a thug, either. Still, his vibe had something menacing about it, and I had the impression the guy knew more than what he was telling us.

  “Martin,” I called. “This guy knows something.”

  Martin responded promptly.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen this woman even once?” he asked politely. “It’s really incredibly important to me.”

  “When I say no, that applies to the first, second, and third time you ask the same question,” the bouncer said. He was parleying as though he’d been a humanities major. And maybe he was. There are barkeeps with PhDs and taxi drivers with tenure at the university, after all!

  “She may not speak German,” Martin said, as though he hadn’t heard the objection.

  The Black Giant didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sure that you know more than you want to tell me,” Martin said, politely.

  “And I’m sure that you’d better get scarce,” the bouncer replied, sounding not at all amicable.

  “All right, we’re done for tonight,” I said.

  “Well, thank you very much for your time,” Martin said, turning around. He stuck the drawing, which the bouncer had taken a curious look at but not touched, back into his duffle coat pocket as he snuck down the dark alley toward the car.

  “No matter what he knows, he’d never have said anything in a hundred years,” I said, trying to console him. The way Martin had to be trotting along here at one thirty in the morning, you really had to feel sorry for him.

  “Hmm,” he muttered.

  I think he was just wiped out.

  His car hadn’t been damaged any further, which didn’t surprise me because most people have a kind of amused affection for a 2CV, no matter what kind of crowd you hang out in.

  Martin was driving so carefully, but to make matters worse he still got flagged into a drunk-driving checkpoint. In response to the question whether he had drunk any alcohol, he said no; in response to the question where was he coming from and where had he spent the whole evening and half of the night, he stated he was looking for his girlfriend. Was she missing? No. Uh-huh. She had run off with a guy, Martin explained. This statement in conjunction with the dark rings under his anguished-looking eyes redeemed him, and the police were nice enough to wish him well and good luck with his girlfriend. Martin was slowly but surely evolving into a skilled liar. But there was no way my praise could coax even one more grunt out of him tonight.

  Once home, he crashed still-dressed into his bed and immediately fell asleep. Oh, fabulous! Now I could take a look at his collection of city maps in peace. I’ve always dreamed of something like this. I looked over at the TV and determined that Meticulous Martin didn’t leave the set in standby mode because standby still draws too much electricity, so I had to marinate in my bad mood until morning.

  Morning started rather early, when someone began incessantly ringing the doorbell at seven. The noise pierced through me down to my balls, because it took a solid three minutes for Martin to emerge from the bedroom. He looked like an animal had eaten him, half-digested him, and hacked him back up again.

  It was Gregor, Martin’s detective friend. At seven in the morning. Just guess if he came as a friend or as a detective. Exactly, criminal investigation.

  “Didn’t sleep much last night, eh?” he said, greeting Martin and heading right into the kitchen. “Coffee?”

  Martin mumbled something incomprehensible and vanished into the bathroom. Gregor putzed around in the kitchen. I decided to go into the kitchen, too. Watching people in the bathroom in the morning is not really my thing. Plus, I wanted to know what had brought Gregor over here so early in the morning.

  Gregor found a can of coffee beans, grabbed the grinder, and started turning the crank. By hand. Have you ever seen such a thing? He did it without any kind of amazement, but since he apparently knew his way around his friend’s place pretty well, he apparently also knew how pointless it would be to look for instant. Anyone who normally sips tea from the finest porcelain would likewise turn the guzzling of coffee into some kind of fussy, civilized ceremony. So Gregor was endeavoring to prepare a cultivated coffee and had just finish brewing when Martin entered the kitchen, freshly showered but still far from top form. He took the mug that Gregor handed him with a mumbled thank-you. Then, totally exhausted, he collapsed onto one of the two stools that were half-slid under the breakfast table the size of a proper gentleman’s handkerchief.

  “An all-night investigation like that is pretty tiring, huh?” Gregor said.

  Martin nodded, staring at his coffee while Gregor added fresh milk and a half spoon of sugar for him. Man, I’d never have expected so much mothering from a heavyset criminal investigator. But apparently Gregor was playing the good cop/bad cop routine here in one person. The good one had made the coffee; the bad one was going to continue his questioning.

  “It’s especially tiring when you have to watch your back loitering around the roughest corners of the city all night while still doing a professional job looking around. Right?”

  Martin nodded again.

  “So you see why police officers always go in pairs.”

  No one said anything for a while, interrupted occasionally by Gregor sipping his coffee. Martin drank silently.

  “So, what the hell is going on?” Gregor asked once he’d had enough of the mutual silence.

  “I wanted to find out who the dead Jane Doe is,” Martin said.

  Of course that wasn’t particularly helpful since Gregor evidently already knew that; otherwise he wouldn’t have been standing around all healthy, wealthy, and wise here in Martin’s kitchen instead of at home in his own warm bed.

  “Your great love from the grocery store,” he said, caustically. “God, Martin. I’m serious,” he then added, now no longer looking irritated but really very, very serious. “You have put yourself and me into an impossible situation.”

  “How do you know anything about it?” Martin asked.

  “Let’s just say there are people who hang out in ugly crowds even though they may not be that ugly themselves,” Gregor said. “Some of them are also happy to pass on a tip now and then when something strange crops up.”

  “The bouncer,” I yelled.

  “The bouncer,” Martin said.

  “Yes, the bouncer,” Gregor said.

  If all morning meetings were going to be of this caliber, they really should ban office hours before nine a.m., I thought, but out of caution I didn’t say anything.

  “What is your relationship to that woman?” Gregor asked.

  “I, um, well…”

  We weren’t getting anywhere like this. “Tell him the whole truth,” I suggested.

  Martin’s cerebral convolutions were slowly warming up, but for the life of him he couldn’t come up with an even semiplausible reason for his nocturnal outing to the rough side of town. So he sighed loudly once, breathed deeply, and laid it all out.

  “Nine days ago, that woman was lying in the trunk of a Mercedes SLR that was stolen that same day by Sascha Lerchenberg.”

  Gregor stared at him and, as he wasn’t paying attention to his cup anymore, poured a generous quantity of coffee onto his pants. His scream sounded a bit exaggerated to my ears, but as we all know the male of the species is apparently hypersensitive to temperature. Martin responded as a doctor immediately, jumping up and filling a cup from the drainer with cold water and pouring it with skillful speed onto Gregor’s pants. He screamed again. Then he grabbed a kitchen towel, groping himself and rubbing, and he disappeared briefly into the bathroom to return without pants, wrapped in a towel. Fortunately he didn’t wear a uniform jacket since he was a detective; otherwise my ensuing laughing fit would have scattered my molecules to kingdom come. Although I quickly regained my composure, Martin
remained totally listless; he didn’t smile even once. Poor Little Goose.

  “You just mentioned Sascha Lerchenberg,” Gregor said, resuming the thread of the conversation as though nothing had happened. “That’s the guy who fell off the temporary bridge at the transit hub, right?”

  “He was pushed,” Martin said, without my having to remind him. Very good.

  “The report said there wasn’t any evidence of a push,” Gregor said.

  “And there isn’t,” Martin said. “But he told me.”

  Short pause.

  “Who?” Gregor asked.

  “Pascha.”

  Longer pause.

  Gregor: “Who is Pascha?”

  Martin: “That’s the name Sascha went by.”

  Gregor: “And he told you this?”

  Martin: “Exactly.”

  Gregor: “When?”

  Martin: “Shortly after the postmortem.”

  Unpleasantly long pause.

  Gregor: “You mean, after you cut up his body, removed all the organs and preserved a small piece of each, stuffed everything back into the abdominal cavity, and then sutured him back up again?”

  Martin: “Exactly. His spirit isn’t dead. He can’t find peace. He’s been buzzing around us down in the morgue.” Rather long pause.

  Gregor: “And he talks to you?”

  Martin: “Exactly.”

  Very long pause. Martin took a microsip of his coffee again, presumably so he could nurse the one mugful through the whole morning, or at least as long as this interrogation lasted. I waited with quasi-bated breath for Gregor’s reaction. We could only assume the worst based on his expression; to my boundless regret I couldn’t find any way into the convolutions of his brain.

  “Do other dead people talk to you?” Gregor asked.

  Martin shook his head.

  “Can your colleagues hear this Pascha, too?”

  “No, I’m the only one he can contact.”

  “And he told you that you’re supposed to find out the identity of this woman?”

  Martin nodded.

  “Why?”

  Martin sighed. “He wants me to find out who pushed him. I couldn’t exactly include in my report that he told me he was pushed. And the connection to that woman’s body in the trunk and all of that—there was no way for me to have known that, and so I didn’t tell you anything about it either, because then I’d have to tell you about him—and there’s absolutely no one who would believe me. Right?”

  Martin looked into Gregor’s eyes for the first time. Now Gregor was the one who looked away.

  “That’s what I thought,” Martin said. “Two weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”

  Neither of them said anything again for a while, and then Gregor went back into the bathroom, got dressed, came back out, and sat next to Martin at the table.

  “You should take some time off,” he told Martin. Martin shook his head.

  “Then at least take today off.”

  “I’m off this morning,” Martin said. “But this afternoon I’m on duty.”

  Gregor stood up and explained to Martin in a rather official voice that he should please refrain from investigating dead Jane Does since he was interfering with the detectives’ investigation, and then Gregor said goodbye in his friendly voice again, and left. Martin looked at the clock, ran his fingers through his still-damp hair, and stood up.

  “We’ve got to get going,” he said.

  “Where to?” I asked Martin.

  “To your funeral.”

  FIVE

  The moment I had secretly been scared stiff of the whole time had finally arrived: my funeral. Naturally, I hadn’t anticipated attending it. Well, that is, I hadn’t anticipated naturally attending it. My body was the main attraction, you know. I had successfully suppressed any thought that I, that is, my own consciousness, would watch myself be buried. Suppression was now a thing of the past.

  “Do we have to?” I asked Martin.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  Why was he being so curt now? Today, at the most difficult hour of my life when we were about to watch me being lowered into the ground? I needed emotional support, and Martin was being kind of an asshole.

  “But I don’t want to,” I said.

  “Then I’ll drop you off at the Institute,” he said.

  Heh, that’s what he was planning the whole time! My body is being taken away, my morgue drawer reassigned, and he thinks in all seriousness he can just ditch me in that hideous high-rise?

  “What am I supposed to do there?” I asked.

  Now I had him. Martin froze in mid-motion. His fingers, which wanted to tie his shoelaces, started to tremble. Well, my dear Martin, you apparently didn’t think that far in advance. My only Attachment Figure in the whole, entire world is YOU! I didn’t think I’d ever be able to shake the panic I saw shooting through his brain. His best friend now thought he was overworked—at the very least. But in any case Gregor hadn’t believed a single word, that was quite clear. Other people such as his colleagues and managers would certainly not be as ginger in their assessment of his mental health. Crazy, they’d say, and Martin—I could sense it at this moment with full-on clarity—was starting to firmly embrace the notion that he would in fact go crazy if I kept haunting around in his head.

  “I think you should come,” he said in a less-than-firm voice. “Maybe it’ll be good for you to see your parents one more time.”

  Now I was the one who was shocked. My parents. Oh, God.

  No one said anything.

  Maybe that was his idea. For me to cleave back to my parents, leave him in peace, and move back home. Back into my old room with posters of Ferraris and Pamela Anderson on the wall. But my room probably didn’t exist anymore; my father had presumably converted it into a study, or my mother into a dressing room. Whatever it was, I would go along to my funeral because I knew very well that otherwise I would obsess night after night about what it had been like. How my parents had looked. What my coffin looked like, and whether I would have liked the grave site. I slipped behind Martin through the living room door, climbed into the trash can with him, and was silent, just like him. You might have taken us for an old married couple the way we were driving to my funeral, each lost in our own thoughts.

  The cemetery looked the way cemeteries do in winter. The tall trees, which surely cast a friendly, calming green shimmer over the graves in springtime, were now bare and thus looked like shit. I’ve never been one for bare trees. Whether capped with snow or not, in sun or fog: I think they just look dead.

  The wide pathways through the cemetery were muddy, and there were lanterns on many of the graves with those awful candles in their little plastic cups burning inside. In the dark they always make the cemetery look haunted with all those little lights flickering everywhere.

  I was familiar with this cemetery because my grandmother was buried here, and my parents used to come visit at least twice a year, on Gran’s birthday and on some other sad day in November. They would light one of those little flickering lights and pretend to pray for a while before going back home and shoveling cake into their mouths. I had to go along until I was twelve, and then my father stopped going, too. I have no idea how long my mother kept up the tradition. Starting tomorrow, though, she could visit two graves at once. My birthday happens to be in November, so maybe she can cover the November visits at the same time, too. More practical.

  Martin found his way to the cemetery chapel without getting lost, although as far as I was concerned the paths all looked the same. I never knew if I should take the third or fourth crosscut, but Martin knew. He was just being precise—as always.

  There was a sign in front of the chapel with my name and the time of the burial on it. My name. That queasy feeling started getting stronger. Pretty soon it would be serious.

  Martin swallowed, too, even though he hadn’t known me at all when I was alive. And he knew that I wasn’t dead now, too. Funny thing. Should y
ou be sadder that the body is dead, or happier that the spirit is alive? But is a life like mine, where I’ve got only a very restricted radius of action, really any comfort? I could feel Martin struggling with these thoughts, and I couldn’t help him answer his questions. Plus, I myself didn’t know what the alternative was. Would “dead” mean that my spirit just ceased to exist, as well? Or would it exist somewhere else, where other spirits were flitting around? Would we be able to talk to each other, make fun of each other, tell jokes? Keep following events on earth? Make bets? With what kind of money? I’d never given any thought to things like this when I was alive, but now, in view of my special situation, they were cropping up naturally, like a cold sore after a wet kiss.

  OK, that was enough. I had to create some spiritual distance. I had to think about something nice or just about the harshness of reality, instead of drowning here in religious, philosophical, or other sentimentalities. This funeral wasn’t changing anything about my current situation. What the hell difference should it make if my body was lying in a refrigerated morgue drawer or inside a box underground?

  Martin entered the dim light of the chapel and sat in the second-to-last row. I stayed with him for a moment, but of course I couldn’t recognize the attendees just from the back like that. Stupid. So I set out, passing along the wall nice and discreetly toward the front. My parents were sitting in the front row, and behind them a couple of aunts and uncles I hadn’t seen for an eternity. The women who lived on either side of my parents’ house, who apparently didn’t have anything better to do, or just wanted to wear their black coats out again. And my elementary school teacher. Wow! I hadn’t thought about her for ages. Back in the day I had idolized her. She was the coolest teacher at school: bleach-blond, single, smoker. All the boys in my class wanted to marry her. In those days I thought she was very young and good-looking, and that was a just decade and a half ago. Now I thought she looked old and frumpy. Still blond, still a smoker, as suggested by her yellow, nicotine-stained fingers, but I couldn’t tell if she was married or not. Didn’t matter now anyway. She was here, in any case, and I thought that was pretty strange. Did she feel something for me in those days, too? But if so, then she must have been pretty seriously disturbed. After all, I was ten years old and had only about seven teeth in my mouth, as I mentioned before.