Night Train полностью

Right now I want to say something about myself and Colonel Tom. One morning toward the very end of my career in Homicide I came in for the eight to four— late, drunk, with a face made of orange sand, and car­rying my liver on my hip like a flight bag. Colonel Tom got me into his office and said, Mike, you can kill your­self if that’s what you want. But don’t expect me to watch you doing it. He took me by the arm and led me to the second tier of the headquarters garage. He drove me straight to Lex General. The admissions doc looked me over and the first thing he said was, You live alone, right? And I said, Mo. No, I don’t live alone. I live with Deniss...After they dried me out I convalesced at the Rockwells’ residence—this was when they lived way out in Whitefield. For a week I lay in a little bedroom at the back of the ground floor. The distant traffic was music and people who weren’t people—as well as peo­ple who were—came and stood at the foot of my bed. Uncle Tom, Miriam, the family physician. And then the others. And Jennifer Rockwell, who was nineteen years old, would come and read to me in the evenings. I lay there trying to listen to her clear young voice, wonder­ing if Jennifer was real or just another of the ghosts who occasionally stopped by, cool, self-sufficient, unre-proachful figures, their faces carved and blue.

I never felt judged by her. She had her troubles too, back then. And she was the daughter of a police. She didn’t judge.

First I recheck the case folder, where you’re going to find every last bit of boring shit, like the odometer reading on the unmarked that Johnny Mac and myself drove that night—the night of March fourth. But I want all the chapter and verse. I want to shore up a sequence in my mind.

19:30. Trader Faulkner is the last to see. Trader has stated that he took his leave of her at that time, as he always did on a Sunday night. Jennifer’s apparent mood is described here as “cheerful” and “normal.”

19:40. The old lady in the attic apartment, dozing in front of her TV, is woken by a shot. She calls 911.

19:55. Beat cop shows. The old lady, Mrs. Rolfe, keeps a set of spare keys to Jennifer’s apartment. Beat cop gains access and finds body.

20:05. Tony Silvera takes the call in the squad-room. The dispatcher gives the name of the victim.

20:15. I am summoned by Detective Sergeant John Macatitch.

20:55. Jennifer Rockwell is pronounced.

And twelve hours later she is cut.

taceant colloquia, it says on the wall. effugiat risus.

HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE.

Let talking cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.

Die suspiciously, die violently, die unusually—in fact, die pretty much anywhere outside an intensive-care unit or a hospice—and you will be cut. Die unattended, and you will be cut. If you die in this American city, the paramedics will bring you down to the ME’s office on Battery and Jefferson. When it’s time to get around to you there, you will be trolleyed out of the walk-in freezer, weighed, and rolled onto a zinc gurney under an overhead camera. It used to be a micro­phone, and you’d take Polaroids. Now it’s a camera. Now it’s TV. At this stage your clothes will be exam­ined, removed, bagged, and sent to Evidence Control. But Jennifer is wearing nothing but a toe-tag. And it begins.

Maybe I’d better point out that the process itself, for me, means close to nothing. When I worked homi­cides, the autopsy room was part of my daily routine. And I still get down there on business at least once a week. Asset Forfeiture, which is a subdivision of Orga­nized Crime, is a lot more hands-on than it sounds. Basically what we do is: We rip off the Mob. One whis­per of conspiracy, out there by the pool, and we con­fiscate the entire marina. So we deal with bodies. Bodies found, almost always, in the trunks of airport rental cars. Impeccably executed and full of bullets. You’re down in the ME’s office half the morning some­times, on account of all the bullets they have to track...The process itself doesn’t mean much to me. But Jennifer does. I am confidently assuming that Colonel Tom didn’t watch this, and would have relied on Silvera’s summary. Why am I watching it? Take away the bodies, and the autopsy room is like the kitchen of a restaurant that has yet to open. I am watching. I am sitting on the couch, smoking, taking notes, and using the Pause. I am bearing witness.