Where There's Smoke полностью

Sec. 2216. A person who removes the dead body of a human being, or any part thereof from a grave, vault, or other place where the same has been buried, or from a place where the same has been de­posited while awaiting burial, without authority of law, with intent to sell the same, or for the purpose of dissection, or for the purpose of procuring a re­ward for the return of the same, or from malice or wantonness, is punishable by imprisonment for not more than five years or by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or both.

When you cut through the verbiage, the law pretty well describes what it considers to be the only possible mo­tives for stealing a corpse. Those are love, money, or lu­nacy. In fact, no matter what the criminologists will tell you, those are the only possible motives for any crime: love, money, or lunacy. The lunacy aspects of Section 2216 are defined in the word “wantonness” and in the phrase “for the purpose of dissection,” which was proba­bly a carry-over from the time of Dr. Frankenstein and his ilk; there were very few mad scientists running loose in the city these days. Still, there were many bedbugs in this vast metropolis for which I’d once been a public servant, and whereas they didn’t normally come out of the mat­tress in September (preferring the dog days of July and August), the possibility did exist that one of them had unseasonably surfaced, swiped a stiff, and then gone back to a snug hiding place in the bedsprings. If a lunatic had committed the crime, I wasn’t interested. Lunatics bore me.

Love as a motive was defined in the section with the simple word “malice,” which together with spite or re­venge form the other side of the love coin. Perhaps this was simply a case of someone with a grudge against the family of the deceased, someone who’d stolen the corpse in an attempt to make tragedy even more painful than it had to be. If so, I was equally uninterested. If anything’s more boring than a bedbug, it’s someone with a petty grievance.

As for money, the section spelled it out with the words “with intent to sell the same,” and “for the purpose of procuring a reward for the return of the same.” I wasn’t aware of a lively market in corpses these days, and whereas I’d handled three or four kidnappings during my years on the force, I’d never had a case in which a ran­som demand had been made for a stolen body. In fact, I’d never had a case of body snatching in twenty-four years of police work, and I guess this was what caused me to tell Abner on the spot that I’d find his missing Mr. Gib­son.

“But how much will you charge?” Abner asked. “For getting the body back to me by ten tomorrow morning?”

“Why ten?” I asked.

“That’s when the family will be here. That’s when they expect to find the body ready for viewing.”

I didn’t know what to tell him regarding a fee. In this city, you don’t need a license to be a private detective provided you don’t charge anything for your services.

There is, after all, no law against being an unpaid snoop. My four previous clients had gifted me lavishly after I’d successfully concluded investigating their cases, and frankly I’d felt justified in accepting presents from them—but only because the disappointment of having solved yet another case seemed ample reason for com­pensation. Could I now tell Abner that not finding Mr. Gibson’s corpse would make me a very happy man? Could I tell him that if I failed (hope springs eternal), I would not accept even a token of appreciation from him, but would instead take him to dinner in one of the city’s best restaurants, where we’d drink champagne till dawn and toast the superiority of the criminal mind?

“I’m not permitted to charge a fee,” I told him. “Let’s simply see what happens, shall we?”

Full of perhaps childish expectations, I began.

A narrow alley ran between the rear of Abner’s mortu­ary and the brick rear wall of an apartment building op­posite. One end of the alley opened onto Hennessy Street, some hundred feet from the jimmied door; the other end was cut off by another brick wall at right angles to the apartment building. There was a door on this wall, as well as several lighted basement windows. I went to the door and knocked on it.

“Who is it?” a woman asked.