at.46 by Unknown Author

Author:Unknown Author
Language: eng
Format: epub

“Bi Mat Nguoi Tham Tu.”

“What?” Gadgets Schwarz and Carl Lyons both asked Pol Blancanales several hours later as they stood deep inside the bowels of the county morgue, viewing an autopsy on the body of the man Haley Klein had shot with her snubnosed .38.

“The tattoo on his left shoulder there. It’s the insignia of a special branch of the Vietnamese Secret Police,” Blancanales explained. The men zeroed in on the crossed machetes superimposed over a combination yellow five-pointed star and Soviet sickle.

“You’re sure?” Lyons asked.

“The only reason I know about it is because my old Black Beret unit once ambushed a sampan full of the suckers.”

Lyons glanced over at Haley Klein as the assistant medical examiner began using a huge set of metal shears to open up John Doe’s torso from crotch to throat. “Appears to be three entry wounds along the lower abdominal cavity,” the assistant coroner said into a tape recorder mike suspended from the ceiling directly over the morgue table. “From a small-caliber firearm in a horizontal pattern, beginning eight inches in from the right hip, proceeding...”

Lyons tried to gauge the expression on Klein’s face: was it unabashed pride in her accomplishment, or horror at what she had done down in Chinatown? He simply couldn’t read her features. Ironman shrugged as the assistant coroner began describing the belly wounds in depth. The important thing was that Haley had come through for him when it had counted most. She’d proven herself in her own eyes. And that was what was important, what counted most.

Carl Lyons had never doubted her.

When they first arrived at the morgue, a group of police officers assigned to work Fisherman’s Wharf had congregated outside the lab. Lyons had overheard them talking about a severed head they’d just brought in from one of the dock units, where it had been discovered in the back of a garbage truck.

“Gave one of the garbagemen quite a fright,” the patrolman telling the story had said, erupting into a long, drawn-out bellow.

“The other garbageman, he said it weren’t no big thing,” another officer had added to the story. “Claimed he’d seen it all. Said it was his third severed head this year. Yep, that’s what he said! I swear it.”

The morgue lobby had erupted into hearty bellows again. “You’d have thought we was woi’kin’ the South Bronx or somet’ing!” a third line cop had said in a grating Brooklyn accent.

“She was a pretty thing, she was! Asian or something!”

“Or something!”

“Yeah!” And they had all exploded again.

After the autopsy, Lyons gave the assistant coroner a sealed document. “This is where the body goes,” he ordered. “No place else.”

“Well, I’ll have to clear it with my—”

“You clear it with the White House, if you have to clear it with anyone,” Lyons said, silencing him with steel-blue eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” the man muttered. He loved a good argument now and then, but he was getting too old to fight. “Screw it, anyway.”

“Appreciate it, Pops,” Ironman said, his features softening. $

“Yeah, right!” the coroner said, waving him off.

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