God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 3

The drive back downtown is as slow as bureaucracy. I follow the flood of humanity trapped in cars and mammoth buses, slowly south, slowly south, one turn of the tires after another. I hit the random button on my stereo and it replies with Count Basie's Going to Chicago Blues. It's like the gods governing my life know how to taunt me. I can see the skyline, but I'll be damned if I get any closer to it.

When I finally hit Chicago Ave, I make the turn west. The car beside me is full of kids making faces. The parent at the steering wheel looks like he's ready to speed his SUV straight into a building and put an end to his misery. He looks at me with that expression the damned have a few hours before shaking hands with the devil. I smile, sympathetic. At least he'll have someone to put him in a old people's home when the time comes. What will I do when I'm too ancient to wipe my ass, I sure don't know. We proceed shoulder to shoulder a few blocks, until I finally veer south-west on Ogden. The major traffic fuck up relaxes a bit. I can actually put the foot to the pedal without risking to rear-end the BMW in front of me.

Ogden Ave makes for a nice drive, with the trees on both sides of the lanes, the buildings old and new and somewhere in between, the diners, the shops, the residential blocks, the business ones. Even the industrial park after Hubbard, with its huge red-brick buildings, does nothing to depress the soul. Even with the lay offs and the cuts, there are cars parked in front of every buildings. Tough times, but nothing has yet closed for good. There's still hope, if you're naive enough to go looking for it.

It becomes the Historic Route 66, and for a few blocks I feel like I belong not to a city, but to a whole Nation. If I just don't stop, if I forget about everything but myself, in a few days I can dip my toes in the Pacific Ocean. Then I park in front of the County Morgue. Fuck the Pacific Ocean. 

I say hi to the same old faces. I walk down the same old corridors. Like every time I get here, my heart skips a couple of beats and bumps here and there inside my chest like a loose basketball.

I'm afraid Vanessa will always have this effect on me. More the fool me.

The morgue smells of death, and cold, and whatever is used to clean and sterilize and preserve the bodies. I never asked for details. It's mystery that keeps the romance alive. The morgue smells of muffins as well, because Vanessa has a soft spot for cutting people up, but a softer one for muffins. Somehow, her consumption of half a dozen of the things a day doesn't seem to add an ounce to her figure. Sometimes I wonder if she eats and I get fat, a bizarre take on the Picture of Dorian Grey.

'It's banana and strawberries,' I tell her as I put the brown paper bag down.

'Thanks, you're a darling,' she chirps. She's never unhappy when she's surrounded by her bodies. I'm afraid there's a creepy veneer in her. Then again, there's one in all of us. She just embraced it.

'How can you eat so much and stay in such a shape?'

'How can you always proclaim to be on a diet, or of having just started one, and always be so fat?'

At forty, Vanessa Bergman looks better than most thirty year old I see prancing around in high heels and tight-fitting dresses. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We went on a date once, a lifetime and many pounds ago. She got married but not to me. Looking at me now, I can hardly blame her. It was like she knew what the future was holding in store for me, and wisely avoided to be dragged into it.

'Enough pleasantries, what can you tell me about Burt?'

'Burt?'

'Santa Claus.' I point at the guy. Hard to miss him.

'I thought he was a John Doe.'

'I'm an amazing detective.'

'You have to be amazing at one thing, right? To compensate for the rest.'

'You're always so nice to me, no wonder I keep feeding you muffins.'

She leans in on her tiptoes and plants a kiss on my cheek. She knows I hate it, she does it anyway because she knows deep down I like it more than I despise it. It's a crush slash torture relationship that will last for as long as I'm in Homicide and people will keep killing each other. Or retirement happens. I've always found it funny that if I get killed in the line of duty she might, most likely, perform my autopsy. This way she would get to see me naked at least once. I should really go on a diet just in case I end up dead on one of these gurneys.

'How's Brandy?' she asks.

'Cleaning the house.'

'You got a treasure there, you should put a ring around her finger.'

'As if she'd have me,' I scoff. 'Tell me about Burt now, enough smalltalk.'

'He was shot.'

'No shit?'

'They did him a favor. He had cancer, too far gone to do anything about it. Both kidneys, and spreading.' She clicks her tongue in a way that sounds as final as Burt's cancer. ' I bet he didn't even know, poor man. He avoided a lot of pain this way.'

'Always look at the bright side, right?'

'That's what we doctors do. And when you're trapped down here with these zombies, you need to catch all the silver linings you can.'

'How many bullets did you find?'

'Three, and five tumors. All close togethers. The bullets I mean. Eight mm, shooter seems like he knew his deal. No gunpowder traces. I'd say he was shot from four or five meters away, but a ballistic expert might help more than I. Why should somebody kill Santa Claus so close to Christmas?'

'Tumors aside, what can you tell me about him?'

'Traces of alcohol in his blood, nothing that suggests he was a heavy drinker, probably a couple of beers before going to sleep. No drugs, no painkillers or medicines of any kind.'

'What about the other thing?'

'His penis being found hanging out?'

'That,' I nod.

'Well, it tells a tale, for sure. Traces of saliva, pink lipstick and pre-ejaculatory fluid. Whoever killed him found him in the middle of a party with some naughty Santa's little helper. It's heartbreaking that he didn't get to the happy ending. Once the boys in the lab are done, they'll be able to tell you more.' She pats me on the back while I look at the corpse. Burt looks like a pink whale. Poor Burt. I don't think he deserved this. I don't think he deserved cancer as well. Who knows, maybe two wrongs can make a right.

Vanessa keeps talking. 'Hey, he died before cancer made his life hell, while getting a blow job. That's like the perfect death, isn't it?'

I look at her. 'Can you read minds too?'

She looks back at me like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Story of my life, I guess.