Slice

BUCKHEAD COUNTY MORGUE

“I think it's stupid. What the hell you wanna put yourself through this for?"

“Just let's do it, okay?” Tuny had stayed with him like a Siamese twin. Watching over him. Bodyguarding him. It was absurd, but Jack didn't have the heart to make him go away.

“It's stupid. Y'r a dumb fuck ta come down here. Doc told you stay in bed another day anyway."

“They don't know everything. Come on.” They walked through the door simultaneously, but Eichord was amused Dana didn't bump him. “What a turkey,” he said.

“I'll catch ya next time."

Jack made a morgue attendant pull out the stitched, headless cadaver. He ran a set of prints for his own files, checked known scars—the whole bit. Finally he made them show him the decapitated head, the autopsy reports.

Dana said, “Hey, fuckface, enough awready. We gonna stay down here all fucking day or what?"

“I thought you might like to eat down here. We could order some lunch sent in?"

“Key, asshole. What d'ya think I look like anyway—a fucking GHOUL?"

“Yeah,” Eichord said, leaning over and giving his fat friend a little gentle punch on the tit. “That's what you look like around the mammaries. A fucking girl.” But it wasn't funny like when Jimmie did it, so Jack just looked at Dana and smiled. “I guess it's all in the timing.” They went back out into the hot Buckhead sunlight of the more or less real world of the living.

When he got home that night there was quite a bit of mail, but his heart sank when he saw the package that was waiting for him. He couldn't find any markings or anything on it. Obviously Jimmie's printing, with a joke return address from “I.P. Freely, of Vlasic, MASS.” But even without the printing he knew what it was—that soft, rectangular heft of dirty money, so innocent-looking in the IGA brown paper wrapper and transparent tape. Rubber-stamped “RE-ROUTED BY BUCKHEAD MAIL CENTER."

“How did this come. Donna?"

“It came today."

“HOW did it come? In the mail or UPS or what?"

“In the mail."

“It doesn't have any stamps. How was it delivered. Where's the address?"

“OH! Sorry babe. The thing came off and I put it in the trash.” She bent over and plucked something out of a wastebasket. “Here you go.” He looked at the stick-on label and the cluster of postage stamps.

“Thanks,” he said. He wouldn't open it for a while. He'd deal with it later. He didn't want to think about it right now. He took the package back to the bedroom and tossed it into the back of a closet shelf to gather dust along with the crazy, homemade shotgun and a cowboy hat he had paid too much for and never wore.

Much later Jimmie Lee's last note would be found, in with the stolen money. For now that was temporarily forgotten. Eichord's big concern at the moment was the baby boy. He'd been jacked around half the day by the bureaucratic jumble of the adoption process. He told Donna about it over dinner promising her, “I'm gonna hang in there. I'll find out tomorrow if the Major Crimes Task Force has any serious clout with the Department of Family Services.” He laughed with her about fat Dana, who had said to him with his usual tact and diplomacy, “What makes you think they'd let YOU adopt a kid?” And he had to smile every time he contemplated the idea that he might find himself becoming the father of a baby son.

Later that night. Donna did the dishes and Jack went outside for some fresh air. He stood looking up at the dark sky, and he said to himself silently, “What the fuck am I going to do with a baby?"