The Way Some People Die

Chapter 31

The Pacific Point morgue was in the rear of the mortuary two blocks from the courthouse. I avoided the front entrance – white pseudo-Colonial columns lit by a pink neon sign – and went up the driveway at the side. It curved around the back, past the closed doors of the garage, and led me to the rear door. Callahan was smoking a cigarette just outside the door, his big hat brushing the edge of the brown canvas canopy. A pungent odor drifted through the open door and disinfected the twilight.

He showed me the palm of his hand in salutation. “Well, we found your man. He’s not much good to anybody, in his condition.”

“Drowned?”

“Sure looks like it. Doc McCutcheon’s coming over to do an autopsy on him soon as he can. Right now he’s delivering a baby. So we don’t lose any population after all.” A smile cracked his weathered face as dry heat cracks the earth. “Want to take a look at the corpus?”

“I might as well. Where did you find him?”

“On the beach, down south of Sanctuary. There’s a southerly current along here, about a mile an hour. The wind blew the boat in fast, but Tarantine was floating low in the water and the current drifted him further south before the tide brought him in. That’s how I figure it.” His butt pinwheeled into the gathering darkness, and he turned toward the door.

I followed him into a low deep room walled with bare concrete blocks. Five or six wheeled tables with old-fashioned marble tops stood against the walls. All but one were empty. Callahan switched on a green-shaded lamp that hung above the occupied table. A pair of men’s feet, one of them shoeless, protruded from under the white cotton cover. Callahan pulled the cover off with a sweeping showman’s gesture.

Joe Tarantine had been roughly used by the sea. It was hard to believe that the battered, swollen face had once been handsome, as people said. There was white sand in the curled black hair and white sand on the eyeballs. I peered into the gaping mouth. It was packed with wet brown sand.

“No foam,” I said to Callahan. “Are you sure he drowned?”

“You can’t go by that. And those marks on his face and head are probably posthumous. The stiffs all get ’em when the surf rolls ’em in on the rocks.”

“You have a lot of them?”

“One or two a month along here. Drownings, suicides. This is a plain ordinary drowning in my book.”

“In spite of what the girl said, about the man swimming ashore?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that if I was you. Even if the girl was telling the truth, which I doubt – some of these biddies will say anything to get their picture in the paper – even if she was, it was probably one of these midnight bathers or something. We have a lot of nuts in this town.”

I leaned closer to the dead man to examine his clothing. He had on worn blue Levi’s and a work-shirt, still dark with sea-stain and smelling of the sea. There was sand in the pockets and nothing else.

I glanced at Callahan. “You’re certain this is Tarantine?”

“Him or his brother. I knew the guy.”

“Did he usually wear dungarees? I understood he was a flashy dresser.”

“Nobody wears good clothes on a boat.”

“I suppose not. Speaking of his brother, where is his brother?”

“Mario should be on his way now. Him and the old lady were out all afternoon; we finally got in touch with them. They’re coming in for a formal identification.”

“What about Mrs. Tarantine? The wife?”

“She’s coming, too. We notified her soon as we found the body. Seems to be taking her time about it, doesn’t she?”

“I’ll stick around, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s all right with me,” he said, “if you like the scenery. It suits me better outside.” Raising his arm in an exaggerated movement, he squeezed his veined nose between thumb and forefinger.

The dead man lay under the light, battered and befouled and awesome. Callahan turned the switch and we went outside.

Leaning against the wall with a cigarette, I told him about Dalling’s early morning swim and Dalling’s early morning death. I didn’t expect the information to do him any good. I was talking against the stillness that circled outward from the dead man as sound waves spread from their source. The late green twilight faded from the sky as I talked, and darkness rolled in a slow surge over the rooftops. All I could see of Callahan was his dark hulk like a buttress against the wall, and the orange eye of the cigarette glowing periodically under his hatbrim.

A pair of bright headlights swept into the driveway and froze in the massive stillness.

“Bet that’s the patrol car,” he said, and moved to the corner of the building.

Over his shoulder, I saw Mario step out of the sheriffs car. He came into the glare of the headlights, towing his mother like a captive balloon. I stepped hack into the shadow to let them pass, and followed them to the door. Callahan switched on the lamp above the dead man’s face. Mario stood looking down, his mother leaning heavily on his shoulder. The bruise marks on his face were turning yellowish and greenish. Other men had been as rough on him as the sea had been on his brother. He might have been thinking that, from the look in his eyes. They were mocking and grim.

“That’s Joe,” he said finally. “Was there any doubt about it?”

“We like to have a relative, just to make it legal.” Callahan had removed his hat and assumed an expression of solemnity.

Mrs. Tarantine had been silent, her broad face almost impassive. She cried out now, as if the fact had sunk through layers of flesh to her quick: “Yes! It is my son, my Guiseppe. Dead in his sins. Yes!” Her great dark eyes were focused for distance. She saw the dead man lying far down in hell.

Mario glanced at Callahan in embarrassment, and jerked at his mother’s arm. “Be quiet, Mama.”

“Look at him!” she cried out scornfully. “Too smart to go to Mass. For many years no confession. Now look at my boy, my Guiseppe. Look at him, Mario.”

“I already did,” he said between his teeth. He pulled at her roughly. “Come away now.”

She laid one arm across the dead man’s waist to anchor herself. “I will stay here, with Guiseppe. Poor baby.” She spoke in Italian to the dead man, and he answered her with silence.

“You can’t do that, Mrs. Tarantine.” Callahan rocked in pain from one foot to the other. “The doctor’s going to perform an autopsy, you wouldn’t want to see it. You don’t object, do you?”

“Naw, she don’t object. Come on, Mama, you get yourself all dirty.”

She allowed herself to be drawn towards the door. Mario paused in front of me: “What do you want?”

“I’ll drive you home if you like.”

“We’re riding with the chief deputy. He wants to ask me some questions, he says.”

The mother looked at me as if I was a shadow on the wall. There was a stillness in her to match the stillness of the dead.

“Answer a couple for me.”

“Why should I?”

I moved up close to him: “You want me to tell you in Mexican?”

His attempt to smile when he got it was grotesque. He shot a nervous glance at Callahan, who was crossing the room towards us. “Okay, Mr. Archer. Shoot.”

“When did you see your brother last?”

“Friday night, like I told you.”

“Are those the clothes he was wearing?”

“Friday night, you mean? Yeah, those are the same clothes. I wouldn’t be sure it was him if it wasn’t for the clothes.”

Callahan spoke up behind him: “There’s no question of identification. You recognize your son, don’t you, Mrs. Tarantine?”

“Yes,” she said in a deep voice. “I know him. I ought to know him, the boy I nursed from a little baby.” Her hands moved on her black silk expanse of bosom.

“That’s fine – I mean, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming down here and all.” With a disapproving glance at me, Callahan ushered them out.

He turned to me when they were out of earshot: “What’s eating you? I knew the guy, knew him well enough not to grieve over him. His mother and his brother certainly knew him.”

“Just an idea I had. I like to be sure.”

“Trouble with you private dicks,” he grumbled, “you’re always looking for an angle, trying to find a twist in a perfectly straight case.”