Dead Ringer (5 page)

Ditto says, “Well, I’ve had enough of this shit. Just remember, you got a job if you change your mind.”

Leo sits back, pushes his metal frame glasses up his nose, crooked. “You serious? What kinda business?”

“Only kind I know how to do. Funeral home.”

“Who you gonna work for, your dad?”

“Nah, fuck Hamtramck. Too many blacks and Polacks. I’m thinking Seattle. And I’m not working for nobody ever again. I’ll start my own.”

Leo nods, looks back at the chess game.

But Bobby is really getting into it now, excited over his new idea, wanting to run it by someone even if that person had an IQ on a par with a snail. “Thing is, everyone wants to save money, right?”

Leo glances up again, as if irritated for being distracted from the game. “I guess.”

“Yeah, they do. Everybody loves a discount. Think about all those coupons people clip out of the newspaper. Shit, even Rockefeller would probably want to save a buck if he could.”

“So?”

“I start a discount funeral home, run specials on budget cremations. Something everyone, even a field worker, can afford. Call it Ditto’s Budget Funeral Service. Advertise on AM radio, on those stations that play geezer music. Cater to your potential customers. It’ll work. I know it will.”

Leo points to the chessboard. “Gonna fucking move or what?”

T
WO YEARS LATER DITTO
, his business up and running, read an article in the
Seattle Times
about a morgue worker in Los Angeles busted for selling body parts on the black market.

How stupid not to have seen it. A cremated body represented huge profits that were quite literally going up in smoke. So he did a little research into the cadaver business and discovered just how much could be made from a fully harvested, disassembled body. Not only that, but there were demands for body parts for surgical demonstrations and medical schools.

He added two optional programs to his menu of traditional funeral service: the medical research program and the body
recycling program. The research program pitch went like this: the mortuary would cremate your loved one free of charge if the body was first donated to science. Meaning it could be used for teaching purposes. Once the teaching was completed, all the parts would be collected and cremated and the ashes returned to the family.

The recycling program had a different spin. Body parts would be donated to recipients. The brochures stressed the heartrending need for corneas, skin, and bone, playing up how much this helped the grateful recipients’ quality of life.

The problem was that although the discount funeral part of the program caught on with people who couldn’t afford a traditional mortuary, to Ditto’s dismay, the option of donating bodies or body parts for medical research didn’t fly. People just couldn’t seem to get their heads around chopping up Mom or Dad for the advancement of science. Ditto took this as a prime example of people’s callous disrespect for fellow human beings.

Then it dawned on him: why not take the parts anyway? So many people were opting for cremation there was plenty of opportunity. Fuck it. No one was looking. And here was the beautiful thing: he could steal what he wanted—a little skin here, a few ligaments there—and who would be the wiser? Especially since cremated remains always seemed to weigh more than people expected considering the size of the box. Who would know if Grandma’s ashes were intact? And from that day on, they never were.

If you thought about it, each body had two legs, two arms, a head, and a torso. Each piece profitable. But if you sold off all the parts, where did you get ashes for the family? Easy. Once in a while, he took care of bodies of the homeless. His civic duty, as he saw it. Those ashes that nobody wanted, he could
“bank” until he needed them. Plus, who the hell could tell if they got all their loved one’s ashes? Holding back a little here and there, he could build up quite the savings account. Then, when a primo body came in, all the parts could be sold off and the family given banked ashes. And when things got tough and the bank low, there were always dogs and cats to cremate.

D
ITTO AND GERHARD STAYED
in contact, and two tours of duty later Gerhard mustered out and came to work at the funeral home. One evening they were sitting in Ditto’s living room drinking beer and listening to Bob Seger complain about working men’s problems and bullshitting just like old times when Ditto asked, “You like this job?”

Leo shrugged. “Guess so.”

“You like the money?”

Leo grinned. “Sure.” He salted away every cent. Only God knew what he was saving for. Ditto sure didn’t. No kids, no wife. But he knew Leo had grown up dirt-poor and probably had a fear of ever living like that again.

Ditto said, “I’m paying you fifty grand a year, right?”
Plus benefits
.

Gerhard walked to the kitchen with the empties. “Ready for another?”

Seeing as he was on call that night, Ditto thought better of it. “Nah, but go ahead.” He heard the clatter of aluminum cans drop into the recycle bin.

Gerhard returned, levering the tab open with a
pffsshh
. “Yeah, I guess fifty grand. Why?”

“How’d you like to make more?”

Leo grinned again. “Could always use a bit more. What’re we talking about?”

“What if I kicked it up to seventy-five grand?”

Leo’s face sobered. He just stood there like he wasn’t going to allow himself to get sucked into being the butt of a joke.

Ditto said, “I’m serious.”

Gerhard took a long pull of a Labatt’s. “Then hell, yeah. What you expect me to say?”

“See, here’s the thing. You know how we’re always short on bodies? Well, I’ve been thinking about a way to deal with that.”

“Yeah?”

“We don’t wait for them; we just take them. People no one will miss. You know, homeless, hookers, addicts. Who gives a shit about ’em? Follow?”

Gerhard took a pull. “Kill them, huh.” Making a statement out of a question.

Which convinced Ditto that Leo’s only issue was the money. “That’s right. That’s what I’m thinking.” Now it was out in the open, but if there was one person on this earth he could trust with a proposition like this, it was Leo.

Gerhard nodded slowly, thinking it over. “But there’s a problem.”

Uh-oh
. “Yeah?”

“Seventy-five’s a little on the low side for that kinda work.”

Ditto breathed a sigh of relief. “What’s a more realistic figure?”

“Ninety, thereabouts.”

Ditto had already done the math. Even at ninety it was a steal. He held out his hand. “Deal.”

“Y
OUR DRINK, SIR
.” A waiter wearing white gloves and a tux held out a round black lacquer tray to Lucas with a traditional martini glass perfectly centered. A spiraled lemon rind floated in Bombay Sapphire, one end hooked over the rim, looking like it was right out of an
Architectural Digest
advertisement.

“Thank you.” Lucas sampled the drink. Perfect. Exactly what he needed. Especially after today. Man, what a bitch it’d been.

Once he’d recovered from the initial shock of seeing that guy that looked like his friend, he’d gone on to do the demonstration, but only after Wong exchanged that head with another one, which turned out to be a female with her hair clipped off too. From the natural color of the roots and the lack of lines around the eyes and mouth, he guessed her to be mid-twenties. Which also seemed so depressing. How could a woman so young be dead? It caused him worry again about his son Josh. Was he okay?

Now he was supposed to be chatting up the other surgeons but couldn’t bring himself to do it. They seemed to sense this and left him alone, standing in small clusters, chatting and munching serious-looking hors d’oeuvres served by an attractive Chinese woman in an embroidered red silk dress with a mandarin collar and provocative slit up the side to show a little
leg. With her killer smile and long legs, she wove effortlessly through the group.

With the start of the morning session delayed an hour, they’d finished later than scheduled, so Wong had shepherded the group here directly from the hospital, giving Lucas just one chance to call home with his cell phone, only to get no answer. How frustrating. He checked his watch and calculated how much longer until the party might be over so he could go back to his room. Hopefully, dinner would be mercifully short.

He took another sip of the martini and attempted to distract himself by looking more closely at the restaurant. Impressive. The society had reserved a separate dining area of the Hutong, a restaurant renowned for its bird’s-eye view of Hong Kong from the twenty-eighth floor of One Peking in Tsim Sha Tsui. Nice place. And in a better frame of mind, he’d certainly would’ve enjoyed the guest of honor role. But not after this morning.

Drink in hand, he stepped to the floor-to-ceiling windows to peer down on Hong Kong Island and Victoria Harbour where two Star Ferries passed each other in opposite directions. He checked his watch again, trying to convert to Seattle time, vaguely aware of a fifteen-hour difference.

A familiar voice asked, “You feel better now?” Wong stood next to him, teacup in one hand, saucer in the other.

Lucas said, “Let me ask you. How did you obtain the heads?”

“We ordered them from a supplier. M-E-R-C-S.” He said each letter individually. “With all the demonstrations you do, I’m sure you must have heard of them. Perhaps you have even been an instructor for one of their in-house courses?”

“No, never heard of them.” But it made sense to obtain anatomical parts this way. The specimens were always there for him at the demonstrations, and he’d never given it much thought. Besides, his primary focus was on the dissection, not how the parts were supplied. But now … Suddenly his mind flooded with questions. “So how does it work? You just call up and say I want four heads for such and such a date, and they show up?”

“Essentially, but the process is not as capricious as that. First, you must be able to document a legitimate need. In this case, we were required to verify our status as a valid medical organization made up of licensed physicians.”

This was another point he hadn’t considered. “When did they arrive?”

“Yesterday. In fact, the courier is over there.” Wong nodded to his left.

“Courier?”

“Yes, of course.”

Lucas looked in the direction Wong indicated and saw the Westerner from earlier. He’d forgotten all about the paunchy bald guy with thick glasses. Now, seeing him again, Lucas remembered him hanging around the periphery of the class, never quite interacting yet never leaving. Like muted patterned wallpaper: there but never noticed. He wore a cheap brown business suit, and the front of his white dress shirt hung sloppily over his belt. His tie was pulled loose, and his top button was undone. A squat glass of amber liquid—scotch or bourbon maybe—was held in his right hand, his little finger extended in a delicate manner. An odd affectation, Lucas thought.

“He
brought
them? I mean personally?” He just took it for granted the material would show up, maybe using DHL, FedEx, or a similar overnight service. Maybe all you had to do was fill out an order form on the Internet, and at the scheduled time the material appeared. But now that he thought about that, it seemed incredibly idiotic for various reasons. The biggest being that packages were sometimes lost or delayed. There had to be better delivery assurance than an Internet tracking number.

Wong appeared puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure I understand what you are asking.”

“You say he brought them. How?”

“In his luggage.”

Jesus.
He imagined arriving in a hotel room and unpacking—shirts here, pants there, and arms in the fridge.

“May I introduce you?”

Lucas was already heading toward the man, intent on asking whose head they’d used today.

Wong caught up with him in time to say, “Mr. Gerhard, allow me to introduce our honored guest, Dr. Lucas McRae.”