Every Dead Thing

The coroner had almost finished his work and an ambulance team was standing by to remove the body when an untidy figure shambled into the apartment. He wore a long brown overcoat the color of beef gravy, and the sole of one of his shoes had come adrift from the upper. Through the gap, a red sock and an exposed big toe revealed themselves. His tan pants were as wrinkled as a two-day-old newspaper and his white shirt had given up the struggle to keep its natural tones, settling instead for the unhealthy yellow pallor of a jaundice victim. A fedora was jammed on his head. I hadn’t seen anyone wear a fedora at a crime scene since the last film noir revival at the Angelika.

But it was the eyes that attracted the most attention. They were bright and amused and cynical, trailing lines like a jellyfish moving through water. Despite his ramshackle appearance, he was clean shaven and his hands were spotless as he took a pair of plastic gloves from his pocket and pulled them on.

“Cold as a whore’s heart out there,” he remarked, squatting down and placing a finger gently beneath Jenny Ohrbach’s chin. “Cold as death.”

I felt a figure brush my arm and turned to see Cole standing beside me.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“I’m one of the good guys,” responded the figure. “Well, I’m FBI, so whatever that makes me in your eyes.” He flicked his ID at us. “Special Agent Woolrich.”

He rose, sighed, and pulled the gloves from his hands, then thrust both gloves and hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

“What brings you out on a night like this, Agent Wool-rich?” I asked. “Lose the keys to the Federal Building?”

“Oh, the witty NYPD,” said Woolrich, with a half smile. “Lucky there’s an ambulance standing by in case my sides split.” He turned his head to one side as he took in the body again. “You know who she is?” he asked.

“We know her name, but that’s it,” said a detective I didn’t recognize. I didn’t even know her name at that point. I knew only that she had been pretty once and now she was pretty no longer. She had been beaten around the face and head with a piece of hollow-centered coaxial cable, which had been dumped beside her body. The cream carpet around her head was stained a deep, dark red and blood had splashed on the walls and the expensive, and probably uncomfortable, white leather furniture.

“She’s Tommy Logan’s woman,” said Woolrich.

“The garbage collection guy,” I said.

“The very same.”

Tommy Logan’s company had clinched a number of valuable garbage collection contracts in the city over the previous two years. Tommy had also expanded into the window cleaning business. Tommy’s boys cleaned the windows in your building or you didn’t have any windows left to clean, and possibly no building either. Anyone with those kinds of contacts had to be connected.

“Racketeering interested in Tommy?” It was Cole.

“Lots of people interested in Tommy. Lot more than usual, if his girlfriend is lying dead on the carpet.”

“You think maybe someone’s sending him a message?” I asked.

Woolrich shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe someone should have sent him a message telling him to hire a decorator whose eyesight didn’t give out the year Elvis died.”

He was right. Jenny Ohrbach’s apartment was so retro it should have been wearing flares and a goatee. Not that it mattered to Jenny Ohrbach any more.

No one ever found out who killed her. Tommy Logan seemed genuinely shocked when he was told that his girlfriend was dead, so shocked he even stopped worrying that his wife might find out about her. Maybe Tommy decided to be more generous to his business partners as a result of Jenny Ohrbach’s death, but if he did, their arrangement still didn’t last much longer. One year later, Tommy Logan was dead, his throat cut and his body dumped by the Borden Bridge in Queens.

But Woolrich I saw more of. Our paths crossed on occasion; we went for a drink once or twice before I returned home and he went back to his empty apartment in Tribeca. He produced tickets to a Knicks game; he came to the house for dinner; he gave Jennifer an enormous stuffed elephant as a birthday present; he watched, but did not judge or interfere, as I drank myself away shot by shot.

I have a memory of him at Jenny’s third birthday party, a cardboard clown’s hat jammed on his head and a bowl of Ben amp; Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream in his hand. He looked embarrassed, sitting there in his crumpled suit surrounded by three-and four-year-olds and their adoring parents, but also strangely happy as he helped small children blow up balloons or drew quarters from behind their ears. He did farmyard impressions and taught them how to balance spoons on their noses. When he left, there was a sadness in his eyes. I think he was recalling other birthdays, when his child was the center of attention, before he lost his way.