Читать книгу Every Man for Himself - Mark J. Hannon - Страница 18

CHAPTER 14

BUFFALO, 1931

Johnny smelled the next body way before he came into the dissecting room and saw it— the unmistakable sweet odor of the dead, this one reeking of urine and alcohol, as well. The wagon men said he’d been found in a rooming house full of old drunks on Carolina Street on the West Side, lying in bed, a church key bottle opener tied to a lanyard switch hanging from a naked light bulb. He’d been there for a few days, the tenants oblivious, but the landlord noticing. He not only stank, but there were maggots crawling under his clothes like a moving bed of rice. The medical examiner came in, took a look around the body, read the report, wrote a few notes, and told Johnny to go ahead. Between the maggots and the smell, Johnny was still a little queasy around this body, and delayed the medical examiner by striking up a conversation so he wouldn’t be alone with the corpse.

“Say Doc, see these maggots on him,” as he cut away the stained sport coat and shirts that were layered and stuck to the body. “What happens with them?”

“Well, most of them turn into flies and go on to bigger and better garbage. If they’re not disturbed, the flies’ll come back and plant more eggs there, and they’ll turn into maggots that keep eating the body until there’s not much left. If there’s nothing left, and they get real hungry,” he added, “I guess they start eating each other.” Then he left, and Johnny hurried, dumping the clothes that smelled of booze and old piss, and hosing the bugs and dirt off the old man who, in his last days, looked like Johnny’s father.