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  “No, mon,” Roy said. He shook his head. “That e-mail ain’t gonna be comin’.”

  Cooper looked around at Roy’s posse, the cops slouching, mute, exhibiting an array of poses. “How about you take me back to the Marine Base,” he said, “so I can get home.”

  Cap’n Roy gave him a sideways look and made a cluck-cluck sound with his tongue. “You know, strange murder case turning up in the police beat,” he said, “that’d be somethin’ people maybe want to keep an eye on. Case go unsolved-that call not comin’ in from your St. Johnnie-then the whole thing might just start lookin’ pretty bad on the head policeman. Look especially bad, that policeman up for chief minister next month.”

  Cooper caught Riley checking him for a reaction.

  “People say you know the kind of people I make a point not to know,” Cap’n Roy said, getting to it now. “Kind of people could take a body that wash up on the beach, take that body, and put it away. Nobody know a thing about it.”

  Cooper said, “Those sound like some kind of people.”

  Cap’n Roy grinned. “People say something else too. They say somebody need help, got himself in a bind he can’t fix, he can call on that Cooper, that spy on the island, mon, and he help you out.”

  “Last year,” Cooper said, “that kid, the one got shot up on Blackburn Road-what was his name?”

  “Entwine,” Roy said.

  “You didn’t call me when Entwine died.”

  The mobile phone on Cap’n Roy’s waist chortled and Roy made a motion with his hand, Cooper interpreting the gesture to mean that Roy had been expecting an important call, and would Cooper excuse him for a moment. After a few words into the phone, Roy reclipped the phone to his belt. He waved over the RVIPF cops, the men wearing the standard uniforms.

  “Got a little crisis, mon,” he said, back with Cooper now. “Riley and Tim, they give you anything you need.”

  Then Cap’n Roy reached out to shake Cooper’s hand.

  Cooper looked at the hand. It was a clean hand, recently manicured. It looked like a hand that had never been dirty. It looked like a hand that had never done a single day’s hard work. Cooper thought that with a hand like that, someday Roy would probably be running more than just Road Town. He knew that Roy and his merry band of performers knew something about the body they weren’t telling him, which, to say the least, did not bode well. Still, he thought that if Roy happened to expand his kingdom, outstripping that self-imposed nickname of his, it’d be nice to have the man on his list.

  “I might call you sometime,” Cooper said. Cap’n Roy kept his hand out. “I might have a question. I might need some help, or a favor. I take that body, and you’ll take the call.”

  Roy thought about this for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah, mon.”

  Cooper shook his hand, and with that, Cap’n Roy marched off around the breakwater and disappeared into the field of thick brown grass. The RVIPF men followed, leaving Cooper alone with Riley and Tim. He saw that Riley was smiling at him.

  Cooper didn’t smile back.

  “I assume you guys brought a bag,” he said.

  3

  A cadaverous man slathered Grecian Formula on his hair and admired his reflection. Eugene Little used watered-down Grecian Formula to maintain the natural color of his hair, primarily because he’d read in People that Ronald Reagan had used the same recipe during his White House days.

  Eugene had made himself efficient in the morning. He bathed at night, eliminating the need for a morning shower; he’d roll out of the sack, gargle some Listerine, work the tincture of Grecian Formula into his hair, stir a cup of instant coffee-Folgers or Yuban, whichever he’d found a coupon for-step out the kitchen door in his bathrobe, grab his copy of the Virgin Islands Daily News, open his mailbox, dig out the periodicals he cherished-National Review, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report-come back in, get dressed, and get out the door.

  This morning Eugene chose permanent-press trousers and a plaid shirt, the short sleeves showing off his pale, skinny biceps and matted forearm hair. He polished off the coffee, tucked the periodicals beneath an elbow, and skittered down the sidewalk. It hadn’t been fifteen minutes, alarm to exit. Eugene’s bachelor pad occupied a dirty corner of Charlotte Amalie, the only city in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The thing about a squalid neighborhood like Eugene’s was that the 7-Eleven was always open, so Eugene could swing by, pick up a plain doughnut and second cup of coffee, and still get to work before eight.

  One mile down the road, 7-Eleven coffee in hand, Eugene shuffled up the stairs of a single-story building that looked like any other house on the street, but wasn’t, as evidenced by the words engraved on a plaque beside the front door: CHARLOTTE AMALIE MORGUE. Making his way down to the basement, Eugene turned on a bank of fluorescents and checked his in-box, which, as expected, contained nothing. This, along with the neutral scents in the room, meant there was no stiff awaiting his inspection. When they’d left one for him, he could always smell it.

  He sat at his desk and whipped out the magazines, deciding to start with National Review. He’d broken off a piece of his doughnut and was pulling the lid off the coffee when the phone rang.

  He snatched it from its cradle.

  “Lab.”

  “Eugene!” came the voice from the other end of the line. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  A globule of spittle formed on Eugene’s lower lip and a snappy facial tic tugged at his left eye. “Cooper?” he said. “It is Cooper, isn’t it? Well, you can just fuck off.”

  Standing on the Marine Base dock with his sat phone tucked against an ear, Cooper watched Riley and Tim carry what looked like a flattened inner tube down to the dock. The kid walked backward, checking his footing by looking over his shoulder, and Riley brought up the rear. Watching them do it, Cooper observed that the corpse filled the blue vinyl bag no better than a couple of bait fish.

  “That isn’t a polite way to start a conversation,” he told Eugene, “so let’s start over. There’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

  “What kind of something?” Eugene said.

  “I need to dispose of a body.”

  “Dispose?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where are you calling from? Are you here in my jurisdiction?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, it’s out of the question. I don’t operate as some sort of freelance coroner.”

  Riley and Tim dropped the bag into the Apache’s stern. Puny as it was, the body made a solid thud on impact.

  “I see,” Cooper said.

  “Is there no official inquiry?”

  “No.”

  “That’s irregular.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, you fucking spook,” Little said, “what are you asking? What do you expect me to do?”

  “That’s better, Eugene,” Cooper said.

  “What do you mean, ‘That’s better’? I’m not doing you any favors. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, a law enforcement code to observe. What is it, anyway? Somebody OD out at that godforsaken beach club of yours? Christ-you probably shot the poor bastard. Whatever it is, I refuse to be a party to any foul play.”

  “Eugene,” Cooper said, “I’ve got a body here. I need you to dispose of it. I need it done, no questions asked. I’m about forty-five minutes away. I was thinking maybe you could send a car to the marina. You know something? You might like this one. Something odd about the circumstances-burn marks like you’ve never seen.”

  “You-you actually expect me to just send a car out?” Eugene paused, and Cooper could hear the sounds of him fidgeting at his desk. “What do you mean by odd?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The fidgeting stopped. “I’m incinerating it, burning the body,” Eugene said, “that’s something I’ll need to do on my own time. Outside of my normal duties.”

  “Like some sort of freelance coroner?”

  “Spare me-I know how you work. Let me guess. I don’t do y
ou this little favor, you make a few calls, and pretty soon somebody’s looking into things. Things I don’t want anybody looking into. That about how it goes?”

  “Not bad,” Cooper said. “How much?”

  “How much? Well, considering the irregularity-”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Five? Fine.”

  “Have a cab waiting for me at the fishing terminal.”

  Cooper flipped the phone into the boat. It landed on the cushion of the driver’s seat. From the dock, Riley brushed off his hands with two neat claps, grinned, and said, “All right then, mon. Live slow and nice.”

  Cooper raised a hand without waving and climbed into his boat.

  It intrigued him that the cabby didn’t even flinch as Cooper climbed into the taxi, body bag slung over his shoulder, and said, “The morgue.” There was only a friendly nod and a flip of the gearshift.

  One night, bored under the safety lights at the beach club, Cooper had taken a hard look at a list of employees on the government payroll of the United States Virgin Islands. Abusing the privilege of his rather lofty security clearance, he’d snatched from Charlotte Amalie City Hall a list of active USVI government staff, and, reading the list on the beach, noticed an American expatriate employed as the medical examiner. Knowing the population of the U.S. Virgin Islands was eighty-seven percent local and thirteen percent expatriate, Cooper also knew a fairly low percentage of the expats ever wound up on the government payroll. He figured there must have been one hell of a story behind this Eugene Little.

  Cooper got his hands on Little’s job application and medical credentials. A couple days later, with nothing much to do, he made some phone calls to the mainland, found that nobody named Eugene Little had graduated from the schools claimed in the credentials, and, working off a gritty photocopy of Little’s driver’s license, he checked the handful of federal databases to which he had access. Using his PowerBook’s moody wireless modem, Cooper took his time searching and ultimately found a bonanza of dirt on the expat coroner.

  Eugene had been born with the name Roger Ignatius Holmby, and under that identity was wanted on ten counts ranging from medical fraud to manslaughter, with warrants outstanding for failure to show for multiple arraignments. Holmby, a former plastic surgeon, had killed two patients and left at least fifteen with some form of permanent disability. Once charged, he’d skipped out on a half-million-dollar bond. Cooper thinking that there was probably an army of bounty hunters going after ten percent of that.

  After a while Cooper paid the man a visit, taking his Apache over to St. Thomas. He caught him around noon, asked if Little was free for lunch, Cooper buying-courtesy of his fairly bottomless Agency expense account. They grabbed a couple of sandwiches at the deli across the street from the morgue and had a nice talk, Cooper telling him, “Your secret’s safe with me, Ignatius. You don’t have a worry in the world.” Watching those nervous twitches, the facial tic going nuts, Cooper laid out what he’d found on him, and told the man he might get a call someday, and that when he did, he should take the call.

  You don’t just walk in through the front door carrying a stiff,” Eugene said, hurriedly escorting Cooper to the examination table.

  Cooper dumped the body bag on the steel table and went for his wallet. There were three hundreds and five fifties inside; he came out with two of the hundreds and put the wallet back in his pocket.

  “Two hundred bucks is all I have on me,” he said, extending his hand. Eugene grabbed the money. “I don’t want to see this on the local news, so do it right and do it now. You’ll get the rest when I hear nothing about this for three weeks.”

  “Bastard,” Eugene said, backing off a step, keeping a cushion between himself and Cooper. “Coming in here trying to palm your murder off-hey, look at that.”

  He moved in closer, getting a tight look at Cooper’s face.

  “Smell bothering you? Not so tough after all, eh?”

  Eugene looked at the body bag.

  “Why don’t we take a look? See what we’ve got here. Check out this odd set of circumstances. Think you can take it, big man?”

  Eugene emitted a piercing giggle, his face mere inches from Cooper’s. His breath reeked of stale coffee and vomit. Cooper thought for a moment, and decided that since he’d hooked Eugene’s curiosity, he may as well put the coroner to work.

  Attempting to hold his breath as a shield against the combined stench of Eugene’s breath, Roy’s body from the beach, and the overwhelming reek of formaldehyde, he said, “Let’s have a look.”

  At Eugene’s urging, Cooper helped him remove the body from the bag. The coroner flipped on an examination light and pointed it at the body’s torso. In the bright light, the sores appeared worse to Cooper than they had on the beach. Some of them were six, eight inches in diameter, ragged tufts of raw flesh with bubbly blisters around the rim. The victim’s body looked as though it had been stabbed repeatedly by the hot end of a six-foot cigar.

  Cooper watched as Eugene did the exam, noticing that Eugene would surreptitiously peer over at him from time to time, maybe waiting for Cooper to say something, maybe trying to figure something out about him. Eugene, my man, Cooper thought, you are one odd duck.

  Eugene pulled off what was left of the soiled blue shirt covering the body and set it aside, leaving the rest of the man’s upper body exposed-its waterlogged skin, the sores, blisters, and what looked like a series of exit wounds: jagged rips in the man’s flesh, clearly torn by bullets. On both legs the jeans, shredded to the knee, looked as though they had caught on something; below the jeans were the compound fractures, one on each shin. Cooper could see that both ankles were severely swollen and probably broken.

  The stench of rotting flesh became overwhelming as Eugene, seemingly oblivious, gave the corpse a complete once-over, lifting hands, feet, head, arms and legs, examining the skin, the sores, the fingernails, teeth, eyes, soles of the feet, the numerous bullet wounds. He made muffled grunts as he worked. Cooper stood two or three feet back, giving Eugene a zone in which to roam around the body.

  At length Eugene backed off, opened a drawer, came out with an aerosol can, shot it in bursts around the room, put it back, opened another drawer and came out with a Polaroid camera. One body part at a time, he popped a series of pictures-each time pulling out the picture, waving it once or twice, setting it on the countertop, then moving in for another. He had a speed that came only with practice, Eugene working the camera with his right hand, prepping whatever section of the body he was photographing with the other, Cooper thinking this felonious, malpracticing quack had gone ahead and found his groove down here in the islands.

  Not unlike himself.

  Eugene stepped back and took some wider shots-head and shoulders, the full upper body. When he was through, he set the camera on the countertop next to the rows of pictures. He nodded at Cooper and motioned toward the body with a gloved hand.

  “Give me some help,” he said.

  Cooper at the feet, Eugene at the head, they turned the body over. A new wave of foul air wafted up at them. It smelled so bad Cooper could feel it in his brain. Again Eugene didn’t seem to notice.

  The victim’s back had fewer sores than the front, and the marks were smaller. The skin was smoother and darker, Cooper suspecting this to be the natural color of the man in life. On the victim’s back, Cooper saw the cleaner, almost precisely round entry points of the series of bullets that had caught him. He didn’t like the feeling it gave him.

  When Eugene got to the neck, he started pushing and stretching at the skin. He looked up and jutted his chin at Cooper.

  “See this?” he said. “Identifying mark.” He left the table and went over to the counter for the camera.

  Cooper moved closer and saw what Eugene was talking about. At the base of the neck, barely visible against the skin, was a green symbol, dark enough to all but blend in. Maybe an inch in height, the symbol was composed of a circular top that at its base tapered off into a si
ngle vertical line with a horizontal bar below.

  It looked like a tattoo.

  It also looked religious, half upside-down cross, half right-side-up racquet. A word occurred to him, Cooper not sure if it was right. Ankh. He thought ankhs, if that was the word, were Egyptian, which wouldn’t make much sense in the Caribbean-but then again, not much did anyway. Eugene came back and started snapping pictures again, grunting while he did it. Finally Eugene set the camera on the counter and jammed his fists against his hips.

  “What you’ve got here is some kind of menial laborer. A young one-I’d estimate him to be nineteen, maybe twenty.” He came over to the body, held up one of the hands. “Subject displays deeply calloused hands, fingernails embedded with grime, dozens of scars on the fingers and back of the hand.” With gloved fingers, Eugene pulled open the lips. “Both the fingernails and gums show definitive signs of chronic malnutrition. Sores in and around the mouth indicate a lack of citric acid in the diet. Scurvy.”

  He let go. “Musculature is sinewy, with a great deal of long-term ligament and tendon damage. Less than five percent body fat.”

  Cooper shrugged off a twitch in his shoulders. Eugene worked his way around the body and lifted the torso. “Seven gunshot wounds, bullets entering and exiting quite cleanly. He was shot in the back. The bullets did a great deal of damage-not your ordinary bullets. Burns on the chest and abdomen,” Eugene said, lifting the body now, exposing the chest, “are, as you say, odd, not like any I’ve seen. If I were doing a legitimate autopsy, I would take tissue samples, see what kind of residue is there, get some indication as to what burned him.” He extended one of the body’s arms. “There are also tracks on both triceps. Could be heroin, which, normally, is simple to test for. The back of the upper arm is a difficult place to self-inject, by the way.”

  He let go of the upper body and moved around to the legs, Cooper watching him as he went. “Compound fractures of the lower legs indicate the victim fell from a great height, difficult to tell exactly how high without analyzing the bones. Ankles are also broken, with extreme ligament damage.”