Anonymous Rex (17 page)

I dress, slipping into the guise like a comfortable pair of pajamas. The inner lining is made from a silk polymer, I am told, and it facilitates the process quite nicely. Before I stepped into the empty skin, I imagined that it would be odd seeing out from new eyeholes, feeling
through new gloves. But I find that the experience is comparable to that in the old guise; a human is a human is a human. A mirror is wheeled over to me, and now when I wave, a chubby middle-aged fellow waves back. When I grin, a chubby middle-aged fellow’s second chin puffs out. When I dance, I stumble over my own two feet. Perfect.

“You like?” Manny asks me when we’re all through.

“You do good work.” I produce the TruTel charge card with little more than a glance at the bill—by God, more than a glance would probably kill me—and Manny eagerly runs it through.

“Mr. Vincent, you are a good customer. You come back whenever you want.”

Manny kisses our hands, our cheeks, and leads us back out of the warehouse, through the maze of doors, and into the art gallery. The entire process has taken no longer than thirty minutes.

“You want me to come along?” Glenda asks as we prepare to leave.

“Solo deal. I don’t wanna spook the guy—he’s shaky as it is.”

“Maybe if I hang back—”

“Glen, it’s okay. Go to work.”

On the way out of Manny’s, I detect a familiar scent wafting through the air and spin around like a top trying to locate the source. But with all of these pedestrians streaming by, many with their own particular smells, it’s impossible to localize. A young man walks confidently into Manny’s; it’s possible that the odor is coming from him, but I don’t recognize the face and I don’t have the time to worry about it.

I need quick directions. “Central Park is …?”

“North,” says Glenda. “The zoo’s about halfway up on the east side. Stick to the right and you can’t miss it.”

“Damn, I almost forgot—” I turn back to Glenda. “Can you do a little checking up for me?”

“Checking up how?”

“At J&T, on the computer.”

Glenda’s face falls into a frown. “You gonna get me into some shit, Vincent?”

“Possibly.”

“Finally.” She claps her hands together, rubbing them in anticipation. “Whaddaya need?”

“Got a lead that said Ernie mighta been keeping his stuff over at J&T when he was here last time. Notes, files, whatever you can find.”

“Ernie’s a part of this now?”

“He might be. And even if he’s not—”

“This is the kind of thing that got you in trouble the last time, you know that?” A mild rebuke, a featherweight slap.

“I know it. Please, a favor. For me. For Meester Veencent.”

As soon as I pressure Glenda into agreeing to snoop around her offices and phone me with the information, we bid farewell. I have fifteen minutes to walk into the heart of Central Park thirty blocks away, and I set myself toward the tall trees in the distance. North, I think.

Noon. The sun is harsh today, and even through the new costume I can feel its rays heating up my delicate hide. One thing I’ve already noticed about Manny’s guise is that the pore structure is weak, trapping a good deal of my natural moisture inside the skin, rather than allowing it to leach into the air. I pray this does not wear out the epoxy.

No Dr. Nadel in sight, though as he’s wearing a different costume and I’m wearing a different costume, sight isn’t going to be of much help. Fortunately, the guise I chose has extra-wide nostrils, so I’ll be able to catch his scent whenever he should show. I believe it was woodsy, maybe … oak? I’ll know it when I smell it.

On the way to the zoo, I passed an impressive herbilogical exhibit planted in the middle of Central Park, a series of trees and shrubs from different locales, each bearing a small name plaque describing type, flowering habits, and country of origin. Discreetly, I plucked a few leaves here and there for a little experimental ingestion should I need it later in the day; I may never make it to French Guyana, for example, but if I find that their trees pack a wallop, a trip would be in order. I sit on a park bench and catalog the leaves, tucking them inside the breast pocket of a particularly noxious sweater vest Glenda picked out.

Scent of polished pine, riding on a gust of wind—that’s Nadel. I glance around, attempting to localize. Punk with mohawk, strutting this way? Nah, human. Father, angry, storming toward me, holding a
squirming child by the wrist? He wouldn’t bring along a kid, would he? They pass—both human, I realize now—and the scent remains. Weak, but growing stronger. I look farther afield, into the green pastures of the park.

There—the black woman with short hair approximately a hundred feet away. Brightly colored running shorts, a pink tank top. Thin. And a small folder in her hands. As she comes closer, the smell grows stronger, and as I catch her eyes, there’s a moment of unspoken understanding. It’s Dr. Nadel.

Not a bad idea for clandestine work, the male/female swap, though I turned down such an offer at Manny’s a half-hour ago. Dinos risk enough identity crises without having to worry about transgender mix-ups. Nadel comes closer, not hurrying, not lagging, moving at a steady pace toward the bridge. I expect there will be little in the way of discussion; he will most likely walk by, leave the folder on the bench, where I will retrieve it moments later before walking back into the park. I take a few steps backward, retreating to safety beneath a small bridge.

Another smell, suddenly, overpowering Nadel’s pine, and this one is unfamiliar to me. But it’s enough to stop me in my tracks, force my eyes to scan the park once again. Nothing has changed—pedestrians walk, children run, jugglers drop their clubs. There it is again—deodorant and chewing gum. It does not belong.

A tandem bicycle enters the scene, two obese blond women somehow remaining upright on the contraption despite an incredibly high center of gravity. They wear identical T-shirts stretched across their bodies that read
TOO HOT FOR YOU
, and giggle incessantly at some silent joke. They are pedaling quickly, though—almost too quickly even for experienced cyclists—zipping the two-seated bicycle through the park with impressive speed.

The smells intensify and collide with one another, mixing into a soupy mélange that my olfactory organs are unable to separate. Rooted into the spot beneath the bridge, I find myself glancing back and forth between the black woman I know to be Dr. Kevin Nadel and the two heavy girls on the bike, who I don’t know to be anything but two heavy girls on a bike.

But I have a hunch.

Before I can convince my legs to leap from their spot, before the
thought has even made its way down my spinal cord, the tandem bikers pull up before Dr. Nadel, and, giggling all the way, stop the bike in the middle of the path, blocking his progress. Now I’m starting to get my legs in gear, just coming off the blocks—but even past the din of the zoo, the children, the sounds of Central Park, I can hear buttons snapping and claws sliding into place. The two women have turned around on the bicycle seats, riding sidesaddle, shielding Nadel from my view with their solid bodies. I run.

There’s not much commotion—I don’t hear raised voices, shouts of protestations. No struggle—isn’t that how these things are supposed to go down? There’s a zing, a slice, a squish, and a groan, and in less time than it took for the ladies to stop the bike, they’ve started it up again, reaching cruising speed in seconds. Nadel is on the ground.

As I approach Nadel and kneel over the body, I look up to find that the bike has already slipped down one of the many shaded paths crossing the park, disappearing into the shadows and the crowds. A small river of blood oozes out from a long, thin slice to the black woman’s neck, fluid gushing rhythmically with the faltering heartbeat. Scent disappearing, the doctor dying.

One quick slice with one sharp claw; that was all it took. I don’t even know which of the “ladies” did it. The guise is holding up well beneath the strain of an injury—I can barely make out the fake skin from the shredded hide below, though perhaps the blood helps to obscure the bond. There’s no time left for Nadel to croak out a last confession; the eyes have already glazed over, the mouth opening and closing like a codfish.

The folder is gone.

A crowd has begun to form, more from curiosity than altruism, I am sure, but it remains my duty to ensure the security and eventual removal of the body. I poke my head up and say, “She’s all right, little accident. Passed out. Happens all the time.”

This mollifies some of the onlookers, and they walk away. Others, perhaps sensing a little more than a fainted jogger, stick around to watch. I catch the eye of a dino in the crowd—young girl, jasmine scent, probably a Diplodocus—and wink slowly.

“Think you can call us somebody to help, young lady?” I ask her pointedly, and she seems to get the idea. The girl runs off at top speed
toward a nearby pay phone where I hope she will ring the proper dino authorities.

Meanwhile, I search Nadel’s new—and now unused—body, frisking the corpse for any clues or information the two cyclists didn’t grab. The search turns up nothing in terms of information, but a full key chain comes out of the running shorts, and I quickly transfer the metallic mass to my own pocket.

I wait around for the ambulance to show up, shielding Nadel from passersby, pretending to speak to the African-American woman lying on the ground as if she were still alive. “You’ll feel better with some food in you,” I say to the body. “Right as rain in a minute or so.”

“Clear out, clear out,” instructs the paramedic. He’s got two partners, and from the smell of it, they’re all Carnotaurs. They huddle around Nadel’s prone body, muttering to one another. The protocol here is simple: Get the dino out of sight and into a secured location, away from human eyes. They load Nadel’s body onto a stretcher and wheel him/her/it into the back of the ambulance. The crowd, displeased at the lack of gore, disperses.

After we’re alone, the lead paramedic turns to me—“You see it?”

“I didn’t see it, but I was here.”

“You wanna explain that?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” I say, “but you can call me at my hotel later tonight.” I give him my contact information, run down my PI credentials, and discreetly warn him that on the off chance that the guise is registered (mine isn’t), it might not match up with the dino inside. Grudgingly, he accepts my word and prepares to leave.

“Oh, and by the way,” I say, “you may want to find another coroner to do the autopsy.”

“Why?” he asks. “Guy downtown’s always done a good job on our kind.”

“Yeah, but he’s on vacation. Be gone for a while.”

No time to change guises; I don’t know who sent the two assassins after Nadel, and I don’t know if they’re after me. Better to remain hidden for the moment. I’m sneaking through the underground service passages at City Hall, trying to find some back entrance into the morgue. If I can get into Nadel’s office without being seen …

No such luck. I have to brave the front door. Wally, the coroner’s assistant, stands behind the desk, and I half-expect him to freak out and call security as soon as I walk in. But I don’t look like the guy who assaulted him nine months ago; I’m just another bereaved man with middle-age spread, and his lousy human nose isn’t up to the task of uncovering my deception.

“Is … is my Myrtle … in here?” I choke out.

“I’m sorry?” Wally’s already confused—good.

“My Myrtle, she … it was a stroke, they said, a … a stroke …”

“I—I don’t know, sir, ah … Let me check the books. The last name?”

“Little.”

“Myrtle Little?” He doesn’t sound the least bit skeptical, and it hurts not to laugh. I hide it in a barking cough, a sob into my hands. Wally looks through the morgue log.

“I don’t see anything,” he says. “How long ago—”

“A few hours, I don’t know. Please—you’ve got to find her—please—” I’m grabbing onto Wally’s white physician’s coat now, tugging in a desperate plea for help.

“Maybe you could go back to the hospital—”

“They told me to come down here—”

“They did?”

“Just a moment ago. Please, my Myrtle—”

Wally grabs a phone, dials, and has a short conversation with the person on the other end, a conversation that quickly turns heated. After nearly deafening me with his shouts, Wally slams the receiver on the hook and storms out from behind the desk, face set in a mask of righteous indignation. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on in this place,” he huffs, “but Mr. Little, I’m going to find your wife.”

“Thank you, young man,” I cry. “Thank you.” I keep up a steady flow of tears until Wally’s out the door, down the hall, and up the stairs. Then I’m dry as a bone and it’s back to business.

The outer door is unlocked, making the first part of this nice and easy. Nadel’s office is a different matter, and it’s not until I try the very last key on the chain that I find the right one. The place looks the same as when I left it—neat, precise, boring. I put all my faith in the file cabinet, a four-drawer job with a separate key for each compartment; with such precautions, perhaps excitement lies within.

These keys are easy to locate, and the cabinet doors slide open without a sound. In each compartment, hundreds of manila folders are pressed between two aluminum binders, each file labeled with a date of death and organized by last name. I scan through the M and W sections, attempting to locate what I know won’t be there: the autopsies for McBride and Ernie. I also know where the folders are—pressed between the sweaty palms of two chubby, giggling cyclists.

I’m about to pack it up, the lack of evidence and wasted time already making me regret this side trip, when I notice a small subcompartment in the back of the bottom drawer, a metallic box covered by a locked lid. It takes another key off the key ring, a small one I almost overlooked, to unlock and open the box, and inside I find not another file, but a red spiral leather-bound notebook, perfect for writing down names and addresses and the like. I eagerly flip through, ready to be astounded, but all I come across are seemingly random numbers and letters. For example: 6800 DREV. 3200 DREV. Not exactly a case breaker.