The Florentine Deception (16 page)

“I told you to stay out of view!” I sniped.

“What did you find?”

“Cross your fingers,” I said, meaning it. “Let's see.” I approached the door to the student freezer and extended my finger to key in the code.

“Crap,” I said.

“What?”

“I need to translate the letters into numbers.” Papa grimaced uncomprehendingly. I whipped out my smartphone and pulled up the phone-dialing screen. “Okay, here we go. B translates to a two, Y into a nine, N into a six, and E into a three.” I keyed in the four digits in rapid succession.

“
Beep beep beep
,” whined the door. I tried the handle anyway.

“Shit.” I reentered the code.

“
Beep beep beep
.” No, no, no!

“Let's see if we're at least on the right track,” I said to Papa, who was still thoroughly befuddled. I walked across the hall to the other door and punched in the code.

Before I could lift my finger from the final button the door issued a loud click. I grabbed the cool, steel handle and pulled, if only for a momentary sense of accomplishment.

“Wonderful!” said Papa enthusiastically.

“Not quite, Papa. This is the wrong door. I couldn't find the code for the other door.” Papa just stared at me.

“That's the room we want to get into.” I pointed across the dim hallway. “I only found the code for this door.”

“The body we're looking for isn't in there?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

I collapsed onto the ground and grabbed my knees in a thinking pose; Papa, seeing that we weren't about to go anywhere, lowered himself back into the chair and stared at me.

“Why the hell can't they just use a key?” asked Papa rhetorically. “What's wrong with a cockamamie key?”

“Give me a few minutes to think,” I said. So much for my carefully laid plan. What were my options?

“Why don't you bribe the watchman?” I looked up at Papa. “Offer him five bucks.” I shook my head.

“Five bucks isn't what it used to be, Pop.”

“The veterans used to offer me fifty cents to bring them whiskey. If the head nurse had caught me, that would've been it.” He drew his finger across his throat.

“Give me a second.” I had a kernel of an idea. “I'll be right back.” I held up a finger indicating “stay put.”

A moment later I'd returned with the gurney and one of the white sheets we'd found outside the alcove.

“I've got an idea. Up for a little adventure?” I asked Papa with raised eyebrows.

“Of course.”

“Can you play dead? I mean really pretend you're dead?”

“Absolutely.” Papa immediately dropped his head onto his shoulder, closed his eyes, and gently slacked his jaw. I had to admit, my grandfather had serious talent in this department. The sight also made me strangely nostalgic; at eighty-eight, I didn't know how much longer he'd have, yet I'd rarely given it any thought. I took a deep breath. “Impressive. Now do you think you could play dead like that for five or ten minutes? You think you could fool the watchman?”

“Absolutely.”

“You're positive you can hold that look no matter what? Even if you have a sudden urge to urinate?” I tilted my head and looked him in the eye. “Even if you have a hot flash?” Hot flashes, Papa's latest affliction, were the result of the testosterone-depriving prostate cancer treatments he'd been receiving and which had recently taken him to the edge. “No matter what?”

“No matter what,” he replied. I knew the odds of such resolve were roughly 100 to 1, but I was desperate, and I figured if all else failed, Papa could talk us out of the predicament, geezer to geezer.

“Okay. I'm going to call this guy's phone when he gets back to the office and tell him you just died. Follow me?” Papa nodded. “I'll tell him you died, and that you had indicated your body be donated to the medical school cadaver program. I'll tell him that I'll wheel you down right away from your room upstairs in the medical tower. So we'll put you on the cart,” I pointed to the gurney, “cover you, and wheel you over to the office, and then have the guy escort us over to the morgue. I'll wheel you in, thank the guy, and then walk away. Once he goes back to the office, I'll come back, knock on the door, and you can let me in.” I paused. “Make sense?”

“Sure.”

“And if the guy pulls the sheet up—you're delivering a performance, right?”

“Say again?”

“If the guy lifts the sheet, you play dead—just like you did a second ago.”

“Yeah sure.”

“You want to use the bathroom first?”

“Ah shit,” he said. “I can take care of myself. I'll tell you if I want to use the damn bathroom.”

“All right, get up on the cart,” I said doubtfully, one hand stabilizing the gurney and the other supporting Papa's arm. A few seconds later, I draped the sheet over his body and face. “Comfortable? Can you breathe?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I'm going to wheel you past the elevator back into the other wing. Don't forget, you're dead. No talking, farting, or any other noises.”

Several hallways later and now in relative seclusion, I pushed the gurney up against a wall and drew the sheet from Papa's face.

“Here goes nothing.” It took just a second to remember Clarence's extension, and another minute or two to look up the hospital's area code and phone prefix on my smartphone. I entered the ten digits and hit Send. Six rings later Clarence's voicemail answered.

“Not back yet,” I explained. Papa nodded sullenly.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I'm just thinking about Mawtha.” Martha—my maternal grandmother had meant the world to my grandfather—and to me; she'd passed away of brain cancer ten years ago and Papa had never been the same. “Laying under the sheet just got me thinking.”

“Mmm,” I responded.

The next five minutes passed in contemplative silence, and jarred by a chirping reminder on my phone's calendar, I tried Clarence's extension again.

On the fifth ring, Clarence picked up.

“Hello?” Clarence's gruff voice boomed equally from the phone and from down the hallway. I froze.

“Hello?” A pause. “Dammit.”

“Eh-excuse me,” I stammered, “is this the morgue office?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you can help me then?”

“I can try. What do you need?”

“I've got a patient here in the North Tower. The guy just passed away. Doctor … Doctor Pascul finished filling out the paperwork and asked me to wheel him down to the med school freezer.”

“Okay. Bring him down quick then. I'm taking my lunch break in fifteen.”

“No problem. I'll be right down,” I said.

“So far, so good,” I said to Papa. “Ready to play dead? Need to use the bathroom first? Pass any gas? Scratch?”

“I'm fine,” he replied.

“Fine. For good measure, let's wait a few minutes. The North Tower is a good ten-minute walk from here.” I looked down to Papa again. “You think you can get off of the gurney by yourself to open the door?”

“I think so.”

“Give it a try.” I lifted the sheet with a flourish. Papa sat up, slowly rotated his body and extended his legs off the side of the gurney, then gently lowered his feet six inches onto the floor.

“Genius,” I said, helping him back up. “Just remember, wait until I knock on the door before you open it. Otherwise just stay put on your cart once you're in. It might take me five minutes to come back, so don't get nervous. Close your eyes.”

I pulled the sheet back over Papa's face, and gave his slightly protruding nose a loving squeeze through the sheet.

Chapter 26

“Hello?” I addressed the empty service alcove.

“One second,” replied Clarence. A moment later, he emerged from the storage room carrying a thick folded plastic tarp.

“Hi. I called a few minutes ago.” I pointed toward the gurney. “I've got the body right here.”

Clarence, easily seventy years old, bounded with unusual agility to the gurney and lifted the sheet, exposing Papa's thirty-year-old coffee-colored loafers. He gave me a confused look.

“What's with the shoes?” He lifted the sheet farther. “The guy's still fully clothed.” This, from Clarence's voice, was not as expected.

“The doctor said to bring him right down,” I muttered.

“He died in his shoes?” replied Clarence disbelievingly. “The guy's ready to go to a senior center dance, for God's sake.”

“I asked the same thing,” I improvised, “Doctor Pascul said the guy was a complainer, wanted to go home, wouldn't take no for an answer. He pulled on his clothes and a minute later keeled over from a massive infarction.”

“Has he been added to the database? Where's his tag?”

“I assume Doctor Pascul added him.” I ignored the second question.

“He needs to be processed before they put him in the med school freezer. You need to take him to Embalming.”

“The doctor called Embalming first. They open at seven-thirty a.m. He said to throw him in the freezer until tomorrow.”

“Incompetent. Either way, we can't put him in the freezer unless he has a tag. I'll get fired. Can't have untagged bodies sitting in the freezer.” Clarence shook his head reprovingly. “Give me the guy's name. Then, go take off his shoes and put them under the gurney. And get me a temporary tag from the back.” He pointed to the storage room. “Someone's going to have to take him to Embalming tomorrow morning. What was his name?”

“Melvin Stover,” I responded, inadvertently providing my grandfather's real name.

“Stoufer?”

“S-T-O-V-E-R,” I replied nervously. Clarence clacked away on a vintage IBM keyboard.

“Strange.”

“What?”

“I found the guy. He's been a patient here, but he's not currently admitted to the hospital and the system says he's still alive. You sure you've got the right name?”

“Positive. If you need, I can get Doctor Pascul on the line.” A bluff.

“Nah. But do me a favor and go grab his paperwork after we drop him in the freezer. And throw it on my desk. I'll take care of it after my break. Oh, go grab a tag from the back and get his shoes off.” Clarence shot an impatient glance at his watch.

Several dozen stiff white plastic tags, each about the size of a business card, sat jumbled in a box just inside the door of the storeroom. Beside the box lay a bundle of clear zip-ties—like the ones they used on
Cops
—clumped together with a wide rubber band; under the assumption we'd need something to attach the tag to Papa's foot, I gently shimmied one of the ties from the middle of the bunch and exited the small room. Clarence, obviously in a hurry to go on his break, had already removed Papa's left shoe and was working on the right.

“Here,” he gestured, “finish taking his socks off while I get his ID.” Clarence dropped the shoe atop Papa's covered legs, shuffled over and grabbed the tag from my hand, and headed back to his computer. A moment later he handed me the shakily stenciled tag. “My fingers are bad with the hog ties. Do me a favor?”

“No problem.” Following his instructions, I threaded the zip tie through a punched hole in the tag and then fastened it loosely around Papa's right big toe—all the easier to remove it later for a quick getaway.

“I'm going to put a note in his file that he's in the morgue. He doesn't even have a morgue ID yet and I don't want him to get lost.”

“What did you write on the tag?” I asked, confused.

“I just wrote his patient ID. There's a whole lot of paperwork they're going to have to do in the morning before he gets his country club membership.” Clarence gave me an incongruous wink and then joined the two of us in the hallway. “This way.”

A moment later, we rounded the darkened corner and I wheeled Papa up to the med school freezer door on the left. Unsettlingly, Clarence headed straight for the opposite door.

“I thought we were supposed to put him in the student freezer,” I said nervously.

Clarence turned. “No way he goes in there until he's properly tagged. For all we know his family wants him buried. Last thing we need is some co-ed taking a Ginsu to his schmeckle and a nice big lawsuit.” Clarence returned his attention to the door. “Dammit.”

“What's wrong?”

“Forgot the code. One minute.” The septuagenarian shuffled off, leaving the two of us in the gloom.

Dammit was right. I needed Papa in the hospital morgue like I needed a goiter. Somehow I needed to get Clarence to put Papa in the student freezer, and just about the only way I could think of was sabotaging the door to the main morgue. I could try smashing the keypad or shorting the keypad with some water, but I didn't want to cause any damage. Then it came to me.

“Hold tight Pop, we're getting close.”

“What's going on?”

“Just hold on. Keep your mouth shut for another few minutes.”

I walked up to the main freezer's keypad and rapidly punched in a four-digit code, then another, and another. Each time, the keypad chastised me with its three beeps. Undeterred, I entered five more random sets of digits, each with the same result. Finally, on my ninth attempt, the keypad flashed three times and stayed silent. Promising. I keyed in another four digits and to my delight, the keys no longer brightened after each press; nor did the keypad beep after my fourth digit. Now the question was whether my repeated failed attempts would attract hospital guards or just activate a temporary security-lockout in the lock. I was either the world's smartest treasure hunter or the world's dumbest grave robber. Literally five seconds later, Clarence rounded the corner with his notebook and a, “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.”