Fatal Reaction

Azorini,” he said, stripping off the gloves. “You must be Mr. McNamara. We spoke on the phone.” Mr. McNamara, still looking somewhat uncertain, allowed his hand to be shaken. “This is my attorney, Kate Millholland. I’m sorry we just barged in on you like this. I was so frustrated by the runaround I’ve been getting from the medical examiner’s office I had to see things for myself.”
    “We are so sorry for this intrusion,” I chimed in. While they may not formally teach it in law school, groveling cannot be overrated in the attorney’s arsenal of indispensable skills. “I can’t imagine what you must have thought when we arrived. I assure you we meant no harm to you, your place of business, or the dignity of your clients. I’m just afraid that in his grief Dr. Azorini was swept away by his desire to be sure the medical examiner’s office was handling matters correctly....” In the distance I could hear the whine of approaching sirens. “Now that those concerns have been addressed, I’m sure he’s ready to turn his attention to the matter of funeral arrangements for Mr. Wohl. Stephen was just telling me that he was hoping he would be able to plan a really memorable final tribute for his friend.”
    “Well, I suppose there’s been no real harm done,” ventured Mr. McNamara, no doubt calculating exactly how many dollars constituted a fitting final tribute. We heard the buzzer from the front of the mortuary.
    “That will probably be the police,” observed the funeral director as Stephen and I did our best to look harmless. “I’ll just go out front and tell them it was all a false alarm.”
    As he disappeared through the swinging doors I felt myself go limp with relief.
    “A memorable final tribute,” muttered Stephen, under his breath. “Do you have any idea what that’s going to end up costing?”
    “No,” I replied. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Whatever it is, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer to defend yourself against criminal-trespass charges.”
     
    It seems only fitting that, after that macabre burlesque, we ended up in a corner tavern a few blocks from the funeral home that was filled with people who’d apparently just come from some kind of barbershop quartet convention. Over the strains of “Down by the Old Mill Stream” in four-part harmony, I tried to get some kind of explanation out of Stephen.
    “Do you mind telling me what the hell got into you tonight?” I demanded once I’d gotten my hand around a double scotch.
    “The medical examiner’s office called this afternoon while I was in a meeting downtown. Rachel must have been away from her desk so they just left a message on her voice mail. All it said was that they were releasing Danny’s body to the funeral home. Unfortunately by the time she got the message and gave it to me, and I called them back, whoever had left the original message had already left for the day. I finally managed to speak to the morgue attendant, but he couldn’t tell me anything except that the body had just been picked up by the funeral home. I asked him if he knew if an autopsy had been performed before the body was released, but he had no idea. I asked him to check his paperwork, but he couldn’t find any for that particular case.”
    “They wouldn’t release the body without doing an autopsy,” I protested.
    “Not necessarily. You’re forgetting that I asked my father to see if he could make a couple of calls to see if he could expedite things. The trouble with organized crime, though, is that they’re not that organized. At that point I had no idea whether my father had succeeded in getting the medical examiner’s office to perform the autopsy and release the body, or whether some over-ambitious gangster had just paid off somebody at the morgue to look the other way while he made off with the body. I had to be sure. That’s why I took matters into my own hands.”
    “Is that what you’d call it?”
    “Come on, Kate. I had to see him before the embalmer got his hands on him. I had to see him for myself.”
    “And now that you’ve seen him...” I said, staring into the amber depths of my scotch. I still couldn’t get over how lucky we’d been. It was a miracle the two of us weren’t sitting in the municipal lockup right now waiting to make our one phone call.
    I contemplated which one of my partners I’d burden with arranging my release and shuddered at the thought of exposing that kind of