2013/05/13 12:45
He went on, describing the clothes Rasmoulian was wearing down to an alligator belt with a silver buckle, which I certainly hadn’t noticed. I must have seen it but it didn’t register. “That’s amazing,” I said. “You barely looked at him and you got all that. You fluffed the name a little, but everything else was picture-perfect.”
“Well, I’m what you call a trained observer,” he said, clearly pleased. “I’ll screw up a name now an’ then, but I get the rest of it right most of the time.”
“Now that just shows you,” I said. “I’m the other way around. I guess I’m just more verbal than visual. I’ll get the names right every time, but the faces are another story.”
“I guess it comes from hangin’ around books all the time.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Instead of gettin’ out and mixin’ with people.”
“That must be it.”
“So?”
“How’s that, Ray?”
“So are you gonna ID this poor dead son of a bitch or what?”
“Just hypothetically,” I said. “Suppose I wasn’t a hundred percent certain.”
“Aw, Jesus, why’d you have to go an’ say a thing like that?”
“No, let me finish. I get the impression that my identifying the body is really nothing more than a formality.”
“That’s exactly what it is, Bernie.”
“You’ve probably already identified him from fingerprints and dental records. You just need somebody to eyeball the deceased and confirm what you already know.”
“So far we didn’t get any kind of a bounce from the prints or the dental records. But we sure as hell know who he is.”
“So it’s just a formality.”
“Didn’t I just say that, Bernie?”
I made up my mind. “All right,” I said. “It’s Candlemas.”
“Way to go, Bern. For the record, you’re formally identifying the man you just saw as Hugo Candlemas, right?”
If this had been a movie there’d have been an ominous chord right about now, so that you’d know the hero was about to put his foot in it. No, you’d want to cry. No, you fool, don’t do it!
But would he listen?
“Ray,” I said, “there’s no question in my mind.”
