"Who is it?" Werner's voice, laden with static, issued from a tiny speaker.
"Dr. Philips. I've got some money for you, Werner. Bigmoney."
There was a moment or two of silence and Martin could feel his pulse.
"Who else is with you, Philips?"
"No one."
A raucous buzz filled the once sumptuous foyer and Philips pushed through the door. He headed up the stairs for the third floor. Behind the sole door he could hear multiple locks being released. The door opened slightly so that a sliver of light cut across Philips' face. He could see one of Werner's deeply set eyes looking at him. The brow was raised in apparent surprise. A chain was then removed and the door swung open.
Martin stepped briskly into the room, forcing Werner to back up to avoid a collision. In the center of the room Martin stopped.
"I don't mind paying, my friend," he said with as much assertiveness as he could muster. "But I want to find out what happened to Lisa Marino's brain."
"How much you willing to pay?" Werner's hands were opening and closing rhythmically.
"Five hundred dollars," said Philips. He wanted the amount to sound enticing without being ridiculous.
Werner's thin mouth pulled back in a smile so that deep lines appeared in his hollow cheeks. His teeth were small and square.
"Are you sure you're alone?" asked Werner.
Philips nodded.
"Where's the money?"
"Right here." Philips patted his left breast.
"All right," said Werner. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything," said Philips.
Werner shrugged his shoulders. "It's a long story."
I got the time."
"I was just going to eat. You want to eat?"
Philips shook his head. His stomach was a tense knot.
"Suit yourself." Werner turned and with his characteristic gait, went into the kitchen. Philips followed, allowing himself a quick glance at the apartment. The walls were some sort of red velvet, the furniture Victorian. The room had a sleazy, heavy elegance, which was enhanced by the low-level illumination coming from a single Tiffany lamp. On the table was Werner's briefcase. A Polaroid camera, which had apparently been in the case, lay next to it, along with a stack of photos.
The kitchen was a small room with a sink, a tiny stove, and a refrigerator, the likes of which Martin hadn't seen since his childhood. It was a porcelain-surfaced box with a cylindrical coil on top. Werner opened the refrigerator and removed a sandwich and a bottled beer. From a drawer beneath the sink, he got an opener and removed the cap from the beer, putting the opener back where he got it.
Holding up the beer, Werner said, "Would you care for a drink?"
Philips shook his head. The diener came out of the kitchen and Philips backed up. At the dining-room table Werner pushed his briefcase and Polaroid to one side, motioning Martin to sit. The diener took a long draught of beer, then burped loudly as he set the bottle down. The longer he delayed, the less confident Philips felt. He had lost his initial advantage of surprise. To keep his hands from trembling, he put them on his knees. His eyes were glued to Werner, watching every move.
"Nobody can live on a diener's salary," said Werner. Philips nodded, waiting. Werner took a bite of his sandwich. "You know I come from the old country," said Werner with his mouth full, "from Rumania. It's not a nice story because the Nazis killed my family and took me back to Germany when I was five years old. That was the age I started handling corpses in Dachau…" Werner went on to tell his story in grisly detail, how his parents had been killed, how he'd been treated in the concentration camps, and how he was forced to live with the dead. The gruesome story went on and on and Werner did not spare Martin a single repulsive chapter. Philips tried on several occasions to interrupt the ghastly tale, but Werner persisted and Philips felt his fixity of purpose melt like wax before a hot coal. "Then I came to America," said Werner, finishing his beer with a loud sucking sound. He scraped back his chair and went into the kitchen for another. Philips, numb from the story, watched him from the table. "I got a job with the medical school in the morgue," yelled Werner as he opened the drawer beneath the sink. Below the bottle opener were several large autopsy knives Werner had spirited out of the morgue when autopsies were still done on the old marble slab. He grasped one of them, and point first, slid the knife up inside the left sleeve of his jacket. "But I needed more money than the salary." He opened the beer bottle and replaced the opener. Closing the drawer, he turned and came back toward the table.
"I only want to know about Lisa Marino," said Martin, limply. Werner's life story had made Philips conscious of his physical fatigue.
"I'm coming to that," said Werner. He took a sip from the fresh beer, then put it on the table. "I started making extra money around the morgue when anatomy was more popular than it is now. Lots of little things. Then. I hit on the idea of pictures. I sell them on Forty-second Street. I've been doing it for years." With one of his arms Werner made a gesture of introduction around his apartment.
Philips let his eyes roam the dimly lit room. He'd vaguely been aware the red velvet walls were covered with pictures. Now when he looked, he realized the pictures were lewd, gruesome photos of nude female corpses. Philips slowly turned his attention back to the leering Werner.
"Lisa Marino was one of my best models," said Werner. He picked up the pile of Polaroid shots on the table and dumped them in Philips' lap. "Look at them. They're bringing top dollar, especially on Second Avenue. Take your time. I've got to go to the bathroom. It's the beer; it goes right through me."
Werner walked around the stunned Philips and disappeared through the bedroom door. Martin reluctantly looked down at the sickeningly sadistic photos of Lisa Marino's corpse. He was afraid to touch them, as if the mental aberration they represented might rub off on his fingers. Werner had obviously misinterpreted Philips' interest. Perhaps the diener didn't know anything about the missing brain, and his suspicious behavior was only owing to his illicit trade in necropbilic photos. Philips felt the stirrings of nausea.
Werner had gone through the bedroom and into the bathroom. He ran the water at a rate that sounded like someone urinating and, reaching into his sleeve, he extracted the long slender autopsy knife. He grabbed it in his right hand like a dagger, then moved silently back through the bedroom.
Philips was sitting fifteen feet away, his back to Werner, his head bowed, looking at the photos in his lap. Werner paused just beyond the bedroom doorway. His slender fingers tightened around the worn wooden handle of the knife and he pressed his lips tightly together.
Philips picked up the pictures and lifted them in preparation of putting them face-down on the table. He got them as far as his chest when he was aware of motion behind him. He started to turn. There was a scream!
The knife blade plunged down just behind the right clavicle at the base of the neck, slicing through the upper lobe of the lung before piercing the right pulmonary artery. Blood poured into the opened bronchus, causing a reflex agonal cough, which sent the blood hurling from the mouth in a ballistic arc over the top of Philips' head, drenching the table in front of him.
Martin moved by animal reflex, jumping to the right and grabbing the beer bottle in the process. Spinning around, he was confronted by the sight of Werner staggering forward, his hand groping vainly to pull out a stiletto buried to the hilt in his neck. With only a gurgle issuing from his throat, his thrashing body fell forward onto the table before crashing in a heap on the floor. The autopsy knife Werner had been holding clattered as it hit the table and skidded off with a thump.