McNally's Trial by Lawrence Sanders Read Free Book Online Page A

Fogarty had quoted to us were generally correct: approximately 25,000 dead are exported from Florida each year, most of them to contiguous states but some as far afield as Malaysia and Tibet.
    South Florida is especially active in this commerce, with about four thousand corpses being shipped annually from Broward County alone. The large population of the elderly retired accounts for that.
    Coffins are packed in cartons, embalmed bodies airlifted in special crates. All containers are labeled “Human Remains” and “Handle with Extreme Care.” That’s a comfort, isn’t it?
    The packaged deceased are delivered to airports in unmarked vans, not hearses. This custom demonstrates a nice sensibility. Can you imagine sitting in first class, waiting for your plane to take off, and you glance out the window and see a hearse pull up alongside? “Stewardess, I’ve changed my mind; I think I’ll take the bus.”
    According to our calculations, Monsieur Watrous and I reckoned that almost every airliner departing from South Florida carried at least one corpus in the cargo bay. As Binky remarked, “That’s one passenger who won’t worry about a crash.”
    Of course there was an added expenditure for all this. Funeral homes charged a hefty sum, sometimes two thousand dollars, to prepare a loved one for shipment and delivery to the airport. Airlines billed about three hundred dollars for a domestic destination and at least five times that for one overseas.
    A final note: Some religions forbid embalming. In that case, the body is placed in a metal container packed with ice before being airlifted. Remember that before you ask the flight attendant for your third Scotch on the rocks.
    After discussing all this wonderful stuff, Binky and I fell silent and stared at each other.
    “What does it all mean?” he asked finally.
    “It means,” I said, “that Whitcomb Funeral Homes is making a great deal of money by shipping an amazing number of dead out of Florida to points west, north, and east.”
    “Sure, Archy,” he agreed. “We knew that before we started. But where are they getting all the inhabitants of those crates?”
    I said, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of living men?”
    “Hey,” Binky said, “you’re not The Shadow.”
    “True, but I’m a reasonable facsimile thereof. Do you have any ideas, wild or otherwise?”
    He shook his head. “Haven’t the slightest, old boy.”
    “Nor do I,” I admitted. “And there’s no point in worrying about it until we get more information from Sunny Fogarty. Let’s go home.”
    “Banzai!” he cried. “There’s a rerun of Invasion of the Body Snatchers on the tube at four o’clock. I don’t want to miss it.”
    “Very fitting,” I said approvingly. “Maybe it’ll yield a clue to what’s going on at Whitcomb.”
    That evening I brooded in my den, staring at the journal notes I had jotted. The entire mishmash seemed to me Much Ado About Nothing. But then, I reflected, if there was chicanery afoot, it might be As You Like It to the perpetrator. In either case, it was a comedy, was it not?
    I recalled the pater’s admonition to go through the motions but not spend too much time on the Whitcomb affair. I had already disobeyed him and knew I would continue. I was hooked by the puzzle.
    Sgt. Al Rogoff of the Palm Beach Police Department—my friend and sometimes collaborator—constantly complains that I overuse the adjective “intriguing.” I suppose I do, but I cannot think of a better word to describe Whitcomb’s increased revenue from the departed and deported.
    If the truth be told—a painful necessity—I am a nosy bloke. I do like to stick my schnozz in other people’s business and learn what’s going on. It’s a grievous sin, I admit, but more fun than Chinese checkers and also, on occasion, a good deal more dangerous.
    Nothing of any great consequence occurred on Tuesday morning except that I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast. The afternoon was