Read Meet Me at the Morgue for Free Online Page A

with the years, just like faces do. I’d say you’re thirty-five, give or take a couple.”
    “Close enough. I’m thirty-seven.”
    “I’m practically never more than two years out. Bet a quarter you can’t guess my age, though.”
    “Taken.” I looked at the unlined brow, the carefully brushed black hair, the serene smiling mouth. “About thirty?”
    “Forty-one!” he announced with gusto. “I lead a quiet life.” He pushed a jar with a slotted lid across the counter. It was half full of quarters. “Drop your two bits in here. It goes to the Braille fund.” He nodded briskly when he heard the fall of the coin. “Now what can I do for
you?
”
    “Someone left a suitcase outside here this morning. Behind your newspaper rack.”
    He thought for a moment. “About eleven o’clock?”
    “Exactly.”
    “So that’s what it was. I thought I saw a suitcase.”
    “I beg your pardon.”
    “That’s just a manner of speaking,” he explained. “I see with my ears and touch and sense of smell. You’ve just been out in the country, haven’t you? I can smell country on you.”
    “Right again.” I was beginning to hope that the kidnappers had outwitted themselves in choosing this blind man’s store for their money-drop. He made a point of noticing everything. “About the suitcase, it was left there shortly before eleven.”
    “Did you leave it?”
    “A friend of mine did.”
    “He shouldn’t have left it out there. I’d have kept it behind the counter for him. Was it stolen?”
    “I wouldn’t say it was stolen. It’s simply gone. I think it was gone a few minutes after eleven.”
    He raised his sightless forehead. “Your friend doesn’t think I took it?”
    “Certainly not. I’m trying to trace the suitcase. I thought perhaps you could help me.”
    “You’re a policeman?”
    “I’m County Probation Officer. Howard Cross.”
    “Joe Trentino.” He held out his hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Cross, heard your talk on the radio last winter. The one on juvenile delinquency. Now let me think.”
    His hand, when I had shaken it, returned to the jar of coins and twirled it on the glass counter-top as he concentrated:
    “The ten fifty-five was in. It was standing there when I heard that suitcase plop down on the platform. It wasn’t a big one, was it? Then somebody walked away. Your friend a heavy, older man? I couldn’t see him too well, there was too much interference from the train.”
    “You’re a wonder, Joe.”
    “Quiet,” he said. “I’m listening. I had a couple of customersfrom the train, they wanted
Racing Forms
. They didn’t stop at the newspaper rack. I guess they already got their papers before they left L.A. Hold it a minute, I had another customer, right after the train pulled out. He brought in a paper from the rack, a
News
. Now which one was it?”
    He tapped his forehead lightly with blunt fingertips. I watched him with a sense of strangeness growing on me. His awareness of the life around him seemed almost supernatural.
    His tongue clicked. “It was one of the bellhops from down the street, they come in here all the time. I can tell them by the way they walk, the way they handle a coin. He flipped his dime on the counter. Now which one was it? I know it was one of the boys from Pacific Inn.”
    Water started from the pores of his face. It was an arduous job, reconstructing reality from blowing wisps of sound.
    “By golly!” he said. “He was carrying the suitcase. He picked it up before he came in. I heard it bump on the doorframe. I think it was Sandy, the one they call Sandy. He usually passes the time of day, but he didn’t say a word to me. I wondered why he didn’t speak. Was he stealing it?”
    “No, probably he was just doing his job. Somebody sent him for it. I can’t tell you any more about it right now, Joe.” I caught myself up short. I had almost said: you’ll read it in the papers. “Thanks for your trouble.”
    “No trouble at all,” he