No Body(Anthony Colombo) No Body


“Car fifty twenty-eight and fifty twenty-nine dispatch, fifty twenty-eight,” said the voice of a radio dispatcher.

“Fifty twenty-eight, go dispatch.”

“Fifty twenty-nine,” repeated the dispatcher.

“Fifty twenty-nine, go dispatch.”

“Fifty twenty-eight to handle, and twenty-nine to fill. Fifty twenty-eight, report of a dead body at the corner of Sixth and Jackson. The reporting party gave no details and refused to identity himself. All the call taker could say was that he sounded white and drunk, fifty twenty-eight copy,” asked the dispatcher.

“Roger dispatch, Twenty-eight in route.”

“Fifty twenty-nine?”

“Copy dispatch, in route, ETA ten to fifteen.”

For the two officers this was a routine call. It wasn’t something you would see on that popular TV cop show because this was the place where the elite didn’t go. It was a neighborhood forgotten by everyone but the winos, dopers, whores, pimps, dealers and the cops.

Both officers had been here, how many times before? Neither could remember. This was just another one of those calls. This would be a person with a past no one cared about and no future to look forward to. This would be a person that lived from drink to drink or shot to shot. The coroners report would have Latin names for malnutrition, dehydration and no will to live. There would be no one to care what brought this person to this end, nor anyone to claim the body. All it did mean was that both officers would be tied up for at least three hours because in this state only the coroner could say a dead person was dead.

Three hours at the scene and then one more writing reports. The report would document things like the sex of the victim, his or her name (if they could find anyone who might know it), age, address (if it could be established) and anything else that could be divined at the scene. It would include all the details surrounding the position of the body and anything they found that might be related to the demise of the person to whom the body used to belong. It was a report that would be read by no one else.

The intersection of Sixth and Jackson was as forgettable as the body that lay on its Southeast corner in front of a hotel that was a dump the day it was first open for business. Next to the hotel were two liquor shores and on the other side of the street was a rundown strip mall. Everywhere one looked could be seen boarded up windows or heavy cyclone fencing to protect the unbroken windows. All the buildings were in need of paint, and trash flowed freely in the gutters. The only people who dared to lie down on the sidewalks were the derelicts and the dead. This was the intersection to which two police officers were now assigned. They would be the only ones, for three hours, to care about what was once a human being.

“Dispatch, fifty twenty-eight and nine are on the scene. Has the Coroner been advised?”

“That’s affirmative fifty twenty-eight, but we had no details for his deputy. Can you advise?”

“Roger dispatch. We have a male adult. He looks to be in his eighties. That’s all we got so far dispatch.”

Any time the police arrive on the scene of anything a crowd forms from nowhere. In this neighborhood they are drawn to the sight of a blue and white like a moth to a flame. “Anyone know this guy?” asked the officer.

“I think I do,” said a voice from the back of the crowd.

“Come up here,” said the officer, and a skinny, dirty weasel-looking man in his early twenties pushed his way to the front, “well, do you know him?”

“Let me check his pockets, I’m sure I’ll find out who he is.”

“Get the hell out of here you…” The officer, disgusted with the thing standing in front of him, remembered that Internal Affairs took a dim view of his completing the sentence, even in this neighborhood people have their rights. “Does anyone else know him?”

There was a silence that sounded louder than the traffic noise from the street. Then, “his name is Stevenson, William J.”

“Who said that” asked the officer.

“I did,” said a tall well-built man in his early eighties as he moved through the other people standing around the body.

“And how is it that you know this guy?”

“Officer, ‘this guy,’ has a name.”

“Yes, he does. I’m sorry, Mr. Stevenson.”

“I served with him in the Marines during the Second World War.”

“He was a vet?”

“Guadakanal, Rabaul, Sipan and Iwo. He was wounded four times. He got the Bronze and Silver Stars and the Distinguished Service Cross.”

“No disrespect intended Sir,” said the officer, “but how’d he end up here?”

“None taken son, but when you’ve been through what he has, that in itself might do it to you, but when the war ended, he went home, and found that his two sons and his wife were both dead. You see they lived in Pearl and the three died on December the seventh nineteen forty-one. The navy investigating the death couldn’t tell if the explosive that killed them was ours or theirs.”

Both police officers stood looking at the body of William J. Stevenson a man, a human being, a somebody.

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