AS IF THEY WERE THE DEGENERATE ELITE OF ancient Rome, reclining in midbacchanal, their togas scandalously disarranged, the nameless dead revealed here a smooth and creamy shoulder, here the pale curve of a breast, here a blue-veined thigh, here a hand with the fingers curled in a subtle obscene gesture, here a delicate foot and slender ankle, and here half a profile in which one open eye stared with milky lust.
The least-superstitious witness to this grotesque display might be inclined to suspect that in the absence of a living observer, these unidentified vagrants and teenage runaways would visit bunk to bunk. In the most lonely hours after midnight, might not the restless dead pair up in a cold and hideous parody of passion?
If Corky Laputa had believed in a moral code or even if he had believed that good taste required certain universal rules of social conduct, he might have passed his two-minute wait by rearranging these carelessly draped shrouds, insisting upon modesty even among the deceased.
Instead, he enjoyed the scene because in this chamber was the ultimate fruit of anarchy. Besides, with considerable excitement, “he [178] anticipated the arrival of the usually unflappable Roman Castevet, who would be fully flapped on this occasion.
Almost two minutes to the tick, the lever-action door handle clicked, creaked, and eased down. The door cracked open, but only an inch.
As though he expected to discover that Corky awaited him with a camera crew and a pack of muckraking reporters, Roman peered through the gap, his one revealed eye as wide as that of a startled owl.
“Come in, come, come,” Corky encouraged. “You’re among friends here, even though it is your intention eventually to dissect some of them.”
Opening the door only wide enough to accommodate his thin frame, Roman slipped into the cadaver vault, pausing to peer back worriedly at the hallway before closing himself in with Corky and the twenty naughty members of the toga party.
“What the hell are you wearing?” asked the nervous pathologist.
Corky turned in place, flaring the skirt of his yellow slicker. “Fashionable rain gear. Do you like the hat?”
“How did you slip by security in that ludicrous outfit? How did you slip by security at all?”
“No slipping necessary. I presented my credentials.”
“What credentials? You teach empty-calorie modern fiction to a bunch of self-important sluts and brain-dead, snot-nosed wonder-boys.”
Like many in the sciences, Roman Castevet held a dim view of the liberal-arts departments in contemporary universities and of those students who sought, first, truth through literature and, second, a delayed entry into the job market.
Taking no offense, in fact approving of Roman’s nasty antisocial vitriol, Corky explained: “The pleasant fellows at your security desk think I’m a visiting pathologist from Indianapolis, here to discuss with you certain deeply puzzling entomological details related to the victims of a serial killer operating throughout the Midwest.”
[179] “Huh? Why would they think that?”
“I have a source for excellent forged documents.”
Roman boggled. “You?”
“Frequently, it’s advisable for me to carry first-rate false identification.”
“Are you delusional or merely stupid?”
“As I’ve explained previously, I’m not just an effete professor who gets a thrill from hanging out with anarchists.”
“Yeah, right,” Roman said scornfully.
“I promote anarchy at every opportunity in my daily life, often at the risk of arrest and imprisonment.”
“You’re a regular Che Guevara.”
“Many of my operations are as clever and shocking as they are unconventional. You didn’t think I wanted those ten foreskins just for some sick personal use, did you?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought. When we met at that boring university mixer, you seemed like the grand pooh-bah of the demented, a moral and mental mutant of classic proportions.”
“Coming from a Satanist,” Corky said with a smile, “that could be taken as a compliment.”
“It’s not meant as one,” Roman replied impatiently, angrily.
At his best, groomed and togged and breath-freshened for serious socializing, Castevet was an unattractive man. Anger made him uglier than usual.
Slat-thin, all bony hips and elbows and sharp shoulders, with an Adam’s apple more prominent than his nose and with a nose sharper than any Corky had ever seen on another member of the human species, with gaunt cheeks and with a fleshless chin that resembled the knob of a femur, Roman appeared to have a serious eating disorder.
Every time that he met Castevet’s bird-keen, reptile-intense eyes, however, and whenever he caught the pathologist, for no apparent reason, sensuously licking his lips, which were the only ripe feature [180] of that scarecrow face and form, Corky suspected that a fearsome erotic need spun the wheels of the man’s metabolism almost fast enough to cause smoke to issue from various orifices. Had there been a betting pool regarding the average number of calories that Roman burned up every day in obsessive self-abuse alone, Corky would have wagered heavily on at least three thousand—and he would no doubt have ensured a comfortable retirement with his winnings.
“Well, whatever you think of me,” Corky said, “nevertheless, I would like to place an order for another ten foreskins.”
“Hey, get it through your head—I’m not doing business with you anymore. You’re reckless, coming here like this.”
Partly as a profitable sideline, but also partly from a sense of religious duty and as an expression of his abiding faith in the King of Hell, Roman Castevet provided—only from cadavers—selected body parts, internal organs, blood, malignant tumors, occasionally even entire brains to other Satanists. His customers, other than Corky, had both a theological and a practical interest in arcane rituals designed to petition His Satanic Majesty for special favors or to summon actual demons out of the fiery pit. Frequently, after all, the most essential ingredients in a black-magic formula could not be purchased at the nearest Wal-Mart.
“You’re overreacting,” Corky said.
“I’m not overreacting. You’re imprudent, you’re foolhardy.”
“Foolhardy?” Corky smiled, nearly laughed. “All of a sudden you seem awfully prissy for a man who believes plunder, torture, rape, and murder will be rewarded in the afterlife.”
“Lower your voice,” Roman demanded in a fierce whisper, though Corky had continued to speak in a pleasant conversational tone. “If somebody finds you here with me, it could mean my job.”
“Not at all. I’m a visiting pathologist from Indianapolis, and ............