Disco for the Departed Read Online Free PDF Page B

shocked out of her daydream. "Will I?"
    "Certainly." This was Siri's way. He often threw her in to see if she'd float. He wouldn't come to her rescue until he was absolutely certain she couldn't bob to the surface on her own.
    "Okay." She looked at the peculiar scene and quickly ran through the possibilities in her mind. "Right!" she said. "If there's a body, it'll be faceup. Judging from the state of the arm, it's mummified; ergo, it would have shrunk."
    Siri smiled and she knew she was on the right track. She continued with more confidence.
    "As he probably didn't get inside the concrete after it was set, we have to assume he was deliberately buried in wet cement--or fell in. That means the cement hardened around him. As the body shrank, a mold would have been left of the original person. That mold could tell us as much as the body itself. So we don't want to damage the concrete too much. Dah dah," she sang. "I don't hear clapping."
    Lit and one of the workmen did indeed applaud. The security chief looked at her with undisguised admiration. "Very well done," he said. "Yes, excellent."
    Siri, still smiling, was looking more closely at the hand. He removed the plastic bag and took a closer look at the clawed fingers. The skin was the color of dark chocolate, not so unusual in mummified bodies. He knew a body at this stage of mummification wouldn't reveal many secrets. But the palm of this hand seemed several tones lighter than the back of the hand.
    The workmen began to chisel along the dotted line he had drawn as carefully as an archaeologist at an ancient dig.
    "Gentlemen," Siri urged, "it's concrete. At the rate you're going, you won't get through it until the year 2006. Smash the hell out of it, for goodness' sake."
    And smash they did. They worked from either side while Lit, Dtui, and Siri sat at the foot of the karst. A feeble sun had finally burned a hole through the northeastern mist but hadn't yet warmed the land. Dtui and Lit filled the following hour with their friendly chatter while Siri dozed. The young couple seemed to have a great deal in common. Both had spent the later years of their lives caring for a sick parent. Dtui told Lit that her mother, Monoluk, had cirrhosis, and that they were presently living at Siri's house. She explained that the doctor didn't like to live alone and he'd managed to gather a peculiar collection of waifs and strays to share his large Party bungalow. Lit's father, on the other hand, had lost both his legs and a length of intestine to a bomb that exploded beneath his feet. A few months ago he'd succumbed to his injuries.
    Both Lit and Dtui had taken every opportunity to study. Lit had attained his position, despite his relative youth, by working his way through the public service texts. Dtui had memorized numerous medical books in self-taught English. Then, when American aid vanished, she'd gone through the same subjects in self-taught Russian. Her dream was to join the twenty-five hundred Lao presently studying in the Eastern Bloc and to send home whatever she could save to her mother.
    Their conversation was terminated by the sound of a loud crack. Siri looked up from his slumber. The workmen had succeeded in prizing the top layer of the slab loose with crowbars. The concrete lid broke in two as they lifted it off the base.
    A mummy, as if in frozen horror, lay shriveled within a shell of concrete that it had once filled. One arm was by its side; the other held high above its head. Its knees were bent slightly and it seemed to be dressed only in a pair of nylon football shorts that were now several sizes too large for it. Their brilliant red contrasted sharply with the almost black-chocolate surface of the corpse.
    But what shocked the onlookers most--even Siri who had seen death in many forms--was the expression of agony on its face, in which a huge gaping hole had taken the place of its mouth. They had no doubt this had been a torturous death--and no accident.
    "What ... what