JL04 - Mortal Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

pockets. No wallet, no ID, no nothing except an Eastern Air Lines schedule and a hundred colons in Costa Rican currency. Of course, that solved the mystery.”
    “It did?”
    “The poor wretch had no visa and no money for a ticket, so he crawled into the wheel well of a jet at the airport in San Jose. There’s space up there that a man—well, not someone your size, but this fellow—could fit into. The wheel well isn’t pressurized, and if the lack of oxygen hadn’t killed him, the temperature would have.”
    “The fall probably didn’t do him any good, either,” I speculated.
    A group of Hare Krishnas chanted and bangled their way along the sidewalk, sweat glistening on their shaved heads. I took a bite of my cheeseburger. South Beach overflows with chichi cafés where the pasta is al dente and the tuna rare, but I’m still a burger-and-brew guy. I’m as health-conscious as the next guy, as long as the next guy is sitting on a barstool, but there are limits. It doesn’t bother me if someone waxes poetic about the joys of bean sprouts. If a scrawny woman feasts on grapefruit and lettuce, fine. If a guy is a vegetarian jogger, that’s great, too, though most look as if they couldn’t buck a force-three wind. I don’t tell other people how to live, and I appreciate reciprocity.
    Once when I was chomping a cheeseburger with a side of fries at an outdoor cafe in Coconut Grove, a fragile-looking guy in a gold velour warmup suit and white bicycling helmet stopped short at my table. “I’d hate to see the inside of your arteries,” he said somberly.
    “Fine,” I responded, taking a long swallow of my chocolate shake. “I’ll tear your heart out, and we’ll look at yours.”
    He blinked and took a step backward. “Eat yourself to death, if you want. All that animal fat leads to cardiac arrest and the excess protein causes kidney failure.”
    “So does a good left hook,” I advised him.
    I don’t believe in being judgmental. You eat your tofu, I’ll eat my T-bone. Today, though, it was a rare burger with purple onions, ripe tomato slices, and tangy mustard on a fresh-baked roll. A nice slab of melted Jarlsberg cheese to keep the juices in the meat. With all the pasta and sushi places, it isn’t easy to find a good burger any more, so it’s a real quiniela if the same place also serves Grolsch, the Dutch beer.
    “You say Mr. Tupton had been drinking?” Charlie asked.
    “Heavily.”
    “And the room temperature was in the fifties?”
    “Fifty-six, right on the button, and Tupton was soaking wet.”
    In the street, several young men carried a banner protesting discrimination against AIDS victims. The Miami Beach bicycle cops patiently directed traffic around the demonstrators. Charlie smoothed his beard with the back of his hand. “That could do it. Once in a while, in the winter down here, with the ambient temperature in the fifties, we’ll see a homeless person die of hypothermia. If there’s been excessive alcohol intake, vasodilation is the killer. The blood vessels dilate, body temperature plummets. All kinds of complications can result, metabolic acidosis, elevations in serum amylase, and pancreatitis.” A shirtless man walked by, a bright green mynah perched on his shoulder. Hardly anyone turned to stare. “How long was Tupton in there?”
    “Twelve, fourteen hours. The maid discovered him in the morning. When the paramedics arrived, his body temperature was seventy-seven degrees. No respiration, no heartbeat.”
    “Ventricular fibrillation was the likely terminal event. Seems like he died of natural causes, so what’s the problem, Jake?”
    I shrugged. I didn’t know. It was just this vague uneasiness. I took a bite of the burger and drained the beer.
    “Any surprises in the autopsy?” asked the man who had performed twenty thousand before retiring to a life of fishing and reading medical texts in their original Latin.
    “M.F. says no. Nothing unusual in the system other than the