The Passionate [antikvár]

Chapter OneOutside, it was a warm passionate night, and inside my apartment I'd left a warm passionate blonde. I figured by now she must have got the same damp, disenchanted feel-ing that I had. The morgue at midnight is not my idea of fun.I looked at Katz, the head mortician, in disgust. "You sure you just didn't count 'em wrong, Charlie?" I asked him."Lieutenant Wheeler," he said indignantly. "You don't think I dreamed up this bruise on the back of my head, do you?""Could be," I said. "You almost live hereyou could dream up anything.""It's gone," he said flatly."Who wants a stiff?" I said. "Who wants to steal a stiff? What can you do with it? You can't even hock it.""I guess that's your business to find out," Charlie said primly."Your trouble is you don't have a sense of humor, Charlie," I told him. "And will you put your eyes back into their sockets? They worry me.""Aren't you going to do something about it?" he asked plaintively. "In all my twenty years here, Lieutenant, nothing like this ever happened before, never!""There's always got to be a first time," I said, "like I told that blonde before I was so rudely interrupted by the Sheriff's call. What happened, anyway?""Somebody knocked on the door," he said hoarsely. "That isn't usual, Lieutenant, mostly they just walk in.""The stiffs?""People!" he snarled. "You want to hear this, or don't you?"