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Hecht, Ben, 1894-1964

"A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago"

But interestin' things is pretty
hard to run into. I remember one night out to the old morgue. This was
'way back when I started on the force thirty years ago and more. And they
was having trouble at the morgue owing to the stiffs vanishing and being
mutilated. They thought maybe it was students carryin' them off to
practice medicine on. But it wasn't, because they found old Pete--that was
the colored janitor they had out there--he wasn't an African, but it
turned out a Fiji Islander afterward. They found him dead in the morgue
one day and it turned out he was a cannibal. Or, anyway, his folks had
been cannibals in Fiji, and the old habit had come up in him so he
couldn't help himself, and he was makin' a diet off the bodies in the
morgue. But he struck one that was embalmed, and the poison in the body
killed him. The papers didn't carry much on it on account of it not bein'
very important, but I always thought it was kind of interestin' at that.
That's about what you want, I suppose--some story or other like that.
Well, let's see.
* * * * *
"It's hard," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, after a pause, "to put your finger on a
yarn offhand. I remember a lot of things now, come to think of it, like
the case I was on where a fella named Zianow killed his wife by pouring
little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he
sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and
while they was monkeying with the skull they heard something rattle and
when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling
around.


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