“Closer on his hands,” Benton tells Lucy.

She zooms in more as Marino says, as if he can’t stand the man, “Yeah, I remember.”

Benton notices Lucious Meddick’s raw fingertips, says to Lucy, “Severe nail biting. A form of self-mutilation.”

“Anything new on that one?” Lucious is asking about the murdered little boy who Benton knows is still unidentified in the morgue.

“None of your business,” Marino says. “If it was for public semination, it would be in the news.”

“Jesus,” Lucy says in Benton’s ear. “He sounds like Tony Soprano.”

“Looks like you lost a hubcap.” Marino points to the back left tire of the hearse.

“It’s a spare.” Lucious is snippy about it.

“Kinda ruins the effect, don’t it,” Marino says. “Tricked out with all that shine, then a wheel with ugly lug nuts.”

Lucious huffily opens the tailgate and slides the stretcher over rollers in back of the hearse. Collapsible aluminum legs clack open and lock in place. Marino doesn’t offer assistance as Lucious rolls the stretcher and its black-pouched body up the ramp, bangs it against the door frame, cusses.

Marino winks at Shandy, who looks bizarre in her open surgical gown and black leather motorcycle boots. Lucious impatiently abandons the pouched body in the middle of the hall, snaps the rubber band on his wrist, and says in an irritable raised voice, “Got to take care of her paperwork.”

“Keep it down,” Marino says. “You might wake somebody up.”

“I don’t got time for your comedy club.” Lucious starts to walk off.

“You ain’t going nowhere until you help me transfer her from your stretcher to one of our state-of- the-art gurneys.”

“Showing off.” Lucy’s voice sounds in Benton’s earpiece. “Trying to impress his potato-chip tramp.”

Marino rolls a gurney out of the cooler, scratched up and rather bandy-legged, one of the wheels slightly cockeyed like a bedraggled grocery store buggy. He and an angry Lucious lift the pouched body from the stretcher, place it on the gurney.

“That lady boss of yours is a piece of work,” Lucious says. “The b-word comes to mind.”

“Nobody asked your opinion. You hear anybody ask his opinion?” To Shandy.

She stares at the pouch, as if she didn’t hear him.

“It’s not my fault she’s got her addresses mixed up on the Internet. She acted like it was my problem showing up, trying to do my job. Not that I can’t get along with anybody. You got a particular funeral home you recommend to your clients?”

“Get a fucking ad in the Yellow Pages.”

Lucious heads to the small morgue office, walking fast, hardly bending his knees, reminding Benton of a pair of scissors.

One quadrant of the screen shows Lucious inside the morgue office, fussing with paperwork, opening drawers, rummaging, finding a pen.

Another quadrant of the screen shows Marino saying to Shandy, “Didn’t anyone know the Hinelick maneuver?”

“I’ll learn anything, baby,” she says. “Any maneuver you want to show me.”

“Seriously. When your father was choking on—” Marino starts to explain.