When they had returned to the office downstairs the medical examiner took two scratched glass tumblers from the middle drawer of his desk and poured them stiff shots from the tagged whiskey bottle. The tag said Exhibit Number Two—Elliot Johnson. They took the whiskey neat.

“To the john,” Lobsenz said, removing a key from a nail in the wall.

When he was gone the skinny girl spoke without looking up from her typewriter. “He’ll offer you a room and seventy-five a month. Don’t take it for less than a hundred. He’ll tell you he’s got other candidates but he’s had only one applicant who vomited halfway through the autopsy.” The keys continued to clatter. “He’s a terrific guy but he’s full of shit,” she said.

Dr. Lobsenz came back, rubbing his hands. “Well, what do you think? Do you want the job? You can learn more about the human body here than in four medical schools. I’ll teach you as we work.”

“Okay,” Adam said.

“We’ve got a good room for you here. Seventy-five dollars a month.”

“I want the room and a hundred dollars.”

Lobsenz’s smile faded. He looked suspiciously at the girl behind the desk, who continued to type. “I have other candidates.”

Perhaps it was the liquor, which just about that time hit his empty stomach like a fist, making his head feel large and airborne, like a balloon. “Doctor, in a couple of months I’ll be very hungry if I don’t get a job right now. If not for that I wouldn’t touch this fine position with your ten-foot pole.”

Lobsenz looked at him and suddenly he smiled. “Come on, Silverstone, I’ll buy you some lunch,” he said.

The room on the second floor looked like an office from outside the frost-windowed door, but it contained a cot and a bureau. The sheets could be changed as often as he liked; he had access to the services of the county laundry for his personal needs, a wonderful bonus Dr. Lobsenz had neglected to mention. Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God. Francis Bacon.