Buried on Avenue B by Peter de Jonge Page B

then added to in the fluorescence of the morgue. For the next twenty minutes she filters it through her exhausted brain like the mesh filtered the dirt at the site, and although she doesn’t make a mark on the pad, the sight of her pen lying across the long, empty page is as calming as her drink. O’Hara smiles at her memory of Bradley’s response when Kelso tried to hustle him along. Excavating is a destructive process. You only have one chance to do it right. Although strictly speaking, the analogy doesn’t apply to police work, and she may have more than one chance to get it right, a composed and thoughtful start could avoid unnecessary missteps and save her a lot of time. Finally, almost reluctantly, she makes the first blemish on the page—a capital V and, a couple sips later, ictim . Beneath it, she lists what she knows so far:
    Caucasian, presumably male, approximately ten years old
    Hair color: blond, nearly white
    Height: 4-foot-7
    Another sip produces a second heading—“Burial Artifacts.” She divides them into the three categories she observed at the morgue. Under “Currency” she lists:
    $20 bill
    5-peso coin
    25-yen coin
    1 subway token—obsolete
    1 pearl
    1 marble
    Under “Tools” she lists:
    1 lighter—female torso
    1 roach clip
    1 Swiss Army knife
    Under “Entertainment” she lists:
    1 pint of Ballantine whiskey, unopened
    1 small bag of weed, sealed
    1 audio CD—Coldplay, titled “X&Y”
    As O’Hara reviews her work, she considers adding Kelso to the list under “Tools” but decides it’s bad form to kick a man when he’s down, particularly when you’re the one who put him there. Now O’Hara creates a fourth heading—“Clothes”—and beneath it writes:
    1 baseball cap, New York Yankees
    Unlike most New Yorkers, and cops in particular, O’Hara roots for the underdog. Instead of the Yankees, she pulls for the Mets. Instead of the Giants, she roots for the Jets; instead of the Beatles, the Stones. Her ex-boyfriend, the medical examiner Leibowitz, another Mets fan, said pulling for Steinbrenner’s Yankees would be like going to Vegas and rooting for the house. Continuing the list of clothes, O’Hara writes:
    1 dress shirt—blue with yellow stripes
    1 T-shirt, “The Germs”—clean
    O’Hara looks up from her list at the bartender in her long-sleeved Kiss concert tee and wonders if at this point in the history of civilization, it is possible to infer anything about a person from the name of the band emblazoned on her chest. To do so, you’d need to know the exact degree of irony with which the garment is being worn, and to know that, you’d have to interview the wearer. O’Hara doesn’t doubt the barkeep likes Kiss. How could anyone not like Kiss? At the same time, it’s worn with a bit of a wink. T-shirts for AC/DC, Kiss, and Def Leppard are heavy metal ironic, just as T-shirts for the Stones, Zeppelin, and the Beatles are rock royalty ironic. The Strokes are prematurely obsolete ironic, the Wings and Ted Nugent b-list ironic or, if you’re a contrarian, underrated a-list ironic. The only thing you can know for sure is that the T-shirt is no longer just about the band, because at this point, no one is willing to give it up blindly to anyone, not Mick or Keith, and certainly not Gene Simmons.
    The only exception might be a band so obscure no one’s heard of it. O’Hara hasn’t heard of the Germs, so maybe they fall into that last category, but who knows? O’Hara takes a sip and adds:
    1 pair of jeans
    1 pair of sneakers—Converse high-tops, white
    (No socks, no underwear)
    As O’Hara ponders her various lists, she gets a call on her cell, and for the breach in early-morning Milano’s etiquette, a dirty look from the female on her left. “I just learned something else about the victim,” says Bradley. “I