whatever you think of me

“Well, whatever you think of me,” Corky said, “nevertheless, I would like to place an order for another ten foreskins.”
“Hey, get it through your head—I’m not doing business with you anymore. You’re reckless, coming here like this.”
Partly as a profitable sideline, but also partly from a sense of religious duty and as an expression of his abiding faith in the King of Hell, Roman Castevet provided—only from cadavers—selected body parts, internal organs, blood, malignant tumors, occasionally even entire brains to other Satanists. His customers, other than Corky, had both a theological and a practical interest in arcane rituals designed to petition His Satanic Majesty for special favors or to summon actual demons out of the fiery pit. Frequently, after all, the most essential ingredients in a black-magic formula could not be purchased at the nearest Wal-Mart.
“You’re overreacting,” Corky said.
“I’m not overreacting. You’re imprudent, you’re foolhardy.”
“Foolhardy?” Corky smiled, nearly laughed. “All of a sudden you seem awfully prissy for a man who believes plunder, torture, rape, and murder will be rewarded in the afterlife.”
“Lower your voice,” Roman demanded in a fierce whisper, though Corky had continued to speak in a pleasant conversational tone. “If somebody finds you here with me, it could mean my job.”
“Not at all. I’m a visiting pathologist from Indianapolis, and we’re discussing your current manpower shortage and this deplorable backlog of unidentified cadavers.”
[181] “You’ll ruin me,” Roman moaned.
“All I’ve come here to do,” Corky lied, “is to order ten more foreskins. I don’t expect you to collect them while I wait. I just placed the order in person because I thought it would give you a chuckle.”
Although Roman Castevet appeared too emaciated, too juiceless to produce tears, his feverish black eyes grew watery with frustration.
“Anyway,” Corky continued, “there’s a bigger threat to your job than being caught here with me—if someone discovers you people have mistakenly penned up a living man in this place with all these dead bodies.”
“Are you wired on something?”
“I already told you on the phone, a few minutes ago. One of these unfortunate souls is still alive.”
“What kind of mind game is this?” Roman demanded.
“It’s not a game. It’s true. I heard him murmuring ‘Help me, help me,’ so soft, barely loud enough to hear.”
“Heard who?”
“I tracked him down, peeled the shroud back from his face. He’s paralyzed. Facial muscles distorted by a stroke.”
Hunching closer, bristling like the collection of dry sticks in a bindle of kindling, Roman insisted on eye-to-eye conversation, as if he believed the fierceness of his gaze would convey the message that his words had failed to deliver.
Corky blithely continued: “The poor guy was probably comatose when they brought him in here, then he regained consciousness. But he’s awfully weak.”
A crack of uncertainty breached Roman Castevet’s armor of disbelief. He broke eye contact and swept the bunks with his gaze. “Who?”
“Over there,” Corky said brightly, indicating the back of the vault, where the light from the overhead fixture barely reached, leaving the recumbent dead shrouded in gloom as well as in white cotton cloth. [182] “Seems to me I’m saving all your jobs by alerting you to this, so you ought to fill my order for free, out of gratitude.”