Calypso

1

In this city, autumn is often wasted. There are not that many parks, there is never a riotous flame of leafy color sufficient to stun the senses. The skies are often sodden and gray with the afterbirth of tropical storms born in the Caribbean and swept far northward by raging winds. It is not until October that they turn constantly, achingly, intensely blue. It is then that the air comes briskly alive in a season of dying.

This September, as usual, there was rain.

The two men walking through the late night storm were autumn enough. The taller of the two had a warm café au lait complexion, and he was wearing under his raincoat a yellow silk blouse and red silk trousers. Yellow glowed in the V-neck of the raincoat; red flashed below the hem and in the gap that opened with each long-legged stride he took. He was carrying a guitar case in his left hand. The case swung in counterpoint to his hurried steps. The shorter man had difficulty keeping up with him. His complexion was darker, a rich chocolate brown that glistened wetly in the teeming rain. He was wearing a green ski parka and trousers that almost matched the color of his skin. When he smiled, as he was doing now, a gold tooth gleamed at the front of his mouth.

“You were sensational,” he said.

“Yeah,” the taller man said without enthusiasm.

“You killed them, baby, I don’t know what I got to say to convince you.”

“Yeah.”

“Look at what the crowd was. A three hundred advance, another fifty at the door. That’s a sizable crowd, George.”

“That’s skimpy. For a Friday night, that’s real skimpy.”

“No, no, that ain’t skimpy. With capacity at four hundred? You almost filled the hall. Nossir, I don’t consider that skimpy.”

“None of them knew what I was doing, man.”

“They caught it all, George. You were layin it down, baby, and they were pickin it up. Why you think they were yellin and screamin so? When you did the one—”

The shots came from a shadowed tenement doorway.

There was a flash of yellow paler than the tall man’s shirt, and then a shocking explosion. The bullet entered the left side of his neck and blew out an exit wound on the opposite side, blood spattering in globules on the falling rain. He groped the rain for support, staggered, dropped the guitar case, and turned in time to see the second muzzle flash. The bullet shattered his left cheekbone, and veered wildly through the top of his skull, opening his head in a shower of gristle, bone, and blood.

The shorter man’s reaction time was slow. He was turning toward the doorway when the muzzle flared yellow again. Lightning flashed above, there was the sound of the explosion, and then a thunderclap that made it seem magnified and echoing. He winced in anticipation, and then realized the bullet had missed him. He began running. He heard another explosion behind him, and swerved like a quarterback dodging opposition, a futile reaction given the speed of the bullet. But the aim was wild again, he was still on his feet and running, and beginning to think he would get away clean. The fifth bullet caught him high on the left shoulder. It hit him hard, he felt only the pressure at first, as though someone had swung a sledgehammer at his back, and then he felt the searing pain as the bullet tore through flesh and bone, and suddenly he fell flat to the pavement. Up the street, he heard someone yelling. In the gutter on his right, he heard rushing water. And then he heard something that caused him to feel suddenly faint. Footsteps. Footsteps moving swiftly from the doorway to where he lay bleeding on the sidewalk.

He said, “Oh, Jesus, please,” and lifted his head. He saw only the tips of black leather boots below the legs of narrow black trousers. He squinted through the teeming rain, raised his head a bit higher, and saw a black-sleeved arm leveled at his head, a hand clutching a black pistol. Lightning flashed again, he thought at first it was the flaring muzzle, heard the thunder, and mistook it for the explosion of the pistol. Instead, there was a click. It reverberated through the hoarse whisper of the rain. Up the street, there was more yelling, a chorus of voices approaching. There was another click, and yet another. He saw the tips of the black leather boots only an instant longer, and then they were gone. He heard the footsteps rushing away through the falling rain, and then more footsteps approaching from the opposite direction, voices above him and around him now. “Man, you see that?” “Call the police, man,” “Somebody git an ambulance,” “You okay, man?” and then he passed out.

The Police Administrative Aide at Communications Division was wearing a telephone headset with a single earphone, the mouthpiece close to her chin. She was sitting before a console that looked like a television screen with a typewriter keyboard under it. To her right was another console with thirty-two buttons; it was this console that would be activated by a 911 call from any of the city’s five separate sections. At twenty minutes to midnight, the ISOLA button flashed, and she immediately said into the mouthpiece, “This is Operator Seventy-four. Where’s the emergency?”

From a phone booth on the corner near where the two men lay bleeding on the sidewalk, a man said in an excited voice, “There’s two guys been shot here. They layin on the ground here.”

“Where’s that, sir?”

“Culver Avenue, near South Eleventh.”

“Hold on, please.”

Her hand flashed to the typewriter keyboard. Her index finger punched first the I key and then the q key. On the screen above the typewriter, in glowing green letters on a darker green background, a two-hour sector summary flashed:

The computer had just told her that the telephone caller was not reporting an emergency already reported within the past two hours. Into the mouthpiece, she said, “Sir, is there any shooting going on at the moment?”

“No, he run away. Man with the gun run away. They layin here on the sidewalk, the two of them.”

“What is your name and the number you’re calling from, sir?”

There was a click on the line. This was the city. It was one thing doing a good turn, it was another getting involved with the fuzz. The aide, unsurprised, hit four digits on her telephone console and began typing as her call went through to Centrex.

“Ambulance Receiving,” a woman’s voice said.

“Two men with gunshot wounds, sidewalk on Culver and South Eleventh.”

“Rolling,” the woman said.

There was another click on the line. The aide continued typing. As she typed, her words appeared in bright electronic letters on the console screen:

She reached for the enter button on her keyboard and hit it at once. Instantaneously, in another part of Communications, a green light flashed on an almost identical console in the Emergency Dispatchers’ room. The dispatcher sitting in front of the console immediately hit his Q button. The message the aide had just typed and entered appeared on his screen. He hit the TRANSMIT button on the console to his right. As he spoke into a microphone hanging over the unit, he was already beginning to type.

“Adam Two,” he said, “are you available?”

“Affirmative, Central.”

“Ten-twenty-four, two men with gunshot wounds on the sidewalk on Culver and South Eleventh.”

“Ten-four.”

On the screen, the words “ES ADAM 2” appeared. Adam Two was the emergency service van covering that section of the city. The dispatcher knew that an ambulance was already on the way; the aide taking the call had indicated this was an ambulance case, and he knew she would have contacted Ambulance Receiving at once. It was his guess that the Adam Two van would get there before the ambulance did. If this had been a jumper on one of the city’s bridges, or a man pinned under a truck, or a bomb scare, or any one of a dozen other emergencies requiring heavier equipment than that carried on the van, he would have radioed Truck Two as well, and asked them to respond if they were available. As it was, he knew Adam Two could handle it alone. He hit two digits on his telephone console now, opening communication with one of the Mobile Unit Dispatchers elsewhere on the floor.

“Mobile.”

“Emergency,” he said. “Ten-twenty-four, two men with gunshot wounds on the sidewalk at Culver and South Eleventh.”

“Got it, Frank.”

The radio frequency used by the Mobile Unit Dispatcher and every radio motor patrol car in Isola was not the same one used by the Emergency Dispatcher. In the Adam Two van, the driver and his partner would be monitoring both frequencies, but the men in the separate r.m.p. cars would be tuned only to the Mobile Unit band. The dispatcher knew the whereabouts of every r.m.p. car in Isola; there were four other dispatchers on the floor, separately controlling the cars in Riverhead, Calm’s Point, Bethtown, and Majesta. The Isola dispatcher knew that Culver and South Eleventh was in the 87th Precinct. He further knew that Boy car up there had responded to a 10–13 — an Assist Police Officer — not three minutes earlier, leaving its normal sector to join Adam car at Culver and South Third. Charlie car had just responded to a 10–10 — a Suspicious Person call — and had radioed back with a 10–90 — Unfounded. Into the mike, the dispatcher said, “Eight-Seven Charlie, ten-twenty-four, two men with gunshot wounds on the sidewalk at Culver and South Eleventh.”

The man riding shotgun in the Charlie car was undoubtedly new on the job. He said at once, and with obvious excitement, “Ten-thirrty-four, did you say?”

“Twenty-four, twenty-four,” the dispatcher said impatiently, distinguishing for the rookie a past crime from a crime in progress.

“Ten-four,” the rookie said, acknowledging. He sounded disappointed.

Five minutes later, in response to a police call box report from Charlie car to the station house, Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer of the 87th Precinct arrived at the scene. Five minutes after that, Detectives Monoghan and Monroe of the Homicide Division were standing on the pavement looking down at the dead man in the yellow shirt and the red pants.

“Must be some kind of musician,” Monoghan said.

“A guitar player,” Monroe said.

“Yeah, that’s a guitar case,” Monoghan said.

“Did a nice job on his head there,” Monroe said.

“Those’re his brains you’re looking at,” Monoghan said.

“Don’t I know brains when I see them?”

“What’s the other guy’s condition?”

He addressed this question to Carella, who was staring silently at the corpse. There was a pained expression on Carella’s face. His eyes — faintly Oriental, slanting downward — seemed to exaggerate the look of grief, presenting a false image of someone who might suddenly burst into tears. A tall, athletically slender white man, he stood in the rain with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the corpse. Near the doorway behind him, the man from the Photo Unit snapped his Polaroids, his strobe flash blinking like a distant star. In the hallway, one of the lab technicians was searching for spent cartridge cases.

“Carella? You hear me?” Monoghan said.

“Meat wagon took him away before we got here,” Carella said. “Patrolman in Charlie car said he was bleeding front and back.”

“But still alive, huh?”

“Still alive,” Carella said, and looked again at the dead man.

“Hey, Petie, you finished with the stiff here?” Monoghan called to the photographer.

“Yeah, I got all I need,” the photographer answered.

“Did you toss him yet?” Monoghan asked Carella, gesturing toward the dead man.

“I was about to when you got here.”

“Don’t get his brains all over you,” Monroe said.

Carella knelt beside the corpse. In the right-hand pocket at the rear of his trousers — the sucker pocket, the one any pick-pocket could slash undetected — Carella found a brown leather wallet with a driver’s license that identified the dead man as George C. Chadderton. His address was given as 1137 Raucher Street, uptown in Diamondback. The license gave his height as six feet four inches, his sex as M for Male, and a date of birth that would have made him thirty years old on the tenth of November — if he’d lived that long. The license also indicated that it was valid only if the bearer wore corrective lenses while driving. George C. Chadderton, lying on the pavement dead, was not wearing eyeglasses, unless they were contacts.

Behind the license was a Lucite-sealed card stating that he was a member in good standing of the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians — corroboration of the identification, not that any was needed. There was no registration for a motor vehicle in the wallet, but this meant nothing; most motorists kept their registration in the glove compartments of their cars. In the section for cash, Carella found three $100 bills, a five, and two singles. The $100 bills bothered him. They did not seem like the denominations a man would be carrying in this neighborhood — unless he were a pusher or a pimp. Or had Chadderton been heading home after a gig? Still, $300 seemed like more than any guitar player could reasonably earn in a single night. Was this his pay for a week’s work? He rolled the man over on his hip, and reached into the left rear pocket. Only a soiled handkerchief was in it.

“Don’t get snot on your hands,” Monroe said cheerfully.

The rain drilled the sidewalk. Carella, hatless and wearing a tan trench coat, was flanked by the two Homicide men, who stood like bulky bookends on either side of him, both of them dressed in black raincoats, both wearing black fedoras. Their hands were in their pockets. They watched Carella with something less than interest but more than curiosity. In this city, a homicide was investigated by the precinct detective catching the squeal. Homicide detectives responded as a matter of course, and the later paperwork would be routinely delivered to them. But they were spectators, in effect. Or perhaps referees. Carella, hunched and squatting in the rain, emptied the dead man’s right-hand side pocket. Chadderton was carrying six keys on a ring, none of them car keys, 67¢ in change, and a subway token. The subway kiosk for the Culver Avenue line was only two blocks away. Had he been slain on his way to the subway? Or had he and the other man been walking toward a car parked somewhere in the neighborhood?

“What’s his name?” Monoghan asked.

“George Chadderton.”

“Nice,” Monroe said, almost to himself.

“Is the ME on his way?” Monoghan asked.

“He should be,” Carella said. “We notified him.”

“Who said you didn’t?” Monoghan said.

“What’s the matter with you tonight, anyway?” Monroe asked. “You seem depressed.”

Carella did not answer him. He was busy bagging and marking the things he’d taken from the dead man’s pockets.

“Rain got you depressed, Carella?” Monoghan asked.

Carella still said nothing.

Monroe nodded. “Rain can depress a man,” he said.

“So how come we don’t get umbrellas?” Monoghan asked suddenly. “Did you notice that?”

“Huh?” Monroe said.

“You ever see a cop with an umbrella? I never seen a cop with an umbrella in my entire life.”

“Me neither,” Monroe said.

“So how come?” Monoghan asked.

“Don’t let the rain depress you,” Monroe said to Carella.

“Look what it done to Chadderton here,” Monoghan said.

“Huh?” Monroe said.

“Walkin around with the top of his head open like that, rain killed the man,” Monoghan said, and began laughing.

Monroe laughed with him. Carella walked to where the lab technician was still working in the hallway. He handed him the dead man’s belongings.

“His pockets,” he said. “Find anything?”

“Nothing yet. How many shots were fired, do you know?”

“Meyer’s talking to one of the witnesses now. You want to listen?”

“What for?” the technician said.

“Find out how many shots were fired.”

“It’s raining out there,” the technician said. “I can find out how many shots were fired right in here, if I locate any casings.”

Meyer and the witness were standing under the open awning of a bakery shop. The shop’s windows were grilled for the night. The man Meyer was talking to was a thin light-skinned Puerto Rican. The neighborhood here was a mixture of Hispanic and black, the Puerto Ricans along Mason Avenue spilling over onto Culver in the past several years, the friction constant. Carella caught only the tail end of the man’s sentence. He spoke with a thick Spanish accent.

“...to may dee call,” he said.

“Do you know who made it then?”

“Nobody wanns to may it,” the man said. “We don’t wann to geh involve, comprende?”

“Yes, but who finally called the police?”

“Some black guy, I don’t know who.”

“Where were you when you heard the shots?” Meyer said.

He was a tall burly white man with china blue eyes, wearing a Burberry raincoat and a checked Professor Higgins hat that made him look more like an inspector from Scotland Yard than a detective from right here in the Eight-Seven. The hat was a new acquisition. It hid the fact that he was totally bald. The hat was wet now, somewhat shapeless. Above his head, the awning dripped a fringe of rain onto the sidewalk. He waited for the witness’s response. The man seemed to be thinking it over.

“Well?” Meyer said.

“We were juss hangin aroun dee pool hall,” he said, and shrugged.

“How many of you?”

“Fi’ or six, I’m not sure.”

“Then what?”

“We herr dee shots.”

“How many shots?”

“Quién sabe? Plenty.”

“Then what?”

“We come runnin.”

“See anybody with a gun?”

“We see a man run away. Tall man, all dress in black.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

“Tall. Skinny, too. All in black. Black coat, black hat, black shoes.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No, I dinn see his face.”

“Was he white or black?”

“I dinn see his face.”

“Did you see his hands?”

“No, he wass run away.”

“How tall would you say he was?”

“Fi’ nine, fi’ ten, someting like dat.”

“How much would you guess he weighed?”

“He wass skinny. Like a boy, you know.”

“You said a man.”

“Sí, but skinny like a boy. Como un adolescente, comprende?”

“I don’t know what that means. What’s that in English?”

“Él parecia tener diecinueve años.”

“Anybody here speak Spanish?” Meyer yelled.

A patrolman in a black rubberized rain slicker came to where they were standing. The plastic nameplate pinned under his shield identified him as R. SERRANO. “Help you?” he said.

“Ask this guy what he just said.”

“Qué le acabas de decir al detective?” the patrolman said.

“Que el hombre que se iba corriendo parecía un adolescente.”

“What’d he say?” Meyer asked.

“He said the guy who split looked like a teenager.”

“Okay, thanks,” Meyer said. “Tell him thanks. Gracias,” he said, telling the man himself. “Tell him he can go now. Tell him we’re finished with him. Gracias,” he said again, and turned to Carella. The patrolman was busily translating to the witness. The witness seemed reluctant to leave. Now that he’d been interrogated by the police, he seemed to consider himself a star. He was clearly disappointed when the patrolman told him he could go. He started an argument with the patrolman. In English, the patrolman told him to get lost, and then went back to stand in the rain where the police barricades had been set up. The cardboard CRIME SCENE — DO NOT ENTER signs tacked to the barricades were beginning to wilt in the steady downpour.

“You heard it, Steve,” Meyer said. “Tall skinny teenager.”

“How many tall skinny teen-agers in this city, would you guess?”

“Jesus, I didn’t get that guy’s name! Hey!” Meyer yelled. “Hey, you! Wait a minute!”

The witness, reluctant to leave not a moment before, now heard himself being called with some urgency. He did what anyone in his right mind would have done. He began running. The Puerto Rican cop who’d translated for Meyer began chasing him. He rounded the corner, slipping and almost falling on the wet pavement. The rain was coming down harder now. The lightning and thunder had passed; there was only the steady drilling rain. Monoghan and Monroe came over to stand under the awning.

“Where’s the goddamn ME?” Monoghan said.

“Don’t he know it’s rainin?” Monroe said.

“You need us here any longer?” Monoghan said.

“We still need a cause of death,” Carella said.

“Big mystery, that’s gonna be,” Monoghan said. “Guy’s head is all blown away, whattya think the ME’s gonna say killed him? A flowerpot fallin from a windowsill?”

“Maybe the rain,” Monroe said, remembering, laughing again. “Maybe it rained in on him, like you said.”

“I’d appreciate it if you waited till the ME got here,” Carella said quietly.

The patrolman who’d run after the witness came back around the corner, panting. He walked to where the men were standing under the dripping awning. “I lost him,” he said.

Monoghan looked at his nameplate. “Good work, Serrano,” he said. “A promotion is in order.”

“What’s your captain’s name?” Monroe asked. “We’ll put in a commendation.”

“Frick,” the patrolman said. “Captain Frick.” He looked worried.

“Captain Frick, remember that,” Monoghan said.

“Got it,” Monroe said.

“We want to get over to the hospital,” Meyer said, “talk to the other victim. Can you wrap this for us here?”

“What, in the rain?” Monoghan said.

“You can stay under the awning,” Meyer said.

“Here’s the ME now,” Carella said, and walked out into the rain toward the curb, where a black car marked with the city’s seal was pulling in at an angle to one of the RMP cars.

“How nearly done are the rest of them?” Monoghan asked.

“Photo is about to leave,” Meyer said. “I don’t know how long the techs’ll be. They’ll want to mark the position of the body...”

“How about your sketches? Have you made your sketches yet?”

“No, but...”

“Then why the hell are you planning to leave the scene?”

“Because the other guy may die before we get to him,” Meyer said patiently.

“You’re a team, ain’t you?” Monoghan said.

“A pair,” Monroe said.

“A couple.”

“Two cops, not one.”

“A team,” Monoghan said. “So one of you can stay here to wrap while the other one goes to the hospital. That’s the way to do it.”

“That’s the only way to do it,” Monroe said.

“That’s the way we’d do it.”

“That’s the only way we’d do it.”

“Send us your paper shit,” Monoghan said.

“In triplicate,” Monroe said, and both Homicide detectives walked out into the rain toward where their black Buick sedan was parked.

Meyer sighed.