Doll

Chapter 5

Teddy Carella sat in silence of her living room and watched the lips of Detective Lieutenant Peter Byrnes as he told her that her husband was dead. The scream welled up into her throat, she could feel the muscles there contracting until she thought she would strangle. She brought her hand to her mouth, her eyes closed tight so that she would no longer have to watch the words that formed on the lieutenant’s lips, no longer have to see the words that confirmed what she had known was true since the night before when her husband had failed to come home for dinner.

She would not scream, but a thousand screams echoed inside her head. She felt faint. She almost swayed out of the chair, and then she looked up into the lieutenant’s face as she felt his supporting arm around her shoulders. She nodded. She tried to smile up at him sympathetically, tried to let him know she realized this was an unpleasant task for him. But the tears were streaming down her face and she wished only that her husband were there to comfort her, and then abruptly she realized that her husband would never be there to comfort her again, the realization circling back upon itself, the silent screams ricocheting inside her.

The lieutenant was talking again.

She watched his lips. She sat stiff and silent in the chair, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and wondered where the children were, how would she tell the children, and saw the lieutenant’s lips as he said his men would do everything possible to uncover the facts of her husband’s death. In the meantime, Teddy, if there’s anything I can do, anything I can do personally, I mean, I think you know how much Steve meant to me, to all of us, if there’s anything Harriet or I can do to help in any way, Teddy, I don’t have to tell you we’ll do anything we can, anything.

She nodded.

There’s a possibility this was just an accident, Teddy, though we doubt it, we think he was, we don’t think it was an accident, why would he be across the river in the next state, fifty miles from here?

She nodded again. Her vision was blurred by the tears. She could barely see his lips as he spoke.

Teddy, I loved that boy. I would rather have a bullet in my heart than be here in this room today with this, with this information. I’m sorry. Teddy I am sorry.

She sat in the chair as still as a stone.

Detective Meyer Meyer left the squadroom at two p.m. and walked across the street and past the low stone wall leading into the park. It was a fine April day, the sky a clear blue, the sun shining overhead, the birds chirping in the newly leaved trees.

He walked deep into the park, and found an empty bench and sat upon it, crossing his legs, one arm stretched out across the top of the bench, the other hanging loose in his lap. There were young boys and girls holding hands and whispering nonsense, there were children chasing each other and laughing, there were nannies wheeling baby carriages, there were old men reading books as they walked, there was the sound of a city hovering on the air.

There was life.

Meyer Meyer sat on the bench and quietly wept for his friend.

Detective Cotton Hawes went to a movie.

The movie was a western. There was a cattle drive in it, thousands of animals thundering across the screen, men sweating and shouting, horses rearing, bullwhips cracking. There was also an attack on a wagon train, Indians circling, arrows and spears whistling through the air, guns answering, men screaming. There was a fight in a saloon, too, chairs and bottles flying, tables collapsing, women running for cover with their skirts pulled high, fists connecting. Altogether, there was noise and color and loud music and plenty of action.

When the end titles flashed onto the screen. Hawes rose and walked up the aisle and out into the street.

Dusk was coming.

The city was hushed.

He had not been able to forget that Steve Carella was dead.

Andy Parker, who had hated Steve Carella’s guts when he was alive, went to bed with a girl that night. The girl was a prostitute, and he got into her bed and her body by threatening to arrest her if she didn’t come across. The girl had been hooking in the neighborhood for little more than a week. The other working hustlers had taken her aside and pointed out all the Vice Squad bulls and also all the local plainclothes fuzz so that she wouldn’t make the mistake of propositioning one of them. But Parker had been on sick leave for two weeks with pharyngitis and had not been included in the girl’s original briefing by her colleagues. She had approached what looked like a sloppy drunk in a bar on Ainsley, and before the bartender could catch her eye to warn her, she had given him the familiar ‘Wanna have some fun, baby?’ line and then had compounded the error by telling Parker it would cost him a fin for a single roll in the hay or twenty-five bucks for all night. Parker had accepted the girl’s proposition, and had left the bar with her while the owner of the place frantically signaled his warning. The girl didn’t know why the hell he was waving his arms at her. She knew only that she had a John who said he wanted to spend the night with her. She didn’t know the John’s last name was Law.

She took Parker to a rented room on Culver. Parker was very drunk — he had begun drinking at twelve noon when word of Carella’s death reached the squadroom — but he was not drunk enough to forget that he could not arrest this girl until she exposed her ‘privates.’ He waited until she took off her clothes, and then he showed her his shield and said she could take her choice, a possible three years in the jug, or a pleasant hour or two with a very nice fellow. The girl, who had met very nice fellows like Parker before, all of whom had been Vice Squad cops looking for fleshy handouts, figured this was only a part of her normal overhead, nodded briefly, and spread out on the bed for him.

Parker was very very drunk.

To the girl’s great surprise, he seemed more interested in talking than in making love, as the euphemism goes.

‘What’s the sense of it all, would you tell me?’ he said, but he did not wait for an answer. ‘Son of a bitch like Carella gets cooked in a car by some son of a bitch, what’s the sense of it? You know what I see every day of the week, you know what we all of us see every day of the week, how do you expect us to stay human, would you tell me? Son of a bitch gets cooked like that, doing his job is all, how do you expect us to stay human? What am I doing here with you, a two-bit whore, is that something for me to be doing? I’m a nice fellow. Don’t you know I’m a nice fellow?’

‘Sure, you’re a nice fellow,’ the girl said, bored.

‘Garbage every day,’ Parker said. ‘Filth and garbage I have the stink in my nose when I go home at night You know where I live? I live in a garden apartment in Majesta. I’ve got three and a half rooms, a nice little kitchen, you know, a nice apartment. I’ve got a hi-fi set and also I belong to the Classics Club. I’ve got all those books by the big writers, the important writers. I haven’t got much time to read them, but I got them all there on a shelf, you should see the books I’ve got. There are nice people living in that apartment building, not like here, not like what you find in this crumby precinct, how old are you anyway, what are you nineteen, twenty?’

‘I’m twenty-one,’ the girl said.

‘Sure, look at you, the shit of the city.’

‘Listen, mister—’

‘Shut up, shut up, who the hell’s asking you? I’m paid to deal with it, all the shit that gets washed into the sewers, that’s my job. My neighbors in the building know I’m a detective, they respect me, they look up to me. They don’t know that all I do is handle shit all day long until I can’t stand the stink of it any more. The kids riding their bikes in the courtyard, they all say, “Good morning, Detective Parker.” That’s me, a detective. They watch television, you see. I’m one of the good guys. I carry a gun. I’m brave. So look what happens to that son of a bitch Carella. What’s the sense?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the girl said.

‘What’s the sense, what’s the sense?’ Parker said. ‘People, boy, I could tell you about people. You wouldn’t believe what I could tell you about people.’

‘I’ve been around a little myself,’ the girl said drily.

‘You can’t blame me,’ he said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘You can’t blame me. It’s not my fault.’

‘Sure. Look, mister, I’m a working girl. You want some of this, or not? Because if you—’

‘Shut up, you goddamn whore, don’t tell me what to do.’

‘Nobody’s—’

‘I can pull you in and make your life miserable, you little slut. I’ve got the power of life and death over you, don’t forget it.’

‘Not quite,’ the girl said with dignity.

‘Not quite, not quite, don’t give me any of that crap.’

‘You’re drunk,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t even think you can—’

‘Never mind what I am, I’m not drunk.’ He shook his head. ‘All right. I’m drunk, what the hell do you care what I am? You think I care what you are? You’re nothing to me, you’re less than nothing to me.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘Shut up,’ he said. He paused. ‘The kids all yell good morning at me,’ he said.

He was silent for a long time. His eyes were closed. The girl thought he had fallen asleep. She started to get off the bed, and he caught her arm and pulled her down roughly beside him.

‘Stay where you are.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But look, you think we could get this over with? I mean it, mister, I’ve got a long night ahead of me. I got expenses to meet.’

‘Filth,’ Parker said. ‘Filth and garbage.’

‘Okay, already, filth and garbage, do you want it not?’

‘He was a good cop,’ Parker said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘He was a good cop,’ he said again, and rolled over quickly and put his head into the pillow.