Lady, Lady, I Did It!

Chapter 11

A corpse has no rights.

If you are a corpse, they can take your picture from a hundred unflattering angles as you stare up unseeingly at the popping flash guns, your skirt pulled back to reveal the dried and caked blood on the inside of your thighs and legs, the last flies of summer swarming about your open mouth. They can press their thumbs into your eyes at last to close your lids, and they can pull your skirt down over your knees and mark the position of your body on the shelf of flat rock where you lay motionless behind the trees. They can roll you onto a stretcher and carry you down to the waiting ambulance, the stretcher bouncing as they move along; they are not concerned for your comfort — you are beyond feeling. They can put the stretcher down on the floor of the ambulance with a sudden jolt and then cover you with a sheet — your waist, your young breasts, your throat, your face. You have no rights.

If you are a corpse, they can take off your clothing and put it into a plastic bag, and tag it, and send it to the police laboratory. They can place your cold and naked body on a stainlesssteel table and dissect you in search of a cause of death. You have no rights. You are a corpse, a stiff, a container of clues perhaps, but no longer a person; you have forfeited your rights — forfeited them to death.

If you are a junkie, you have more rights than a corpse — but not many more.

You can still walk and breathe and sleep and laugh and cry — which is something. These things are life — they are not things to be discounted — and you can still do these things. But if you are a junkie you are involved in your own brand of living death, and you are not very much better off than a bona fide corpse. Your death is continuous and persistent. It starts every morning when you wake up and take that first shot, and it continues throughout the day-long hustle for heroin, punctured by the other death-giving shots, or through the night and into another morning, over and over again, you’re a record player spinning the same tired mournful dirge, and the needle is stuck — in your arm. You know you’re dead, and everybody else knows it, too.

Especially the cops.

While the corpse named Eileen Glennon was being disrobed and then dissected, a drug addict named Michael Pine was being questioned in the squadroom of the 87th Precinct. His questioner was a cop named Hal Willis who could take junkies or leave them alone but whose preference was to leave them alone. A lot has been said about the psychology of the drug addict, but Hal Willis wasn’t a psychologist, he was only a cop. He was a disciplined cop who had learned judo because he was only five feet eight inches tall and because he had learned at an early age that big guys like to push around little guys unless little guys learn how to push back. Judo was an exact science and a disciplined one. Drug addiction, so far as Willis was concerned, was the ultimate in lack of discipline. He didn’t like junkies, but only because it seemed to him that they didn’t have to be junkies. He knew with certainty that if he were ever hooked on heroin, he could kick the habit in a week. He would lock himself in a room and puke out his guts, but he would kick it. Discipline. He didn’t hate junkies, and he didn’t pity them; he simply felt they were lacking in self-control, and this to Willis was unforgivable.

“You knew La Scala, huh?” he said to Pine.

“Yeah,” Pine answered. He delivered the word quickly and curtly. No wise-guy intonation, no enthusiasm, just “Yeah,” like the sharp rap of a knuckle on wood.

“Know him long?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Two years.”

“He’s been a junkie all that time?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know he’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how he died?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think?”

Pine shrugged. He was twenty-three years old, a blond boy with blue eyes that seemed wide and staring, partially because he’d had a shot before they picked him up and the dilated pupils gave his eyes a weird look and partially because the skin under his eyes was dark, making the blue of the pupils more startling.

“Anybody after him?” Willis asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know his pusher?”

Pine did not answer.

“I asked you a question. Do you know who La Scala’s pusher was?”

“No.”

“That’s a lie,” Willis said. “He’s probably the same crumb you use.”

Pine still would not answer.

“That’s right,” Willis said, “protect the pusher. That’s the smart thing. You scrape together all your nickels and dimes. Go ahead. Make the pusher fat. And then protect him, so he can go right on sucking your blood. You goddamn fool, who’s the pusher?”

Pine did not answer.

“Okay. Did La Scala owe him any money?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“You’re a cop,” Pine said. “You know all about how fat pushers are, don’t you? Then you also know they take cash on the line. No. Tony didn’t owe the connection nothing.”

“Got any ideas who killed him?”

“I don’t have any ideas,” Pine said.

“You high now?”

“I’m a little drowsy, that’s all,” Pine said.

“When did you have your last shot?”

“About an hour ago?”

“Who’s your connection, Pine?”

“Aw, come on, cop,” Pine said. “What’s he gonna bother with knocking off a guy like Tony for, huh? That’s stupid, ain’t it? Would you knock off a customer?”

“How bad was Tony hooked?”

“Through the bag and back again.”

“How much did he spend every day?”

“Twenty-five bucks, maybe three bills, maybe more, I don’t know. Whatever it was, his connection sure as hell wasn’t gonna lose it by knocking him off. Besides, what’s the reason?” Pine smiled thinly. “Pushers like hopheads, don’t you know that?”

“Yeah, they like ‘em,” Willis said dryly. “All right, tell me everything you know about La Scala. How old was he?”

“About my age. Twenty-three, twenty-four.”

“Married? Single?”

“Single.”

“Parents living?”

“I think so. But not here.”

“Where?”

“The coast, I think. I think his old man is in pictures.”

“What do you mean, pictures? La Scala’s father is a movie star?”

“Yeah, just like my father is a movie star,” Pine said. “My father’s Cary Grant. You didn’t know that?”

“Don’t get wise,” Willis said. “What does La Scala’s father do?”

“Something with the crew. A grip, a shmip, who knows? He works with the crew.”

“Does he know his son is dead?”

“I doubt it. Nobody in LA reads newspapers.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“I been West.”

“On your way to Mexico to pick up some junk?”

“What does it matter where I was on the way to? I been West, and in LA nobody reads newspapers. In LA what they do is complain about the smog and keep their eyes open in case Lana Turner should stop for a traffic light. That’s what they do out there.”

“You’re the first junkie we had in here who’s also a social commentator,” Willis said.

“Well, it takes all kinds,” Pine said philosophically.

“So La Scala was living alone, that it?”

“Yeah,” Pine said.

“No girl?”

“No.”

“Did he have relatives besides his parents?”

“A sister, yeah. But she lives on the coast, too. In Frisco.”

“You think they read the papers there, Pine?”

“Maybe. All I know for sure about Frisco is that all the ladies wear hats.”

“You think his sister knows he’s dead?”

“I don’t know. Give her a call and ask her. You got plenty of taxpayers’ money. Give her a call.”

“You seem to be perking up a little, Pine. You’re getting a real sharp edge of a sudden.”

“Yeah. Well, you can’t operate on one level all the time, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know. In other words, Pine, La Scala was alone in this city, huh? You know anybody who might have wanted him dead?”

“Nope. Why should they? He wasn’t bothering nobody.”

“And all his relatives are in California, is that right, too?”

“That’s right.”

“Then nobody here’ll miss him,” Willis said.

“I got news for you, cop,” Pine answered. “Even if they were here, they would not miss him.”

Paul Blaney was an assistant medical examiner, a short man with a scraggly black mustache and violet eyes. It was Blaney’s contention that he, as junior member on the medical examiner’s staff, was always given the most gruesome corpses for necropsy, and he was rather surprised and pleased to receive the body of Eileen Glennon. The girl seemed to be in one piece, and there were no signs of undue violence, no stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, no broken skull. Blaney was sure one of his colleagues had made a mistake in assigning this particular cadaver to him, but he was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he fell to work with Dispatch, half afraid they would change their minds and give him another corpse before he was through.

He called the squadroom at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon, ready to give a full necropsy report to whoever was handling the case. Steve Carella took the call. He had spoken to Blaney many times before, and Blaney was glad that Carella and not another of the 87th’s cops had answered the phone. Carella was a man who understood the problems of the medical examiner’s office. Carella was a man you could talk to.

The men exchanged the pleasantries and amenities and then Blaney said, “I’m calling about this little girl they sent over. From what I understand, the body was found in Majesta, but it seems to be connected with a case you’re working on, and I was asked to deliver my report to you. I’ll send this over typed later, Carella, but I thought you might want the findings right away.”

“I’m glad you called,” Carella said.

“Her name’s Eileen Glennon,” Blaney said, “That right?”

“That’s right.”

“I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same person before I went through the whole bit.”

“That’s okay,” Carella said.

“This was an interesting one,” Blaney said. “Not a mark on her. Plenty of bloodstains, but no visible wounds. I figure she’s been dead a few days, probably since Sunday night sometime. Where was she found, exactly?”

“In a little park.”

“Hidden?”

“No, not exactly. But the park doesn’t get much traffic.”

“Well, that might explain it. In any case, I estimate she was lying wherever they found her since Sunday night, if that’s any help to you.”

“It might be helpful,” Carella said. “How’d she die?”

“Well, now, that’s what was interesting about this. Does she live in Majesta?”

“No. She lives with her mother. In Isola.”

“Well, that makes sense, all right. Though I can’t understand why she didn’t at least try to get home. Of course, considering what I found, she probably had a range of symptoms, which could have confused her. Especially after what she’d been through.”

“What kind of symptoms, Blaney?”

“Chills, febrile temperature, vomiting maybe, syncope, weakness, and eventually stupor and delirium.”

“I see,” Carella said.

“The autopsy revealed a slightly distended cervix, tenderness of the lower abdomen, discharge from the external os, and tenacula marks.”

“I see,” Carella said, not seeing at all.

“A septic infection,” Blaney stated simply. “And, at first, I thought it might have been the cause of death. But it wasn’t. Although it certainly ties in with what did kill her.”

“And what was that?” Carella asked patiently.

“The bleeding.”

“But you said there were no wounds.”

“I said there were no visible wounds. Of course, the tenacula marks were a clue.”

“What are tenacula marks?” Carella asked.

“Tenacula is a plural for tenaculum — Latin,” Blaney said. “A tenaculum is a surgical tool, a small sharp-pointed hook set in a handle. We use it for seizing and picking up parts. Of the body, naturally. In operations or dissections.”

Carella suddenly remembered that he didn’t very often like talking to Blaney. He tried to speed the conversation along, wanting to get at the facts without all the details.

“Well, where were these tenacula marks?” he asked pointedly.

“On the cervical lip,” Blaney said. “The girl had bled profusely from the uterine canal. I also found pieces of pla—”

“What did she die from, Blaney?” Carella asked impatiently.

“I was getting to that. I was just telling you. I found pieces of pla—”

“How did she die?”

“She died of uterine hemorrhage. The septicemia was a complication.”

“I don’t understand. What caused the hemorrhage?”

“I was trying to tell you, Carella, that I also found pieces of placental tissue in the cervix of the uterus.”

“Placental...?”

“The way I figure it, the job was done either Saturday or Sunday sometime. The girl was probably wandering around when—”

“What job? What are you talking about, Blaney?”

“The abortion,” Blaney said flatly. “That little girl had an abortion sometime over the weekend. You want to know what killed her? That’s what killed her!”

Somebody had to tell Kling what everybody in the squadroom decided that Tuesday. Somebody had to tell him, but Kling was at a funeral. So, instead of speculating, instead of hurling theories at a man who was carrying grief inside him, instead of telling him that one of those closets they’d spoken about had finally been opened and, like all closets opened in the investigation of a homicide, it contained something that should have remained hidden — instead of confronting him with something they knew he would disbelieve anyway — they decided to find out a little more about it. Carella and Meyer went back to see the girl’s mother, Mrs. Glennon, leaving Bert Kling undisturbed at the funeral.

Indian summer was out of place at that cemetery.

Oh, she had charm, that guileful bitch. The trees lining the road to the burial plot were dressed in gaudy brilliance, reds and oranges and burnt yellows and browns and unimaginable hues mixed on a Renaissance palette. Hotly, they danced overhead, whispering secrets to the balmy October breeze, while the mourners marched beneath the branches of the trees, following the coffin in colorless black, their heads bent, their feet drifting through idle fallen leaves, whispering, whispering.

The hole in the earth was like an open wound.

The grass seemed to end abruptly, and the freshly turned earth began in moist rich darkness, its virgin aroma carried on the air. The grave was long and deep. The coffin was suspended over it, held aloft on canvas straps attached to the mechanism that would lower it gently into the earth.

The sky was so blue.

They stood like uneasy shadows against the wide expanse of sky and the gaudy exhibitionism of the autumn trees. They stood with their heads bent. The coffin was poised for disappearance.

He looked at the black shining box and beyond that to where a man was waiting to release the mechanism. Everything seemed to shimmer in that moment because his eyes had suddenly filled with tears. A hand touched his arm. He turned, and through the glaze of tears he saw Claire’s father, Ralph Townsend. The grip tightened on his arm. He nodded and tried to hear the minister’s words.

“...above all,” the minister was saying, “she goes to God even as she was delivered from Him: pure of heart, clean of spirit, honest and unafraid of His infinite mercy. Claire Townsend, may you rest in eternal peace.”

“Amen,” they said.