Lightning

3

The padded mailing bag arrived by parcel post on Tuesday morning, October 11. It was addressed to the 87th Precinct, and was accepted at the muster desk by Sergeant Dave Murchison, together with the rest of that morning’s mail. Murchison looked at the bag suspiciously, and then held it to his ear to listen for any ticking. In today’s world, you never knew whether there was a bomb in a package with no return address on it.

He didn’t hear any ticking, which didn’t mean a damn thing. Nowadays, you could fashion homemade explosive devices that didn’t tick at all. He wondered if he should alert the Bomb Squad; he’d feel like a horse’s ass if they came all the way up here and discovered there was a box of chocolates or something inside the bag. Murchison had been a cop for a long time, though, and he knew that one of the first laws of survival in the Police Department was to cover your flanks. He picked up the phone and immediately buzzed Captain Frick’s office.

There were 186 uniformed policemen and sixteen plainclothes detectives working out of the Eight-Seven, and Captain Frick was in command of all of them. Most of them believed that Frick was beyond the age of retirement, if not chronologically, then at least mentally. Some of them went so far as to say that Frick was non compos mentis and incapable of tying his own shoelaces in the morning, no less making decisions that could very easily affect the very real life-or-death situations these men confronted daily on the precinct streets. Frick had white hair. His hair had been white forever. He felt it complemented the blue of his uniform. He could not imagine holding down a job that would compel him to wear anything but the blue uniform that so splendidly complemented his dignified white hair. The gold braid, too; he liked the gold braid on his uniform. He liked being a cop. He did not like being told by a desk sergeant that a suspicious-looking package had just arrived in the morning mail.

“What do you mean, suspicious?” he asked Murchison.

“No return address on it,” Murchison said.

“Where’s it postmarked?” Frick asked.

“Calm’s Point.”

“That’s not this precinct,” Frick said.

“No, sir, it’s not.”

“Send it back,” Frick said. “I want no part of it.”

“Send it back where, sir?” Murchison asked.

“To Calm’s Point.”

“Where in Calm’s Point? There’s no return address on it.”

“Send it back to the post office,” Frick said. “Let them worry about it.”

“Suppose it blows up?” Murchison said.

“Why would it blow up?”

“Suppose there’s a bomb in it? Suppose we send it back to the post office, and it blows up and kills a hundred postal clerks? How would we look then?” Murchison asked.

“So what do you want to do?” Frick asked. He was looking at his shoes and thinking he needed a shine. On his lunch hour, he’d go for a shine at the barber shop on Culver and Sixth.

“That’s what I’m asking you,” Murchison said. “What to do.”

Responsibilities, Frick thought, always responsibilities. Cover your flanks, he thought. In case there’s flak from upstairs rank later on. You never knew when departmental heat would come. It struck like lightning.

“What is your recommendation, Sergeant?” he asked.

“I am asking for your recommendation, sir,” Murchison said.

“Would you suggest we call the Bomb Squad?” Frick asked.

“Is that what you suggest, sir?” Murchison said.

“This would seem a routine matter,” Frick said. “I’m sure you are capable of handling it.”

“Yes, sir, in what way should I handle it, sir?”

Both men were extremely expert at covering their flanks. It seemed as if they had reached an impasse. Frick was wondering how he could vaguely word an order that wouldn’t sound like an order. Murchison was sitting there hoping Frick would not tell him to open the damn package. Even if there wasn’t a bomb in it, you opened these padded mailing bags and all sorts of crud that looked like chopped asbestos fell out onto your desk and your clean blue pants. He did not want to open that bag. He sat there wondering how he could maneuver Frick into giving him definite instructions that would take the damn thing off the muster desk before it exploded in his face.

“Do as you see fit,” Frick said.

“Yes, sir, I’ll send it to your office,” Murchison said.

“No!” Frick said at once. “Don’t send any damn bomb to my office!”

“Where shall I send it?” Murchison said.

“I told you. Back to the post office.”

“Yes, sir, is that your order, sir? If it later explodes at the post office?”

“It won’t explode if the Bomb Squad looks at it first,” Frick said, and realized an instant later that he’d been outflanked.

“Thank you, sir,” Murchison said, “I’ll call the Bomb Squad.”

Frick hung up thinking that if there was no bomb in that package, the Bomb Squad boys would be telling jokes about it for months — chickenhearted 87th Precinct calls the Bomb Squad when it gets a package without a return address on it. He almost wished there was a bomb in that damn bag. He almost wished it would explode before the Bomb Squad got here.

There was no bomb inside the bag.

The Bomb Squad boys were laughing when they left the station house. Shaking his head, Frick watched them from his upstairs window and hoped he didn’t run into any departmental rank within the next few weeks.

There was a woman’s pocketbook inside the mailing bag.

The pocketbook contained a small packet of Kleenex tissues, a rat-tailed comb, a compact, a package of Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum, a checkbook, a small spiral-bound notebook, a ballpoint pen, a tube of lipstick, a pair of sunglasses, and a wallet. No keys. The detectives thought that was odd. No keys. The wallet contained four ten-dollar bills, a five-dollar bill, and two singles. The wallet also contained a Ramsey University student I.D. card giving the girl’s address here in the city. The girl’s name, as typed on the I.D. card, was Marcia Schaffer. A photograph was sealed between the protective plastic layers of the card.

The girl was smiling in the photograph.

She was not smiling in the photographs the PU had taken at the scene of the hanging on Friday morning, October 7.

Aside from that, the photographs were virtually identical.

Kling and Carella were studying the photographs when Meyer Meyer walked into the squadroom. They pretended they didn’t know him. That was because Meyer was wearing a wig.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?” Carella asked, looking up.

“Come on, “Meyer said, and started pushing his way through the gate in the railing.

Kling leaped to his feet at once, starting for the railing.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “this is a restricted area.”

“Would you please state your business, sir?” Carella said.

Meyer kept advancing into the squadroom.

Kling pulled his gun from his shoulder holster.

“Hold it right there, sir!” he shouted.

Carella’s gun was already in his hand. “State your business, sir!” he shouted, moving forward.

“It’s me,” Meyer said. “Cut it out, will you?”

“It’s who, sir?” Kling said. “State your goddamn business!”

“My business is kicking the asses of wise-guy flatfoots,” Meyer said, and went to his desk.

“It’s Meyer!” Carella said in mock surprise.

“I’ll be a son of a gun!” Kling said.

“You’ve got hair!” Carella said.

“No kidding,” Meyer said. “What’s the big deal? Man buys a hairpiece, right away it’s a reason for hilarity.”

“Are we laughing?” Kling asked.

“You see us laughing?” Carella asked.

“Is it real hair?” Kling asked.

“Yes, it’s real hair,” Meyer said testily.

“Boy, you sure had us fooled,” Carella said.

“Real hair from where?” Kling asked.

“How do I know from where? It’s people who sell their hair, they make hairpieces out of it.”

“Is it virgin hair?” Kling asked.

“Is it head hair or pubic hair?” Carella asked.

“The shit a man has to take up here,” Meyer said, shaking his head.

“I think he looks beautiful,” Kling said to Carella.

“I think he looks adorable,” Carella said.

“Is this shit going to go on all morning?” Meyer said, sighing. “Nothing better to do around here? I thought you caught a homicide last week. Go arrest some shopping bag ladies, will you?”

“He’s ravishing when he gets angry,” Kling said.

“Those flashing blue eyes,” Carella said.

“And those curly brown locks,” Kling said.

“They’re not curly,” Meyer said.

“How much did it cost?” Kling asked.

“None of your business,” Meyer said.

“Virgin pubic hair must cost a fortune,” Carella said.

“Very difficult to come by,” Kling said.

“How does Sarah feel about you wearing a merkin on your head?” Carella asked, and both he and Kling burst out laughing.

“Very funny,” Meyer said. “Typical crude squadroom humor. Man buys a hairpiece...”

“Who’s that sitting in my chair?” a voice boomed from beyond the railing, and Arthur Brown walked into the squadroom. Brown was the color of his surname, a six-foot-four, two hundred and twenty pound detective who stood now with an amazed look on his handsome face. “Why, I do believe it’s Goldilocks,” he said, opening his eyes wide. “Fetch some porridge,” he said to Kling. “What cute curls you have, Goldilocks.”

“Another county heard from,” Meyer said.

Brown approached Meyer’s desk. He tiptoed around the desk, eyeing the hairpiece. Meyer didn’t even look at him.

“Does it bite?” Brown asked.

“He rented it from a pet shop,” Kling said.

“Ha-ha,” Meyer said.

“It looks like a bird done on your head,” Brown said.

“Ha-ha,” Meyer said.

“Do you comb it, or just wipe it off?” Brown asked.

“Wise guys,” Meyer said, shaking his head.

He’d been dreading walking in here all morning. He knew just what would be waiting for him here when he showed up wearing the hairpiece. He would rather have faced a bank robber holding a sawed-off shotgun than these smart-asses in the squadroom. He busied himself looking over the slips on the Activity Reports spindle. He desperately wanted a cigarette, but he’d promised his daughter he’d quit smoking.

“What’s this about the Bomb Squad being here?” Brown asked.

Good, Meyer thought. They’re getting off my goddamn rug.

“False alarm,” Carella said. “You ought to wear it in braids,” he said to Meyer.

Meyer sighed.

“So what was it?” Brown asked.

“You can sweep it up on top of your head when you go to the Governor’s Ball,” Kling said.

“Anti-Semites,” Meyer said, and laughed when the other men did. “Is the Governor holding one of his balls again?” Brown asked, and they all laughed again.

“Did you see the picture?” Carella said.

“What picture?” Brown asked.

“It was a handbag, not a bomb,” Kling said. “Somebody sent us the hanging victim’s handbag.”

“No shit?” Brown said.

“Picture of her on her I.D. card,” Carella said.

The men all looked at each other.

They were each thinking the exact same thing. They were thinking that whoever had hanged that lady from a lamppost wanted them to identify her. They had been running all over the city for the past three days trying to get a positive make so they’d have someplace to start. Now somebody had made the job easy for them. He had sent them the dead girl’s handbag with identification in it. They could only think of one person in the world who would ever want to make things easy for the cops up here. Or seemingly easy. None of them wanted to mention his name. But they were all thinking that’s who it was.

“Maybe somebody found the handbag,” Brown said.

“Read about her in the newspapers, figured he’d send the bag over to us.”

“Didn’t want to get involved.”

“This city, nobody wants to get involved.”

“Maybe,” Carella said.

But they were still thinking it was the Deaf Man.

The physician conducting the autopsy for the Medical Examiner’s Office had agreed with Blaney’s original diagnosis at the scene, while expanding upon it somewhat: death had been caused not only by dislocation and fracturing of the upper cervical vertebrae but also by crushing of the spinal cord, typical of what occurred in legal execution by hanging. But the report went on to give an estimated time of death that was eight hours earlier than the moment Carella and Genero had walked out of the construction site to find the victim dangling from a lamppost.

On the telephone with Carella, the man from the Medical Examiner’s Office expressed the opinion that the victim had been killed elsewhere — either by the indicated hanging or else by physical force sufficient to fracture the vertebrae and crush the spinal cord — and then transported to the scene of the discovery. The man from the Medical Examiner’s Office was very careful not to say “the scene of the crime.” In his opinion, the actual scene of the crime was not that deserted street with its abandoned buildings and its gaping construction craters. This seemed to jibe with what Carella was already thinking. Neither he nor Genero had seen anybody hanging anyplace on that street when they’d gone in to talk to the night watchman.

The address on the dead girl’s I.D. card added further weight to the supposition that she had been killed somewhere else and only later transported to the lucky Eight-Seven. The girl lived in an apartment building some four miles west of the precinct territory, in a section of the city that contained its bustling garment manufacturing center. Cloak City, as the area was familiarly and historically known, had as its nucleus the workshops and showrooms that supplied ready-to-wear clothing for the rest of the nation and indeed for many countries in the non-Communist world. But in the avenues north of the factories, the tenements had been razed and luxury high-rise apartments and expensive restaurants had sprung up in their place to create a Gold Coast ambiance, attracting a show biz clientele who preferred living close to the theater district, and who joyously referred to their new neighborhood not as Cloak City but as Coke City.

Neither Carella nor Hawes — with whom he was partnered this Tuesday morning, Genero being happily away in court where he was testifying against a hot dog vendor he’d arrested for peddling without a license — knew whether estimates of the flourishing cocaine trade in this precinct were valid or not. As far as they were concerned, they had enough headaches of their own uptown, one of which had dragged them down here this morning. The day was one of those sparkling clear days October often lavished on the citizens of this city. Both men were glad to be out of the squadroom. On days like today, you could not help but fall in love with this city all over again.

The dead girl — whose I.D. card gave her age as almost twenty-one — had lived in one of the surviving old neighborhood buildings, a five-story, red-brick edifice covered with the soot and grime of centuries. Coatless and hatless, Carella and Hawes climbed the front stoop and rang the superintendent’s bell.

“What’d you think of Meyer’s wig?” Carella asked.

“What wig? You’re kidding me.”

“You didn’t see it?”

“No. He’s got a wig?”

“Yeah.”

“You know why the Indian bought a hat?” Hawes asked, and the front door opened.

The girl who stood there was ten feet tall. Or at least she seemed to be ten feet tall. Both detectives had to look up at her, and neither of them were elves. She was twenty years old, Carella guessed, perhaps twenty-one, with short brown hair, luminous brown eyes, and a slender lupine face. She was wearing blue jeans and a Ramsey University sweatshirt, and she was carrying a canvas book bag printed with the words book bag.

“Police officers,” Carella said, and showed her his shield. “We’re looking for the super.”

“We don’t have a super,” the girl said.

“We just rang the super’s bell,” Hawes said.

“Just ’cause there’s a super’s bell doesn’t mean there’s a super,” he girl said, turning to Hawes. Hawes got the feeling she was thinking he was too short for her. And too old. And probably too dumb. He almost shrugged. “There hasn’t been a super in this building for almost a year now,” the girl said. And then, because people in this city loved nothing better than to stick it to the cops whenever they could, she added, “Maybe that’s why we have so many burglaries here.”

“This isn’t our precinct,” Hawes said defensively.

“Then what are you doing here?” the girl asked.

“Do you live here, Miss?” Carella asked.

“Of course I live here,” she said. “What do you think I’m doing here? Delivering groceries?”

“Do you know a tenant named Marcia Schaffer?”

“Sure. Listen, she’s in 3A, you can talk to her personally, okay? I was just on my way out, I’ll be late for class.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Carella asked.

“At school Thursday.”

“Ramsey U?” Hawes asked, looking at the sweatshirt.

“Brilliant deduction,” the girl said.

“You went to school together?”

“Give the man another cigar.”

“How long did you know her?” Carella asked.

“Since my freshman year. I’m a junior now. We’re both juniors.”

“She from here originally? The city?”

“No. Some little town in Kansas. Buffalo Dung, Kansas.”

“How about you?” Hawes asked.

“Born and bred right here.”

“You sound like it.”

“Proud of it, too,” she said.

“What was she wearing last Thursday? When you saw her?”

“A track suit. Why? We’re both on the track team.”

“What time was this?”

“At practice, around four in the afternoon. Why?”

“Did you see her anytime after that?”

“We took the subway home together. Listen, what...?”

“Did you see her anytime after that? Anytime Thursday night?”

“No.”

“See her leave the building anytime Thursday night?”

“No.”

“What apartment do you live in?”

“3B, right across the hall from her.”

“And you say she lived in 3A?”

She suddenly caught the past tense.

“She still lives there,” she said.

“Did you see or hear anybody outside her apartment on Thursday night? Anybody knocking on the door? Anybody...”

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking these questions?”

Carella took a deep breath. “Marcia Schaffer is dead,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the girl said.

Both detectives looked at her.

“Marcia isn’t dead,” she said.

They kept looking at her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said again.

“Can you tell me your name, Miss?” Carella asked.

“Jenny Compton,” she said, and then at once, “But Marcia isn’t dead, you’ve made a mistake.”

“Miss Compton, we’re reasonably certain the victim...”

“No,” Jenny said, and shook her head.

“Did Miss Schaffer live here?” Hawes asked.

“She still does,” Jenny said. “Third floor front, apartment 3A. She isn’t dead.”

“We have her picture...”

“She isn’t dead,” Jenny insisted.

“Is this Marcia Schaffer?” Carella asked, and showed her a glossy blowup the P.U. had made of one of the pictures taken at the scene. It was not a very pretty picture. Jenny flinched away from it as if she’d been struck full in the face.

“Is this Marcia Schaffer?” Carella asked again.

“It looks like her, but Marcia isn’t dead,” Jenny said.

“Is this also Marcia Schaffer?” Carella asked, and showed her the I.D. card.

“Yes, that’s Marcia, but...”

“The address on this...”

“Yes, Marcia lives here, but I know she isn’t dead.”

“How do you know that, Miss Compton?” Hawes asked.

“She’s not dead,” Jenny said.

“Miss Compton...”

“I saw her last Thursday afternoon, for Christ’s sake, she can’t...”

“She was killed sometime Thursday ni—”

“I don’t want her to be dead,” Jenny said, and suddenly burst into tears. “Shit, why’d you have to come here?”

She was ten feet tall, this girl, perhaps twenty-one years old, this woman, with city-bred smarts and a city-honed tongue, but she might have just been on her way to kindergarten class, the way she looked now, her right hand covering her face as she wept into it, the left hand clutching the book bag, standing a bit pigeon-toed, and sobbing uncontrollably while the detectives watched, saying nothing, feeling awkward and clumsy and far too overwhelmingly large for this little girl unashamedly crying in their presence.

They waited.

It was such a beautiful day.

“Aw, shit,” Jenny said, “it isn’t true, is it?”

“I’m sorry,” Carella said.

“How... how...?” She sniffled and then knelt to reach into her book bag, pulling out a package of tissues, ripping one free, blowing her nose, and then dabbing at her eyes. “What happened?” she said.

They never thought murder, unless they happened to be the ones who did the job. They always thought a car accident, or something in the subways, people were always falling under subway trains, or else an elevator shaft, there were always accidents in elevator shafts, that’s the way their minds ran when you came around telling them somebody was dead, they never thought murder. And if you told them up front that the person had been killed, if you didn’t just say the person was dead but actually specified killed, if they knew up front that a murder had been committed, they always thought gun, or knife, or poison, or bare hands, somebody beaten to death, somebody strangled to death. How did you explain that this had been a hanging? Or something made to look like a hanging? How did you explain to a twenty-one-year-old girl who was snuffling into a torn tissue that her girlfriend had been found hanging from a goddamn lamppost?

“Fracture of the upper cervical vertebrae,” Carella said, opting for what the M.E. had told him earlier this morning. “Crushing of the spinal cord.”

“Jesus!”

He still had not told Jenny that someone had done this to her friend. She looked at him searchingly now, realizing that a pair of detectives would not be on the doorstep asking questions if this had been a simple accident, recognizing at last that someone had caused Marcia Schaffer’s death.

“Someone killed her, is that it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Thursday night sometime. The Medical Examiner’s estimate puts it at around seven o’clock.”

“Jesus,” she said again.

“You didn’t see her at all on Thursday night?” Hawes asked.

“No.”

“Did she mention any plans she might have had for that night?”

“No. Where... where did this happen?”

“We don’t know.”

“I mean... where did you find her?”

“Uptown.”

“In the street? Somebody attacked her in the street?”

Carella sighed.

“She was hanging from a lamppost,” he said.

“Oh, God!” Jenny said, and began sobbing again.