Like Love

12

Carella said “No hospital!” and the ambulance driver turned to the intern riding in the back, and the intern looked at Carella and said, “But, sir, you’re bleeding rather profusely,” and Carella pinned him with his sternest minion-of-the-law stare and said, “No goddamn hospital!” and the intern had the distinct impression that if he’d insisted on this going-to-the hospital routine, he himself might be the one who went. So he shrugged in his very calm, textbook, intern way, wishing they’d be called some morning to pick up a nice timid old lady with a traumatic subdural hemorrhage instead of a bleeding wildman with a gun in his fist, but those were the breaks, and anyway he’d had all this in first year med. It was better to go to the hospital as a part of the staff, rather than as a patient. So he went.

The man at the bottom of the steps who sat there somewhat sheepishly clutching the area below his stomach, which Carella had kicked with both big feet, wasn’t saying very much. His weapon, a sawed-off broom handle, had gone down the steps with him, and Carella picked it up and then bummed a ride from the precinct patrolmen, who had been called-together with the hospital- by the helpful change booth attendant. The patrolmen dropped Carella and his prisoner at the 87th Precinct. Carella, his gun still in his hand, shoved the man across the sidewalk, and up the front steps, and past the muster desk, and up the iron-runged stairway leading to the Detective Division, and down the corridor, and through the slatted rail divider, and then pushed him into a straight-backed chair which, it seemed, was immediately surrounded by detectives.

“You’re bleeding,” Meyer said to Carella “You know that?”

“I know it,” Carella said. To the man seated in the chair with his head bent, Carella said, “What’s your name, mister?”

The man didn’t answer.

Carella took the man’s jaw between the fingers of one hand, squeezing hard and lifting the man’s head, and looking directly into his eyes.

“Your name, mister,” he repeated.

The man didn’t answer.

“Get up.”

The man didn’t move.

“Get up!” Carella shouted angrily, and he seized the man by the front of the lightweight jacket he was wearing, and then hurled him halfway across the room to the wall alongside the filing cabinets.

“Take it easy, Steve,” Meyer cautioned.

Carella holstered his gun, and went through each of the man’s pockets. He found a wallet in one of them, and he turned the man around, shoved him into a chair again, and then sat on the edge of a desk as he went through the wallet. Hawes and Meyer stood on opposite sides of the prisoner, waiting. Meyer glanced at Carella, and then shook his head.

“Miscolo!” he yelled.

“Yo!” Miscolo yelled back from the Clerical Office.

“Bring in some iodine and some Band-Aids, will you?”

“Yo!” Miscolo answered.

Carella looked up from the wallet. “Richard Bandler,” he said. He looked at the man. “That your name?”

“You’re holding my driver’s license in your hand, who the hell’s name do you think it is?”

Carella flipped the license onto the desk and walked slowly to Bandler and said very slowly and very distinctly, “Bandler, I don’t like you very much. I didn’t like you the first time you cold-cocked me, and I don’t like you any better after the second time. It’s all I can do, Bandler, to keep myself from kicking you clear through next Sunday, so you’d better watch your mouth, Bandler, you dig? You’d just better answer everything I ask you nice and peaceful or you’re going to be a cripple before they take you to jail, you understand that, Bandler?”

“It seems plain enough,” Bandler said.

“It better be plain enough,” Carella warned. “Is your name Richard Bandler?”

“That’s my name.”

“Get that tone out of your voice!” Carella shouted.

“What tone?”

“Take it easy, Steve,” Hawes said.

Carella clenched his fists, unclenched them, walked back to the desk and picked up the driver’s license again. “Is this your correct address? 413 South Sixty-fifth, Isola?”

“No. I’ve moved since.”

“Where to?”

“I’m staying at the Hotel Culbertson downtown.”

“How long have you been staying there?”

“About ten days.”

“You moved from Sixty-fifth Street ten days ago?”

“No. I moved from Sixty-fifth last month.”

“Where to?”

Bandler paused.

“Where to, Bandler?”

“The Coast.”

“When did you leave?”

“On March twenty-seventh.”

“Why? Are you wanted in this city?”

“No.”

“Are you wanted anywhere?”

“No.”

“We’re going to check, you know. If you’re wanted…”

“I’m not wanted. I’m not a criminal.”

“Maybe you weren’t a criminal,” Hawes said, “but you are now, mister. First-degree assault happens to be a big fat felony.”

Bandler said nothing. Miscolo came in from the clerical office with the adhesive bandages and the iodine. He took a look at Carella’s face, shook his head, clucked his tongue, and then said, “Jesus, what’s the matter with you, anyway?” He took another look and said, “Go wash your face in the sink there.”

“My face is all right, Alf,” Carella said.

“Go wash your face,” Miscolo said sternly, and Carella sighed and went to the corner sink.

“Have you got a record, Bandler?” Hawes asked.

“No, I told you. I’m not a criminal.”

“All right, why’d you go to California?”

“I’ve got a job there.”

“What kind of a job?”

“In television.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m an assistant director.”

“What do you direct?” Carella said from the sink. He reached for the white towel hanging on a rack and Miscolo yelled, “You’ll get that all full of blood. Use the paper towels.”

“Assistant directors don’t direct very much,” Bandler said, “We maintain quiet on the set, we call actors, we…”

“We’re not interested in an industry survey,” Hawes said. “What show do you work on?”

“Well… well, you see, I don’t actually have a steady job with any one show.”

“Then why did you go to California?” Meyer said. “You just told us you had a job there.”

“Well, I did.”

“What job?”

“They were shooting a ninety-minute special. So a friend of mine who was directing the show called to see if I’d like to work with him. As assistant, you see. So I went to the Coast.”

Carella came back to the desk and sat on the edge of it. Miscolo picked up the iodine bottle and began swabbing the cuts. “You’re gonna need stitches here,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s the same cut from last week,” Miscolo said. “It’s opened all over again.”

“Why’d you come back from the Coast?” Carella asked.

“The job ended. I looked around for a while, to see if I could get some kind of steady work, but nothing came up. So I came back here.”

“Are you working now?”

“No. I just got back about ten days ago.”

“When was that, Bandler?”

“The eighth.”

“Ow!” Carella said as Miscolo pressed a piece of adhesive in place. “Why’d you come after me, Bandler?”

“Because… I found out what you did.”

“Yeah? What did I do? Ouch! For Christ’s sake, Alf…”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Miscolo said. “I’m not a doctor, you know,” he added petulantly. “I’m only a lousy clerk. Next time, go to the hospital instead of messing up the whole damn squadroom.”

“What did I do?” Carella asked again.

“You killed my girl,” Bandler said.

“What?”

“You killed my girl.”

For a moment, no one in the room made a connection. They stared at Bandler in silent puzzlement, and then Bandler said, “Blanche. Blanche Mattfield,” and the name still meant nothing to anyone but Carella.

Carella nodded. “She jumped, Bandler,” he said. “I had nothing to do with her jumping.”

“You told her to jump.”

“I was trying to get her off that ledge.”

“You got her off, all right.”

“How do you know what I said to her?”

“The landlady told me. She was in the room behind you, and she heard you tell her to jump.” Bandler paused and then said, “Why didn’t you just shove her off that ledge? It would have amounted to the same thing.”

“Do you have any idea why she was on that ledge to begin with?” Carella asked.

“What difference does it make? She wouldn’t have jumped if it hadn’t been for you!”

“She wouldn’t have been out there if it hadn’t been for you!” Carella said.

“Sure,” Bandler said.

“Why’d you leave her?”

“Who left her?”

“You did, you did. Come on, Bandler, don’t get me sore again. She wanted to die because you left her. ‘Goodbye, Blanche, it’s been fun.’ Those were your exact words.”

“I loved that girl,” Bandler protested. “She knew I was coming right back. She knew it was just a temporary job. I told her…”

“You walked out on her, Bandler.”

“I tell you I didn’t. I loved her, don’t you understand? She knew I was coming back. I told her so. How do I know why she decided to… to kill herself?”

“She killed herself because she knew you were finished with her. Do you feel better now?”

“Wh… what do you mean?”

“After beating me up? After shoving all the blame onto me?”

“You killed her!” Bandler shouted, and he came out of the chair angrily, and Carella put both hands on his shoulders and shoved him back down again.

“What’s the name of this friend of yours on the Coast?”

“Wh… what friend?”

“Your director friend. Who was doing the ninety-minute special.”

“It… uh…”

The room went silent.

“Or was there a friend?”

“Ask anybody in the business. I’m one of the best a.d.’s around.”

“Did you go out there to work, Bandler? Or did you go out there with a dame?”

“A dame,” Meyer said, nodding. “I’m telling you I loved Blanche. Why would I go to California with another woman?” “Why, Bandler?” Hawes asked.

“Why, Bandler?”

“I… loved . . . Blanche. I… what… what the hell was the harm of a little… a little innocent fun with… with somebody else? She… she knew I’d come back to her. She knew that girl meant nothing to me. She knew that.”

“Apparently she didn’t.”

Bandler was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I saw it in the papers out there. Just a little item. About… about Blanche jump… jumping off that building. I saw it the day after she did it. I… I ditched the girl and got a plane back as fast as I could. Saturday. That was the earliest I could book. But she’d been buried by the time I got here and… and when I talked to the landlady of her building, she told me what he’d heard you say, so I… I figured you had it coming to you. For… for killing the girl I loved.”

“You just go on believing that,” Carella said.

“Huh?”

“It’ll make the time pass more quickly.”

“Huh?”

“You can get up to ten years for first-degree assault.” Carella paused. “What was the harm of a little innocent fun, huh, Bandler?”

* * * *