Long Time No See

One

He thought of the city as a galaxy. A cluster of planets revolving around a brilliant sun. Asteroids and comets streaming through the blackness of space. Behind his eyes, bursts of color sometimes exploded, tracer bullets flashed jaggedly and vanished, skyrockets soared against the nighttime of his sightlessness.

He was blind, but he knew this city.

It sometimes got bitter cold in November, this city. Far as he was concerned, that was the worst month here. Never could keep himself warm in November. Even the dog got to shivering in November. The dog was a black Labrador, trained as a guide dog. The dog’s name was Stanley. He had to laugh when he thought of that dog, a black man with a black dog. Just this morning somebody put a coin in the cup, a quarter by the sound of it, and then asked, “What’s the dog’s name, man?” Knew right off it was a black man talking. He could tell what a person was, what color or what nationality, just by hearing the voice.

“Dog’s called Stanley,” he said.

“Hang in there, Stanley-brother,” the man said, and walked off.

Stanley-brother. Dog was black, he automatically got to be a brother. Stanley must’ve looked at the dude like he was crazy. Good old dog, he’d be lost without him. “Right, Stanley?” he said, and patted him on the head. Dog said nothing, hardly ever said a word, old Stanley. Lucky to have that dog. Got home from the war, eyes shot to hell, people on the block chipped in to buy him the dog. Wasn’t a German shepherd, but trained just the same way, took him wherever he wanted to go in this city. Loved this city. Used to love it when he could see, and still loved it On the subway tonight, coming uptown, man offered him a seat. Italian from the sound of him. “Hey, buddy, you wanna sit?” Touched his elbow. Must’ve known some blind people, didn’t just reach up and scare hell out of him. Gently touched the elbow, that was all. “Hey buddy, you wanna sit?” Something in the way he said it — he must’ve known blind people, had to be the case. Wasn’t nothing in his voice made it sound like he was talking to an old lady or a cripple. Just man to man, you want the seat you can have it. He’d taken the seat. Would’ve refused it otherwise, but the man wasn’t taking pity, the man was just making things a little easier for him. That was acceptable.

You get to be blind...

You’re twenty years old and you get to be blind, people all of a sudden think of you as an old man. Got home from the war ten years ago, eyes gone, wearing the shades, Mama and Chrissie crying like anything, Come on, come on, he’d said, it ain't nothin, it can’t nothin. Shit, it ain’t nothin. It’s I’m blind is what it is.

But then you begin learning how to see again. How to use that old Stanley-dog to take you around where you want to go. How to read Braille and how to write it with a guide slate. Things like tying your own shoelaces, you already know how to do — most people don’t even look when they’re lacing their shoes, so ain’t nothing wrong with being blind when it comes to tying laces. And rattling a few coins in a cup’s an easy job. Get yourself a hand-lettered sign to hang around your neck, and you’re in business for yourself. Free enterprise. HERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO THEE. Chrissie lettered the sign for him. Made it on a piece of cardboard, threaded string through a hole in each corner. The sign, the tin cup, Stanley the black Lab, and he was well on his way to making a fortune. He would forever be grateful to the war. Otherwise, how could he have got started in his own business?

That was ten years ago.

Full disability pension. Tin cup. Rattle, rattle the coins in it, listen for the sound of more coins. Add them up at the end of the day. Take them home to Isabel and add them up together. Sit at the kitchen table, spread the coins on the oilcloth cover, her hands and his hands feeling the coins, separating them, feeling, feeling. He’d met Isabel in a bar on The Stem six years ago. He was a pretty good beggar by then, shuffling along behind old Stanley, listening to the hum of the city around him, picking out sounds in the air, entertaining himself with the sounds as he moved slowly along the sidewalk, jingling the coins in the cup, sign around his neck — a new one lettered by a man who ran a shop on South Twelfth — right hand holding onto Stanley’s harness. He’d had a good day, he stopped in the bar for a drink, this must’ve been about four in the afternoon. Woman sitting next to him. The scent of perfume and whiskey. Jukebox going at the back of the bar.

“What’ll it be, Jimmy?” the bartender asked.

“Bourbon and water.”

“Right.”

“My daddy used to drink bourbon and water,” the woman said.

White woman by her voice. Southerner.

“That right?”

“Yes. Bourbon and branch water’s a big thing down home. I’m from Tennessee.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Here you go, Jimmy.”

The sound of the glass being placed on the bar top. His hand moved forward exploringly, found the glass. “Cheers,” he said, and drank.

“Cheers,” the woman said. “My name’s Isabel Cartwright.”

“I’m Jimmy Harris.”

“Nice to know you.”

“Are you white?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m blind,” he said.

She laughed softly. “So am I,” she said.

Married her six months later. Blind as bats, both of them. Took an apartment on Seventh near Mason, didn’t want to be living in Diamondback uptown, not because he had himself a white wife now, but only because Diamondback was bad news for blacks or whites. Named by the blacks themselves, supposed to be sarcastic and comical, was just about as funny as a rattler itself, and every bit as deadly. Her father came up from Tennessee for the wedding. They’d been living together six months by then, wouldn’t have mattered if the old man yelled and hollered, they’d have told him to go back home and drown in his bourbon and branch water. Nice old man, though, said he knew his daughter would be well looked after. Marrying a man who couldn’t see his own hand in front of his own black face, but sure, he’d look after her.

Well, he had.

They danced together sometimes.

Put on the radio, danced to it. He used to be some dancer before the war. Secret music, he heard secret music all the time. Same as the lights that flashed. Used to think being blind meant darkness all the time. Wasn’t so. Lights flashing. Electrical impulses from the brain, memory images, whatever. Lots of action in his head all the time. Couldn’t see nothing in front of his eyes, but saw plenty behind them. Touched her face. Beautiful face. Blond hair, she said. Old Jimmy Harris got himself a honky chick, loved her to death. Rattled that old cup for her, rattled her bones in bed, too.

He was, by his calculation, two blocks from the building he lived in on Seventh Street. He had taken the subway uptown to Fourth, and was now crossing Hannon Square, where the statue of the World War I general on a horse dominated a small grassy patch overhung with chestnut trees. Weren’t no horses in his damn war. Punji sticks and vill sweeps, surround the village, go right through it — that had been his war. Leave your eyes on the floor of a jungle. Nice work, Jimmy. You got him. His M-16 was still on automatic, he’d sprayed the bushes on the right side of the trail, where the sudden machine-gun fire had started. There was stillness now. The sergeant’s voice. Nice work, Jimmy. You got him.

He waited.

He was wearing a fiberglass flak jacket over his cotton jungle shirt and field pants, leather-soled, canvas-topped jungle boots with holes for water drainage, black nylon socks, a helmet liner and a steel pot with a camouflage cover over it. Hanging from his belt suspender straps was a first-aid kit containing gauze, salt tablets and foot powder; an ammo pouch containing magazines for his automatic rifle; a Claymore pouch containing six M-26 fragmentation grenades and two smoke grenades; a bayonet, a protective mask and two canteens of water. He crouched in the underbrush, waiting, listening. He could hear their RTO radioing back to Bravo for help.

The grenade came from somewhere far over on the right. One of the men in Alpha yelled a warning too late. He turned to see the grenade flickering through the dappled jungle heat like a rare tropical bird. He was about to throw himself away from it, flat into the bushes behind him, when it exploded some four feet above his head. Lucky it didn’t blow his whole head off. Opened his forehead, made scrambled eggs of his eyes. Doctor at the base hospital told him he was lucky he was alive. That was sifter Bravo came to the rescue. Hadn’t seen a thing since that day. December the fourteenth. Eleven days before Christmas, ten years ago. Blind since then.

The chestnut trees in Hannon Square were leafless now in November. He could hear the wind keening through their naked branches. He was approaching the statue — there were things a blind person could sense, objects that bounced back echoes or warmth, movements that caused changes in the air pressure to be felt on the face. Somewhere up on Culver Avenue, he heard a bus grinding into gear. There was the smell of snow in the air. He hoped it would not snow. Snow made it difficult to—

Stanley suddenly stopped.

He jerked at the harness. The dog would not move.

“What is it?” he asked.

The dog was growling.

“Stanley?” he said.

Silence except for the dog still growling.

“Who’s there?” he said.

He smelled something he identified at once. From when they’d operated on him back at the base hospital. Smelled it carried on the November wind. Chloroform. He could feel the dog’s tenseness vibrating up through the leather harness in his hand. And then suddenly the dog began to whimper. The scent of the chloroform was overpowering. He turned his head away from it, and felt the weight of the dog tugging on the harness. Stanley was falling to the sidewalk. He tried to keep the dog on his feet. Struggled. He bent over to his right, leaning into the wind. The dog was on the sidewalk now. Above, he heard the crackle of the swaying limbs of the chestnut tree. He was suddenly lost. He did not want to let go of the harness because he felt, irrationally, that if he did so he would be truly blind; the dog was his eyes. But he knew that Stanley was unconscious, knew the dog had been chloroformed. His hand opened. He let go of the harness as though he were letting go of a lifeline. He backed away from the dog. The November wind roared against his ears. He could hear no footfalls.

“Where are you?” he said.

Silence. The wind.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

He was seized suddenly from behind. He felt his chin caught in the crook of someone’s elbow, felt his head being jerked back, his jaw raised. And then pain. A searing line of fire across his throat. The collar of his shirt was suddenly wet. Warm. The widespread fingers of his left hand pushed spasmodically against the air. He coughed, choked, gasped for breath. In a moment he fell to the pavement beside the dog. Blood gushed from his slit throat, ran in bright red rivulets to the base of the statue, and around the base, and then slanted across the pavement to disappear into the barberry bushes.

The woman who found the body at ten minutes to eight that Thursday night was a Puerto Rican lady who spoke no English. She looked down at the man and the dog and thought they both were dead, and then realized the dog was breathing. At first she thought to forget the entire matter; it did not pay to involve oneself in another’s business, especially when there was a man on the sidewalk with the insides of his neck showing. She realized then that the dog was a seeing-eye dog, and she felt at once enormous pity for the dead man. Shaking her head, clucking her tongue, she went to the phone booth across the street, inserted a coin into the slot, and dialed 911. She knew how to dial 911 because all the advertisements for the number were in both English and in Spanish, and in this part of the city it was a good idea to know how to dial the police in an emergency. The man who answered the telephone understood Spanish. He, too, was of Hispanic background, his family having come from Mayagüez during the great influx following World War II. He was twelve years old then. He now spoke English without a trace of accent; if anything, it was his Spanish that was somewhat faulty. He was able to gather from the woman’s excited babble that she had found a dead blind man near the statue in Hannon Square. When he asked her what her name was, the woman hung up.

He understood that completely; this was the city.

A radio motor patrol car was angle-parked into the curb when Detectives Carella and Meyer arrived at the scene. Behind that was a black sedan that looked like a hearse. Carella guessed it belonged to Homicide.

“Well, well,” Monoghan said, “look who’s here.”

“Well, well,” Monroe said.

The two Homicide detectives stood with their hands in their pockets, one on either side of the man who lay crookedly on the pavement. They were dressed almost identically, each wearing black overcoat and gray fedora, blue woolen muffler. Both of them were sturdily built, with wide shoulders and beefy chests and thighs, craggy faces and eyes that were used to seeing dead men, blind or otherwise. Monoghan and Monroe looked exactly like hit men for the mob.

“We been here ten minutes already,” Monoghan said at once.

“Twelve,” Monroe said, checking his watch.

“We’re a little short-handed tonight,” Carella said.

“We radioed for a meat wagon already,” Monoghan said.

“And the M.E. is on his way.”

“Lab boys, too.”

“You can thank us,” Monroe said.

“Thank you,” Carella said, and looked down at the body.

“Guy’s dead as a doornail,” Monoghan said.

“Somebody opened his throat nice,” Monroe said.

“Look at them tubes in there.”

“Makes you want to puke.”

In the city for which these men worked, the appearance of Homicide cops at the scene of a murder was mandatory, even though the subsequent investigation was handled by the precinct detectives catching the squeal. In rare instances, and presumably because they were specialists serving in a supervisory and advisory capacity, the Homicide detectives would come up with an idea or a piece of information that helped expedite the solution to a case. More often than not, they simply got underfoot. Monoghan and Monroe had already confused the issue by calling for an ambulance before the M.E. was on the scene. This was a cold night. Nobody liked dancing a jig when the temperature was hovering near the freezing point. And the hospital team would not be able to move the body till the M.E. checked it out.

“I hate stabbings,” Monoghan said.

“This ain’t a stabbing,” Monroe said.

“No, then what is it? A poisoning? Man’s laying there with his throat cut open — what is it, a hanging?”

“This is an incised wound,” Monroe said. “There’s a difference. A stabbing—” His right hands suddenly appeared from the pocket of his coat, the fist clutching an imaginary dagger. “A stabbing is when you urh, urh, urh” he said, pushing his fist at the air. “That’s a stabbing. An incised wound is when you zzzt,” he said, and smoothly drew the imaginary dagger across the same empty air.

“To me,” Monoghan said, “a man gets cut with a knife, that’s a stabbing.”

“To me also,” Monroe said.

“Then what are you—”

“I’m talking about what the autopsy’s going to say. The autopsy’ll say this is an incised wound.”

“Yeah, but I’m talking about what I’ll tell my wife at breakfast tomorrow morning. Can I tell her we found a man who was incised to death?” Monoghan said, and burst out laughing.

Monroe started laughing, too. Vapor plumed from their months onto the brittle air. Their hilarity rang in the small square where the dead man lay on his back near the statue. In the distance, Carella could hear the impatient eee-wah, eee-wah, eee-wah of an ambulance siren. The dead man’s dark glasses had fallen from his head and lay shattered on the pavement beside him. Carella looked into the open scarred sockets where his eyes should have been. He turned away. The black Labrador lay on its side some four feet from the dead man. Meyer was crouched near the dog. Blood from the dead man’s open throat had run across the sidewalk and into the black hair tufted on the dog’s massive chest. The dog was still breathing. Meyer wondered what to do about the dog. He’d never had a case where there was an unconscious dog.

“What do we do about the dog?” he asked Carella.

“I was just wondering the same thing.”

“It’s a seeing-eye dog,” Monoghan said. “Maybe he saw who done it. Maybe you can ask him who done it.”

Monroe burst out laughing again. Monoghan, as originator of the witticism, modestly restrained himself a moment longer, and then joined his partner. Together they bellowed to the night

The dog was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived. There were four R.M.P. cars at the scene now, dome lights rotating. Barricades were going up all around the square. It was a cold night, but people were beginning to gather nonetheless and patrolmen were already urging them to go about their business — “Nothing here to see, folks, let’s keep it moving.” The intern got out of the ambulance, looked around immediately for somebody with a police shield pinned to his coat, and went to where Carella and Meyer were standing with the two Homicide dicks. He looked down at the body.

“All right to move him?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Carella said. “The M.E. hasn’t seen him yet.”

“Then why’d you call us?” the intern asked.

“You can wait a few minutes,” Monoghan said. “It won’t kill you.”

The intern looked at him.

“Yeah,” Monoghan said, and nodded.

“You in charge here?” the intern asked.

“I’m the one ordered the ambulance.”

“You should have waited,” the intern said flatly, and turned on his heel and walked back to where the ambulance was parked at the curb. The attendant had already opened the rear door. The intern told him to close it.

The assistant medical examiner arrived ten minutes later. By that time the intern had threatened to leave four times. Carella mollified him each time. Each time the intern said, “There are people dying in this city.” The M.E. was a man named Michael Horton. He was wearing a suit and tie, dark overcoat, no hat, black leather gloves. He took off the glove on his right hand before he shook hands with Carella. Then he knelt to examine the body. The man from the Photo Unit moved off and began taking pictures of the dog.

“Cute, very cute,” Horton said. “Severed the trachea, carotids and jugular. There’s your cause of death right there. Not another mark on the man. Look at his hands. No defense cuts, nothing. Cute. Must’ve been a big blade. Just one slash, very deep, nobody did this with a penknife, I can tell you. Oh yes, very cute. No hesitation marks, clean-cut edges to the wound, help me roll him over.” Carella knelt. Together they rolled the man over. Horton looked at his back. “Nothing here, clean as a whistle,” he said. He pulled on the collar of the dead man’s coat, studied the back of his neck. “Slash runs almost through to the spine. Okay, on his back again,” he said, and he and Carella rolled the corpse over again. “I want his hands bagged, there may be scrapings under the nails. You won’t need him fingerprinted here at the scene, will you?”

“We don’t know who he is yet,” Carella said.

“I’ll wait around till you go through his pockets,” Horton said. “Pending autopsy, you can say your cause of death is the incised throat wound.”

“What’d I tell you?” Monroe said.

“What?” Horton said.

“Nothing,” Monoghan said, and scowled at Monroe. “What about the dog?” Carella said.

“What dog?”

“Over there. You want to look at the dog, too?”

“I don’t look at dogs,” Horton said.

“I thought—”

“I’m not a veterinarian, I don’t look at dogs.”

“Well, who does?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know,” Horton said. “I have never in my years with the Medical Examiner’s Office had to examine a dead dog.”

“The dog’s still alive,” Carella said.

“Then why do you want me to look at him?”

“To see what’s wrong with him.”

“How would I know what’s wrong with him? I’m not a veterinarian.”

“The dog’s unconscious there,” Carella said. “I thought you’d take a look at him, tell us what—”

“No, that’s not my function,” Horton said. “I’m finished here, give me what I have to sign. I’ll wait while you check for identification.”

“I don’t know if the Photo Unit’s done with him yet,” Carella said.

“Well, find out, will you?” Horton said.

The intern walked over from the ambulance. He was blowing on his hands. “All right to take him now?” he asked.

“Everybody slow down, okay?” Carella said.

“I’ve been waiting here—”

“I don’t give a damn,” Carella said. “This is a homicide, let’s just cool it, okay?”

“There are people dying in this city,” the intern said.

Carella didn’t answer him. He walked over to where the police photographer was snapping pictures of the unconscious dog. “You finished with the dead man?” he asked.

“Only my Polaroids,” the photographer said.

“Well, take whatever else you need,” Carella said. “Everybody’s getting itchy.”

“I haven’t fingerprinted him yet, either.”

“The M.E. wants his hands bagged.”

A lab technician was already chalking an outline of the body onto the pavement. The photographer waited till he was finished, and then began taking the additional pictures he needed. Flash bulbs exploded. The assistant M.E. blinked. At the ambulance, the attendant had opened the rear door again, in expectation. Meyer took Carella aside. They had been about to leave for a stakeout in a warehouse when the squeal came. Both men were wearing mackinaws and woolen watch caps.

“What do we do with the dog?” Meyer asked.

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“Can’t just leave him here, can we?”

“No.”

“So what do we do?”

“Call a vet, I guess. I don’t know.” Carella paused. “Have you got a dog?”

“No. Have you?”

“Because I was wondering — maybe we ought to get a vet here right away. The dog may have been poisoned or something.”

“Yeah,” Meyer said, and nodded. “Let me call in, see if we can’t get Murchison to send somebody.”

“Maybe there’s somebody downtown... you know the unit that has those dogs who sniff out dope?”

“Yeah?”

“They must have a vet who takes care of those dogs, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. Let me call in, see what I can do.”

“Yeah, go ahead. I think Photo’s done with the body, I want to toss him.”

Meyer walked toward the closest R.M.P. car, exchanged a few words with the patrolman, and then climbed into the car and reached for the hand mike. Carella walked to where the photographer was putting a fresh roll of film into his camera.

“Okay to go through his pockets?”

“He’s all yours,” the photographer said.

In the dead man’s coat pockets, Carella found only a book of matches and a subway token. In the right-hand trouser pocket, he found another subway token, a key chain with two keys on it, and twelve dollars and four cents in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. In the left-hand pocket, he found a wallet with seventeen dollars in it, all singles, and a lucite-enclosed card from the Guiding Eye School at 821 South Perry. The typewritten text on one side of the card read:

The card was signed by the Director of Training, a man named Israel Schwartz, and the seal of the school was in the lower right-hand corner of the card. On the reverse side of the card there was a picture of Harris and the dog in harness, and the printed text:

The 3400 block was just off Mason Avenue. James Harris had been less than two blocks from home when he’d been killed. Pinned to the inside of the leather wallet was a medallion that looked Catholic to Carella. On Harris left wrist, there was a Braille wristwatch. On the third finger of his left hand, there was a wedding band. On his right hand, he wore a high school graduation ring. Emory High. A school in Diamondback. That was all.

The technician walked over. He squatted beside Carella and began putting the dead man’s belongings into brown paper bags, sealing them, tagging them.

“What do you suppose this is?” Carella asked, and showed him the medallion.

“I’m not religious,” the technician said.

“It’s a saint, though, don’t you think?”

“Even if I was religious,” the technician said, “there are no saints in my religion.”

“Get what you need?” Horton asked.

“Yes,” Carella said.

“I want his hands bagged,” Horton said to the technician.

“Okay,” the technician said.

“I’ll have a man at the morgue first thing tomorrow,” Carella said.

Horton nodded. “Goodnight,” he said, and walked off.

Carella went over to where the photographer was taking pictures of the terrain surrounding the square. “I’ll need somebody from Photo to print him in the morning,” he said. “I’ll have a man there to back up the prints and deliver them to the I.D. Section.”

“What time?” the photographer asked.

“Make it eight o’clock.”

“Crack of dawn.”

“What can I do?” Carella said, and gestured helplessly toward where the lab technician was already slipping a plastic bag over the dead man’s right hand.

Meyer came over from the R.M.P. car. “Get a make?” he asked.

“His name’s James Harris,” Carella said, “lives on South Seventh. What about the dog?”

“Murchison’s sending a vet right away.”

“Good. You want to stay here while I check out this address?”

“Have you made the sketch yet?”

“Not yet.”

The intern approached just as Meyer was asking about the sketch. “Listen,” he said, “if you think we’re going to hang around while you made a goddamn drawing of the—”

“It’ll just take a few minutes,” Meyer said.

“Next time call when you’re ready for us,” the intern said. “And about that dog—”

“What about the dog?”

“Cop there said we’d have to take the dog, too. I’m not carrying any dog in the ambulance. That’s—”

“Who said you had to take him?”

“The big cop over there. The one in the black coat.”

“Monoghan?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“You don’t have to take the dog,” Meyer said. “But I can’t let you move the body till I’ve got a sketch of the scene, okay? It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”

Carella knew it would take more like a half-hour. “Meyer,” he said, “I’ll be back.”