Long Time No See

Thirteen

In order to get to Fort Kirby in the bordering state, one drove over the Hamilton Bridge and through a community called Baylorville, which in the good old days used to be the pig-farming center of the state. Nowadays there was nary an oink to be heard in the vicinity, but the place stank nonetheless, and Meyer put his handkerchief to his nose the moment they began driving through it. He was beginning to discover that he had a very sensitive olfactory mechanism, a quality he had not recognized in himself earlier. He wondered how he could put this to good use in the crime detection business. Meanwhile, he looked out dismally at the rows of factories and refineries, incinerators and mills that lined the Parkway. The weather had turned bleak and forbidding. Even without the benefit of the smokestacks belching their filth and stench into the air, the sky would have been the color of gunmetal.

Both men sat huddled inside their overcoats. It was 12:30 by the car clock, and Fort Kirby was still forty miles away. The Parkway tollbooths were spaced exactly five miles apart; Carella kept rolling down the window on the driver’s side and handing quarters to toll collectors. Meyer kept track of the quarters they spent. They would later turn in a chit to Clerical, hoping they’d one day be reimbursed. In the Police Department, chits were questioned closely, the operative theory being that people in law enforcement were all too often crooks themselves, educated as they were in the ways of thieves. After all, who was to say that the fifty cents spent for a bridge toll had not instead been spent for a hamburger, medium rare? Carella asked for receipts at all of the tollbooths. He handed these to Meyer, who clipped them to the inside cover of his notebook.

It was twenty minutes past one when they reached Fort Kirby. Carella identified himself to the sentry at the gate in the cyclone fence surrounding the base. A huge sign, black lettered on white, advised that no one but authorized personnel would be admitted to the area. The sentry examined Carella’s shield and I.D. card, checked a sheaf of slips attached to a clipboard, and then said, “The major’s expecting you, sir. You can park just this side of the canteen, that’s the redbrick building there on your right. The major’s in A-4.”

“Thank you,” Carella said.

Major John Francis Tataglia was a man in his early thirties, with close-cropped blond hair and a blond mustache that hung under his nose like an afterthought. He was slight of build, perhaps five feet nine inches tall, with alert blue eyes and an air of total efficiency about him. You could visualize this man on a parade ground standing at attention in the hot sun, never wilting, never even perspiring. He rose from behind his desk the moment the sergeant ushered Carella and Meyer into his office. He extended his hand.

“Major Tataglia,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Both detectives shook hands with him, and then took seats opposite his desk. The sergeant backed out of the room like an indentured servant. The door whispered shut behind him. From somewhere out on the drill field, they could hear a sergeant bellowing marching orders, “Hut, tuh, trih, fuh,” the repetitive chant oddly and overwhelmingly evocative. For Carella, it recalled his own basic training so many years before. For Meyer, inexplicably, it brought back with an almost painful rush the days when he played football for his high school team. Beyond the major’s wide window, November sprawled leadenly. It was a good month for memories, November.

“As I told you on the phone,” Carella said, “we’re investigating a series of homicides—”

“More than one?” Tataglia said. “When you told me you were looking for information about Harris, I assumed—”

“There’ve been three murders so far,” Carella said. “We’re not sure they’re all related. The first two most certainly are.”

“I see. Who were the other victims?”

“Harris’ wife, Isabel, and a woman named Hester Mathieson.”

“How can I help you?” Tataglia asked.

The top of his desk was clear of papers and even pencils. A brass plaque read Maj. J. F. Tataglia. A folding triptych picture frame showed photographs of a dark-haired woman and two little girls, one with dark hair, the other with hair as blond as the major’s. He touched the tips of his fingers together and held them just under his chin, as though in prayer.

Meyer kept watching him. With his extrasensory olfactory awareness, he detected the scent of cologne emanating from behind the major’s desk. He had never liked men who wore cologne, even if they were athletes being paid to advertise it on television. He did not like Tataglia altogether. There was something prissy about the man, something too starchily precise. He kept watching him. Tataglia had apparently decided Carella was the spokesman here; Meyer watched Tataglia and Tataglia watched Carella.

“We have reason to believe Harris may have contacted an old Army buddy regarding a scheme of his,” Carella said.

“What sort of scheme?”

“An illegal one, possibly.”

“You say possibly...”

“Because we don’t really know,” Carella said. “You were in command of the 3rd Platoon, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Were you present when Harris was blinded?”

“Yes. I later filed the action report.”

“And signed it as commanding officer.”

“Yes.”

“That was on December fifteenth. He was blinded on December fourteenth — is that correct? — and you filed the report on December fifteenth.”

“Yes, those are the dates,” Tataglia said.

“Had you been recently promoted?”

“Yes.”

“Before the action in which Harris...”

“Yes, a week or ten days earlier. We’d begun Operation Ala Moana at the beginning of December. Lieutenant Blake was killed shortly after the choppers dropped us in. I was promoted in the field. For the rest of the operation, I was acting O.I.C.”

“You were promoted to lieutenant?”

“Yes, second lieutenant in charge of the entire platoon. This was no simple vill sweep, you understand. This was a vast encircling maneuver involving a full battalion — mechanized units, artillery, air support, the works. The day before Harris got blinded, our recon patrol found an enemy base camp a mile to the southwest. We were marching toward it through the jungle when we got hit.”

“What happened?”

“An L-shaped ambush. The first fire team was fully contained in the short side of the L. Bravo was just entering the long side. There was nothing we could do. They’d closed the trail and lined it with rifles and machine guns, and we were caught in the crossfire. We hit the bushes, hoping they hadn’t been lined with punji stakes, and we just lay there returning fire and hoping Bravo would get to us before we all were killed. Bravo came in with the 3rd Squad right behind them, a machine-gun squad. It was a pretty hairy ten minutes, though. I was amazed we got through it with only Harris getting hurt. A grenade got him, almost tore his head off.”

“No other casualties?”

“Not in Alpha. Two men in Bravo were killed, and the 3rd Squad suffered some wounded. But that was it. We were really lucky. They had us cold.”

“Would you remember which of the men Harris was closest to?”

“What do you mean? In the action? When he was hit?”

“No, no. Who were his friends? Was there anyone he was particularly close to?”

“I really couldn’t say. I’m not sure if you understand how this works. There are forty-four men in a platoon, plus the commanding officer and the platoon sergeant. The lieutenant will usually set up his command post where he can best direct the action. I was with that particular fire team on that particular day because they were first in the line of march.”

“Then you didn’t know the men in Alpha too well.”

“Not as individuals.”

“Even though the operation had started at the beginning of the month?”

“I knew them by name, I knew their faces. All I’m saying is that I had very little personal contact with them. I was an officer, they were—”

“Yes, but you’d only recently been promoted.”

“That’s true,” Tataglia said, and smiled. “But there’s not much love lost between top sergeants and the men under them. I was an E-7 before Lieutenant Blake got killed.”

“How did he get killed?” Meyer asked.

“Mortar fire,” Tataglia said.

“And this was?”

“Beginning of the month sometime. Two or three days after the drop, I’m not certain of the date.”

“Would you know if Harris kept in touch with any of the men after his discharge?”

“I have no idea.”

“Have you been in contact with any of them?”

“The men in Alpha, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No. I correspond regularly with the man who commanded D Company’s 1st Platoon, but that’s about it. He’s a career soldier like myself, stationed in Germany just now, got sent over shortly after the reunion.”

“What reunion is that, Major?”

“D Company had a big reunion in August. Tenth anniversary of the company’s arrival overseas.”

“Where’d the reunion take place?”

“Fort Monmouth. In New Jersey.”

“Did you attend the reunion?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did your friend?”

“Yes, he did. He mentioned it in one of his letters to me. Actually, I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Well,” Carella said, and looked at Meyer. “Anything else you can think of?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Meyer said.

“Thank you very much,” Carella said, rising and extending his hand.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” Tataglia said.

The D.D. report was on Carella’s desk when they got back to the squadroom. Meyer asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee, and then went down the corridor to Clerical. The clock on the wall read 3:37. The shadows were lengthening; Carella switched on his desk lamp and picked up the report. A handwritten note was fastened to it with a paper clip.

Carella took the paper clip from the report, crumpled Hawes’ note, and threw it in the wastbasket. Hawes was a better typist than most of the men on the squad The report looked relatively neat:

Majesta, of course, had been named when the British owned America. It had been named after His Majesty King George. Lots of things were named after King George in those days. Georgetown was named after King George. In those days, when the British were dancing quadrilles and even common soldiers sounded like noblemen, Majesta was hilly and elegant. “Oh, yes, Majesta,” the British would say. “Quite elegant.” Majesta nowadays was still hilly but it was not elegant. It was, in fact, inelegant. In fact, it was what you might call crappy.

There were some people in Majesta who lived all the way out on the tongue of land that jutted into the Atlantic, within the city limits but far from the city proper and also the madding crowd. These people felt that Washington and the Continental Congress had been misguided zealots. These people were of the opinion that Majesta would have fared better as a British colony. A case in point was neighboring Sand’s Spit, which even today seemed very much like a British colony. That was because the people out there drank Pimms Cups during the summer months and talked through their noses a lot. The people on Sand’s Spit were enormously rich, most of them. Some of them were only terribly rich. The people in Majesta were miserably poor, most of them. Some of them were only dreadfully poor. Russell Poole was pretty goddamn poor.

He lived with his mother in a row of houses that resembled those one might have found in England along Victoria Street or Gladstone Road — the apple does not fall far from the tree. Russell Poole was black. He had never been to England, but often dreamt of going there. He did not know that England had its own problems with people of a darker hue — the tree does not grow far from the fallen apple. Poole only knew that he was poor and living in a dump. He did not like the looks of Cotton Hawes. Cotton Hawes looked like a mean motherfucking cop. Poole told his mother to go in the other room.

Hawes didn’t much like the looks of Russell Poole, either.

Actually, the men looked a lot alike, except that one was white and the other was black. Maybe that made all the difference. Poole was about Hawes’ height and weight, a good six feet two inches tall and a hundred and ninety pounds. Both men were broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. Poole did not have red hair like Hawes — but then again, who did? Poole closed the door on the bedroom his mother had just entered, and then said, “Okay, what’s this about?”

“I told you on the phone,” Hawes said. “James Harris was murdered.”

“So?”

“You were in his squad overseas, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I say again — so?”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“In August.”

“This past August?”

"Yes.”

“Where was that?”

“The company reunion in New Jersey.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Old times.”

“How about new times?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he mention any plans he might have had?”

“Plans for what?”

“Plans involving Alpha.”

“What kind of plans?”

“You tell me,” Hawes said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did he mention needing Alpha’s help with anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Some kind of business deal maybe?”

“I told you. Nothing.”

“Who else was there? From Alpha, I mean.”

“Just four of us.”

“Who?”

“Me and Jimmy, and Karl Fiersen who was on his way to Amsterdam, and Rudy Tanner who flew in from California.”

“Do you know where we can reach these other men?”

“I’ve got Tanner’s address. Fiersen said to just write him care of American Express in Amsterdam.”

“You exchanged addresses?”

“Yeah, we all did.”

“Jimmy, too?”

“Jimmy, too.”

“You gave him your address?”

“We all gave each other our addresses.”

“Did Jimmy write to you?”

“No.”

“Would you know if he wrote to any of the other men?”

“How would I know?”

“Was Lieutenant Tataglia at the reunion?”

“No. We were surprised about that because he was stationed at Fort Lee in Virginia, and that’s not such a long haul to New Jersey. Tanner came all the way from California.”

“How’d you know where he was stationed?”

“Tataglia? Well, there was a captain there at the reunion, he used to be in command of the 1st Platoon, some of the guys got talking to him. He told us Tataglia was a major now, and stationed at Fort Lee.”

“Who’d he tell?”

“I forget who was standing around there. I think it was me and Jimmy and another guy from the squad, but not from Alpha.”

“Who would that have been?”

“A guy from Bravo. There wasn’t much left of Bravo. Two of them were killed in action the day Jimmy got wounded, and another guy was killed just after Christmas.”

“The one who was at the reunion — do you know his name?”

“Of course I know his name. Danny Cortez, he lives in Philadelphia.”

“Have you got his address, too?”

“Yeah, I took it down.”

“Did Jimmy get his address?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t follow Jimmy around seeing whose address he took or whose address he didn’t.” “But you know for sure that Jimmy took the addresses of the men who were in Alpha.”

“Yeah, because we were all standing around bullshitting, and we used the same pencil to write the addresses.”

“What were you bullshitting about?”

“I told you. Old times. We went through a lot together over there.”

“What did you go through?”

“A lot of action. In the boonies and in the whorehouses, too.”

“What do you mean by boonies?”

“The boondocks. You know, out in the jungles there. The boonies.”

“What kind of action did you see?”

“Vill sweeps mostly. We’d surround a village in the night, and then attack at first light, before they left their women and their rice bowls to go off in the jungle again. We’d destroy whatever we found — AT mines, sugar, pickled fish, small-arms rounds, whatever the fuck.”

“Were you on a vill sweep when Jimmy got wounded?

“No, that was Ala Moana. That was a big operation. That was the whole battalion.”

“How bad was it?”

“It wasn’t good. We lost a lot more people over there than the newspapers made out. All the body counts were the enemy, you dig? Nobody bothered to count us.”

“Did Jimmy get along with everybody in Alpha?”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody in the squad?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you think of anybody who might have wanted him dead?”

“Nope.”

“And that’s the last time you saw him, right? In August.”

“That’s the last time I saw him.”

“You want to let me have those addresses now?” Hawes said.

The telephone again.

The telephone was as vital a tool to policemen as was a tension bar to a burglar. They now had addresses for Rudy Tanner and a man named Danny Cortez, who’d been in Bravo Fire Team of the 2nd Squad. They also knew that Karl Fiersen could be reached care of American Express in Amsterdam, but that didn’t help them much because the city would never spring for a transatlantic call even if by some miracle they could get a phone number for Fiersen. They dialed Directory Assistance for Los Angeles and for Philadelphia, and came up with listings for both Tanner and Cortez. Carella talked to Tanner first He asked almost the same questions about the action that December day, and got almost the same answers. Nothing that didn’t jibe. He kept reaching.

“When did you see him last?”

“August At the reunion.”

“Did he mention any plans to you?”

“Plans? What do you mean?”

“Plans for himself and somebody in Alpha.”

“In Alpha? I don’t get you.”

“He didn’t ask for your help in some plan he had?”

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“Did he write to you after the reunion?”

“No.”

“But you gave him your address, isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“And he gave you his address, right?”

“Yes.”

“When’s the last time you were here in this city?”

“August. On the way to the reunion.”

“Haven’t been back since?”

“No.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Hang up the phone, look at your notes, compare what you just got from Tanner with what you already have from Tataglia and Hopewell and Poole. Think about it Wonder about it. Wonder especially about Jimmy’s nightmares, which his doctor said were rooted in a basement rape that never took place. Make a note to call the police psychiatrist — what the hell was his name? Consider the possibility that the murders were motiveless.

There used to be a time when most murders started as family quarrels resolved with a hatchet or a gun. Find a lady dead on the bathroom floor, go look for her husband. Find a man with both legs broken and a knife in his heart besides, go look for his girl friend’s husband, and try to get there fast before the husband threw her off the roof in the bargain. Those were the good old days. Hardly ever would you get a murder where everything had been figured out in advance — woman wanted to get rid of her husband, she worked out a complicated plot involving poison extracted from the glands of a green South American snake, started lacing his cognac with it every night, poor man went into convulsions and died six months later while the woman was on the Riviera living it up with a gigolo from Copenhagen. Nothing like that. In the good old days your average real-life murder was a woman coming into the apartment and finding her husband drunk again, and shaking him, and then saying the hell with it, and going out to the kitchen for an ice pick and sticking him sixteen times in the chest and the throat. That was real life, baby. You wanted bullshit, you went to mystery novels written by ladies who lived in Sussex. Thrillers. About as thrilling as Aunt Lucy’s tatted nightcap.

In the good old days you wrapped a thing up in three, four hours sometimes — between lunch and cocktails, so to speak. And usually it wasn’t the butler who did it, nor even the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet, but instead your own brother or your brother’s wife or your Uncle Tim from Nome, Alaska. Nowadays it was different. One-third of all the homicides committed in this city involved a victim and a murderer who didn’t even know each other when the crime was committed. Perfect strangers, total and utter, locked in the ultimate intimate obscenity for the mere seconds it took to squeeze a trigger or plunge a blade. So why not believe that Jimmy and Isabel and Hester were victims of someone totally unknown to any of them, some bedbug who had a hang-up about blind people? Why not? Knew them only from their respective neighborhoods, saw them around all the time, shuffling along, their very presence disgusted him. Decided to do away with them. Why not?

Maybe.

Carella sighed, dialed the area code 215 for Philadelphia, and then dialed Danny Cortez’s number. It was almost 5:30 on the squadroom clock, he hoped the man would be home from work already. The phone rang three times, and then a woman picked up.

“Hello?” she said. In that single word he thought he detected a Spanish accent, but that may have been because he knew Danny’s surname was Cortez.

“I’d like to talk to Danny Cortez, please,” he said.

“Who’s this?” the woman asked, the accent unmistakable now.

“Detective Carella, 87th Squad in Isola.”

“Who?” the woman said.

“Police Department,” he said.

“Police? Que desea usted?”

“I’d like to talk to Danny Cortez. Who’s this, please?”

“His wife. Qual es su nombre?”

“Carella. Detective Carella.”

“He knows you, my husband?”

“No. I’m calling long distance.”

“Ah, long distance,” she said. “One minute, por favor.”

Carella waited. He could hear voices in the background, talking softly in Spanish. Silence. Someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“Mr. Cortez?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad in Isola. I’m calling in reference to a murder we’re investigating.”

“A murder?”

“Yes. A man named James Harris. He was in the Army with you, would you happen to remember him?”

“Yes, sure. He was murdered, you say?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you’d answer some questions for me.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When’s the last time you saw him, Mr. Cortez?”

“Jimmy? In August. We had a reunion of the company. I went there to New Jersey. That was when I saw him.”

“Did you talk to him then?”

“Oh, sure.”

“What about?”

“Oh, many things. We were in the same squad, you know. He was Alpha Fire Team, I was Bravo. We were the ones got them out the day he was wounded. They were trapped there, we got them out.”

“Were you very friendly with him?”

“Well, only so-so. We were in the same hootch, Alpha and Bravo, but—”

“The same what?”

“Hootch.”

“What’s that?”

“A hootch? You know what a hootch is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s what we lived in. On the base. There were eight of us in a hootch, the non-coms had their own Playboy pad.”

“Was it like a quonset hut or something?”

“Well, it was more like a tent, you know, with wooden frames and the top half screened. Our hootch had a metal roof, but not all of them did.”

“And eight of you lived in this hootch, is that right?”

“Yeah, four of us from Alpha and four from Bravo. The sergeants — the two team leaders and the squad leader — had their own hootch. But what I’m saying is the guys in Alpha were closer to each other than they were to the guys in Bravo, even though we were all in the same squad. That’s because a fire team, you know, is a very tight-knit unit. You depend for your life on the guys in your own fire team, you understand me? You go through a lot together. Like Bravo went through a lot together, and Alpha went through a lot together, but on their own, you understand? Even though we were all in the same squad.”

“Mm-huh,” Carella said. “What did Alpha go through on its own?”

“Oh, lots of things. I mean, in combat and also off the base, you understand me?” His voice lowered. “In the bars, you know? And with whores, you know?”

“What did they go through in combat together?” Carella asked.

“Well, vill sweeps, you know. And on Ala Moana — that was a big operation — they were there when the lieutenant got killed.”

“Lieutenant Blake, would that be?”

“Yeah, Lieutenant Blake. The platoon commander.” “Alpha was there but Bravo wasn’t, is that it?” “Well, we were already going up the hill. There was a patrol out, and the RTO radioed back that they found half a dozen bunkers and a couple of tunnels up the hill. We were moving out to join them.”

“Bravo was?”

“Yeah. Alpha was resting.”

“Resting,” Carella said.

“Yeah. We’d all been through heavy fighting that whole month. Alpha was down where the lieutenant had set up a command post near some bamboo at the bottom of the hill.”

“A command post,” Carella said.

“Yeah. Well, not really a post. I mean, not buildings or tents or whatever. A command post is wherever the officer in command is. From where he directs the action, you understand me?”

“Mm-huh,” Carella said. “And that’s where the lieutenant was when he got killed? Down there with Alpha?”

“Yeah. Well, no, not exactly. This is what happened. Alpha was down there with the platoon sergeant—”

“Tataglia?”

“Yeah. Johnny Tataglia. Bravo was going up the hill to where the enemy was dug in. The lieutenant went back down to see where the hell Alpha was. To get Alpha so they could bring up the rear, you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“That’s when the mortar attack started. Bastards had zeroed in on the bamboo and were pounding the shit out of it.”

“And that’s when the lieutenant got killed?”

“Yeah, in the mortar attack. Frag must’ve got him. It was a terrible thing. Alpha took cover when the attack started, and then they couldn’t get to the lieutenant in time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in the war over there, you had to pick up your own dead and wounded because if you didn’t they dragged them off and hacked them to pieces. The enemy, you understand me?”

“Is that what happened to Lieutenant Blake?”

“Yeah. He must’ve got hit while he was going down the hill. Alpha told us later they couldn’t go after him because of the mortars. All they could do was watch while he was dragged in the jungle. They found him later in an open pit — cut to ribbons. The bastards used to cut the bodies up and leave them in open pits.”

“Mm-huh,” Carella said.

“With bayonets, they did it,” Cortez said.

“Mm-huh.”

“So what I’m saying, you go through these terrible things together, you naturally get close to the guys who are in your own fire team. You understand me?”

“Yes, I do,” Carella said. “This happened on the third of December, is that right?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you that. We weren’t even there, you understand me? We were on our way to where they’d found those bunkers. It turned out there was a big cache up there. What I’m saying, there are things that are important to a person in combat because he’s in them. But if he isn’t there to experience them, well, then it’s just another day for him. So I couldn’t tell you if the lieutenant was killed on the third or the fourth or whenever. To me, it was just another day. I was out there on a search-and-destroy, I was in no danger at all. The mortars didn’t come anywhere near us. All we heard was the noise. You ever been in a mortar attack? It makes a lot of noise, even from a distance.”

“Mm-huh. Mr. Cortez, when you were at that reunion in New Jersey, did Jimmy talk to you about a plan he was considering?”

“A plan? No. We talked about what it was like overseas. What do you mean, a plan?”

“For making money.”

“I wish he would've talked to me about it,” Cortez said, and laughed. “I could use some money.”

“You wouldn’t know whether he’d approached any of the other men about such a plan?”

“No, I wouldn’t know. I’ll tell you, none of us are doing too hot, you understand me? In New Jersey we were all bitching about what a lousy deal we got. As veterans, I mean. If Jimmy had some plan to make money... hey, I got to tell you, we’d have gone in with him in a minute.” Cortez laughed again. “Long as it didn’t cost us nothing.”

“But you didn’t know about any such plan?”

“No.”

“Did you give Jimmy your address?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he write to you after the reunion?”

“No.”

“Did he telephone you, or try to contact you in any other way?”

“No.”

“Mm,” Carella said. “Well,” he said, and sighed. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Cortez, I appreciate the time you gave me.”

“I wish you luck,” Cortez said, and hung up.

Sergeant Dave Murchison looked toward the iron-runged steps as Carella came down them into the muster room. In the swing room, two patrolmen had taken off their tunics and were sitting in their suspended trousers and long-sleeved underwear, drinking coffee. One of them had just told a joke, and both men were laughing.

Carella glanced briefly through the open door to the room, and then walked to the muster desk. “I’m heading home,” he said.

“What about the dog?” Murchison asked.

“What? Oh, Jesus, I forgot all about him. Did somebody pick him up?”

“He’s downstairs in one of the holding cells. What do you plan to do with him?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said. “I guess I’ll turn him over to Harris’ mother.”

“When?” Murchison said. “Steve, it’s against regulations to keep animals here at the station house.”

“Miscolo has a cat in the Clerical Office,” Carella said.

“That’s different. That’s not in a holding cell downstairs.”

“Shall I take the dog up to Clerical?”

“He’d eat Miscolo’s cat. He’s a very big dog, Steve. Have you seen this dog?”

“He’s not so big. He’s an average-sized Labrador.”

“An average-sized Labrador is a very big dog. I’d say he weighs ninety pounds, that’s what I’d say. Also, he won’t eat.”

“Well, I’ll take him over to Harris’ mother in the morning. I have to talk to her, anyway.”

“You better hope Captain Frick doesn’t decide to take a stroll down to the holding cells. He finds a dog down there, he’ll take a fit.”

“Tell him it’s a master of disguise.”

“What?” Murchison said.

“Tell him it’s a criminal wearing a dog suit.”

“Ha-ha,” Murchison said mirthlessly.

“I’ll get him out of here first thing in the morning,” Carella said. “Dave, I’m tired. I want to go home.”

“What the hell time is it, anyway?” Murchison said, and looked up at the clock. “I got a call from Charlie Maynard an hour ago, he said he’d be a little late. He’s supposed to relieve me at a quarter to four, he calls at a quarter to five, tells me he’ll be a little late. Now it’s a quarter to six, and he still ain’t here. When he called, I told him to get on Tarzan and ride over here as quick as he could.”

“Get on Tarzan? What do you mean?”

“Tarzan was Ken Maynard's horse,” Murchison said.

“No, Tarzan was Tom Mix’s horse.”

“Tony was Tom Mix’s horse.”

“Then who was Trigger?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know who Trigger was. Buck Jones’ horse maybe.”

“Anyway, Charlie Maynard isn’t Ken Maynard.”

“What difference does it make?” Murchison said. “He’s two hours late either way, ain’t he?”

Carella blinked. “Goodnight, Dave,” he said, and walked across the room to the entrance doors, and through them to the steps outside. A fierce wind was blowing in the street.

The wind tore at the blind man’s coat.

He clung to the harness of the German shepherd leading him, cursing the wind, cursing the fact that he had to go to the bathroom and he was still three blocks from his building. The trouble with running a newsstand was that you had to go in the cafeteria or the bookstore every time you had to pee. They were nice about it, they knew a man couldn’t be out there on the comer all day long without going to the bathroom, but still he hated to bother them all the time.

He wondered what astronauts did. Did they pee inside their space suits? Was there a tube they had? He should have gone in the cafeteria before heading home. The bookstore was already closed, but the cafeteria was open twenty-four hours, and the manager said he didn’t mind him coming in to use the men’s room downstairs. Still, you couldn’t go in there every ten minutes, take advantage of the man’s hospitality that way. Tried to limit his necessity calls to lunch time and then maybe once again midafternoon. Always took his lunch at the cafeteria so he could stay on friendly terms with the manager. He went in the bookstore only every now and then, when he felt embarrassed about going in the cafeteria. But it was different in the bookstore because he only bought from them every now and then, when he wanted to give a present to one of his sighted friends, and also they sold magazines same as he did, and he guessed they maybe thought he was in competition with them.

God, he had to pee!

The dog suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What is it, Ralph?” he said.

The dog began growling.

“Ralph?” he said. “What’s the matter, boy?”

He smelled something sickeningly sweet in that instant, cloying, medicinal — chloroform, it was chloroform. The dog growled again, an attack growl deep in his throat, and suddenly the harness jerked out of his hand and someone yelled in pain. He heard the shuffle of feet on the sidewalk, heard harsh breathing, the dog’s low growl again, and then footsteps running into the night, fading. The dog was barking. The dog would not stop barking.

“All right,” he said, “all right,” and groped for the harness and found it. He patted the dog’s head. “Take me home, boy,” he said. “Home now. Home, Ralph.”

At home, there was a telephone.

He called the police, not because he thought they’d do anything about it — police in this damn city never did anything about anything — but only because he felt outraged by the attack. The patrolman who arrived at his apartment immediately challenged him.

“How do you know it was an attack, Mr. Masler?”

The man’s name was Eugene Maslen, with an “n.” He had corrected the patrolman twice, but the patrolman kept saying Masler. Maybe he was hard of hearing. He tried again.

“It’s Maslen,” he said, “with an ‘n,’ and I know it was an attack because the dog wouldn’t have begun growling that way if someone wasn’t threatening us.”

“Mm,” the patrolman said. His name was McGrew, and he worked out of the Four-One downtown in the financial district, near the Headquarters building. “And you say you smelled chloroform?”

“It smelled like chloroform, yes. From when I had my tonsils out.”

“When was that, Mr. Masler?”

“When I was seven.”

“And you remember what the chloroform smelled like, huh?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“So what is it you’re saying, Mr. Masler? Are you saying this person was trying to chloroform the dog?”

“I don’t know what he was trying to do. I’m telling you he approached us with chloroform and the dog attacked him and bit him.”

“Oh, the dog bit him. How do you know?”

“Because I heard the man yell.”

“How do you know it was a man?”

“It sounded like a man yelling.”

“What did he yell?”

“He just yelled in pain, but I can tell the difference between a man yelling and a woman yelling. This was a man.”

“Your dog ain’t got rabies, has he?”

“No, he had his shots just last month. The date’s on the tag there. On his collar.”

McGrew thought he should look at the tag, but this was a dog who’d already bit one person and he didn’t want to be the second person getting bit tonight.

“Where did this incident take place?” he asked.

“Three blocks from here. On Cherry Street. Near the Mercantile Bank on the comer.”

“You knew where you were, huh?”

“Yes,” Maslen said, “I knew exactly where I was. I may be blind but I’m not stupid.”

“Mm,” McGrew said, managing to sound dubious. “Well,” he said, “we’ll look into this, Mr. Masler, let you know if we come up with anything.”

“Thank you,” Maslen said. He did not for a moment believe anybody would look into it or come up with anything.

A second patrolman was waiting downstairs in the radio motor patrol car. They had routinely answered the 10–24 — Past Assault — and when they got to Maslen’s building, had decided it wasn’t necessary for both of them to go all the way up to the fourth floor. McGrew’s partner, whose name was Kelly, was asleep in the car when McGrew came down to the street again. McGrew rapped on the window, and Kelly came awake with a start, blinked first into the car and then through the window to where McGrew was bent over looking in. “Oh,” Kelly said, and unlocked the door on the passenger side. McGrew got in.

“What was it?” Kelly asked.

“Who the hell knows?” McGrew said. “Whyn’t you take a spin over to Cherry, near the Mercantile there.”

“The bank there?”

“Yeah, the bank there,” McGrew took the hand mike from the dashboard. He had called in a 10–88 — Arrived At Scene — some five minutes ago, and now he radioed the dispatcher with a combined 10-80D and 10–98 — Referred to Detectives and Resuming Patrol/Available. From the call box on Cherry and Laird, he telephoned the precinct and asked the desk sergeant to connect him with the squadroom upstairs. The detective who took the call was a man named Underhill. McGrew filled him in on the squeal, and then asked did Underhill want to come down there, or what?

“You at the scene now?” Underhill asked.

“Yeah, where it’s supposed to have took place.”

“Why don’t you look around, give me a call back?”

“Look for what?”

“You said chloroform, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So look around, see if there’s anything with chloroform on it A rag, a piece of cotton, whatever. If you find anything, don’t touch it, you hear me?”

“Okay,” McGrew said.

“And look for bloodstains, too. You said the dog bit him, didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s what the blind guy told me.”

“Okay, so look for bloodstains. If you find anything, call me right back. Did the blind guy get hurt?”

“No.”

“Did his dog get hurt?”

“No.”

“Is the dog rabid or anything?”

“No, he got his shots last month.”

“So okay, look around a little,” Underhill said, and hung up.

McGrew went back to the car and opened the door.

“What are we supposed to do?” Kelly asked.

“Look around a little,” McGrew said.

Kelly came out of the car with a long torchlight in his hand. He sprayed the beam over the sidewalk near the mailbox, and the call box, and the lamppost, and then began working his way back toward the wall of the bank.

“Look, there’s some blood,” he said.

“Yeah,” McGrew said. “I think I better get back to Underhill.”

Detective George Underhill did not want to leave the squadroom.

He was busy organizing the paperwork he’d assembled on a series of liquor-store holdups just this side of Chinatown, and he was absorbed with the job, and besides, it was cold outside. Underhill had been bom and raised in the state of California, where it was always warm and lovely, despite what songwriters had to say about its being cold and damp. Underhill did not like this city. Underhill liked San Diego. The reason Underhill was here in this city was that his wife’s mother lived here in this city, and his wife wanted to be near her mother, whom Underhill hated almost as much as he hated this city. If Underhill had his druthers, which he didn’t have, he’d have liked this city to break off and float away into the Atlantic, carrying his mother-in-law with it. That’s how Underhill felt about this city and about his mother-in-law. But that goddamn McGrew had found blood on the sidewalk, and so Underhill guessed the dog had really bitten somebody. Whether the dog had bitten somebody about to assault the blind man was another question. Nobody had got hurt, not the blind man and not the dog, either; Underhill figured this could not by any stretch of the imagination be categorized an assault. He even wondered whether it could be categorized an attempted assault. In which case, why the hell was he contemplating going all the way over to Cherry and Laird on a night when they should be taking in the brass monkeys?

Underhill did not know that three blind people had been killed since Thursday night, two of them in the Eight-Seven and another in Midtown East. Carella’s stop-sheet asking for information on Unusual Crimes and specifying attacks on blind people was at this moment on the desk of a Detective Ramon Jiminez, not six feet from Underhill’s own desk in the detective squadroom of the 41st Precinct, but Underhill hadn’t seen it. If he had seen it, he might have called Carella at once. But this wasn’t a homicide Underhill was dealing with, this wasn’t even an assault, this was maybe an attempted assault — or maybe it was just a grouchy old dog biting somebody just for the hell of it.

Being a conscientious man, however, he wired a stop to the Commissioner of the Department of Hospitals at 432 Market, asking for information re patients seeking medical treatment for dog bites. He did not know where the man had been bitten, he guessed the leg, if anyplace, but he didn’t specify this in his stop. It occurred to him belatedly that if any of the city hospitals came up with the name of a man they’d treated for dog bite, he would have no way of identifying a possible suspect unless he had a blood sample. That was why he called the Police Laboratory, and that was how it happened that a lab technician went to the scene at eight-fifteen that night and began taking blood samples from the sidewalk.

Carella knew nothing about any of this.

It was a big city.