Long Time No See

Fourteen

Sophie Harris did not want the dog.

“I got no way of taking care of the dog,” she said. “Chrissie’s in school all day long, and I’m out workin. What we goan do with a big dog like that in this small apartment? Who’s goan take care of him?”

“I thought you might want him,” Carella said.

“Ain’t no dog goan bring back my Jimmy,” she said. “You better take him with you when you leave.”

“Well,” Carella said, and looked at the dog. Nobody seemed to want the dog. He’d be damned if he wanted the dog, either. The dog looked back at him balefully. Carella had removed the leather harness, but the dog still wore around his neck a studded leather collar hung with a collection of hardware. If he decided to keep the dog, he’d have to look at all those metal discs and whatever else was hanging there, find out what shots the dog had already had. He did not want a dog. He didn’t even like dogs. Teddy would have a fit if he brought home a dog. “Are you sure you don’t want the dog?” he asked Sophie.

“I’m sure,” she said. They had put her son in the ground yesterday, she did not want any damn dog reminding her that he was gone forever. Buried him side by side with the daughter-in-law she’d loved, both of them gone now. Made Sophie want to bust out crying all over again, here in the presence of the policeman. She had to learn to control these sudden fits of weeping that came over her.

“Well,” Carella said, “I’ll have to find something to do with him.” He looked at the dog again. The dog looked back. “Anyway,” Carella said, “that isn’t my only reason for coming here this morning. Mrs. Harris, do you remember telling me that Jimmy had contacted an old Army buddy...”

“Yes.”

“For help with what you thought might have been an illegal scheme.”

“Yes.”

“And you said you didn’t remember the man’s name.”

“That’s right.”

“If I gave you some names, would that help?”

“Maybe.”

“How about Russell Poole? Did your son call him or write to him?”

“That doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Rudy Tanner?”

“No.”

“John Tataglia?”

“I really don’t remember. I’m very bad with names.”

“Robert Hopewell?”

“I’m sorry, but...”

“Karl Fiersen?”

“All those names sound alike to me.”

Carella thought about that. He guessed that Tanner did sound something like Tataglia and maybe Russell Poole and Robert Hopewell could be mistaken one for the other. But there was nothing Fiersen sounded like but itself. And as for Cortez...

“Cortez?” he said. “Danny Cortez?”

“I can’t remember,” Sophie said. “I’m sorry.”

“Did your son write to this person, or did he call him?”

“He wrote to him.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me.”

“Did you see the letter?”

“No.”

“Do you know what it said?”

“No, he didn’t tell me what was in it. Only that he’d written to this man who was going to help him and Isabel get rich.”

“Did he say how much money was involved?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Harris, what would Jimmy have considered rich?”

“I got no idea.”

“What do you consider rich?”

“I’d be the richest woman in the world if I could have my Jimmy and his wife back,” Sophie said, and began weeping.

The dog didn’t say a word all the way downtown. Kept sitting on the back seat looking through the window, watching the traffic. Carella wondered if he should take him to an animal shelter. He thought of what Maloney from Canine had told him about gradually drawing all the air out of a container. Maloney said it was just like going to sleep. Carella doubted that gasping for air was very much like going to sleep. He didn’t like dogs, and he didn’t know this particular dog from an inchworm — but he didn’t think he would take him to a shelter.

He parked the car on Dutchman’s Row, near the old Harrison Life Building. As he locked the door, the dog on the back seat looked out at him. Carella said, “That’s okay,” and walked away from the car. The streets here were clogged with automobiles and pedestrians. On the comer a traffic cop was chatting with a dark-haired girl in a miniskirt, a fake-fur jacket and black leather boots. The girl looked like a hooker. The traffic cop was talking to the girl who was maybe a hooker, smiling at her, puffing out his chest, while horns honked and tempers soared and traffic backed up clear to the harbor tunnel. Carella dodged a taxi that had begun weaving in and out of the stalled traffic. The taxi almost hit him. The driver rolled down his window and shouted, “You tired of living, mister?”

He found the address for Prestige Novelty on the other side of the street, some four buildings down from the comer. Someone had spilled water on the sidewalk in front of the entrance door and the water had frozen into a thin dangerous glaze. Carella automatically looked up to the face of the building, to see whether there were any window washers on scaffolds up there. Nothing, and no one. He wondered where the spilled water had come from. Mysteries. All the time, mysteries. He skirted the patch of ice and pushed his way through the revolving doors. On the lobby directory he found a listing for PRESTIGE NOVELTY, Room 501. He took the elevator up, and then searched out the office in the fifth-floor corridor. Frosted-glass upper panel on the door, Prestige Novelty in gold-leaf lettering beneath which were the numerals 501. So far, so good. With brilliant deductive work like this — finding an office after having consulted a lobby directory — Carella figured he’d make Detective/First within the month. He opened the door. This, too, indicated high intelligence and good small-motor control — grasping a doorknob in one’s right hand, twisting it, pushing the door inward. He found himself in a smallish reception room done in various shades of green, all bilious. There was an opening on the wall facing the door, a pair of sliding glass panels. Behind the panels was a dark-haired woman in her early thirties. He guessed this was Jennie D’Amato, with whom he had talked last Friday night. He approached the partition; one of the panels slid open.

“Yes?”

“Detective Carella,” he said. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Preston, please.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Are you Miss D’Amato?”

“Yes.”

“Is Mr. Preston in?”

“I’ll see,” she said, and slid the panel shut, and picked up the telephone receiver, and stabbed at a button in the base of the phone. He could hear her voice through the glass panels. “Mr. Preston? There’s a Detective Carella here to see you.” She listened, said, “Yes, sir,” and put the receiver back on its cradle. She slid open the panel again. “I’ll buzz you in,” she said to Carella, and indicated a door on her right. Carella went to the door, took the knob in his hand, waited for the buzz that unlocked it, and opened it into the office beyond. Desks, filing cabinets. At one of the desks, a horsefaced woman working over what appeared to be the company ledgers. He supposed this was Miss Houlihan. She did not look up from the books.

“It’s the door right there,” Jennie said. “Just go right in.”

“Thank you,” Carella said, and walked to the door and knocked on it.

“Come in,” Preston said.

He was sitting behind a large wooden desk, the book cases behind him lined with leatherbound books that looked dusty and old. He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit, a white shirt and muted tie. The last time Carella saw him, he’d been wearing a bathrobe. He looked rather more elegant now, somewhat like a barrister out of Great Expectations, fringe of white hair framing his massive head, blue eyes alert and expectant under the white shaggy brows. He rose immediately, shook hands with Carella, and immediately asked, “Any news?”

“No, nothing,” Carella said. “I’d like to ask you a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. This other woman who was killed—”

“You know about that?” Carella asked at once.

“Yes, it was in the papers. Is her death linked to Isabel’s?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Because if it is...” Preston shrugged. “Well then, you’re obviously dealing with a lunatic, isn’t that so?”

“Possibly,” Carella said. “Mr. Preston, I’m assuming that the relationship between you and Isabel was the sort in which there was a free exchange of dialogue.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you ever talk about your separate marriages?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Mr. Preston, we have good reason to believe that Jimmy Harris wrote to someone he knew in the Army, proposing some sort of business deal — possibly something illegal. Did Isabel ever mention this to you?”

“No, she did not.”

“Never mentioned Jimmy contacting one of his old Army buddies?”

“No.”

“Did she mention Jimmy going to the reunion in August?”

“Yes. In fact...”

“Yes, Mr. Preston?”

“We... stole a few days together.”

“You and Isabel went away together, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“While Jimmy was at the reunion?”

“Yes.”

“Did she later mention anything that happened at the reunion?”

“No.”

“Did Jimmy ever tell her about a plan to get rich?”

“She never mentioned such a plan to me.”

“Mr. Preston, when we went through the Harris apartment, we didn’t find anything like a diary or a journal that Isabel might have kept...

“She was blind,” Preston said.

“Yes, I realize that, but blind people can write in Braille, and I’m sure there are at least some blind people who keep diaries. Did Isabel ever mention a diary or a journal?”

“No.”

“Where did she work, Mr. Preston?”

“Here, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“In the mail room.”

“Where’s that?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because maybe she kept such a diary here at the office, where her husband wouldn’t come across it.”

“No, I don’t think she kept a diary.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“Well, I can’t be sure, of course, but... she never mentioned a diary to me. I’m sure she would have mentioned it.”

“Mr. Preston, may I see her desk, please?”

“I... I don’t see what...”

“What’s the problem, Mr. Preston?”

“There’s no problem. It’s simply that you’d be wasting your time.”

“Well, it’s my time, isn’t it?”

“Yes but...”

“What is it, Mr. Preston?”

“Nothing.”

“Would you show me the mail room, please?”

Preston sighed and rose from behind his desk. “This way,” he said, and walked across the office to the door, and opened it, and stepped into the outer office, Carella following him.

The door to the mail room was set alongside the desk at which Miss Houlihan still worked on the ledgers. This time she glanced up as the two men went past. There seemed to be a faintly quizzical look on her face. Preston opened the door to the mail room as though he were opening the door to a vault. A girl sat at a desk inside the windowless room. There were brochures stacked on the floor beside the desk. The girl kept reaching for the brochures and stuffing them into envelopes. She did this mindlessly — reaching, inserting, moistening the envelope flaps, sealing the envelopes.

“Would you, leave us, please, Beth?” Preston asked, and the girl walked out of the room. Preston closed the door behind her. Idly, because he was not here to look through advertising matter for ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, coasters, swizzle sticks or other assorted souvenir items, Carella picked up one of the brochures.

On the cover there was a line drawing of a man and a woman kissing. Above the woman’s head, and moving across the cover from left to right in delicate script lettering, was the legend Marital Aids for Lovers. Below the word Lovers, in a white heart on the extreme right-hand side of the cover, was the name of Preston’s firm, and below that its address on Dutchman’s Row. In the lower left-hand corner of the cover, in very small print, Carella read the words sexually oriented advertising for adults. Beneath this was the warning This catalogue contains advertisements which may be deemed sexually oriented under the new postal law. That law is concerned with seeing that sexually oriented advertisements are not thrust upon minors or persons not desiring such advertisements. Accordingly, if you are less than 21 years of age, or if you do not desire to view a sexually oriented advertisement, DO NOT OPEN THIS CATALOGUE. Please be kind enough to request that we remove your name from our mailing list. We will then remove your name and make every effort to see that you do not receive any more sexually oriented advertisements from us.

“That’s explicit enough,” Carella said.

“It’s in accordance with the law,” Preston said.

“I’m sure it is,” Carella said, and since he was well over twenty-one years of age, and since he was also desirous of viewing a sexually oriented advertisement, he opened the brochure.

The items advertised within were many and varied.

Here was a cordless massager in a handsome grain finish in a choice of ivory or walnut colors. Here on the facing page was a set of double remote-controlled Ben-Wa balls. Here now was a Ben-Wa fringed tingle ball, and here a series of love potions ranging from stingers to energizers to vaginal teasers to penis sweeteners and to more exotically erotic accessories variously called Cunnilingus Powder, Erecios Capsules, Vipe Spice and Jungle Love. Here was a life-sized doll complete with breasts and vaginal pocket, the blonde with no clothes selling for $32.50, the blonde with lingerie selling for $37.50, similarly naked or attired brunettes coming somewhat cheaper, with nary a redhead in evidence. Here was a vibrodongo marital aid and here a vibro double dongo marital aid. Here was something called a vaginal pal portable marital aid of durable construction with real-looking hair in a handsome gift box — only $17.25. Here, too, was something called an autosuck vagina, described as a male marital aid and guaranteed to operate from a car’s cigarette lighter.

The list of products went on and on, page after page of prosthetic extensions, electrical devices designed to provide sensuous vibrations, action playing cards featuring male-female “sexation” or female-female love, eight-track recordings or cassettes boasting “live stag-action,” a bath mat covered with foam rubber breasts, a wristwatch with sexual positions substituting for the numbers on the dial, a sensuous dictionary with full-color photographs, and lastly but not least inventively, a lipstick in the shape of a penis — described as “a tasteful gift for any woman.”

Carella closed the brochure. “Is this what you had Isabel Harris mailing for you?” he said.

“If she couldn’t see it,” Preston said, “how could it hurt her?”

Carella suddenly had the feeling that he could hack his way through the dense undergrowth of this city forever and still not reach a clearing where there was sunlight. He looked at Preston for only an instant, and then began searching through the desk that had been Isabel’s. He did not find a diary, he did not find a journal, he did not find a goddamned thing. When he left the office, he went down the corridor to the men’s room and washed his hands.

So now they snowballed it.

It was ten minutes past twelve on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and they sat in Lieutenant Byrnes’ office, drinking coffee brewed in Clerical and eating sandwiches Hawes had called down for a half-hour earlier. There were four of them in the office: Carella, Meyer, Hawes and the lieutenant.

Byrnes was a compact man whose clothes seemed too tight for him, vest open across the barrel chest, jacket pinched across wide shoulders, tie pulled down and shirt collar open as though to allow breathing space for the thick neck that supported his head. His hair was a gray the color of the city snow; his eyes were a flinty blue. The men of the 87th called him “Loot” or “Pete” or “Boss.” He was the boss, the man in command of the squad’s sixteen detectives, answerable in the precinct only to Captain John Marshall Frick, who theoretically ran the whole shebang but who, in practice, gave Byrnes and the detective squad almost complete autonomy. Byrnes had read the reports filed by Carella, Meyer and Hawes, and now he wanted to know what the hell was happening. There were four crimes that irritated him more than any of the others rampant in this city. At the top of the list was homicide. Beneath that, but comparatively rare, was arson. Then came rape. And then pushing dope. In Byrnes view, slitting the throats of blind people was tantamount to strangling innocent babes in their cribs. He was not too happy about the squad’s progress on this case; he was, in fact, a bit cranky and unpredictable this morning, and the men sensed this displeasure and tiptoed around it like burglars in an occupied apartment.

“So why are you wasting time with all this Army business?” Byrnes asked.

“Well,” Carella said, “the man was having nightmares, Pete—”

“I have nightmares, too. So what?”

“And also he’d contacted one of his old Army buddies about this deal he had in mind, whatever it was.”

That’s according to his mother,” Byrnes said.

“She seems like a reliable witness,” Carella said.

“Witness to what?” Byrnes said. “She didn’t see this letter he’s supposed to have sent.”

“But he told her about it.”

“He told her he’d sent a letter to one of his buddies?”

“He told her the name, too.”

“But she can’t remember the name.”

“That’s right.”

“Then what the hell good is she?” Byrnes said, and picked up his coffee cup, and sipped at it, and then put it down on his desk immediately; goddamn coffee was cold “He could’ve sent the letter to anybody in Alpha — he had all their addresses, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah, he got them at the reunion.”

“Anyway, what’s this letter got to do with his murder? I get back to what I asked you before: why are you wasting time with all this Army business?”

“Because of the nightmares,” Carella said, and shrugged.

“What he figures,” Meyer said, “is that—”

“Does he stutter?” Byrnes asked.

“What?”

“Does Detective Carella stutter?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Then let him tell me himself what he figures.”

“I don’t know what I figure,” Carella said. “But it bothers me that Jimmy Harris remembered a rape that never happened.”

“That’s if you believe the girl.”

“I believe the girl,” Carella said.

“So do I,” Meyer said.

“What’s that got to do with the murders?” Byrnes insisted. “The man was murdered, his wife was murdered, another woman was murdered.”

“I don’t think all three murders are related,” Carella said. “I think the first two are, but I can’t see any connection—”

“He just picked another victim at random, is that what you’re saying?”

“No, not at random,” Carella said. “Well, it could have been anybody, yes, in that sense it was random. But the victim had to be blind. He deliberately chose another blind person.”

Hawes had been silent until this moment. He said now, very softly because he was in this case only peripherally and didn’t want to make waves when the lieutenant was making enough waves of his own, “It could be a smoke screen, Pete.”

“Nobody’s that dumb,” Byrnes said.

“You don’t have to be smart to kill people,” Meyer said.

“No, but you have to be dumb to try covering your tracks by killing somebody else.”

“Let’s look at the only thing we’ve got,” Carella said.

“What’s that?”

“Jimmy wrote to an Army buddy concerning a get-rich-quick scheme.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“His mother thinks Jimmy may have had something illegal in mind.”

“Like what?”

“She was only guessing, but she figured he needed somebody who knew how to use a gun. Okay, let’s say he wrote to this person after the August reunion.”

“Why after the reunion.”

“Because he wouldn’t have known any addresses before the reunion.”

“Why didn’t he just talk to the man?”

“What do you mean?”

“At the reunion. Why didn’t he just go up to him and say TListen, I want to hold up a liquor store, are you interested?’ ”

“Maybe he didn’t get the idea till after the reunion,” Meyer said.

“Wrote to the man in September sometime,” Hawes said.

“And let’s say the man agreed to go in with Jimmy. Wrote back, or phoned him, or whatever, told him ‘Okay, I’m in, let’s rob a bank.’ ”

“Okay,” Byrnes said.

“Okay, so they hold up the bank or the liquor store or the gas station or whatever...”

“Yeah?”

“And Jimmy stashes the loot in his apartment.”

“In the window box,” Meyer said.

“And won’t tell his partner where he put it,” Hawes said.

“So his partner follows Jimmy on his way home Thursday night, and tries to get him to talk, but Jimmy won’t.”

“So the partner slits his throat, and then goes to the apartment figuring that’s where the loot is...”

“Turns the place upside down...”

“Finds the money...”

“Kills Isabel...”

“And then kills Hester Mathieson the next night...”

“To make it look like some nut’s running around killing blind people.”

“How does that sound, Pete?” Carella asked.

“It stinks,” Byrnes said.

The police psychologist was a man named Manfred Leider. His primary job was to help members of the department who were having problems that could not be solved by the use of marital aids such as those Prestige Novelty sold through the mails. Occasionally, though, a law-enforcement officer came to him for information about criminal behavior. He had dealt with detectives like Carella before; he found the man sincere but limited. All too often, even the brightest of working cops had only a peripheral knowledge of the intricacies of psychiatric techniques. This one wanted to know about dreams. Where should he begin? Basic Freud?

“What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.

They were sitting in Leider’s office on the fortieth floor of the Headquarters Building on High Street downtown. The island was narrow here; beyond the windows they could see both rivers that bounded the city. The day was cold and clear and sharp, they could see for miles into the next state.

“I’m investigating a homicide,” Carella said, “and the victim was having nightmares.”

“Mm,” Leider said. He was a man in his fifties, and he sported a graying beard that he thought made him look like a psychiatrist. In this state a psychiatrist had to go through four years of college, four years of medical school, one year of internship, three years of residency and another two years of clinical practice before taking the written and oral examinations he had to pass for a license to practice. That was why psychiatrists charged fifty dollars an hour for their services.

Leider was only a psychologist.

When Leider first began to practice, even a garage mechanic could hang out a shingle and offer his services as a “psychologist,” whatever that might have been. Times had changed; there were now stringent licensing procedures. But many psychologists, Leider among them, still felt somewhat inferior in the presence of a psychiatrist or — God forbid — that most elite and august personage, a psychoanalyst. At a tea or a soiree in the presence of such learned men, Leider often talked of glove anesthesia and eulalia and waxy flexibility. This was to show that he knew his stuff. The funny part of it was that he really did know his stuff. Leider should have gone to see a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist might have helped him with his feelings of inferiority. Instead, he spent eight hours a day in an office at the Headquarters Building downtown, where he talked to working policemen who made him feel superior.

“What sort of nightmares?” he asked.

“Well, the same nightmare each time,” Carella said.

“A recurring nightmare, do you mean?”

“Yes,” Carella said. Leider made him feel inferior. He knew that the word he’d been looking for was “recurring,” but somehow it had eluded him. Leider was wearing bifocal glasses. His eyes looked huge behind them. A crumb was clinging to his beard; he had probably just had lunch.

“Can you tell me the content of these recurring dreams?” he asked.

“Yes,” Carella said, and related the dream to him:

It is shortly before Christmas.

Jimmys mother and father are decorating a Christmas tree. Jimmy and four other boys are sitting on the living-room floor, watching. Jimmy's father tells the boys they must help him decorate the tree. The boys refuse. Jimmy's mother says they don’t have to help if theyre tired. Christmas ornaments begin falling from the tree, crashing to the floor, making loud noises that startle Jimmys father. He loses his balance on the ladder and falls to the floor, landing on the shards of the broken Christmas tree ornaments and accidentally cutting himself. The carpet is green, his blood seeps into it. He bleeds to death on the carpet. Jimmys mother is crying. She lifts her skirt to reveal a penis.

“Mm,” Leider said.

“That’s the dream,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said again.

“The dream was analyzed by a Major Ralph Lemarre...”

“An Army doctor?” Leider asked.

“Yes, a psychiatrist.”

“A psychiatrist, mm,” Leider said.

“And he seemed to think it was related to a gang rape that had taken place some years back?”

“Some years back from when?”

“From when he was treating the patient.”

“When was he treating the patient?”

“Ten years ago.”

“Ten years ago, mm. And the rape took place how many years before that?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Carella said. “The rape didn't take place. We talked to the girl who was supposed to have been the victim, and it never happened.”

“Perhaps she was lying. Many rape victims—”

“No, she was telling the truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told us what did happen, and it was a sex experience, but not a rape.”

“What is it that happened?” Leider asked.

Carella told him all about Roxanne and Jimmy being alone down there in the basement on a rainy day. The intercourse against the basement post. Thunder and lightning outside. The fear of discovery and punishment.

“What I’m asking,” Carella said, “is whether it’s possible— Look, I don’t know much about how this works. I’m trying to find out whether their making love in the basement that day could’ve become something different in Jimmy’s mind, could’ve become a whole big rape scene in his mind, and could’ve eventually caused nightmares. That’s what I want to know.”

“You say there was fear of punishment involved?”

“Yes. If the leader of the gang had found out, they both would’ve been punished.”

“Mm,” Leider said.

“What do you think?” Carella said.

“Well, there’s certainly a great deal of sexual symbolism in the dream, no question about that,” Leider said. “A tree is a dream symbol for male genitalia, and any sharp weapon is a dream symbol for the penis. The broken Christmas tree ornaments — commonly called Christmas balls — would seem another reference to male genitalia. And the dream figure cutting himself would seem to symbolize penetration of the body — sexual intercourse.”

“Then the dream could have—”

“And the memory,” Leider continued, “which is in itself a sort of dream, since you tell me it never really happened, substantiates the dream material by utilizing different sexual symbolism to restate essentially the same thing. Freud used as symbols of sexual intercourse such rhythmical activities as dancing, riding and climbing. In the false memory, the gang leader is first depicted as dancing with his girl friend, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you said the girl is carried later to a weed-covered lot...”

“Yes...”

“Well, in dreams of both sexes, pubic hair is represented as woods or bushes, so I guess by extension we can include weeds. In the dream, as I recall, the weeds have become a green carpet. The father figure bleeds to death on a green carpet, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Again we can refer back to the broken Christmas tree ornaments. A vase, or a flowerpot, or any such vessel — which a round Christmas tree ornament somewhat resembles — is a symbol for the female genitals, and the breaking might symbolize virginity and the bleeding normally associated with first intercourse. Was the girl a virgin, would you know?”

“I don’t know. I would doubt it,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said, and took off his glasses and wiped at the lenses. His eyes were a pale blue behind them; he looked suddenly weary, and much, much older. He put the glasses on again. His magnified eyes leaped into the room. “And of course we’ve got the violence — violent experiences in dreams can usually be interpreted as representations of sexual intercourse.”

“But I thought dreams were designed to mask something,” Carella said. “To disguise it.”

“To hide it from the censor of the conscious mind, yes,” Leider said. “If your outlook is strictly Freudian, you’re bound to believe, quote, that what instigates dreams are actively evil and extravagantly sexual wishes, which have made the censorship and distortion of dreams necessary, unquote.”

“Mm,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said. “But of course, that’s very early Freud, and we’ve come a long way in the interpretation of dreams since then. In this case, where the patient was having recurring nightmares, I would guess he was trying to master the original trauma... to desensitize it, if you will, by exploring it again and again. That’s what the dream-work would seem to indicate to me.”

“What trauma?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know what trauma,” Leider said. “You know his history, you tell me.”

“He was blinded in the war,” Carella said. “I guess that could...”

“That would most certainly be traumatic,” Leider said.

“But... no,” Carella said, “because... Now, wait a minute. When Jimmy was telling Lemarre about the rape, he said God had punished him instead of the other boys. He told Lemarre the rape had everything to do with his getting blinded.”

“But there was no rape,” Leider said. “There was the trauma instead.”

“Right, and the trauma couldn't have been him getting blinded, because he later blamed the blindness on whatever it was happened.”

“So what was it that happened?” Leider asked.

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“When was he wounded?”

“December the fourteenth.”

“Had he been in any action before then?”

“Yes, they’d been fighting since the beginning of the month...”

You'd been fighting with another gang all that month—

Heavy fighting, man.

And now you were resting.

Yeah, and Lloyd told us to go on up.

“What is it?” Leider asked.

“Is it possible that...?”

“Is what possible?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said. “Let me... let me just put this together, okay?”

“Take your time.”

His mouth was suddenly dry. He wet his lips with his tongue, and nodded, and tried to remember everything he’d read in Lemarre’s report up there at the hospital while he himself was repressing all sorts of sexual desire for Janet, tried to remember the report in detail, and tried to remember everything Danny Cortez had told him on the phone yesterday.

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... Bravo was going up the hill where the enemy was dug in. The lieutenant went back down to see where the hell Alpha was... That's when the mortar attack started. Bastards had zeroed in on the bamboo and were pounding the shit out of it.

That was Danny Cortez talking about the third day of December, ten years ago, when Lieutenant Roger Blake was killed by a mortar fragment.

It was a terrible thing. Alpha took cover when the attack started, and then they couldn't get to the lieutenant in time... 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?... 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... With bayonets, they did it.

That was still Danny Cortez, elaborating on the theme of jungle warfare. This now was Jimmy Harris talking about a rape that had never taken place.

Lloyd told us to go on up... Upstairs... The boys told Lloyd to shove it up his ass. Then they all grabbed him, you know, pulled him away from Roxanne where they were standin there in the middle of the floor. Record still goin, drums loud as anything. Guy banging the drums there.

(All we heard was the noise, Cortez said. You ever been in a mortar attack? It makes a lot of noise, even from a distance.)

There's this post in the middle of the room, you know? Like, you know, a steel post holdin up the ceiling beams. They push him up against the post. I got no idea what they fixin to do with him, he the president, they askin for trouble there. I tell them Hey, cool it, this man here's the president. But they... they... they don't listen to me, man. They just... they keep holdin him up against the tree, and Roxannes cryin now, she's crying, man... The post, I mean. Roxanne's cryin. They grab her. She fightin them now, she don't want this to happen, but they do it anyway, they stick it in her, one after the other, all of them... They carried her outside afterward, they picked her up and took her out... Cause she bleeding. Cause they hurt her when they were doin it.

(All they could do was watch while he was dragged in the jungle, Cortez said. 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. With bayonets, they did it.)

“What is it, Mr. Carella?” Leider asked again. “Have you hit upon something?”

The dog was in a small office on the ground floor of the police garage, where a uniformed cop had promised to watch him while Carella was upstairs. The cop wanted to know what was wrong with the dog; he’d tried feeding him and the dog wouldn’t take nothing. Carella said he was a seeing-eye dog. The cop looked at the dog and said, “So what does that explain?”

“He’s trained to accept food only from his master.”

“So where’s his master?” the cop asked.

“Dead,” Carella said.

“Then the dog’s gonna starve,” the cop said philosophically, and picked up the magazine he’d been reading, dismissing with that single gesture the vast and complicated world of canine problems.

Carella put one hand into the dog’s collar and led him back to where he’d parked the car. He did not want a dog, and he especially did not want a dog that would not eat. He could visualize the dog getting skinnier and skinnier and finally wasting away to a shadow of his former self. He wondered if the dog had really been given all the shots a dog needed, whatever those shots might be. He did not want a dog, nor did he want a dog wasting away, but most especially he did not want a rabid dog wasting away. He decided to look at the assorted hanging clutter of metal junk on the dog’s collar.

There was a brass tag stamped with the words Dog License, and the name of the city, and the year, and the six-digit license number. There was a stainless-steel tag stamped with the name and address of a Dr. James Kopel, presumably a veterinarian, and beneath that the words I Have Been Vaccinated Against Rabies, and the year, and a four-digit number. There was another stainless-steel tag with the words Guiding Eye School stamped on it, and beneath that the Perry Street address of the school. There was yet another stainless-steel tag stamped with the words I Belong to James R. Harris, and beneath that, Harris’ address on South Seventh and a telephone number.

There was also a stainless-steel key.

Carella could not imagine why a dog was wearing a key around his neck until he saw the word Mosler stamped on the head of the key just below the hole where a metal ring fastened it to the collar. There was dirt — or rather, soil — caked around the edges of the hole. The key was a safety deposit box key, and Carella was willing to bet his next year’s salary that it had once been buried in the flower box on the Harris window sill. He knew the name of Harris’ bank because he’d seen it on the passbook he and Meyer found in the apartment — First Federal on Yates Avenue. He also knew he would need a court order to open that box, key in hand or not. It did not hurt that he was downtown at the Headquarters Building; the municipal, state and federal courthouses were all scattered here within a five-block radius. He took the key from the dog’s collar, and then led the dog back to the cop in the office.

“What, again?" the cop said.