Long Time No See

Two

There was no light in the small entrance foyer.

Carella took a small penlight from his coat pocket and flashed it over the mailboxes. The nameplate for apartment 3C read J. HARRIS. He snapped off the light and tried the inner lobby door. It was unlocked. Inside, there was a hanging bulb on the first-floor landing, casting a yellowish glow onto the linoleum-covered steps. He started up the steps. The tenement smells were familiar to him. He had grown accustomed to them after years of working out of the 87th.

He took the stairs two at a time, not because he was in any hurry, but only because he always climbed stairs two at a time. He had started doing that when he was twelve and beginning to get lanky and long-legged. His mother used to call him a long drink of water. He’d stopped growing when he was seventeen, just short of six feet tall. He was broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted now, with the muscular leanness and effortless grace of an athlete. His hair was brown, his eyes were brown, too; they slanted downward to give his face a peculiarly Oriental look.

The tenements in the precinct territory were always either too hot or too cold. This one was suffocatingly hot with the contained steam heat of the day. He took off the woolen watch cap as he climbed the steps, stuffed it into a pocket of the mackinaw, and then unbuttoned the short coat. Behind closed doors he could hear television voices. Somewhere in the building someone flushed a toilet. He came onto the third-floor landing. There were three apartments there. Apartment 3C was at the end of the hall, farthest from the stairwell. He knocked on the door.

“Jimmy?” a woman’s voice said.

“No, ma’am, police officer.”

“Police, did you say?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He waited. The door opened a crack, held by a night chain. The apartment beyond was dark, he could not see the woman’s face.

“Hold up your badge,” she said.

He had the tin ready in his hand, they always asked to see it. It was pinned to the flap of a small leather case that also contained his lucite-enclosed I.D. card. He showed it to her, and waited for recognition.

“Are you holding it up?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and frowned, puzzled.

Her hand appeared in the narrow open wedge of the door. “Let me touch it,” she said, and he realized belatedly that she was blind. He held out the shield, watched as her fingers explored the blue enamel, the gold ridges set in a sunburst pattern around the city’s seal.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Detective Carella,” he said.

“I guess it’s all right,” she said, and pulled her hand back. But she did not remove the night chain. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Does James Harris live here?”

“What is it?” she asked at once.

“Mrs. Harris...” he said, and hesitated. He hated this moment more than anything in police work. There was no kind way to do it, nothing that would soften it, nothing. “Your husband is dead,” he said.

There was silence in the open wedge of the door, silence in the darkness beyond.

“What... what...?”

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, please...”

He heard the night chain being removed. The door opened wide. In the light spilling from the landing, he saw that she was a white woman, blond, slender, wearing a long belted blue robe and oversized dark glasses that covered her eyes and a goodly portion of her face as well. The apartment behind her was dark. He hesitated before entering, and she sensed this, and understood the cause at once. “I’ll put on a light,” she said, and turned and moved surely to the wall, and then along it, her left hand scarcely grazing it. She found the light switch, snapped it on. An overhead ceiling fixture illuminated the room. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

They were standing in a kitchen. This did not surprise him; the front doors to many of the precinct’s apartments opened into kitchens. Some of those kitchens were spotlessly clean, others were filthy. This one was neither. Had he not known the occupants of the apartment were blind, he would have guessed they were only careless housekeepers. She was facing him now, head tilted in the characteristic position of the blind, chin bent, waiting.

“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “your husband was murdered.”

“Murdered?” She began shaking her head. “No,” she 6aid, “you must be... no, there’s some mistake.”

“I wish there were, Mrs. Harris.”

“But why would... no,” she said. “No, he’s blind, you see.”

He understood her reasoning completely. The thought was inconceivable. You did not slay blind men or little children. You did not strangle bluebirds or pull the wings off butterflies. Except that people did. Someone had. Her husband was lying dead on the sidewalk this very moment. Someone had slit his throat. Carella said again, very slowly this time, “He’s dead, Mrs. Harris. He was murdered.”

“Where is he?”

“He’ll be taken to Buena Vista Hospital in just a little while.”

“Where is he now?”

“In Hannon Square.”

“How was he killed?” she asked.

She had the mildest of Southern accents, and her voice was pitched so low that he had trouble hearing her. But she spoke directly and she said what was on her mind, and she was asking now for information he had deliberately withheld.

“He was stabbed,” Carella said.

She was silent for what seemed a long time. On the street outside, automobile tires squealed against asphalt, an engine roared, the tires squealed again as a corner was turned. The sound of the engine receded and was gone.

“Sit down, please,” she said, and gestured unfailingly toward the kitchen table. He pulled out a chair and sat. She came across the room; her hand found the top of the chair opposite him. She sat immediately.

“We can talk another time, if you like,” Carella said.

“Isn’t it better to talk now?”

“If you want to, it might be helpful, yes.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“When did you see him last, Mrs. Harris?”

“This morning. We left the house together at ten o’clock.”

“Where were you going?”

“I have a job downtown. Jimmy was going to Hall Avenue. He usually works Hall, between the Circle and Montgomery.” She paused. “He’s a beggar,” she said.

“Where do you work, Mrs. Harris?”

“I work for a direct-mail company. I insert catalogues into envelopes.”

“What kind of catalogues?”

“Advertisements for what the company is selling. We send them out twice a month. There’s another girl who types up the mailing list, and I fill the envelopes. We sell souvenir items like ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, coasters, swizzle sticks... things like that.”

“What’s the name of the company?”

“Prestige Novelty. On Dutchman’s Row. In the garment center.”

“And you and your husband both left the house together at ten this morning?”

“Yes. We try to avoid the subway rush hours. Jimmy’s got the dog, and so we—” She stopped abruptly. “Where’s Stanley?”

“He’s being taken care of, Mrs. Harris.”

“Is he ail right?”

“I don’t know. He may have been drugged, he may have been... Carella let the sentence trail.

“What were you about to say? Poisoned?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Stanley won’t accept food from strangers. Jimmy’s the one who feeds him. That’s how he was trained. He won’t even take food from me if I offer it. It has to be Jimmy who feeds him.”

“We’ll know in a little while,” Carella said. “A vet was on the way when I left. Mrs. Harris, was this the usual routine with you and your husband? Did you always leave the house together at ten a.m.?”

“Mondays to Fridays.”

“What time did you get back?”

“I generally get home at about three, three-thirty. Jimmy waits through the end of the day — people going home from work, he makes a lot of money between five and six o’clock. Then he waits another half-hour, stops for a drink in a bar, just to make sure he’ll miss the rush hour. He takes the subway uptown around six-thirty, a quarter to seven. He’s usually home by...” She hesitated. She had suddenly realized that she was talking in the present tense about a man who was dead. The realization was painful. Watching her face, Carella saw tears beginning to run down her cheeks from the lower edges of the oversized glasses. He waited.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“If you’d rather...”

“No, no,” she said, and shook her head. “He... he was usually home by seven-thirty the latest,” she said, and rose abruptly and walked directly and unfalteringly to the countertop alongside the sink. Her hands found the box of Kleenex there, she pulled a tissue loose and blew her nose. “I usually had supper ready by seven-thirty. Or else we’d go out for a bite. Jimmy loved Chink’s, we’d go out for Chink’s a lot. With the dog, we could go anywhere we wanted to,” she said, and began weeping again.

“Is there just the one dog?”

“Yes.” The tissue was pressed to her mouth, she mumbled the single word into it. She pulled a second tissue from the box, blew her nose again. “Guide dogs are expensive,” she said. “I didn’t need one, only time I was without Jimmy was when I was at work, or coming back home from work. I’ve got the cane, I... I...” She began sobbing now, deep racking sobs that started in her chest and made it difficult for her to breathe.

He waited. She sobbed into the tissue. Behind her, through the kitchen window, he could see a light snow beginning to fall. He wondered if they were through at the scene. Snow would make it more difficult for the lab people. Silently, the snow fell. She could not have known it was snowing. She could neither see it nor hear it. She kept sobbing into the same rumpled tissue, and then at last she drew back her shoulders and raised her head, and said, “What else do you want to know?”

“Mrs. Harris, is there anyone you can think of who might have done something like this?”

“No.”

“Did your husband have any enemies?”

“No. He was blind,” she said, and again he followed her reasoning completely. Blind men did not have enemies. Blind men were objects of pity or sympathy, but never of hate.

“You haven’t received any threatening telephone calls or letters in recent—”

“No.”

“Mrs. Harris, this was a mixed marriage...”

“Mixed?”

“I mean...”

“Oh, you mean I’m white.”

“Yes. Were there any of your neighbors or... someone where you worked... anyone... who might have strongly resented the marriage?”

“No.”

“Tell me about your husband.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How old was he?”

“Thirty. He was just thirty in August.”

“Was he blind from birth?”

“No. He was wounded in the war.”

“When?”

“Ten years ago. It would have been ten years this December. December the fourteenth.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Five years.”

“What was your maiden name?”

“Isabel Cartwright.”

“Mrs. Harris...” he said, and hesitated. “Was your husband involved with another woman?”

“No.”

“Are you involved with another man?”

“No.”

“How did your relatives feel about the marriage?”

“My father loved Jimmy. He died two years ago. Jimmy was there at his bedside in Tennessee.”

“And your mother?”

“I never knew my mother. She died in childbirth.”

“Were you born blind?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“How about your husband?”

“He has one sister. Chrissie. Christine. Are you writing this down?”

“Yes, I am. Does that bother you? I can stop if—”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Are his parents alive?”

“His mother is. Sophie Harris. She still lives in Diamondback.”

“Do you get along well with her?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Harris, can you think of anything that’s happened in recent weeks, anything that might have caused anyone to bear a grudge or—”

“No.”

“However impossible it may seem?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“All right, then,” he said, “thank you very much,” and closed his notebook.

Ordinarily, he’d have asked the wife of a murder victim to accompany him to the morgue for identification purposes. He hesitated now, wondering what to do. Isabel Harris could no doubt explore her husband’s face with her hands and identify him as positively as could a sighted person. But identifying a corpse was a trying experience for anyone, and he could only imagine how emotionally unsettling it would be for someone who had to touch the body. He thought he might call Jimmy’s mother instead, ask her to meet him at the morgue in the morning. Sophie Harris in Diamondback. He’d written her name in his book, he’d give her a call later tonight. But then he wondered whether he wasn’t denying Isabel Harris a right that was exclusively hers — and denying it only because she was blind. He decided to play it straight. He had learned over the years that playing it straight was the best way — and maybe the only way.

“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “when a murder victim is married, it’s usually the husband or wife who identifies the body.” He hesitated. “I don’t know whether you want to do that or not.”

“I‘ll do it, yes,” she said. “Did you mean now?”

“The morning will be fine.”

“What time?”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

“Ten o’clock, yes,” she said, and nodded.

He walked to the door, turned toward her again. Behind her, the snow was still falling silently.

“Mrs. Harris?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Will you be all right? Is there anything I can do?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

When the knock sounded on the door, she was already in bed.

She lifted the cover on her watch and felt for the raised Braille dots. The time was twenty minutes to twelve. She thought immediately that it was the detective coming back; he had probably sensed that she was lying. He had heard something in her voice or seen something flicker on her face. She had lied to him deliberately, had given him a flat “No” answer to the question he’d asked. And now he was back, of course; now he would want to know why she had lied. It made no difference any more. Jimmy was dead, she might just as well have told him the truth from the beginning. She would tell him now.

She was wearing a long flannel nightgown, she always wore a gown in the winter months, slept naked the minute it got to be spring; Jimmy said he liked to find her boobs without going through a yard of dry goods. She got out of bed now, her feet touching the cold wooden floor. They turned off the heat at eleven, and by midnight it was fiercely cold in the apartment. She put on a robe and walked toward the bedroom doorway, avoiding the chair on the right, her hand outstretched; she did not need her cane in the apartment. She went through the doorway into the parlor, the sill between the rooms squeaking, past the piano Jimmy loved to play, played by ear, said he was the Art Tatum of his time, fat chance. It was funny the way she’d cried. She had stopped loving him a year ago — but her tears had been genuine enough.

She was in the kitchen now. She stopped just inside the door. Whoever was out there was still knocking. The knocking stopped the moment she spoke.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Mrs. Harris?”

“Yes?”

“Police Department,” the voice said.

“Detective Carella?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Who is it, then?”

“Sergeant Romney. Would you open the door, please? We think we’ve found your husband’s murderer.”

“Just a minute,” she said, and took off the night chain.

He came into the apartment and closed the door behind him. She heard the door whispering into the jamb, and then she heard the lock being turned, the tumblers falling. Movement. Floorboards creaking. He was standing just in front of her now.

“Where is it?”

She did not understand him.

“Where did he put it?”

“Put what? Who... who are you?”

“Tell me where it is,” he said, “and you won’t get hurt.”

“I don’t know what you... I don’t...”

She was about to scream. Trembling, she backed away from him and collided with the wall behind her. She heard the sound of metal scraping against metal, sensed the sudden motion he took toward her, and then felt the tip of something pointed and sharp in the hollow of her throat.

“Don’t even breathe,” he said. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do you want me to kill you?”

“No, please, but I don’t know what—”

“Then where is it?” he said.

“Please, I...”

“Where?” he said, and slapped her suddenly and viciously, knocking the sunglasses from her face. “Where?” he said, and slapped her again. “Where?” he said.“Where?”