Ten Plus One

8

Carella and Meyer did not learn that an Italian fruit dealer named Salvatore Palumbo had been shot to death until they got back to the squadroom at 4:00 that afternoon of May 1. Up to that time, they had been poring over the records of Anthony Forrest and Randolph Norden at the university.

The records were puzzling and contradictory, and supplied them with almost no additional clues as to just what the hell was happening.

Anthony Forrest had entered Ramsey University as a business-administration major in the spring semester of 1937, when he was eighteen years old and a graduate of Ashley High School in Majesta. By the spring of 1940, which was when Blanche Lettiger enrolled at the university, he was entering his senior year. He had been only a fair student, averaging C for almost every semester at the school, barely qualifying academically for the football team. He was graduated 205th in his class in January 1941, with a BS degree. He had been a member of the ROTC while at the college, but he was not called to active duty until almost a year after graduation, when the attack on Pearl Harbor startled the world.

Randolph Norden had entered Ramsey University in the fall of 1935, when he was eighteen years old and a graduate of Thomas Hardy High in Bethtown. He enrolled as a liberal-arts major with intentions of eventually going on to Ramsey Law. In the spring of 1937, when Forrest entered the school, Norden was halfway through his sophomore year. In the spring of 1940, when Blanche Lettiger entered the school, Norden had already completed his three-year pre-law requirement and was in his second year of law school. He was graduated from Ramsey Law in June 1941, and he went into the Navy almost immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

His records showed that Norden was an excellent student throughout his entire stay at Ramsey. He had been elected to the student council in his sophomore year, had made Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, was listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities, and—in law school—was a member of the Order of the Coif, as well as editor of the Ramsey Law Review.

A closer search of the records showed that Randolph Norden had never been in any of Anthony Forrest’s classes. Nor did it appear as though either of the men, one of whom was a graduating senior in 1940, the other of whom was in his second year of law school, had shared any classes with the entering freshman named Blanche Ruth Lettiger.

“So what do you make of it?” Carella had asked.

“I’m damned if I know,” Meyer had answered.

Now, entering the squadroom at 4:00 in the afternoon, they still did not have the answer. They stopped off in the clerical office and bummed two cups of coffee from Miscolo. A note on Carella’s desk told him that the BCI had called. It no longer seemed important to know the names of the criminals Randolph Norden had defended, but he dutifully returned the call anyway, and was talking to a man named Simmons when the other phone rang. Meyer picked it up.

“87th Squad, Meyer,” he said.

“Let me talk to Carella, huh?” the voice on the other end said.

“Who’s this, please?”

“This is Mannheim of the One-Oh-Four in Riverhead.”

“Hold on a second, will you?” Meyer said. “He’s on the other line.”

“Sure,” Mannheim said.

Carella looked up.

“The One-Oh-Four in Riverhead,” Meyer whispered. “Guy named Mannheim.”

Carella nodded. Into his own phone he said, “Then all but one of them are still serving prison terms, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Simmons told him.

“What’s the story on the one who’s loose?”

“His name’s Frankie Pierce. He’s been back with us since last November. He was serving a five-and-dime at Castleview, came up for parole last year, was granted.”

“What was the rap?”

“Burglary Three.”

“Any other arrests in his record?”

“He had a JD card when he was fifteen, pulled in twice on gang rumbles, but that was all.”

“Weapons?”

“A zip gun in one of the rumbles. They threw the Sullivan Act, but his lawyer got him off with a suspended sentence.”

“He was paroled in November, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s he living now?”

“Isola. 371 Horton. That’s down here near the Calm’s Point Bridge.”

“Who’s his parole officer?”

“McLaughlin. You know him?”

“I think so. Any trouble?”

“He’s been sound as a dollar since he got out. My guess is he’ll be back at the old stand pretty soon, though. That’s the pattern, ain’t it?”

“Sometimes,” Carella said.

“You got some burglaries up there, is that it?” Simmons asked.

“No, this is a homicide.”

“How does it look?”

“Pretty cool right now.”

“Give it time. Homicides work themselves out, don’t they?”

“Not always,” Carella said. “Thanks a lot, Simmons.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, and hung up. Carella pressed the extension button.

“Hello?” he said.

“Carella?”

“Yep.”

“This is Mannheim, the One-Oh-Four in Riverhead.”

“How are you, Mannheim?”

“Fine, fine. Listen, you the guy who’s handling this sniper case?”

“I’m the guy. Have you got something for me?”

“Yeah,” Mannheim said.

“What is it?”

“Another stiff.”

Rose Palumbo spoke very bad English even when she was coherent, and she was practically incoherent by the time Carella reached her at the old frame house in Riverhead. They tried sparring in the king’s language for a while, with her repeating something about “atops” that Carella didn’t understand at all until one of her sons, a man named Richard Palumbo, told Carella she was worried about them cutting up her husband when they did an autopsy. Carella tried to assure the woman, in English, that all they were interested in establishing was the cause of death, but the woman kept repeating the word “atops” between her flowing tears and her violent gasps for breath until Carella finally took her shoulders and shook her.

“Ma che vergogna, signora!” he shouted.

“Mi dispiace,” Rose said, “ma non posso sopportare l’idea che lo taglino. Perchè devono tagliare?”

“Perchè l’hanno ucciso,” Carella said, “e vogliamo scoprire chi è stato.”

“Ma che scoprirete tagliandolo?”

“La palla è ancora dentro. Dobbiamo trovare la palla perchè ci sono stati altri morti. Altri tre.”

“E tagliarono gli altri?”

“Si.”

“È peccato contro Dio mutilare i morti.”

“È un più grosso peccato contro Dio di uccidere,” Carella answered.

“What’s she saying?” Meyer asked.

“She doesn’t want an autopsy.”

“Tell her we don’t need her permission.”

“How’s that going to help? She’s out of her mind with grief.” He turned back to the woman. “Signora,” he said, “è necessario individuare il tipo di pallottola che l’ho uccise. La palla è ancora dentro, non comprende? Doddiamo sapere che tipo.”

“Si, si, capisco.”

“È per questo che dobbiamo fare un’autopsia. Comprende? Così potremo trovare l’assassino.”

“Si, si capisco.”

“La prego, signora. Provi.” He patted her on the shoulder, and then turned to the son, Richard. Richard was perhaps thirty years old, a strapping man with broad shoulders and a dancer’s narrow waist. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Palumbo, is that all right?”

“You have to excuse my mother,” Palumbo said. “She doesn’t speak English too well.”

“That’s all right,” Carella said.

“My father spoke pretty good English, though not when he first came here. He really worked at it. But my mother…” Richard shook his head. “I guess she always felt America was a temporary thing, a stop along the way. I think she always planned to go back to Naples, you know? But not my father. This was it. For him, this was it. He’d really found the place. So he learned the language. He really learned it pretty good. A little accent, but not too noticeable. He was quite a guy.”

Richard said all this looking at a point somewhere above Carella’s shoulders, not looking into Carella’s eyes or even his face. He delivered the words as though he were saying a prayer over Palumbo’s open grave. There were no tears in his eyes, but his face was white, and he kept focusing on that imaginary point somewhere above Carella’s shoulder, staring.

“He worked hard all his life,” Richard said. “When we first came to this country, I was just a little kid. That was in 1938, that was a long time ago. I was eight years old. My brother was only three. We didn’t have nothing to eat then, you know? My father worked like a horse on the docks. He was a skinny little guy then, you shoulda seen him. Then he got all these muscles from lifting all that heavy stuff, you know? He was quite a guy, my father.” He gestured toward the small framed picture of Palumbo where it stood on the living room mantelpiece. “He made all this himself, you know—the house, the store. From nothing. Saved up his pennies, learned English, got himself a pushcart at first with the money he saved from the docks. Just like when he was in Naples, he used to push that damn pushcart all over the city, he used to be exhausted when he got home at night. I remember he used to yell at me, and once he even slapped me, not because he was sore at me, but only because he was so damn tired. But he made it, huh? He got his own store, didn’t he? He had a good business, my father. He was a real good man.”

Carella looked at Meyer, and neither said a word.

“So somebody kills him,” Richard said. “Somebody shoots him from up there on the train station.” He paused. “What did he do to anybody? He never hurt anybody in his entire life. Only once did he ever slap even me, his own son, and that was because he was so tired, not because he was sore, he never hit anybody in anger, he never hit anybody at all. So he’s dead.”

Richard gave a slight shrug, and his hands moved in a futile, bewildered gesture.

“How do you figure it? I don’t know. How do you make any sense out of it? He worked all his damn life to have his store, to take care of his family, and then somebody just shoots him, like as if he was…nothing. That’s my father that guy shot, don’t he know that? That’s my father they took away in the ambulance. For Christ’s sake, don’t he realize that, the guy who shot him? Don’t he realize this is my father who’s dead now?”

Tears were welling into his eyes. He kept staring at the spot above Carella’s shoulder.

“Ain’t he got a father, that guy? How could he just…just shoot him like that, how could he make himself pull the trigger? This is a man who was standing down there, a man, my father, for Christ’s sake! Don’t he know what he done? Don’t he know this man is never gonna go to his store again, he’s never gonna argue with the customers, he’s never gonna laugh or nothing? How could he do that, will you tell me?”

Richard paused. His voice lowered. “I didn’t even see him today. He left the house before I got up this morning. My wife and I, we live right upstairs. Every morning I usually meet him, we leave about the same time to go to work. I work in an aircraft-parts factory on Two Thirty-third. But this morning, I had a little virus, I was running a small fever, my wife said stay in bed, so she called in sick. And I didn’t get to see my father. Not even to say, ‘Hello, Pop, how’s it going?’ So today, somebody kills him. The day I didn’t see him.”

“Have you got any idea who might have done this?” Carella asked.

“No.”

“Has anyone been threatening your father? Had he received any notes or phone calls, or…?”

“No.”

“Any trouble with any of the businessmen along the avenue?”

“None.” Richard shook his head again. “Everybody liked him. This don’t make sense. Everybody liked him.” He rubbed at his nose with his forefinger, sniffed, and said again, “I didn’t even see him today. Not even to say hello.”