The Pusher

Chapter Two

The word had gone out long before Kling and Carella arrived.

Death had silently invaded the night, and death—like Macbeth—had murdered sleep, and there were lights in the windows now, and people leaned out into the bitter cold of winter, staring down at the five patrolmen who clustered in an uneasy and somehow guilty-looking knot on the pavement. There were people in the streets, too, talking in hushed whispers, wearing overcoats thrown over pajamas. The Mercury sedan swung into the block, looking like any pleasure car except for the short radio aerial protruding from the center of the roof. The car carried MD license plates, hut the two men who stepped from it were not doctors; they were detectives.

Carella walked briskly to the patrolmen. He was a tall man, dressed now in a brown sharkskin suit and charcoal-brown overcoat. He was hatless, and his hair was clipped close to his head, and he walked with the athletic nonchalance of a baseball player. He gave an impression of tightness, tight skin drawn taut over hard muscle, tight skin over high cheekbones that gave his face a somewhat Oriental appearance.

"Who called in?" he asked the closest patrolman.

"Dick," the cop answered.

"Where is he?"

"Downstairs with the stiff."

"Come on, Bert," Carella said over his shoulder, and Kling followed obediently and silently. The patrolmen studied Kling with pretended aloofness, not quite able to hide their envy. Kling was a new detective, a twenty-four-year-old kid who'd come up from the ranks. "Come up," hell. "Shot up" was a better way to put it. "Streaked up" was, in fact, the best way to put it. Kling had cracked a homicide, and the other patrolmen called it dumb luck, but the Commissioner called it "unusual perceptiveness and tenacity," and since the Commissioner's opinion was somewhat more highly respected than the opinions of beat-walkers, a rookie patrolman had been promoted to 3rd Grade Detective in less time than it took to pronounce the rank.

So the patrolmen smiled bleakly at Kling as he climbed over the chain after Carella, and the greenish tint to their faces was not caused by the cold.

"What's the matter with him?" one of the patrolmen whispered. "Don't he say hello no more?"

If Kling heard him, he gave no sign. He followed Carella into the basement room. Dick Genero was standing under the light bulb, biting his lip.

"Hi, Dick," Carella said.

"Hello, Steve. Bert." Genero seemed very nervous.

"Dick," Kling acknowledged.

"When'd you find him?" Carella asked.

"Few minutes before I called in. He's over there." Genero did not turn to look at the body.

"You touch anything?"

"Jesus, no!"

"Good. Was he alone when you got here?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he was alone. Listen, Steve, you mind if I go upstairs for some air? It's a little… a little stuffy in here."

"In a minute," Carella said. "Was the light burning?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was." Genero paused. "That's how I happened to come down. I figured maybe a burglar. When I come down, there he was." Genero flicked his eyes toward the body on the cot.

Carella walked to where the boy sat suspended by the rope. "How old can he be?" he asked of no one. "Fifteen, sixteen?" No one answered.

"It looks… it looks like he hung himself, don't it?" Genero asked. Studiously, he avoided looking at the boy.

"It looks that way," Carella said. He did not realize that he was unconsciously shaking his head, or that there was a pained expression on his face. He sighed and turned to Kling. "We'd better wait until the Homicide boys get here. They raise a stink if we leave them seconds. What time is it, Bert?"

Kling looked at his watch. "Two eleven," he said.

"Want to start keeping a timetable, Dick?"

"Sure," Genero said. He took a black pad from his hip pocket and began writing into it. Carella watched him.

"Let's go up and get that air," he said.

Most suicides don't realize the headaches they cause.

They slash their wrists, or turn on the gas jets, or shoot themselves, or bang a slew of parallel wounds into their skulls with a hatchet, or leap from the nearest window, or sometimes chew a little cyanide, or—as seemed to be the case with the boy on the cot—they hang themselves. But they don't give a thought to the headaches of the law enforcers.

A suicide, you see, is initially treated exactly like a homicide. And in a homicide, there are a few people concerned with law enforcement who must be notified. These few people are:

The police commissioner.

The chief of detectives.

The district commander of the detective division.

Homicide North or Homicide South, depending upon where the body was found.

The squad and precinct commanding officers of the precinct in which the body was found.

The medical examiner.

The district attorney.

The telegraph, telephone and teletype bureau at headquarters.

The police laboratory.

The police photographers.

The police stenographers.

Not all of these people, of course, descend simultaneously upon the scene of a suicide. Some of them have no earthly reason for climbing out of bed at an ungodly hour, and some of them simply leave the job to lesser paid and highly trained subordinates. You can always count on a diehard contingent of night owls, however, and this group will include a few Homicide dicks, a photographer, an assistant medical examiner, a handful of patrolmen, a pair or more of dicks from the local precinct, and a few lab technicians. A stenographer may or may not come along for the show.

At 2:11 or thereabouts in the morning, nobody feels much like working.

Oh sure, a corpse breaks up the dull monotony of the midnight tour; and it's nice to renew acquaintances with old friends from Homicide South; and maybe the photographer has a few choice samples of French postcard art to pass around; but all in all, nobody has much heartfelt enthusiasm for a suicide at 2:11. Especially when it's cold.

There was no questioning the fact that it was cold.

The dicks from Homicide South looked as if someone had pulled them from the freezer compartment a few moments before. They walked stiff-legged to the sidewalk, their hands thrust into their coat pockets, their heads bent, their fedoras pulled low over their faces. One lifted his head long enough to say hello to Carella, and then they both followed him and Kling into the basement room.

"Little better down here," the first cop said. He rubbed his hands together, glanced over at the body, and then said, "I don't suppose anybody has a flask with him?" He looked at the faces of the other cops. "No, I didn't suppose so," he said sourly.

"Patrolman named Dick Genero discovered the body at about 2:04," Carella said. "The light was burning, and nothing's been touched."

The first Homicide cop grunted, and then sighed. "Well, better get to work, huh?" he asked with eager enthusiasm.

The second Homicide cop looked at the body. "Stupid," he mumbled. "Why didn't he wait until morning?" He glanced at Kling. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Bert Kling," Kling said, and then—as if the question had been burning his throat since he'd first seen the body —he asked, "I thought the body had to be swinging free in a hanging suicide."

The Homicide cop stared at Kling, and then turned to Carella. "Is this guy a cop?" he asked.

"Sure," Carella said.

"I thought maybe you brought one of your relatives along for a thrill." He turned back to Kling. "No, son," he said, "the body don't have to be swinging free. You want proof?" He pointed to the cot. "There's a hanging suicide, and the body ain't swinging free, now, is it?"

"Well, no, it isn't."

"You're quite a whiz," Carella said. He was not smiling. He caught the Homicide cop's eyes and held them.

"I get by," the Homicide cop said. "I ain't from the crackjack 87th Precinct, but I been on the force twenty-two years now, and I've broken up a few ticktack-toe games in my time."

There was no irony or sarcasm in Carella's voice when he answered. He played it deadpan, apparently serious. "Men like you are a credit to the force," he said.

The Homicide cop eyed Carella warily. "I was only trying to explain…"

"Sure," Carella said. "Stupid kid here doesn't realize the body doesn't have to swinging free. Why, Bert, we've found them standing, sitting, and lying." He turned to the Homicide cop. "Isn't that right?"

"Sure, all positions."

"Sure," Carella agreed. "A suicide doesn't have to look like one." A barely concealed hardness had crept into his voice, and Kling frowned and then glanced somewhat apprehensively toward the Homicide dicks. "What do you think of the color?" Carella asked.

The dick who'd blown his top at Carella approached him cautiously. "What?" he asked.

"The blue. Interesting, isn't it?"

"Cut off the air, you get a blue body," the Homicide cop answered. "Simple as all that."

"Sure," Carella said, the hardness more apparent in his voice now. "Very simple. Tell the kid about side knots."

"What?"

"The knot on the rope. It's on the side of the boy's neck."

The Homicide cop walked over and looked at the body. "So what?" he asked.

"I just thought a hanging-suicide expert like yourself might have noticed it," Carella said, the hardness in his voice completely unmasked now.

"Yeah, I noticed it. So what?"

"I thought you might want to explain to a new detective like the kid here the coloration we sometimes get in hangings."

"Look, Carella," the other Homicide cop started.

"Let your pal talk, Fred," Carella interrupted. "We don't want to miss the testimony of an expert."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"He's needling you, Joe," Fred said.

Joe turned to Carella. "You needling me?"

"I wouldn't know how," Carella said. "Explain the knot, expert."

Joe blinked. "Knot, knot, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Why, surely you know," Carella said sweetly, "that a side knot will completely compress the arteries and veins on one side of the neck only."

"Sure, I know that," Joe said.

"And you know, of course, that the face will usually be red when the knot's been tied at the side of the neck—as opposed to the face being pale when the knot's tied at the nape. You know that, don't you?"

"Sure, I know that," Joe said arrogantly. "And we've had them turn blue in both side-knot and nape-knot cases, so what the hell are you telling me? I've had a dozen blue strangle cases."

"How many dozen blue cyanide-poisoning cases have you had?"

"Huh?"

"How do you know the cause of death was asphyxiation?"

"Huh?"

"Did you see those burnt bottle caps on the orange crate? Did you see the syringe next to the boy's hand?"

"Sure, I did."

"Do you think he's a junkie?"

"I guess he is. It would be my guess that he is," Joe said. He paused and made a concerted effort at sarcasm. "What do the masterminds of the 87th think?"

"I would guess he's an addict," Carella said, "judging from the 'hit' marks on his arms."

"I saw his arms, too," Joe said. He searched within the labyrinthine confines of his intelligence for something further to say, but the something eluded him.

"Do you suppose the kid shot up before he hanged himself?" Carella asked sweetly.

"He might have," Joe said judiciously.

"Be a little confusing if he did, wouldn't it?" Carella asked.

"How so?" Joe said, rushing in where angels might have exercised a bit of caution.

"If he'd just had a fix, he'd be pretty happy. I wonder why he'd take his own life."

"Some junkies get morose," Fred said. "Listen, Carella, lay off. What the hell are you trying to prove, anyway?"

"Only that the masterminds of the 87th don't go yelling suicide until we've seen an autopsy report—and maybe not even then. How about that, Joe? Or do all blue bodies automatically mean strangulation?"

"You got to weigh the facts," Joe said. "You got to put them all together."

"There's a shrewd observation on the art of detection, Bert," Carella said. "Mark it well."

"Where the hell are the photographers?" Fred said, tired of the banter. "I want to get started on the body, find out who the hell the kid is, at least."

"He's in no hurry," Carella said.