Long Time No See (25 page)

“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 Roxanne’s cryin’ now, she’s cryin’, 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’s 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 windowsill. He knew the name of Harris’s 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.

It was a little past 2:00 when Sam Grossman called Detective George Underhill at the Four-One.

“I’ve got a report on that blood sample,” he said.

“What blood sample?” Underhill asked.

“From the sidewalk.”

“Oh, yeah,” Underhill said. He had completely forgotten his request until just this moment. He had, in fact, forgotten it almost the instant after he’d called the lab last night. Now here was Grossman with a report. He did not know what he would do with the report, since there’d been no word from any of the city’s hospitals about anyone seeking treatment for a dog bite. He picked up a pencil, and said, “Okay, let me have it.”

“First of all, yes, it’s blood,” Grossman said, “and secondly, yes, it’s human blood.”

“What group?” Underhill asked.

“You might be lucky. It’s group B.”

“How does that make me lucky?”

“You’d be luckier if it was group AB because only three to six percent of the population falls into that group. As it is, your sample falls into the ten-to-fifteen-percent grouping.”

“That makes me lucky, huh?”

“It could’ve been O or A, which are the most common groups.”

“Okay, thanks a lot,” Underhill said.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

“Not unless you know somebody got bit by a dog.”

“Was this a dog-bite victim?”

“Yeah.”

“The dog wasn’t rabid, was he?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Guy told the investigating patrolman.”

“Because if he’s rabid—”

“No, no, he’s a seeing-eye dog, how could he be rabid?”

“Seeing-eye dogs can be rabid,” Grossman said. “Same as any other dog.”

“Yeah, but this one had his shots.”

“Who’d he bite?”

“We don’t know. Somebody who tried to assault his owner.”

“What do you mean?” Grossman said.

“Somebody tried to assault the owner, and the dog bit him.”

“A blind man?”

“Yeah, the dog’s owner. He’s a seeing-eye dog, isn’t he? So naturally the owner’s—”

“Is this something you’re working with Carella?” Grossman asked.

“No,” Underhill said. “Who’s Carella?”

“Of the Eight-Seven.”

“No, I don’t know him.”

“Because he’s working some homicides involving blind victims.”

“This isn’t a homicide,” Underhill said. “This isn’t even an assault, you want to know. Guy tried to attack a blind man, and the dog bit him.”

“Where?”

“Where’d he bite him? We don’t know.”

“I mean, where did the attack take place?”

“Cherry and Laird.”

“All the way down there, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, I got work here, thanks a lot, huh?” Underhill said and hung up.

Grossman put the receiver back on the cradle, thought for a moment about the odds against Underbill’s case being related to Carella’s, and decided to call the Eight-Seven, anyway.

Genero answered the squadroom phone.

“Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Genero,” he said. He always made sure he gave his title. Every other detective on the squad merely gave a last name; Genero gave any caller the full treatment.

“This is Sam Grossman at the lab,” Grossman said. “I’d like to talk to Carella.”

“Not here,” Genero said.

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know,” Genero said.

“Do you have any idea when he’ll be back?”

“Nope,” Genero said.

“Who’s working the blind-man case with him, would you know?”

“Meyer, I think.”

“Is he there?”

Genero looked around the squadroom. “No, I don’t see him.”

“Well, ask either one of them to call me back as soon as possible, would you?”

“Will do,” Genero said.

“In fact, let me talk to the lieutenant.”

“I’ll have the desk sergeant transfer you,” Genero said. He jiggled the receiver bar, and when Murchison came on the line, he said, “Dave, put this through to the lieutenant’s office, will you?”

Grossman waited. For a moment he thought he’d been cut off.

“87th Squad, Byrnes.”

“Pete, this is Sam Grossman at the lab.”

“Yes, Sam, how are you?”

“Fine. I’ve just been talking to a detective named George Underhill at the Four-One, he’s working a case with a blind victim.”

“A homicide?”

“Attempted assault. I have no idea whether this is related to Steve’s case or not, but it might be worth contacting Underhill.”

“Right, I’ll pass it along to Steve.”

“The perpetrator was bitten by the victim’s dog,” Grossman said. “You might want to put a hospital-stop on it right away.”

“Didn’t Underhill do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll put somebody on it,” Byrnes said. “Thanks, Sam.”

“Don’t mention it,” Grossman said, and hung up.

Byrnes put up the phone and went out into the squadroom. Genero was staring at a pair of pale-blue bikini panties on his desk. Byrnes said, “What are you doing with those panties, Genero?”

“They’re evidence,” Genero said.

“Of what?”

“Fornication,” Genero said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Byrnes said. “Call the Department of Hospitals, put a stop out for any dog-bite victims. Ask them to refer back to Carella of the Eight-Seven.”

“Is that what Captain Grossman wanted?”

“Yes, that’s what he wanted.”

“Does that mean I don’t have to tell Carella he called?” “Leave a note on Carella’s desk.”

“Meyer’s, too?”

“Meyer’s, too.”

“Shall I call the Department of Hospitals first?”

“If you think you can handle three things in a row without forgetting any of them.”

“Oh, sure,” Genero said.

The Supreme Court magistrate read Carella’s affidavit, and then said, “What is it you want in that safety deposit box, Detective Carella? It doesn’t say what you want.”

“That’s because I don’t know what’s in it, Your Honor,” Carella said.

“Then how can you expect me to sign an order commanding you to open it?”

“Your Honor,” Carella said, “as you’ll note in the affidavit, this is a homicide I’m investigating, and I have reason to believe that whatever the murderer was searching for in the apartment of two of the victims—”

“Yes, yes, that’s all here.”

“Might be in the box, Your Honor, and might constitute evidence of the crime of murder.”

“But you don’t know what you’re looking for specifically,” the magistrate said.

“No, Your Honor, I do not.”

“Do you have any personal knowledge of the existence of such evidence?”

“Only knowledge based on the fact that the murderer thoroughly searched the apartment for something, Your Honor, as stated in the affidavit.”

“This is not personal knowledge of evidence in the box,” the magistrate said.

“Your Honor, I don’t think this would constitute an illegal search, any more than going through a victim’s dresser drawers would constitute an illegal search at the scene of the murder.”

“This is not the scene of a murder.”

“I realize that, Your Honor. But I’ve had a court order, for example, to open a safety deposit box when all I was investigating was a numbers operation, a policy operation, Your Honor, and this is a homicide.”

“In this other case, did you have personal knowledge of what you would find in the box when it was opened?”

“I had information from an informer.”

“That constitutes personal knowledge,” the magistrate said.

“Your Honor, I really would like to open that box. Three people have been killed already, all of them blind, and I think there may be something in there that can help me. There’s probable cause to believe there’s something in there, Your Honor.”

“If I issued this warrant, it might do you more harm than good,” the magistrate said. “Your application might later be controverted on a motion to suppress the evidence seized under it.”

“I’d like to take that chance, Your Honor,” Carella said. “Your Honor, there’s no one who can be hurt here but the killer. We’re not violating the victim’s rights by opening that box, Your Honor.”

“I’ll grant the warrant,” the magistrate said.

On the way uptown Carella wondered why the judge had given him such a hard time. He guessed the hard time was worth it. He guessed that protecting the rights of
one
person was the same as protecting the rights of
all
persons. It was almost 2:30 when he got back to the squadroom. He intended stopping by only to tell Byrnes where he was going and what he was about to do. It was good to give progress reports when the lieutenant was complaining about lack of progress. Genero was sitting at his desk, looking at a pair of pale-blue bikini panties.

“I put a note on your typewriter,” Genero said.

“Thanks,” Carella said, and pulled the note from the roller. It told him that Grossman had called. Grossman was spelled “Grosman.” Carella was about to call him back when Byrnes came out of his office and told him about Underhill, and the attempted assault, and the dog bite. Carella said, “Okay, good,” and filled him in on the safety deposit box and the court order, and then turned his name plaque to the wall on the Duty Chart, and went downstairs again to where the dog was dripping spit all over the backseat. He tried to remember the dog’s name, but couldn’t. Nobody’s perfect.

The manager of the First Federal on Yates Avenue was a black man named Samuel Hobbs. He welcomed Carella into his office, shook hands with him, and then studied the court order with a solemnity befitting a command for a royal beheading. Carella extended the Mosler key to him. Hobbs pressed a button on the base of his phone. A black girl in her early twenties came into the office, and Hobbs asked her to locate the box number of James Randolph Harris and then escort Detective Carella to the vault and open the box for him. Carella followed her. She had long slender legs and a twitchy behind. She found the number of the box in a card file, and then led him into the vault. She smiled at him a lot; he was beginning to think he was devastating.

She opened the box drawer and pulled out the box. She asked him if he wanted a room. He said he wanted a room, and she carried the box to a cubicle with a louvered door, which he locked behind him. There was a pair of scissors on the wall-hung desktop, for the convenience of those customers clipping coupons. He lifted the lid of the box. There was only one thing in the box, a carbon copy of a typewritten letter. He looked at the letter. It was addressed to Major John Francis Tataglia at Fort Lee, Virginia. The letter was dated November sixth. It read:

November 6th

Hello, Major Tataglia:

I have decided that I want some money for my eyes. I was at the reunion of D Company in August, and I learned there that every one of the grunts is as pisspoor as me, so there’s no sense asking them for any help. I talked to Captain Anderson who used to command the 1st Platoon, and he told me you’re a major now stationed at Port Lee, which is where I’m writing to you. Major, I want some money from you. I want some money for my eyes. I want one thousand dollars a month from you, for the rest of my life, or I am going to write to the Army and tell them what happened to Lieutenant Blake. I am going to tell them you and the others killed Lieutenant Blake. I don’t give a shit about you or any of them. The others can’t help me cause they’re as broke as I am, but you are a career officer and you can send me money, Major. I want the money right away, Major. I am going to give you till the end of the month, and if the first check for one thousand dollars isn’t here by then, I will call the United States Army and tell them what happened during Ala Moana. You may think I can’t prove nothing, Major, but that doesn’t matter. I am a blind veteran with a full disability pension, and, Major, I don’t have to tell you what kind of heavy shit can come down on you if an army investigation starts about what happened that day. You were the one stuck the first bayonet in him, Major, and if they call the other men they are going to have to say you did it all by yourself, or else they are going to have to admit they were all a part of it. None of them is in the Army no more, only you. You are in trouble, Major, if you don’t send me the money. There is a copy of this letter, so if anything happens to me my wife will know about it, and you will be in even more serious trouble than you already are. So send me a check for one thousand dollars by the first of December, and keep sending me checks on the first day of each month or your ass will be in a sling. Send the checks made payable to James R. Harris, and send them to me at 3415 South 7th Street, Isola.

I will not wait past December 1.

Your old Army buddy,
James R. Harris.

This time Carella’s warrant was a bit more specific. It read:

 

1. I am a detective of the Police Department assigned to the 87th Detective Squad.
   
 

2. I have information based upon my personal knowledge and belief and facts disclosed to me by the medical examiner that three murders have been committed, and that all of the victims were blind.
   
 

3. I have further information based upon my personal knowledge and belief and facts disclosed to me by Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, commanding officer of the 87th Detective Squad, that an assault was attempted against a blind man on the night of November 22, and that during the attempted assault the perpetrator was bitten by the victim’s dog.
   
 

4. I have further information based upon my personal knowledge and belief that the attempted assault upon the blind man falls into that category of crimes known as “Unusual Crimes,” and there is probable cause to believe that it is linked with the three homicides, each similarly falling into the “Unusual Crimes” category, and each occurring within a brief time span, starting with the first murder on Thursday night, November 18, and culminating with the attempted assault on Monday night, November 22.
   
 

5. I have further information based upon my personal knowledge and belief that one of the victims, James R. Harris, wrote an extortion letter to his former commanding officer, John Francis Tataglia, and that this letter was written on November 6, and that it demanded monthly payments of one thousand dollars for the remainder of the life of James R. Harris to keep him from divulging the information that Tataglia in concert with others killed Lieutenant Roger Blake on the third day of December ten years ago during an army operation called Ala Moana.
   
 

6. Based upon the foregoing reliable information and upon my personal knowledge, there is probable cause to believe that a dog bite on the person of John Francis Tataglia would constitute evidence in the crime of attempted assault and possibly in the crime of murder. Wherefore, I respectfully request that the court issue a warrant in the form annexed hereto, authorizing a search of the person of Major John Francis Tataglia for a dog-bite wound. No previous application in this matter has been made in this or any other court or to any other judge, justice, or magistrate.