Mischief

by Ed McBain

  O’Hare wished they’d let Josie wear a skirt to work, make life so much simpler. Josie wished her husband never found out what Adam and she had been doing every night on the job since the middle of February. Her husband was a sergeant who worked out of Narcotics and he was six feet two inches tall and he weighed two hundred and ten pounds and he had been known to bust a few heads in his lifetime. Adam, on the other hand, was five feet eight inches tall, and he weighed a hundred and fifty-four pounds, although when it came to size he was adequately compensated elsewhere.

  “Wanna park awhile?” he asked now.

  “Mmm, yeah,” she said.

  Adam nodded. He was already outrageously erect inside his blue uniform trousers, and he couldn’t wait to have her hands on him again. Adam’s wife, Susan, was seven months pregnant and there wasn’t much activity at home for him these days. Susan—like every other cop’s wife in this city—didn’t like the idea of him being partnered with a woman, no less a darkhaired beauty like Josie Ruggiero,Italian in the bargain, whom she’d met at the Policemen’s Benevolent Association Ball this past Christmas, before anything had started between her husband and his new partner. Hisold partner had been killed on the job. Susan told Adam that if he ever so much as looked cockeyed at Josie, hisnew partner would be killed also, though not necessarily on the job. Adam, too. There would be a double homicide there in the old Eight-Seven, and no judge in his right mind would ever blame Susan.

  Adam rationalized his actions by telling himself a stiff cock had no conscience.

  Josie rationalized hers by telling herself she was gloriously in love.

  Either way, they were consenting adults who knew exactly what they were doing and who looked forward to ever-escalating ecstasy night after night after night.

  What theyweren’t looking forward to on this early morning of March twenty-sixth, the verylast thing they wanted this morning as they drove into the Quiet Zone, each one separately entertaining high hopes and great expectations of secret steamy congress in the snugness of their blue-and-white cocoon, the surprise they definitely had not anticipated and did not now expect to find in the middle of the parking lot was a little old man sitting in a wheelchair in the rain.

  THE INTERNin the emergency room at St. Sebastian’s Hospital was telling Meyer Meyer that someone had dumped an old man in the hospital’s parking lot sometime early this morning, and he was wondering now if the police had any missing-persons reports that might describe the man, his name was Charlie. That was all they were able to get from him, Charlie. This was now a little after eight o’clock in the morning. The day shift had relieved some twenty minutes ago, and Meyer was now having his breakfast—a cup of coffee and a toasted English muffin—at his desk.

  “Charlie what?” he asked.

  “I just told you,” the intern said. “Charlie is all we got from him.”

  “That isn’t much to go on,” Meyer said, “just Charlie.”

  “I can give you a description,” the intern said. “He’s got to be at least seventy-five years old….”

  “Is that a guess, or did he tell you?”

  “No. All he knows is his first name.”

  “Then you’re justguessing he’s seventy-five.”

  “Educated guess.”

  “Seventy-five, right. Color of his eyes?”

  “Blue.”

  “Hair?”

  “Fringe of white around the ears. Otherwise, he’s bald.”

  Like me, Meyer thought.

  “I’ll check Missing Persons,” he said, “see if they have anything.”

  THERE WERE CURRENTLYtwo hospitals within the confines of the 87th Precinct’s geographical boundaries, both of them lousy. Morehouse General was considered one of the worst hospitals in the city, but St. Sab’s—as it was familiarly known—ran a close second. Cops knew where all the good hospitals were; whenever a cop got shot, a radio car raced him to the nearest good hospital, siren screaming. The Old Chancery in the Eight-Six was another wonderful hospital to be avoided at all costs. Buenavista was a good one, and there were several others to which you could quickly transport a wounded cop if you were hitting the hammer and riding hell-bent for leather.

  Meyer and Hawes went over to St. Sab’s at a little past nine that morning. They made an interesting-looking pair of cops, Meyer standing some two inches shorter than Hawes, both men burly and tall, but Meyer completely bald whereas Hawes had flaming red hair with a white streak over the left temple. Meyer wondered what the politically correct term for “bald” was. Depilated? Non-hirsute? He also wondered why you didn’t see as many bald women as you saw bald men. He had, in fact, seen only one bald woman in his entire lifetime, and she had drowned in a bathtub full of soapy water, a lady almost ninety years old and too weak to get herself out of the tub, drowned while she was probably calling weakly for help all day long. There was a blonde wig on a stand in the bathroom, alongside the sink. Meyer wondered what that old lady had looked like when she was young and had her own blonde hair. Bald and emaciated, she had looked like a concentration-camp survivor.

  Meyer thought about that little old bald lady for months after they’d found her in her apartment in that soapy bathtub. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her. About how she’d looked Jewish to him. Because it was one thing to be a Jew who thought of Israel as a foreign country and it was another thing to be a Jew who put up a Christmas tree every year and who hadn’t been inside a synagogue since the time he was investigating the murder of a dead rabbi, years and years ago, but it was quite another thing to know that what had happened to the Jews in Germany had happened only because theywere Jews like himself. The little old lady with her blonde wig on a bathroom stand caused Meyer to weep for every Jew in the world—even though it turned out she wasn’t Jewish at all; her name in fact was Kelly.

  He guessed he was thinking about her now because the man named Charlie looked a lot older than the seventy-five years the intern had estimated. Sitting up in bed, he seemed totally out of it, a frail old man peering out of a face with skin as transparent as parchment, his eyes as blue as chicory blooms.

  “How you doing, sir?” Hawes asked.

  The old man nodded.

  Charlie.

  Charlie is all we got from him.

  Labels cut out of all his clothes. Wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a wheelchair in the rain.

  “We’ve run some tests,” the intern said now. “He’s diabetic and anemic, he’s got high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, and cataracts on both eyes. The memory loss could be Alzheimer’s, but who can tell?”

  “Does he know how he got here?” Hawes asked.

  “Do you know how you got here, sir?” Meyer asked.

  “In a car,” Charlie said.

  “Who was driving the car, do you know?”

  “A man,” Charlie said.

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  His voice was shaky. So were his hands. Meyer wondered if he also had Parkinson’s. The intern hadn’t mentioned anything about Parkinson’s. The intern’s name—his last name, anyway, and an initial for his first name—was lettered onto a little plastic tag pinned to his tunic.DR .J .MOOKHERJI . Indian, Meyer guessed. There were more Indian doctors training in this city than there were Indian snake charmers in all Calcutta. If you were admitted to an emergency room in this city, chances were the doctor treating you had a mother in Delhi.

  “How’d you get in his car?” Hawes asked.

  “Carried me out to it. Put me on the front seat with him.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night.”

  “Where?”

  “From the house.”

  “Where would that be, sir?”

  “The house,” he said again, and shrugged.

  “He doesn’t know where he lives,” Mookherji said. “I’ve already asked.”

  “What ti
me was this, sir?” Hawes asked. “When the man carried you out to the…?”

  “If he ever knew how to tell time, he doesn’t anymore,” Mookherji said.

  “What did the man look like?” Meyer asked.

  He wasn’t hoping for much. Some of these people, they could remember something had happened to them when they were four years old, but they couldn’t recall where they’d put their hat three minutes ago.

  “He was forty, forty-five years old,” Charlie said, “about five feet ten inches tall, with brown eyes and dark hair. Wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket with a yellow shirt under it, no hat.”

  Meyer was impressed. So was Hawes.

  “Was he white or black?” Meyer asked.

  “White.”

  “Anything else you can remember about him?”

  “He was nice to me,” Charlie said.

  “Did you contact Missing Persons?” Mookherji asked.

  “No one answering his description,” Meyer said. He did not mention that the detective he’d spoken to had asked, “What is this, a fuckin epidemic?”

  “Did he drive you straight here from the house?” Hawes asked.

  “Don’t know,” Charlie said.

  “My guess is he was bedridden,” Mookherji said. “He’s got bedsores all over him. We’d really like to locate his people, whoever they are, whoever dumped him here.” Hospital personnel had picked up the media expression. Hardly anyone in a hospital called it abandonment. It was dumping, plain and simple. Like dumping your garbage. Only these were human beings.

  “How long were you in the car, do you know?” Hawes asked.

  “He has no concept of time,” Mookherji said.

  “Twenty months,” Charlie said.

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “He knew my name.”

  “Knew you were Charlie?”

  “Called me Charlie, knew my name.”

  “Charlie what?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did he say anything to you when he left you here?”

  “Said I’d be all right.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Said there were people who loved me,” Charlie said, and looked into Meyer’s face, and said, “Do you love me?” and began weeping.

  4.

  AT A LITTLE PASTten o’clock that Thursday morning, the telephone on Carella’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver, said, “Eighty-Seventh Squad, Carella,” and glanced at the LED display of the caller’s number.

  “Don’t bother with a trace,” the Deaf Man said. “I’m using a stolen mobile phone.”

  “Okay,” Carella said, but he jotted down the number, anyway.

  “And it’s not the same phone I used the other day.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “I love modern technology, don’t you? Are you looking at a CID?”

  “Yes. The area code is for Elsinore County, but I don’t suppose you’re calling from there, are you?”

  “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m right across the street. In the park.”

  “Mm-huh.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I don’t know where you are. Or what you want. I’m pretty busy here, though, so if you’ve got a crime to report…”

  “I want to tell you what I plan to do.”

  “Mm-huh.”

  “That’s a nasty little tic you’re developing. The mm-huh. Makes you sound somewhat skeptical.”

  “Mm.”

  “Even in its abbreviated form.”

  “Look, if you have something to say…”

  “Patience, patie…”

  Carella hung up.

  Arthur Brown was just walking in, easing a man in handcuffs through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside. Both men were black, an inappropriate bit of labeling in that Brown was actually the color of his surname, and the handcuffed man with him was the color of sand. African-Americans would have been a misnomer, too; the man with Brown had been born in Haiti, and Brown had been born right here in the good old U.S. of A., which made him a native son and not a hyphenate of any stripe or persuasion.

  Yankee Doodle Brown was what he was, six feet four inches tall, weighing two hundred and twenty-four pounds—this morning, anyway—and looking high, wide, and handsome in a trench coat he’d worn because it had still been raining when he’d left the house this morning. The man with him was five-six, five-seven, in there, wearing green polyester slacks, a matching green windbreaker, and scuffed black loafers with white socks. His eyes were green; lots of French blood in him, Brown guessed. So far, the man had spoken only French, which Brown didn’t understand at all.

  “What’ve you got?” Carella asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Brown said. “Man was turning a Korean grocery store upside down, throwing fruit and vegetables all over the place, I just happened to be passing by in my car.”

  “Lucky you,” Carella said.

  “Oh, don’t I know it?” Brown said, and took off the man’s handcuffs.

  “Eux, ils sont débiles,”the Haitian said.

  “Empty your pockets,” Brown told him. “Everything on the desk here.”

  “Doesn’t he speak any English?” Carella asked.

  “Not to me he doesn’t. Your pockets,” Brown said, and demonstrated by reaching into his right-hand pocket and taking from it his keys and some change, and putting these on the desk, and then pulling the pocket inside out. “Empty your pockets on the desk here. Understand?”

  Being a police officer was getting to be very difficult in this city. Years ago, most of your foreigners coming to live in this city were white Europeans; for the most part, the only foreign languages you had to contend with were Italian, Spanish, Yiddish, and German. Nowadays, the immigrants were mostly black, Hispanic, and Asian. Back then, if you booked anyone Hispanic, nine times out of ten he was from Puerto Rico. Nowadays, anyone with a Puerto Rican heritage was usually a second-or third-generation American who spoke English without a trace of accent. The ones with the heavy Spanish accents were the new-comers, most of them from the Dominican Republic or Colombia. Well, that wasn’t such a problem; a lot of working cops had picked up at least a little Spanish over the years, and besides there were hundreds of cops on the force whose grandparents had come here from Guayama or San Juan and you could always count on them translating what some guy was machine-gunning in his native tongue.

  But what’d you do when you came up against somebody speakingFrench, the way this Haitian guy was? Brown had no idea whether this was pure French or bastardized French or even the patois some of them spoke, which not even a Parisian could understand. All he knew was that he couldn’t make out a word the guy was saying. He was used to not understanding what half the people they dragged in here were saying. What were you supposed to do, for example, when you got somebody in here from Guyana? In the old days you chatted up a black man, you found out he had people in Georgia or Mississippi or South Carolina, he’d been “down home” for the holidays, or to see his sister in a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, whatever. Nowadays, you talked to a black man, you found outhis relatives were in New Amsterdam or Georgetown, and he spoke a kind of English you could hardly understand, anyway. One out of every four blacks in this city was foreign-born. One out of every four. Count ’em. You got some of them from Guyana, they didn’t talk English atall, they spoke a Creole patois it was impossible to decipher. You got some of those EastIndians from Guyana, they spoke either Hindi or Urdu, who the hell on the police force could understandthose languages? Not to mention the Koreans and the Chinese and the Vietnamese, who they might just as well have been speaking Martian.

  You took the number-seven subway train from Majesta into the city proper, you saw a third-world country on it every morning. The host on one of the city’s nighttime talk shows dubbed the number seven “The UN Express.” The immigrants riding that train didn’t know what the hell he meant. The
mayor said on the radio that the city’s dramatic population change could be considered a glorious experiment in the racial forces of manifold coexistence in a continually changing kaleidoscope of cross-cultural opportunity. The people he was talking about didn’t know what the hellhe meant, either. Not even Brown knew what the mayor meant.

  All Brown knew was that in the old days, a person came here from a foreign country, he planned tostay here, earn a living here, raise a family here, learn the language they spoke here, become a citizen—in short, make some kind ofinvestment in this city and this nation. Nowadays, the immigrants you got from Latin America and the Caribbean preferred remaining citizens of their native lands, shuttling back and forth like diplomats between countries, supporting nuclear families here and extended families in their homelands. This meant that the city’slargest immigrant groups were showing little if any interest in joining the mainstream of American society. Shoot a dope dealer in a neighborhood composed largely of immigrants from Santo Domingo, and the flags that came out in protest were red, white, and blue, all right, but they weren’t the Stars and Stripes, they were the flags of the Dominican Republic. No wonder so many walls in this city were covered with graffiti. If it ain’t our city, then fuck it.