by Ed McBain
He realized now that if only he hadn’t stopped going to church when he was fifteen, he could pray to God for a miracle or at least a clue, and all his problems would go up the chimney. Instead, the radio was playing organ music and Genero was typing in a tempo out of meter with the fat chords that floated out on the air, and Carella not only did not have a clue, he also did not have an inkling of where to go next.
He decided to call Fort Mercer.
His reasoning had nothing to do with sound deduction. It had only to do with desperation. Before talking to Sophie, he had known next to nothing about the dead man. In any homicide it was essential to learn how the victim had spent his last twenty-four hours—where he’d gone, the people he’d seen, the events that had taken place. He knew where Isabel Harris had spent at least a portion of the twenty-four hours before her death; she had spent them in bed with Frank Preston. But all he knew about Jimmy was that he’d left the house at his usual hour in the morning, and presumably walked his usual beggar’s route on Hall Avenue throughout the day, and most likely stopped at a bar, as usual, before heading home after the rush hour.
Carella had neglected to ask Isabel whether Jimmy frequented the same bar each day. A mistake. Maybe a bad one. There was no Isabel to ask anymore, but there existed nonetheless the possibility that Jimmy had met someone in the bar, argued with someone, antagonized someone—who the hell knew? The bar was still a mystery, solely because of Carella’s oversight. It bothered him that he had goofed. He fretted about it, but he didn’t agonize over it. Instead, he examined the two pieces of information he now possessed, a pair of seemingly unrelated fragments that changed Jimmy Harris from a corpse into a living, breathing human being.
At the moment there was nothing he could do about the first piece of information. If Jimmy Harris had indeed contacted an old Army buddy with some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, possibly illegal, Carella had no way of ascertaining this without talking to the old Army buddies. Right now he knew nothing about Jimmy’s Army career, except that he’d been in the 2nd Squad’s Alpha Fire Team and he’d been blinded in action. If he got lucky, Captain McCormick would get back to him before Monday with the service information he’d requested. He doubted he would get lucky. But there was one other thing he had learned from Sophie Harris.
Her son was having nightmares.
Carella dialed “O” for operator, and asked for the area code for Fort Mercer. The operator said she didn’t have a town called Fort Mercer. Carella said it was upstate someplace near Castleview Prison. She said she didn’t know where Castleview Prison was. He told her it was in Rawley. She gave him an area code, and he dialed first the number 1, and then the area code, and then the numerals 555, and then the numerals 1212. By that time he’d forgotten why he was dialing this long succession of numbers, and he’d also forgotten his shield number, his social security number, and his middle initial. Another operator said, “Information, what city?” and Carella told her he thought it was near Rawley, and said he was trying to reach Fort Mercer. The operator said, “That’s in Paxton, sir,” and then said, “I have several listings for Fort Mercer, which one did you wish?”
“The hospital,” he said.
“I’ve got a General Hospital and an Evacuation Hospital.”
“Let’s try the General Hospital.”
“Do you wish to write the number down, sir?”
“Yes, please,” Carella said.
“963-7047,” she said.
“Thank you,” Carella said. “That’s 963…”
But she’d already hung up. He sighed, dialed the number 1, and then the area code, and then the numerals 963, and then the numerals 7047. The phone rang. Across the room, Genero, whose tastes were catholic, switched the radio to a rock-and-roll station. Up in Paxton, the phone was still ringing. Carella wondered if the hospital was closed.
“Hospital,” a man’s voice said.
“Is this the Fort Mercer General Hospital?” Carella asked.
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“This is Detective Carella, 87th Squad, Isola. I’m calling in regard to a patient you had there some ten years ago. I wonder if I could talk to someone who—”
“Who did you want to talk to, sir?”
“Whoever might have detailed knowledge of the patient.”
“Well, sir…How would I know who that might be, sir?”
“Is there anyone there who goes back ten years?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure there is. But…Sir, this is a very big facility, sir, I really wouldn’t know where to connect you.”
“May I speak to whoever is in command of the facility?”
“That would be General Wrigley, sir.”
“Could you connect me, please?”
“Just one moment, sir.”
Carella waited. A woman’s voice came on the phone almost instantly.
“General Wrigley’s office.”
“This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad in Isola. May I please speak to the general?”
“I’m sorry, sir, he isn’t in today.”
“Perhaps you can help me,” Carella said.
“I’ll try, sir.”
“We’re investigating a homicide in which the victim was once a patient at Fort Mercer. I’m trying to learn whatever I can about him.”
“When was he a patient here?”
“Ten years ago.”
“Mm,” the woman said.
“I know that’s a long time ago.”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“But I’m sure your records go back that far.”
“Yes, sir, they do, that’s not the problem.”
“What is the problem?”
“Sir, I really don’t think this is something that can be handled on the telephone.”
“I was trying to save myself a trip upstate. This is a homicide.”
“Well, I’ll put you through to Records.”
“Thank you.”
“Just hang on,” she said. “It’ll sound as if I’m hanging up, but I’m only transferring the call.”
“Thank you.”
Again, he waited. He decided that homicide was an intrusion. Nobody wanted intrusions in their lives, nobody wanted you calling from the big city to ask about a man who’d passed this way ten years ago. Hell with that. There was a hospital to run here, a facility. Lots of sick people here. I’ll put you through to Records. Records might be interested. Records dealt with history, the distant past and the more recent. I’ll put you through to Records because we here among the quick albeit sick just can’t be bothered, you see, with corpses who once lived in the neighborhood.
“Records, Sergeant Hollister speaking.”
“This is Detective Carella, 87th Squad, I’m looking for some information about a homicide victim.”
Sergeant Hollister whistled. “Shoot,” he said.
“The name is James Harris, he was in the Fort Mercer hospital ten years ago.”
“Any middle name?”
“Randolph.”
“This’ll take some time,” Hollister said. “Let me get back to you.”
“The number here is Frederick 7-8024. But, Sergeant…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m really more interested in talking to someone who might have known him while he was there. I mean, rather than you reading to me from his records.”
“Well, let me see what the records indicate, okay, sir? I’ll get back to you in a little while.”
“Sergeant, this is a homicide.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that.”
“Thank you, I’ll be waiting for your call.”
There was a click on the line. Carella looked up at the wall clock. The time was 10:37 A.M.
“How do you spell vehicular?” Genero asked.
“You’ve got the dictionary right there, just look it up,” Carella said.
“How can I look it up if I don’t know how to spell it?”
“Well, you know it starts with a V, don�
��t you?”
“Yeah, but then what?” Genero said.
Carella looked up at the clock again.
The time was 10:38 A.M.
The call from upstate did not come till a few minutes past 11:00. By then Carella had called the IS for a routine check on Charles C. Clarke, and had finished typing his updated reports in triplicate. The IS had promised to get back to him at once. He expected he would hear from them by Monday unless he called them again later in the day. He also expected he would have to call the hospital back. In America, and maybe throughout the whole wide world for all he knew, nobody ever got anything done unless you called twice. And then followed the second call with a letter. And then called again a week after the follow-up letter. He suspected it had been this way in ancient Rome, just before the barbarian hordes broke through the northern barricades and rode their ponies into the streets. Senators picking up the skirts of their togas and running for their lives, clutching unanswered tablets to their chests. Secretaries running along behind them, chewing gum, clothes in disarray.
“87th Squad, Carella.”
“This is Colonel Anderson, Fort Mercer Hospital.”
“Yes, sir,” Carella said.
“A Sergeant Hollister in Records called to say you were interested in a patient I treated several years back.”
“Yes, sir, a man named James Harris.”
“Hollister said he’d been murdered, is that true?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Anderson said. “What is it you want to know, Mr. Carella?”
“This will sound ridiculous.”
“Try me.”
“I was talking to his mother this morning, and she told me he was having nightmares.”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to talk to anyone who might know something about them.”
“The nightmares?”
“Yes, the nature of the nightmares.”
“I’m a plastic surgeon, I didn’t have anything to do with his mental rehabilitation. He’d been through three other hospitals before he reached us, you understand. Our goal was to prepare him for civilian life after the terrible trauma he’d suffered. The wound was a particularly vicious one, requiring a great deal of reconstructive surgery. But it was the psychiatric team who worked toward adjusting him realistically to his new situation. They’re the ones who’d know about the nightmares.”
“Who headed up the team, can you tell me that?”
“That would have been Colonel Konigsberg.”
“I wonder if I could speak to him.”
“He’s no longer here. He was transferred to Walter Reed in Washington, you might try him there. That would be Colonel Paul—well, wait a minute, he was a colonel when he left here, he might well be a brigadier general by now.”
“Colonel Anderson, where would the psychiatric records be? Would they still be there at Fort Mercer?”
“I would imagine so, yes.”
“If I drove up there this afternoon, could I have a look at them?”
“That could be arranged.”
Carella looked up at the wall clock. “Would two o’clock be all right?”
“Yes, fine. I’ll leave word at the gate to pass you through. Could I have your full name, please?”
“Detective Stephen Carella. That’s C-a-r-e-l-l-a. And it’s Stephen with a p-h.”
“The General Hospital is to the right of the redbrick administration building. When you come through the main gate, keep to your right and park in the oval marked for visitors. There’s a receptionist just inside the entrance doors, she’ll tell you how to find me. My office is on the second floor.”
“I’ll be there at two,” Carella said.
“Yes, fine,” Anderson said. “I’ll see you then.”
Carella hung up, looked at the clock again, and then checked the duty chart on the wall. Today was supposed to be Meyer’s day off; he called him at home anyway. Sarah Meyer answered the phone, recognized his voice, and said, “Oh no.”
“Is he in the middle of something?”
“We’re going to a wedding.”
“What time?”
“No trick questions, Steve,” Sarah said. “I’ll put him on.”
Carella waited. When Meyer came on the line, he said at once, “No way.”
“I’m driving up to Fort Mercer,” Carella said.
“Where’s Fort Mercer?”
“Up near Castleview.”
“Have a nice drive.”
“Who’s getting married?”
“Irwin the Vermin.”
“Your nephew?”
“My nephew. Only he grew up to be a mensch, can you imagine? Steve, I can’t go with you, I’m sorry. I still have to pick up my tuxedo.”
“Will you have time to make just one stop?”
Meyer sighed.
“Meyer?”
“Yeah, yeah. Where do you want me to go?”
“Sam Grossman told me there was soil under Jimmy Harris’s fingernails. Check out the apartment, will you? Maybe he buried whatever the killer was looking for.”
“Where do you bury something in an apartment?”
“Did you notice any window boxes?”
“I wasn’t looking for any.”
“Well, check out the sills, and if there aren’t any boxes, you might go down to the backyard, see if anything’s been buried recently.”
“That’s a nice job for a person on a Saturday when he has to get dressed for a wedding.”
“What time is the wedding?”
“Three o’clock.”
“That gives you almost four hours.”
“To go digging up a backyard, and get my tuxedo, and shower and shave, and drive the whole family to Adams Boulevard. Why are you going to Fort Mercer?”
“Jimmy Harris was having nightmares.”
“So am I,” Meyer said, and hung up. Carella smiled and put the receiver back on its cradle.
The phone rang again almost at once. It was the IS calling back to say that Charles C. Clarke had no criminal record.
The apartment was heavy with the stillness of death.
Someone had swept up the garbage that was strewn over the kitchen floor, but the rest of the place was still a shambles. Meyer wondered who would eventually clean it up. The chalked outline of Isabel’s body marked the place near the refrigerator where she’d lain crookedly in death. Sooner or later someone would wash the kitchen floor, wash away the chalked outline and the bloodstains on the linoleum. Sooner or later someone else would rent the apartment. One day the new tenant would casually mention that a murder had taken place in this kitchen: “Found the woman right here near the refrigerator, her throat was slit.” “No kidding?” his visitor would say, and then they would go on to discuss the latest baseball standings.
For now, Isabel Harris was vaguely defined by her chalked outline on the floor and the dried blood on the linoleum. And in the other rooms, her torn furniture and scattered clothing. He had read someplace that blind people put clothing of different colors in different drawers, so that they would not inadvertently wear a green tie with a purple shirt, or a red blouse with an orange skirt. They identified clothing, too, by different stitches sewed into hems or shirttails, their fingers becoming eyes, touch becoming sight. He could not imagine being blind. He thought he would kill himself if suddenly he lost his eyesight.
Above the kitchen sink, there was a small window covered with frost; the apartment was cold, the super had undoubtedly turned off all the radiators the moment the police were gone—waste not, want not, and no sense making the farshtinkener Arabs richer than they already were. With the heel of his gloved hand Meyer rubbed at the frost, clearing a rough circle through which he saw first the brick wall of the building opposite and then the outside windowsill.
There was a flower box on the sill.
The dried and withered stalks of last summer’s blooms lay like casualties across the frozen soil in the box. Meyer tried
the window; more often than not, they were painted shut in city apartments. It opened easily. He took the box in off the sill, put it on the countertop, and closed the window again. From the tangle of forks, knives, and spoons on the kitchen floor, he picked up a tablespoon and began digging at the soil in the box. The crusted upper layer resisted his initial thrusts, and then suddenly gave way to softer earth. Someone had been digging here recently; the soil was loose, the spoon moved it without effort. He took off his gloves and shoved his hands deep into the soil. Nothing. He looked around for something he could dump the soil onto or into, opened the door to the cabinet under the sink, and found a nest of brown paper bags. Tearing one of these open, he spread it on the countertop and began spooning earth onto it.
In a little while the window box was empty.
There had been nothing in it but soil.
Meyer shoveled a spoonful of that soil into an evidence envelope for transmission to Grossman at the lab. Then he left the apartment and went down to the backyard.
The General Hospital at Fort Mercer was built just before the Spanish-American War. Carella was so informed by the WAC sergeant who was leading him to the room where the records were kept. He had no reason to doubt her word; the place looked turn-of-the-century, with high vaulted ceilings and thick walls, windows that rose from the floor to twice a man’s height. They had taken the elevator down from Colonel Anderson’s office and were walking through a ground-level corridor that resembled a colonnade running along one side of a cloister. Beyond the windows were a bloomless garden and a lawn that rolled in hillock after hillock to the River Harb below. In the distance, on a point of land jutting out from the shore, Carella could see the gray walls of Castleview State Penitentiary. He knew a lot of people in that prison, all of them convicted felons. They had been, so to speak, business associates.