Long Time No See

by Ed McBain

  “Yes, it certainly does. What kind of doctor was this? A shrink?”

  “Yes.”

  “A prison shrink?”

  “No. An Army doctor.”

  “Mm,” she said, and shrugged again.

  “Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “how well did you know Jimmy Harris?”

  “Same as the other boys,” she said.

  “The other boys in the gang?”

  “Yes. Well, the club. They called it a club. It was a club, I guess.”

  “About two dozen boys altogether, is that right?”

  “Well, there were others all over Diamondback.”

  “But two dozen in the immediate gang.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew Jimmy about as well as you knew any of the others.”

  “Yes.”

  She was still lying. He knew she was lying, damn it. He looked at Meyer; Meyer knew it, too. They weren’t going to let go of this. They were going to sit here and talk her blue in the face till they found out why she was lying.

  “Would you say you were friendly with him?” Meyer asked.

  “Jimmy? Oh yes. But I was Lloyd’s girlfriend, you understand.”

  “Yes, we understand that.”

  “So I only knew the other boys casually, you see.”

  “Mm,” Meyer said.

  “The way your wife—are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you?”

  “Yes,” Carella said.

  “Well, the way your wives would know other detectives you might work with, the same as that.”

  “That’s the way you knew Jimmy Harris.”

  “Yes.”

  “You thought of yourself as Lloyd’s wife, is that it?”

  “Well, no not his wife,” she said, and laughed. The laugh was phony; it had none of the genuine resonance of her earlier laughter. She was still lying, there was still something she was hiding. “But we did have an understanding with each other. We were going with each other, you see.”

  “What does that mean?” Carella asked. “No other girls in Lloyd’s life…”

  “That’s right.”

  “And no other boys in yours?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It seems strange, though, that Jimmy would come up with this story about the boys’ having raped you.”

  “It certainly does,” Roxanne said, and laughed again. This time the laugh ended almost before it escaped her throat.

  “Did he ever…?” Carella said, and cut himself short. “No, forget it.”

  “What were you about to say?” Meyer said, playing the straight man.

  “I just wondered…Mrs. Hardy, Jimmy never made a pass at you, did he?”

  “No,” she said. “No, never.”

  Another lie. Her eyes would not even meet his now.

  “Never, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. I was Lloyd’s girlfriend, you understand.”

  “Yes, I understand that.”

  “I was faithful to Lloyd.”

  “Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jimmy was faithful to him. Do you see what I mean, Mrs. Hardy? If Jimmy ever approached you—”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “—sexually, then perhaps that might account for what he told his doctor.”

  “Why is this important to you?” she asked suddenly.

  “Because Jimmy Harris is dead, and we don’t know who killed him,” Carella said.

  She was silent for several moments. Then she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Mrs. Hardy…If anything ever happened between you and Jimmy, or between you and any of the other boys on the Hawks, anything that might have prompted someone to start thinking of revenge or retribution—”

  “No,” she said, and shook her head.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Something did happen,” she said. “But no one knew. Only Jimmy knew. And me.”

  “Could you tell us what it was, please?”

  “It won’t help you. No one knew.”

  She looked at them for a long time, not saying anything, debating silently whether or not she wished to reveal whatever secret she had carried for the past twelve years. She nodded then, and said in a voice almost a whisper, “It was raining. It was very cold outside, it seemed as if it should be snowing…”

  Her voice, as she spoke, seemed to become more and more Jamaican, as though the closer she came to the memory of that day twelve years ago, the more she became the seventeen-year-old girl she then was. As they listened, the present dissolved into the past, only to become the present again—a different present, but an immediate one nonetheless; whatever had happened in that basement room so long ago seemed to be happening here and now, this instant.

  It is raining.

  She is surprised by the rain, she thinks it should be snowing at this time of year, it’s so cold outside. But it’s raining instead, there is thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes illuminate the painted basement windows high on the cinder-block walls. Thunder crashes everywhere around them. They are alone in the basement room. It is 4:00 in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Christmas.

  They are alone here by chance. She has come looking for Lloyd, but there’s only Jimmy standing by the record player with a stack of records in his hands. The cinder-block wall is painted a blue paler than the streaked midnight blue that covers the windows. Lightning flashes again, thunder sounds. Jimmy puts a record on the turntable. He tells her the other guys are right this minute in the Hermanos clubhouse, over in Spictown, negotiating a truce. He’d have gone with them, he says, but his mother cut her hand, he had to rush her to the hospital. Lightning again, the bellow of thunder. Cut herself decorating the Christmas tree, he says. The music is soft and slow and insinuating. The thunder booms its counterpoint.

  “You want to dance?” he says.

  She knows at once that she should refuse. She is Lloyd’s woman. If Lloyd comes back unexpectedly and finds them dancing together, there will be serious trouble. She knows this. She knows they will hurt her, she knows she can expect no mercy from Lloyd, the code is the code, they will whip her till she bleeds. Last summer, when they caught one of the Auxils talking to a Hermanos on the street, they stripped her to the waist, tied her to the post, and the sergeant at arms gave her twenty lashes. She whimpered at first, and then began screaming each time the whip raised another welt on her back, the welts opening at last and beginning to bleed. They threw her out in the gutter, threw her blouse and brassiere out after her, told her to go to the Hermanos if she liked them so much.

  That was last summer, but this is now, and this will be worse. This will be dancing with a brother when Lloyd isn’t around. Be different if he was here, nothing would be said of it. But he is not here, she is alone with Jimmy, and she is frightened because she understands the danger. But it is exactly the danger that attracts her.

  She laughs nervously and says, “Sure, why not?”

  Jimmy takes her in his arms. The music is slow, they dance very close. He is excited, she can feel him through his trousers and through her skirt. They are dancing fish, he is socking it to her, grinding against her. There is more thunder. She is still frightened, but he is holding her very tight, and she is getting excited herself. She laughs again. Her panties are wet, she is dripping wet under her skirt. The record ends, the needle clicks and clicks and clicks in the retaining grooves. He releases her suddenly and walks to the record player, and lifts the arm from the record. There is silence, and then lightning streaks the painted windows again, and thunder crashes. He walks to the door.

  She stands motionless in the center of the room near the post. She is afraid they will tie her to the post with her hands behind her back. This is a serious offense, she is afraid they will whip her across her naked breasts. She knows of a girl in another gang who was whipped that way for the offense of adultery. The offense is clearl
y lettered on the rules chart that hangs on the clubhouse wall. Adultery. She is about to make love to a brother, but she is Lloyd’s woman, and that is adultery, and they will hurt her badly for it. They will hurt Jimmy, too. They will force him to run the gauntlet, hitting him with chains and pipes as he runs between his brothers lined up on either side of him.

  And when it is all over and done with, when they’ve given her the fifty lashes, she’s certain she’ll receive in punishment, fifty or maybe a hundred because she’s the president’s woman, across her naked breasts, the sergeant at arms methodically and deliberately beating her with the seven-thonged whip; when they’ve forced Jimmy through the gauntlet and have left him bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the ground, why, then both of them will be thrown out of the club to fend for themselves. The club is their insurance in a hostile world of enemy camps that grow like toad-stools in the surrounding streets. There is no help from the Law in these streets, there is no help from parents who are scrounging for the big white dollar out there, there is only aid and comfort from your brothers and sisters in the clubs.

  If you don’t belong to a club, you are anybody’s.

  If you’re a boy, you’re anybody’s to beat up on, anybody’s to rob, anybody’s to cut or burn or snuff. If you’re a girl, you’re anybody’s to hurt, anybody’s to fuck, anybody’s to do with what they want. This is the city. You need insurance here. Belonging to the Hawks’ auxiliary is her insurance, and she is about to have it canceled only because she is a stupid bitch. She knows she’s being dumb, she knows that. But she wants Jimmy Harris, and she suspects she’s maybe wanted him from the first time he began coming on six months back, and she began looking the other way and making believe it wasn’t happening. It was happening, all right. It is happening right now. He is locking the basement door, double-locking it like he’s expecting a raid from a hundred gangs, putting the chain on it in the bargain, and then coming back to where she’s standing, and grabbing her tight, and kissing her hard on the mouth till she has to pull away to catch her breath.

  His hands are all over her. He unbuttons her blouse, he touches her breasts, he slides his hands under her skirt and up over her thighs, he grabs her ass tight in nylon panties, she is getting dizzy standing there in the middle of the room. She falls limp against the post, and he does it to her standing there against the post. Rips her panties. Tears them in his hands, rips them away from where she’s wet and waiting, unzips his fly and sticks it in her. He comes almost the minute he’s inside her, and she screams and comes with him, the hell with the Hawks, the hell with Lloyd, the hell with the whole world. They grab each other like it’s the weekend ending, they cling to each other there against the post in the middle of the basement, the lightning and thunder crashing around them. She begins crying. He begins crying, too, and then makes her promise she won’t ever tell anybody in the world that he cried.

  Monday morning came at last.

  The telephone on Carella’s desk was ringing. He picked up the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”

  “This is Maloney, Canine Unit.”

  “Yes, Maloney.”

  “You were supposed to call me,” Maloney said.

  “I just got here this minute,” Carella said, and looked up at the clock. “It’s only a quarter to nine, Maloney.”

  “I told you to call first thing in the morning.”

  “This is first thing in the morning,” Carella said.

  “I don’t want to get in no argument about whether it’s first thing in the morning,” Maloney said. “I been here since eight o’clock, that’s first thing in the morning, I don’t want to get in no argument. All I want to know is what disposition is to be taken with this dog here.”

  “Yeah,” Carella said.

  “What does that mean, yeah?”

  “It means, give me a minute, okay?”

  “This dog is not a nice dog here,” Maloney said. “He won’t let nobody go near him. He won’t eat nothin’ we put in his dish, he’s a fuckin’ ungrateful mutt, you want to know.”

  “That’s how he was trained,” Carella said.

  “To be ungrateful?”

  “No, no. To take food only from his master. He’s a seeing-eye dog.”

  “I know what he is. We don’t need no seeing-eye dogs down here. Down here, we need dogs who sniff out dope, that’s what we need down here. So what do you want me to do with him? You don’t want him, he goes to the shelter. You know what they do at the shelter?”

  “I know what they do.”

  “They keep the mutt three weeks, then they put him away. It’s painless. They put him in a container, they draw all the air out of it. It’s like going to sleep. What do you say, Coppola?”

  “Carella.”

  “Yeah, what do you say?”

  “I’ll send someone down for him.”

  “When?”

  “Right away.”

  “When is right away?”

  “Right away is right away,” Carella said.

  “Sure,” Maloney said. “The same way first thing in the morning is quarter to nine, right?”

  “I’ll have somebody there by ten o’clock.”

  “It’s the Headquarters building, eighth floor. Tell him to ask for Detective Maloney. What do you guys do up there, work half a day?”

  “Only when we’re busy,” Carella said, and hung up. Detective Richard Genero was at his desk, studying his dictionary. Carella walked over to him and said, “What’s the good word, Genero?”

  “What?” Genero said. “Oh,” he said, “I get it. The good word.”

  He did not smile. He rarely smiled. Carella imagined he was constipated a lot. He wondered suddenly why no one on the squad called Genero “Richard” or “Richie” or “Dick” or anything but “Genero.” Everyone else on the squad called everyone else by his first name. But Genero was Genero. Moreover, he wondered why Genero had never noticed this. Was it possible that people outside the squadroom also called him Genero? Was it possible that his mother called him Genero? Did she phone him on Fridays and say, “Genero, this is Mama. How come you never call?”

  “How would you like to do me a favor?” Carella said.

  “What favor?” Genero asked suspiciously.

  “How would you like to go downtown to pick up a dog?”

  “What dog?” Genero asked suspiciously.

  “A seeing-eye dog.”

  “This is a gag, right?”

  “No.”

  “Then what dog?”

  “I told you. A seeing-eye dog down at Canine.”

  “This is a gag about when I got shot in the foot that time, right?”

  “No, no.”

  “When I was on that stakeout in the park, right?”

  “No, Genero, wrong.”

  “When I was making believe I was a blind man, and I got shot in the foot, am I right?”

  “No. This is a real job. There’s a black Labrador that has to be picked up at Canine.”

  “So why are you sending me?”

  “I’m not sending you, Genero, I’m asking if you’d like to go.”

  “Send a patrolman,” Genero said. “What the hell is this? Every time there’s a shit job to be done on this squad, I’m the one who gets sent. Fuck that,” Genero said.

  “I thought you might like some air,” Carella said.

  “I’ve got cases to take care of here,” Genero said. “You think I’ve got nothing to do here?”

  “Forget it,” Carella said.

  “Send a goddamn patrolman.”

  “I’ll send a patrolman,” Carella said.

  “Anyway, it’s a gag, you think I don’t know it?” Genero said. “You’re making fun of that time I got shot in the park.”

  “I thought you got shot in the foot.”

  “In the foot in the park,” Genero said unsmilingly. Carella went back to his own desk and dialed 24 for the muster room downstairs. When Sergeant Murchison picked up, he said, “Dave, this is Steve.
Can you send a car to the Headquarters building for me? Eighth floor, ask for Detective Maloney, he’ll turn over a black Labrador retriever.”

  “Is the dog vicious?” Murchison asked.

  “No, he’s a seeing-eye dog, he’s not vicious.”

  “There are some seeing-eye dogs will bite you soon as look at you,” Murchison said.

  “In that case, tell your man to use a muzzle. They carry muzzles in the cars, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, but it’s hard to get a muzzle on a vicious dog.”

  “This dog isn’t vicious,” Carella said. “And, Dave, could you send somebody right away? If the dog isn’t picked up by ten, they’ll send him to the shelter and they’ll kill him in three weeks.”

  “So what’s the hurry?” Murchison said, and hung up.

  Carella blinked. He put the receiver back on the cradle and looked at it. He looked at it so hard that it rang, startling him. He picked up the receiver again.

  “87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

  “Steve, this is Sam Grossman.”

  “Hello, Sam, how are you?”

  “Comme ci, comme ça,” Grossman said. “Was it you who sent this soil sample to the lab? It’s only marked ‘87th Squad.’”

  “Meyer did. How does it look?”

  “It matches what we got from under Harris’s fingernails, if that’s what you’re looking for. But I’ve got to tell you, Steve, this is a fairly common composition. I wouldn’t consider this a positive make unless you’ve got corroborating evidence.”

  “Corroborating supposition, let’s say.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Anything on the Harris apartment?”

  “Nothing. No alien latents, footprints, hairs, or fibers. Nothing.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to you.”

  “So long,” Grossman said, and hung up.

  Carella put the receiver back on its cradle. An Army corporal was standing just outside the slatted-rail divider, looking tentatively into the squadroom. Carella got up and walked to the divider. “Help you?” he said.

  “Sergeant downstairs told me to come up here,” the corporal said. “I’m looking for somebody named Capella.”

  “Carella, that’s me.”

  “This is from Captain McCormick,” the corporal said, and handed Carella a manila envelope printed in the left-hand corner with the words U.S. Army, Criminal Investigations Division.