by Ed McBain
Both men sat huddled inside their overcoats. It was 12:30 by the car clock, and Fort Kirby was still forty miles away. The parkway tollbooths were spaced exactly five miles apart; Carella kept rolling down the window on the driver’s side and handing quarters to toll collectors. Meyer kept track of the quarters they spent. They would later turn in a chit to Clerical, hoping they’d one day be reimbursed. In the police department, chits were questioned closely, the operative theory being that people in law enforcement were all too often crooks themselves, educated as they were in the ways of thieves. After all, who was to say that the 50¢ spent for a bridge toll had not instead been spent for a hamburger, medium rare? Carella asked for receipts at all of the tollbooths. He handed these to Meyer, who clipped them to the inside cover of his notebook.
It was twenty minutes past 1:00 when they reached Fort Kirby. Carella identified himself to the sentry at the gate in the cyclone fence surrounding the base. A huge sign, black lettered on white, advised that no one but authorized personnel would be admitted to the area. The sentry examined Carella’s shield and ID card, checked a sheaf of slips attached to a clipboard, and then said, “The major’s expecting you, sir. You can park just this side of the canteen, that’s the redbrick building there on your right. The major’s in A-4.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
Major John Francis Tataglia was a man in his early thirties, with close-cropped blond hair and a blond mustache that hung under his nose like an afterthought. He was slight of build, perhaps five feet nine inches tall, with alert blue eyes and an air of total efficiency about him. You could visualize this man on a parade ground standing at attention in the hot sun, never wilting, never even perspiring. He rose from behind his desk the moment the sergeant ushered Carella and Meyer into his office. He extended his hand.
“Major Tataglia,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Both detectives shook hands with him, and then took seats opposite his desk. The sergeant backed out of the room like an indentured servant. The door whispered shut behind him. From somewhere out on the drill field, they could hear a sergeant bellowing marching orders, “Hut, tuh, trih, fuh,” the repetitive chant oddly and overwhelmingly evocative. For Carella, it recalled his own basic training so many years before. For Meyer, inexplicably, it brought back with an almost painful rush the days when he played football for his high school team. Beyond the major’s wide window, November sprawled leadenly. It was a good month for memories, November.
“As I told you on the phone,” Carella said, “we’re investigating a series of homicides—”
“More than one?” Tataglia said. “When you told me you were looking for information about Harris, I assumed—”
“There’ve been three murders so far,” Carella said. “We’re not sure they’re all related. The first two most certainly are.”
“I see. Who were the other victims?”
“Harris’s wife, Isabel, and a woman named Hester Mathieson.”
“How can I help you?” Tataglia asked.
The top of his desk was clear of papers and even pencils. A brass plaque read Maj. J. F. Tataglia. A folding triptych picture frame showed photographs of a dark-haired woman and two little girls, one with dark hair, the other with hair as blonde as the major’s. He touched the tips of his fingers together and held them just under his chin, as though in prayer.
Meyer kept watching him. With his extrasensory olfactory awareness, he detected the scent of cologne emanating from behind the major’s desk. He had never liked men who wore cologne, even if they were athletes being paid to advertise it on television. He did not like Tataglia altogether. There was something prissy about the man, something too starchily precise. He kept watching him. Tataglia had apparently decided Carella was the spokesman here; Meyer watched Tataglia, and Tataglia watched Carella.
“We have reason to believe Harris may have contacted an old Army buddy regarding a scheme of his,” Carella said.
“What sort of scheme?”
“An illegal one, possibly.”
“You say possibly…”
“Because we don’t really know,” Carella said. “You were in command of the 3rd Platoon, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Were you present when Harris was blinded?”
“Yes. I later filed the action report.”
“And signed it as commanding officer.”
“Yes.”
“That was on December fifteenth. He was blinded on December fourteenth—is that correct?—and you filed the report on December fifteenth.”
“Yes, those are the dates,” Tataglia said.
“Had you been recently promoted?”
“Yes.”
“Before the action in which Harris…”
“Yes, a week or ten days earlier. We’d begun Operation Ala Moana at the beginning of December. Lieutenant Blake was killed shortly after the choppers dropped us in. I was promoted in the field. For the rest of the operation, I was acting OIC.”
“You were promoted to lieutenant?”
“Yes, second lieutenant in charge of the entire platoon. This was no simple vill sweep, you understand. This was a vast encircling maneuver involving a full battalion—mechanized units, artillery, air support, the works. The day before Harris got blinded, our recon patrol found an enemy base camp a mile to the southwest. We were marching toward it through the jungle when we got hit.”
“What happened?”
“An L-shaped ambush. The first fire team was fully contained in the short side of the L. Bravo was just entering the long side. There was nothing we could do. They’d closed the trail and lined it with rifles and machine guns, and we were caught in the cross-fire. We hit the bushes, hoping they hadn’t been lined with punji stakes, and we just lay there returning fire and hoping Bravo would get to us before we all were killed. Bravo came in with the 3rd Squad right behind them, a machine-gun squad. It was a pretty hairy ten minutes, though. I was amazed we got through it with only Harris getting hurt. A grenade got him, almost tore his head off.”
“No other casualties?”
“Not in Alpha. Two men in Bravo were killed, and the 3rd Squad suffered some wounded. But that was it. We were really lucky. They had us cold.”
“Would you remember which of the men Harris was closest to?”
“What do you mean? In the action? When he was hit?”
“No, no. Who were his friends? Was there anyone he was particularly close to?”
“I really couldn’t say. I’m not sure if you understand how this works. There are forty-four men in a platoon, plus the commanding officer and the platoon sergeant. The lieutenant will usually set up his command post where he can best direct the action. I was with that particular fire team on that particular day because they were first in the line of march.”
“Then you didn’t know the men in Alpha too well.”
“Not as individuals.”
“Even though the operation had started at the beginning of the month?”
“I knew them by name, I knew their faces. All I’m saying is that I had very little personal contact with them. I was an officer, they were—”
“Yes, but you’d only recently been promoted.”
“That’s true,” Tataglia said, and smiled. “But there’s not much love lost between top sergeants and the men under them. I was an E-Seven before Lieutenant Blake got killed.”
“How did he get killed?” Meyer asked.
“Mortar fire,” Tataglia said.
“And this was?”
“Beginning of the month sometime. Two or three days after the drop, I’m not certain of the date.”
“Would you know if Harris kept in touch with any of the men after his discharge?”
“I have no idea.”
“Have you been in contact with any of them?”
“The men in Alpha, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“No. I correspond regularly with the man who commanded D C
ompany’s First Platoon, but that’s about it. He’s a career soldier like myself, stationed in Germany just now, got sent over shortly after the reunion.”
“What reunion is that, Major?”
“D Company had a big reunion in August. Tenth anniversary of the company’s arrival overseas.”
“Where’d the reunion take place?”
“Fort Monmouth. In New Jersey.”
“Did you attend the reunion?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did your friend?”
“Yes, he did. He mentioned it in one of his letters to me. Actually, I’m sorry I missed it.”
“Well,” Carella said, and looked at Meyer. “Anything else you can think of?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Meyer said.
“Thank you very much,” Carella said, rising and extending his hand.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” Tataglia said.
The DD report was on Carella’s desk when they got back to the squadroom. Meyer asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee, and then went down the corridor to Clerical. The clock on the wall read 3:37. The shadows were lengthening; Carella switched on his desk lamp and picked up the report. A handwritten note was fastened to it with a paper clip:
Carella took the paper clip from the report, crumpled Hawes’s note, and threw it in the wastebasket. Hawes was a better typist than most of the men on the squad. The report looked relatively neat:
Majesta, of course, had been named when the British owned America. It had been named after His Majesty King George. Lots of things were named after King George in those days. Georgetown was named after King George. In those days, when the British were dancing quadrilles and even common soldiers sounded like noblemen, Majesta was hilly and elegant. “Oh, yes, Majesta,” the British would say. “Quite elegant.” Majesta nowadays was still hilly, but it was not elegant. It was, in fact, inelegant. In fact, it was what you might call crappy.
There were some people in Majesta who lived all the way out on the tongue of land that jutted into the Atlantic, within the city limits but far from the city proper and also the madding crowd. These people felt that Washington and the Continental Congress had been misguided zealots. These people were of the opinion that Majesta would have fared better as a British colony. A case in point was neighboring Sand’s Spit, which even today seemed very much like a British colony. That was because the people out there drank Pimms Cups during the summer months and talked through their noses a lot. The people on Sand’s Spit were enormously rich, most of them. Some of them were only terribly rich. The people in Majesta were miserably poor, most of them. Some of them were only dreadfully poor. Russell Poole was pretty goddamn poor.
He lived with his mother in a row of houses that resembled those one might have found in England along Victoria Street or Gladstone Road—the apple does not fall far from the tree. Russell Poole was black. He had never been to England, but often dreamt of going there. He did not know that England had its own problems with people of a darker hue—the tree does not grow far from the fallen apple. Poole only knew that he was poor and living in a dump. He did not like the looks of Cotton Hawes. Cotton Hawes looked like a mean mother-fucking cop. Poole told his mother to go in the other room.
Hawes didn’t much like the looks of Russell Poole, either.
Actually, the men looked a lot alike, except that one was white and the other was black. Maybe that made all the difference. Poole was about Hawes’s height and weight, a good six feet two inches tall and 190 pounds. Both men were broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. Poole did not have red hair like Hawes—but then again, who did? Poole closed the door on the bedroom his mother had just entered, and then said, “Okay, what’s this about?”
“I told you on the phone,” Hawes said. “James Harris was murdered.”
“So?”
“You were in his squad overseas, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I say again—so?”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“In August.”
“This past August?”
“Yes.”
“Where was that?”
“The company reunion in New Jersey.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“Old times.”
“How about new times?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he mention any plans he might have had?”
“Plans for what?”
“Plans involving Alpha.”
“What kind of plans?”
“You tell me,” Hawes said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did he mention needing Alpha’s help with anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Some kind of business deal, maybe?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“Who else was there? From Alpha, I mean.”
“Just four of us.”
“Who?”
“Me and Jimmy, and Karl Fiersen who was on his way to Amsterdam, and Rudy Tanner who flew in from California.”
“Do you know where we can reach these other men?”
“I’ve got Tanner’s address. Fiersen said to just write him care of American Express in Amsterdam.”
“You exchanged addresses?”
“Yeah, we all did.”
“Jimmy, too?”
“Jimmy, too.”
“You gave him your address?”
“We all gave each other our addresses.”
“Did Jimmy write to you?”
“No.”
“Would you know if he wrote to any of the other men?”
“How would I know?”
“Was Lieutenant Tataglia at the reunion?”
“No. We were surprised about that because he was stationed at Fort Lee in Virginia, and that’s not such a long haul to New Jersey. Tanner came all the way from California.”
“How’d you know where he was stationed?”
“Tataglia? Well, there was a captain there at the reunion, he used to be in command of the First Platoon, some of the guys got talking to him. He told us Tataglia was a major now, and stationed at Fort Lee.”
“Who’d he tell?”
“I forget who was standing around there. I think it was me and Jimmy and another guy from the squad, but not from Alpha.”
“Who would that have been?”
“A guy from Bravo. There wasn’t much left of Bravo. Two of them were killed in action the day Jimmy got wounded, and another guy was killed just after Christmas.”
“The one who was at the reunion—do you know his name?”
“Of course I know his name. Danny Cortez, he lives in Philadelphia.”
“Have you got his address, too?”
“Yeah, I took it down.”
“Did Jimmy get his address?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t follow Jimmy around seeing whose address he took or whose address he didn’t.”
“But you know for sure that Jimmy took the addresses of the men who were in Alpha.”
“Yeah, because we were all standing around bullshitting, and we used the same pencil to write the addresses.”
“What were you bullshitting about?”
“I told you. Old times. We went through a lot together over there.”
“What did you go through?”
“A lot of action. In the boonies and in the whorehouses, too.”
“What do you mean by boonies?”
“The boondocks. You know, out in the jungles there. The boonies.”
“What kind of action did you see?”
“Vill sweeps mostly. We’d surround a village in the night, and then attack at first light, before they left their women and their rice bowls to go off in the jungle again. We’d destroy whatever we found—AT mines, sugar, pickled fish, small-arms rounds, whatever the fuck.”
“Were you on a vill sweep when Jimmy got wounded?”
“No, that was Ala Moana. That was a big operation.
That was the whole battalion.”
“How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t good. We lost a lot more people over there than the newspapers made out. All the body counts were the enemy, you dig? Nobody bothered to count us.”
“Did Jimmy get along with everybody in Alpha?”
“Yeah.”
“Everybody in the squad?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you think of anybody who might have wanted him dead?”
“Nope.”
“And that’s the last time you saw him, right? In August.”
“That’s the last time I saw him.”
“You want to let me have those addresses now?” Hawes said.
The telephone again.
The telephone was as vital a tool to policemen as was a tension bar to a burglar. They now had addresses for Rudy Tanner and a man named Danny Cortez, who’d been in Bravo Fire Team of the 2nd Squad. They also knew that Karl Fiersen could be reached care of American Express in Amsterdam, but that didn’t help them much because the city would never spring for a transatlantic call even if by some miracle they could get a phone number for Fiersen. They dialed Directory Assistance for Los Angeles and for Philadelphia, and came up with listings for both Tanner and Cortez. Carella talked to Tanner first. He asked almost the same questions about the action that December day, and got almost the same answers. Nothing that didn’t jibe. He kept reaching.
“When did you see him last?”
“August. At the reunion.”
“Did he mention any plans to you?”
“Plans? What do you mean?”
“Plans for himself and somebody in Alpha.”
“In Alpha? I don’t get you.”