by Ed McBain
“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 kno
wledge 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.