by Ed McBain
The Homicide cop eyed Carella warily. "I was only trying to explain…"
"Sure," Carella said. "Stupid kid here doesn't realize the body doesn't have to swinging free. Why, Bert, we've found them standing, sitting, and lying." He turned to the Homicide cop. "Isn't that right?"
"Sure, all positions."
"Sure," Carella agreed. "A suicide doesn't have to look like one." A barely concealed hardness had crept into his voice, and Kling frowned and then glanced somewhat apprehensively toward the Homicide dicks. "What do you think of the color?" Carella asked.
The dick who'd blown his top at Carella approached him cautiously. "What?" he asked.
"The blue. Interesting, isn't it?"
"Cut off the air, you get a blue body," the Homicide cop answered. "Simple as all that."
"Sure," Carella said, the hardness more apparent in his voice now. "Very simple. Tell the kid about side knots."
"What?"
"The knot on the rope. It's on the side of the boy's neck."
The Homicide cop walked over and looked at the body. "So what?" he asked.
"I just thought a hanging-suicide expert like yourself might have noticed it," Carella said, the hardness in his voice completely unmasked now.
"Yeah, I noticed it. So what?"
"I thought you might want to explain to a new detective like the kid here the coloration we sometimes get in hangings."
"Look, Carella," the other Homicide cop started.
"Let your pal talk, Fred," Carella interrupted. "We don't want to miss the testimony of an expert."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"He's needling you, Joe," Fred said.
Joe turned to Carella. "You needling me?"
"I wouldn't know how," Carella said. "Explain the knot, expert."
Joe blinked. "Knot, knot, what the hell are you talking about?"
"Why, surely you know," Carella said sweetly, "that a side knot will completely compress the arteries and veins on one side of the neck only."
"Sure, I know that," Joe said.
"And you know, of course, that the face will usually be red when the knot's been tied at the side of the neck—as opposed to the face being pale when the knot's tied at the nape. You know that, don't you?"
"Sure, I know that," Joe said arrogantly. "And we've had them turn blue in both side-knot and nape-knot cases, so what the hell are you telling me? I've had a dozen blue strangle cases."
"How many dozen blue cyanide-poisoning cases have you had?"
"Huh?"
"How do you know the cause of death was asphyxiation?"
"Huh?"
"Did you see those burnt bottle caps on the orange crate? Did you see the syringe next to the boy's hand?"
"Sure, I did."
"Do you think he's a junkie?"
"I guess he is. It would be my guess that he is," Joe said. He paused and made a concerted effort at sarcasm. "What do the masterminds of the 87th think?"
"I would guess he's an addict," Carella said, "judging from the 'hit' marks on his arms."
"I saw his arms, too," Joe said. He searched within the labyrinthine confines of his intelligence for something further to say, but the something eluded him.
"Do you suppose the kid shot up before he hanged himself?" Carella asked sweetly.
"He might have," Joe said judiciously.
"Be a little confusing if he did, wouldn't it?" Carella asked.
"How so?" Joe said, rushing in where angels might have exercised a bit of caution.
"If he'd just had a fix, he'd be pretty happy. I wonder why he'd take his own life."
"Some junkies get morose," Fred said. "Listen, Carella, lay off. What the hell are you trying to prove, anyway?"
"Only that the masterminds of the 87th don't go yelling suicide until we've seen an autopsy report—and maybe not even then. How about that, Joe? Or do all blue bodies automatically mean strangulation?"
"You got to weigh the facts," Joe said. "You got to put them all together."
"There's a shrewd observation on the art of detection, Bert," Carella said. "Mark it well."
"Where the hell are the photographers?" Fred said, tired of the banter. "I want to get started on the body, find out who the hell the kid is, at least."
"He's in no hurry," Carella said.
Chapter Three
The boy's name was Aníbal Hernandez. The kids who weren't Puerto Rican called him Annabelle. His mother called him Aníbal, and she pronounced the name with Spanish grandeur, but the grandeur was limp with grief.
Carella and Kling had trekked the five flights to the top floor of the tenement and knocked on the door of apartment fifty-five. She had opened the door quickly, as if knowing that visitors would soon be calling. She was a big woman with ample breasts and straight black hair. She wore a simple dress, and there was no make-up on her face, and her cheeks were streaked with tears.
"Police?" she asked.
"Yes," Carella said.
"Come in, por favor. Please."
The apartment was very still. Nothing broke the silence, not even the sullen sounds of sleep. A small light burned in the kitchen.
"Come," Mrs. Hernandez said. "In the parlor."
They followed her, and she turned on a floor lamp in the small living room. The apartment was very clean, but the ceiling plaster was cracked and ready to fall, and the radiator had leaked a big puddle onto the scrubbed linoleum of the floor. The detectives sat facing Mrs. Hernandez.
"About your son…" Carella said at last.
"Si," Mrs. Hernandez said. "Aníbal would not kill himself."
"Mrs. Hernandez…"
"No matter what they say, he would not kill himself. This I am sure… of this. Not Aníbal. My son would not take his own life."
"Why do you say that, Mrs. Hernandez?"
"I know. I know."
"But why?"
"Because I know my son. He is too happy a boy. Always. Even in Puerto Rico. Always happy. Happy people do not kill themselves."
"How long have you been in the city, Mrs. Hernandez?"
"Me, I have been here four years. My husband came first, and then he send for me and my daughter—when it was all right, you know? When he has a job. I leave Aníbal with my mother in Cataño. Do you know Cataño?"
"No," Carella said.
"It is outside San Juan, across the water. You can see all the city from Cataño. Even La Perla. We live in La Perla before we go to Cataño."
"What's La Perla?"
"A fanguito. How do you say—a slom."
"A slum?"
"Si, si, a slum." Mrs. Hernandez paused. "Even there, even playing in the mud, even hungry sometimes, my son was happy. You can tell a happy person, señor. You can tell. When we go to Cataño, it is better, but not so good as here. My husband send for me and Maria. My daughter. She is twenty-one. We come four years ago. Then we send for Aníbal."
"When?"
"Six months ago." Mrs. Hernandez closed her eyes. "We pick him up at Idlewild. He was carry his guitar with him. He plays very good the guitar."
"Did you know your son was a drag addict?" Carella asked.
Mrs. Hernandez did not answer for a long time. Then she said, "Yes," and she clenched her hands in her lap.
"How long has he been using narcotics?" Kling asked, looking hesitantly at Carella first
"A long time."
"How long?"
"I think four months."
"And he's only been here six months?" Carella asked. "Did he start in Puerto Rico?"
"No, no, no," Mrs. Hernandez said, shaking her head." Señor, there is very little of this on the island. The narcotics people, they need money, is that not right? Puerto Rico is poor. No, my son learned his habit here, in this city."
"Do you have any idea how he started?"
"Si," Mrs. Hernandez said. She sighed, and the sigh was a forlorn surrender to a problem too complex for her. She had been born and raised on a sunny island, and her father had
cut sugar cane and fished in the off seasons, and there were tunes when she had gone barefoot and hungry, but there was always the sun and the lush tropical growth. When she got married, her husband had taken her to San Juan, away from the inland town of Comerío. San Juan had been her first city of any size, and she had been caught up in the accelerated pace. The sun still shone, but she was no longer the barefoot adolescent who walked into the village general store and exchanged banter with Miguel, the proprietor. Her first child, Maria, was born when Mrs. Hernandez was eighteen. Unfortunately, her husband had lost his job at about the same time, and they moved into La Perla, a historic slum squatting at the foot of Morro Castle. La Perla—The Pearl. Named in high good humor by the poverty-stricken dwellers, for you could strip these people of their belongings, strip them of their clothes, toss them naked into wooden shacks that crouched shoulder to haunches in the mud below the proud walls of the old Spanish fort—but you could not steal their sense of humor.
La Perla, and a girl-child named Maria and two miscarriages that followed in as many years, and then another girl-child who was named Juanita, and then the move to Cataño when Mrs. Hernandez' husband found a job there in a small dress factory.
When she was pregnant with Aníbal, the family had gone one Sunday to El Yunque, and the Basque National del Caribe—the Rain Forest. And there Juanita, barely two, had crawled to the edge of a fifty-foot precipice while her father was snapping a picture of Mrs. Hernandez and his older daughter. The child had made no sound, had screamed not at all, but the plunge had killed her instantly and they came home from the national forest that day with a corpse.
She feared she would lose the baby within her, too. She did not. Aníbal was born, and a christening followed on the heels of a funeral, and then the factory in Catano closed down and Mr. Hernandez lost his job and took his family back to La Perla again, where Aníbal spent the early years of his boyhood. His mother was twenty-three years old. The sun still shone, but something other than the sun had deepened what used to be laugh wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Mrs. Hernandez was coming to grips with Life. Life and Fortune combined to find more work for Mr. Hernandez. Back to Cataño went the family, moving their scant belongings, convinced that this time the move was for good.
It seemed a permanent job. It lasted for many years. Times were good, and Mrs. Hernandez laughed a lot, and her husband told her she was still the prettiest woman he knew, and she accepted his lovemaking with hot-blooded passion, and the children—Aníbal and Maria—grew.
When he lost the job that had seemed permanent, Mrs. Hernandez suggested leaving the island and heading for the mainland—heading for the city. They had enough for a plane ticket. She packed him a chicken lunch to eat on the plane, and he wore an old Army coat because he had heard the city was very cold, not like Puerto Rico at all, not with the sun shining all the time.
In time, he found a job working on the docks. He sent for Mrs. Hernandez and one child, and she took the girl Maria because a girl should not be left without her mother. Aníbal she left with his grandmother. Three and a half years later, he was to be reunited with his family.
Four years later, he was to be an apparent suicide in the basement of a city tenement.
And thinking over the years, the tears started silently on Mrs. Hernandez' face, and she sighed again, a sigh as barren and hollow as an empty tomb, and the detectives sat and watched her, and Kling wanted nothing more than to get out of this apartment and its echoes of death.
"Maria," she said, sobbing. "Maria started him."
"Your daughter?" Kling asked incredulously.
"My daughter, yes, my daughter. Both my children. Drug addicts. They…" She stopped, the tears flowing freely, unable to speak. The detectives waited.
"I don't know how," she said at last. "My husband is good. He has worked all his life. This minute, this very minute, he is working. And have I not been good? Have I done wrong with my children? I taught them the church, and I taught them God, and I taught them respect for their parents." Proudly, she said, "My children spoke English better than anybody in the barrio. Americans I wanted them to be. Americans." She shook her head. "The city has given us much. Work for my husband, and a home away from the mud. But the city gives with one hand and takes back with the other. And for all, senores, for the clean white bathtub in the bathroom, and for the television set in the parlor, I would not trade the sight of my happy children playing in the shadow of the fort. Happy. Happy."
She bit her lip. She bit it hard. Carella waited for it to bleed, amazed when it did not.
When she released her lip, she sat up straighter in her chair.
"The city," she said slowly, "has taken us in. As equals? No, not quite as equals—but this too I can understand. We are new, we are strange. It is always so with the new people, is it not? It does not matter if they are good; they are evil because they are new. But this you can forgive. You can forgive this because there are friends here and relatives, and on Saturday nights it is like being back on the island, with the guitar playing and the laughter. And on Sunday, you go to church, and you say hello in the streets to your neighbors, and you feel good, señores, you feel very good, and you can forgive almost everything. You are grateful. You are grateful for almost all of it.
"You can never be grateful for what the city has done to your children. You can never be grateful for the narcotics. You can remember, remember, remember your daughter with young breasts and clean legs and happy eyes until those… those bastardos, those chulos… took her from me. And now my son. Dead. Dead, dead, dead."
"Mrs. Hernandez," Carella said, wanting to reach out and touch her hand, "we…"
"Will it matter that we are Puerto Rican?" she asked suddenly. "Will you find who killed him anyway?"
"If someone killed him, we'll find him," Carella promised.
"Muchas gracias," Mrs. Hernandez said. "Thank you. I… I know what you must think. My children using drugs, my daughter a prostitute. But, believe me, we…"
"Your daughter…?"
"Si, si, to feed her habit." Her face suddenly crumpled. It had been fine a moment before, and then it suddenly crumpled, and she sucked in a deep breath, holding back the racking sob, and then she let it out, a sob ripped from her soul. The sob stabbed at Carella, and he could feel himself flinching, could feel his own face tightening in an impotency. Mrs. Hernandez seemed to be clinging to the edge of a steep cliff. She hung on desperately, and then sighed and looked again to the detectives.
"Perdóneme," she whispered. "Pardon me."
"Could we talk to your daughter?" Carella asked.
"For favor. Please. She may help you. You will find her at El Centro. Do you know the place?"
"Yes," Carella said.
"You will find her there. She… may help you. If she will talk to you."
"We'll try," Carella said. He rose. Kling rose simultaneously.
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Hernandez," Kling said.
"De nada," she answered. She turned her head towards the windows. "Look," she said. "It is almost morning. The sun is coming."
They left the apartment. Both men were silent on the way down to the street.
Carella had the feeling that the sun would never again shine on the mother of Aníbal Hernandez.
Chapter Four
The 87th Precinct was bounded on the north by the River Harb and the highway that followed its winding course. Striking south from there, and working block by block across the face of Isola, you first hit Silvermine Road and the fancy apartment buildings facing on the river and Silvermine Park. If you continued walking south, you crossed The Stem, and then Ainsley Avenue, and then Culver Avenue, and the short stretch of Mason known to the Puerto Ricans as La Vía de Putas.
El Centro, despite the occupation of Maria Hernandez, was not located on Whore Street. It crouched in a side street, one of the thirty-five running blocks that formed the east-to-west territory of the 87th. And though there were Italians and Jews and a large p
opulation of Irish people in the 87th, El Centro was in a street that was entirely Puerto Rican.
There were places in the city where you could get anything from a hunk of cocaine to a hunk of woman—anything in the alphabet, from C to S. El Centro was one of them.
The man who owned El Centro lived across the river in the next state. He very rarely visited his establishment. He left it in the capable managerial hands of Terry Donohue, a big Irishman with big fists. Donohue was, for a precinct Irishman, most unusual: he liked Puerto Ricans. This is not to say that he liked only Puerto Rican women. That was certainly true. But there were many "Americans" in the 87th Precinct who detested the influx of the "foreigners" while secretly admiring the tight wiggle of a foreign female's backside. Terry liked them both male and female. He also liked running El Centro. He had worked in dives all over the world, and he was fond of saying El Centro was the worst, but he still like it.
In fact, Terry Donohue liked just about everything. And considering the joint he ran, it was surprising that he could find anything to like in a cop—but he liked Steve Carella, and he greeted him warmly when the detective showed up later that day.
"You lop-eared wop!" he shouted. "I hear you got married!"
"I did," Carella said, grinning foolishly.
"The poor girl must be nuts," Terry said, shaking his massive head. "I'll send her a basket of condolences."
"The poor girl is in her right mind," Carella replied. "She picked the best available man in the city."
"Hoo! Listen to him!" Terry shouted. "What's her name, lad?"
"Teddy."
"Terry?" Terry asked unbelievingly. "Terry, is it?"
"Teddy. For Theodora."
"And Theodora what, may it be?"
"Franklin, it used to be."
Terry cocked his head to one side. "An Irish lass, perhaps?"
"Catch me marrying an Irish girl," Carella said, grinning.
"A mountain guinea like you could do worse than a sweet Irish lass," Terry said.
"She's Scotch," Carella told him.
"Good, good!" Terry bellowed. "I'm four-fifths Irish myself, with a fifth of Scotch thrown in."
"Ouch!" Carella said.