Blood Relatives (12 page)

“Mr. Lowery, I understand your son used to go down to the bank to meet Muriel after work. Is that true?”

“Yes. That’s true. He did.”

“Did
you
ask him to do that?”

“No, no. I was protective, yes, but I wasn’t a nut on the subject. I mean, a girl coming home from work at five in the afternoon, there’s nothing to fear
there,
is there? I know there’ve been people
killed or raped in broad daylight, but you can’t live your lives that way, you can’t keep hiding in a closet, can you? No, I felt Muriel was perfectly safe coming home from work alone. I guess Andy went down there to get her because they had so much to talk about, you see. He’d been accepted in college, and they were all the time discussing the courses he would take. Never a meal went by in this house without the two of them talking about Andy’s college education. He respected that girl a lot, and her opinions, which is why I can’t…I—”

“Would you say it was
his
idea to pick her up after work?” Carella said.

“Well, I don’t know. I guess the two of them. I guess it was arranged by the two of them. Andy wasn’t doing anything during the summer, so I guess he didn’t mind driving downtown to get her, and I guess Muriel was grateful she didn’t have to take the train home during the rush hour. I really couldn’t say, Mr. Carella. But it wasn’t
my
idea, that’s for sure, I had no fear for her safety at five in the afternoon. What
did
bother me was when she’d call and say she’d be late, either working late at the bank, or else shopping if it was a Thursday night, that’s what got me upset.”

“Did she do that often?”

“Well, often enough. I told her about it, I gave her hell about it. I treated that girl like my own daughter, Mr. Carella. I miss her sorely. I truly miss her. I loved that girl. She was a very dear person to me.”

“Mr. Lowery, on those occasions when your son picked up Muriel at the bank—did Patricia ever go with him?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Had she ever gone to the bank on her own?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then she wouldn’t have known any of Muriel’s fellow workers?”

“No.”

“Never would have seen any of them.”

“That’s right.”

They were silent for several moments. Outside in the shop, the hammer started again, and Lowery waited till it was silent, and then said, “What causes something like this, can you tell me? Where a kid you think the world of, bright and good-looking and gentle as can be, just suddenly goes crazy and does something like this? What causes it, Mr. Carella?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“I’ve been trying to figure it out. Ever since Patricia told us what
really
happened that night, I’ve been trying to figure what got into Andy. Muriel kept a diary, you know, I went into her room and looked for it, thinking maybe there was something in it that would explain what happened. She kept that thing faithfully, used to write in it every night before going to bed. But I couldn’t find it. Don’t know what could’ve happened to it. I looked all through that room for it, it just isn’t there.”

“Mr. Lowery,” Carella said, “would you mind if
I
looked for it?”

“Not at all. It’s red leather, I gave it to her for Christmas, in fact. One of those little locks on the front, with a tiny key, do you know the kind I mean?”

“Yes,” Carella said. “Thank you, Mr. Lowery, you’ve been very helpful.”

This time he had something specific to look for, and the something was a diary Muriel Stark had kept. Neither he nor Mr. Lowery had found the diary when they’d separately searched her room, and in his affidavit requesting a search warrant, Carella stated that there was now reasonable cause to believe that the accused, Andrew Lowery, might have stolen the diary on the assumption that it contained incriminating evidence.
Wherefore,
Carella petitioned,
I respectfully request that the court issue a warrant and order of seizure in the form annexed authorizing a search of Andrew Lowery’s room in Apartment 3A at premises 1604 St. John’s Road and directing that if such diary bound in red leather and written in Muriel Stark’s hand, or if any part of this diary or evidence in the crime of murder be found, that it be seized and brought before the court, together with such other and further relief that the court may deem proper.

The warrant was granted.

Carella got back to the Lowery apartment at twenty minutes past 6:00 that evening. Frank Lowery was already home from work, and he and his wife were having their dinner in the kitchen. They explained that Patricia had been sent to her grandmother’s for a week or so. They had not thought it wise to send her back to school just yet, not while the newspapers were playing the story up so big. They asked Carella if he would care to join them for dinner, and he graciously declined their invitation and then searched their son’s room from top to bottom.

He found no trace of the diary.

At 6:45 A.M. the next morning, a Department of Sanitation truck pulled up in front of the building on St. John’s Road. One man was driving the truck and two men were walking behind it. The walkers were also lifting garbage cans and tossing the contents onto the conveyor that dumped the refuse into the truck. These men liked to bang garbage cans around; this was evident in the way they smashed the cans against the metal rim around the conveyor, and also in the way they slammed the cans down on the sidewalk again. The average garbage can on any city street got battered and bruised within the space of a week because these men loved their work so much. (Some people insisted these men also loved the smell of garbage, but that was pure conjecture.) What they loved was banging garbage cans around and griping
about being sanitation employees. Sanitation employees were always going on strike or contemplating going on strike. That was because they figured their jobs were as dangerous as policemen’s or firemen’s. Firemen were always complaining that
their
jobs were more dangerous than policemen’s, but sanitation employees figured
their
jobs were more dangerous than either of the other two, and therefore they wanted at least the same amount of money for this very dangerous work they did.

“It’s dangerous,” Henry said, “because first of all the fuckin’ people don’t respect us.” Henry was driving the garbage truck. The two men who’d been walking behind the truck were now on the front seat beside him. The truck was full now, the men were heading toward the Cos Corner Bridge, near which they would dump the garbage before continuing with the second leg of their route. A sanitation truck could hold only so much garbage, and once it was full to capacity, the garbage had to be dumped someplace. This was an elementary rule of garbage collection. It was, in fact, the first tenet of the sanitation game: When it’s full, empty it. “They don’t respect us,” Henry said, “because they think of us as garbage men. We are not garbage men. We are sanitation employees.”

“Sanit men,” George said. George was one of the men who’d been walking behind the truck. He was glad to be on the front seat now, being driven to the stretch of land the city was filling in near the bridge. A man could get tired of walking behind a garbage truck and lifting garbage cans and smacking them gleefully against the rim of the conveyor. He was certainly glad to be sitting for a while. Moss sat alongside him. Moss was the truck’s other walker, the only black man on the team. They worked well together, these three, despite their racial differences. They liked to believe, and perhaps it was true, that there was no room for prejudice in the sanitation game.

“That’s exactly what we are, George,” Henry said. “Sanit men.”

“And entitled to respect,” Moss said.

“
And
the same damn pay the cops and the firemen get,” George said.

“Now
that’s
the issue,” Henry said. “That’s the issue
exactly.
And that’s why I think we’ve got to strike again.”

“Do firemen have to handle the waste of an entire city?” George asked.

“All that
shit
they put in the garbage there?” Moss asked.

“Firemen
don’t
have to handle that shit,” George said, answering himself.

“Neither do policemen,” Henry said.

“All that slimy shit,” Moss said. “We ought to get paid a
fortune
for handling all that smelly shit.”

“But every time we ask the city for a raise, you know who gets on their high horse?” Henry said. “The cops. They get on their high horse because they want the city to think they’re the only ones risking their lives on the line out there every day. Well, I ask you, my friends, when’s the last time you heard of a cop getting garbage dumped on his head by the superintendent of a building where Murphy’s been collecting the garbage there for fifteen
years!
Fifteen
years,
mind you, and the animal who runs that building turns on him. Like an
animal!
Dumps a full can of garbage on his
head!
Murphy
still
stinks from it.”

“All that slimy shit,” Moss said.

“Should pay us a fortune,” George said.

In the distance they could see the slender lines of the Cos Corner Bridge, and to the left the area the city was filling in with refuse. Gulls winged against the September sky, dipping and wheeling over the garbage dump. Down on the flats, there were several other sanitation trucks unloading. Henry cut off the main
highway and let the truck roll down the dirt road to the flats. The gulls were shrieking and cawing and making a terrible racket.

“Do cops have to deal with sea gulls?” George asked.

The traffic manager, standing knee-deep in garbage, signaled for Henry to pull the truck over to the left, which he did. The traffic manager then jerked his thumb skyward, signaling Henry to dump the load. Henry pulled a lever inside the truck, and the back of the truck began tilting, and the refuse from some 150 apartment buildings began tumbling onto the ground, joining the bottles and newspapers and orange rinds and coffee grounds and meat bones and soggy string beans and mashed potatoes and empty cartons and old shoes and cigar butts that had been collected from all over the city in the past weeks and months. Included in the garbage that had been collected that very day at 1604 St. John’s Road was a diary bound in red leather. The strap holding the diary’s clasp to the lock on the cover had been cut.

Fresh garbage kept falling onto it.

Not twelve miles from the Cos Corner Bridge, in another section of Riverhead, Carella was trying to talk an adamant old lady into letting him see her granddaughter. The woman was Matilda Lowery, and she was eighty-four years old, and she insisted that Patricia had had enough to do with policemen. Her parents had sent her here to keep her
away
from reporters and policemen, in fact, and if Carella didn’t get away from the door, he would get hit on the head with a broom.

Carella explained that he was working for the district attorney’s office, gathering evidence that would help in the prosecution, and there were several questions he wanted to ask Patricia, questions he was certain would be brought up at the trial, when the case finally came to trial. The old lady was seriously raising her broom and seemed ready to crown Carella with it when
Patricia called from the other room and said it was all right to let him in. Matilda Lowery shook her head, and went muttering into the kitchen to make herself a pot of tea.

This was still just a little past noon on Friday, September 12. Patricia was wearing blue jeans and a white sweater. Her dark hair was braided into pigtails on either side of her head. She looked much younger than her fifteen years, and seemed quite calm now that the ordeal of accusation was behind her. Her hands were still bandaged, and a piece of adhesive plaster still clung to her right cheek. She asked Carella to sit, and then immediately said, “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Not going back to school yet?”

“Yes, I think that’s the right thing,” Carella said.

“I’m not sure. I don’t want the kids to think I’m a coward.”

“I’m sure they won’t think that,” Carella said.

“They
already
think I’m a rat,” Patricia said.

“What makes you say that?”

“I got some phone calls. Before I came here to Grandma’s. And also, I received a letter.”

“Have you still got the letter?”

“I threw it away. It frightened me.”

“What did it say?”

“Oh, it just called me all sorts of horrible names for having ratted on my own brother. The phone calls were the same. One man said he would kill me if he ever saw me on the street.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that happening,” Carella said.

“No, I realize a person has to be a little crazy to make a call like that. But—”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I did the right thing? Would
you
have done it? If you’d seen your brother committing a crime…committing
murder…
would you have told on him? Do you have a brother?”

“I have a sister,” Carella said.

“Would you have told on her?”

“Yes.”

“I keep wondering,” Patricia said, and sighed heavily. “Anyway, it’s too late, I’ve already done it. There’s no changing anything now.” She sighed again, and then said, “What did you want to ask me?”

“Just a few things, Patricia. First, when we talked to you on the night of the murder, you said a dark-haired, blue-eyed man—”

“I was lying,” Patricia said immediately.

“Yes, I know that. To protect your brother.”

“Yes.”

“But why’d you pick on that particular combination, Patricia? Dark hair and blue eyes? Was there any reason for that?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Do you know a man named Jack Armstrong?”

“No.”

“He was Muriel’s boss,” Carella said. “He has brown hair and blue eyes.”

“I don’t know him,” Patricia said.

“You see, I might as well tell you this, the identification is going to be challenged,” Carella said. “Your brother’s attorneys are certainly going to challenge the identification.”

“Why? I ought to know my own brother,” Patricia said.