Blood Relatives (3 page)

“Where’d you get the blood on your shirt, Mr. Sully?”

“Well, you know.”

“Was it in a fight outside a bar?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Where was it?”

“Well, in the bedroom.”

“Your bedroom?”

“Yeah. That’s right. Yes, my bedroom. I had a few drinks, you know, so I went in there and she was brushing her hair, so I told her to stop that. She’s sitting there brushing her hair and counting, it can drive a person crazy, somebody sitting there and counting out loud. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, her arm going like
a piston, and she’s counting, fifty-three, fifty-four, I told her to cut it out. So she didn’t cut it out, so I hit her. So she was bleeding a little from the nose, nothing serious. So she told me to get the hell out, which I did. I went over Larry’s house, but he wasn’t home, so then I bought a pint, and I was in the doorway sleeping. I thought maybe she’d filed another complaint. That’s why I tried to get away from you guys. Look, I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know how bad I hurt her this time. I was pretty drunk, I hit her hard. She was bleeding a lot when I left the house. So I didn’t want any trouble with the law, I mean a man and his wife can work things out between them, am I right? We’ve always worked things out between us. So okay, I slap her around every now and then, but she knows I love her.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“I do.”

“Sure.”

“So now I told you what you wanted to know, so how about let’s forget this assault stuff, okay?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Carella said.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“How about we send a car over to your house, see how your wife is doing, first of all. Then how about we check those bloodstains on your shirt with your wife’s blood, just to make sure it isn’t somebody
else’s
blood, okay? That’ll have to wait till morning, when the lab opens. Meanwhile, just for the fun of it, how about we book you for two counts of assault, okay?”

“
Two
counts? My wife won’t press charges against me, she loves me too much.”

“We don’t.”

“Huh?”

“Me. And my partner. One, two. Two counts,” Carella said. “And that may be the least of your worries, Mr. Sully. Depending on what the lab has to say about those bloodstains.”

The lab got back to them at 10:00 the next morning. It told them that whereas Muriel Stark’s blood had been of the O group, and Patricia Lowery’s was of the A group; and whereas the scene of the crime and the bodies and clothing of both victims (the dead one
and
the living one) had been liberally sprinkled or spattered or smeared with blood from
both
groups, the stains on Louis Sully’s shirt were nonetheless of the B group, which substantiated his story about the fracas with his wife, since
her
blood happened to be in that group too. As for the lady, Sully had fractured not only her nose, but her jaw and her collarbone as well. At about the same time Patricia Lowery was being released from the hospital that morning, Mrs. Louis Sully was being moved from a ward to a semi-private room, which her doting husband had requested for her.

Carella and Kling, in the squadroom of the 87th, went through their file of known sex offenders, and then put out a request for similar files from every other detective squad in the city. It was 11:00 on a Sunday morning. Carella went home to his family. Kling went directly to Augusta Blair’s apartment.

During World War II, American bomber crews would fly out from bases in England to strike at enemy targets on the continent. They would fly through exploding flak, helpless in the grip of the bombsight, unable to veer from enemy fire, unable to dodge enemy aircraft until the bombs were released and the controls were back again in the hands of the pilot. And in the evening and in the night they would sit and drink in English country pubs, throw darts with the good old boys, sing an American song or two, and try to forget the terror they had known in the skies over Germany.

During the Vietnam war, combat infantrymen were flown to Saigon by helicopter from bases in the boonies, and from Saigon they were jetted to Hawaii or Japan for what was called R&R—Rest & Recuperation. They would go back into the jungle afterward, presumably refreshed and capable of once more dealing with the everyday horrors of warfare. There existed, for the airmen in World War II, and even for the foot soldiers in the Vietnam war, a curious form of double-think that allowed them to be combat troops one moment and quasi-civilians the next. In the morning you dropped a stick of bombs down a factory smokestack, and in the evening you dropped an egg into your lager. On Friday you were laying machine-gun fire across a trail leading into a suspect hamlet, and on Monday you were laying a whore in Honolulu. Helped you keep your sanity, they said. Moderation in everything, and everything in moderation.

It was something like that for cops.

When it got too horrible, you went home. You took a shower and changed your clothes. You mixed yourself a cold martini or a hot toddy. You patted your dog on the head or your wife on the behind. You philosophized a bit, maybe wagging your head or clucking your tongue every so often. After all (you told yourself), if a person chooses to become a policeman instead of, say, a florist, then he’s got to realize he will more often be dealing with violence than with violets. If he chooses to become a cop in the first place, then he’s got to recognize in the second place that the cops are a paramilitary organization, and that’s because they are involved in a daily war, and that is a war against crime, ta-ra! And in any war, you’ve got your victims, so if you can’t stand the sight of blood, then you shouldn’t become either a cop or a noted brain surgeon—who anyway makes a lot more money than a cop does. Or a butcher, either, if you can’t stand the sight of blood. But if you
do
become a cop, then there are also certain tricks of the trade
you have to learn early if you hope to survive, and one of those tricks is the very same one the bomber crews learned in World War II, and the hapless infantrymen learned in the Vietnamese adventure—how to enjoy being a civilian every now and then. Carella went home to his family, and Kling went to see Augusta Blair.

There were those detectives on the squad who wondered aloud, and
always
in Kling’s presence, whether or not he really intended marrying that poor girl. Not that he was worth even her pinkie. A beauty such as Augusta Blair, whose face and form adorned the covers (not to mention the pages) of fashion and service magazines, whose somewhat breathy voice issued from radio and television loudspeakers alike, she of the jade-green eyes and auburn hair, she of the high cheekbones and even white teeth, she of the good breasts, narrow waist, wide hips, and splendid wheels—what right had a clod like Kling even to
consider
expecting her hand in marriage? Which he had expected. And which he’d asked for. And which she’d agreed to give to him. But that had been back in January, when a hood named Randall M. Nesbitt (the
world
might forget what he had done, or almost done, but Kling never would) had caused an upheaval in West Riverhead the likes of which the cops had never before seen, and never
hoped
to see again. Kling had asked Augusta to marry him on the night Nesbitt led his misguided street troops on what was to have been his last glorious peace-keeping mission. She had said yes moments before Kling walked to the phone and heard Carella’s voice urging him to get uptown because all hell was breaking loose. That had been in January. This was now September. The boys of the 87th wanted a wedding, or at least a bar mitzvah. But Meyer Meyer’s youngest son would not be thirteen till next summer, and Cotton Hawes showed no indication of
ever
asking
Christine Maxwell to marry him, so that left Kling and Augusta as the only immediate possibilities on the horizon.

Sanity. It all had to do with keeping one’s sanity. Weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries (no funerals, thank you; the squad dealt with too
many
funerals, most of them involving dead strangers), whatever joyous occasion the squad could find to celebrate, whatever helped to create a flimsy sense of tradition was all to the good. Like those World War II bomber crews, they were only protecting their sanity. They were finding opportunities that made them feel like ordinary civilians every now and then. They were keeping the old aspidistra flying. It would have gladdened their hearts, those sentimental old bastards, to have known that on this Sunday morning in September—Sunday, September 7, to be exact—Kling and Augusta were discussing plans for their wedding. They were, in fact, trying to decide which members of the squad should be
invited
to the wedding.

“The thing I don’t want this to turn into,” Augusta said, “is some kind of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association event, if you know what I mean.”

“Or a meeting of the Emerald Society,” Kling said.

“Or something, you know, that looks like all the cops in the city are gathered to hear the Police Commissioner speak instead of
us
getting married.”

“I understand completely,” Kling said.

“So please don’t get upset,” Augusta said.

“I’m not upset,” Kling said. “It’s just that most of these guys I’ve worked with a long time, and I’ve
got
to invite them. I’m not only talking now about the ones I
want
to invite—like Steve or Meyer or Hal or Cotton or the Lieutenant or Bob or—”

“Bert, that’s half the squad already!”

“No, honey, there are sixteen men on the squad.”

“And if you add wives to that—”

“Not all of them are married. Gus, I’ll tell you the truth, I’d really
like
to invite all of them, I mean it. Because these are guys I work with, you know. So how can I invite
some
of them and not others? I may be on the job, say, with Andy Parker one night, and some hood’ll get the drop on me, and Andy’ll remember I didn’t invite him to my wedding, and he’ll forget to shoot the hood.”

“Yeah,” Augusta said.

“So from that aspect alone, it’s really, well, important to keep good working relations with the guys on the squad. But from the other aspect, too, of
liking
most of these guys, though I can’t honestly say I’m crazy about Andy Parker, still, he’s not too bad a person when you understand him, from
that
aspect I’d really like them to be there to share my wedding with me. You understand, Gus?”

“Yeah,” she said, and sighed. “Well, Bert, then I guess we’ll just have to figure on more people than we did originally.”

“How many did we figure originally?”

“About seventy, seventy-five.”

“Maybe we can still keep it down to that.”

“I don’t see how,” Augusta said.

“Well, let’s look at that list again, okay?”

They looked at the list again. He did not mention to her that tomorrow morning he would begin questioning a dozen or more known sex offenders. They talked only about the wedding. Then they went out to brunch, and strolled the city. There were outdoor flea markets, and sidewalk art exhibits, and even an antiques show with stalls set up against the curbstones of four barricaded city blocks. For a little while it felt like Paris.

On Monday morning he became a cop again.

In the penal law of the state for which Kling worked, all sex offenses were listed under Article 130. PL 130.35, for example, was Rape 1st Degree, which was a Class B felony. PL 130.38 was Consensual Sodomy, a Class B misdemeanor. PL 130.55 was Sexual Abuse 3rd Degree, another Class B misdemeanor. There were eleven separate sex offenses listed under Article 130, which noted, incidentally, that “a person shall not be convicted of any offense defined in this Article, or of an attempt to commit the same, solely on the uncorroborated testimony of the alleged victim, except in the case of Sexual Abuse 3rd Degree.” There were some cops who found it amusing that the exception to this note did not also apply to the third definition of Sexual Misconduct, which was “engaging in sexual conduct with an animal or a dead human body,” it perhaps being reasonable to assume that neither of these victims could possibly give any testimony at all.

There were other cops who found nothing at all amusing about Article 130. A great many criminals shared their opinion. Sex offenders were the least-respected convicts in any prison society; if a violator of Article 130 could have pretended that he was an ax murderer instead, or an arsonist, or a man who had filled a ditch with fourteen poisoned wives, he’d have preferred that to entering the prison as a sex offender. There had to be something terribly wrong with a man who’d committed a sex crime—
any
sort of sex crime. Or so the reasoning went, inside the walls and outside as well.

When it came to degrees of criminality, there were very few opinions that cops and crooks did not mutually share: Kling, on that Monday morning when he returned to work, found himself questioning these sex offenders with a rising sense of revulsion. Their names had been selected the morning before, and instructions had been left with the desk sergeant to have his uniformed force round them up for questioning first thing Monday morning. They were here now, a baker’s dozen of them in the squadroom or waiting outside on benches in the corridor. Carella and Kling were sharing the interrogations. There was not a single man in that squadroom who did not know he was there because a teenage girl had been found murdered and presumably sexually abused last Saturday night. The news had been in all the papers and on all the television shows. If you’re a sex offender, you get used to the fact that any time somebody so much as gets felt up in the subway, the cops’ll be around to talk to you about it. But this was a big one. This was a homicide.

Kling started each of his interrogations with the exact same words. He told the man sitting opposite him why he was there, and he made certain the man knew he was not being charged with anything. A girl was found murdered, however, and there
had
been indications (he did not reveal
which
indications) that
sex may have been a contributing factor, and since the man sitting opposite him was a known offender, Kling would appreciate it if he could account for his whereabouts on Saturday night between the hours of 10:30 and 11:30. Each of the men invariably
(and
reasonably) protested that just because he’d once taken a fall for Sodomy Three or Rape Two or any one (or more) of the other eleven crimes listed under Article 130, this was no reason for the police to pick him up and drag him into the station house every time some little girl had her skirt lifted. There
was
such a thing as rehabilitation, you know, and it didn’t help a man to be constantly reminded of his past errors. Kling immediately apologized for a system that forced a man to carry forever the burden of his criminal record, but if the man could only understand that Kling was trying to establish his
innocence
rather than his guilt, why then, the man would simply excuse the inconvenience and answer the questions and go on about his business.

Sure, the man would invariably say. Until the
next
time.

But he answered the questions.

The fifth man who approached Kling’s desk had black wavy hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a navy-blue jacket over a paleblue sports shirt. His trousers were a dark blue too, but they did not quite match the jacket. Jacket and trousers alike were rumpled, and there was a beard stubble on the man’s face. He pulled out the chair opposite Kling and sat immediately.

“Mr. Donatelli?” Kling said.

“Yes, sir,” Donatelli said. His voice was low. His pale-blue eyes looked at the filing cabinets, the water cooler, the electric fan, the dock on the squadroom wall, anything but Kling.

“James Donatelli?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Donatelli,” Kling said, “have you got any idea why we asked you to come up here?”

“Yes, sir, I suppose it has to do with the little girl who was killed,” Donatelli said.

“That’s right,” Kling said.

“I had nothing to do with that,” Donatelli said.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

“You know,” Donatelli said, “a man takes one fall in his life on an offense of this nature, he’s right away listed as some kind of maniac. I had nothing to do with that girl’s murder, and I’m happy to be able to tell you that.”

“That’s good, Mr. Donatelli, because no one’s accusing you of anything. I’m sorry we have to inconvenience you this way, but—”

“That’s all right,” Donatelli said, and waved the apology aside with an open hand. “But what is it you want to know? I’d like to get this over with, I’ll be losing half a day’s pay as it is.”

“Can you tell me where you were last Saturday night?” Kling said.

“What time?”

“Between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty.”

“Yes, I know exactly where I was,” Donatelli said.

“Where was that?”

“I was bowling.”

“Where?”

“At the Avenue L Alleys.”

“Who were you bowling with?” Kling asked.

“I was bowling alone,” Donatelli said, and Kling looked up from his pad, and their eyes met for the first time.

“Alone?” Kling said.

“I know that sounds funny.”

“You always bowl alone?”

“No, but my girlfriend got sick. And I didn’t feel like sitting home, so I went alone.”

“Well, that’s okay,” Kling said, “I’m sure someone at the bowling alley will remember your being there, and can—”

“Well, it’s the first time I was ever to this particular bowling alley,” Donatelli said. “My girlfriend is the one suggested it. So I was supposed to meet her there. But she got sick.”

“Mm-huh. Well, what’s her name? I’ll give her a call and—”

“She left for California,” Donatelli said, and Kling looked up from his pad again, and Donatelli turned his eyes away.

“When did she leave for California?” Kling asked.

“Yesterday. She caught an afternoon plane.”

“What’s her name?”

“Betsy.”

“What’s her last name?”

“I don’t know her last name.”

“I thought she was your girlfriend.”

“Well, she’s only a casual friend. Actually, I met her in the park Saturday afternoon, and she said did I ever go bowling, and I said I hadn’t been bowling in a long time, so she said why don’t we bowl together tonight. So I said okay, and I arranged to meet her at the Avenue L Alleys at ten o’clock.”

“Is that what time you got there?” Kling asked. “Ten?”

“Yes. But she wasn’t there.”

“She was sick,” Kling said.

“Yes.”

“How do you
know
she was sick?”

“What? Oh, there was a message for me. When I got there, the manager said Betsy had called and left a message.”

“I see. When you came in, the manager said Betsy had left a message for James Donatelli—”

“Jimmy Donatelli.”

“Jimmy Donatelli, and the message was she was sick and couldn’t make it.”

“Yes.”

“Then the manager knows your name, right?”

“What?”

“The manager. Of the bowling alley. The Avenue L Alleys. If he took a message for you, he knows your name. He’ll remember you.”

“Well—”

“Yes, what is it, Mr. Donatelli?” Kling said.

“Well…I’m not sure he’ll remember my name,” Donatelli said. “Because it was the first time I’d ever been there, you see.”

“Mm-huh,” Kling said. “What happened when you walked in on Saturday night? It was about ten o’clock, is that what you said?”

“Yes, ten o’clock.”

“So what happened when you walked in? Did the manager ask if you were Jimmy Donatelli?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what he asked.”

“Was he asking everybody?”

“No. Oh, I see what you mean. No. Betsy had given him a description of me. Black hair and blue eyes. So when I walked in, the manager saw my hair and my eyes, and he naturally asked if I was Jimmy Donatelli.”

“What’d he say then?”

“He gave me the message. That Betsy was sick.”

“So you decided to stay and bowl alone.”

“Yes.”

“Instead of going over to see her.”

“Well, I didn’t know where she lived.”

“That’s right, you didn’t even know her last name.”

“That’s right. I
still
don’t.”

“So you stayed and bowled. What time did you leave the alleys?”

“It must’ve been around midnight.”

“You bowled till midnight. From ten to midnight. Alone.”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t it get boring?”

“Yes.”

“But you stayed there and bowled.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I went home.”

“And yesterday afternoon Betsy left for California.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, she called me.”

“Oh, she had your phone number.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she call to tell you she was sick? On Saturday night, I mean. Why’d she call the bowling alley instead?”

“I guess she tried to reach me, but I’d probably left already.”

“And you didn’t think to ask her last name, huh? When she called to say she was leaving for California.”

“Well, she was just a casual acquaintance, I figured I’d never see her again.”

“How old is she, this Betsy?”

“Oh, she’s old
enough,
don’t worry about that.”

“Because I notice on your card here—”

“Yes, you don’t have to worry about that,” Donatelli said. “I know what it says on my card, that was a long time ago. You don’t have to worry about anything like that. Besides, this was only supposed to be some innocent bowling, you know, so really there’s—”

“Let’s run over to the bowling alley, huh?” Kling said.

“What for?”

“See if the manager remembers you.”

“I doubt if he’ll remember me.”

“Well, who the hell
is
going to remember you?” Kling asked. “You’re giving me an alibi nobody can back, now what do you expect me to do, huh? I told you up front that a girl was murdered Saturday night, you know that’s why you’re in here, now what the hell do you expect me to believe, Mr. Donatelli? That you were bowling alone for two goddamn hours because you got stood up by somebody whose name you don’t know and who conveniently leaves for California the next day? Now come on, willya?”

“Well, that’s the truth,” Donatelli said.

“Steve,” Kling called. “You want to step over here a minute?”

Carella had just finished interrogating a man at his own desk, and he was standing now and stretching while waiting for the next man to be shown in. He walked to where Kling and Donatelli were sitting.

“This is Detective Carella,” Kling said. “Would you mind telling him the story you just told me?”

Some ten minutes later Donatelli changed his story.

They had moved from the squadroom to the Interrogation Room down the hall, and Donatelli was telling them about how he’d been stood up by the mysterious California-bound Betsy whom he’d met in the park on Saturday afternoon. Carella suddenly said, “
How
old did you say this girl was?”

“Oh, at least nineteen, twenty,” Donatelli said.

“How old are
you?
” Carella asked.

“I’m forty-six, sir.”

“That’s picking them kind of young, isn’t it?”

“He’s picked them younger than that,” Kling said. “Take a look at the card, Steve.”

“Well, that was a long time ago,” Donatelli said.

“Sodomy One,” Carella said.

“Yes, but that was a long time ago.”

“With a ten-year-old girl,” Carella said.

“Well—”

“I’ve got a daughter almost ten,” Carella said.

“Well.”

“So how old was this Betsy? The one you were supposed to bowl with Saturday night?”

“I told you. Nineteen, twenty. Anyway, that’s how old she
looked.
I only met her that afternoon, I didn’t ask to see her ID card.”

“Fellow with a record like yours,” Carella said, “you ought to make a
practice
of asking to see the ID.”

“Well, she looked about nineteen, twenty.”

“Yes, but how old
was
she?” Carella said.

“Well, how would I know? I never even saw her again.”

“Because she got sick, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And called the bowling alley to leave a message for you.”

“Yes.”

“And then left for California the next day.”

“Yes.”

“Where in California?”

“San Francisco, I think she said. Or maybe Los Angeles.”