Long Time No See (6 page)

Well, maybe it
had
been somebody crazy.

The city was full of bedbugs, true enough, and whereas they usually surfaced during the hot summer months, there was no law that said a lunatic couldn’t come out of the woodwork in the middle of November and kill two helpless blind people. The trouble with the crazies of the world, however, was exactly that: They were crazy. And with crazy people, you couldn’t go looking for reasons, you couldn’t start thinking about motives. With crazies, you just went along on the theory that maybe you’d stumble over a solution somehow, maybe the guy would go berserk in a crowded restaurant and you’d arrest him and he’d confess to having killed sixty-four blind people in the past month, all in different cities. One of them in London. There were a lot of crazies on television cop shows, the network reasoning being that the home viewer felt more content watching a show where a
nut
was doing all the killing, instead of a nice sane person with a motive, just like you or me. Crazies made very soothing killers. They were not much fun to track down, however, since there was no place to start and no place to go. All you could do was hope, and hope is the thing with feathers.

So they went to see Charlie Clarke, who at least had a
possible
reason for wanting Jimmy and Isabel Harris out of the way. In the land of the blind, and so on. And in the absence of any solid suspects, you grabbed for the nearest floating straw, hoping it would take on the dimensions of a lifeboat or a log.

The building on Holman was similar to the one in which Sophie lived. Lettered in white paint on successive risers of the front stoop were the warnings N
O
L
OITERING
and N
O
S
TOOP
B
ALL
. They went into the outer lobby, where a row of broken mailboxes was on the wall to their left. There was a nameplate for Charles C. Clarke in the box for apartment 22. The upper half of the inner-lobby door was a piece of frosted glass that had a crack running diagonally across it from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right. The door was unlocked. The ground-floor landing stank of piss and wine. There were no lights. Carella turned on his flash, and together they climbed the steps.

“What do you suppose the C is for?” Meyer asked.

“What C?”

“Charles C. Clark,” Meyer said.

“Oh. Clarence?”

“My guess is Cyril.”

“No, either Clarence or Clyde.”

“Cyril,” Meyer said.

The lightbulb on the second-floor landing had not been smashed or pilfered. Carella snapped out his flash. The metal numerals on Clarke’s door were painted the same brown color as the door itself. There were three visible keyways on the door; Charlie Clarke was no fool. There was also a metal bell twist just below the numbers. Carella took it between his thumb and forefinger, and gave it a twirl. The sound from within the apartment was sharp and jangling. He tried it again. He looked at Meyer, and was about to try it another time when a door at the end of the hall opened. A small boy looked out into the hallway. He was perhaps eight years old. He had brown skin and brown eyes, and he was letting his hair grow into an Afro. He was wearing bedroom slippers and a plaid bathrobe belted at the waist.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Carella said.

“You looking for Mr. Clarke?”

“Yes,” Carella said. “Do you know where he is?”

“At the gym. He’s got a prizefighter, did you know that?”

“Name of Black Jackson,” Carella said.

“You
did
know, huh?”

“Yep.”

“What’s his middle name?” Meyer asked.

“Black Jackson’s? He ain’t
got
no middle name,” the boy said. “Black
Jackson
, that’s his name,” he said, and raised his fists in a boxer’s classic pose. “I got the flu,” he said. “I’m s’posed to be in bed.”

“You better get back there, then,” Meyer said. “Where’s the gym?”

“Up on Holman.”

“What’s Mr. Clarke’s middle name?”

“Don’t know,” the boy said, and grinned and closed the door.

They started down the steps again. On the first-floor landing, Carella turned on his flashlight again. A huge black woman wearing a green cardigan sweater over a flowered housedress was standing at the foot of the steps as they came down to the ground floor. Her hands were on her hips.

“What’s the heat, Officers?” she asked. They had not identified themselves, but she knew fuzz when she saw it.

“No heat,” Carella said.

“Who you lookin for, then?”

“None of your business, lady,” Meyer said. “Go back in your apartment, okay?”

“I’m the super in this building, I want to know what you two men are doing here.”

“We’re from Housing and Development,” Meyer said, “checking on whether there’re lightbulbs on every landing. Go put in some lightbulbs or we’ll be back with a warrant.”

“You ain’t from no Housing and Development,” the woman said. Meyer and Carella were already in the outer lobby. They did not know whether or not Charlie Clarke had done anything, but they did not want a telephone call warning him that the police were on the way. Behind them, they heard the super saying, “Housing and Development, sheeeee-it.”

Charlie Clarke was a dapper little man wearing a yellow turtleneck shirt and a tan cardigan sweater over it. Dark-brown trousers. Brown patent leather shoes. Cigar holder clamped in one corner of his mouth, dead cigar in it. They found him on the second floor of the gym on Holman and Seventy-eighth, elbows on the ring canvas, watching a pair of black fighters sparring. One of the fighters was huge and flatfooted. The other was smaller but more agile. He kept dancing around the bigger fighter, hitting him with right jabs. All around the gym other fighters were skipping rope and pounding the big bags. In one corner a small pale man who looked like a welterweight kept a punching bag going with monotonously precise rhythm. Carella and Meyer walked over to the ring. Clarke had been described to them downstairs. The description proved to be entirely accurate, right down to the dead cigar in his mouth.

“Mr. Clarke?” Carella asked.

“Yeah, shh,” he said. “What the fuck you
waitin’
on, man?” he shouted to the rink. The smaller, more agile fighter stopped dancing around the larger one, and dropped his hands in exasperation. The back of his sweatshirt was lettered with the name Black Jackson. “You
never
gonna knock the man out, you keep jabbin’ all the time,” Clarke said. “You had plenty opportunity for the left hand, now what were you waitin’ on, man, would you tell me?”

“I was waitin’ on an opening,” Jackson said.

“Man, there was openings like a hooker’s Saturday night,” Clarke said.

“Ain’t no sense throwin’ the left till there’s an opening,” Jackson said.

“You want to be the heavyweight champ of the world, or you want to be a dance star?” Clarke asked. “All I see you doin’ is dancin’ and jabbin’, dancin’ and jabbin’. You want to knock down a man the size of Jody there, you got to
hit
him, man. You got to knock his fuckin’
head
off, not go dancin’ with him.” He turned abruptly from the ring and said, “What is it, Officers?”

“What you want us to do now?” Jackson asked.

“Go work out on the bag a while,” Clarke said over his shoulder.

“Which bag?”

“The big one.”

Jackson turned and began walking toward the far side of the ring. The larger fighter followed him. Together they ducked through the ropes. A loudspeaker erupted into the sweaty rhythm of the huge echoing room. “Andrew Henderson, call your mother. Andrew Henderson, call your mother.”

“So what is it?” Clarke asked.

“Jimmy and Isabel Harris,” Carella said.

“You’re kidding me,” Clarke said. “What’ve
I
got to do with that?”

“Is it true you asked Sophie Harris to marry you?”

“That’s right,” Clarke said. “Listen, what is this, man? Is this you’re lookin’ for information about somebody you think
done
this thing, or is it you’re tryin’ to hang it on me? Cause, man, from what I read in the papers, that boy was killed at around seven-thirty last night, and I was right
here
then, man, workin’ my fighter.”

“Don’t get excited,” Meyer said.

“I ain’t excited,” Clarke said. “I just know some things. You don’t get to be sixty years old in Diamondback without gettin’ to know a few things.”

“What are these things you know, Mr. Clarke?”

“I know when a black man’s been killed, the cops go lookin’ for
another
black man. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll give you six-to-five it’s cause I’m black.”

“You’d lose,” Carella said.

“Then enlighten me,” Clarke said.

“We’re here because you asked Sophie Harris to marry you, and you know she’s contingent beneficiary of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy.
That’s
why we’re here.”

“You think I killed those two kids so I could latch onto the twenty-five, is that it?”

“What time did you get here last night?”

“Shit, man, I got half a mind—”

“If you’re clean, we’ll be out of here in three minutes flat. Just tell us when you got here and when you left.”

“I was here at seven and I left at midnight.”

“Anybody see you?”

“I was workin’ with Warren and a sparring partner.”

“Warren?”

“Warren Jackson. My boy.”

“Who was the sparring partner? Same guy there?”

“No, a kid named Donald Rivers. I don’t see him around, I don’t think he’s here right now.”

“Anybody else?”

“Only every fighter and manager in Diamondback. Warren’s got a fight Tuesday night. I been workin’ his ass off. Ask anybody in the gym—pick anybody you see on the floor—ask them was I here workin’ the boy last night. Seven o’clock to midnight. Had ring time from eight to nine, you can check that downstairs. Rest of the time I had him runnin’ and jumpin’ and punchin’ the bags and the whole damn shit.”

“Where’d you go when you left here?” Meyer said.

“Coffee shop up the street. I don’t know the name of it, everybody from the gym rolls in there. It’s right on the corner of Holman and Seventy-sixth. They know me there, you ask them was I in there last night.”

“We’ll ask them,” Meyer said. “What’s your middle name?”

“None of your fuckin’ business,” Clarke said.

They checked around the gymnasium and learned that at least half a dozen people had seen Clarke on the premises the night before, between the hours of 7:00 and midnight. They checked with the owner of the coffee shop up the street, and he told them Clarke and his fighter came in shortly after midnight last night, sat around talking till at least 1:00 in the morning, maybe 1:30. According to the coroner’s report, Jimmy Harris had been slain sometime between 6:30 and 7:30
P.M.
He had been able to pinpoint the time so narrowly because the body was discovered almost immediately after the murder; rigor mortis, in fact, had not yet set in. With Isabel Harris, the latitude was wider; the coroner guessed she’d been killed sometime between 10:00
P.M.
and 1:00
A.M.
In order to have killed Jimmy in Hannon Square at 6:30, and then get uptown to the gym in Diamondback by 7:00, Charlie Clarke had to have moved faster than a speeding bullet. The logistics were impossible. Nor could he have got downtown again to the Harris apartment during the time span the coroner had estimated for Isabel’s murder.

This meant nothing.

In this city you could get somebody killed for $50. There was a possible $25,000 at stake here, and for a tenth of that you could hire a battalion of goons. They did not yet know whether the lab boys had lifted any good prints in the Harris apartment. In the meantime, and against that eventuality, they decided to request an I.D. run on Charles C. Clarke in the morning. It was almost 8:00 when they left Diamondback. Carella dropped Meyer at the nearest subway station, and then drove home to Riverhead.

The front door to the house was locked.

Night like tonight, the goddamn door
would
be locked and he’d have to stand out there in the cold fumbling for keys. He rang the doorbell, and indeed began fumbling for keys, muttering under his breath. His fingers were stiff, they rummaged awkwardly through the loose change in his right-hand pocket. He took out his key ring. There were enough skeleton keys on it to have convicted a burglar of possession of tools. The house was a huge old rambling monster near Donnegan’s Bluff, purchased by the Carellas shortly after the twins were born, a house that had undoubtedly quartered a large family and an army of servants in the good old days. These were the bad new days, however. It was only Fanny who finally opened the door for him.

“Well, well, it’s himself,” she said.

Fanny was their housekeeper, a big woman in her late fifties, wearing a white blouse and bright-green slacks that spread wide over 140 pounds of girth, bleached red hair flaming like neon, mellow Irish brogue spilling from her lips like aged whiskey. “I thought you’d never get here, to tell the truth of it,” she said.

“Fanny,” he said, “I’m cold and I’m hungry.”

“Don’t be threatenin’ me, y’bully,” she said. “Theodora’s in the living room. Come in, you’ll catch your death.”

“If you’ll step out of the doorway…”

“Aye, I’ll step out of the doorway,” she said, and moved aside to let him in.

She had come to the Carellas years ago, as a month-long gift from Teddy’s father, who’d felt his daughter needed at least that much time to recuperate after the birth of twins. In those days Fanny’s hair was blue, and she wore a pince-nez and weighed ten pounds less than she did now. The prepaid month had gone by all too quickly, and Carella had regretfully informed her that he could not afford a full-time housekeeper on his meager salary. But Fanny was an indomitable broad who had never had a family of her own, and who rather liked this one. So she told Carella he could pay her whatever he might scrape up for the time being, and she would supplement her income with night jobs, she being a trained nurse and a very healthy woman to boot. Carella had flatly refused. Fanny had put her hands on her hips and said, “Are you going to throw me out into the street, is that it?” and they’d argued back and forth, and Fanny had stayed. She was still with them.

“Theodora’s in the living room,” she said again. “Shall I bring you a drink, or are you
still
on duty?”

“I’d like a scotch and soda, please, very strong,” Carella said, and took off his coat and hung it on the hallway rack.

“You should wear a hat, this weather,” Fanny said.

“I don’t like hats,” Carella said.

“Gentlemen wear hats,” Fanny said, and went out into the kitchen, where there was a wet bar recessed into what had long ago been a dumbwaiter shaft. In the spare room, the ten-year-old twins were watching television. Carella stopped in the doorway and said, “Hi.”

“Hi, Dad,” April said.

“Hi,” Mark said.

“No kisses?”

“Wait till she wins the money,” April said.

“Who?”

“Shh, Dad, there’s five thousand dollars at stake here,” Mark said.

“See you later,” Carella said, and started toward the living room, and then turned back and said, “Have you eaten yet?”

“Yes, Dad, shhhh,” April said.

Carella went down the corridor to the living room. Teddy was sitting by the fire. She had not heard the doorbell ringing, she had not heard the conversation with Fanny or the twins, she did not now hear her husband approaching; Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute. She sat by the fire, looking into the flames, the firelight touching her midnight hair with reds and oranges and yellows, as though it had been sprinkled with sequins. He hesitated in the doorway, watching her face, the dark luminous brown eyes staring into the flames, the full mouth and finely sculpted cheekbones. As always, his heart soared. He stood watching her speechlessly, feeling as he had the very first moment he’d met her. That would never change. He could guarantee that. In a world he sometimes did not understand, he understood completely his love for Teddy. He went to her. She sensed his approach now, and turned, and her face changed in the tick of an instant from meditative privacy to shared intimacy. There was nothing hidden on that face, her eyes and her mouth declared all her tongue could not. She rose from the easy chair and went into his arms. He held her close. He stroked her hair. He gently kissed her lips.

Her hands fluttered with questions, which he answered with his own hands, using the sign language she had taught him, occasionally lapsing into speech, her eyes searching his mouth. When Fanny came into the room with his drink, she did not interrupt their animated conversation. He told her about the second victim, and Teddy’s eyes clouded, and she watched as his hands and his face and his voice defined his outrage. He told her about Sophie Harris and Charles C. Clarke, whose middle name they still did not know, and Maloney from Canine, and she asked him what would happen to the dog, and he said he didn’t know. They ate dinner alone in the wood-paneled dining room, and later the children came to be kissed before going off to bed. April said the lady on television had blown it. Mark said any dope could have answered the question. April, not realizing what she was saying, said, “
I
couldn’t have answered it,” and they all burst out laughing.

It was almost 9:30, it had been a long day. They sipped their coffee in silence, holding hands across the table. Insidiously, the case began to intrude again. Carella found himself hurrying through the last of his coffee. When he rose abruptly from the table, Teddy looked up at him in puzzlement.

“I’ve got to call this guy Preston,” he said.

She waited, her eyes watching his mouth.

“Why don’t you go upstairs, get ready for bed?”

Still she waited.

“I won’t be a minute,” he said, and grinned boyishly.

She nodded briefly and reached up with one hand to touch his face. He kissed the palm of her hand, and then nodded, too, and went out into the living room to dial Preston’s number from the telephone there.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“Mr. Preston?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Carella, I called earlier.”

“Yes, Mr. Carella.”

“We’re investigating the murders of Isabel and Jimmy Harris, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“
Now
, do you mean?”

“If it’s convenient.”

“Well…Yes, I suppose so.”

“When I spoke to Mrs. Harris yesterday, she told me she worked for your company.”

“That’s right.”

“In the mailroom.”

“Yes.”

“How long had she been working for you, Mr. Preston?”

“Two, three years.”

“What were her duties?”

“She inserted our catalogues into envelopes.”

“Who else worked in the mailroom with her?”

“She worked there alone. Another girl typed up the labels and put them on the envelopes. But that was in the outer office.”

“What’s the other girl’s name?”

“Jennie D’Amato. She also answers phones and serves as receptionist.”

“Would you know her address?”

“Not offhand. If you call the office on Monday, she’ll give it to you.”

“How many people do you employ, Mr. Preston?”

“There’s just myself and three girls in the office—two without Isabel.”

“What’s the third girl’s name?”

“Nancy Houlihan, she’s my bookkeeper.”

“Do you employ anyone who works outside the office?”

“Yes, at the warehouse.”

“Where’s the warehouse?”

“About ten blocks from the office. On the river.”

“Who do you employ there?”

“Just two men to make up the orders and pack them and ship them.”

“So the way the operation works…”

“It’s direct mail,” Preston said. “We send out the advertising matter, and when we receive orders, they’re filled at the warehouse. It’s a very small operation.”

“These two men working at the warehouse—did they ever come up to the office?”

“On Fridays. To pick up their paychecks.”

“Would they have had any contact with Isabel Harris?”

“They knew her, yes.”

“What are their names?”

“Alex Carr and Tommy Runniman.”

“Would you know their addresses?”

“You’ll have to get those on Monday. Just call the office anytime after nine.”

“Mr. Preston, how did Isabel get along with the other employees?”

“Fine.”

“No problems?”

“None that I knew of.”

“How did
you
get along with her?”

“Me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I hardly knew her.”

“You said she’d been working there for two, three years…”

“That’s right. But I rarely had any personal contact with the employees.”

“How’d you happen to hire her, Mr. Preston?”

“I’d been thinking of hiring someone handicapped for a long time. The job doesn’t require eyesight. It’s merely inserting catalogues into envelopes.”

“How much were you paying her, Mr. Preston?”

“She was being paid comparable wages.”

“Comparable?”

“To the other girls.”

“Not more?”

“
More
?”

“Yes, sir. I’m trying to determine whether anyone would have had a reason for bearing a grudge or—”

“No, she wasn’t paid more, comparably, than the other girls.”

“Sir, there’s that word ‘comparably’ again.”

“What I’m saying, Mr. Carella, is that you can’t expect someone working in the mailroom to be paid the same wages as a bookkeeper or a typist, that’s what I’m saying. Comparably, she was being paid what a
sighted
person doing her sort of work would be paid. Neither more nor less. The other two girls would have had no reason for enmity.”

“How about the men from the warehouse?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mrs. Harris was an attractive woman. Did either of them ever make a play for her?”

“I have no idea.”

“But they came to the office every Friday to pick up their paychecks.”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you see them on those occasions?”

“Nancy made out their checks. Nancy Houlihan, my bookkeeper.”

“But you told me they knew Mrs. Harris.”

“Yes, I assume they did.”

“Well…Did you ever see them talking to her?”

“Yes.”

“But you wouldn’t know whether either of them made advances—”

“No, I—”

“And were rebuffed—”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Mr. Preston, I think you know what I’m looking for. I’m trying to find out whether anyone Isabel worked with would have the slightest possible reason for—”

“Yes, I know exactly what you’re looking for, but I can’t help you.”

“Okay,” Carella said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Preston. I’ll call the office on Monday for those addresses.”

“Fine.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night,” Preston said, and hung up.

Carella sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for several moments. In the Riverhead house, just as in the squadroom, he had phone books for all five sections of the city. He lifted the Isola directory from the floor under the desk and opened it to the D’s. He knew he wouldn’t get the right time from Nancy Houlihan, but he was eager for more information, and he figured he might stand a chance with Jennie D’Amato. There were seventy-four D’Amatos in the Isola directory, and none of them were Jennies. He opened the Riverhead book. Twelve D’Amatos, no Jennies. In Calm’s Point, there were twenty-nine D’Amatos, no Jennies, but a J on Pierce Avenue. He jotted down the number. In the Majesta book, he found another J. D’Amato, and wrote down that number as well. He did not bother looking through the Bethtown directory. It was his contention that no one but retired cops lived in Bethtown, even now that a bridge had been put in. He dialed the Calm’s Point number first, and immediately hit pay dirt.

“Hello?”

“Miss D’Amato, please.”

“This is Miss D’Amato.”

“Jennie D’Amato?”

“Yes?” Tentative, cautious.

“This is Detective Carella, I believe I spoke to you earlier today.”

“Oh.” Pause. The pause lengthened. “Yes.”

“This
is
the woman who works at Prestige Novelty?”

“Yes.”

“Miss D’Amato, I wonder if you can tell me a little about Isabel Harris.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m primarily interested in how she got along with the other people in the office.”

“Fine.”

“No arguments or anything?”

“No. Well…”

“Yes?”

“Well, the usual.”

“What do you mean by ‘the usual’?”

“Well, you know how it is in an office, especially a small one. There’d be irritations every now and then, but nothing—”

“What sort of irritations?”

“Oh, I can hardly remember. Someone would answer the phone and forget to take a message. Or someone would send out for coffee and forget to ask if everybody in the office wanted anything—like that.”

“You’re the one who normally answers the phone, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“But sometimes other people did, and they forgot to take messages.”

“Well, that only happened once.”

“Who answered the phone and forgot to take a message?”

“Isabel.”

“And who got irritated?”

“Well…Nancy. Because it was her boyfriend who’d called, and Isabel just forgot to mention it.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Last month sometime.”

“Were there any
recent
arguments?”

“No, not really.”

“What about sending out for coffee? You said—”

“That was me. I sent out for coffee one day and forgot to ask Nancy if she wanted anything, so she blew her stack. That wasn’t Isabel.”

“How about the two fellows who work at the warehouse?”

“Alex and Tommy, yes.”

“She get along with them?”

“Oh yes. As a matter of fact, Alex was always kidding her about wanting…well, you know.”