by McBain, Ed
“Anybody hear this argument?”
“I don’t know what anybody heard or didn’t.”
“Anybody see you going outside with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’d you do after the fight?”
“I chased him up the street, and then I went back inside the bar and called my wife. She said I was a drunken bum and I shouldn’t bother coming home. So I started looking for a place to sleep.”
“What time was this?”
“When I called the wife? I told you. Around ten-thirty, eleven, something like that.”
“What’d you do then?”
“I left the bar and I went over my friend’s house. Larry. But he wasn’t home. So then I stopped at a liquor store and bought a pint, and I found this doorway and sat here drinking till I fell asleep. What is this, anyway? I don’t like getting stopped by cops and questioned right in the street.”
“Have you ever been questioned by the police before? In the street or anyplace else?”
“Once.”
“Why were you questioned?”
“There was a burglary in my building.”
“And the police questioned you about it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“Well, they questioned everybody about it.”
“You’ve never been involved in a burglary, have you?”
“No, no.”
“Have you ever been involved in any crime?”
“No.”
“Mr. Sully, we’re going to have to take you with us,” Carella said.
“What for?”
“Well, for one thing, we’d like to test those bloodstains on your—”
Sully came up out of the doorway in a crouch, flicking the cigarette away with his right hand and then throwing his left fist into Carella’s gut, doubling him over. Kling grabbed for Sully, but he shoved past him, knocking him flat to the wet pavement. He was sprinting for the street when the lab technician tackled him. Sully fell headlong to the sidewalk, and then began crawling and kicking toward the curb, the technician hanging onto his legs for dear life. Kling jumped up and onto Sully’s back, and then twisted his arms behind him and cuffed his wrists together. Sully kicked out once more at the lab technician, who sat bolt upright on the sidewalk now and blinked into the night. He was surprised and somewhat thrilled by his own behavior; this was the first time he’d ever physically apprehended a criminal. He could not wait to get home to tell his wife about it. Trouble was, she probably wouldn’t believe him.
It was 3:00 in the morning. In the squadroom, it was technically Sunday, but it still felt like Saturday. They did not tell Sully that a teenage girl had been murdered five blocks from where they’d found him sleeping in a doorway. They told him only that they were going to book him for assaulting two police officers, and then they said they wanted to ask him a few questions, if that was all right with him. He did not have to answer any questions if he didn’t want to.
“Questions about what?” Sully asked.
“About what you were doing in that doorway. And about why you decided to assault—”
“I didn’t assault anybody,” Sully said. “I took a poke at you, and I shoved your partner. That’s all I did.”
“That’s assault,” Carella said.
“If that’s assault, what is it when you really hurt somebody?” Sully said, and shook his head.
“Look, Mr. Sully—”
“Anyway, did I hurt you?” Sully asked. “Tell the truth, did I hurt you?”
“No, you didn’t hurt me,” Carella said.
“Then how about giving me a break, huh? I didn’t hurt anybody, so how about letting me out of here, huh? How about forgetting that assault stuff, okay? Who assaulted anybody? All I did was take a feeble little poke at—”
“Mr. Sully, would you care to answer some questions, or wouldn’t you?” Carella said.
“Sure, I’d care to answer some questions. If that’ll help you forget the assault stuff, sure I’ll answer—”
“I can’t make any promises,” Carella said.
“I realize that,” Sully said, and winked. “What kind of questions have you got?”
“Mr. Sully, the big one is why you resisted arrest back there. We identified ourselves as police officers, you knew we were police officers, yet you hit me—”
“But I didn’t hurt you,” Sully said immediately.
“You hit me nonetheless, and you knocked my partner to the sidewalk—”
“I only shoved him, he must’ve slipped,” Sully said.
“Why’d you do that, Mr. Sully?”
“Because I’m scared of cops,” Sully said.
“You’re scared of cops, so you go around slugging them and pushing them—”
“No, I panicked, that’s all. I didn’t want to end up in a police station. I’m scared of cops.”
“Is there any reason for that?”
“No reason.”
“You’re just scared of cops.”
“Yeah. That’s all. Yeah. It’s a phobia.”
“Mr. Sully, have you ever been arrested before?”
“Never.”
“Mr. Sully, we can’t check with the Identification Section till eight in the morning, but at that time we’ll find out whether there’s a yellow sheet on you—”
“No, no, I’ve never been arrested.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“Positive. I’ve had complaints made, but I’ve never been arrested.”
“What kind of complaints?”
“Complaints. People make complaints. A person gets a little drunk, people make complaints.”
“Which people?”
“Well, a person’s wife, for example. A person gets a little drunk, he slaps his wife around a little, right away she calls the cops.”
“Has your wife complained to the police about you?”
“Well, just a few times. Three or four times.”
“Because you beat her?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I beat her. I just slapped her around a little. You know. Little slapping around. Have a few drinks, slap her around a little. That’s all.”
“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 bloodstai
ns 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 wo
rking 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.
