Blood Relatives (87th Precinct)

by McBain, Ed

  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.

  “Yes, but you see, Patricia, you were so insistent about the first identification, and it turned out to be a false identification. So the defense is going to try to make something out of that, I’m sure of it. Which is why I wanted to know whether you’d ever met Mr. Armstrong. Because then, you see, in trying to cover up for your brother, you might have unconsciously picked somebody who was in some way connected with Muriel. But you don’t know Mr. Armstrong.”

  “No.”

  “Your father mentioned that Muriel went out on dates, and the boys came to pick her up at the house. Do you remember any of those boys?”

  “Some of them,” Patricia said.

  “Would any of them have had black hair and blue eyes? I’m sorry to keep harping on this, Patricia, but I’m positive the identification will be challenged, and anything we can do to help the district attorney—”

  “I don’t remember what any of those boys looked like,” Patricia said. “Some of them only went out with her once or twice. I didn’t even know their names, some of them.”

  “Well, then that’s the end of that, I guess,” Carella said, and sighed. “There’s just one other thing. Your father mentioned that Muriel kept a diary, said she wrote in it faithfully every night. You shared a room with her, did you ever see her writing in a diary?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Would you describe it to me?”

  “It was red leather, with a little strap that locked onto the front cover.”

  “When did you last see that diary, Patricia?”

  “I guess she was writing in it the night before she was killed.”

  “Last Friday night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did she do with it afterward?”

  “She locked it and put it back in her drawer. She used to carry the key on a chain around her neck.”

  “Which drawer did she keep it in?”

  “The top drawer of her dresser.”

  “It’s not there now, Patricia. Would you have any idea where it might be?”

  “No. That’s where she always kept it.”

  “Well,” Carella said, and then shrugged. “Okay, I guess that’s it. Sorry to have bothered you. Thanks a lot, Patricia.”

  The man thought of himself as royalty.

  He thought of himself as the monarch of all he surveyed. This was his city, and as the reigning potentate he was entitled to his daily tithe. He would have sent menials to collect for him, except that he so enjoyed doing it himself. Especially at this time of year. He had been born in September, guessed that had something to do with it. Baby first sees the light of day in a certain season, why, that’s got to affect the way he feels about life from that minute on. Imagine being born in February or March, coming bare-ass naked into a world so cold, doctor slapping you, drawing that needle-sharp air into your lungs, enough to make even a prince shudder! He loved making the daily rounds in September, when the skies above were invariably blue and the air was like a maiden’s kiss. Oh, how they loved him! Oh, the things they put out for him each day, his loving subjects! Oh, the surprises! He never knew what the tithe would be, never could even hope to guess what gifts he would find in alleyways or mews, curbside container or back-lot carton.

  And today—today he had found a mountain of treasure, he could not believe his eyes at first. It was not yet his birthday, and so the barbarian hordes from beyond the city walls were not required to bring a percentage of their plunder through the gates to lay at his feet. Nor was it yet Christmas, when those of the Christian faith who inhabited the lands to the south and to the west were required to bring to him in measure equal to his weight riches beyond imagination. And yet, here upon the Cos Corner plain, his subjects had strewn for his pleasure a carpet of gifts extending to the very horizon, causing him to widen his jaded old eyes in surprise and smack his toothless gums in delight. In the shadow of the bridge he danced upon the endless treasure trove, plucked a skeletal umbrella from one glittering mound, twirled it over his head, trailed a tattered pink boa on the fragrant breeze, poked and picked for trifles and fancies, tried on a pair of pale-blue gloves and a pendant with a broken stone, and then settled back into an easy chair with its stuffing showing, and in the late-afternoon light began to read a book bound in bright-red leather. On the front page of the book, he read the printed words:

  THIS IS THE DIARY OF

  And below that, written by hand on the appropriate blank line:

  The name sounded familiar, one of his loyal subjects, no doubt—Muriel Stark. Had he read another book about her adventures? Was this a sequel? Muriel Stark. And then he remembered seeing her name in a newspaper he had plucked from a garbage can just a few days ago, and he remembered, too, that she’d been murdered. He got out of the chair and tucked the diary into the pocket of his long black coat. Then, tossing the pink boa back over his shoulder, twirling the stark umbrella over his head, he went looking for a policeman.

  Carella had always believed that anyone who kept a diary did so only because he was hoping it would someday be read by another person. The lock would be picked, the strap would be cut, the pages would be opened, and the diarist would stand revealed to the prying eyes of a stranger. In all the diaries he had read during his years as a cop, he had never come across one in which the diarist seemed unaware of a potential audience. Some diarists plainly acknowledged the possibility of later readership by writing entire pages in code; presumably there were some entries they considered fit for broadcast but others they chose to keep secret. The codes were very often so simple, however, that they ceased to be codes at all—further indication that the diarist intended them to be understood all along. It did not take a mastermind, for example, to crack a code that moved each letter one letter forward in the alphabet, so that the world’s most famous epithet would appear as GVDL ZPV. Some of the codes were more complicated, but none of them were terribly difficult to decipher. Usually, the pages written in code dealt with specific sex episodes or wild fantasies. Never violence. It was rather strange. If a man committed an act of violence, the entry would appear in his diary in plain, undisguised English—”Today I broke Charlie’s head with a hammer.” But if he’d had an unusually heady sex experience, then the entry would appear in code—”In Carol’s room yesterday, I did DVOOJMJOHVT on her.” Dvoojm
johvt was neither Dutch nor Swedish. Nor was it a voodoo curse. It was merely brilliant code, the kind any diarist hoped would be licked in six seconds flat. Such was the way of all diarists. They pretended that the words they committed to the pages of their secret books were sacred and profane, but at the same time they were clearly writing for an audience.

  Muriel Stark’s diary did nothing to change Carella’s mind.

  He did not read it in the best of surroundings: a detective squadroom at ten past 5:00 on a Friday afternoon is not exactly the reading room of the public library. The diary had been delivered to him via radio motor patrol car direct from the 106th in Riverhead. The Riverhead patrolman to whom Crazy Tom had turned over the diary (“I suggest you take a look at this, my good man,” Tom had said) had checked out the first page and had been alert enough to recognize the name of a homicide victim. Suspecting a possible hoax, he had nonetheless given the diary to his sergeant, and the sergeant—also suspecting a hoax—had taken it back to the 106th, where he’d passed it on to the desk officer, who immediately sent it upstairs to the detective squadroom, where a detective/3rd named Di Angelis was at last smart enough not to add his fingerprints to the collection already there. Accepting the diary on a clean white handkerchief, he carried it into his lieutenant’s office, and the lieutenant checked out the name on the first page, and then called Homicide and was informed that the case was being handled by a Detective Stephen Louis Carella of the 87th Squad, who could be reached at Frederick 7-8024. The lieutenant from the 106th had called Carella at once, and then had offered to send the diary downtown in a radio motor patrol car. Carella had graciously accepted the offer. Now, wearing white cotton gloves and gingerly turning pages, Carella read Muriel Stark’s diary, and became more and more convinced that she (like other diarists he had known) was writing for posterity, each word chiseled on the granite of the page. It was difficult to tell whether Muriel was actually feeling anything at all, or feeling everything with the same unbearable intensity, or simply pretending to feel things for the benefit of her future unseen audience. She used no codes, unless one could consider flowery language or literary allusions codes of a sort. At times her prose was sickeningly sentimental. At other times it was morose and self-pitying. She wrote passionately of womanly yearnings and desires without the slightest indication that she understood either. Even in April, when she fell madly in love and began recording what she referred to as “the single most exciting experience in my life,” she seemed thoroughly aware of her phantom reader, and so her lover became a phantom as well, never named, never described except in language so ethereal that it vanished like mist.