by Ed McBain
“I hate stabbings,” Monoghan said.
“This ain’t a stabbing,” Monroe said.
“No, then what is it? A poisoning? Man’s laying there with his throat cut open—what is it, a hanging?”
“This is an incised wound,” Monroe said. “There’s a difference. A stabbing—” His right hands suddenly appeared from the pocket of his coat, the fist clutching an imaginary dagger. “A stabbing is when you urh, urh, urh,” he said, pushing his fist at the air. “That’s a stabbing. An incised wound is when you zzzt,” he said, and smoothly drew the imaginary dagger across the same empty air.
“To me,” Monoghan said, “a man gets cut with a knife, that’s a stabbing.”
“To me also,” Monroe said.
“Then what are you—”
“I’m talking about what the autopsy’s going to say. The autopsy’ll say this is an incised wound.”
“Yeah, but I’m talking about what I’ll tell my wife at breakfast tomorrow morning. Can I tell her we found a man who was incised to death?” Monoghan said, and burst out laughing.
Monroe started laughing, too. Vapor plumed from their mouths onto the brittle air. Their hilarity rang in the small square where the dead man lay on his back near the statue. In the distance, Carella could hear the impatient eee-wah, eee-wah, eee-wah of an ambulance siren. The dead man’s dark glasses had fallen from his head and lay shattered on the pavement beside him. Carella looked into the open scarred sockets where his eyes should have been. He turned away. The black Labrador lay on its side some four feet from the dead man. Meyer was crouched near the dog. Blood from the dead man’s open throat had run across the sidewalk and into the black hair tufted on the dog’s massive chest. The dog was still breathing. Meyer wondered what to do about the dog. He’d never had a case where there was an unconscious dog.
“What do we do about the dog?” he asked Carella.
“I was just wondering the same thing.”
“It’s a seeing-eye dog,” Monoghan said. “Maybe he saw who done it. Maybe you can ask him who done it.”
Monroe burst out laughing again. Monoghan, as originator of the witticism, modestly restrained himself a moment longer, and then joined his partner. Together they bellowed to the night.
The dog was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived. There were four RMP cars at the scene now, dome lights rotating. Barricades were going up all around the square. It was a cold night, but people were beginning to gather nonetheless and patrolmen were already urging them to go about their business—“Nothing here to see, folks, let’s keep it moving.” The intern got out of the ambulance, looked around immediately for somebody with a police shield pinned to his coat, and went to where Carella and Meyer were standing with the two Homicide dicks. He looked down at the body.
“All right to move him?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Carella said. “The ME hasn’t seen him yet.”
“Then why’d you call us?” the intern asked.
“You can wait a few minutes,” Monoghan said. “It won’t kill you.”
The intern looked at him.
“Yeah,” Monoghan said, and nodded.
“You in charge here?” the intern asked.
“I’m the one ordered the ambulance.”
“You should have waited,” the intern said flatly, and turned on his heel and walked back to where the ambulance was parked at the curb. The attendant had already opened the rear door. The intern told him to close it.
The assistant medical examiner arrived ten minutes later. By that time the intern had threatened to leave four times. Carella mollified him each time. Each time the intern said, “There are people dying in this city.” The ME was a man named Michael Horton. He was wearing a suit and tie, dark overcoat, no hat, black leather gloves. He took off the glove on his right hand before he shook hands with Carella. Then he knelt to examine the body. The man from the Photo Unit moved off and began taking pictures of the dog.
“Cute, very cute,” Horton said. “Severed the trachea, carotids, and jugular. There’s your cause of death right there. Not another mark on the man. Look at his hands. No defense cuts, nothing. Cute. Must’ve been a big blade. Just one slash, very deep, nobody did this with a penknife, I can tell you. Oh yes, very cute. No hesitation marks, clean-cut edges to the wound, help me roll him over.” Carella knelt. Together they rolled the man over. Horton looked at his back. “Nothing here, clean as a whistle,” he said. He pulled on the collar of the dead man’s coat, studied the back of his neck. “Slash runs almost through to the spine. Okay, on his back again,” he said, and he and Carella rolled the corpse over again. “I want his hands bagged, there may be scrapings under the nails. You won’t need him fingerprinted here at the scene, will you?”
“We don’t know who he is yet,” Carella said.
“I’ll wait around till you go through his pockets,” Horton said. “Pending autopsy, you can say your cause of death is the incised throat wound.”
“What’d I tell you?” Monroe said.
“What?” Horton said.
“Nothing,” Monoghan said, and scowled at Monroe.
“What about the dog?” Carella said.
“What dog?”
“Over there. You want to look at the dog, too?”
“I don’t look at dogs,” Horton said.
“I thought—”
“I’m not a veterinarian, I don’t look at dogs.”
“Well, who does?” Carella asked.
“I don’t know,” Horton said. “I have never in my years with the Medical Examiner’s Office had to examine a dead dog.”
“The dog’s still alive,” Carella said.
“Then why do you want me to look at him?”
“To see what’s wrong with him.”
“How would I know what’s wrong with him? I’m not a veterinarian.”
“The dog’s unconscious there,” Carella said. “I thought you’d take a look at him, tell us what—”
“No, that’s not my function,” Horton said. “I’m finished here, give me what I have to sign. I’ll wait while you check for identification.”
“I don’t know if the Photo Unit’s done with him yet,” Carella said.
“Well, find out, will you?” Horton said.
The intern walked over from the ambulance. He was blowing on his hands. “All right to take him now?” he asked.
“Everybody slow down, okay?” Carella said.
“I’ve been waiting here—”
“I don’t give a damn,” Carella said. “This is a homicide, let’s just cool it, okay?”
“There are people dying in this city,” the intern said.
Carella didn’t answer him. He walked over to where the police photographer was snapping pictures of the unconscious dog. “You finished with the dead man?” he asked.
“Only my Polaroids,” the photographer said.
“Well, take whatever else you need,” Carella said. “Everybody’s getting itchy.”
“I haven’t fingerprinted him yet, either.”
“The ME wants his hands bagged.”
A lab technician was already chalking an outline of the body on the pavement. The photographer waited till he was finished, and then began taking the additional pictures he needed. Flash bulbs exploded. The assistant ME blinked. At the ambulance, the attendant had opened the rear door again, in expectation. Meyer took Carella aside. They had been about to leave for a stakeout in a warehouse when the squeal came. Both men were wearing mackinaws and woolen watch caps.
“What do we do with the dog?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t know,” Carella said.
“Can’t just leave him here, can we?”
“No.”
“So what do we do?”
“Call a vet, I guess. I don’t know.” Carella paused. “Have you got a dog?”
“No. Have you?”
“Because I was wondering—maybe we ought to get a vet here right away. The dog may have been p
oisoned or something.”
“Yeah,” Meyer said, and nodded. “Let me call in, see if we can’t get Murchison to send somebody.”
“Maybe there’s somebody downtown…you know the unit that has those dogs who sniff out dope?”
“Yeah?”
“They must have a vet who takes care of those dogs, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. Let me call in, see what I can do.”
“Yeah, go ahead. I think Photo’s done with the body, I want to toss him.”
Meyer walked toward the closest RMP car, exchanged a few words with the patrolman, and then climbed into the car and reached for the hand mike. Carella walked to where the photographer was putting a fresh roll of film into his camera.
“Okay to go through his pockets?”
“He’s all yours,” the photographer said.
In the dead man’s coat pockets, Carella found only a book of matches and a subway token. In the right-hand trouser pocket, he found another subway token, a key chain with two keys on it, and $12.04 in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. In the left-hand pocket, he found a wallet with $17 in it, all singles, and a Lucite-enclosed card from the Guiding Eye School at 821 South Perry. The typewritten text on one side of the card read:
THIS WILL IDENTIFY JAMES R. HARRIS OF 3414 SOUTH SEVENTH STREET, ISOLA AND HIS GUIDE DOG STANLEY, BLACK LABRADOR RETRIEVER.
The card was signed by the director of training, a man named Israel Schwartz, and the seal of the school was in the lower right-hand corner of the card. On the reverse side of the card there was a picture of Harris and the dog in harness, and the printed text:
ISSUED FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF TRANSPORTATION COMPANIES GRANTING USE OF THEIR FACILITIES TO GUIDE DOGS ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR OWNERS. NONTRANSFERABLE.
The 3400 block was just off Mason Avenue. James Harris had been less than two blocks from home when he’d been killed. Pinned to the inside of the leather wallet was a medallion that looked Catholic to Carella. On Harris’s left wrist, there was a Braille wristwatch. On the third finger of his left hand, there was a wedding band. On his right hand, he wore a high school graduation ring. Emory High. A school in Diamondback. That was all.
The technician walked over. He squatted beside Carella and began putting the dead man’s belongings into brown paper bags, sealing them, tagging them.
“What do you suppose this is?” Carella asked, and showed him the medallion.
“I’m not religious,” the technician said.
“It’s a saint, though, don’t you think?”
“Even if I was religious,” the technician said, “there are no saints in my religion.”
“Get what you need?” Horton asked.
“Yes,” Carella said.
“I want his hands bagged,” Horton said to the technician.
“Okay,” the technician said.
“I’ll have a man at the morgue first thing tomorrow,” Carella said.
Horton nodded. “Good night,” he said, and walked off.
Carella went over to where the photographer was taking pictures of the terrain surrounding the square. “I’ll need somebody from Photo to print him in the morning,” he said. “I’ll have a man there to back up the prints and deliver them to the ID Section.”
“What time?” the photographer asked.
“Make it eight o’clock.”
“Crack of dawn.”
“What can I do?” Carella said, and gestured helplessly toward where the lab technician was already slipping a plastic bag over the dead man’s right hand.
Meyer came over from the RMP car. “Get a make?” he asked.
“His name’s James Harris,” Carella said, “lives on South Seventh. What about the dog?”
“Murchison’s sending a vet right away.”
“Good. You want to stay here while I check out this address?”
“Have you made the sketch yet?”
“Not yet.”
The intern approached just as Meyer was asking about the sketch. “Listen,” he said, “if you think we’re going to hang around while you make a goddamn drawing of the—”
“It’ll just take a few minutes,” Meyer said.
“Next time call when you’re ready for us,” the intern said. “And about that dog—”
“What about the dog?”
“Cop there said we’d have to take the dog, too. I’m not carrying any dog in the ambulance. That’s—”
“Who said you had to take him?”
“The big cop over there. The one in the black coat.”
“Monoghan?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“You don’t have to take the dog,” Meyer said. “But I can’t let you move the body till I’ve got a sketch of the scene, okay? It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”
Carella knew it would take more like a half hour. “Meyer,” he said, “I’ll be back.”
There was no light in the small entrance foyer.
Carella took a small penlight from his coat pocket and flashed it over the mailboxes. The nameplate for apartment 3C read J. HARRIS. He snapped off the light and tried the inner lobby door. It was unlocked. Inside, there was a hanging bulb on the first-floor landing, casting a yellowish glow onto the linoleum-covered steps. He started up the steps. The tenement smells were familiar to him. He had grown accustomed to them after years of working out of the 87th.
He took the stairs two at a time, not because he was in any hurry, but only because he always climbed stairs two at a time. He had started doing that when he was twelve and beginning to get lanky and long-legged. His mother used to call him a long drink of water. He’d stopped growing when he was seventeen, just short of six feet tall. He was broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted now, with the muscular leanness and effortless grace of an athlete. His hair was brown, his eyes were brown, too; they slanted downward to give his face a peculiarly Oriental look.
The tenements in the precinct territory were always either too hot or too cold. This one was suffocatingly hot with the contained steam heat of the day. He took off the woolen watch cap as he climbed the steps, stuffed it into a pocket of the mackinaw, and then unbuttoned the short coat. Behind closed doors he could hear television voices. Somewhere in the building someone flushed a toilet. He came onto the third-floor landing. There were three apartments there. Apartment 3C was at the end of the hall, farthest from the stairwell. He knocked on the door.
“Jimmy?” a woman’s voice said.
“No, ma’am, police officer.”
“Police, did you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He waited. The door opened a crack, held by a night chain. The apartment beyond was dark, he could not see the woman’s face.
“Hold up your badge,” she said.
He had the tin ready in his hand, they always asked to see it. It was pinned to the flap of a small leather case that also contained his Lucite-enclosed ID card. He showed it to her, and waited for recognition.
“Are you holding it up?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, and frowned, puzzled.
Her hand appeared in the narrow open wedge of the door. “Let me touch it,” she said, and he realized belatedly that she was blind. He held out the shield, watched as her fingers explored the blue enamel, the gold ridges set in a sunburst pattern around the city’s seal.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Detective Carella,” he said.
“I guess it’s all right,” she said, and pulled her hand back. But she did not remove the night chain. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Does James Harris live here?”
“What is it?” she asked at once.
“Mrs. Harris…” he said, and hesitated. He hated this moment more than anything in police work. There was no kind way to do it, nothing that would soften it, nothing. “Your husband is dead,” he said.
There was silence in the open wedge of the door, silence in the darkness beyond.
“What…w
hat…?”
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, please…”
He heard the night chain being removed. The door opened wide. In the light spilling from the landing, he saw that she was a white woman, blonde, slender, wearing a long belted blue robe and oversized dark glasses that covered her eyes and a goodly portion of her face as well. The apartment behind her was dark. He hesitated before entering, and she sensed this, and understood the cause at once. “I’ll put on a light,” she said, and turned and moved surely to the wall, and then along it, her left hand scarcely grazing it. She found the light switch, snapped it on. An overhead ceiling fixture illuminated the room. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
They were standing in a kitchen. This did not surprise him; the front doors to many of the precinct’s apartments opened into kitchens. Some of those kitchens were spotlessly clean, others were filthy. This one was neither. Had he not known the occupants of the apartment were blind, he would have guessed they were only careless housekeepers. She was facing him now, head tilted in the characteristic position of the blind, chin bent, waiting.
“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “your husband was murdered.”
“Murdered?” She began shaking her head. “No,” she said, “you must be…No, there’s some mistake.”
“I wish there were, Mrs. Harris.”
“But why would…no,” she said. “No, he’s blind, you see.”
He understood her reasoning completely. The thought was inconceivable. You did not slay blind men or little children. You did not strangle bluebirds or pull the wings off butterflies. Except that people did. Someone had. Her husband was lying dead on the sidewalk this very moment. Someone had slit his throat. Carella said again, very slowly this time, “He’s dead, Mrs. Harris. He was murdered.”
