Fiddlers

by Ed McBain

  ‘… and he asked her to dance… what was his name, I can’t imagine what’s wrong with my memory these days! Held out his hand to her. “Would you care to dance?” he said, such a wuss. Alicia looked up at him. Ray Charles was on the record player, I remember now. Looked him dead in the eye. Said, “Get lost, faggot.” Which he deserved. I mean, everybody said he was.

  ‘He just turned and walked away. But you should have seen the look on his face. If looks could kill

  Geraldine shook her head.

  ‘Walked that whole long distance back across the rec hall again, went out the door, and out of the church for all I know. Never followed Alicia around again, you can bet on that. Never. I wonder whatever happened to him. Such a wuss. I can’t even remember his name.’

  ‘Mrs. Jennings,’ Parker said, ‘try to remember his name.’

  ‘Chuck Something?’ she said.

  9.

  THE DEPARTMENT of Veterans Affairs provided a list of local Vietnam vets who’d served in either D Company (or perhaps B Company, depending on which relative you believed) of the 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division during Operation Ala Moana. But getting a straight story from any of them wasn’t as easy as Meyer and Carella had hoped.

  Some were reluctant to talk about the worst experience they’d ever had in their lives. All of them were remembering events that had taken place close to forty years ago. Obscured by the fog of war, separate encounters took on almost surreal significance…

  ‘… the jungles in Nau Nghia Province are thick and dense, you never know who’s behind what tree, you can’t tell which trail Charlie has already booby-trapped…”

  ‘… Max Sobolov, yeah, he was our sergeant. And it was D Company, D for Dog, not B, you got that wrong …”

  ‘This was only thirty miles northwest of Saigon, but you’d think you were in the heart of Africa someplace…’

  ‘… something to do with a Vietnamese woman, Sobolov and this kid in his squad. They were taking her back for questioning…’

  ‘… the stuff was stashed in this village, these huts they had, you know? Buried in these huts. AT mines, and rice, and sugar, and pickled fish, all therefor Charlie to use whenever he dropped in…’

  * * * *

  Mark was in his room watching television when Teddy walked in on him at four o’clock that Monday afternoon. April was at a sleepover; Teddy felt perfectly safe talking to her son. She went immediately to the television set, turned it off, stood in front of the screen facing him, and began signing at once, as if she’d been preparing for this a long while, the words tumbling from her hands in a rush.

  Your father and I have been talking, she signed. You have to tell us what’s going on.

  ‘Nothing, Mom.’

  Then why’d you burst into tears on the way home from practice yesterday?

  ‘It’s just that April and I aren’t as close anymore,’ he said, ‘that’s all. Mom, really, it’s nothing.’

  Then why couldn’t you just tell that to Dad?

  ‘April and I need to work it out for ourselves,’ Mark said, and shrugged. ‘Kids, you know?’ he said, and tried a lame smile.

  Teddy looked him dead in the eye.

  There’s something you’re not telling us, she signed. What is it, Mark?

  ‘Nothing.’

  Has her friend stolen something else?

  ‘No. I don’t know. April hasn’t said anything about…”

  Because if that girl is a thief…

  ‘It isn’t that, Mom.’

  Then what the hell is it, Mark! Teddy signed, her eyes blazing, her fingers flying. Tell me right this minute!

  Mark hesitated.

  M-a-a-rk, she signed, her hands stretching the simple word into a warning.

  ‘They were doing pot,’ he said.

  Who?

  Eyes and fingers snapping.

  ‘Lorraine and the older boys.’

  Where?

  ‘At the party last Tuesday. Some of the other girls, too.’

  April? Teddy asked at once.

  ‘I don’t know. They were all in Lorraine’s bedroom. The door was locked.’

  Was April in there with them?

  Again, he hesitated.

  Was she?

  ‘Yes, Mom.’

  Are you sure about this, Mark?

  ‘I know what it smells like, Mom.’

  Teddy nodded.

  Thanks, son, she signed.

  ‘Did I just get her in trouble again?’ Mark asked.

  No, you just got her out of it, Teddy signed, and hugged her son close, and kissed the top of his head.

  Then she went directly into her own bedroom, and opened her laptop there, and immediately e-mailed her husband at work.

  * * * *

  ‘Patricia?’

  ‘Hey, hi, Oll!’

  ‘How you doing?’

  ‘Great. I just got home a few minutes ago. Whussup?’

  ‘I’ve been doing some thinking. You know, it’s been frantic here, these Glock Murders…”

  ‘Oh, I’ll bet.’

  ‘So I thought… let me try this on you… I may not have the time to go shopping for the kind of dinner I’d like to make for you this Saturday…”

  ‘Oh sure, Oil. You want to make it some other night?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. I thought if you could come over here for brunch Sunday morning… instead of dinner the night before… it would be a lot simpler. I could make pancakes for us…”

  ‘Yummy, I love pancakes. But that’s the Fourth, isn’t it? Sunday?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, suddenly thinking he was making a wrong move here. ‘Yes, it is. Will that be a problem?’

  ‘No, no. In fact, we could hang out together all day, and then go see the fireworks at night.’

  ‘That’s just what I thought. We’d make it real casual, you know. Blue jeans. Like that.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Patricia said. ‘Just a nice, easy, relaxed Sunday.’

  ‘And fireworks later,’ Ollie reminded her.

  ‘Lo-fat pancakes, though, right?’

  ‘Right, lo-fat.’

  ‘Terrific. Good idea, Oil. What time did you have in mind?’

  ‘Eleven o’clock all right?’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll see you then.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good, Patricia. Casual, right? Blue jeans.’

  ‘Blue jeans, got it. See you then.’

  ‘See you, Patricia,’ he said, and hung up.

  His heart was pounding.

  He felt as if he’d just planned a candy store holdup.

  * * * *

  On and on the veterans’ stories went…

  ‘… this wasn’t my squad, it was another squad in D Company. You know how this works? Or do you? There’s your company, has two to four platoons in it, and then there’s your platoon, has two to four squads. There are only nine, ten soldiers in a squad, you get it? This kid who shot the woman uas in another squad…’

  ‘… we flushed out seven bunkers and two tunnels in the area just to the rear of us. Captured twelve 81-millimeter rounds and 11,200 small-arms rounds, more than a ton of rice, and a Russian-made radio…”

  ‘… an encircling maneuver, like in a vilsweep, we done them all the time. Attack at first light, catch Charlie by surprise. But they knew we were coming, they’d lined the trail with rifles and machine guns, and we walked right into it…”

  ‘… Sobolov took a mortar explosion should’ve killed him. Instead, it only blinded him.

  * * * *

  It wasn’t until that Monday afternoon, at a little past five o’clock, that Meyer and Carella located the lieutenant who’d been in command of the almost two hundred men in D Company during the Ala Moana offensive in December of 1966, almost thirty-nine years ago. His name was Danny Freund. Now sixty-one, with graying hair and a noticeable limp…

  ‘My war souvenir,’ he told them.

  … he was enjoying a day away from his law office, supervising his two
grandchildren in the park. On nearby swings, the kids reached for the sky while Freund recalled a time he’d much rather have forgotten.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve learned about Sobolov,’ he said, ‘but there aren’t many of us lamenting his murder, I can tell you that. He was your stereotypical top sergeant, believe me. A complete son of a bitch.’

  ‘Some of the men in your company mentioned an incident with a Vietnamese woman,’ Meyer said. ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘It was all about a court martial that never happened. Max brought this kid up on…”

  ‘What kid?’

  ‘Twenty-year-old kid in his squad. Blew a Vietnamese woman away. Sobolov brought charges on an Article 32. That’s the equivalent of a civilian grand jury. Convened to determine if a crime was committed and if it’s reasonable to assume the person charged committed the crime. The kid claimed he’d been ordered to shoot the woman. Claimed Sobolov had ordered him to do it. The judges refused to take the matter to the next step. Instead, they

  ‘The next step?’

  ‘They refused to recommend a court martial.’

  ‘So they ruled in favor of the kid, right?’ Carella said.

  ‘Well, that depends on how you look at it, I guess. Conviction in a court martial would have meant a punitive discharge. Either a DD or a BCD. Instead, the judges ruled…”

  He saw the puzzled looks on their faces.

  ‘Dishonorable Discharge,’ he explained. ‘Bad Conduct Discharge. Either one would have meant a serious loss of benefits. Instead, the kid got what’s called an OTH - an Other Than Honorable discharge. The OTH entailed a loss of benefits, too. Most significantly the GI Bill -which would have paid for his college education.’

  Freund shook his head, cast an eye on his soaring grandchildren, yelled, ‘Boys! Time to go!’ and rose from the bench. ‘Sobolov got off scot-free,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe not. He came out of the war blind. But if, in fact, he gave the order that took that young woman’s life, he deserved whatever he got. Even before Ala Moana, he was smoking pot day and night. Couldn’t function without his daily toke. A bully, a prick, and a hophead, that’s what Sergeant Max Sobolov was. When that mortar shell took his eyes, everyone in the platoon cheered. We’d have cheered louder if it had killed him.’

  This soldier he brought up on charges,’ Meyer said. ‘Could you remember his name?’

  ‘Charlie Something. Like the enemy.’

  ‘Charlie what?’

  ‘Let me think a minute,’ Freund said, and started walking toward the swings, the detectives beside him. Oh, sure,’ he said, ‘it was…”

  * * * *

  Jennifer Purcell lived in a low-rise apartment building in what used to be an Italian neighborhood in Riverhead. Now largely Puerto Rican, the area was enjoying a sort of vogue among younger people because of its proximity to the city proper: Forbes Avenue was a scant twenty minutes by subway to the heart of downtown Isola.

  At five thirty that Monday, Jennifer admitted Hawes to her apartment and immediately apologized for its messy appearance. ‘I work the day shift on Mondays,’ she said, ‘we get a big lunch crowd. I haven’t had a chance to tidy up yet.’ She further explained that she was a waitress at a restaurant called Paulie’s downtown, and apologized again for not being able to talk to him this morning, but she was truly on her way out when he called.

  She was, as Hawes had surmised from her telephone voice, a woman in her late twenties. Wearing jeans and a cotton sweater, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, no makeup, not even lipstick. Plain. A trifle overweight. They sat at her kitchen table, drinking coffee.

  ‘Do you think you’ll find who killed her?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re working on it,’ Hawes said.

  ‘The newspapers are saying it was a serial killer. That she was just another random victim.’

  ‘Well, the newspapers,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been following the case. Not because she’s my grandmother. In fact, I never met the woman. She just up and left, you know. Never even tried to contact her own children again. That’s odd, don’t you think? A woman leaving her own children that way? Ten and eight years old? Never trying to reach them again? Talk to them even? I think that’s very odd. My father despised her.’

  ‘Was he the oldest? Or the youngest?’

  ‘The oldest. He was ten when she left.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘No, he died of cancer twelve years ago, when he was forty-eight. That’s very young. It runs in the family, you know. My grandfather died of cancer, too. Luke. He was much older, though, this was only seven years ago. He was seventy-six years old. I blame it all on her.’

  ‘On…

  ‘My grandmother. Helen. Leaving them the way she did. Cancer is directly traceable to stress, you know. My grandfather was a young man when she left the family, thirty-three, that’s very young. The boys were only ten and eight. He raised them alone, a single father, never remarried. The boys were very close when they were young… well, you can imagine, no mother. Then… well… my father died so young, you know. I didn’t see much of my uncle after that. He just sort of… drifted away.’

  ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘Oh yes. Remarried, in fact. Living in Florida. A Jewish man.’ She hesitated a moment, looked down at her hands folded in her lap now. ‘There’s not much of a family anymore, I suppose. I’m an only child, you know. The last time I saw my uncle was when he came to my grandfather’s funeral seven years ago. He seemed so… I don’t know… distant. He never married, bought himself a little house out on Sands Spit. He was working in a shoe store then, selling shoes. He was always a salesman, ever since he got out of the Army. He was in Vietnam, you know. He used to sell records after the war. In a music store, you know. He used to bring me records all the time. I liked him a lot. I think she did everyone great harm back then. I don’t think any of them ever recovered from it. Well, cancer killed two of them. That’s stress, you know. Cancer. Helen Reilly. I didn’t even know her name until I read about her murder in the paper. I mean, I didn’t know this was my own grandmother until I read she was the former Helen Purcell. Then it clicked. And… I have to tell you… I was glad. I was glad someone killed her.’

  The small kitchen went silent.

  ‘I know that’s a terrible thing to say, may God forgive me. But it’s what I felt.’

  ‘Have you talked to your uncle about it?’

  ‘About… ?’

  ‘His mother’s death. Helen Reilly’s death.’

  ‘No. I told you, the last time I saw him…”

  ‘Yes, but I thought you might have spoken afterward. When you heard about the murder…”

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you know where I can reach him?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I think he still lives out on the Spit, but I don’t have the address, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Can you tell me his name?’ Hawes said.

  ‘My uncle’s name? Well, of course I…”

  ‘I know it’s Purcell,’ Hawes said. ‘But what’s his first name?’

  ‘Charles,’ she said. ‘Uncle Charles.’

  * * * *

  Carella had just finished reading Teddy’s e-mail when the phone on his desk rang. He sat stunned and shocked for a moment, staring at his computer screen, before reaching for the receiver.

  ‘Eighty-seventh Squad,’ he said. ‘Carella.’

  ‘Steve?’

  Faint accent.

  ‘Who’s this, please?’ he said.

  ‘Il tuopatrigno,’ the voice said. ‘Your stepfather. Luigi.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Carella said at once.

  ‘Qualcosa non va? No, what could be wrong? Am I calling at a bad time? What time is it there?’

  ‘Almost six,’ Carella said.

  ‘It’s almost midnight here,’ Luigi said. ‘Your mother’s already asleep.’

  Carella waited. Was something wrong? Why this call from Milan? Where it was
almost midnight.

  ‘Is she okay?’ he asked. ‘Mom.’

  ‘Yes, fine. She met me for lunch in town today, and then she went shopping. She came home exhausted. We had a late dinner and she went straight to bed.’ He hesitated. ‘I thought I’d call to see come va, how everything it goes there. I’m not bothering you, am I?’

  ‘No, no. Bothering me? No. Shopping for what?’

  ‘Things we still need for the apartment. Not furniture, I manufacture furniture, we have furniture up to our eyeballs, is how you say it? But towels, sheets, pots and pans, all that. We bought this new apartment, you know…”

  We, Carella noticed. We bought this new apartment. Not I bought it. He considered this a good sign. A partnership. Like his own with Teddy.

  ‘… on the Via Ariosto, near the park. Eight rooms, plenty for when you and the children come to visit, eh? Also, this weekend, we’ll be driving to Como to look at a rental for the summer - if it’s not already too late to get one. The lake is about an hour from here, I’ll be able to go there for weekends and for the entire month of August, when I take my holiday from the office. Which would be a good time for you to visit with the children, no? It will be big enough for all of us, I’ll make sure, something nice on the lake, eh? How are the children, Steve?’

  Carella hesitated.

  ‘Fine,’ he said at last. “Well, they’re teenagers now, you know. Their birthday was a week ago.’

  ‘Did you get what Luisa and I sent? Mama and I?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Madonna, ma com’e possibile? We sent their gifts by courier! I will have my secretary check. Not there yet? Ma cbe idioti!’

  ‘I’ll call when they arrive, don’t worry,’ Carella said.

  There was a short silence on the line.

  ‘What did you mean, I know about teenagers?’ Luigi asked. ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘Well, you know.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  The identical words Carella used when interrogating a perp. Tell me.

  ‘Well, you have children, you know.’

  ‘I have children with teenagers of their own!’ Luigi said. ‘What’s the matter, Steve?’

  And then, just the way a perp will often take a deep breath before blurting that he’d killed his wife and their pet canary with a hatchet, Carella took a deep breath and said, ‘April’s smoking marijuana.’