“Want to take a little swim?” Reardon asked, and cackled unexpectedly.
“Let’s take a look upstairs, okay?”
“Nothing to see up there,” Reardon said. “Fire done a pretty good job.”
The fire had indeed done a pretty good job, nor was it difficult to understand how $500,000 worth of miniature wooden rabbits, puppy dogs, and pussycats had provided excellent tinder for a blaze of monumental proportions. The mess underfoot was a combination of waterlogged ashes and charcoal, with here and there a recognizable head, tail, or paw. The crates had probably been piled on metal tables, the scorched and twisted remnants of which had been shoved aside or thrown over by the firemen in their efforts to quench the flames. Hanging light fixtures with metal shades, their bulbs shattered by the heat, were spaced evenly across the high ceiling of the room. One of these fixtures caught Carella’s attention because a fire-frayed length of electrical wire was dangling from its bulb socket. He pulled a table over and climbed onto it. The length of wire was an extension cord equipped with a fitting that screwed into the socket ordinarily occupied by the bulb. The hanging wire had been burned short by the fire, but it was reasonable to assume it had once been long enough to reach from the fixture down to one of the tables.
Carella frowned.
He frowned because Andy Parker was supposed to be a cop, and cops are supposed to know that most criminal fires are not started with matches; since the whole idea of arson is to be far away from the place when it bursts into flame, such instant ignition is impractical and dangerous. Parker had mentioned that he’d conducted a thorough search for wicks, fuses, mechanical devices, traces of chemicals — anything that would have caused delayed ignition. But he had not noticed the hanging extension cord, and the only thing Carella could assume was that Parker had been too intent on his vacation to spot what could easily have been a primitive but highly effective incendiary device. He had investigated too many arsons in the past (and he was sure Parker had as well) where the fires had been started by wrapping an electric light bulb in wool, rayon, or chiffon, and then suspending it over a pile of highly inflammable material such as movie film, cotton, excelsior, or simple wood shavings.
With Reardon at his elbow, Carella, still frowning, walked across the room to the light switch near the entrance door. The toggle was in the oN position. This meant that the arsonist, working with a flashlight in the dark, could have screwed in his extension cord, hung his light bulb over the prepared nest of combustibles, walked to the door, turned on the light switch, and left the building — secure that he’d have a merry conflagration in a short period of time.
“Anybody dust this light switch?” he asked Reardon.
“What?”
“Did any of the lab technicians examine this switch for fingerprints?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” Reardon said. “Why?”
Carella reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of evidence tags. From his side pocket, and musing on the fact that a cop in the field is a walking stationery store, he removed a small roll of Scotch tape. He yanked one of the evidence tags from under the rubber band holding the stack together and then Scotch-taped it, top and bottom, over the light switch. “Somebody’ll be here later,” he told Reardon. “Leave this just the way it is.”
“Okay,” Reardon said. He looked puzzled.
“Mind if I use your phone?”
“On the wall outside,” Reardon said. “Near the clock.”
Carella went out into the corridor. Scribbled onto the wall in pencil alongside the phone were the names and numbers of Reardon’s counterparts, Lockhart and Barnes. Carella dialed the Police Laboratory downtown on High Street and spoke to a lab assistant named Jeff Warren, telling him what he thought and requesting that somebody come to the warehouse to dust the switch. Warren told him they were up to their asses at the moment with a pile of dirty clothes from a suspected murderer’s apartment, going through it all for laundry and dry-cleaning marks, and he doubted anybody could get up there before morning. Carella told him to do the best he could, hung up, and fished in his pocket for another dime. He found only three quarters, and asked Reardon if he had any change. Reardon gave him two dimes and a nickel, and Carella dialed Lockhart’s number from the penciled scrawl on the warehouse wall.
Lockhart sounded sleepy when he answered the phone. Carella belatedly remembered that he was dealing with a night watchman and instantly apologized for having awakened him. Lockhart said he hadn’t been asleep and asked what Carella wanted. Carella told him he was investigating the Grimm fire and would appreciate talking to him and Barnes if the three of them could get together sometime later in the afternoon. They agreed on 3:00, and Lockhart said he would call Barnes to tell him about the meeting. Carella thanked him and hung up. Reardon was still at his elbow.
“Yes?” Carella said.
“They won’t be able to tell you anything,” Reardon said. “The other cop already talked to them.”
“Have any idea what they said?”
“Me? How would I know?”
“I thought they were friends of yours.”
“Well, they relieve me every night, but that’s about it.”
“What’ve you got here?” Carella asked. “Three shifts?”
“Just two,” Reardon said. “Eight in the morning till eight at night, and vice versa.”
“Those are long shifts,” Carella said.
Reardon shrugged. “It ain’t a hard job,” he said. “And most of the time, nothing happens.”
Carella treated himself to a long, leisurely lunch at a French restaurant on Meredith Street, wishing that his wife were there to share the meal with him. There is perhaps nothing more lonely than eating a French meal all by yourself, unless it’s eating Chinese food alone, but then the Chinese are experts at torture. Carella rarely longed for Teddy’s company while coping with the minute-by-minute aggravations of police work, but here and now, relieved of routine for just a little while, he wished she were there to talk to him.
Contrary to the opinion of some male show-business pigs who surmised that being married to a beautiful deaf-mute guaranteed a lifetime of submissive silence, Teddy was the most talkative woman Carella knew. She talked with her face, she talked with her hands, she talked with her eyes, she even “talked” when he was talking, her lips unconsciously mouthing the words his own lips formed as she watched and read the words. They talked together about everything and anything. He suspected that the day they stopped talking would be the day they stopped loving each other. Even their fights (and her silent raging anger was frightening to behold, those eyes flashing, those fingers shooting sparks of molten fury) were a form of talking, and he cherished them as he cherished Teddy herself. He ate his Duck Bigarade in silence, alone, and then drove to Stiller Avenue for his 3:00 appointment with Lockhart and Barnes.
Clearview, in Calm’s Point, was a section of the city variously labeled “heterogeneous,” “fragmented,” or “alienated,” depending on who was doing the labeling. Carella saw it for exactly what it was: a festering slum in which white men, black men, and Puerto Ricans lived elbows-to-buttocks in abject poverty. Perhaps Mr. Agnew, who had seen one slum and therefore seen them all, had never had to work in one. Carella worked in a great many different slums as part of his everyday routine, and since he was not a milkman or a letter carrier or a Bible salesman, but was instead a police officer, his job sometimes got a bit difficult. If there is one thing the residents of a slum can detect immediately, it is the smell of a cop. Slum dwellers do not like policemen. Being a cop (and naturally being a bit defensive about judgments made on the basis of whether or not a man is carrying a police shield), Carella could nonetheless recognize the fact that slum dwellers, both criminal and honest, had very good reasons for looking upon the Law with a dubious and distrustful eye.