I kept lifting manhole covers and Kruger would cast the beam of his flashlight down inside, but we saw nothing but muck.
“Let’s not forget the catch basins,” I said.
“Good point.”
We began checking those as well, and in the passageway between two brick apartment buildings directly across from the similar building that housed those bloody laundry tubs, the circular iron catch-basin lid — like a manhole cover, but smaller — looked loose.
“Somebody opened that recently,” Kruger said. His voice was quiet but the words were ominous in the stillness of the darkening night.
“We need something to pry it up a little,” I said, kneeling. “Can’t get my fingers under it.”
“Here,” Kruger said. He plucked the badge off the breast pocket of his jacket and, bending down, used the point of the star to pry the lid up to where I could wedge my fingers under it.
I slid the heavy iron cover away, and Kruger tossed the beam of the flashlight into the hole.
A face looked up at us.
A child’s face, framed in blonde, muck-dampened, darkened hair.
“It looks like a doll,” Kruger said. He sounded out of breath.
“That’s no doll,” I said, and backed away, knowing I’d done as my wife had requested: I’d found Bob Keenan’s little girl.
Part of her, anyway.
5
We fished the little head out of the sewer; how, exactly, I’d rather not go into. It involved the handle of a broom we borrowed from the janitor of one of the adjacent buildings.
Afterward, I leaned against the bricks in the alleylike passageway, my back turned away from what we’d found. Kruger tapped me on the shoulder.
“You all right, Heller?”
Uniformed men were guarding the head, which rested on some newspapers we’d spread out on the cement near the catch basin; they were staring down at it like it was some bizarre artifact of a primitive culture.
“About lost my lunch,” I said.
“You’re white as an Irishman’s ass.”
“I’m okay.”
Kruger lighted up a cigarette; its amber eye glowed.
“Got another of those?” I asked.
“Sure.” He got out a deck of Lucky Strikes. Shook one out for me. I took it hungrily and he thumbed a flame on his Zippo and lit me up. “Never saw you smoke before, Heller.”
“Hardly ever do. I used to, overseas. Everybody did, over there.”
“I bet. You were on Guadalcanal, I hear.”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty rough?”
“I thought so till tonight.”
He nodded. “I made a call. Keenan’s assistant, guy that runs the ration board, he’s on his way. To make the ID. Can’t put the father through that shit.”
“You’re thinking, Kruger,” I said, sucking on the cigarette. “You’re all right.”
He grunted noncommittally and went over to greet various cops, uniform and plainclothes, who were arriving; I stayed off to one side, back to the brick wall, smoking my cigarette.
The janitor we’d borrowed the broom from sought me out. He was a thick-necked, white-haired guy in his early fifties; he wore coveralls over a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves.
“So sad,” he said. His face was as German as his accent.
“What’s on your mind, pop?”
“I saw something.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe is not important.”
I called Lt. Kruger over, to let him decide.
“About five this morning,” the bull-necked janitor said, “I put out some trash. I see man in brown raincoat walking. His head, it was down, inside his collar, like it was cold outside, only it was not cold and not raining, either. He carry shopping bag.”
Kruger and I exchanged sharp glances.
“Where did you see this man walking, exactly?” Kruger asked the janitor.
The stocky Kraut led us into the street; he pointed diagonally — right at the brick mansion where the Keenans lived. “He cut across that lawn, and walk west.”
“What’s your name, pop?” I asked.
“Otto. Otto Bergstrum.”
Kruger gave Otto the janitor over to a pair of plainclothes dicks and they escorted him off to Summerdale District station to take a formal statement.
“Could be a break,” Kruger said.
“Could be,” I said.
Keenan’s OPA coworker, Walter Munsen, a heavy-set fellow in his late forties, was allowed through the wall of blue uniforms to look at the chubby-cheeked head on the spread-out papers. It looked up at him, its sweet face nicked with cuts, its neck a ragged thing. He said, “Sweet Jesus. That’s her. That’s little JoAnn.”
That was good enough for Kruger.
We walked back to the Keenan place. A starless, moonless night had settled on the city, as if God wanted to blot out what man had done. It didn’t work. The flashing red lights of squad cars, and the beams of cars belonging to the morbidly curious, fought the darkness. Reporters and neighbors infested the sidewalks in front of the Keenan place. Word of our grim discovery had spread — but not to Keenan himself.
At the front door, Kruger said, “I’d like you to break it to him, Heller.”
“Me? Why the hell me?”
“You’re his friend. You’re who he called. He’ll take it better from you.”
“Bullshit. There’s no ‘better’ in this.”
But I did the deed.
We stood in one corner of the living room. Kruger was at my side, but I did the talking. Keenan’s wife was still upstairs at the neighbors. I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s not good, Bob.”
He already knew from my face. Still, he had to say: “Is she dead?” Then he answered his own question: “You’ve found her, and she’s dead.”
I nodded.
“Dear lord. Dear lord.” He dropped to one knee, as if praying; but he wasn’t.
I braced his shoulder. He seemed to want to get back on his feet, so I helped him do that.
He stood there with his head hung and said, “Let me tell JoAnn’s mother myself.”
“Bob — there’s more.”
“More? How can there be more?”
“I said it was bad. After she was killed, whoever did it disposed of her body by...” God! What words were there to say this? How do you cushion a goddamn fucking blow like this?
“Nate? What, Nate?”
“She was dismembered, Bob.”
“Dismembered...?”
Better me than some reporter. “I found her head in a sewer catch basin about a block from here.”
He just looked at me, eyes white all around; shaking his head, trying to make sense of the words.
Then he turned and faced the wall; hands in his pockets.
“Don’t tell Norma,” he said, finally.
“We have to tell her,” Kruger said, as kindly as he could. “She’s going to hear soon enough.”
He turned and looked at me; his face was streaked with tears. “I mean... don’t tell her about... the... dismembering part.”
“Somebody’s got to tell her,” Kruger insisted.
“Call their parish priest,” I told Kruger, and he bobbed his dour hound-dog head.
The priest — Father O’Shea of St. Gertrude’s church — arrived just as Mrs. Keenan was being ushered back into her apartment. Keenan took his wife by the arm and walked her to the sofa; she was looking at her silent husband’s tragic countenance with alarm.
The priest, a little white-haired fellow with Bible and rosary in hand, said, “How strong is your faith, my child?”
Keenan was sitting next to her; he squeezed her hand, and she looked up with clear eyes, but her lips were trembling. “My faith is strong, father.”
The priest paused, trying to find the words. I knew the feeling.
“Is she all right, father?” Norma Keenan asked. The last vestiges of hope clung to the question.