Barlow returned at 3:17 P.M. Gleason pulled up a few minutes later, driving an unmarked sedan. Told me Barlow had only gone to do his weekly marketing, stopping at grocer’s, butcher’s, hardware store, etc. I thanked Gleason and took up
Whatever Barlow does with his weekends, he apparently doesn’t go out. This was Saturday night, but he didn’t leave that house again all day. At 11:00 P.M., all the lights went out. I hung around until one in the morning, and then called the 64th for relief.
April 16th:
I slept late than checked with Carella at home to find out where brother Tommy Barlow is buried. Con firmed Cedarcrest, I relieved Patrolman Gordley on post at 12:15 P.M. Gordley said Barlow had not been out of the house all morning. At 1:30 P.M., Barlow came out wearing slacks and sweater, carrying cane. He walked to garage, came out pushing power lawn mower, which he started. He mowed front lawn, put mower back in garage, went into house again, At 3:00 P.M., small red compact Chevy II pulled up in front of Barlow’s house. Young girl in her twenties, long black hair, got out of car, went up front walk, rang doorbell. I knew Barlow was inside because he hadn’t left since mowing the lawn, but the girl stood on the doorstep and rang the bell for a long time, and he didn’t answer the door. She finally gave up, walked back to the car, angrily slammed the door, and drove off. Checked immediately with Hawes for description of Martha Tamid, positive identification, asked for relief from 64th, drove to Miss Tamid’s apartment near the Oval. The red compact parked at the curb, but when I spoke to her, she denied having left the apartment, said she’d been in all day, said she had certainly not driven to Barlow’s house. She offered me drink, which I declined. She also asked me if I thought she looked like an Egyptian belly dancer, which I thought was a strange question, but I said yes, now that she mentioned it, I thought she did look like one. She seems like very aggressive and very female person. Can’t understand her lying about visit to Barlow.
I took up post again at 6:12 P.M., after dinner, Patrolman said Barlow had not been out. Occurred to me that perhaps Barlow had left house by foot, sneaking out back way, leaving his car in the garage. I called the house from a drugstore two blocks away, hung up when Barlow answered, took up post again. Lights went on at 11:00.
I left at 2:00 in the morning, Schwartz relieving. Schwartz wanted to know why we were sticking to this guy. I wish I could tell him.
April 17 th:
Monday morning.
Barlow up and off at 7:30 A.M. Identical weekday routine. Breakfast, office, lunch, office, home, lights out, goodnight. Time is now 1:30 A.M. I left Barlow house at 1:00 A.M., calling 64th for relief, and getting Gleason who also wanted to know why we were tailing Barlow.
Request permission to end surveillance.
Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram Kling
* * * *
On the morning of April 18th, which was a bright shining Tuesday with the temperature at sixty-three degrees, and the prevailing winds westerly at two miles per hour, Detective Steve Carella left his house in Riverhead and walked toward the elevated structure some five blocks away. He had been attacked on the twelfth of the month but time, as the ancient Arab saying goes, heals all wounds. He had not taken the beating lightly because nobody in his right mind takes a beating lightly. A beating hurts. It is not nice to have someone knock you about the head and the body with a stick or a cane or a baseball bat. It is not nice to be carted off to the hospital where interns calmly look at your bleeding face, and calmly swab the cuts, and calmly dress them as if they are above all this petty bleeding, as if you are a page out of a textbook, elementary stuff, we had this in first year med, give us something hard, like a duodenal ulcer of the Macedonian canal. It is even worse to have to come home and face your wife with all those bandages and chunks of adhesive plaster clinging to your fine masculine head. Your wife is a deaf-mute and doesn’t know how to scream, but the scream is there in her eyes, and you wish with all your might that you could erase that scream, that you hadn’t been ambushed by some lousy bastard and beaten to a pulp before you could even get your gun in firing position. You wonder how you are going to explain all this to the children in the morning. You don’t want them to start worrying about the fact that you are a cop. You don’t want them to begin building anxiety neuroses when they’re barely out of diapers.
But time heals all wounds-those Arabs knew how to put it all right-and Carella was aware of another old proverb, an ancient Syrian saying that simply stated, “Time wounds all heels.” He didn’t know who had pounced upon him in the driveway of Barlow’s house, but he had every reason to believe that the minions of the law, those stout defenders of the people, those stalwart protectors of the innocent, those relentless tracers of lost persons, those bulwarks of freedom, those citadels of truth and common decency, yeah, he had no doubt the bulls of the 87th would one day pick up some louse who would confess to every crime committed in the past ten years and who would also casually mention he’d happened to beat up a cop named Carella on the night of April twelfth. So Carella was content to bide his time, confident that the odds were on his side. Crime doesn’t pay. Everybody knows that. And time is a river.
Time, on that lovely April morning, happened to be a torrential flood, but Carella didn’t know that as yet. He was on his way to work, minding his own business on the way to the elevated station, and he hadn’t the faintest idea that time was about to reopen a couple of old healed wounds, or that he was about to receive-once again-a few knocks about the head and body. Who expects a beating on a lovely April morning? The beating came as he was climbing the steps to the elevated platform. The first blow came from behind, and it struck him at the base of the neck, sending him sprawling forward on to the steps. He felt the impact of the sudden shock, felt himself blacking out as he fell forward, and thought only, Jesus, broad daylight! and then grasped fumblingly for the steps as he fell. The man with the stick, or the cane, or the baseball bat, or whatever the hell he was using, decided to kick Carella because it was most convenient to kick a man when he was groveling on his knees, grasping for a hold on the steps. So he kicked him in the face, opening one of the cuts there and releasing a torrent of blood that spilled over Carella’s cheek and down his neck, and onto his nice white clean go-to-work shirt. A woman coming down the steps screamed and then ran up the steps again, screaming all the way to the change booth, where the Elevated Transit employee tried to calm her down and find out what had happened, while on the steps the man with the stick or the cane or the baseball bat was striking Carella blow after blow on the head and neck, trying his best, it seemed, to kill him. Carella was aware of the woman’s screams, and aware of pounding footsteps, and of a man’s voice yelling, “Stop that! You stop that, do you hear?” but he was mostly aware of blinding flashes of yellow erupting everywhere the goddamned stick fell, and especially aware of his own dizziness as he groped for his revolver, missing it, feeling the cartridges in his belt, groping again for the handle of the gun, feeling his fingers closing around the walnut stock as his attacker again struck him across the bridge of the nose, Hit me hard enough you bastard and you’ll kill me, hit me on the bridge of the nose and I’ll drop dead right here at your feet, the gun was free.