Fourth-floor rear.
He'd eased the window open.
The baby's bedroom.
He knew this.
Dark except for a shaft of light spilling through the open doorway from somewhere else in the apartment. The living room. Silence. He could hear the baby's soft, gentle breathing. Two o'clock in the morning. The baby asleep.
The master bedroom was at the other end of the apartment.
He knew this.
In the middle, separating the sleeping wings, were the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room.
He leaned in over the crib.
Everything changed in the next several seconds.
In the next several seconds, the baby was screaming.
And a voice came from the living room.
'Who is it?'
Silence.
'Who's there?'
More silence.
And suddenly there she was. Standing there. Standing in the door to the baby's room, a knife in her hand.
He had to go for the knife.
* * * *
4
Ostensibly, Kling was eating and enjoying the cannelloni on his plate while listening to Carella tell him about the several approaches he and Meyer were taking to the Hodding-Flynn murders. But he caught only snatches of what Carella was telling him. His mind and his ears were on what Eileen was saying to Teddy.
He had never heard her so bitter.
They sat on opposite sides of the round table.
Eileen with her red hair and her green eyes, blazing now, her hands flying all over the place as the words tumbled from her mouth.
Teddy listening, her head cocked to one side, dark hair falling over one cheek, brown eyes open wide and intently watching Eileen's mouth.
'. . . find this Handler kid,' Carella was saying, 'then maybe we can . . .'
'And your cop comes home at last,' Eileen said, 'and he's watching television after a long, hard day of dealing with a wide variety of victimizers, and he sees a news broadcast about the rioting in this or that prison wherever in the United States, and the convicts are saying the food's terrible and there aren't enough television sets and the equipment in the gymnasium is obsolete, and the cells are overcrowded, and you know what that cop thinks, Teddy?'
From the corner of his eye, Kling saw Teddy shake her head.
'. . . cause why would he have run if he hasn't got something to hide?' Carella asked. 'On the other hand . . .'
'That cop sits there shaking his head,' Eileen said, 'because he knows how to rid the streets of crime, man, he knows how to make sure the guy he arrested two years ago isn't out there again right this minute doing the same damn thing all over again, he knows exactly how to get kids thinking that serving up burgers at a drive-in is more attractive than a life of criminal adventure - and, by the way, the answer isn't Just Say No. That's bullshit, Teddy, Just Say No. That lays the guilt trip on the victim, don't you see? If only you'd have said No, why then you wouldn't have got addicted to heroin, and you wouldn't have been molested by some weirdo in the street . . .
Here it comes, Kling thought.
'. . . and you wouldn't have been raped or murdered, either. All you have to do is just say no. Have a little willpower and nobody'll hurt you. Where the hell does Mrs Reagan live? On the moon? Did she think the streets of America were in Disneyland? Did she think all it ever came to was politely saying No, thank you, I've already had some, thank you? I'm telling you, Teddy, someone should have just curtsied and said no to her, told her that cute little slogan of hers sucked, lady, that just isn't the way it is.'
Teddy Carella sat there listening, wide-eyed.
Knowing.
Realizing that Eileen was talking about her own rape. The time she'd got cut. The time she'd said Yes. Because if she'd have said No, he'd have cut her again. Just say no, my ass.
'Every cop in this city knows how to keep criminals off the street,' Eileen said. 'You want to know the answer?'
And now she had Carella's attention, too.
He turned to her, fork in mid-air.
'Make the time impossible to do,' Eileen said. 'Make all time hard time. Make it back-breaking time and mind-numbing time. Make it senseless, wasted time. Make it the kind of time where you carry a two-hundred-pound boulder from point A to point B and then back to point A again, over and over again, all day long, day in and day out, with no parole, Charlie.'
'No parole?' Carella said, and raised his eyebrows.
'Ever,' Eileen said flatly. 'You catch the time, you do the time. And it's hard, mean time. You want to be hard and mean? Good. Do your hard, mean time. We're not here to teach you an honest job. There are plenty of honest jobs, you should've found one before you got busted. We're here to tell you it doesn't pay to do what you did, whatever you did. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't done something uncivilized, and so we're going to treat you like the barbarian you are.'
'I'm not sure that would . . .'
But Eileen was just gathering steam, and she cut Carella off mid-sentence.
'You want to go out and do another crime after you've served your time? Good, go do it. But don't let us catch you. Because if we catch you for the same crime again, or a different crime, whatever crime you do, why, the next time you're going to do even harder time. You are going to come out of that prison and you are going to tell all your pals on the street that it doesn't pay to do whatever illegal thing they're thinking of doing. Because there's nothing funny or easy about the kind of time you've going to do in any slammer in the country, you are going to do hard, hard time, mister. You are going to carry this ten-thousand-pound rock back and forth all day long, and then you are going to eat food you wouldn't give a dog to eat, and there'll be no television, and no radio, and no gym to work out in, and you can't have visitors and you're not allowed to write letters or make phone calls, all you can do is carry that goddamn rock back and forth and eat that rotten food and sleep in a cell on a bed without a mattress and a toilet bowl without a seat. And then maybe you'll learn. Maybe once and for all you'll learn.'
She nodded for emphasis.
Her eyes were shooting green laser beams.
Carella knew better than to say anything.
'There isn't a cop in this city who wouldn't make prison something to dread,' she said.
Carella said nothing.
'Mention the word prison, criminals all over this city would start shaking. Mention the word prison, every criminal in the United States would just say no, Mrs Reagan! No! Not me! Please! Do it to Julia! Please!'
She looked at Carella and Kling.
Daring either of them to say a word.
And then she turned to Teddy, and her voice lowered almost to a whisper.
'If cops had their way,' she said.
There were tears in her eyes.
* * * *
On her doorstep Eileen said, 'I'm sorry.'
'That's okay,' Kling said.
'I spoiled it for everyone,' she said.
'The food was lousy anyway,' he said.
Somewhere in the building, a baby began crying.
'I think we ought to stop seeing each other,' she said.
'I don't think that's such a good idea.'
The baby kept crying. Kling wished someone would go pick it up. Or change its diaper. Or feed it. Or do whatever the hell needed to be done to it.
'I went to see somebody at Pizzaz,' Eileen said.