Lullaby

She began to whimper.

Small whimpering sounds around the barrel of the gun.

She tried to say Please around the barrel of the gun. Her tongue found the hole in the barrel of the gun, and pushed out against it as if to nudge it gently and unnoticed from her mouth. The barrel clicked against her teeth. She thought at first that he had moved the gun because he'd discovered she was trying to expel it from her mouth. But she realized all at once that the reverse was true. The gun was steady in her mouth; it was her trembling jaw that was causing her teeth to click against the barrel.

'Well ...' he said.

Almost sadly. And paused. As if trying to think of something else to say before he pulled the trigger. And in that split second, she knew that unless she herself said something brilliantly convincing, unless she spit that gun barrel out of her mouth and pleaded an eloquent-

The first shot took off the back of her head.

* * * *

11

The person Carella spoke to at the Coast Guard's Ship Movement Office was named Lieutenant Phillip Forbes. Carella told him he was trying to locate a ship.

'Yes, sir, which ship would that be, sir?' Forbes said.

'I don't know exactly,' Carella said. 'But I'll tell you what I do know, and maybe you can take it from there.'

'Who did you say this was, sir?'

'Detective Carella, 87th Squad.'

'Yes, sir. And this is in regard to?'

'A ship. Actually a person on that ship. If we can locate the ship.'

'Yes, sir. And you feel this ship may be in port here, is that it?'

'I don't know where it is. That's one of the things I'd like to find out.'

'Yes, sir, may I have the name of the ship, please?'

'The General Something. Are there ships called the General This or the General That?'

'I can think of at least fifty of them off the top of my head, sir.'

'Military vessels or what?'

'No, sir, they can be tankers, freighters, passenger ships, whatever. There're a lot of Generals out there on the ocean.'

'How about a General Something that would have been here fifteen months ago?'

'Sir?'

'Do you keep records going back that far?'

'Yes, sir, we do.'

'This would've been October a year ago.'

'Do you mean October of last year?'

'No, the year before that. Can you check it for me?'

'What is it you want to know, exactly, sir?'

'We have good reason to believe that a ship named the General Something was here in port fifteen months ago. Would you have any record of...?'

'Yes, sir, all ships planning to enter the port must notify us at least twelve hours in advance of arrival.'

'All ships?'

'Yes, sir, foreign or American. Arrangements for docking are usually made through the ship's agent, who contracts for a berth. Or the owner-operator can do it. Or sometimes the person who chartered the ship. But we also get captains who'll radio ahead to us.'

'What information do they give you?'

'Sir?'

'When they notify you. What do they tell you?'

'Oh. The name of the ship, its nationality, the tonnage. Its cargo. Where it's been. Where it's going when it leaves here. How long it plans to be here. Where it'll be while in port.'

'Do they usually dock right here in the city?'

'Some of them do, yes, sir. The passenger ships. But not too much of anything else, anymore. There're plenty of berths, you know, the port covers a lot of territory. All the way from Hangman's Rock to John's River.'

'If a ship did dock here in the city, where would that be?'

'The Canal Zone, most likely. Nothing on the North Side, anymore. It'd be the Canal Zone, over in Calm's Point. Well, the Calm's Point Canal is its right name. That's the only place I can think of where they'd dock. But more than likely - well, this wouldn't be a passenger ship, would it?'

'No.'

"Then most likely it'd head for Port Euphemia, over in the next state.'

'But you said there would be a record . . .'

'Yes, sir, in the Amber files.'

'Amber?'

'Amber, yes, sir. That's what the tracking system is called. Amber. Anytime a ship notifies us that it's coming in, all that information I told you about goes right into the computer.'

'Do you have access to that computer, Lieutenant? To the Amber files?'

'I do.'

'Could you kick up an October eighteenth departure . . .'

'This wasn't last October, am I right?'

'October a year ago. See what you've got on a tanker named the General Something-or-Other. Possibly the General Putnam. Or a General Putney. Leaving for the Persian Gulf.'

'Take me a minute, sir, if you'd like to hang on.'

'I'd like to hang on,' Carella said.

When Forbes came back on the line, he said, 'I've got two Generals departing on the eighteenth of October that year, sir. Neither of them are tankers. And neither of them are either a Putney or a Putnam.'

'What are they?'

'Freighters, both of them.'

'And they're called?'

'One of them's the General Roy Edwin Dean and the other's the General Edward Lazarus Kalin.'

'Which one of them was heading for the Persian Gulf?'

'Neither one, sir. The Dean was bound for Australia. The Kalin was headed for England.'

'Terrific,' Carella said, and sighed heavily. Either Joyce Chapman's seaman had been lying in his teeth, or else she'd been too stoned to remember anything about him. 'Well, Lieutenant,' he said, 'thank you very . . .'

'But you might want to run down there yourself,' Forbes said.

Carella guessed he meant Australia.

'The Canal Zone,' Forbes said. 'The Deans in now. I know you're looking for a Putney or a Putnam but maybe your information . . .'

'Have you got a berth number?' Carella asked.

* * * *

The Calm's Point Canal.

The police had long ago dubbed it the Canal Zone, and the label had seeped into the city's general vocabulary. For the citizens who had never seen it, the name conjured a patch of torrid tropicana right here in the frigid north, a glimpse of exotic Panama - which they had also never seen. The only thing Hispanic about the Zone was the nationality of many of the hookers parading their wares for seamen off the ships or men cruising by in automobiles on their way home from work. Much of the trade was, in fact, mobile. A car would pull up to any one of the corners on Canalside, and the driver would lean over and roll down his window, and one of the scantily dressed girls would saunter over, and they'd negotiate a price. If they both agreed they had a viable deal, the girl would get in the car, and the trick would drive around the block a couple of times while she showed him what an expert could accomplish in all of five minutes.