Meyer and Hawes went over to St. Sab’s at a little past nine that morning. They made an interesting-looking pair of cops, Meyer standing some two inches shorter than Hawes, both men burly and tall, but Meyer completely bald whereas Hawes had flaming red hair with a white streak over the left temple. Meyer wondered what the politically correct term for “bald” was. Depilated? Non-hirsute? He also wondered why you didn’t see as many bald women as you saw bald men. He had, in fact, seen only one bald woman in his entire lifetime, and she had drowned in a bathtub full of soapy water, a lady almost ninety years old and too weak to get herself out of the tub, drowned while she was probably calling weakly for help all day long. There was a blonde wig on a stand in the bathroom, alongside the sink. Meyer wondered what that old lady had looked like when she was young and had her own blonde hair. Bald and emaciated, she had looked like a concentration-camp survivor.
Meyer thought about that little old bald lady for months after they’d found her in her apartment in that soapy bathtub. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her. About how she’d looked Jewish to him. Because it was one thing to be a Jew who thought of Israel as a foreign country and it was another thing to be a Jew who put up a Christmas tree every year and who hadn’t been inside a synagogue since the time he was investigating the murder of a dead rabbi, years and years ago, but it was quite another thing to know that what had happened to the Jews in Germany had happened only because they were Jews like himself. The little old lady with her blonde wig on a bathroom stand caused Meyer to weep for every Jew in the world—even though it turned out she wasn’t Jewish at all; her name in fact was Kelly.
He guessed he was thinking about her now because the man named Charlie looked a lot older than the seventy-five years the intern had estimated. Sitting up in bed, he seemed totally out of it, a frail old man peering out of a face with skin as transparent as parchment, his eyes as blue as chicory blooms.
“How you doing, sir?” Hawes asked.
The old man nodded.
Charlie.
Charlie is all we got from him.
Labels cut out of all his clothes. Wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a wheelchair in the rain.
“We’ve run some tests,” the intern said now. “He’s diabetic and anemic, he’s got high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, and cataracts on both eyes. The memory loss could be Alzheimer’s, but who can tell?”
“Does he know how he got here?” Hawes asked.
“Do you know how you got here, sir?” Meyer asked.
“In a car,” Charlie said.
“Who was driving the car, do you know?”
“A man,” Charlie said.
“Do you know who he was?”
“No.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
His voice was shaky. So were his hands. Meyer wondered if he also had Parkinson’s. The intern hadn’t mentioned anything about Parkinson’s. The intern’s name—his last name, anyway, and an initial for his first name—was lettered onto a little plastic tag pinned to his tunic.DR .J .MOOKHERJI . Indian, Meyer guessed. There were more Indian doctors training in this city than there were Indian snake charmers in all Calcutta. If you were admitted to an emergency room in this city, chances were the doctor treating you had a mother in Delhi.
“How’d you get in his car?” Hawes asked.
“Carried me out to it. Put me on the front seat with him.”
“When was this?”
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“From the house.”
“Where would that be, sir?”
“The house,” he said again, and shrugged.
“He doesn’t know where he lives,” Mookherji said. “I’ve already asked.”
“What time was this, sir?” Hawes asked. “When the man carried you out to the…?”
“If he ever knew how to tell time, he doesn’t anymore,” Mookherji said.
“What did the man look like?” Meyer asked.
He wasn’t hoping for much. Some of these people, they could remember something had happened to them when they were four years old, but they couldn’t recall where they’d put their hat three minutes ago.
“He was forty, forty-five years old,” Charlie said, “about five feet ten inches tall, with brown eyes and dark hair. Wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket with a yellow shirt under it, no hat.”
Meyer was impressed. So was Hawes.
“Was he white or black?” Meyer asked.
“White.”
“Anything else you can remember about him?”
“He was nice to me,” Charlie said.
“Did you contact Missing Persons?” Mookherji asked.
“No one answering his description,” Meyer said. He did not mention that the detective he’d spoken to had asked, “What is this, a fuckin epi demic?”
“Did he drive you straight here from the house?” Hawes asked.
“Don’t know,” Charlie said.
“My guess is he was bedridden,” Mookherji said. “He’s got bedsores all over him. We’d really like to locate his people, whoever they are, whoever dumped him here.” Hospital personnel had picked up the media expression. Hardly anyone in a hospital called it abandonment. It was dumping, plain and simple. Like dumping your garbage. Only these were human beings.
“How long were you in the car, do you know?” Hawes asked.
“He has no concept of time,” Mookherji said.
“Twenty months,” Charlie said.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“He knew my name.”
“Knew you were Charlie?”
“Called me Charlie, knew my name.”
“Charlie what?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did he say anything to you when he left you here?”
“Said I’d be all right.”
“Anything else?”
“Said there were people who loved me,” Charlie said, and looked into Meyer’s face, and said, “Do you love me?” and began weeping.
4.
AT A LITTLE PAST ten o’clock that Thursday morning, the telephone on Carella’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver, said, “Eighty-Seventh Squad, Carella,” and glanced at the LED display of the caller’s number.
“Don’t bother with a trace,” the Deaf Man said. “I’m using a stolen mobile phone.”
“Okay,” Carella said, but he jotted down the number, anyway.
“And it’s not the same phone I used the other day.”
“I didn’t think it would be.”
“I love modern technology, don’t you? Are you looking at a CID?”
“Yes. The area code is for Elsinore County, but I don’t suppose you’re calling from there, are you?”
“No, I’m not. In fact, I’m right across the street. In the park.”
“Mm-huh.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I don’t know where you are. Or what you want. I’m pretty busy here, though, so if you’ve got a crime to report…”
“I want to tell you what I plan to do.”
“Mm-huh.”
“That’s a nasty little tic you’re developing. The mm-huh. Makes you sound somewhat skeptical.”
“Mm.”
“Even in its abbreviated form.”