There would be a close-up, and the close-up would show a hand suddenly breaking the surface of the water, the fingers stiff and widespread.
And then a body would appear, and the water would nudge the body until it washed ashore and lay lifeless with the other debris while the rain drilled down unrelentingly. The con men would have written it with flourish and filmed it with style, and they had a fine day for the plying of their trades.
The men of the 87th Precinct weren’t con men.
They only knew they had another floater.
Nine
The tattoo was obviously a mistake.
Mary Louise Proschek had had an almost identical tattoo. It had nestled snugly on the fold of skin between her right thumb and forefinger. The tattoo had been a heart, and the word MAC had decorated that heart. Mac — and a heart. A man — and love. For the con men throughout the ages have built a legend about the heart, have made the hardworking sump pump of the body the center of emotion, have disassociated love from the mind, have given a veneer of glamour to a bundle of muscle. It could have been worse. Their efforts could have descended upon the liver. In fact, the bile or the intestinal tract could have become the citadel of romance. The con men knew their trade. The shape of the heart makes a good symbol, easily recognized, easily worshipped. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the mind — the organs which see and hear and smell and know another human being, the organs which make another human being a living breathing part of yourself, a part as vital as your brain — these are discounted. St. Valentine had a good press agent.
The second floater was a girl.
There was a tattoo on the flap of skin between her right thumb and forefinger.
The tattoo was a heart.
There was a word in the heart.
And the word was NAC.
And, obviously, the tattoo was a mistake. Obviously, the man or woman who had been paid to decorate the skin had made a mistake. Obviously, he had been told to needle the word MAC into that heart, to fasten indelibly that man’s name onto that girl’s flesh. He had goofed. Perhaps he’d been drunk, or perhaps he’d been tired, or perhaps he simply didn’t give a damn. Some people are that way, you know — no pride in their work. Whatever the case, the name had come out all wrong. Not a MAC this time, but a NAC. The man who’d thrown those girls into the water must have been absolutely furious.
Nobody likes his byline misspelled.
The idea was to combine business with pleasure.
It was an idea Steve Carella didn’t particularly relish, but he’d promised Teddy he’d meet her downtown at 8:00 on the button, and the call from the tattoo parlor had been clocked in at 7:45, and he knew it was too late to reach her at the house. He couldn’t have called her, in any case, because the telephone was one instrument Carella’s wife could never use. But he had, on other occasions, illegally dispatched a radio motor patrol car to his own apartment with the express purpose of delivering a message to Teddy. The police commissioner, even while allowing that Carella was a good cop, might have frowned upon such extracurricular squad car activity. So Carella, sneak that he was, never told him.
He stood now on the corner under the big bank clock, partially covered by the canopy that spread out over the entrance, shielding the big metal doors. He hoped there would not be an attempted bank robbery. If there was anything he disliked, it was foiling attempted bank robberies when he was off duty and waiting for the most beautiful woman in the world. Naturally, he was never off duty. A cop, as he well knew, is on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 366 days in leap year. Then, too, there was the tattoo parlor to visit, and he couldn’t consider himself officially clocked out until he’d made that call and then reported the findings back to whoever was catching at the squad.
He hoped there would not be an attempted bank robbery, and he also hoped it would stop drizzling, because the rain was seeping into his bones and making his wounds ache. Oh, my aching wounds!
He put his aches out of his mind and fell to wool-gathering. Carella’s favorite form of wool-gathering was thinking about his wife. He knew there was something hopelessly adolescent about the way he loved her, but those were the facts, ma’am, and there wasn’t much he could do to change his feelings. There were probably more beautiful women in the world, but he didn’t know who they were. There were probably sweeter, purer, warmer, more passionate women, too. He doubted it; he very strongly doubted it. The simple truth was that she pleased him. Hell, she delighted him. She had a face he would never tire of watching, a face that was a thousand faces, each linked subtly by a slender chain of beauty. Fully made up, her brown eyes glowing, the lashes darkened with mascara, her lips cleanly stamped with lipstick, she was one person — and he loved the meticulously calculated beauty, the freshly combed, freshly powdered veneer of that person.
In the morning, she was another person. Warm with sleep, her eyes would open, and her face would be undecorated, her full lips swollen, the black hair tangled like wild weeds, her body supple and pliable. He loved her this way, too, loved the small smile on her mouth and the sudden eager alertness of her eyes.
Her face was a thousand faces, quiet and introspective when they walked along a lonely shore barefoot and the only sound was the distant sound of breakers on the beach, a sound she could not hear in her silent world. Alive with fury, her face could change in an instant, the black brows swooping down over suddenly incandescent eyes, her lips skinning back over even, white teeth, her body taut with invective she could not hurl because she could not speak, her fists clenched. Tears transformed her face again. She did not cry often, and when she did cry, it was with completely unself-conscious anguish. It was almost as if, secure in the knowledge of her beauty, she could allow her face to be torn by agony.
Many men longed for the day when their ship would come in.
Carella’s ship had come in — and it had launched a thousand faces.
There were times, of course, like now, when he wished the ship could do a little more than fifteen knots. It was 8:20, and she’d promised to be there at 8:00 on the dot, and whereas he never grew weary of her mental image, he much preferred her in person.
Now! For the first time! Live! On our stage! In person! Imported from the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris...
There must be something wrong with me, Carella thought. I’m never really here. I’m always...
He spotted her instantly. By this time, he was not surprised by what the sight of her could do to him. He had come to accept the instant quickening of his heart and the automatic smile on his face. She had not yet seen him, and he watched her from his secret vantage point, feeling somewhat sneaky, but what the hell!
She wore a black skirt and a red sweater and, over that, a black cardigan with red piping. The cardigan hung open, ending just below her hips. She had a feminine walk, which was completely unconscious, completely uncalculated. She walked rapidly because she was late, and he heard the steady clatter of the black pumps on the pavement, and he watched with delighted amusement the men who turned for a second look at his wife.