But would Cotton have walked out on her?
It was possible. Carella had to concede that it was definitely possible. There was no second-guessing the ways of maids and men. He’d handled many a suicide where a seemingly levelheaded young man had thrown himself out the nearest hotel window because a sweet young thing in a skirt had refused a date. Why, take his own Teddy. Annoyed because he’d been dancing with that wench from Flemington. God, that had been a long time ago, he could remember every detail of that night as if it were happening now. Faye, grrrr, she’d been a wonderful, wonderful—
Hey now.
Steady, lad.
He saw Teddy sitting near his father. He grinned and began walking toward her.
From the woods behind him, he heard someone scream, “Help! Help!”
He whirled and broke into a trot, crashing into the bushes. His service revolver was in his fist before he’d covered three feet.
The boys had been standing on the corner watching all the girls go by. They had been standing there all afternoon, they said. They had been standing right under that same lamppost near the el structure. Just standing. Just watching the girls. June was a good time for watching the girls, the boys said.
“Did you happen to notice the people who came down off the train?” Meyer asked.
“Yeah, we noticed the girls,” the boys said.
“Did you notice anybody else?”
“Yeah,” the boys said, “but mostly we noticed the girls.”
“Did you happen to see a man carrying a trombone case?”
“What does a trombone case look like?”
“You know,” O’Brien said. “A trombone case. Black leather. Long. With a sort of a flaring bell on one end.”
“Gee,” the boys said. “You’d better ask Charlie.”
“Which one of you is Charlie?”
“Charlie’s in the candy store. Hey, Charlie! Charlie, come on out here!”
“Is Charlie a musician?” Meyer asked.
“No, but his sister is taking piano lessons. She’s eight years old.”
“How old is Charlie?” Meyer asked skeptically.
“Oh, he’s a grown man,” the boys said. “He’s sixteen.”
Charlie came out of the candy store. He was a thin boy with a crew cut. He wore khaki trousers and a white tee shirt, and he ambled over to the boys under the lamppost with a curious expression on his face.
“Yeah!” he said.
“These guys have some questions.”
“Yeah!” He delivered the word as a cross between a question and an exclamation, as if surprised by his own query.
“Do you know what a trombone case looks like, Charlie?”
“Yeah!” he said, and again it was both a question and an exclamation.
“Did you see anyone come down those steps carrying one?”
“A trombone case?” This time it was purely a question.
“Yes,” Meyer said.
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Down those steps?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah!” he said, the exclamation preceding the question.
“Which way did he go?”
“How do I know?” Charlie said.
“You saw him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah! Why? You need a trombone player? Does it have to be a trombone player? My kid sister plays piano.”
“Think, Charlie. Which way did he go?”
“Who remembers? You think I followed him or something?”
“He came down those steps?”
“Yeah!”
“Did he turn right or left?”
Charlie thought for a moment. “Neither,” he said at last. “He walked straight up the avenue.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he turn at the corner?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lost him after he walked past that corner?”
“I don’t know whether he walked past that corner or not. Who lost him? I wasn’t even trying to find him. Who was interested in him?”
“Do you think he passed that corner?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he turned at the corner?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could he have crossed the street?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know.” He paused. “Listen, why don’t you ask the guy in the deli on the next corner. Maybe he seen him.”
“Thanks, son,” Meyer said, “we’ll do that.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “Does it have to be a trombone player?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“‘Cause my kid sister plays some gone piano, I mean it.” Meyer looked at Charlie sadly. Charlie shrugged. “So some guys go for horns,” he said resignedly, and he went back into the candy store.
Meyer and O’Brien started up the avenue.
“What do you think?” O’Brien said.
“Sounds as if it might be him. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have some luck in the delicatessen.”
They did not have any luck in the delicatessen.
The man behind the counter wore bifocals, had been busy all day waiting on Sunday customers, and wouldn’t have known a trombone case from a case of crabs, good day.
Meyer and O’Brien went out onto the sidewalk.
“Where to?”
Meyer shook his head. “Boy,” he said, “this suddenly seems like a very big neighborhood.”
Chapter 13
Ben Darcy lay on his back in the bushes.
Dusk was coming on, staining the sky with purple. In the woods, the insects were beginning their night song. The city looked skyward and greeted the impending night with a sigh; this was Sunday and tomorrow was another workday. And in the city, in the imposing steel and concrete structures of Isola, in the teeming streets of Calm’s Point, in the suburban outlands of Riverhead, the beginning of night seemed to bring with it a touch of peace, a restfulness that bordered on weary resignation. Another day was moving into the coolness of the past. The moon would rise, and stars would pepper the skies, and the city would suddenly be ablaze with light.
Ben Darcy seemed to be a part of the peacefulness of dusk. Lying on his back on the ground beneath the big maple that dominated the surrounding area of bushes, he looked like nothing more than a summer sleeper, a dreamer, a sky-watcher, the classic boy with the strand of straw between his teeth. His arms were outstretched. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be asleep, at peace with himself and with the world.
The top of his skull was bleeding.
Stooping down beside him quickly, Carella saw the cut at once, and his fingers moved to it rapidly, parting the hair, feeling the swelling around the gash. The cut was not a deep one or a long one, nor did it bleed profusely. It sat in the exact center of Darcy’s skull, and the area surrounding it had swelled to the size of a walnut. In the growing darkness, Steve Carella sighed audibly. He was tired, very tired. He did not enjoy chasing specters. I should have been a prizefighter, he thought. A good dirty sport where the combat is clearly stated from go, where the rules are set down by an impartial observer, where the arena is circumscribed from the very beginning, where the opponent is plainly visible and plainly identified as the opponent, the only man to beat, the only enemy.
Why the hell would anyone ever choose police work as his profession, he wondered.
We’re dealing with destruction, he thought, and the destruction is always secret and our job is not so much preventing it as it is discovering it after it has happened. We seek out the destroyers, but this doesn’t make us creators because we are involved in a negative task, and creation is never a negative act. Teddy, sitting out there, with a baby inside her, creating with no effort, creating by nature, is accomplishing more than I’ll accomplish in fifty years of police work. Why would anyone ever want to get involved with a son of a bitch who saws through the tie rods of an automobile or kills the neighbor, Birnbaum, or takes a whack at the skull of Darcy? Why would anyone choose as his profession, as the job to which he devotes most of his waking hours, a task that must necessarily bring him into contact with the destroyers?