Patrolman Shanahan, who had discovered Muriel Stark’s body, had not turned in a lamp outage report after his tour of duty that Saturday night, but perhaps he’d been too busy reporting the homicide. Patrolman Feeny, on the other hand, had walked that same beat on Friday night’s graveyard shift. And when he’d reported back to the station house at 8:00 Saturday morning, he had handed a lamp outage report to the desk sergeant, and on it he had indicated that the precinct was the 87th, the precinct post was post number 3, and the date was September 6. He had located the lamppost at the corner of Harding and Fourteenth, and had identified it as lamppost number 6 — there were six lampposts on the block, three on each side of the street. He had not indicated when the lamp went out, presumably because he hadn’t known. Nor had he written in a time for when the lamp had been restored to service. He had put check marks alongside the words Broken Globe and also Broken Bulb. There were no comments under ACTION TAKEN. He had signed the bottom of the form with his rank, his name, and his shield number. The report told Carella that the light had been out on Friday night, and he knew from his visit to the scene that the light was out now as well. What he did not know was whether it had been repaired sometime after the Friday outage, and then broken again after the Saturday night murder.
He immediately called the electric company.
The man who answered the phone said, “Yes, that outage was reported.”
“When was it repaired?” Carella asked.
“Look, you know how many damn outages we get in this city every night of the week?” the man asked.
“I only want to know about this particular outage,” Carella said. “Lamppost number six, on the corner of Fourteenth and Harding. According to what we’ve got here, our patrolman reported a broken bulb and globe on the morning of Saturday, September sixth, and presumably the desk sergeant—”
“Yes, it was reported to us. I already told you it was reported.”
“Was it repaired?”
“I would have to check that.”
“Please check it,” Carella said. “I’m specifically interested in knowing whether it had been repaired by eleven o’clock that Saturday night.”
“Just a second.”
Carella waited.
When the man came back onto the line, he said, “Yes, that lamp was repaired at four fifty-seven P.M. on Saturday, September sixth.”
“It’s out again now,” Carella said.
“Well, so what? If you didn’t happen to know it, that lamp happens to be right outside an abandoned building that’s being torn down. You’re lucky we repaired the damn thing at all.”
“I’d like it repaired again,” Carella said. “We’re investigating a homicide here, and it’s important for us to know whether that streetlamp could have illuminated—”
“Well, shit, put your own emergency service on it.”
“No, I want it fixed the way the electric company would have fixed it. Your lightbulb, your globe.”
“Who’s this I’m talking to?”
“Detective Carella.”
“Paisan, have a heart, huh? I’m up to my ass in orders here. I’ll be lucky if I get through them by the Fourth of—”
“I need that lamp fixed,” Carella said. He looked up at the wall clock. “It’s a quarter past seven,” he said. “My partner and I are going out for a bite, we’ll be back at the scene there by eight, eight-thirty. I want it fixed by then.”
“You sure you’re Italian?” the man from the electric company said, and hung up.
Carella buzzed the desk sergeant, asked for Patrolman Shanahan’s home number, and immediately dialed it. Shanahan barked “Hello!” into the phone, and then immediately apologized when Carella identified himself. He said his sixteen-year-old daughter kept getting phone calls day and night from her girl-friends or from these pimply-faced jerks who kept coming to the house, man couldn’t get a moment’s peace, phone going like sixty all the time.
“So I’m sorry for snapping your head off,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Carella said. “There was just one thing I wanted to ask you. On Saturday night, when you found that girl’s body—”
“Damn shame,” Shanahan said.
“... would you remember whether the streetlamp was working?”
“Sure, it was working.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I just know it was working. I automatically look for outages, know what I mean? I see a busted lamp, I fill out a report. But aside from that, I could see the girl’s hand. Up on the top step there, know what I mean? Now if the lamp had been out, it would’ve been blacker’n a witch’s asshole on that corner. Couldn’t have seen the hand, know what I mean? But I could see it. Laying palm up, right there outside the doorway. Didn’t put my flashlight on till after I’d climbed the steps. Threw my beam inside the doorway then and saw the body.”
“Did you see anything inside the hallway before you turned on your flash?”
“I could see the outline of the body, yes. I knew there was a body inside there, yes.”
“Okay, thanks a lot,” Carella said.
“Don’t mention it,” Shanahan said.
At a quarter past 8:00 that Monday night, Carella and Kling went back to Harding Avenue. The streetlamp was burning again. It cast a circle of light onto the sidewalk and into the gutter. The circle of light included the entire front stoop of the building in which Muriel Stark had been murdered. The detectives went into the hallway. The only light was the bounce from the lamp outside, but on the floor they could clearly make out the chalked outline of Muriel Stark’s body, and on the walls they could see scribbled graffiti and spatters they assumed were bloodstains. Standing against the wall opposite Kling, Carella could even distinguish the color of his eyes. There was no question but that the reflected light in that hallway was sufficient for identification. They had to believe that Patricia Lowery had indeed seen a dark-haired, blue-eyed man stabbing her cousin to death. This being the case, they further had to believe that she’d mistakenly identified Walt Lefferts only because he resembled the killer more closely than any of the other men in the lineup. They realized with dismay that Patricia’s value to them had been totally destroyed by this false identification. They were looking for a dark-haired, blue-eyed man who looked like Walt Lefferts, yes, but even if they found him, and even if Patricia pointed an accusing finger at him, how could they know for certain that he was the man she’d really seen committing the murder? She had also seen Walt Lefferts committing the murder, hadn’t she?
As far as they were concerned, they were still looking for someone Patricia had described — accurately, it now seemed — as “a perfect stranger.”
The kids knew somebody had been killed in that building on Saturday night, but this was Tuesday afternoon and the barricades the City Housing Authority had put up on either end of the block made the street perfect for stickball. It was still early September, and there’d be plenty of daylight before dinnertime. So they congregated at about 4:00, chose up their sides and chalked their bases onto the asphalt, and got down to the serious business at hand.