“My son would never do nothing wrong in his life,” Sophie said.
“Mrs. Harris, you just said he never spoke directly of any criminal friends. Now what does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Did your son ever mention some sort of criminal activity in which he was involved?”
“He wasn’t involved in no criminal activity.”
“Was he planning some sort of criminal activity?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. He was a troubled person.”
“How? Troubled how?”
“The nightmares.”
“What nightmares?”
“From when he first got home from Fort Mercer.”
“Fort Mercer?”
“The Army hospital there. Upstate. Near the prison.”
“What kind of nightmares?”
“He’d wake up hollering. I’d go in his room, he’d be sitting up in the middle of his bed, staring into the darkness like he could see. I’d take him in my arms, he’d be covered with cold sweat. I’d say, ‘Jimmy, what is it? What is it, son?’ Nothing. No answer. He’d be shaking in my arms.”
“Did he ever mention these nightmares when he was awake?”
“No. But Isabel told me he was still having them.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“Just recently.”
“Mrs. Harris, you said you honestly didn’t know if Jimmy was planning some sort of criminal activity. Is it possible that he was?”
“I guess.”
“Did he say anything about it to you?”
“He said he was going to make them rich.”
“Who?”
“Him and Isabel.”
“Did he say how?”
“Mr. Carella, I got to tell you the truth. I think he was maybe planning something would be against the law.”
“Did he say that?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think...?”
“Well, why else would he need his old Army buddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me he’d contacted one of his buddies.”
“An Army buddy?”
“I guess he meant an Army buddy.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“Did he say why he’d contacted him?”
“He said the man was going to help him and Isabel get rich.”
“Did he say how?”
“No.”
“Then why do you figure he was planning something against the law?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe it’s cause soldiers are trained to use guns.”
“But your son never actually said—”
“No, he didn’t.”
"Well,” Carella said, and shrugged. He was thinking it sounded like a movie — a pair of old Army pals getting together to knock over a bank or a Las Vegas casino. He supposed it was possible; anything was possible. But he doubted it. Still — it was possible, what the hell.
“Thank you,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful.”
But he wasn’t sure she had been.
The squadroom looked rather like a cathedral that Saturday morning. Don’t laugh. November sunshine slanted through the wire-mesh grilles on the long windows, and shafts of golden light touched desk tops and typewriters. Dust motes sparkled in the fanning rays of the sun. The radio on Genero’s desk was playing organ music. Carella expected a religious miracle, but none came.
Genero was typing.
He had bought himself a paperback pocket dictionary and was looking up words. Repeatedly, he glanced from typewriter keyboard to open dictionary. His stop-and-go typing irritated Carella; it was obscene to be typing in church. Besides, there were no more miracles in the world, and the case was getting staler than yesterday’s bagels.
The organ music swelled into the squadroom. Carella felt like going to confession. He had not been to confession since he stopped going to church. That was when he was fifteen. Coincidentally, that was also when he lost his virginity on the roof of an apartment building in Riverhead, with a girl named Suzie Ryan, who was Irish. Suzie was seventeen. Woman of the world. She went to the same church Carella did. After his rooftop awakening, he figured he should go to confession and mention that he had sinned. Then he wondered if the priest would ask him who his sinful partner had been. He knew they could see your face in the dark there. The priest would know it was Stephen Louis Carella who had sinned, and then he would want to know who the willing young lady had been, and Carella would then have to implicate Suzie Ryan, who had been generous and passionate and whom he would have followed into the mouth of a cannon at that budding stage of his career. He wondered what to do. He decided not to go to confession. He also decided never to go to church again, but that had nothing to do with Suzie. He decided not to go to church because church put him to sleep. His father said, “Why don't you go to church no more?” Carella answered, “Why don’t you, Pop?” His father said, “Never mind.”
He realized now that if only he hadn’t stopped going to church when he was fifteen, he could pray to God for a miracle or at least a clue, and all his problems would go up the chimney. Instead, the radio was playing organ music and Genero was typing in a tempo out of meter with the fat chords that floated out on the air, and Carella not only did not have a clue, he also did not have an inkling of where to go next.
He decided to call Fort Mercer.
His reasoning had nothing to do with sound deduction. It had only to do with desperation. Before talking to Sophie, he had known next to nothing about the dead man. In any homicide it was essential to learn how the victim had spent his last twenty-four hours — where he’d gone, the people he’d seen, the events that had taken place. He knew where Isabel Harris had spent at least a portion of the twenty-four hours before her death; she had spent them in bed with Frank Preston. But all he knew about Jimmy was that he’d left the house at his usual hour in the morning, and presumably walked his usual beggar’s route on Hall Avenue throughout the day, and most likely stopped at a bar, as usual, before heading home after the rush hour.
Carella had neglected to ask Isabel whether Jimmy frequented the same bar each day. A mistake. Maybe a bad one. There was no Isabel to ask any more, but there existed nonetheless the possibility that Jimmy had met someone in the bar, argued with someone, antagonized someone — who the hell knew? The bar was still a mystery, solely because of Carella’s oversight. It bothered him that he had goofed. He fretted about it, but he didn’t agonize over it. Instead, he examined the two pieces of information he now possessed, a pair of seemingly unrelated fragments that changed Jimmy Harris from a corpse into a living, breathing human being.
At the moment there was nothing he could do about the first piece of information. If Jimmy Harris had indeed contacted an old Army buddy with some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, possibly illegal, Carella had no way of ascertaining this without talking to the old Army buddies. Right now he knew nothing about Jimmy’s Army career, except that he’d been in the 2nd Squad’s Alpha Fire Team and he’d been blinded in action. If he got lucky, Captain McCormick would get back to him before Monday with the service information he’d requested. He doubted he would get lucky. But there was one other thing he had learned from Sophie Harris.
Her son was having nightmares.
Carella dialed “O” for Operator, and asked for the area code for Fort Mercer. The operator said she didn’t have a town called Fort Mercer. Carella said it was upstate someplace near Castleview Prison. She said she didn’t know where Castleview Prison was. He told her it was in Rawley. She gave him an area code, and he dialed first the number 1, and then the area code, and then the numerals 555, and then the numerals 1212. By that time he’d forgotten why he was dialing this long succession of numbers, and he’d also forgotten his shield number, his social security number and his middle initial. Another operator said, “Information, what city?” and Carella told her he thought it was near Rawley, and said he was trying to reach Fort Mercer. The Operator said, “That’s in Paxton, sir,” and then said, “I have several listings for Fort Mercer, which one did you wish?”