That was then, Gertie. Today, except for the old-timers, your Homicide cops were identifiable only by the proprietary air they brought to the scene of a murder, rather like comfortable burghers looking out over their vast holdings. The shields pinned to their overcoats were similar in every respect to the shields the precinct detectives wore — blue enamel set in a gold sunburst pattern — except for the single word Homicide stamped into the gold beneath the word Detective. Every detective at the crime scene had his shield pinned to his coat or his jacket. The detectives all looked the same.
The woman lying in angular disarray on the first-floor landing looked like any other homicide victim — they all looked the same. When you’d seen enough fatal wounds, they all began to lose defining characteristics except to the medical examiner. It made little difference whether the wound was inflicted by shotgun or knife, pistol or hatchet, baseball bat or ice pick, the results were the same, the results reminded a working cop day in and day out that life was fragile. But it reminded him of something else as well, and it was this that made his job so very difficult. It reminded him that life was cheap. It reminded him that death could be bought suddenly and senselessly — to Carella, it would always be senselessly. To Carella, there was never a good or valid reason for murder.
A pair of ambulance attendants lifted the body onto the stretcher. One of them started to throw a rubber sheet over it. Carella identified himself and told them to wait a minute, he wanted to have a look at her.
“We been told to remove her from the premises,” one of the attendants said.
“Right, and I’m asking you to hold a minute, okay?” Carella said.
“It’s the M.E. says when to take a stiff or when not to take it,” the attendant said. “Anyway, who are you? Are you the investigating officer here? I thought the other guy was the investigating officer.”
Carella didn’t answer him. He was stooping beside the body, looking into the dead woman’s face as though trying to read the identity of the murderer there. The neck wound was gaping and raw; he turned away. Her hands had been put in plastic bags, par for the course when the weapon was a knife and the attack proximate. No dutiful M.E. would have neglected the possibility that the victim may have scratched out in self-defense and might be carrying under her fingernails samples of the murderer’s skin or blood.
“All right, you can take her,” Carella said.
“You dope it out yet?” the attendant asked sarcastically. “You figured who done it?”
Carella rose from where he’d been kneeling beside the body. He did not say a word. He looked directly into the attendant’s eyes. The attendant visibly flinched, and then bent silently to cover the corpse with the rubber sheet. Silently, he and his partner picked up the stretcher and carried it down the stairs.
“You Carella?” a voice said behind him.
Carella turned. The man was a detective, his shield pinned to the pocket of his tweed overcoat. Fleshy, thickset man with blue eyes and blond hair. Smoking a cigar. Stunk up the hallway with the stench of it.
“Tauber?” Carella asked.
“Yeah,” Tauber said. “You got here, huh?”
“I got here.”
The men did not shake hands. Law-enforcement officers rarely shook hands with each other. Even at dances thrown by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association or the Emerald Society, they did not shake hands. It was a peculiar occupational quirk, Carella thought. In days of yore, knights used to shake hands to make certain the haft of a dagger was not concealed in a closed fist, the blade hidden along the arm. Maybe cops had no daggers to hide.
“Did you see her?” Tauber asked.
“I got a look at her, yes.”
“Policewoman searched her a little while ago. I’ve got her stuff waiting to go to the property clerk, I wanted you to see it first. You know a Homicide cop named Young?”
“No.”
“He’s the one told me you could take charge here if it looks like we got the same killer. I realize a slit throat’s a slit throat. But if I remember your stop-sheet, both victims were blind, and nothing was stolen, am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, the lady had twenty-two dollars and fifty cents in her handbag, and she was wearing a gold crucifix around her neck, and also a gold ring with a small diamond on her right hand. Whoever killed her didn’t take the money or the jewelry, left a good accordion, too — it’s over there against the wall, I already had it tagged, got to be worth a couple of hundred, don’t you think? So robbery wasn’t the motive here. All I’m saying is it looks like a similar M.O. to me.”
“Yes, it does,” Carella said.
“I’m not trying to duck out of this,” Tauber said, “believe me. I got a full caseload right now, but what the hell, one more or less ain’t going to break me. It’s just I really think this might be yours.”
“I understand that Who found the body?”
“Guy down the hall. I only asked him a few questions, you’ll want to talk to him some more if you’ll be takin this over. What do you think? Do you think you’ll be takin this over?”
“I guess so,” Carella said.
“Do you want me to hang around, or what?”
“How do we work the paper on this?”
“I guess I file with Homicide, I don’t know. I got Young’s verbal okay, that should be enough, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. When I get back to the station house, I’ll give Homicide a call, find out how they want us to handle the paper, okay? If you want to ring me later. I’ll tell you what they suggest. What I think personally is you just handle it like it’s your squeal.”
“All the way downtown here?”
“On the basis of your stop-sheet,” Tauber said, and shrugged. “You asked for dope on a pair of unusual crimes, right? Well, now you got another homicide looks related. You ask me, that's enough.”
“You think the stop-sheet would cover it, huh?”
“That’s my opinion.”
“I just don’t want to get involved in a bunch of departmental bullshit,” Carella said. “That’s the one thing I don’t need on a homicide.”
“Naw, don’t worry.”
“For example, what do we do with her valuables? Does the Eight-Seven’s property clerk get them, or do I send them over to Midtown East?”
“I think your man gets them.”
“That’s what I think,” Carella said.
“That’s what I think, too.”
“Where’s the stuff?”
“There wasn’t much, aside from the cash and the jewelry,” Tauber said. “I got it bagged there against the wall, you want to take a look at it.” He led Carella to where the woman’s accordion was resting against the wall alongside a brown paper bag. The accordion was tagged, and so was the bag. Carella picked up the bag and peeked into it.