“Harry O’Neill here in St. Louis. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get a chance to run this through the computer till a few minutes ago. I’ve got the company roster here — that’s a long sheet that lists all the men in a company and breaks the company down into four platoons, listing the men alphabetically and by rank. James Harris was in D Company’s 3rd Platoon. Now... depending on the morning reports of each platoon, you’ll sometimes get a breakdown of the squads and fire teams in those squads. The clerks in the 3rd Platoon kept very nice records. I’ve got those names you wanted.”
“Good,” Carella said, “let me have them, please.”
“Got a pencil?”
“Shoot.”
“Rudy Tanner, Pfc., automatic rifleman. That’s T-a-n-n-e-r.”
“Got it.”
“Karl Fiersen, E-4, grenadier.”
“Carl with a C?”
“With a K.”
“Would you spell the last name for me, please?”
“F-i-e-r-s-e-n.”
“Go on.”
“James Harris and Russell Poole, both Pfc.’s, riflemen. That’s Russell with two els and two els, and Poole with an e.”
“Okay."
“The sergeant leading the team was an E-5 named Robert Hopewell, just the way it sounds.”
“Right,” Carella said.
“Did you want the names of the platoon commander and his assistant?”
“If you’ve got them.”
“Commander was a man named Lieutenant Roger Blake, later killed in action. The next one’s a tough one, I’d better spell it. Sergeant John Tataglia, that’s T-a-t-a-g-l-i-a.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“About what?”
“Tataglia’s rank. Isn’t he the lieutenant who signed the action report? Just a second,” Carella said, and spread the sheaf of papers on his desk. “Yes, here it is, Lieutenant John Francis Tataglia.”
“Well, he’s listed as a sergeant on this.”
“On what?”
“The platoon’s morning report.”
“Any date on it.”
“December third.”
“The action report is dated December fifteenth.”
“Well, one or the other must be wrong,” O’Neill said “Unless he was promoted in the interim.”
“Is that likely?”
“It’s possible.”
“Can I get some addresses for these people?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” O’Neill said.
The list of last-known addresses for the four men in Jimmy’s fire team, as well as the man who’d once been his platoon sergeant, broke down this way:
John Francis Tataglia
Fort Lee
Petersburg, Virginia
Rudy Tanner
1147 Marathon Drive
Los Angeles, California
Karl Fiersen
324 Barter Street
Los Angeles, California
Robert Hopewell
163 Oleander Crescent
Sarasota, Florida
Russell Poole, the last man on the list, was also the only man from Alpha who lived in the city. Or, at least, he had lived in the city when he was discharged from the Army. His address was listed as 3167 Avenue L, in Majesta.
A series of phone calls to Directory Assistance came up with address confirmations for Robert Hopewell in Sarasota and Russell Poole here in the city. There were no telephone listings for Rudy Tanner or Karl Fiersen in Los Angeles; Carella could only assume both men had since moved. There was nothing else he could do to locate them, unless they’d been in trouble with the law since their discharge. He called the Los Angeles Police Department and asked for a records search in their Identification Section. The detective-sergeant to whom he spoke — in Los Angeles, they were rather more paramilitary concerning rank than were the police in this city — promised Carella he’d get back to him by the end of the day.
Carella then called Fort Lee, Virginia, and learned that John Francis Tataglia, the erstwhile platoon sergeant who’d presumably been promoted to second lieutenant, was now Major Tataglia and had been transferred to Fort Kirby this past September. Fort Kirby was in the adjoining state, some eighty miles over the Hamilton Bridge. Carella called the major there at once, and told him he’d be out to see him that afternoon. The major did not remember Pfc. James Harris until Carella explained that he was the man who’d been blinded in action. Cotton Hawes was just coming through the slatted rail divider as Carella hung up the phone. He signaled to him, and Hawes walked over to his desk; his red hair had been tangled by the wind outside, his face was raw, he looked fierce and mean.
“Are you busy?” Carella asked.
“Why?”
“I need someone to call Sarasota for me, do a telephone interview. I’ve got to go out to Fort Kirby right away.”
“Sarasota? Where’s that, upstate?”
“No, Florida.”
“Florida, huh? Why don’t I just fly on down there?” Hawes said, and grinned.
“Because I also want you to go see a man in Majesta. What do you say?”
“What am I supposed to do with the three burglaries I’m working?”
“This is a homicide, Cotton.”
“I've got a homicide, too,” Hawes said. “Somewhere on my desk, I’m sure I’ve got a homicide.”
“Can you help me?”
“Fill me in,” Hawes said, and sighed.
Thirteen
In order to get to Fort Kirby in the bordering state, one drove over the Hamilton Bridge and through a community called Baylorville, which in the good old days used to be the pig-farming center of the state. Nowadays there was nary an oink to be heard in the vicinity, but the place stank nonetheless, and Meyer put his handkerchief to his nose the moment they began driving through it. He was beginning to discover that he had a very sensitive olfactory mechanism, a quality he had not recognized in himself earlier. He wondered how he could put this to good use in the crime detection business. Meanwhile, he looked out dismally at the rows of factories and refineries, incinerators and mills that lined the Parkway. The weather had turned bleak and forbidding. Even without the benefit of the smokestacks belching their filth and stench into the air, the sky would have been the color of gunmetal.
Both men sat huddled inside their overcoats. It was 12:30 by the car clock, and Fort Kirby was still forty miles away. The Parkway tollbooths were spaced exactly five miles apart; Carella kept rolling down the window on the driver’s side and handing quarters to toll collectors. Meyer kept track of the quarters they spent. They would later turn in a chit to Clerical, hoping they’d one day be reimbursed. In the Police Department, chits were questioned closely, the operative theory being that people in law enforcement were all too often crooks themselves, educated as they were in the ways of thieves. After all, who was to say that the fifty cents spent for a bridge toll had not instead been spent for a hamburger, medium rare? Carella asked for receipts at all of the tollbooths. He handed these to Meyer, who clipped them to the inside cover of his notebook.
It was twenty minutes past one when they reached Fort Kirby. Carella identified himself to the sentry at the gate in the cyclone fence surrounding the base. A huge sign, black lettered on white, advised that no one but authorized personnel would be admitted to the area. The sentry examined Carella’s shield and I.D. card, checked a sheaf of slips attached to a clipboard, and then said, “The major’s expecting you, sir. You can park just this side of the canteen, that’s the redbrick building there on your right. The major’s in A-4.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
Major John Francis Tataglia was a man in his early thirties, with close-cropped blond hair and a blond mustache that hung under his nose like an afterthought. He was slight of build, perhaps five feet nine inches tall, with alert blue eyes and an air of total efficiency about him. You could visualize this man on a parade ground standing at attention in the hot sun, never wilting, never even perspiring. He rose from behind his desk the moment the sergeant ushered Carella and Meyer into his office. He extended his hand.