Majesta, of course, had been named when the British owned America. It had been named after His Majesty King George. Lots of things were named after King George in those days. Georgetown was named after King George. In those days, when the British were dancing quadrilles and even common soldiers sounded like noblemen, Majesta was hilly and elegant. “Oh, yes, Majesta,” the British would say. “Quite elegant.” Majesta nowadays was still hilly but it was not elegant. It was, in fact, inelegant. In fact, it was what you might call crappy.
There were some people in Majesta who lived all the way out on the tongue of land that jutted into the Atlantic, within the city limits but far from the city proper and also the madding crowd. These people felt that Washington and the Continental Congress had been misguided zealots. These people were of the opinion that Majesta would have fared better as a British colony. A case in point was neighboring Sand’s Spit, which even today seemed very much like a British colony. That was because the people out there drank Pimms Cups during the summer months and talked through their noses a lot. The people on Sand’s Spit were enormously rich, most of them. Some of them were only terribly rich. The people in Majesta were miserably poor, most of them. Some of them were only dreadfully poor. Russell Poole was pretty goddamn poor.
He lived with his mother in a row of houses that resembled those one might have found in England along Victoria Street or Gladstone Road — the apple does not fall far from the tree. Russell Poole was black. He had never been to England, but often dreamt of going there. He did not know that England had its own problems with people of a darker hue — the tree does not grow far from the fallen apple. Poole only knew that he was poor and living in a dump. He did not like the looks of Cotton Hawes. Cotton Hawes looked like a mean motherfucking cop. Poole told his mother to go in the other room.
Hawes didn’t much like the looks of Russell Poole, either.
Actually, the men looked a lot alike, except that one was white and the other was black. Maybe that made all the difference. Poole was about Hawes’ height and weight, a good six feet two inches tall and a hundred and ninety pounds. Both men were broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. Poole did not have red hair like Hawes — but then again, who did? Poole closed the door on the bedroom his mother had just entered, and then said, “Okay, what’s this about?”
“I told you on the phone,” Hawes said. “James Harris was murdered.”
“So?”
“You were in his squad overseas, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I say again — so?”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“In August.”
“This past August?”
"Yes.”
“Where was that?”
“The company reunion in New Jersey.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“Old times.”
“How about new times?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he mention any plans he might have had?”
“Plans for what?”
“Plans involving Alpha.”
“What kind of plans?”
“You tell me,” Hawes said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did he mention needing Alpha’s help with anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Some kind of business deal maybe?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“Who else was there? From Alpha, I mean.”
“Just four of us.”
“Who?”
“Me and Jimmy, and Karl Fiersen who was on his way to Amsterdam, and Rudy Tanner who flew in from California.”
“Do you know where we can reach these other men?”
“I’ve got Tanner’s address. Fiersen said to just write him care of American Express in Amsterdam.”
“You exchanged addresses?”
“Yeah, we all did.”
“Jimmy, too?”
“Jimmy, too.”
“You gave him your address?”
“We all gave each other our addresses.”
“Did Jimmy write to you?”
“No.”
“Would you know if he wrote to any of the other men?”
“How would I know?”
“Was Lieutenant Tataglia at the reunion?”
“No. We were surprised about that because he was stationed at Fort Lee in Virginia, and that’s not such a long haul to New Jersey. Tanner came all the way from California.”
“How’d you know where he was stationed?”
“Tataglia? Well, there was a captain there at the reunion, he used to be in command of the 1st Platoon, some of the guys got talking to him. He told us Tataglia was a major now, and stationed at Fort Lee.”
“Who’d he tell?”
“I forget who was standing around there. I think it was me and Jimmy and another guy from the squad, but not from Alpha.”
“Who would that have been?”
“A guy from Bravo. There wasn’t much left of Bravo. Two of them were killed in action the day Jimmy got wounded, and another guy was killed just after Christmas.”
“The one who was at the reunion — do you know his name?”
“Of course I know his name. Danny Cortez, he lives in Philadelphia.”
“Have you got his address, too?”
“Yeah, I took it down.”
“Did Jimmy get his address?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t follow Jimmy around seeing whose address he took or whose address he didn’t.” “But you know for sure that Jimmy took the addresses of the men who were in Alpha.”
“Yeah, because we were all standing around bullshitting, and we used the same pencil to write the addresses.”
“What were you bullshitting about?”
“I told you. Old times. We went through a lot together over there.”
“What did you go through?”
“A lot of action. In the boonies and in the whorehouses, too.”
“What do you mean by boonies?”
“The boondocks. You know, out in the jungles there. The boonies.”
“What kind of action did you see?”
“Vill sweeps mostly. We’d surround a village in the night, and then attack at first light, before they left their women and their rice bowls to go off in the jungle again. We’d destroy whatever we found — AT mines, sugar, pickled fish, small-arms rounds, whatever the fuck.”
“Were you on a vill sweep when Jimmy got wounded?
“No, that was Ala Moana. That was a big operation. That was the whole battalion.”
“How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t good. We lost a lot more people over there than the newspapers made out. All the body counts were the enemy, you dig? Nobody bothered to count us.”
“Did Jimmy get along with everybody in Alpha?”
“Yeah.”
“Everybody in the squad?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you think of anybody who might have wanted him dead?”
“Nope.”
“And that’s the last time you saw him, right? In August.”
“That’s the last time I saw him.”
“You want to let me have those addresses now?” Hawes said.
The telephone again.
The telephone was as vital a tool to policemen as was a tension bar to a burglar. They now had addresses for Rudy Tanner and a man named Danny Cortez, who’d been in Bravo Fire Team of the 2nd Squad. They also knew that Karl Fiersen could be reached care of American Express in Amsterdam, but that didn’t help them much because the city would never spring for a transatlantic call even if by some miracle they could get a phone number for Fiersen. They dialed Directory Assistance for Los Angeles and for Philadelphia, and came up with listings for both Tanner and Cortez. Carella talked to Tanner first He asked almost the same questions about the action that December day, and got almost the same answers. Nothing that didn’t jibe. He kept reaching.