Ed McBain: Long Time No See

He waited.

He was wearing a fiberglass flak jacket over his cotton jungle shirt and field pants, leather-soled, canvas-topped jungle boots with holes for water drainage, black nylon socks, a helmet liner and a steel pot with a camouflage cover over it. Hanging from his belt suspender straps was a first-aid kit containing gauze, salt tablets and foot powder; an ammo pouch containing magazines for his automatic rifle; a Claymore pouch containing six M-26 fragmentation grenades and two smoke grenades; a bayonet, a protective mask and two canteens of water. He crouched in the underbrush, waiting, listening. He could hear their RTO radioing back to Bravo for help.

The grenade came from somewhere far over on the right. One of the men in Alpha yelled a warning too late. He turned to see the grenade flickering through the dappled jungle heat like a rare tropical bird. He was about to throw himself away from it, flat into the bushes behind him, when it exploded some four feet above his head. Lucky it didn’t blow his whole head off. Opened his forehead, made scrambled eggs of his eyes. Doctor at the base hospital told him he was lucky he was alive. That was sifter Bravo came to the rescue. Hadn’t seen a thing since that day. December the fourteenth. Eleven days before Christmas, ten years ago. Blind since then.

The chestnut trees in Hannon Square were leafless now in November. He could hear the wind keening through their naked branches. He was approaching the statue — there were things a blind person could sense, objects that bounced back echoes or warmth, movements that caused changes in the air pressure to be felt on the face. Somewhere up on Culver Avenue, he heard a bus grinding into gear. There was the smell of snow in the air. He hoped it would not snow. Snow made it difficult to—

Stanley suddenly stopped.

He jerked at the harness. The dog would not move.

“What is it?” he asked.

The dog was growling.

“Stanley?” he said.

Silence except for the dog still growling.

“Who’s there?” he said.

He smelled something he identified at once. From when they’d operated on him back at the base hospital. Smelled it carried on the November wind. Chloroform. He could feel the dog’s tenseness vibrating up through the leather harness in his hand. And then suddenly the dog began to whimper. The scent of the chloroform was overpowering. He turned his head away from it, and felt the weight of the dog tugging on the harness. Stanley was falling to the sidewalk. He tried to keep the dog on his feet. Struggled. He bent over to his right, leaning into the wind. The dog was on the sidewalk now. Above, he heard the crackle of the swaying limbs of the chestnut tree. He was suddenly lost. He did not want to let go of the harness because he felt, irrationally, that if he did so he would be truly blind; the dog was his eyes. But he knew that Stanley was unconscious, knew the dog had been chloroformed. His hand opened. He let go of the harness as though he were letting go of a lifeline. He backed away from the dog. The November wind roared against his ears. He could hear no footfalls.

“Where are you?” he said.

Silence. The wind.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

He was seized suddenly from behind. He felt his chin caught in the crook of someone’s elbow, felt his head being jerked back, his jaw raised. And then pain. A searing line of fire across his throat. The collar of his shirt was suddenly wet. Warm. The widespread fingers of his left hand pushed spasmodically against the air. He coughed, choked, gasped for breath. In a moment he fell to the pavement beside the dog. Blood gushed from his slit throat, ran in bright red rivulets to the base of the statue, and around the base, and then slanted across the pavement to disappear into the barberry bushes.

The woman who found the body at ten minutes to eight that Thursday night was a Puerto Rican lady who spoke no English. She looked down at the man and the dog and thought they both were dead, and then realized the dog was breathing. At first she thought to forget the entire matter; it did not pay to involve oneself in another’s business, especially when there was a man on the sidewalk with the insides of his neck showing. She realized then that the dog was a seeing-eye dog, and she felt at once enormous pity for the dead man. Shaking her head, clucking her tongue, she went to the phone booth across the street, inserted a coin into the slot, and dialed 911. She knew how to dial 911 because all the advertisements for the number were in both English and in Spanish, and in this part of the city it was a good idea to know how to dial the police in an emergency. The man who answered the telephone understood Spanish. He, too, was of Hispanic background, his family having come from Mayagüez during the great influx following World War II. He was twelve years old then. He now spoke English without a trace of accent; if anything, it was his Spanish that was somewhat faulty. He was able to gather from the woman’s excited babble that she had found a dead blind man near the statue in Hannon Square. When he asked her what her name was, the woman hung up.

He understood that completely; this was the city.

A radio motor patrol car was angle-parked into the curb when Detectives Carella and Meyer arrived at the scene. Behind that was a black sedan that looked like a hearse. Carella guessed it belonged to Homicide.

“Well, well,” Monoghan said, “look who’s here.”

“Well, well,” Monroe said.

The two Homicide detectives stood with their hands in their pockets, one on either side of the man who lay crookedly on the pavement. They were dressed almost identically, each wearing black overcoat and gray fedora, blue woolen muffler. Both of them were sturdily built, with wide shoulders and beefy chests and thighs, craggy faces and eyes that were used to seeing dead men, blind or otherwise. Monoghan and Monroe looked exactly like hit men for the mob.

“We been here ten minutes already,” Monoghan said at once.

“Twelve,” Monroe said, checking his watch.

“We’re a little short-handed tonight,” Carella said.

“We radioed for a meat wagon already,” Monoghan said.

“And the M.E. is on his way.”

“Lab boys, too.”

“You can thank us,” Monroe said.

“Thank you,” Carella said, and looked down at the body.

“Guy’s dead as a doornail,” Monoghan said.

“Somebody opened his throat nice,” Monroe said.

“Look at them tubes in there.”

“Makes you want to puke.”

In the city for which these men worked, the appearance of Homicide cops at the scene of a murder was mandatory, even though the subsequent investigation was handled by the precinct detectives catching the squeal. In rare instances, and presumably because they were specialists serving in a supervisory and advisory capacity, the Homicide detectives would come up with an idea or a piece of information that helped expedite the solution to a case. More often than not, they simply got underfoot. Monoghan and Monroe had already confused the issue by calling for an ambulance before the M.E. was on the scene. This was a cold night. Nobody liked dancing a jig when the temperature was hovering near the freezing point. And the hospital team would not be able to move the body till the M.E. checked it out.

“I hate stabbings,” Monoghan said.

“This ain’t a stabbing,” Monroe said.

“No, then what is it? A poisoning? Man’s laying there with his throat cut open — what is it, a hanging?”

“This is an incised wound,” Monroe said. “There’s a difference. A stabbing—” His right hands suddenly appeared from the pocket of his coat, the fist clutching an imaginary dagger. “A stabbing is when you urh, urh, urh” he said, pushing his fist at the air. “That’s a stabbing. An incised wound is when you zzzt,” he said, and smoothly drew the imaginary dagger across the same empty air.