Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“Yes,” Maslen said, “I knew exactly where I was. I may be blind but I’m not stupid.”

“Mm,” McGrew said, managing to sound dubious. “Well,” he said, “we’ll look into this, Mr. Masler, let you know if we come up with anything.”

“Thank you,” Maslen said. He did not for a moment believe anybody would look into it or come up with anything.

A second patrolman was waiting downstairs in the radio motor patrol car. They had routinely answered the 10–24 — Past Assault — and when they got to Maslen’s building, had decided it wasn’t necessary for both of them to go all the way up to the fourth floor. McGrew’s partner, whose name was Kelly, was asleep in the car when McGrew came down to the street again. McGrew rapped on the window, and Kelly came awake with a start, blinked first into the car and then through the window to where McGrew was bent over looking in. “Oh,” Kelly said, and unlocked the door on the passenger side. McGrew got in.

“What was it?” Kelly asked.

“Who the hell knows?” McGrew said. “Whyn’t you take a spin over to Cherry, near the Mercantile there.”

“The bank there?”

“Yeah, the bank there,” McGrew took the hand mike from the dashboard. He had called in a 10–88 — Arrived At Scene — some five minutes ago, and now he radioed the dispatcher with a combined 10-80D and 10–98 — Referred to Detectives and Resuming Patrol/Available. From the call box on Cherry and Laird, he telephoned the precinct and asked the desk sergeant to connect him with the squadroom upstairs. The detective who took the call was a man named Underhill. McGrew filled him in on the squeal, and then asked did Underhill want to come down there, or what?

“You at the scene now?” Underhill asked.

“Yeah, where it’s supposed to have took place.”

“Why don’t you look around, give me a call back?”

“Look for what?”

“You said chloroform, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So look around, see if there’s anything with chloroform on it A rag, a piece of cotton, whatever. If you find anything, don’t touch it, you hear me?”

“Okay,” McGrew said.

“And look for bloodstains, too. You said the dog bit him, didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s what the blind guy told me.”

“Okay, so look for bloodstains. If you find anything, call me right back. Did the blind guy get hurt?”

“No.”

“Did his dog get hurt?”

“No.”

“Is the dog rabid or anything?”

“No, he got his shots last month.”

“So okay, look around a little,” Underhill said, and hung up.

McGrew went back to the car and opened the door.

“What are we supposed to do?” Kelly asked.

“Look around a little,” McGrew said.

Kelly came out of the car with a long torchlight in his hand. He sprayed the beam over the sidewalk near the mailbox, and the call box, and the lamppost, and then began working his way back toward the wall of the bank.

“Look, there’s some blood,” he said.

“Yeah,” McGrew said. “I think I better get back to Underhill.”

Detective George Underhill did not want to leave the squadroom.

He was busy organizing the paperwork he’d assembled on a series of liquor-store holdups just this side of Chinatown, and he was absorbed with the job, and besides, it was cold outside. Underhill had been bom and raised in the state of California, where it was always warm and lovely, despite what songwriters had to say about its being cold and damp. Underhill did not like this city. Underhill liked San Diego. The reason Underhill was here in this city was that his wife’s mother lived here in this city, and his wife wanted to be near her mother, whom Underhill hated almost as much as he hated this city. If Underhill had his druthers, which he didn’t have, he’d have liked this city to break off and float away into the Atlantic, carrying his mother-in-law with it. That’s how Underhill felt about this city and about his mother-in-law. But that goddamn McGrew had found blood on the sidewalk, and so Underhill guessed the dog had really bitten somebody. Whether the dog had bitten somebody about to assault the blind man was another question. Nobody had got hurt, not the blind man and not the dog, either; Underhill figured this could not by any stretch of the imagination be categorized an assault. He even wondered whether it could be categorized an attempted assault. In which case, why the hell was he contemplating going all the way over to Cherry and Laird on a night when they should be taking in the brass monkeys?

Underhill did not know that three blind people had been killed since Thursday night, two of them in the Eight-Seven and another in Midtown East. Carella’s stop-sheet asking for information on Unusual Crimes and specifying attacks on blind people was at this moment on the desk of a Detective Ramon Jiminez, not six feet from Underhill’s own desk in the detective squadroom of the 41st Precinct, but Underhill hadn’t seen it. If he had seen it, he might have called Carella at once. But this wasn’t a homicide Underhill was dealing with, this wasn’t even an assault, this was maybe an attempted assault — or maybe it was just a grouchy old dog biting somebody just for the hell of it.

Being a conscientious man, however, he wired a stop to the Commissioner of the Department of Hospitals at 432 Market, asking for information re patients seeking medical treatment for dog bites. He did not know where the man had been bitten, he guessed the leg, if anyplace, but he didn’t specify this in his stop. It occurred to him belatedly that if any of the city hospitals came up with the name of a man they’d treated for dog bite, he would have no way of identifying a possible suspect unless he had a blood sample. That was why he called the Police Laboratory, and that was how it happened that a lab technician went to the scene at eight-fifteen that night and began taking blood samples from the sidewalk.

Carella knew nothing about any of this.

It was a big city.

Sophie Harris did not want the dog.

“I got no way of taking care of the dog,” she said. “Chrissie’s in school all day long, and I’m out workin. What we goan do with a big dog like that in this small apartment? Who’s goan take care of him?”

“I thought you might want him,” Carella said.

“Ain’t no dog goan bring back my Jimmy,” she said. “You better take him with you when you leave.”

“Well,” Carella said, and looked at the dog. Nobody seemed to want the dog. He’d be damned if he wanted the dog, either. The dog looked back at him balefully. Carella had removed the leather harness, but the dog still wore around his neck a studded leather collar hung with a collection of hardware. If he decided to keep the dog, he’d have to look at all those metal discs and whatever else was hanging there, find out what shots the dog had already had. He did not want a dog. He didn’t even like dogs. Teddy would have a fit if he brought home a dog. “Are you sure you don’t want the dog?” he asked Sophie.

“I’m sure,” she said. They had put her son in the ground yesterday, she did not want any damn dog reminding her that he was gone forever. Buried him side by side with the daughter-in-law she’d loved, both of them gone now. Made Sophie want to bust out crying all over again, here in the presence of the policeman. She had to learn to control these sudden fits of weeping that came over her.

“Well,” Carella said, “I’ll have to find something to do with him.” He looked at the dog again. The dog looked back. “Anyway,” Carella said, “that isn’t my only reason for coming here this morning. Mrs. Harris, do you remember telling me that Jimmy had contacted an old Army buddy...”