Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“Wasn’t it on the low ground? Near some bamboo?”

“I don’t remember.”

“This was the day you were promoted in the field, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but I don’t remember where the command post was.”

“Danny Cortez says it was near some bamboo at the bottom of a hill.”

“I don’t even know who Danny Cortez is.”

“He was in Bravo. The lieutenant ordered Bravo up the hill, and then he came down to get Alpha. He ordered Alpha up the hill, too, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“But the men refused to go, didn’t they?”

Damn straight, man. The boys told Lloyd to shove it up his ass. Then they all grabbed him, you know, pulled him away from Roxanne where they were standin there in the middle of the floor. Record still goin, drums loud as anything. Guy banging the drums there.

“Isn’t that what happened?” Carella asked. His scalp was beginning to tingle. He understood it completely now. It had taken him a long time to see it but now it was crystal-clear. He didn’t need Lemarre or Leider to explain what had happened that day. He knew what had happened. “Did you and the lieutenant struggle?”

“No, the lieutenant and I didn’t struggle.”

“Didn’t you tell him the men didn’t have to go up that hill if they didn’t want to? Didn’t you tell him they were tired?”

“I told him nothing of the sort.”

“But he was there, isn’t that right?”

“Where? I don’t know what you mean.”

“At the command post. He wasn’t killed before he got to the command post, was he?”

“I don’t... I don’t remember when he was killed. We... the mortar attack started when he was coming down the hill.”

There’s this post in the middle of the room, you know? Like, you know, a steel post holdin up the ceiling beams. They push him up against the post. I got no idea what they fixin to do with him, he the president, they askin for trouble there.

“What was the lieutenant’s first name?” Carella asked.

“What?”

“Lieutenant Blake. What was his first name?”

“Roger.”

Roxanne’s cryin. They grab her. She fightin them now, she don’t want this to happen, but they do it anyway, they stick it in her, one after the other, all of them.

“Danny Cortez saw it,” Carella said. He was lying again. He didn’t give a damn. He wasn’t going to let this son of a bitch off the hook. If the courts reversed it later, the hell with it. He wasn’t going to let him get away now.

“I... don’t know who Danny Cortez is.”

“Bravo Fire Team. I told you before. Bravo. He saw it while he was going up the hill. He looked down, and he saw you and the lieutenant struggling—”

“No,” Tataglia said.

“Saw you unsheath your bayonet—”

“No.”

“And stab him.”

“No!” Tataglia screamed, and suddenly he put his face in his hands and began sobbing. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “I didn’t want to... I didn’t do it for... I was trying to protect the men. They were tired, they... I was their sergeant, I was the one they trusted. He waited them to... The enemy was up there with mortars, how could we possibly... Oh, Jesus. I told him they didn’t have to go if they were tired. We... he swung at me and I grabbed him and... we... we held him against a tree and I... I pulled my bayonet out of... out of... I stabbed him with it. The mortars were going everywhere around us, we... we all stabbed him. All of us but Jimmy. We all stabbed him. And then we... dragged him in the jungle and... and cut him... cut him... cut him up in pieces so it would look like the... the enemy did it.

“When I... when I got Jimmy’s letter, I... I tried to remember, it was so long ago, it was... Who could remember? I could hardly remember. But I knew he could ruin me... I knew he... I had to protect myself, I have a wife and family, I love them, I had to protect them. I knew if the Army started an investigation it would all come out, somebody would crack. So I — he’d given me his return address, you know, on his letter, you know — so I... I found him and I... I killed him. And then I went to his apartment looking for the copy he said he had, the copy of the letter — I gave his wife a chance, I really did, I gave her a chance to give it to me, but she wouldn’t, so I... so I slit her throat with the same bayonet. The others — the lady with the accordion and the man I tried to kill last night — they were just so you’d think it was someone crazy.”

He looked up suddenly. Tears were streaming from his eyes, his face was distorted and pained and plaintive.

“Did the dog really have rabies?” he asked.

So that was it.

They took Tataglia down and booked him for three counts of Murder One, and they threw in the Attempted Assault only because they knew the smoke screen would most certainly become part of the case when it was tried, and they didn’t want any looe ends kicking around. As for the rest of it, that was the Army’s business and the Army’s job. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Loomis promised them he would set the wheels of military justice in motion the moment he got back to Fort Kirby. A full investigation into the murder of Lieutenant Roger Blake would be forthcoming, he said, and he was confident that all perpetrators would be brought before a convened court-martial. Carella thought it was interesting that he had used the word “perpetrators.”

He left the squadroom at twenty minutes to eleven. The night was blustery and cold. He walked with his head ducked against a fierce wind, clutching against his chest a wrapped hamburger he’d asked Miscolo to send out for while Tataglia was being booked. The dog was asleep on the back seat of the car. Carella had left the window on the curb side open a crack, figuring no one would try boosting an automobile belonging to a cop, the information clipped to the turned-down visor: Police Department. He unlocked the front door now, pulled up the lock-knob on the rear door, and then opened it and leaned into the car. He still couldn’t remember the damn dog’s name. He’d have to ask Sophie Harris what the dog’s name was.

“Hey, boy,” he said. “Wake up.”

The dog blinked up at him.

“You want some hamburger?” Carella said, and opened the paper in which the hamburger was wrapped.

The dog blinked again.

“Miscolo sent out for it. It’s cold but it’s very nice. Take a sniff.

He extended his hand to the dog, the hamburger on his open palm. The dog sniffed at it. Then he took a tentative nibble.

“Good,” Carella said, and spread open the paper the hamburger was wrapped in, and put hamburger and paper on the seat beside the dog. By the time he came around to the driver’s side of the car, the hamburger was gone and the dog was licking at the paper. Carella sat behind the wheel a moment before starting the car, looking through the windshield at the green globes of the station house ahead, the numerals “87” painted on each in white. He wondered if there was anything he’d forgotten to do, decided there wasn’t, and twisted the ignition key. It was his contention that when you finished your song and dance, the best thing to do was go home.

He went home.