“So,” Brolin said. “This is about Mr. Newman?”

  “Yes,” Carella said. He still hadn’t taken a seat. There was a leather couch angled out from a single chair beside the desk, and there was also a leather armchair facing the desk.

  “The armchair,” Brolin said.

  Carella sat.

  “What did you want to know?” Brolin asked. “I’m sorry this has to be so brief, but I have a full caseload…”

  “I understand,” Carella said. “Dr. Brolin, I know it would be unethical to discuss anything a patient says here in this office…”

  “It would,” Brolin said.

  “But what I have to ask today doesn’t concern Anne Newman, per se, except as it relates to her husband.”

  “Uh-huh,” Brolin said.

  “So if you can answer some of my questions…”

  “I’d have to hear the questions first.”

  “Of course,” Carella said. “First, can you tell me whether Mrs. Newman ever mentioned the possibility of her husband committing suicide.”

  “Yes,” Brolin said.

  His immediate response surprised Carella; he had half-expected a lengthy discourse on confidentiality. Taken aback, he blinked, and then said, “She did?”

  “Yes,” Brolin said again.

  “When was this, Dr. Brolin?”

  “On several occasions.”

  “Said she was afraid her husband might commit suicide.”

  “Said he had threatened suicide.”

  “Did she say why?” Carella asked.

  “Well, the man had a drinking problem,” Brolin said, and rested his elbows on the desk, and tented his hands in front of his face, and peered over them. His eyes were an intense blue, Carella noticed. “He was finding it increasingly difficult to cope. His occupation didn’t help much, I’m sure. He was a commercial artist, freelancing out of the apartment, and was alone much of the time. Without the normal give-and-take of a so-called community relationship—the sort of camaraderie one might normally enjoy in the atmosphere of a business office or a shop or what-have-you—his problems must have appeared insurmountable. I’d suggested to Mrs. Newman, on more than one occasion, that he seek help. But apparently—”

  “By help…?”

  “Psychiatric help.”

  “What was his reaction to this?”

  “He refused. He told her he was perfectly capable of handling his own life. And now…” Brolin sighed. “The way he handled his own life was to end it.”

  Carella nodded, and then said, “Dr. Brolin, these suicide threats, would they have predated the drawing of his will?”

  “What will is that?” Brolin asked.

  “Mr. Newman had a new will drawn last month.”

  “Oh my, he’d been threatening suicide for almost as long as I’ve been treating Mrs. Newman.”

  “Then this wasn’t something new.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Dr. Brolin, had Mrs. Newman ever discussed divorce with you?”

  “I’m not sure I wouldn’t be breaching a patient’s confidence if I answered that question.”

  “Then again,” Carella said, “you just answered it, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” Brolin said, and smiled. “Yes, she explored the possibility of divorce.”

  “What did you advise her?”

  “It’s not a psychiatrist’s role to advise, Mr. Carella. I’m here to help my patients find a way of dealing realistically with their problems.”

  “When did she first discuss the possibility of divorce?”

  “Last month sometime.”

  “Dr. Brolin…do you believe Mrs. Newman had any knowledge of her husband’s new will?”

  “The first I’ve heard of any will is when you mentioned it a few minutes ago.” His reference to time seemed to alert him to the patient waiting outside. He glanced at his watch.

  “Just a few more questions,” Carella said, and looked at his own watch. “When Mrs. Newman discussed divorce with you, did she indicate it might have had anything to do with her husband’s will?”

  “I just told you—”

  “I’m referring to the fact that Mr. Newman left all of his estate to an art dealer named Louis Kern.”

  “That name has never been mentioned here in this office.”

  “What I’m trying to learn, Dr. Brolin, is whether Mrs. Newman may have felt any resentment—”

  “Resentment?”

  “Yes, over the fact that her husband named her as beneficiary of a relatively small insurance policy, whereas in his will—”

  “If she knew about such a will, she never mentioned it here.”

  “Dr. Brolin, in your…?”

  “Mr. Carella, I’m really very sorry, but I have a patient waiting.”

  “Just this one last question.”

  “Please.”

  “In your professional opinion, would someone with a severe aversion to medication of any kind have willingly ingested a fatal dose of Seconal?”

  “I have no way of answering that without knowing the case history of the person in question.”

  “The person in question, I’m sure you realize—”

  “Yes, is Mr. Newman. But I know nothing more about him than what his wife has told me in this office. That’s not sufficient empirical evidence upon which to base a professional judgment.”

  “I see,” Carella said, and rose. He extended his hand across the desk. “Thank you, Dr. Brolin,” he said, “I appreciate your time.”

  “Glad to be of help,” Brolin said.

  The man in the overcoat was still sitting in the small waiting room outside. As Carella passed him, he looked up and said, “Are you going to pee now?”

  “Later,” Carella said.

  The men on the team had all gone down the hall to pee.

  The clock behind the muster-room desk read 10:10 P.M. as they came downstairs to pick up their equipment in the small supply room to the right of the iron-runged steps. The hand-held, battery-powered radios were Police Department property, and marked as such. The vests had been privately purchased and were privately owned by any detective who thought he might have cause to need one. In this city, only Emergency Squad cops were issued bulletproof vests; any other cop who wanted one had to pay for it with his own hard-earned bucks. The vests bore the names of the various cops stenciled across their backs. The cops often loaned their vests to other cops less affluent than themselves when something heavy was going down and they would be sitting the back of a liquor store instead. Not all of the detectives on the Eight-Seven owned bulletproof vests, but normally there were always more than enough to go around.

  The vests were bulky and uncomfortable and often limited movement to such an extent that many detectives preferred taking their chances without them. There wasn’t a cop in the world who thought he was faster than a speeding bullet, but mobility was sometimes vital in a shootout, and if a vest caused you to move too clumsily, a bullet in the head might easily result; there was no vest that covered a cop’s head. Tonight, the men would not put on their vests until they were approaching the building on Culver Avenue; this would have been normal procedure even when it wasn’t so damn hot. The two detectives from the Narcotics Squad hadn’t brought along any vests. They wanted to know now if they could borrow a couple from the Eight-Seven.

  There were four 87th Precinct detectives and six 87th Precinct patrolmen working the bust. There were only eight vests. Willis decided he didn’t want to wear one. The six patrolmen, as part of the family, drew straws to see who would get to wear the remaining five vests. One of the patrolmen and both Narcs were left out in the cold. Gerardi, the older of the Narc Squad cops, complained that the Eight-Seven ought to learn some common courtesy. Miller, the other Narc, said this wasn’t even their bust; the Eight-Seven would get credit for the bust, and they’d be risking their asses without vests. Meyer told them both to go home to their knitting. The men all went to pee again before leaving the station house.

  The police van posing as a bakery truck was parked across the street from 1124 Culver when the unmarked sedans pulled up. The men had put on their vests when they were three blocks away from the building, and had sat in silent, cramped discomfort on the approach. The moment the cars angled into the curb, they piled out gratefully onto the sidewalk, and moved swiftly toward the front door of the building, guns drawn. Meyer was in the lead. Immediately behind him in the triangular wedge were Brown and Hawes, and behind them Willis and a patrolman named Roger Higgins, who was scared out of his wits. The men went up the steps as quietly as they possibly could, considering the number of them. Their main interest was speed. Get up to the third floor, kick in the door, nail them cold with the dope and the money, make the arrest. On the second-floor landing, one of the Narc cops tripped and muttered “Shit,” and one of the patrolmen shushed him, and then suddenly all of them were on the third floor, and Higgins wasn’t the only one who was scared. As Meyer approached the door to the suspect apartment, he felt a familiar pounding in his chest, the anticipated reaction to fear of the unknown. He thought he knew who would be behind the door he was about to kick in, but he didn’t know what kind of arsenal was inside there.

  In the state for which these men worked, it was necessary to obtain a search warrant from either a Criminal Court judge, or a Superior Court judge—a justice of the Supreme Court, as it applied to Isola—in order to enter any suspect premises. The form and content of the search warrant were defined by law. If the investigating officers felt there might be contraband materials on the premises, they would also request that the warrant carried a No-Knock provision, which would allow them to enter without announcing themselves. Meyer’s warrant, signed downtown at the Criminal Courts building yesterday, contained just such a provision. But being legally sanctioned to go in unannounced did not dissipate that persistent fear of the unknown, the possible sudden death that lurked behind an alien door. He was sweating as he braced himself against the wall opposite the door, and then jackknifed his right leg and released a flat-footed kick at the lock.

  The jamb splintered, the door sprang open.

  “Police!” Meyer shouted. “Don’t move!”

  There were two people in the room.

  They both sat at a long table.

  One of them was a woman wearing only a slip. The other was a man in his undershorts. The woman was white, the man was black. The woman was thin to the point of emaciation. The man looked relatively robust, but his eyes were as glazed as hers, and there was a syringe on the tabletop, and a book of matches, and a soot-blackened tablespoon, and two torn, empty glassine packets. The man and the woman looked up as the detectives and the uniformed policemen swarmed into the room. Neither of them said a word. The cops fanned out, throwing open doors to other rooms, closets, a small toilet. The apartment was empty except for the man and the woman who sat at the table, stoned, watching them silently.

  “Anybody else here?” Meyer asked.

  The woman shook her head.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Mary,” she said.

  “Mary what?”

  “What’s my name?” she asked the black man.

  The black man shrugged.

  “How about you?” Meyer asked him.

  “Jefferson Hill.”

  “Where’d you get this shit?” one of the Narc cops asked, picking up an empty glassine packet.

  “Mary?” Hill said. “Where we get this?”

  “Good shit,” Mary said, and nodded.

  “Where’re the guys running this place?” Brown asked.

  “Where’re the guys, Mary?” Hill asked.

  “Yeah,” Mary said, and shrugged.

  “All this for a couple of fuckin’ junkies,” the other Narc cop said.

  Some you win, some you lose.

  Augusta had told him they’d be shooting outdoors tonight, at Long General downtown, something to do with juxtaposing the new line of ski fashions with the stark, monolithic architecture of the hospital and the starched white uniforms of the staff nurses they’d be using as background extras. The commercial would not appear on television till December sometime, Augusta explained, they worked very far in advance. She was not looking forward to the assignment. Modeling ski parkas, in the stifling heat under bright lights, was not her idea of an ideal way to spend a summer night.

  Kling hadn’t believed a word of it.

  A call to the senior security officer at the hospital informed him that no plans had been made for anyone to take pictures in or around the place that night. “This is a hospital,” the security man said somewhat testily, “there are sick people here, we don’t allow such shenanigans here.”

  Marveling at the blatancy of her lie, Kling thanked the man politely, and then sat at his desk in the squadroom, staring at the windows, listening to the lost sounds of summer outside. In a little while, he said good night to Carella, and went downstairs, and told Murchison on the muster desk that he was checking out, and then walked the two blocks to the kiosk on Grover, and took the subway downtown.

  The lights on the first floor of the building on Hopper Street, in the apartment occupied by the painter Michael Lucas, were out. So were the lights on the second floor; Martha and Michelle were most likely prowling the town, and God knew where Franny the possible hooker was. He expected the photographers’ studios on the third and fourth floors to be dark, and they were. But the fifth-floor apartment—the one rented or owned by the man who modeled “mostly fashion, occasional beefcake,” the man named Bradford Douglas with his bulging muscles and his flowing blond hair—his apartment was ablaze with light across the entire top floor of the building. Kling was tempted to go up there and kick in the door, no search warrant with a No-Knock provision, just kick the damn thing in and find Augusta there.

  He stood across the street, in the shadows, thirty feet or more away from the single lamppost on the corner. The shops and restaurants lining the street were closed for the night; this was now a little past 11:00, and Augusta had left for her imaginary shoot at a quarter to 9:00. He looked up at the lighted windows. In his mind, they became multiple screens flashing pornographic movies, Augusta scantily clad, Douglas bare-chested, Augusta in his arms, Augusta accepting his embrace and his kisses, Augusta opening herself to—

  The first shot took him completely by surprise.

  He heard the roar of the gun somewhere off to his left, beyond the circle of light cast by the street-corner lamppost, heard the slug as it whacked home against the brick of the building, saw from the corner of his eye the brick a foot away from his head shatter with the impact of the bullet, throwing flying pieces of soot-stained red into the air. By the time the second shot came, he was flat on his belly on the sidewalk, his pistol in his hand, his heart beating wildly, his eyes scanning the darkness beyond the circle of light. There was a third shot, triggered off in haste, and then the sound of footsteps pounding away into the darkness. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw the running man cross a pool of light under another lamppost. Dark windbreaker and fedora. Gun flailing in his right hand as he pumped the air like a track star. He disappeared around the corner just as Kling began chasing him, and was gone when Kling reached the lamppost.

  Out of breath, he walked back to where he thought the shots had come from. On his hands and knees, he began searching the pavement, touching, feeling with his palms and his fingers, looking for spent cartridge cases. All he got was dirty hands. Either this wasn’t the exact spot or else the man had been firing a revolver rather than an automatic. He went back to where he’d been standing when the shooting started. The hole in the brick wall was at least six inches in diameter; his assailant had been using a high-powered gun. The area was dark. He looked up and down the street, hoping to find a radio motor-patrol car; the patrolmen would be carrying torchlights. The street was empty of traffic. Never a cop around when you needed one. He got down on his hands and knees again, in the dark, and began feeling the sidewalk, searching for bullets. He found only one, in pretty good shape, not too badly deformed. He pocketed the slug, debated phoning this in to the local precinct, and decided against it. Instead, he walked up to the lighted avenue two blocks away, hailed a taxi, and told the driver to take him to Long General. There were no photographers and no models outside the hospital. He gave the driver his home address, and then nervously took a cigarette from the package he’d bought that morning, and lighted it, his hands trembling. The last time he’d smoked was on his wedding night, almost four years ago, when Augusta, his bride, was abducted by a lunatic who’d then held her captive for three days.

  The cabbie said, “Would you mind putting that out, please? I’m allergic to cigarette smoke.”

  “What?” Kling said.

  “There’s a sign back there, can’t you see the sign?” the cabbie said.

  Kling put out the cigarette.

  Back at the ranch, they were discussing the abortive raid.

  “They must’ve been tipped,” Gerardi, the older of the Narc Squad cops said.

  “I don’t think so,” Meyer said.

  “Then how come we find only two junkies with track marks running from their shoulders to their assholes?”

  “It must’ve been called off,” Brown said. “Maybe the shipment was delayed.”

  “Delayed, my ass,” Miller, the other Narc said. “Somebody tipped them.”

  “You should tighten your security up here,” Gerardi said.

  “What’ve you got up here?” Miller asked. “Some cop on the take?”

  Brown glared at him and said nothing. Brown’s glares were often more meaningful than a thousand words.

  “Where’s the son of a bitch sitting that bakery truck?” Gerardi asked. “I thought he was supposed to come up here.”

  “He’s clearing it with Photo,” Willis said.

 

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