smile on his face. It had all the shrinks puzzled. So Doc asks him, What's going on in there?
Norman tells Doc he goes to this planet every day. Time–travels inside his head. This planet, Ludar, he called it, it's a beautiful, peaceful place. The sky is rose–colored, and the grass is white, pure white, like snow. Everybody does something on Ludar. Norman, he was a farmer— he raised gold— it grows out of the ground on Ludar. Norman has a wife there. Some kids too. It's a perfect, holy place. Nobody starves, nobody's homeless. Nobody even gets mad.
So Norman's not really in his cell, see. He's on Ludar. He only eats twice a day. For fuel, so he can go back to where he wants to be.
Doc told me Norman really went there. He had so much detail that it had to be real. In his head, real. Doc told me he asked Norman, it sounded so perfect, could he go there too? Norman got real sad behind that. He really liked Doc, and he wished he could have given him better news…but most people couldn't go to Ludar— that's just the way it was.
So Doc started to trace it back, find out where Norman got his flight plan to Ludar. They had Norman when he was a kid, the same way they had so many of us. In one of the places they put him, Norman picked up a knife and started stabbing. That was to protect himself— even the guards knew that. Some of those kiddie camps, it comes down to the same two choices as prison.
So they started him on medication then— to gentle him down, keep him quiet. But it never worked. Sooner or later, Norman would start stabbing again.
Doc didn't bother too much with those paper–and–pencil tests— he just asked Norman flat–out: How come you stab so many people? Norman said they were keeping him from going to Ludar. They had no right to do that— he wasn't hurting anybody going there. That's when Doc put it all together. It wasn't
Fantasy is something you wish would happen. Flashbacks are something you wish never had. I didn't need an imagination to be somewhere else— I'd been there. All I had to do was remember, play the images out on my own screen.
I went there, stayed a long time. When I opened my eyes, it was early Sunday morning. I had nothing to show for my trip inside my head. And my back felt as cold as the killer's trail.
I went out to resupply. Came back with a pint of ice cream, a bag full of warm bagels, a thick wedge of cream cheese, and a quarter–pound of Nova lox. Pansy loves the stuff. Maybe she's West Indian in her heart and Jewish in her soul…although Mama insists she's a giant Shar–Pei.
I stepped out on the fire escape, standing well back in the building's shadow, invisible from the ground at that hour. When I finished the last bagel, I punched Mama's number into the cellular phone.
'It's me,' I said.
'Two calls,' she answered. 'One man say his name J.P. The other was that woman.'
'Either one say it was important?'
'Both say.'
'Thanks, Mama. I'll call later.'
'Watch the sky,' she said, hanging up.
On the street, I looked around for a pay phone before I tried Belinda.
'What's up?' I asked her when she answered on the first ring.
'You don't know?'
'No. I
'Oh Jesus. Not on the phone. Can you meet me— ?'
'I don't have a car anymore,' I told her.
'That's all right,' she said. 'I have one. You know…Wait! Are you on a safe phone?'
'In the street,' I said.
'Yeah…okay. You know Benson Street? The alley behind the— ?'
'I know it,' I told her. 'What time?'
'Midnight, okay?'
'Okay.'
I rode the underground to Midtown, got off a few blocks from Hauser's office. I tried a pay phone on him too.
'It's me.'
'Where the hell have you been?' he barked, an urgent undertone in his voice. 'Can you meet me— ?'
'Say where and when.'
'My office,' he replied. 'ASAP.'
The door to his office was slightly ajar. I pushed it open the rest of the way and crossed the threshold, rapping gently on the door at the same time. Hauser's eyes were on some papers on his desk— he jerked his head up sharply. 'What'd you do, fly?' he asked.
'I was in the neighborhood,' I told him. 'What have you got?'
'Sit down,' Hauser said, standing up himself. 'This could take a while.'
I took the seat he offered, lit a smoke, settled in. Hauser was pacing back and forth behind his desk. 'Go,' I told him.
'Those psych reports— the ones on this cop, Morales. You read them carefully?'
'Carefully as I could,' I said, wary now.
'He's a Catholic. Did you see that?'
'Yeah, So what? There's all kinds of Catholics.'
'Hispanic Catholics, they generally don't stray as far from the church as others.'
'Nobody
'You see where he doesn't have any kids?' Hauser went on like I hadn't spoken.
'Yeah. And if you're gonna tell me maybe he's gay and can't deal with it, I'm already on that trail.'
'He's not gay,' Hauser said, a dead certainty in his voice. 'Did you look at the cross–references on the report?'
'There weren't any,' I told him flatly. 'I gave you everything she gave me.'
'Yeah, there were,' he said. 'Look at the bottom of the last page.'
I ran my eyes over the paper. All I could see was a small box outlined in black, like an obit:
VS = 1
LOD79–I = 2
HOSP80–Dx81–Rx = 3
'What's all that supposed to mean?' I asked him.
'The first reference is to vital statistics. Date of birth, parents' names, like that. Next is line–of–duty injuries. The last one is all hospitalizations, communicable diseases— any inpatient stays, including the E–Ward.'
'Yeah, okay. But what good's that do us? Belinda never gave us— '
'She probably never had it,' Hauser interrupted. 'But there's more than one way to get documents out of One Police Plaza. Here, take a look for yourself.' He handed over a long printout on thermal paper, like a continuous feed from a fax machine.
I ran my eyes over it, still coming up empty–handed. 'Okay, so he was born in 1956 in Camden, New Jersey. And he had an operation to fix a hernia once.'
'In the same place,' Hauser said.
