Fiddlers

‘We called the enemy Charlie, too,’ he told them. ‘That was the name we had for them at the time. Charlie. That was my name, too, at the time. While I was in Nam…”

The girl couldn’t have been more than nineteen.

I don’t know why the sergeant thought she might be a spy.

It was a very sunny day.

I remember the sun was shining very brightly.

I was twenty years old, and riding in an open Jeep on a bumpy road with an automatic rifle in my lap and a girl with a baby hanging on to the hood for dear life.

You know… they teach you to kill.

That’s the whole point of it.

You are trained to kill.

Even so…

The sergeant ordered her to put up her hands. This wasn’t logical. He was grinning. Told her to put her hands up over her head. The Jeep was bouncing along, she was hanging on to the baby, hanging on to the hood, how could she put up her hands!

‘Put up your hands!’ he yelled.

She couldn’t understand a word of English. She maybe didn’t even hear him, the wind, the sound of planes strafing the village, maybe she didn’t even hear him.

‘Get your hands up!’ he yelled.

Grinning.

He turned to me.

‘Blow her away,’ he said.

They teach you to kill, you know.

‘Blow her off the fuckin hood!’ he yelled.

* * * *

By six fifteen, they felt they had everything they needed for a grand jury. But Andy Parker still wasn’t satisfied.

‘Why’d you wait all this time?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Why’d you wait till now to go after them?’

‘Time was running out.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I couldn’t let them get away with what they’d done to me. I had to get them before it was too late.’

‘You mean before they died natural deaths?’ Parker asked, referring to the advanced ages of the vies, grinning when he asked the question.

‘No,’ Purcell said. ‘Before the cancer killed me.’

‘Pancreatic cancer.

‘Was what I had.

‘The chemotherapy was Gemzar and Taxotere. It was the Taxotere that caused me to lose my hair. It’s only supposed to do that in eighty percent of the cases, but look at me. They told me my hair would grow back in six months. When we stopped the chemotherapy. Taxotere’s a synthetic now, but it originally came from the leaves of the yew tree. That sounds medieval, doesn’t it? Like doctors using leeches and such? Well, cancer, they’re really just guessing. But the recipe, the cocktail, whatever you want to call it, the mix of poisons, seemed to be helping, the tumors in the pancreas seemed to be shrinking. Then…”

He hesitated.

The video camera was fall on his face.

‘Then in May, the middle of May it was, we got the results of the next CAT scan, and… it had spread everywhere. The cancer. Everywhere. The stomach, the liver, the lymph nodes, the lungs… just everywhere. The doctor told me I had potentially two months to live. That was the word he used. “Potentially.”

‘I decided to live it up in those next two months. Took out a home equity loan on my house, they gave me two hundred thousand dollars, let them take the house, who cares, I’ll be dead. I recently leased a car, I’ll be dead before the first payment is due, who cares? I’m making up for what I never achieved in my lifetime. Never accomplished. What I might have accomplished if only… if only people hadn’t fiddled with me. So I decided to make them pay for what they’d done. The people who’d messed up my life. All of them. Do you understand? I killed them because they fiddled with my life!’

‘You fiddled with theirs, too,’ Nellie said. ‘Big time.’

‘Good. They deserved it.’

‘Sure, good,’ Nellie said, and nodded. ‘You won’t think it’s so good when they inject that valium in your vein.’

‘That’ll never happen,’ Purcell said. ‘I’ll be dead before then. By my count, I’ve got no more than a week. So who cares?’

‘Your fiancee might care,’ Nellie said.

Which was the only time any emotion crossed his face.

* * * *

It was 6:43 A.M. when the video guy wrapped up his equipment and told Nellie and the detectives he was on his way. By then, Charles Purcell was already on his way to the Men’s House of Detention downtown, for arraignment when the criminal courts opened. The video guy, who’d been interested in nothing more than the whodunit aspect of the case - this was, after all, merely a video, right? - could now pack up and go home.

For that matter, so could everyone else.

11.

WHEN SHE OPENED the door at seven thirty that Tuesday morning, Paula Wellington was still in pajamas, her white hair loose around her face, no makeup. She looked fifty-one. She looked beautiful. She yawned, blinked out into the hallway at him.

‘Little early, isn’t it?’ she said.

I’ve been up all night,’ Hawes said.

‘Come in,’ she said.

She closed the door behind him, locked it.

‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘I thought I might just sleep on the couch or something.’

‘That’s what you thought, I see.’

‘You think that might be all right? My just sleeping here?’

‘I’m still asleep,’ she said. ‘But come,’ she said, and took his hand. ‘Then we’ll see,’ she said.

If she was talking about the fragility of relationships, he knew all about those; he’d been there.

If she was telling him that life itself was at best tenuous, he knew that, too; he was a cop.

‘Then we’ll see,’ he agreed.

* * * *

‘What am I, some kind of criminal here?’ April asked.

Just answer the question, Teddy signed.

‘Dad? Do I need a lawyer here?’

Good ploy, Carella thought. Turn the innocent smile and wide eyes on Dear Old Dad, always worked before, should work now. Mr. and Mrs. America at the breakfast table with their darling, thirteen-year-old, average- American twins - except that one of them may have been smoking pot on her thirteenth birthday.

‘Answer your mother’s question,’ he said.

‘I forget the question,’ April said, and grinned at Mark for approval. Mark kept spooning Cheerios into his mouth.