Hark!

HARK!

An 87th Precinct Novel

Ed McBain

1.

GLORIA KNEW THAT someone was in her apartment the moment she unlocked the door and entered. She was reaching into her tote bag when a man's voice said, 'No, don't.'

Her fingertips were an inch away from the steel butt of a .380 caliber Browning.

'Really,' the voice said. 'I wouldn't.'

She closed the door behind her, reached for the switch to the right of the door jamb, and snapped on the lights.

He was sitting in an easy chair across the room, facing the entrance door. He was wearing gray slacks, black loafers, blue socks, and a matching dark blue, long-sleeved linen shirt. The throat of the shirt was unbuttoned two buttons down. The cuffs were rolled up on his forearms. There was a hearing aid in his right ear.

'Well, well,' she said. 'Look what the cat dragged in.'

'Indeed,' he said.

'Long time no see,' she said.

'Bad penny,' he said, and shrugged almost sadly.

It was the shrug that told her he was going to kill her. Well, maybe that and the gun in his right hand. Plus the silencer screwed onto the muzzle of the gun. And their history. She knew he was not one to forget their history.

'I'll give it all back,' she said at once. 'Whatever's left of it.'

'And how much is that, Gloria?'

'I haven't been frugal.'

'So I see,' he said, and with a slight arc of the gun

barrel indicated her luxurious apartment. She almost reached into the tote again. But the gun regained its focus at once, steady in his hand, tilted up directly at her heart. She didn't know what kind of gun it was; some sort of automatic, it looked like. But she knew a silencer when she saw one, long and sleek and full of deadly promise.

'What's left of the thirty million?' he asked.

'I didn't get nearly that much.'

'That was the police estimate. Thirty million plus.'

'The estimate was high.'

'How much did you get, Gloria?'

'Well, the smack brought close to what they said it was worth.

'Which was twenty-one mil, six-hundred thou.'

The gun steady in his fist. Pointing straight at her heart.

'But I had to discount it by ten percent.'

'Which left twenty-one mil, six-hundred thou.'

Lightning fast calculation.

'If you say so,' she said.

'I say so.'

A thin smile. The gun unwavering.

'Go on, Gloria.'

'The police sheet valued the zip at three mil. I got two for it.'

'And the rest?'

'I'm not sure I have all this in my head.'

'Try to find it in your head, Gloria,' he said, and smiled again, urging her with the gun, wagging it encouragingly. But not impatiently, she noticed. Maybe he didn't plan to kill her after all. Then again, there was the silencer. You did not attach a silencer to a gun unless you were concerned about the noise it might make.

'The rocks brought around half a mil. The lucy was estimated at close to a mil. I got half that for it. The ope, I had a real hard time dealing. The cops said eighty-four large, I maybe got twenty-five for it. If I got another twenty-five for the hash, that was a lot. The gage brought maybe one-fifty large for the bulk. The fatties, I smoked myself.' She smiled. 'Over a period of time,' she said.

'Over a long period of time,' he said. 'So let me see. You got twenty-one-six for the heroin and another two for the coke. Half a mil for the crack and another half for the LSD. Twenty-five for the opium and the same for the hashish. Another one-fifty for the marijuana. That comes to twenty four million, eight hundred thousand dollars. The cigarettes are on the house,' he said, and smiled again. You owe me a lot of money, Gloria.'

'I spent a lot of it.'

'How much is left?'

'I haven't counted it lately. Whatever's left is yours.'

'Oh, you bet it is,' he said.

'Maybe twenty mil, something like that? That's a lot of cash, Sonny.'

The name he'd used on the job was Sonny Sanson. Sonny for 'Son'io,' which in Italian meant, 'I am.' The Sanson was for 'Sans son,' which in French meant, 'without sound.' I am without sound. I am deaf. Maybe.

'Where's the money?' he asked.

'In a safe-deposit box.'

'Do you have the key?'

'I do.'

'May I have it, please?'

And then what? You kill me?'

You shouldn't have done what you did, Gloria.'

'I know. And I'm sorry. Put down the gun. Let's have a drink, share a joint.'

'No, I don't think so. The key, please. And let me see your hands at all times.'

He followed her into a lavishly decorated bedroom, a four-poster bed, a silk coverlet, a chest that looked antique Italian, silk drapes to match the bedspread. From a drop-leaf desk that also looked Italian, hand-painted with flowery scrollwork, she removed a black-lacquered box, and from it took a small, red snap-button envelope. The printing on the envelope read FirstBank.

'Open it,' he said.

She unsnapped the envelope, took out a small key,

showed it to him.

'Fine,' he said. 'Put it back, and let me have it.' She put the key back into the envelope, snapped it shut, and held it out to him. He took it with his left hand, the gun steady in his right, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

'So here we are in my bedroom,' she said, and smiled. 'Took me a long time to find you, Gloria.' 'Thought you'd never get here,' she said. Still smiling. 'Didn't even have a last name for you,' he said. 'Yes, I know.'

'All I knew was you'd been a driver since you were sixteen, that your end of a bank job in Boston enabled you to buy a house out on Sand's Spit. . . .'

'Sold it the minute I came into some money.' 'My money.'

'Well, actually the ill-gotten gains from narcotics the police were going to burn anyway.' 'Still my money, Gloria.'

"Well, yes, it was your plan, so I suppose the dope was rightfully yours. And we all got paid for what we did, so it wasn't really right of me to . . . well. . . run off with the stash, I know that, Sonny. The plan was a brilliant

one, oh, God, what a plan! First the diversion in the Cow Pasture.

'I see you remember.'

Smiling.

'How could I forget? And then the heist itself, at the Department of Sanitation incinerator.

'Yes.'

Nodding. Remembering.

'Houghton Street on the River Harb Drive,' she said. 'Remember, Sonny? Me driving the truck, you sitting right beside me?'

'Went off like clockwork,' he said.

Still smiling, remembering.

'Like clockwork,' she said. Smiling with him now. Beginning to feel this would go all right after all.

'I found the house you used to live in, Gloria. Took me a while, but I found it.'

'What took you so long?'

'Recuperating. You almost did me in. A doctor named Felix Rickett fixed me up. Dr. Fixit, I called him,' he said, and smiled again.

Yeah, well, like I said, I'm sorry about that.'

'I'm sure you are,' he said, and glanced knowingly at the gun in his hand. 'The present owner of the house told me he'd bought it from a woman named Gloria Anstdorf.'

Yep, that was me, all right.'

'German ancestry?'

'I suppose so. I know the dorf part means 'village' in German. My grandmother thinks the anst may have come from "badieansalt," which means "baths" in German. A village where they had thermal baths, you know? She thinks the Customs people at Ellis Island shortened it when her parents got to America. To Anstdorf, you know?'

'But that's not the name in your mailbox, Gloria.'

'No, it isn't.'

'You bought this apartment as Gloria Stanford.'

'Yes. What I did was rearrange the letters a little. From Anstdorf to Stanford. Made the name a little more American, you know?'

'A lot more American.'

'Never hurts to rearrange the letters of your name here in the land of the free and home of the brave, does it? Especially when someone might be looking for you.'

'It's called an anagram, Gloria.'

'What is?'

'Rearranging the letters to form another word.'

'Is that right?'

'Anstdorf to Stanford. An anagram.'

'Is that what I did? An anagram? I'll be damned.'

'Never hurts to use anagrams here in the land of the free and home of the brave.'

'I suppose not.'

'But I found you anyway, Gloria.'

'So you did. So why don't we make the most of it?'

'Was that your German ancestry, Gloria?'

'Pardon?'

'Tying me to the bed that way?'

'I thought you liked that part.'

'The Hamilton Motel, remember, Gloria?'

'Oh, how I remember.'

'In the town of Red Point. Across the river.'

'And into the trees,' she said, and smiled.

She was feeling fairly confident now. She sat on the edge of the bed, patted it to indicate she wanted him to sit beside her. He kept standing. Kept pointing the gun at her chest. She took a deep brearh. Never hurt to advertise the breasts here in the land of the free and home of

the brave. He seemed to notice. Or maybe he was just searching for a spot on her chest to shoot her.

'Was that German, too?' he asked. 'Little bit of Nazi heritage there?'

'I don't know what you mean, Sonny'

'Shooting me twice in the chest that way?'

'Well

'Leaving me tied to the bed that way?'

'Speaking of beds

'Leaving me there to bleed to death?'

'I'm really sorry about that, I truly am. Why don't you let me show you just how sorry I am?'

'Turnabout is fair play,' he said.

'Come over here, honey,' she said. 'Stand right in front of me.'

'Fair is foul, and foul is fair,' he said.

'Unzip your fly, honey,' she said.

'Macbeth,' he said. 'Act One, Scene One.'

And shot her twice in the chest.

Pouf, pouf.

2.

"NOW THAT IS WHAT I call a zaftig woman,' Monoghan said.

'How do you happen to know that expression?' Monroe asked.

'My first wife happened to be Jewish,' Monoghan said.

Monroe didn't even know there'd been a first wife. Or that there was now a second wife. If in fact there was a second wife. The woman's skirt had pulled back when she fell to the expensive Oriental carpet, exposing shapely thighs and legs, which, in concert with her ample breasts, justified the label Monoghan had just hung on her. She was indeed zaftig, some five feet nine inches tall, a woman of Amazonian proportions, albeit a dead one. The first bullet hole was just below her left breast. The second was a bit higher on her chest, and more to the middle, somewhere around the sternum. There were ugly blood stains around each bullet hole, larger stains in the weave of the thick carpet under her. The detectives seemed to be staring down at the wounds, but perhaps they were just admiring her breasts.

Today was Tuesday, the first day of June, the day after Memorial Day. The dead woman lying there at Monoghan's feet looked to be in her mid-thirties, still young enough to be a mother, though not what anyone would call a young mother, which was the juiciest kind. Monroe's thoughts were running pretty much along similar lines. He was wondering if the woman had been sexually compromised before someone thoughtlessly shot her.

The idea was vaguely exciting in an instinctively primitive way, her lying all exposed like that, with even her panties showing.

Monoghan and Monroe were both wearing black, but not in mourning; this was merely the customary raiment of the Homicide Division. Their appearance here was mandatory in this city, but they would serve only in an advisory and supervisory capacity, whatever that meant; sometimes even they themselves didn't know what their exact function was. They did know that the actual investigation of the crime would be handled by the detective squad that caught the initial squeal, in this instance the Eight-Seven - which, by the way, where the hell were they? Or the ME, for that matter? Both detectives wondered if they should go down for a cup of coffee, pass the time that way.

The handyman who'd found the dead woman was still in the apartment, looking guilty as hell, probably because he didn't have a green card and was afraid they'd deport him back to Mexico or wherever. The super had sent him up to replace a washer in the kitchen faucet, and he'd let himself in with a passkey, figuring the lady . . .

He kept calling her the lady.

. . . was already gone for the day, it being eleven o'clock in the morning and all. Instead, the lady was dead on her back in the bedroom. The handyman didn't know whether or not it was okay to go back downstairs now, nobody was telling him nothing. So he hung around trying not to appear like an illegal, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as if he had to pee.

'So how do you wanna proceed here?' Monoghan asked.

Monroe looked at his watch. 'Is there traffic out there, or what?' he said.

Monoghan shrugged.

'You wanna hear what happened yesterday?' he asked.

'What happened?'

'I go get some takee-outee at this Chinese joint, you know?'

'Yeah?'

'And I place my order with this guy behind one of these computers, and I tell him I also want a coupla bottles non-alcoholic beer. So he . ...'

'Why you drinking non-alcoholic beer?'

'I'm tryin'a lose a little weight.'

'Why? You look okay to me.'

'I'm tryin'a lose ten, twelve pounds.'

'You look fine.'

'You think so?'

'Absolutely.'

Together, the detectives looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But Monroe didn't seem to realize this.

'Anyway, that ain't the point of the story,' Monoghan said. 'I told him I wanted two non-alcoholic beers, and he told me I'd have to get those at the bar. So I go over to the bar, and the bartender — this blonde with nice tits, which was strange for a Chinese joint. . .'

'Her having nice tits?'

'No, her being blonde . . . can you please pay attention here? She asks me, "Can I help you, sir?" And I tell her I'd like two non-alcoholic beers, please.'

'When you say "nice tits," is that what you really mean? "Nice tits"?' 'What?'

'Is that a truly accurate description? "Nice tits"?' 'Can you please tell me what that has to do with my story?'

'For the sake of accuracy,' Monroe said, and shrugged.

'Forget it, then,' Monoghan said.

'Because there's an escalation of language when a person is discussing breast sizes,' Monroe said.

'I'm not interested,' Monoghan said, and looked down again at the breasts of the dead woman.

'The smallest breasts,' Monroe said, undeterred, 'are what you'd call "cute boobs." Then the next largest breasts are "nice tits" . . .'

'I told you I'm not. . .'

'. . . and then we get to "great jugs," and finally we arrive at "major hooters." That's the proper escalation. So when you say this blonde bartender had nice tits, do you really mean . . . ?'

'I really mean she had "nice tits," yes, and that has nothing to do with my story.'

'I know. Your story has to do with ordering nonalcoholic beer when you don't even need to lose weight.'

'Forget it,' Monoghan said.

'No, tell it. I'm listening.'

You're sure you're not still distracted by the bartender with the great tits or the cute hooters or whatever the hell she had?'

'You're mixing them up.'

'Forgive me, I didn't know this was an exact science.'

'There's no need for sarcasm. I'm tryin'a help your story, is all.'

'So let me tell it then.'

'So tell it already,' Monroe said, sounding miffed.

'I ask the bartender for two non-alcoholic beers, and a Chinese manager or whatever he was, standing there at the service bar says, "We can't sell you beer to take home, sir." So I said, "Why not?" So he says, "I would lose my liquor license." So I said, "This isn't alcohol, this is nonalcoholic beer. It would be the same as my taking home

a Diet Coke." So he says, "I order my non-alcoholic beer from my liquor supplier. And I can't sell it to customers to take home." So I said, "Who can you sell it to if not customers?" He says, "What?" So I say, "If you can't sell it to customers, who can you sell it to? Employees?" So he says, "I can't sell it to anyone. I would lose my liquor license." So I say, "This is not liquor! This is nonalcoholic!" And he says, "I'm sorry, sir.'"

'So did you get the beer or not?'

'I did not get it. And it wasn't beer. It was non-alcoholic beer.'

'Which you don't need, anyway, a diet.'

'Forget it,' Monoghan said, sighing, and a voice from the entrance door said, 'Good morning, people. Who's in charge here?'

The ME had arrived.

Detectives Meyer and Carella were just a heartbeat behind him.

YOU COULDN'T MISTAKE them for anything but cops.

Monoghan and Monroe might have been confused with portly pallbearers at a gangland funeral, but Meyer and Carella — although they didn't look at all alike -could be nothing but cops.

Detective Meyer Meyer was some six feet tall, a broad-shouldered man with china-blue eyes and a completely bald head. Even without the Isola PD shield hanging around his neck and dangling onto his chest, even with his sometimes GQ look — on this bright May morning, he was wearing brown corduroy slacks, brown socks and loafers, and a brown leather jacket zipped up over a tan linen shirt — his walk, his stance, his very air of confident command warned the

criminal world at large that here stood the bona fide Man.

Like his partner, Detective Stephen Louis Carella exuded the same sense of offhand authority. About the same height as Meyer, give or take an inch or so, dark-haired and dark-eyed, wearing on this late spring day gray slacks, blue socks, black loafers, and a blue blazer over a lime-green Tommy Hilfiger shirt, he came striding into the room like an athlete, which he was not — unless you counted stickball as a kid growing up in Riverhead. He was already looking around as he came in just a step behind both Meyer and the Medical Examiner, who was either Carl Blaney or Paul Blaney, Carella didn't know which just yet; the men were twins, and they both worked for the Coroner's Office.

In answer to Blaney's question, Monroe said, 'We were in charge until this very instant, Paul, but now that the super sleuths of the Eight-Seven

'It's Carl,' Blaney said.

'Oh, I beg your parmigiana,' Monroe said, and made a slight bow from the waist. 'In any event, the case is now in the capable hands of Detectives Meyer and Carella, of whose company I am sure you already have had the pleasure.'

'Hello, Steve,' Blaney said. 'Meyer.'

Carella nodded. He had just looked down at the body of the dead woman. As always, a short sharp stab, almost of pain, knifed him between the eyes. He was looking death in the face yet another time. And the only word that accompanied the recognition was senseless,

'Nice jugs, huh, Doc?' Monoghan remarked.

'Great jugs,' Monroe corrected.

'Either way, a zaftig woman,' Monoghan said.

Blaney said nothing. He was kneeling beside the dead

woman, his thumb and forefinger spreading her eyelids wide, his own violet-colored eyes studying her pupils. A few moments later, he declared her dead, said the probable cause of death was gunshot wounds, and ventured the wild guess that the lady had been shot twice in the heart.

Same words the handyman had used.

The lady.

THE HANDYMAN TOLD them the lady's name was Gloria Stanford. He told Meyer and Carella what he'd already told the Homicide dicks. He'd come up to change a washer in the kitchen faucet and had found the lady dead on the bedroom floor.

'What were you doing in the bedroom?' Meyer wanted to know.

'Senor?'

'If you came up to change a washer in the kitchen, what were you doing in the bedroom?'

'I alwayss check the apar'menn, make sure anybody's

home.'

'So you went into the bedroom to see if the lady was in there, is that right?'

'Si. Before I begin work.'

'And what if the lady'd been in bed or something?' Meyer asked.

'Oh no. It wass eleven o'clock. She hass to be gone by

then, no?'

'Then why'd you go look in the bedroom for her?' 'To see if she wass there,' the handyman said, and

shrugged elaborately.

'This guy sounds like my Chinese manager,' Monoghan

said.

'What'd you do when you found her in here dead?' Carella asked.

'I run down get the super.'

'He's the one called it in,' Monroe said. 'The super.'

'Where is he now?'

'You got me. Probably hiding in the basement, keeping his nose clean.'

The boys from the mobile crime lab were just arriving.

It was going to be a long day.

ALONG ABOUT THREE-THIRTY every afternoon, the squadroom's often frantic boil dissipated, to be replaced by a more relaxed ambience. The shift would be relieved in fifteen minutes, and usually all the clerical odds and ends were tied up by now. This was a time to unwind, to relax a little before heading home. This was a time to enter the mental decompression chamber that separated the often ugly aspects of police work from the more civilized world of family and friends.

Meyer and Carella had jointly composed the Detective Division report on Gloria Stanford, the woman who'd been found dead this morning in a fourteenth-floor apartment on Silvermine Oval, an area that passed for the precinct's Gold Coast. One copy of this DD report would go to Homicide, another would go to the Chief of Detectives, and the third would be filed here. Meyer was on the phone with his wife, Sarah, discussing the bar mitzvah of his nephew Irwin's second son — my how the time does fly when you're having a good time; it seemed like only yesterday that they'd attended Irwin the Vermin's own bar mitzvah. But Irwin was a grown man now — albeit a lawyer, so perhaps the sobriquet still applied.

Carella was on the phone with his sister, Angela. She had just told him he was a cad. Not in those words, exactly. What she'd actually said was 'Sometimes you behave like a spoiled brat.' This from his kid sister. Not such a kid anymore, either. All grown up, divorced once, and about to marry the district attorney who'd let their father's killer escape justice. Or so it seemed to Carella. Which was probably why his sister expressed the opinion that he sometimes behaved like a spoiled brat.

1 don't know what you're talking about,' he said into the phone, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper because a squadroom was not particularly the most private place in the world.

'What you said to Mama,' Angela said. She was referring to dinner at their mother's house yesterday. Carella felt like telling her that what had made that Memorial Day memorable for a woman named Gloria Stanford was getting shot twice in the chest, with both bullets passing through her heart, and that this morning, he had looked down into that woman's dead eyes, staring up at him wide open before the ME gently lowered her lids. He wanted to tell her that it had been a long, tiring day, and that he had just finished typing up the details of the case, and was ready to call home to tell Teddy he'd be on the way in fifteen — he glanced up at the wall clock - make that thirteen minutes, and he didn't need a scolding just now from his kid sister, was what he felt like telling her.

Instead, he said, 'I told Mama I was very happy. In fact, I told both of you . . .'

'It was your tone,' Angela said. 'My what?'

'The tone of your voice.'

'I meant what I said. I'm very happy Mama is getting married so soon after Papa got killed, and I'm very happy you're ..."

'That's exactly what I mean. That sarcastic, sardonic tone of voice.'

'I did not mean to sound either sarcastic or sardonic. You're both getting married, and I'm very happy for you.'

'You still think Henry ran a shoddy trial.'

'No, I think he did his best to convict Papa's murderer. I just think the defense outfoxed him.'

'And you still hold that against him.'

'Sonny Cole is dead,' Carella said. 'It doesn't matter anymore.'

'Then why do you keep harping on it?'

'I don't.'

'Why do you keep behaving as if I shouldn't marry Henry, and Mama shouldn't marry Luigi?'

'I wish he'd change his name to Lou,' Carella said.

'That's just what I mean.'

'And I wish he'd move here instead of taking Mama with him to Italy'

'His business is in Italy.'

And mine is here.'

'You're not the one marrying Mama!' Angela said.

'That's true,' Carella said. 'I'm not the one marrying Henry Lowell, either.'

There was a long silence on the line. In the background, Carella could hear the voices of the other detectives in the squadroom, all of them on their own phones, at their own desks.

At last, Angela said, 'Get over it, Steve.'

'I'm over it,' he said. 'You're both getting married on

June twelfth. I'm giving both of you away. Period.'

'You even make that sound ominous. Giving us away. You make it sound so final. And yes, ominous.'

'Sis,' he said, 'I love you both. You get over it, okay?'

'Do you really?' Angela asked. 'Love us both?'

'With all my heart,' he said.

'Do you remember when you used to call me "Slip"?' she asked.

'How could I forget?'

'I was thirteen. You told me a thirteen-year-old girl shouldn't still be wearing cotton slips.'

'I was right.'

You gave me an inferiority complex.'

1 gave you an insight into the mysterious ways of womanhood.'

Yeah, bullshit,' Angela said, but he could swear she

was smiling.

'I love you, bro,' she said.

'I love you, too,' he said, 'I have to get out of here. Talk to you later.'

'Give my love to Teddy and the kids.'

'I will,' he said. 'Bye, sweetie.'

He pressed the receiver rest button, waited for a dial tone, and then began dialing home.

A RELATIONSHIP CAN settle down into a sort of complacency, you know. You forget the early passion, you forget the heat, you begin to feel comfortable in another sort of intimacy that has nothing to do with sex. Or if it does, it's only because the idea of being loved so completely, of loving someone back so completely, is in itself often sexually exciting. This profound concept did not cross the minds of either Bert Kling or Sharyn Cooke as

they spoke on the telephone at eighteen minutes to four that afternoon. They simply felt snug and cozy with each other, sharing their thoughts as their separate days wound down in separate parts of the city.

Sharyn worked in the police department's Chief Surgeon's Office at 24 Rankin Plaza, over the bridge in Majesta. As the city's only female Deputy Chief, she was also its only black one. A board-certified surgeon with four years of medical school, plus five years of residency as a surgeon, plus four years as the hospital's chief resident, she now earned almost five times as much as Kling did. Today, one of the cops she'd seen on a follow-up had been shot in the face at a street demonstration six months earlier. Blinded in the left eye, he was now fully recovered and wanted to go back to active duty. She had recommended psychiatric consultation first: a seriously wounded cop is often thought of as a jinx by his fellow officers, who sometimes tended to shun him. She told this to Kling now.

'I'm seriously wounded, too,' he said.

'Oh? How's that, hon?'

'We've been on the phone for five minutes, and you haven't yet told me you love me.'

'But I adore you!' she said.

'It's too late to apologize,' he said.

'Where do you want to eat tonight?'

You pick it, Shar.'

'There's a place up in Diamondback serves real down-home soul food. Want to try it?'

'Wherever.'

'Such enthusiasm,' she said.

'I'm not very hungry. Cotton and I were working a burglary over on Mason, we stopped for a couple of late pizzas afterward.'

'Shall we just order in?'

'Whatever,' he said. 'Law and Order is on tonight, you

know.'

'Law and Order is on every night,' she said.

'I thought you liked Law and Order.'

'I adore Law and Order,'

'That's just what I mean,' he said. 'You say you adore me, but you also adore Law and Order.'

'Ahh, yes, but I love you,' she said.

'At last,' he said.

Not exactly hot and heavy.

But they'd been living together for quite a while now.

And neither of them ever once thought trouble might be heading their way.

Had they but known.

THIS WAS STILL the early days of their relationship. Everything was still whispers and heavy breathing. Innu-endos. Promises. Wild expectations. Covert glances around the room to see if the phone conversation was being overheard. Hand cupped over the mouthpiece. Everything hot and heavy.

Honey Blair was in a large, open room at Channel Four News, sitting at a carrel desk, her back to the three other people, two men and a woman, occupying the room at the moment. What they were doing was frantically compiling some last-minute news segments that would go on the air at six P.M. Honey was telling Hawes that before she saw him tonight, she would have to run downtown to do a remote from the Lower Quarter, where some guy had jumped out the window of a twenty-first-floor office. She'd be heading out in half an hour or so.

'I can't wait,' she whispered into the phone.

'To scrape your jumper off the sidewalk?' Hawes asked.

'Yes, that, too. But, actually . . .'

She lowered her voice even further.

'. . . I can't wait to jump on you!'

'Careful,' he warned, and glanced around to where the other detectives all seemed preoccupied with their own phone conversations.

'Tell me what you can't wait to do,' she whispered.

'I'd get arrested,' he whispered.

'You're a cop, tell me, anyway.'

'Do you know that little restaurant we went to the other night?'

Y-e-ess?'

'That very crowded place where everyone turned to look at you when we walked in . . . ?'

'Flatterer.'

'It's true. Because you're so beautiful.'

'Don't stop, sweet talker.'

'I want you ..."

'I want you, too.'

'I'm not finished,' he said.

'Tell me.'

'I want you to go to the ladies room

'Right now?'

'No, in that restaurant.'

'Y-e-ess?'

And take off your panties . . .'

'Oooo.'

And bring them back to the table and stuff them in the breast pocket of my jacket.'

'Then what?'

'Then you'll be sitting there in that crowded room with

everyone knowing you're Honey Blair from Channel Four News . . .'

'Honey Blair, Girl Reporter.'

'Yes, but I'll be the only one who knows you're not wearing panties.'

'Even though they're sticking out of your jacket pocket like a handkerchief ?'

'Even though,' he said.

'And then what?'

'Then we'll see.'

'Oh, I'll just bet we will,' Honey whispered.

Hot and heavy.

Like that.

Not a worry in sight.

Little did they know.

THE BICYCLE C0URIER was a Korean immigrant who not five minutes earlier had almost caused a serious accident when he ran a red light on Culver Avenue and almost smacked into a taxi driven by a Pakistani immigrant whose Dominican immigrant passenger began cursing in Spanish at the sudden brake-squealing stop that hurled her forward into the thick plastic partition separating her from the driver.

Now, safe and sound, and smiling at the desk sergeant, the courier asked in his singsong tongue if there was a Detective Stephen Carella here. Murchison took the slender cardboard envelope, signed for it, and sent it

upstairs.

The packet was indeed addressed to Carella, the words detective STEPHEN LOUIS CARELLA scrawled across the little insert slip, and below that the address of the precinct house on Grover Avenue. He pulled on a

pair of latex gloves, ripped open the tab along the top end of the stiff envelope, and found inside a white business-size envelope with his name handwritten across it again,

DETECTIVE STEPHEN LOUIS CARELLA. He Opened

this smaller envelope, and pulled from it a plain white sheet of paper upon which were the typewritten words:

WHO'S IT, ETC?

A DARN SOFT GIRL?

O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

'Who's it from?' Meyer asked, walking over.

'Dunno,' Carella said, and turned the packet over in his hands. The return name on the delivery insert, in the same handwriting as Carella's scribbled name, was ADAM fen. The return address was for a post office box at the Abernathy Station downtown.

'Anybody you know?' Meyer asked.

'Nope,' Carella said, and looked at the note again.

WHO'S IT, ETC?

A DARN SOFT GIRL?

O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

'He spelled oh wrong,' Genero said. 'Didn't he?' he asked, not certain anymore. He had walked into the squad-room as part of the relieving night-shift team, and was now at Carella's desk, peering at the two envelopes and the note. 'Isn't oh supposed to be spelled with an h?'

'It's sexier without the h,' Parker said.

He, too, had just walked in as part of the relieving team. All in all, there were now six detectives crowded around Carella's desk, all of them looking at what he'd just received by same-day delivery. Cotton Hawes, all

suffused with heat from his conversation with Honey Blair, had to agree that o was sexier than oh, even if he couldn't say exactly why. Detective Richard Genero was still pondering the exact spelling of the word oh, when Hal Willis suggested that perhaps Adam Fen was an Irishman, a 'fen' being an Irish bog or marsh . . .

'. . . or swamp or something like that, isn't it?' he

asked.

. . . and the Irish sometimes waxing a bit romantic, which might account for dropping the h in the word oh, confirming Genero's lucky surmise.

Kling had already gone home, so he didn't have any opinion at all. Eileen Burke was just coming through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squad-room from the corridor outside. She hadn't yet seen the stuff on Carella's desk, so she didn't have an opinion, either. As yet.

Meyer was remembering that Monoghan — or Monroe, or one or the other of them - had remarked earlier today that the dead woman on the bedroom floor of the Silvermine Oval apartment was 'zaftig,' which in Yiddish meant 'juicy' or 'succulent,' but which in everyday English slang meant 'having a full or shapely figure,' which Meyer supposed could be translated as 'a darn soft girl.' He hesitated before mentioning this aloud because he knew in his heart of hearts that Detective Andy Parker was at best a closet anti-Semite and he didn't want to introduce religious conflict into what seemed to be a mere note from a possible homicidal nut named Adam Fen. But the coincidence seemed too rare not to have specific meaning.

'You know,' he said, 'the word zaftig And Carella immediately nodded and said, 'Gloria Stanford.'

'You think there's a connection?'

'Some crazy trying to tell us he did it?'

'Did what?' Parker asked. 'And what the hell is zaftig?'

'A darn soft girl,' Meyer said.

'Is that some kind of sexist remark?' Eileen asked.

Unlike the female detectives she saw on television, Eileen was not wearing a tight sweater. Instead, she had on an olive-green pants suit that complemented her red hair and green eyes. On every cop television show, at least one of the leading characters was a female detective. Sometimes, you had two or three female detectives in the same squadroom. Sometimes, even the lieutenant in command of the squad was a woman. In Eileen's experience, this was total bullshit. Of the eighteen detectives on the 87th Squad, she was the only woman.

'We caught a shooting death this morning,' Meyer explained.

'Beautiful woman.'

'Gloria Stanford.'

'Two in the chest.'

'So is this a written confession?' Genero asked hopefully.

'Oh, there's a hot hint!' Parker said, and rolled his eyes.

'Where's the Abernathy Station?' Willis asked.

'Downtown near the Arena,' Hawes said.

'Should be easy to check that P.O. box.'

'You don't think Mr. Fen here would give us a real address, do you?' Parker asked.

'What's the name of that courier service?' Hawes asked.

Carella turned the envelope over again.

'Lightning Delivery.'

'Shy and unassuming,' Eileen said.

'Modest, too.' Willis agreed.

'Fen sounds Chinese to me,' Genero said. 'Like Moo Goo Gai Fen.'

They all looked at him.

'No, Fen is American,' Parker said. 'There was once an actor named Fen Parker, no relation. Played Daniel Boone on TV.'

'That was Fess Parker,' Hawes said. Parker shrugged.

'Anyway,' Genero said, nodding in agreement with himself, 'Adam Fen is most definitely Chinese. Adam is a popular name in Hong Kong.'

'How do you happen to know that?' Parker asked. 'It's common knowledge,' Genero said. Willis almost sighed. He turned to the three detectives who were now fifteen minutes late getting relieved. Go home,' he told them. 'We'll get on this shit.' He tapped the courier envelope. 'Maybe we'll learn something.'

'Mazeltov,' Meyer said.

'Which means what? Parker asked, making it sound like a challenge.

'Which means "good luck,'" Carella said. He had no expectation that either Lightning Delivery or the Abernathy Station would provide any clue to Adam Fen. He was right.

3.

IT WOULD SEEM ODD that in this vast and bustling metropolis, in the mightiest nation on earth, a message from someone intent on mischief could enter a police station unchallenged. After the anthrax mailings — and what with Homeland Security and all — one might have thought that a barrier of screening machines would have been erected at the portals of every police station in the country. Nay.

In the good old days (ah, the good old days) whenever you were in trouble, you ran right into a police station, any police station, past the hanging green globes flanking the wooden entrance doors, and you rushed to the desk sergeant and yelled, 'I've been raped!' 'I've been robbed!' 'I've been mugged!' and somebody would take care of you. Nowadays, there was a uniformed cop standing guard at the entrance, and he asked you to state your business and show some ID before he let you inside. This was still the big bad city and a great many choices were available to you. 'I've been stabbed, I've been axed, I've been shot in the foot!' But he wouldn't let you inside there unless he felt you had legitimate business with the police.

Well, a same-day, courier-service messenger certainly has legitimate business with the police if he's delivering a letter. Besides, what are you supposed to do? Examine each and every letter in his pouch? Impossible. In fact, what you do is you say, 'How goes it today, Mac?' and you let him in. Same way you let in the courier from Lightning Delivery yesterday, whom you also called 'Mac' even though you didn't know him from Adam.

Adam Fen was the return name on the letter the messenger carried to the muster desk at six-thirty that Wednesday morning, the second day of June. The letter was once again addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. Sergeant Murchison asked an officer to take the letter upstairs.

Upstairs in the squadroom, Bob O'Brien shouldn't have opened it because it wasn't addressed to him, but he thought if a person used a same-day delivery service, thete might be some urgency involved. Besides, the graveyard shift still had an hour-fifteen to go, and things were pretty quiet. So he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ripped open the MetroFlash envelope, and plucked from it a white business-size envelope. The note folded inside it read:

A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?

O'Brien figured their trigger-happy lunatic from yesterday was still bragging about his dead broad.

EARLY STAGES OF a romance, when you go to the bathroom to pee, you make sure the door is locked, and you run water in the sink to cover the sound of your urination, lest it be your ruination. When Hawes came back into the bedroom, Honey was awake and sitting up in bed.

'I have to pee, too,' she said, and climbed over the side of the bed, long legs flashing beneath the hem of a white baby-doll nightgown. On her way to the bathroom, she tossed him a sassy moon, grinned over her shoulder, and then disappeared behind the closed door. He did not hear

the lock clicking shut. Neither did he hear water running in the sink.

He wondered if he should call in sick. If the squad hadn't caught a homicide yesterday, he might have given it serious thought. Was there time, anyway? He looked at his watch. Six forty-five. Figure half an hour to get uptown to the precinct. No way he could manage it.

Honey came out of the bathroom.

Reading his mind, she asked, 'Do we have time?'

'I have to be in at a quarter to eight,' he said.

She looked at the bedside clock.

'Nuts,' she said, and went to him and kissed him anyway.

It was almost a goodbye kiss.

THE FIRST SHOT cracked on the early morning air the moment Hawes stepped out of the building. He was about to say 'Good morning' to Honey's doorman when he heard the shot and instinctively ducked. He had been a cop for a good long time now, and he knew the difference between a backfire and a rifle shot, and this was a rifle shot, and he knew that even before he heard the bullet whistling past his right ear, even before he saw brick dust exploding from the wall of the building where the first slug hit it.

Because he was an officer of the law, and because he was sworn to protect the citizenry of this fair city, the first thing he did was shove the doorman back into the building and out of harm's way, and the second thing he did was drop to the sidewalk, which was when the second shot came, ripping air where Hawes' head had been not ten seconds earlier. On his hands and knees, he scrabbled for cover behind a car parked at the curb to

the left of the building's canopy, reaching it too late to drag his right foot from the sniper's line of fire.

He felt only searing pain at first, and then a wave of fleeting nausea, and then anger, and then immediate self-recrimination — how could he have let this happen to himself? His gun was already in his hand, too late. He was already scanning the rooftops across the way, too late. The doorman was starting out of the building .. .

'Stay back!' Hawes shouted, just as another shot splintered the suddenly surreal stillness. There were two more shots, and then a genuine stillness. He signaled to the doorman with his outstretched left hand, patting the air, wait, wait, his hand was saying. There were no further

shots.

The doorman came rushing out of the building.

'Call an ambulance,' Hawes said.

A small puddle of blood was forming on the sidewalk.

SHARYN COOKE WAS asleep in Bert Kling's bed when the phone rang in his apartment near the Calm's Point Bridge. He was not due in until seven forty-five, and this was now a quarter past seven and he was just heading out the door. He picked up the phone, said, 'Kling,' listened, said, 'Just a moment, please,' and then went to the bed and gently shook Sharyn awake. 'For you,' he said.

Sharyn scowled at him, but she took the phone.

'Deputy Chief Cooke,' she said.

And listened.

'What?' she said.

And listened again.

"Where is he?'

She looked at Kling, shook her head. Her face was grim.

'I'll get there right away,' she said. 'Thanks, Jamie,' she said, and hung up.

'What?' Kling asked.

'Cotton Hawes got shot,' Sharyn said. And then immediately, seeing his face, 'It's not serious. Just his foot. But he's at Satan's Fluke, and I want him moved out of there fast.'

'I'll come with you,' Kling said.

She was already in the bathroom.

'Who's Jamie?' he asked.

But she'd just turned on the shower.

THE SECOND NOTE that day arrived at twenty minutes to eight. Sergeant Murchison handed Carella the envelope the moment he walked into the muster room.

'Arrived five minutes ago,' he said.

Carella nodded, said, 'Thanks, Dave,' and studied the envelope as he climbed the steps to the second floor of the old building. Name of the courier service was Speed-O-Gram. The envelope was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. The return name on it was Adam Fen, the return address P.O. Box 4884, Abernathy Station. Willis had drawn a blank on each of those yesterday. There were only five Fens listed in all of the city's telephone directories. None of them was an Adam. Willis had called each and every one of them, with no luck. He got Chinese accents each and every time, 'So solly, no Adam Fen here'; for a change, Genero had been right. There were only 300 post office boxes at the Abernathy Station downtown. A box numbered 4884 simply did not exist.

'See you got another one,' O'Brien said. Carella didn't know what he was talking about. O'Brien handed him the MetroFlash envelope and the note that had been inside it:

A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?

'Meaning?' Carella asked.

'You're the detective,' O'Brien said.

'He's still trying to confess,' Carella said.

'You think?'

'Telling us there's a dead body wet with her own

blood.'

'Maybe so,' O'Brien admitted dubiously, not wishing to press his good fortune by venturing a true opinion. O'Brien was known far and wide as a hard-luck cop. Not only just here in the confines of the Eight-Seven. Everywhere in the city. Far and wide. Walk down the street with Detective Bob O'Brien, there'd be shooting. Just standing beside him here in the squadroom, Carella was wondering if a bullet would come smashing through one of the windows.

'But what does he mean by "corn, etc?" ' O'Brien asked, stepping out boldly.

'He's referring to the same old routine,' Carella said. 'A body, an investigation, like that. He's telling us this is all corny by now. We've seen it a thousand times on television.'

You think?' O'Brien said again.

'I'm guessing. Same as you.'

'What's the new one say?' O'Brien asked.

He knew his own hard-luck reputation. Shrugged it aside. He'd had to shoot only six, or maybe seven, people in his entire career, but who was counting? And, anyway,

that wasn't so much. Besides, if they couldn't take a joke, fuck 'em.

Carella fished a pair of latex gloves from his desk drawer, pulled them on, opened the Speed-O-Gram envelope. A business-size envelope inside. A pattern here. Same lunatic. He slit open the inner envelope, removed from it a folded white sheet of paper. The message on it read:

BRASS HUNT? CELLAR?

'So what's that got to do with your wet corpse?' O'Brien asked.

'I haven't the foggiest,' Carella said.

Which was when the telephone rang.

It was Bert Kling telling him that Cotton Hawes had been shot and that Sharyn was having him moved from the notorious St. Luke's to Boniface, one of the city's better hospitals.

On the way to Boniface, Carella and Meyer tried to dope out what the three notes meant. The first one said:

WHO'S IT, ETC?

A DARN SOFT GIRL?

O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

'Okay, the darn soft girl is the female stiff we caught. That's obvious.'

'Then why's he asking us who it is?' Carella asked.

He was driving. Meyer was riding shotgun.

'Cause he's a madman,' Meyer said. 'Lunatics don't behave like normal people.'

'He asks us who it is, etcetera, etcetera, and so on, and

then he tells us that's a hot hint} Right after he's already told us the vic is a darn soft girl who we already know is Gloria Stanford? I don't get it, Meyer, I really don't.'

'He's confessing, is all. He wants us to catch him, is all. It's like that nut years ago who wrote in lipstick on the mirror, whatever his name was.'

'Here? One of our cases?'

'No, Chicago. Catch me before I kill more. Whatever it was he wrote on the mirror.'

'That's what he wrote?'

'He wanted them to stop him.'

'But this guy doesn't want us to stop him. He doesn't say

"Stop me!'"

'"Catch me" was what he said. Heirens, that was his name. William Heirens. The guy in Chicago.'

'Our guy says I killed this girl and I'm giving you a hint who she is, that's what he says in his note.'

'In his first note. What about the other two?'

A copy of the second was on Meyer's lap.

A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?

'Same thing. He's telling us to pay attention here. I killed this woman, her nice white blouse is all covered with blood . . .'

'Where does it say that?'

'Metaphorically. A wet corpus. A bloody body. Is what he's saying. Do your usual corny thing, he's saying.'

'And the third note?'

Carella glanced at the copy:

BRASS HUNT? CELLAR?

'I don't know,' he said.

'I mean, she was killed in her own bedroom. What's he talking about, a cellar?'

'I don't know. The techs found spent cartridge casings, does he mean brass in that way?'

'You're thinking, like, a hunt for brass shell casings?'

'Yes, but we already ..."

'Like he's telling us we'll find shell casings cause the murder gun was an automatic?'

'But we already know that. Ballistics already told us it was a forty-five.'

'So he's telling us again.'

'Why?'

'Because he thinks he's smarter than we are. We don't know who the body is, we're totally lost, we're in the cellar. He's giving us all these hints, but we're just plain stupid. Is what he's saying.'

'Maybe,' Carella said.

'It's the next driveway,' Meyer said. 'Where it says "Main Entrance.'"

You think he may have tossed the weapon in the basement?' Carella asked. 'On his way out of the building?'

'I don't think so,' Meyer said. 'But we can ask Mobile to check again.'

'If not, why's he pointing us to the cellar?' Carella asked, and shook his head, and pulled the police sedan into Boniface's parking lot.

DETECTIVE/SECOND GRADE Cotton Hawes was enormously pissed off. Sitting up in bed, wearing a blue-striped hospital gown, a shaft of sunlight streaming through the bedside window to highlight the white

streak in his otherwise red hair, he fumed and snorted about having been cold-cocked by a rooftop sniper, and having to spend the day here . . .

'For observation!' he shouted. 'What do they have to observe? They've already cleaned and dressed the wound, what the hell do they have to observe?'

'You got shot, Cotton,' Carella observed.

'In broad daylight!' Hawes said. 'Can you imagine someone shooting a cop in broad daylight?'

Meyer could imagine it.

'What was he thinking?' Hawes said. 'A cop? Broad daylight? A good thing Sharyn yanked me out of Fluke's. They wanted to amputate the foot!'

'You didn't happen to see the shooter, did you?' Carella asked.

'I was too busy ducking. He was on one of the rooftops across the way.'

'The Eight-Six is already up there looking around,'

Meyer said.

'Silk Stocking precinct.'

'Who's on it, do you know?'

'Kling didn't say.'

'Not often the Eight-Six gets a sniper.'

'Tell them one of the slugs is in the wall to the left of the entrance doors.'

'Guy's probably in China by now.'

'Maybe not,' Hawes said, and looked suddenly concerned. 'This guy was serious. I got the distinct impression he wanted me dead.'

Carella looked at him.

Yeah,' Hawes said, and nodded. 'And also, I have to wear like this open kind of boot for the next little while.'

THE NEXT NOTE arrived ten minutes after Meyer and Carella got back to the squadroom. Yet another courier service. Same phony Adam Fen return name, same nonexistent Abernathy Station P.O. Box 4884. The note read:

PORN DIET? HELL, A TIT ON MOM!

'Party's getting rough,' Meyer said.

Carella merely nodded.

'I think he's beginning to lose it,' Meyer said. 'I mean, this is pure bullshit, is what this is here.'

You know what I think?'

'No, what do you think?' Meyer asked. He sounded angry. Not as angry as Hawes had sounded half an hour ago, but angry enough for a man who hadn't been shot in the foot.

'I think it's coffee and donuts time.'

THE THURSDAY MORNING meeting wasn't supposed to take place till tomorrow, this still being Wednesday and all, but when Carella laid out the five notes for Lieutenant Byrnes to study, he agreed that the changing of the guard this afternoon might be a good time to summon together the great minds of the 87th Squad. Coffee and donuts were de rigueur, paid for from the squad's slush fund, and arranged on top of the long bookcase on one wall of the lieutenant's corner office.

The team being relieved was Meyer, Kling, and Carella; Hawes would have been there, too, but he was in the hospital, still fuming. The relieving team was Willis, Parker, Genero, and Brown. Andy Parker, relieving five minutes late, was nonetheless the first to pour himself a

cup of coffee and heap three donuts onto his paper plate. 'So what've we got here?' Byrnes asked. 'A nut?' He sounded annoyed. White-haired and blue-eyed, the map of Ireland all over his craggy phizz, he sat behind his desk in his corner-windowed office, glaring out at his men as though challenging them to tell him this nut was as sane as any of them.

'Beginning to ramble a bit, right,' Meyer agreed, and

rolled his eyes.

'Whose mom is he referring to?' Parker asked. Naturally, his interest would have been drawn to mention of a porn diet and a tit, any tit. He had not shaved this morning. Upon awakening, he'd told himself he would shave this afternoon, before coming in. But it was now a little past four P.M., and he still hadn't shaved, and he wouldn't be relieved until midnight, so he probably wouldn't shave at all today. But such were the vagaries of police work; one never knew when he might be called upon to impersonate some kind of shabby street person.

'Who cares whose mom?' Meyer said. 'Mom's tit is where he starts to lose it.' 'And us,' Carella added.

'When were you not lost?' Byrnes wanted to know. 'Well, at first we thought he was referring to the homicide we caught yesterday morning. In his first

note . . .'

'Let me see that again,' Byrnes said, and extended his hand across his desk. Carella gave him the note in its plastic shield:

WHO'S IT, ETC?

A DARN SOFT GIRL?

O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

And this arrived when?' Byrnes asked.

Around this time yesterday afternoon.'

'So you figured the "darn soft girl" was . . . what was the vic's name again?'

'Gloria Stanford. Yes.'

And that was the perp's hot hint, is that what you figured? That Gloria Stanford was the darn soft girl?'

'Yes. Well. . . yes.'

'Some hint,' Parker remarked.

'He spelled oh wrong,' Genero said, sure of it now. He'd looked it up in the dictionary last night. At five feet nine inches tall, Genero thought he was very tall. From his father, he had inherited beautiful curly black hair, a strong Neapolitan nose, a sensuous mouth, and soulful brown eyes. From his mother, he had inherited the tall Milanese carriage of all his male cousins and uncles — except for his Uncle Dominick, who was only five-six.

'Tell me something,' Byrnes said. 'Doesn't the perp realize we know this girl's name? I mean, he left her in her own apartment, he didn't dump her in the park someplace without any ID on her, he's got to realize we already know who she is. Isn't that so?'

'It would appear to be so, yes, sir,' Carella said.

Byrnes looked at him. He was not used to being sirred by his detectives.

'So why is he asking us who she is? And why is he telling us there's a hint in his note? Where's the hint? Do any of you see a hint? Hot or otherwise?'

'Am I the only one eating here?' Parker asked.

'I can use some coffee,' Brown said.

He appeared to be scowling, but that was merely his normal expression. A big man . . . well, a huge man . . . with eyes and skin the color of his name,

Arthur Brown was the sort of detective who reveled in playing Bad Cop because it fulfilled the stereotypical expectations of so many white people. He particularly enjoyed being partnered with Bert Kling, whose blond hair and healthy cornfed looks made him the perfect Good Cop honkie foil. Going to the bookcase feast now, eating a donut in three bites before he poured himself a cup of coffee and put two more donuts on a paper plate, Brown said, 'Could we see that second note, please?'

Carella passed it around:

A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?

'He's telling us we've got a bleeding corpse here,' Brown said.

'Just what I thought,' Meyer said.

'Then why the question marks?' Genero asked.

'He's saying "Get it?"' Kling said. "Wake up here! I'm spelling it all out for you, dummies.'

'Pay attention here!'

'Listen to me.'

'HarkV

They all turned to look at Willis.

'Is actually what he's saying,' Willis said, and shrugged. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was the shortest man on the squad, but he was a black belt in karate, and he was ready to knock any one of his colleagues flat on his ass in ten seconds flat if they questioned his use of a perfectly legitimate synonym for 'listen carefully.'

'The third note is where he begins to lose it,' Meyer said. 'In my opinion, anyway.'

'Could we see it again?' Kling asked.

Carella placed it on Byrnes's desk. They crowded around it, munching donuts.

BRASS HUNT? CELLAR?

'Was there any top brass at the scene?' Byrnes asked.

'Not a big enough case to draw their attention,' Carella said.

'So what's this about a "brass hunt?" '

'I figured he might be referring to spent cartridge cases.'

'Did Mobile find any?'

'No, but

'What'd Ballistics say the weapon was?'

'A forty-five automatic'

'So there wouldn't have been any.'

'So what does "brass hunt" mean?'

'And why's he sending us to the cellar?'

'Which, by the way,' Meyer said, 'Mobile went down there this afternoon and found zilch.'

'Down where?' Genero asked.

'The basement of the building,' Carella said. 'Where the girl was killed.'

'She was killed in the basement?'

'No, in her bedroom. I meant the building where she was killed.'

Genero looked bewildered.

'The last note is where he loses it entirely,' Meyer said. 'In my opinion, anyway.'

'Let's have a look,' Byrnes said.

PORN DIET? HELL, A TIT ON MOM!

'Maybe he's referring to the girl again,' Genero said.

'Did he shoot her in the breast?'

'Not according to the ME's report. She was shot twice. Both slugs took her in the heart. Just below the left breast.'

'Was she sexually assaulted?'

'No.'

'Then what's this "porn diet" shit?' Parker asked.

"What's any of it?' Genero asked.

"Who's this Adam Fen?' Byrnes asked.

'I checked the phone books yesterday,' Willis said. 'Fen is a Chinese name . . .'

'Told you,' Genero said.

'. . . but I didn't get an Adam anyplace in the city.'

'Was there an Eve?' Parker asked. 'Adam and Eve? Porn

diet?'

Byrnes glared at him.

'Just a thought,' Parker said, and picked up another

donut.

'What about this P.O. box number?' Byrnes asked.

'Nonexistent,' Willis said.

'Why'd he pick 4884?'

'Why'd he pick us?' Genero asked.

'He's crazy is why,' Meyer said.

'Like a fox,' Carella said.

'Let's go over it again,' Byrnes said.

IN A PENTHOUSE apartment not a mile from where the detectives mulled over the various missives he'd sent them, the Deaf Man was trying to explain the meaning of the word anagram to the girl who sat beside him on his living room couch.

The girl was blond, and perhaps twenty-three years old, certainly no older than that. He had helped her to

remove her white blouse not three minutes ago, so she was at the moment wearing only a black miniskirt, black panties and bra, and black, high-heeled, strapped sandals. Altogether a dangerous look.

'Think of it this way,' he said. 'Suppose I told you your breasts are as ripe as berries.'

'Well, you don't know that yet, do you?' the girl said.

'I can speculate,' the Deaf Man said.

'I suppose we can all speculate,' she said.

'As ripe as berries,' he repeated, and lifted a clean white pad from the coffee table, and with a marking pen wrote on it:

AS BERRIES

'Is that for emphasis?' the girl asked.

Her name was Melissa, Lissie for short. She'd told him this at the bar in the cocktail lounge of the Olympia Hotel, where he'd picked her up. He knew she was a hooker. A hooker was what he needed. But he had never in his life paid anyone for sex, and he did not intend to pay for it now.

'Now if we rearrange those letters,' he said, 'placing them in a different order, we get the word

And here he wrote on the pad again:

BRASSIERE

. . . and reached behind her back to unclasp it, freeing her breasts.

'As ripe as berries,' he said, and tried to kiss her nipples, but she crossed her arms over her breasts, and crossed her legs, too, and began jiggling one black-sandaled foot.

'And what'd you call that?' she asked. 'Rearranging the letters that way?' 'An anagram,' he said. 'That's a neat trick,' she said. 'Can you do an anagram

for Melissa?'

'Aimless,' he said at once. 'But how about this one?' he asked, and on the pad he wrote:

A PET SIN

. . . and reached under her skirt to lower them over her thighs, before writing on the pad:

PANTIES

'Neat,' she said, and uncrossed her legs and her arms, and lifted herself slightly so he could lower the panties to her ankles. She kicked them free. They sailed halfway across the room, hitting the sliding glass doors that opened onto the seventeenth-floor terrace and a spectacular view of the city.

'Let's hope no one can spy us,' he said, and wrote the last two words on the pad:

SPY US

'Can you rearrange those?' he asked. 'Sure,' she said, and took the marker from his hand, and wrote:

'Neat,' he said.

'But,' she said, and wrote:

MORE'S NIFTY

'I'll bet it is,' he said.

'Oh, you bet your ass it is,' she said. 'But it's your game, Adam.'

"Which game do you mean?' he asked.

His hand was between her legs, but her thighs were closed tight on it, refusing entrance.

'This one,' she said, and wrote on the pad:

SNAG A RAM

'Anagrams, do you mean?'

'Bingo,' she said.

'You want an anagram for "more's nifty." Is that it?'

'Try it,' she said, and handed him the marker.

He thought for merely an instant, and then wrote:

MONEY FIRST

'How clever of you,' she said, and spread her legs wide, and held her hand out to him, palm upwards.

'I think not,' he said, and slapped her so hard he almost knocked her off the couch.

LATER, WHILE MELISSA was still tied to the bed, he asked if she knew that 'Adam Fen' was an anagram for 'Deaf Man.'

Aching everywhere, she said she guessed she did.

He wrote both words on the pad for her, one under the other:

ADAM FEN DEAF MAN

'Gee, yeah,' she said.

Along about then, a courier was delivering the final note in what the Deaf Man thought of as the first movement of his ongoing little symphony.

THE NOTE IN the inside envelope read:

We wondred that thou went'st so soon From the world's stage, to the grave's tiring room. We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth, Tells thy spectators that thou went'st but forth To enter with applause.

An Actor's Art,

Can die, and live, to act a second part.

I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!

There was also a line drawing in the envelope: 'Who the hell is that supposed to be?' Parker asked. 'Looks like a rag picker,' Byrnes said. 'You have rag

pickers in your neighborhood?'

'We called him the Rags Man,' Brown said, nodding.

'Why would he be sending us a picture of a rag picker?' Meyer asked.

'No, Artie's got it,' Carella said. 'It's a rags man. Oh, Jesus, it's a rags man!'

They all looked at him.

He seemed about to have a heart attack.

'It's an anagram!' he said.

'Huh?' Genero said.

'An anagram, an anagram, a rags man! That's an anagram for anagrams!'

'Huh?' Genero said again.

All at once the letters under the note's poetry seemed to spring from the page, I'M A FATHEAD, MEN, leaping into the air before Carella's very eyes, rolling and tumbling in random order, IAFMHATDEAN M E, until at last they fell into place in precisely the order Adam Fen had intended.

I AM THE DEAF MAN!

'Shit,' Carella said, 'he's back.'

And now, of course, all of it made sense.

All of the notes, when read as anagrams, clearly told them what the Deaf Man had done and possibly why he had done it.

WHO'S IT, ETC?

A DARN SOFT GIRL?

O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

Rearranged in their proper order, the letters became:

SHOT TWICE?

GLORIA STANFRD?

SHOT IN THE HEART!

Move that dangling 'O' from the third line to the first line and you had her full last name: STANFORD. Similarly:

A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?

. . . became:

COW PASTURE? CONCERT?

. . . the scene of the Deaf Man's last chaotic diversion in Grover Park.

And once they rearranged:

BRASS HUNT? CELLAR?

... they got:

STASH BURN? RECALL?

. . . which merely asked them to remember his true target the last time out, the incinerator on the River Harb Drive, where thirty million dollars worth of confiscated narcotics was scheduled to be burned by the police.

And lastly:

PORN DIET? HELL, A TIT ON MOM!

Put in their intended order, the letters in both lines formed the words:

RED POINT? HAMILTON MOTEL!

. . . the name of the motel in a town across the river where a man who'd registered as Sonny Sanson had left behind a bloody trail apparently inspired by a woman who'd betrayed him.

Had that woman been GLORIA STANFORD?

A DARN SOFT GIRL-O!

Because, boy-o-boy-o, Sonny Sanson was sure as hell Son'io Sans Son, who was in turn ADAM FEN, who was none other than the DEAF MAN, who'd entered with fanfare and flourish to act yet another part.

I'M A FATHEAD, MEN?

Oh, no, not by a long shot.

I AM THE DEAF MAN!

Bravo, lads, that was more like it!

He was back, and the very thought sent a collective shudder through the detectives gathered in the lieutenant's office.

'Anyone care for another donut?' Byrnes asked.

4.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May And summer's lease hath all too short a date ...

'Actually, that's kind of nice,' Genero said.

'He's back, all right,' Willis said.

'With more poetry, no less.'

' "The darling buds of May,'" Eileen said. 'That's Shakespeare, isn't it?'

'Sure sounds like Shakespeare.'

' "The darling buds of May.

'But it's June already,' Carella said.

'Just barely,' Meyer said.

This was Thursday morning, the third day of June. The lieutenant had virtually double-teamed the squad because whenever the Deaf Man put in an appearance, his people all suddenly began behaving like Keystone Kops, and one could not be too careful lest disapprobation thunder down from the brassy skies above. The nine Shakespearean scholars grouped around Carella's desk were Carella himself, Meyer, Kling, Genero, Parker, Hawes, Willis, Brown, and Eileen Burke.

'Kind of nice, though,' Genero said. '"The darling buds of May," you know? I really like that.'

All the squadroom windows were open to the balmy breezes of early June. The note on Carella's desk was the first one delivered today. He felt sure there'd be more.

'What's he trying to tell us this time?' he asked.

'Nothing about the homicide, that's for sure.'

'He's already said enough about that,' Meyer said. 'I killed Gloria Stanford, I shot her twice in the heart, now come find me, dummies.'

'Where does it say that?' Parker asked.

He had shaved this morning. Maybe he expected another round of coffee and donuts.

'In his previous notes,' Meyer explained. 'All those

anagrams.'

'Yeah, anagrams, right,' Parker said, not giving a shit

one way or the other.

'What does he mean about "summer's lease"?' Willis

asked.

'When does summer start this year?' Eileen asked.

Limping around the lieutenant's office in his soft cast, Hawes didn't much care when summer started this year. Or any year. He was still fuming because the dicks from the Eight-Six hadn't found any ejected shells on any of the rooftops opposite Honey Blair's building, and so far nobody knew nothing about whoever had fired half a dozen shots at him yesterday morning. It was one thing to get all excited about someone who might or might not be the Deaf Man perhaps being responsible for the death of a woman named Gloria Stanford, but bygones were bygones, easy come, easy go, and Hawes himself was still in the here-and-now and luckily among the living, and whoever had tried to render him otherwise was still out there someplace, on the loose, so where the hell was a cop when you needed one? 'Miscolo!' Brown yelled. ' "Summer's lease hath all too short a date,"' Eileen

quoted.

'Nice,' Genero said again, smiling wistfully.

Miscolo came in from the Clerical Office down the hall. He'd put on a little weight and lost a little hair at the back

of his head. But he still resembled a somewhat moist-eyed basset hound. 'You want coffee, right?' he said.

'Have you got a Farmer's Almanac in the Clerical Office?' Brown asked.

'Why would I have a Farmer's Almanac?'

'We're trying to find out when summer comes this year.'

'Why?'

'Because it hath all too short a date,' Genero explained.

You guys,' Miscolo said, and walked out shaking his head.

'Anybody got a calendar?' Brown asked, and went to his own desk. He flipped open the pages to June, ran his forefinger across the dates. The words Summer begins were printed in the box for June 21. 'Here it is,' he said. 'June twenty-first. First day of summer.'

'"Summer's lease,'" Eileen said.

'Is he planning something for the twenty-first?'

'Or not planning it, as the case may be,' Meyer said. 'He never tells us exactly what he's up to.'

"All too short a date,"' Willis reminded them.

'So it could be short of the twenty-first.'

'Closer to May,' Kling suggested. '"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."'

'That reminds me of teenage girls,' Parker said.

Then again, many things reminded him of teenage girls.

'"The darling buds of May," he explained, and shrugged.

You know what he might be doing?' Carella said. 'He might be sending us a new batch of notes just to divert us from the homicide investigation.'

But even he didn't believe this.

The lieutenant's door opened. 'Eileen?' he said. 'See you a minute?'

'HAVE A SEAT,' Byrnes said.

She took one of the chairs opposite his desk.

Waited.

'I want you to know I appreciate your input on this

case,' Byrnes said. 'Thank you, sir.' 'Pete,' he said. 'Please. Pete.' 'Yes, sir. Pete.'

'Eileen,' he said, 'I don't want you to take what I'm about to say the wrong way.' Uh-oh, she thought. 'This isn't just because you're a woman.' Am I being transferred? she wondered. To a precinct where a woman — Fat Chance Department — commands the detective squadroom? She waited.

'I want you to go over to the Stanford apartment. Now that Mobile's cleared it, I want you to go through her things, her personal items, everything she left behind. Bring a fresh eye to it. Bring a woman's eye to it. See if you can spot anything a man might have missed.' 'Yes, sir,' she said.

'It's not just because you're a woman,' he said. Then what is it? she wondered. 'I understand, sir,' she said. 'Pete.' In my experience,' he said, 'aside from crimes of passion, which this might have been Yes, sir.'

'. . . the man coming back to take revenge on the woman who done him wrong, that sort of thing . . .'

'Yes, sir.'

'But if this wasn't simply that, if instead the man wanted something from her, which in my experience is the motive for many murders, hasn't that been your experience, too? A person wants something very badly, he gets it, and then, to protect his identity or whatever, he kills the person he took it from. Like an arsonisr setting a fire to cover some other crime. Hasn't that been your experience, Eileen?'

'Well, I haven't investigated that many homicides, Pete. Sir,' she said. 'Or arsons, either, for that matter.'

'So what did the Deaf Man want from her?' Byrnes asked rhetorically. 'He masterminded a multimillion-dollar narcotics theft, you know ..."

'Yes, sir, I know.'

'. . . so was he coming back after that stash? If so, where is it? Where's the dope? Or the dope money? I don't think he's the sort of man who'd kill someone merely for revenge, do you? So why else might he have killed her? That's what I want you to bring your woman's eye to.'

'I understand, sir. It's like what the Walt Disney studio did a few years back.'

'The what?'

'The movie company.'

Yes?'

'They hired a nineteen-year-old girl to bring a teenager's sensibility to a script a man had written for them.'

'Oh,' Byrnes said.

'Turned out she was in her thirties. The female writer they hired.'

'Oh,' Byrnes said again.

'But they figured a man couldn't possibly know what a woman was thinking or feeling.'

'That's right,' he said. 'Even if he was a writer.' 'I can understand that.'

'So that's why you want me to shake down Gloria's apartment. Find out what she might have been thinking

or feeling.'

'Find out why he killed her,' Byrnes said, nodding

grimly.

MELISSA SUMMERS DIDN'T know quite what she was

feeling.

Never in her entire life had she ever met anyone like Adam Fen, or whatever his name was. Never anyone like him in all the guys she'd fucked for free when she was still just a girl and an amateur, never anyone like him in all the guys she'd fucked since turning pro at the age of sixteen in Los Angeles, California. Well, sort of dabbled at being a pro. She didn't really become a pro till she came to this city, thank you for that, Ambrose Carter. But never had she met anyone like Adam Fen. Never.

A deaf guy, no less! If he was, in fact, deaf. Actually, she didn't know what he was. One minute, he was kind and gentle with her, stroking her like a kitten, the next he was fierce as a tiger, slapping her around, making her do things even none of the freaks in LaLaLand had asked her to do, some of them movie stars even, would you believe it? Well, TV actors, anyway. Some of them. One of them, actually. Well, a walk-on part in a weekly sitcom, actually. Tipped her five hundred bucks. Told her to catch the show on NBC next Friday night. And there he was! Actually on the show!

Walked into this executive's office, said, 'Someone to see you, sir,' and walked right out again. Looked innocent as an angel, the things he'd asked her to do.

Adam Fen was worse. Or better, depending how you looked at it. If that was his real name. Which she sincerely doubted. But Melissa Summers wasn't her real name, either, so what difference did it make? He'd told her Adam Fen was an anagram for Deaf Man, which was certainly true, the anagram part, but whether or not he was really deaf was another matter. Not that she cared. What she was worried about was getting involved with him. She had the feeling that getting involved with him could be dangerous. Well, getting involved with any man, getting really involved with any man, was a dangerous thing to do.

Take the money and run, that was her motto.

Even when she was still giving it away (boy, talk about naive!) she'd realized that getting involved with a man — though back then they were all still boys, kids, you know, fifteen, sixteen, a bit older than she was, she'd started when she was fourteen, with a cousin of hers from New Jersey — getting involved meant letting them have the upper hand, and that was putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

He had a gun.

She'd seen the gun.

He'd showed her the gun.

Actually cocked the trigger and used it on her like a cock. The gun. Inserted the barrel inside her. Got her so scared, she almost peed on it. Turned out there were no bullets in it.

But she was afraid if she got involved with this guy, really involved with him — he might one day actually use the gun on her.

That was her fear.

He seemed unpredictable.

Exciting but dangerous.

So why was she running this errand at the bank for

him today?

THERE WAS SOMETHING eerily frightening about the murder scene. Maybe it was the yellow tape on the bedroom carpet, the outline of where Gloria Stanford's body had lain. Maybe it was the silence. Eileen guessed it was

the silence.

A stillness so complete that it seemed to exclude the sounds one normally associated with big-city living, the ambulances and police sirens outside, the occasional toilet being flushed somewhere in the building, the low whine of an elevator, the rumble of television voices. All seemed subordinate to the utter silence.

She stood in the entrance door to the dead woman's bedroom, looking in at the yellow tape on the floor. The stillness was oppressive. It seemed to be challenging her to enter the bedroom. She hesitated on the door sill. At last, she took a step into the room, walked gingerly around the taped outline on the floor, and directly to a drop-leaf desk that must have cost her yearly salary. As a detective/third, Eileen currently earned $55,936 a year; her own one-bedroom flat was furnished with stuff she'd bought at IKEA, across the River Harb.

She lowered the drop-leaf front and sat in a chair upholstered with a satin seat and back.

In one of the desk's warren of cubbyholes, she found a box of checkbook inserts. Blank checks for FirstBank's Salisbury Street branch right here in the city. Top sheaf of checks numbered from 151 through 180. Sheaves

below it numbered to follow. Lettering across the top of each check was:

Gloria Stanford

1113 Silvermine Oval

Isola, 30576

In another of the cubbies, she found FirstBank's most recent statement. Gloria's checking account balance at the end of March had been $1,674.18. On the third of April, she'd made a cash deposit of $9,800. Another cash deposit on April 12, this time for $7,200. Yet another on April 23, for $8,100. Total cash deposits for the month: $25,100. Total amount of checks written: $24,202.17; her closing balance on April 30 was $2,573.01.

By law, all banks were required to report to the Internal Revenue Service any cash deposits in excess of $10,000. Was it mere coincidence that Gloria's cash deposits had been for amounts somewhat less than the ten grand? She looked for a savings account passbook and could find none.

So where had those cash deposits come from?

Eileen went through Gloria's appointment calendar and her address book.

She went through her closets and her dresser drawers.

She went through her medicine cabinet and her refrigerator.

Her 'woman's eye' caught nothing a man's eye might have missed.

In the living room, on a counter to the right of the entrance door, she found a tote bag with a small-caliber pistol in it. She wondered if Carella and Meyer had simply missed the gun. Or had they turned it over to Ballistics for testing, and then brought it back to the

apartment on their second go-round? A place for everything and everything in its place. She would have to ask them. Meanwhile, the apartment had been cleared, so she felt free to take the gun out of the bag (although using a pencil passed through the trigger guard) and sniff the barrel. It did not seem to have been fired recently.

Sliding the gun off the pencil, she dropped it back into the bag. Digging around the way only a woman could — the lieutenant was right in that respect, at least — she also found a tube of lipstick, a mascara pencil, a packet of Kleenex tissues, a small vial of Hermes' Caliche, and a red leather Coach wallet. Oddly, there was no identification in the wallet. No driver's license (but that was possible in a big city), no credit cards (which was unusual), no social security card (but you weren't supposed to carry that with you), not anything with Gloria Stanford's name or her signature on it.

She went back to the drop-leaf desk in the bedroom, opened the FirstBank statement again.

The statement showed checks written in April to American Express, Visa, and MasterCard. So where were the credit cards? Was that what he'd been after? The lady's credit cards? The Deaf Man? Planning to charge a camcorder or a stereo to the

lady's credit cards? Come on now.

That hardly seemed his style. And yet . . .

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May...

Maybe the poor man had fallen upon hard times. And summer's lease hath all too short a date ...

Maybe he needed a new wardrobe for the coming summer season.

Still and all. . .

Credit cards?

Such small-time shit for such a big-time schemer.

She decided to pay a visit to the FirstBank branch on Salisbury Street.

MELISSA HAD PRACTICED signing the name a hundred or more times. Copying it from Gloria Stanford's driver's license and credit cards. Gloria Stanford, Gloria Stanford, again and again. She now knew it almost the way she knew her own name. Melissa Summers, Gloria Stanford. Interchangeable.

There was a photo of a good-looking blonde on both the license and in the corner of one of rhe credit cards. But except for the blond hair, Gloria Stanford — whoever the hell she might be — bore no resemblance to Melissa Summers, none at all.

Melissa had pointed this out to Adam.

'We don't look at all alike,' she'd said.

'No problem,' he'd assured her. 'One thing certain about a so-called personal banker is that he wouldn't know you if he tripped over you in his own bathroom.'

She hoped so.

She did not know what crime it might be to try getting into someone else's safe-deposit box, but she had a feeling she could spend a lot of time upstate if she got caught doing it. Be ironic, wouldn't it? Get sent up for

signing someone else's name on a bank's signature card, after she'd been hooking all these years with never so much as a blemish on her spotless career — well, that one prostitution bust in L.A., but she was still Carmela Sammarone then.

Her high-heeled shoes clicked noisily on the bank's polished marble floor as she approached the desk at the rear. A bespectacled woman looked up at her, smiled. Handing her the little red envelope with the key in it, Melissa returned the smile. The woman shook the key out of the envelope, opened a file drawer with numbered index cards in it, fingered swiftly through them, yanked one out, silently read the name on it, looked up, asked 'Miss Stanford?,' and without waiting for an answer, handed the card to Melissa for signature. Gloria Stanford's true signature marched down the length of the card like so many identical siblings:

Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford Gloria Stanford

Melissa added her forgery just below the last true signature:

Gloria Stanford

Close, but no cigar.

On the other hand, who was watching the store?

The lady in the eyeglasses glanced cursorily at the sig-

nature, and then opened the gate in the railing and led Melissa back to rhe rows upon rows of stainless steel boxes. She used first Gloria's key and next the bank's own key to open the door to one of the boxes, and then yanked the box out of the row and handed it, deep and sleek, to Melissa.

'Will you need a room, Miss Stanford?' she asked.

'Yes, please,' Melissa said.

Her heart was pounding.

In the small room, with the door locked, Melissa lifted the lid of the box and peered into it.

There seemed to be a whole big shitpot full of hundred-dollar bills in that box.

She wondered if Adam would find her and shoot her if she ran off with all that money.

She decided he would.

WHEN EILEEN BURKE got to the bank, the woman in the eyeglasses told her that Miss Stanford had been there not ten minutes earlier. She showed Eileen the signature card Miss Stanford had signed. Eileen knew she'd now have to go all the way downtown for a court order to open that safe-deposit box. She also knew that when she opened it, she would find it empty.

Just as she was going down into the subway kiosk to catch a train to High Street, the second message that day was being delivered to the stationhouse.

Shake off slumber, and beware: Awake, awake!

'There he goes again!' Meyer said. 'Taunting us with Shakespeare.'

'If it is Shakespeare,' Kling said. 'What else could it be but Shakespeare?' 'Calling us dummies,' Meyer said. 'Maybe we are dummies,' Genero said. No one disagreed with him.

'Let's try to figure out what he's saying,' Carella said. 'That shouldn't be too difficult.'

'I got better things to do,' Parker said, and went off to the men's room to pee.

'He's telling us to wake up.'

'Or else.'

' "Shake off slumber and beware." '

' "Awake, awake!'"

'It doesn't even rhyme,' Genero said.

DR. JAMES MELVIN Hudson was head of the Oncology Department at Mount Pleasant Hospital, not too distant from where Sharyn Cooke maintained her private practice in Diamondback. As a member of the medical team in the Deputy Chief Surgeon's Office in Majesta, however, he reported only to Sharyn, his immediate

superior.

At twelve noon that Thursday, while Detective Eileen Burke was on her way downtown for her court order, Hudson asked Sharyn if she'd like to go down for lunch, and they both went downstairs to a sandwich joint called the Burger and Bun, right there in the Rankin Plaza complex. The strip mall in which the Deputy Chief Surgeon's Office was located also housed a dry-cleaning establishment, a fitness center, a Mail Boxes, Etc., and a branch of the Lorelie Records chain of music shops. A cop who'd recently been shot or merely kicked in the ass could therefore have coffee or lunch before being exam-

ined by a doctor, get his uniform jacket pressed while he was having his chest X-rayed, develop his pecs or his abs after his exam, and then buy and mail a CD to his mother for her birthday, all in the same little mall. Location, location. All was location.

Timing was important, too.

At a quarter past noon, when Hudson and Sharyn entered the Burger and Bun, it was jammed with similarly minded lunchers. Heads turned nonetheless. Here was a strikingly good-looking black couple, both obvious professionals, both wearing white tunics, a stethoscope hanging around Sharyn's neck, another one dangling from Hudson's pocket. He was six-feet two-inches tall. She was five-nine. All conversation almost stopped when they came through the door. The proprietor showed them to a booth near the rear of the shop. They ordered soups and sandwiches, and then earnestly and seriously discussed a patient they'd both seen earlier that morning, Sharyn because the cop had been shot two months ago, Hudson because the cop had revealed to him that two non-malignant tumors had been removed from his bladder three weeks before the shooting. When their food came, they dropped shop talk for a while, Sharyn mentioning a movie she and Kling had seen over the weekend, Hudson telling her he was getting sick and tired of movies aimed at fifteen-year-old boys.

'There's nothing made for grownups anymore,' he said.

'Not all movies are that bad,' Sharyn said.

She was bone weary.

Her police workday was only three hours old, and she was ready to go home. Still had to bus back to the city for her own office hours this afternoon. Sometimes, she wondered.

I'd rather stay home and listen to music,' Hudson said. And then, without preamble, 'Are you familiar with the work of a rap group called Spit Shine?' 'No,' she said. 'I don't much like rap.' "Well, it's come a long way from "Let's All Kill the Police," if that's what you're thinking.'

'I don't know what "Let's All Kill the Police" is.' 'I'm categorizing a form of gangsta rap,' Hudson said. 'Spit Shine went beyond that. Spit Shine addressed the ills of black society itself. Didn't try to lay it all on Whitey. Asked us what we ourselves were doing to denigrate . . .'

'I don't like the expression "Whitey,"' Sharyn said. 'Sorry. Didn't mean it in a derogatory way. In any case, Spit Shine no longer exists. Guy who wrote their stuff got killed in the Grover Park riot a few years back. Remember the riot thete?'

'Yes.'

She remembered. The day after the riot, a white detective named Bert Kling had called her from a phone booth in the rain to ask if she'd like to go to dinner and a movie

with him.

'Twenty-three years old when a stray bullet killed him,' Hudson said. 'His name was Sylvester Cummings, his rapper's handle was "Silver." Wrote wonderful lyrics. Wonderful.' And again without preamble, he began beating out a rhythm on the table top, and began singing in a low, somehow urgent voice.

'You dig vanilla? 'Now ain't that a killer! 'You say you hate chocolate? 'I say you juss thoughtless. 'Cause chocolate is the color

'Of the Lord's first children 'Juss go ask the diggers 'The men who find the bones 'Go ask them 'bout chocolate . . . 'Go ask them 'bout niggers . . .'

'I don't like that word, either,' Sharyn said. 'Man was trying to make a point,' Hudson said. Their food arrived.

He seemed about to say something more. Instead, he just shook his head, and began eating.

Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

'Adam,' Meyer said.

'Adam Fen,' Carella said.

'The Chinese guy again,' Genero said.

'The Deaf Man,' Kling said.

'If he's deaf, then how can he hear? Parker asked.' "Thou shalt hear."'. . . And what's with all this Quaker talk all at once?' Willis asked. "Thou shalt hear?" What's that supposed to be?'

'"Thy hat and thy glove,'" Eileen said. 'That was a good movie.'

This was now ten minutes past three. She'd been back in the squadroom since a quarter to. As she'd suspected, the FirstBank safe-deposit box was empty. She was wondering now if it was worth sending Mobile over there to dust it for prints. Had 'Gloria Stanford' put on gloves before opening it?

'Friendly Persuasion,' Kling said, remembering.

They had seen it together on television, Eileen lying in

his arms on the couch in his studio apartment near the Calm's Point Bridge. That was when they were still living together. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

'"Thee I love,'" Eileen said, remembering.

'He's telling us he plans to shake us up,' Parker said.

He bated this fucking Deaf Man. Made him feel stupid. Which maybe he was. But he didn't even like to consider that possibility.

'Shake us up how?' Brown asked.

'You think he's gonna tell us all at once?'

'Oh no, not him.'

'Piece by piece.'

'Bit by bit.'

'Listen.'

'Go apart and listen.'

'Hark!' Willis said.

And this time, no one questioned his use of the word.

THE CALL FROM Milan came at three-thirty, which Carella figured was either nine-thirty or ten-thirty over there in Italy. The call was from Luigi Fontero, the man who was about to marry Carella's mother on June twelfth and whisk her off to Italy shortly thereafter. Life With Luigi, he thought.

'Hey, Luigi,' he said, feigning a jovial camaraderie he did not feel. 'What a surprise! How are you?'

'Fine, Steve, and you?' Fontero said.

Mild Italian accent. Somehow it grated.

'Busy, busy,' Carella said. 'We're having trouble again with a criminal we call the Deaf Man. That would be "El Sordo" in your language.'

'II Sordo,' Fontero corrected.

'Right,' Carella said.

Thanks, he thought.

'So what can I do for you?' he asked.

'I don't know how to begin.'

Carella immediately thought He's calling off the wed-ding\

He waited.

'About the wedding

Breathlessly, he waited.

'I don't know how to say this.'

Just say it, Carella thought. Just tell me you've made a terrible mistake, you've now met a lovely Italian girl drawing water from the well in the town square, and you'd like to call off the entire thing. Just say it, Luigi!

'I don't wish to offend you.'

No, no, Carella almost said aloud. No offense, Luigi, none at all. I quite understand. We all make mistakes.

'I want to pay for the cost of the wedding,' Fontero blurted.

'What?' Carella said.

'I know this is not customary

'What?' he said again.

'I know the groom is not supposed to make such an offer. But Luisa is a widow . . . your mother is a widow . . . and we are neither of us youngsters, there is no father of the bride here, there is only a loving, devoted son who has taken it upon himself. . .'

He's rehearsed this, Carella thought.

'. . . to shoulder the burden of a double wedding, his mother's and his sister's. And, Steve, I cannot allow this to happen. You are a civil servant. . .'

Oh, please, Carella thought.

'. . . and I cannot allow you to assume the tremendous expense of a double wedding. If you will permit me

'No, I can't do that,' Carella said.

'I've offended you.'

'Not at all. But I'm perfectly comfortable paying for both weddings. In fact it's been fun talking to caterers and musicians and . . .'

'I can hear it in your voice.'

'No, Luigi, truly. It's very kind of you to make such an offer, but you're right, this isn't something the groom should have to do, pay for his own wedding, no, Luigi. No. Truly. When do you plan to come over?'

'Are you certain about this, Steve? I'm ready to wire to my bank there ..."

'No, no. Not another word about it. How's the weather there in Milan?'

'Lovely actually. But I long to be there. I miss your mother.' He hesitated. 'I love her dearly,' he said.

I'm sure she loves you, too,' Carella said. 'So when do you think you'll be here?'

'I fly in on the eighth. Four days before the wedding.' 'Good, that's good,' Carella said. There was a long silence on the line. 'Well, I'd better get back to work here,' Carella said. 'Are you sure I haven't offend . . . ?' 'Positive, positive. See you next week sometime. Have a good flight.'

'Thank you, Steve.'

Carella broke the connection.

HE WONDERED NOW if actually he had been offended.

Here at the ragtag end of the day's shift in this grimy squadroom he had called home for such a long time now, he wondered if the offer from the rich furniture-maker in Milan had offended him.

As a working detective, Carella currently earned $62,857

a year. By his most recent calculation, the double wedding was going to cost almost half that. Without doubt, Mr. Luigi Fontero could more easily afford to pay for the coming festivities than could Detective/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella.

But there was this matter of pride.

When he was still in college, one of his professors — and he truly could no longer remember which class this had been — called him in to discuss his term paper and his final grade. The professor told him it was a very good paper, and he was grading it an A, and then he said he was giving Carella a B-plus for the semester.

He must have seen the look on Carella's face.

'Or do you really need an A?' the professor asked.

Carella didn't know what that meant. Did he really need an A? Everyone really needs an A, he thought.

He looked the professor dead in the eye.

'No,' he said. 'I don't really need an A. B-plus will be fine.'

And he'd picked up his term paper and walked out.

A mere matter of pride.

So what the hell? he thought now.

My mother and my only sister are getting married. So thanks, Mr. Fontero, but no thanks. I'll find a way to pay for it myself. Even if it takes me to the poorhouse.

Which was just when the Deaf Man's final note of the day arrived.

And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontents I'll read you matter deep and dangerous, As full of peril and adventurous spirit As to o'er-walk a current roaring loud On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

'Now we're getting there,' Meyer said.

'Where are we getting?' Parker wanted to know. 'It's just more damn Shakespeare.'

'But he'll be sending us a book!'

'"A secret book,'" Kling corrected.

'Didn't Shakespeare write sonnets?' Genero asked. 'I hope it's a book of his sonnets. I like his poetry.'

'Personally, I find it somewhat shitty,' Parker said.

'We've got to put them all together,' Carella said. 'His notes. The four notes we received today.'

'Why?'

'Because they won't make sense otherwise. Same as

the anagrams.'

'You're right,' Willis said. 'We've got to look at them as a whole. Otherwise they're just nonsense.'

'You want my opinion,' Parker said, 'they're just nonsense, anyway. I mean, what the fuck — excuse me, Eileen — is this supposed to mean? "As to o'er-walk a current roaring loud on the unsteadfast footing of a spear." I mean, that isn't even EnglishV

'Let's take a look at the other ones,' Carella suggested, and removed the previous three notes from the center drawer of his desk.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May And summer's lease hath all too short a date ...

'He's telling us he's planning something for the summer.'

'Or maybe even sooner.'

'Sometime closer to May . . .'

' 'The darling buds of May," Eileen said.

' "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."

'He's telling us the party's gonna get rough.'

'Let's see the second note.'

Shake off slumber, and beware: Awake, awake!

'Previews of coming attractions,' Meyer said. 'Nothing more, nothing less.'

'We can expect a full-screen ad for a furniture store next,' Parker said. 'I hate going to the movies nowadays.'

'Oh, me, too,' Eileen agreed.

'Wake up, he's telling us. "Shake off slumber."'

'Let's see the third one.'

Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

'Uses the name "Adam" this time,' Willis said.

'Lets us know this is the same Adam Fen who sent us the anagrams.'

'Same Deaf Man who told us who he killed last Sunday.'

'Whom,' Genero corrected.

'Same fuckin murderer,' Parker said heatedly. 'Excuse me, Eileen.'

'Going to shake us up with what he's planning next.'

'Big summer movie.'

'Coming attractions.'

'You notice they release the lousiest movies in the summer and around Christmastime?'

'There's that word again.'

'What word?'

'Shake. He's gonna shake us up. That's what he's telling us.'

'Oh shitV Eileen said. 'Excuse me, Andy.'

'What?' Carella asked at once.

'Check out these first three notes again. What's the word common to all of them?' They all studied the notes again:

Rough winds do SHAKE ...

SHAKE off slumber ...

SHAKE me up ...

'Now take a look at this last note.'

I'll read you matter deep and dangerous, As full of peril and adventurous spirit As to o'er-walk a current roaring loud On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

'And single out the last line. . . '

On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

'Then skip to the last word in that line. . . .'

... footing of a SPEAR.

'Put them all together . . .' '. . . they spell MOTHER,' Parker said. 'No,' Eileen said. 'They spell Shakespeare. Shake and spear spell Shakespeare.'

'Doesn't Shakespeare have an e on the end?' Genero

asked.

'Don't you see?' she said. 'He's telling us all his references will be coming from Shakespeare.'

'I doped that out from the very start,' Parker said.

'How come everybody in the world always dopes out everything from the very start?' Willis asked.

'Well, I did,' Parker insisted. 'Right after we got all that anagram shit. I knew that would be his plan. All Shakespeare, all the time. Where's that note?' he asked, and began rummaging through the messages arranged on Carella's desktop. 'Here,' he said. 'This one.'

We wondred that thou went'st so soon From the world's stage, to the grave's tiring room. We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth, Tells thy spectators that thou went'st but forth To enter with applause.

An Actor's Art,

Can die, and live, to act a second part.

'Now if that ain't Shakespeare,' he said, 'then I don't know what is!'

WHEN CfiRELLfl GOT home that night, he was carrying a thick book he'd borrowed from the library three blocks from his house.

His daughter, April, was curled up in the armchair under the imitation Tiffany lamp, reading.

'Hi, Dad,' she said, without looking up. 'Catch any crooks today?'

'Hundreds,' he said.

'Good work, Jones,' she said, and tossed him a salute. He went to her, kissed the top of her head. 'What are you reading?' he asked.

'Math,' she said.

'Where's your brother?'

Here,' Mark said, and came striding in from his room down the hall. The twins favored their mother more than Carella, he guessed. Or perhaps hoped. Mark gave him a hug. Carella went into the kitchen. Teddy was at the stove, cooking. She turned her face to him for a kiss. Raven hair pulled back into a ponytail. Long white apron made her look like a French chef or something. She lifted a cover, stirred something, put down the ladle, noticed the book. Her hands moved on the air, signing. He read her flying fingers, read the words she mouthed in accompaniment.

'Shakespeare,' he answered. 'The complete works.'

Mark materialized in the kitchen doorway.

'Why Shakespeare, Dad?'

'Some guy's sending us quotes from Shakespeare. I want to find out where he's getting them.'

'There's an easier way,' Mark said.

CRRELLA WAS THINKING no home should be without a twelve-year-old boy going on thirteen. Sitting before the computer in his room, Mark went first to GOOGLE, and then typed in the keyword SHAKESPEARE and from the seemingly hundreds of choices there, he zeroed in on a site called RhymeZone Shakespeare Search. To the right of a little picture of Shakespeare's face were the words Browse: Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Poetry, Coined words, Most popular lines, Help.

Just below that was the direction Find word or phrase, with a narrow rectangular box to the right of that, and then the boxed word

Search

'All you do is type in the word or phrase you're

looking for,' Mark said. 'Give me an example.' Carella took out his batch of photocopied notes. 'How about "the darling buds of May"?' he said. Mark typed in darling buds. He hit the search key. On

the computer screen, Carella saw:

Keyword search results:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, Sonnets: XVIII 1 result returned.

'Now we click on Sonnets,' Mark said, and clicked on it. The screen filled with:

XVIII.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date ...

'That's amazing,' Carella said. 'Give me another one,' Mark said.

CARELLA REMEMBERED THE name of the course now. American Romantic Poetry.

And his term paper had been titled 'The Raven' and Roe's Philosophy of Composition.

What had fascinated him most about the poem was Poe's subsequent admission that he'd written it backwards. He could still remember the key passages from the author's explanation:

Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning — at the end where all works of art should begin — for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:

'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!'

I composed this stanza, at this point, first — by establishing the climax . . .

Carella had read the entire poem aloud to the class. Wowed the girls. Got an A on the paper, too. But only a B-plus for his final grade. It still rankled.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered

weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten

lore -

Still knew the entire poem by heart. Could recite it at the drop of a hat. Now, weak and weary after a long day in the salt mines, he pondered on his son's computer many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. And because he'd once been a good student and was now a good cop, he composed a short list he would take to work with him tomorrow morning:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May:

Sonnets XVIII shake off slumber, and beware: The Tempest: Act II.

Scene i

how he will shake me up: As You Like It: Act I.

Scene i

On the unsteadfast footing of a spear: King Henry IV. part I: Act 1. Scene iii

Shake plus spear equals Shakespeare. But he got no returns at all for any of the words or phrases in one of the earliest quotes they'd received:

We wondred that thou went'st so soon From the world's stage, to the grave's tiring room. We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth, Tells thy spectators that thou went'st but forth To enter with applause.

An Actor's Art,

Can die, and live, to act a second part.

Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

BEFORE SHE'D LEFT Rankin Plaza that afternoon, Sharyn stopped in at Lorelie Records downstairs from her office, and bought Spit Shine's last CD. Titled after its hit song, 'Go Ask,' it was the final album they'd made before that fateful and fatal Cow Pasture Concert. The title song was on track number seven. In her bedroom that night, she played it for Kling. He listened intently.

'Can you understand what they're singing?' he asked.

'Sure,' she said.

'I can't,' he admitted.

'Guess you got to be black, sugah.'

'They ought to put subtitles on rap music,' he said, shaking his head.

'They already do, on TV,' she said. 'But here, read the liner notes. The lyrics should be there.'

'Play it again,' he said, and removed the little pamphlet from the CD's plastic jewel box, and opened it to the lyrics for 'Go Ask.'

Sharyn clicked back to band seven again.

'You dig vanilla? 'Now ain't that a killer! 'You say you hate chocolate? 'I say you juss thoughtless.

'Cause chocolate is the color 'Of the Lord's first children 'Juss go ask the diggers 'The men who find the bones 'Go ask them 'bout chocolate . . . 'Go ask them 'bout niggers . . .'

'Oops,' Kling said.

"Why you denyin

'Whut should senn you flyin?

"Why you find borin

'Whut should senn you soarin?

'You a black woman, woman

'Who you tryin'a sass?

You a black woman, woman,

'Why you tryin'a pass?'

'Juss go ask the diggers 'The men who find the bones

'Go ask them 'bout chocolate . . . 'Go ask them 'bout niggers, 'Go ask.'

The song ended. Sharyn turned off the player.

'That's kinda nice, actually,' Kling said. 'How'd you come across it?'

'Colleague suggested I give it a listen. I thought you might like it.'

"Well, it's not exactly Shakespeare . . .'

'Hey, what is?'

'But I like it. I really do.'

'Do you think I'm like that woman in the rap?' Sharyn asked, straight out of the blue.

Kling blinked.

'Do you think I dig vanilla?'

'Well, I certainly hope so,' Kling said, and she burst out laughing.

You think I've forgotten I'm black?'

'I hope not.'

You think I'm trying to pass?'

'No way. Who's been telling you such things?'

'Nobody,' she said, and went to him where he was sitting on the sofa, and curled up in his arms.

He turned the CD pamphlet over, looked at the picture on the back of it.

You think any of these guys are handsome?' he asked.

She hesitated.

A tick of an instant too long, he thought.

Then she said, 'No.'

She took the pamphlet from his hand, thumbed through it till she found the lyrics for another of the songs, something called 'Black Woman.'

'I like these last few couplets, don't you?' she said.

'Couplets,' he said. 'Now that's Shakespeare for you.' She began reading them aloud.

'In the night, in the night, 'All is black, all is white 'Love the black, love the white 'Love the woman tonight.'

She looked up into his face.

Batted her eyelashes like an ingenue.

'So what do you say, big boy?' she asked.

'DO YOU KNOW how much money was in that box?' the Deaf Man asked her.

Melissa debated lying. But she figured it might not be such a good idea to lie to this man.

'Yes,' she said.

He looked surprised. She did not think he was the sort of man a person could ever surprise, but he sure looked surprised now.

'How do you know?'

'I counted it,' she said.

'Why?'

She again debated lying. No, she thought. Always tell this man the truth. Or one day he'll kill you.

'I counted it so I'd know how much I should ask. For what I did. For walking that money out of the bank for

you.'

'I see. You felt you were entitled to some sort of reward, is that it?'

"Well. . . eighteen million,' she said, and raised her eyebrows. 'Don't you think that's worth a tip?'

Stop thinking like a hooker, she warned herself.

'How big a tip, would you say?' She knew better than to fall into this trap. 'I'll leave that entirely to your judgment,' she said. 'Does a hundred thousand sound okay?' he asked, and smiled.

She smiled back.

A bit low,' she said, 'but hey, you're the boss.'

SHE FIGURED HE thought of himself as some kind of mentor.

The last time she had a mentor was right here in the big bad city, the minute she got off the bus from L.A. Enter Ambrose Carter in his shiny pimp threads, Hey, li'l girlfriend, welcome to town. Got a place to stay? Introduced her to twelve of his homies that very night, cheaper by the dozen, right? Twelve of them who took her under their collective wing, a sort of pimp conglomerate that proceeded to fuck her day and night in a tiny room off the Stem, everywhere, anyplace she had an opening, day and night, twelve of them coming into the room one after the other to let her know she belonged to them, day and night. 'Turned her out,' as the expression went in the trade. Taught her she was nothing but a cheap two-bit hooker now, even though in L.A. she'd been getting a hundred bucks a throw for a mere blowjob.

Well, boys, you should see me now, she thought.

Adam wasn't kidding when he'd said a hundred K.

That's what he'd given her, cold cash, and he'd also taken her to a fur salon on Hall Avenue, where they were having what they called their Fall Preview Sale, when it wasn't even summer yet, and he bought her a sable coat that came right down to her ankles, and a mink stole she could wrap around her three times.

He also told her she could now leave anytime she wanted, but that if she stayed she might learn a thing or two.

This was what made her think he might want to be her mentor.

He did not tell her what he was up to, but she figured it had to be something grand. When a man already had eighteen million in the poke — less the hundred grand he'd laid on her, and the sable and the mink - he certainly didn't have to take risks on any penny-ante scheme. She knew this had something to do with misleading the police, though she didn't know exactly why he would want to do that. She also suspected that she would somehow figure into his plan later on, he wasn't just keeping her around because she gave great head, which by the way, she did, and that wasn't just her opinion.

She was curious to see how this thing might unfold. She was also wondering if he'd cut her into it for another big chunk later on.

So she figured she would stick around, why not, even

though the hundred K could take her around the world

three times over, like the mink stole took her shoulders.

'Do you know the story Frank Sinatra used to tell on

himself? Do you like Sinatra?'

'I don't know Sinatra all that well,' she said. The truth. With him, always the truth. 'When he was playing Vegas, he would put on his tux each night, and stand in front of the mirror tying his bow tie, can you visualize that?'

'Sort of,' she said. She found it hard to visualize Sinatra himself. She concentrated instead on some guy trying to tie a bow tie.

'He'd tweak the tie this way and that . . .' She loved him using words like 'tweak,' which most guys didn't.

"... until finally he said to his mirror-image, "Thar's good enough for jazz." Do you understand the meaning of that?'

'No, I'm afraid I don't.'

Never lie to this man, she thought again.

'He was going out there to sing jazz. This was not grand opera, this was merely jazz. And he wasn't going to fool around with that tie any longer, it was good enough for jazz. You have to remember, Lissie, that even in his later years, Sinatra could sing rings around any other singer, male or female. Any of them. Name one who could beat him. And he knew exactly how good he was. Never mind who hit the charts that particular week. He knew none of them could come anywhere near him. In fact, he knew how bad most of them really were, million-copy gold records or not. So he was just going out there to sing his splendid jazz in yet another barroom to yet another bunch of people who'd already heard all his tunes. The bow tie was good enough for jazz, do you see?'

'Gee,' she said.

'Well, I can always tie my tie so that it's good enough for jazz, I can do what I plan to do without all this folderol beforehand

Folderol. Another word she liked.

'But then where would all the fun be?' he asked, and looked deep into her eyes. 'Where would all the fun be, Lissie?'

5.

HE'S BACK TO spears again,' Genero said.

The Deaf Man's first note that Friday morning, the fourth day of June, read:

Come on, come on; where is your boar-spear,

man? Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?

'Or is he telling us he's just a bore?' Parker asked.

'Which he spelled wrong, by the way.'

'Because, you want to know the truth, I think he is a bore. Him and his Shakespeare both.'

'Never give critics a good line,' Carella said.

Parker didn't know what he meant.

'Anyway, we don't know for sure that this one is Shakespeare,' Kling said.

'Well,' Eileen said, 'he told us it was going to be Shakespeare from now on, didn't he? That's what he told us yesterday, am I right? That's what the spear and all those shakes were about yesterday.'

She was inordinately proud of her deduction yesterday, and did not much like Kling shooting her down this way now. In her secret heart, she also felt he wouldn't be talking this way if they hadn't once shared a relationship. This was some kind of man-woman thing between them, she felt, and had nothing whatever to do with sound police work.

'Who else but Shakespeare would talk like that?' Carella asked.

'Right,' Genero said. 'Nobody but Shakespeare talks like that.'

'Well, Marlowe talked like that,' Willis said.

'Marlowe said "Where is your boar-spear, man?'"

'I don't know if Marlowe actually said that particular line. I'm just saying Marlowe talked a lot like Shakespeare.'

'Did Raymond Chandler know that?' Kling asked.

'Know what?' Brown asked.

'Who's Raymond Chandler?' Genero asked.

'The guy who wrote the books,' Meyer said.

'What books?'

'The Phillip Marlowe novels.'

'Did he know he sounded like Shakespeare?'

'I'm talking about Christopher Marlowe,' Willis said.

'What's a boar-spear, anyway, man?' Brown asked.

'They had these wild boars back in those days,' Parker said.

'The question is,' Eileen said, 'why's he going back to spears again?'

'Maybe he's gonna throw a spear at somebody,' Genero suggested.

'This city,' Parker said, 'I'd believe it.'

AS HAWES WAS leaving the squadroom for his eleven o'clock doctor's appointment, Genero sidled over to him.

'I know how it feels to get shot in the foot,' he said. 'I'm with you, guy.'

'Thanks,' Hawes said.

Actually, he didn't appreciate the comparison. The way he recalled it, Genero had shot himself in the foot. This was on the eighth day of March during a very cold winter many years ago, the second time the Deaf Man

had put in an appearance. What he'd done that time around was demand $50,000 in lieu of killing the deputy mayor, asking that the Eight-Seven leave the money in a lunch pail on a bench in Grover Park.

If Hawes remembered correctly, the fuzz staked out in the park that day had included a detective recruited from the Eight-Eight, who was posing as a pretzel salesman at the entrance to the Clinton Street footpath. Meyer and Kling, disguised as a pair of nuns, were sitting on a park bench saying their beads. Willis and Eileen were pretending (or not) to be a passionate couple necking in a sleeping bag on the grass behind another bench. Genero was sitting on yet another bench, wearing dark glasses and scattering bread crumbs to the pigeons as he patted a seeing-eye dog on the head.

Genero was still a patrolman at the time. He'd been pressed into undercover service only because there was a shortage of detectives in the squadroom that Saturday. Unaccustomed to the art of surveillance, he jumped up the moment he saw somebody picking up the lunch pail, yanked off his blind man's dark glasses, unbuttoned the third button of his overcoat the way he'd seen detectives do on television, reached in for his revolver, and promptly shot himself in the leg.

This was not the same thing as getting shot by a sniper from a rooftop across the way. Or maybe it was.

Grumbling to himself, Hawes threw open the front door of the stationhouse, nodded to the uniformed cop bravely protecting homeland security on the steps outside, and limped down to the sidewalk, where he planned to make a right turn that would take him to the subway kiosk up the street.

A black stretch limo was standing at the curb, its

engine running. Stenciled onto the rear door of the car was the Channel Four logo — a silhouette of the city's skyline with the huge numeral 4 superimposed on it. The tinted rear window on the street side slid down noiselessly. Honey Blair's grinning face appeared in the opening.

'Want a lift, gorgeous?' she asked.

Hawes walked over to the car. 'Hey!' he said. 'What're you doing here?'

'Thought I'd surprise you,' she said.

He climbed in beside her, pulled the door shut behind him. 'Nice wheels,' he said.

'One of the perks of being a media staaahj she said, rolling her eyes on the last word.

'Five seventy-four Jefferson,' Hawes told the driver.

'I've already got that, sir,' the driver said.

Honey tapped a button. The tinted glass partition between the driver's seat and rear compartment slid up, closing them off, sealing them in a soundless, moving cocoon.

'Here's another perk,' she said, and unzipped his fly.

'Uh-oh,' Hawes said.

'You know why Clinton got impeached, don't you?' she asked.

'I think so, yes.'

'It was because right-wing conservatives didn't know what the word "blowjob" meant.'

'Is that right?'

'Uh-huh. They thought "blowjob" was the code word for two villains running around the White House.'

'Now where'd they get that idea?'

'From James Bond.'

'I see. Two villains from James Bond, huh?'

'Yep.'

'Which ones?'

'Blofeld and Oddjob,' she said.

She didn't say anything else after that.

Or if she did, he didn't hear her.

DR. STEPHEN HANNIGAN was one of the orthopedists approved by the PD for the treatment of police personnel injured in the line of duty. Whether getting shot as you left your girlfriend's house in the early morning qualified as 'injured in the line of duty' was a matter for the Police Benevolent Association to sort out later. Meanwhile, a civil servant who earned $62,587 a year as a Detective/ Second Grade pulled up in a stretch limo in front of 574 Jefferson Avenue at the corner of Jefferson and Meade. Hawes kissed Honey goodbye, and was just stepping out on the curb side of the car, when —

He hurled himself and Honey to the floor of the car the instant he heard the first shot. He wasn't counting, but enough shots were fired, in the next thirty seconds to shatter the tinted glass window of the limo, rip through the Channel Four logo on the rear door, tear up the interior upholstery, smash the whiskey and brandy decanters in both side door panels, and narrowly miss killing Honey and Hawes both.

Picking himself up off the floor of the car, Hawes yelled 'I wasn't angry until right now!' never realizing how close he'd come to echoing Shakespeare's 'I was not angry since I came to France' line in King Henry V, Act IV, Scene vii.

THE SECOND NOTE that day read:

I am disgraced, impeach 'd and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear

'That first line is intended for us,' Meyer said. 'He's telling us by now we should be feeling disgraced, impeach'd

'Which he also spelled wrong,' Genero said.

'. . . and baffled here. That's what he's saying.'

'No, I don't think any personal message is intended here,' Eileen said. 'I think he's simply calling our attention to the last word in the couplet. Spear. It's spear again.'

'I quite agree,' Genero said, sounding somewhat Shakespearean himself. 'But what's a couplet?'

'And why? Kling asked.

'Why what?' Parker said.

'Why's he pointing us to spear again?'

'A poisoned spear.'

'Where does it say that?'

'Venom'd. That means poisoned.'

'Shakespeare keeps dropping his e's, you notice that?'

'What's slander?' Genero asked.

'A lie,' Carella said.

'MEANWHILE WE'VE GOT a dead girl here,'Lieutenant Byrnes said.

He had asked Willis and Eileen to step into his office, and now they were sitting in chairs opposite his desk, listening attentively. Eileen figured the Loot was old enough to call a thirtysomething dead woman a 'girl' and get away with it, so she forgave him. 'Let's forget what this hard-of-hearing shmuck plans to do next,' Byrnes said, 'and concentrate instead on what he's already done. He's committed murder, is what he's done. He can quote

Shakespeare from here to Christmas, and that won't change the fact that he killed that girl!'

'Yes, sir,' Eileen said.

Byrnes glared at her.

'Pete,' she corrected.

'What'd the FBI report tell us, Hal?'

'Nothing,' Willis said. 'No matching prints anywhere. Means she doesn't have a record, was never in the armed forces, and never worked for any governmental agency'

'Which is not surprising,' Byrnes said. 'How many people do you know who have their fingerprints on file?'

Willis thought this over. Except for the hundreds of assorted thieves he met in this line of work, he couldn't think of a single soul.

'I want both of you to go back to the girl's building,' Byrnes said. 'He got into that apartment somehow. How'd he get past the doorman? Did anybody see him going in or coming out? He's not invisible, how'd he manage it? Talk to everybody and anybody. Get a description, get something.'

As they started out of his office, he added, 'Anything.'

THE CATERER WAS as gay as a bowl of fresh daisies.

His name was Buddy Mears, and he was wearing a fawn-colored suit with a lavender shirt open at the throat. He had blond hair and blue eyes. A nose Caesar would have died for. High cheekbones. Taut skin. Teddy Carella wondered if he'd had a face lift. They were sitting in his office on Henley and Rhynes, in Riverhead, not far from the hall in which the reception would take place on June twelveth. Carella had driven here on his lunch hour. Teddy had taken a bus over. Sample menus were open on

Buddy's desk. Several framed culinary awards were hanging on his walls. Plaques, too. Early June sunshine streamed through the windows and splashed onto the open menus.

'How many guests are we expecting?' he asked.

About a hundred,' Carella said.

Teddy signed to him.

Buddy looked politely puzzled.

A hundred and twelve,' Carella corrected.

Buddy already knew that Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute, speech-and-hearing impaired as they were calling it these days, but nonetheless a woman with devastating black hair and luscious dark brown eyes to match, absolutely gorgeous even when her fingers were flashing on the air, as they were now.

Carella watched her flying fingers.

'The numbers keep changing every day,' he translated for her. And then added, 'Either my mother or my sister keep inviting new people all the time.'

'This is so-o-oo cute, what they're doing,' Buddy said. 'The double wedding. Adorable. So let's figure a hundred and ten people

Reading his lips, Teddy again signed, A hundred and twelve.

'Yes, I know, darling,' Buddy said, almost as if he could read her hands. 'I'm approximating. But let's say a hundred and ten, a hundred and twelve. Will we be passing fingerlings around before dinner?'

'Fingerlings?' Carella said, and looked at Teddy.

Finger food, she signed.

'Fig with liver mousse,' Buddy said, nodding. 'Seared tuna on toast tips . . . well, here,' he said, and moved one of the sample menus to where Carella and Teddy sat opposite him. 'Potato pancakes with avocado salsa

. . . salmon and cucumber bites . . . goat cheese tartlets . . . and so on. We've got fifty or more fingerlings we can pass around before dinner is served.'

'Do you think we'll want fingerlings?' Carella asked.

I think they might be nice, Teddy signed. With the drinks.

Beforehand.

'How many different kinds of fingerlings would you

suggest?' he asked Buddy.

'Oh, four or five. Half a dozen. That should be enough. We don't want to get too complicated. And we don't want to spoil our appetites for dinner, do we?'

Reading his lips, Teddy signed, Maybe we should choose the dinner menu first.

Carella translated.

And come back to the hors d'oeuvres later.

Hors d'oeuvres was a difficult word to sign. Or to read. She saw the puzzled look on her husband's face. She corrected it at once.

Finger food.

Carella told Buddy what she'd said.

'Well, yes, certainly, we can do it backwards if you prefer,' he said, sounding miffed.

For the appetizers, he suggested three dishes from which the guests could choose. Either the lobster salad with black truffle dressing, or the Hamachi tuna tartare with caviar creme fraiche and smoked salmon, or the jumbo shrimp cocktail. For the main course, again a choice of three dishes. Either the roasted branzino stuffed with seafood, button mushrooms, roasted artichokes, and fennel, or the chicken curry with pearl onions, red peppers, and madras rice, or the braised rabbit in Riesling with spaetzle, fava beans, and wild mushrooms.

'All served with a baby-greens-and-tomato salad with

lemon, extra virgin olive oil, and century-old balsamic vinegar dressing,' he said, grinning in anticipation.

Carella looked at Teddy.

She looked back at him.

'Isn't there anything . . . simpler?' Carella asked.

'Simpler?' Buddy said.

'Well . . . it's just... I don't think many of the invited guests would appreciate such a . . . such an ambitious menu.'

'These are, believe me,' Buddy said, 'some of our very simplest selections. Virtually basic, in fact.'

'Well,' Carella said, and shrugged and turned to Teddy. 'Hon?' he said.

Some of the guests will be coming from Italy, she signed.

Carella told Buddy what her hands had just said.

'So what would you like to serve them?' Buddy said, somewhat snippily. 'Spaghetti and meatballs?'

'No, but. . .' Carella started.

'Or maybe you should just take them over to McDonald's,' Buddy snapped.

'Maybe so,' Carella said, and rose abruptly. 'Let's go, hon,' he told Teddy, who had stood up at almost the same moment.

'We also make a nice risotto,' Buddy offered as they went out the door.

'ANYBODY COMING IN the building has to talk to me first,' the doorman told them. 'Has to state his business with me,' he said. 'I clear all visitors with the tenant. That's the rule here. No exceptions.'

'So if anyone had come here for Ms. Stanford . . .'

'That's right.'

'. . . on Memorial Day . . .'

'Correct.'

'. . . he'd've had to talk to you.'

'Which is what I just told you,' the doorman said, 'din't I?'

'So how'd he get in her apartment?' Eileen asked. 'I got no idea,' the doorman said. 'Is there a service entrance?' 'Yes, there is a service entrance.' 'Where's that?'

'Around the back of the building. On Eleventh. But the man taking deliveries there has to call up to the tenant, same as me. Before he lets anything or anyone go upstairs. So you can save yourselves a walk around there.' 'Is there a door to the roof?' Willis asked. 'Of course there's a door to the roof.' 'Is it kept locked?' 'All the time.'

'Mind if we take a look up there?' The doorman looked at them, and then wagged his head as if to say there was no accounting for people who wished to waste their time. 'Let me get the super to take you up,' he said, and yanked a wall phone off its hook.

THE BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT seemed surprised.

'Looks like somebody smashed the lock,' he said, studying the door to the roof.

'Looks that way, doesn't it?' Willis said.

'Sure does.'

'When's the last time you were up here?'

'Can't recall.'

'Try,' Eileen said.

'Must've been last week sometime. Water tank was leaking. Had to bring a plumber up.'

'When last week would that have been?'

'Friday, must've been. Had a tough time getting a plumber cause the long weekend was coming up. Well, it's always tough getting a plumber. Plumbers are the divas of the building trade, you know. Guys fixing toilets, can you imagine? Divas!'

Eileen had already taken out her pocket calendar.

'So this would've been Friday, May twenty-eighth, is that right?' she said. 'When you last came up here?'

'If that's what it says,' he said, and leaned over to look at the calendar in her hand.

And the lock was okay at that time?' Willis said.

'Had to use my key to open the door,' the super said.

'Anybody been up here since?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'Let's see what's on the other side,' Eileen said.

A doorknob was lying on the floor inside the door. The super poked a screwdriver into the hole the missing knob had left, angled it upward, and used it for leverage to pull open the door. They stepped out onto the roof.

There were times when this city took your breath away.

The day was sunny and bright, with wisps of white clouds scudding across an immaculate blue sky. At this time of day, the sun glinted on the gray-green waters of the River Harb below in the near distance, causing dancing sparkles of silver to glimmer on its surface. There was enough breeze to encourage the city's sailors; at least a dozen boats skimmed along the river's surface, bright sails billowing in the sunlight. Across the river in the next state, a non-competitive skyline seemed modestly secure in its own stark beauty. And to their right, the city's rooftops stretched far and away to the distant River Dix.

'Is the building next door a doorman building?' Eileen asked.

'Don't think so,' the super said.

'So he could've got onto this roof from the one next door,' Willis said.

'If he was of a mind to, yes,' the super said.

'Could've jumped right over.'

'If he was intent on doing mischief, yes.'

They turned back to the door behind them.

Someone had worked long and hard on the knob in order to get to the lock. Removed the knob, approached the lock from inside the door.

'No alarm on this door?' Willis said.

'No,' the super said.

'You ought to look into that,' Willis said.

Why? Eileen wondered. Horse is already out of the

barn.

The super was thinking the same thing.

'Can we go down to her apartment again?' Eileen asked.

THIS TIME THEY concentrated on the door and the lock. And this time, now that they were looking for them, they found the discreet marks a burglar's jimmy had left. So now they knew how he'd got in. Jumped onto the roof from the building next door, forced the lock on the roof door, did the same thing to the lock on Gloria Stanford's apartment. Was waiting for her when she got home that day. He'd used a gun with a silencer, Ballistics had confirmed that. So no one had heard any shots, no one had raised an alarm. Had he left the building the same way he'd got in? Probably. Easy come, easy go-

They thanked the super for his time, and left 1113 Sil-vermine Oval.

'Want to do a canvass next door?' Willis asked.

'I doubt if anyone spotted him going in or out,' she said. 'But if you want to knock on doors, I'm with you.'

'For the sake of closure,' he said.

'I hate that word,' she said. 'Closure.'

'So do I.'

'It's a lawyer's word.'

'I also hate lawyers,' Willis said.

'Me, too.'

They were out on the street now. It was almost three-thirty. Their shift was almost over.

'So what do you say?'

'Let's do it,' she said. 'Keep the Loot happy.'

THE DEAF MAN'S third and final note that day cleared up any lingering doubt that he was trying to spear the word spear, so to speak:

Yea, and to tickle our noses with spear-grass to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it was the blood of true men.

'What the hell is spear-grass?' Parker asked. 'Some kind of grass they have over there in England,' Genero said.

'How do you happen to know that?'

'Common sense. If it's Shakespeare, it has to be England.'

'This doesn't even look like Shakespeare,' Hawes said.

'That's right. It's not even poetry'

'Shakespeare also wrote prose,' Carella said.

'And this time, there is a message,' Kling said, 'prose or whatever.'

"What's prose?' Genero asked.

'What's the message?' Hawes asked.

'That it's all fake. He's misleading us. It's slander, the venom'd spear. It's a lie again.'

'Same as always.'

'Tickle your noses to make them bleed

'Must be some kind of sharp grass, don't you think? That spear-grass?'

'. . . and then beslubber your garments

'I love that word.'

'Sounds like beslobber,' Brown said. 'Beslobber the

Johnson

'Beslubber the garments

'The clothes . . .'

'. . . with the blood from the nose, make it look like battle wounds. That's what he's saying. It's all fake. He's leading us to spear, but he's going someplace

else.'

'Then why's he leading us to spear?'

'Cause he's a rotten son of a bitch,' Carella said.

THE BUILDING NEXT door to 1113 Silvermine Oval was a seventeen-story edifice with six apartments on each floor. By five-thirty that night, Willis and Eileen had knocked on the doors to a hundred and two apartments, and spoken to eighty-nine tenants who were home and who answered their knocking. The first time they'd ever dealt with the Deaf Man, they'd got a description of him from a doorman named Joey. This was a long time ago, after he'd fired a shotgun blast into Carella's shoulder and slammed the stock of the shotgun into his head again and

again and again. One could understand why Carella considered any encounter with the Deaf Man a highly personal matter.

He's around my height, Joey had told Lieutenant Byrnes. Maybe six-one, six-two, and I guess he weighs around a hun' eighty, a hun' ninety pounds. He's got blond hair and blue eyes, and he wears this hearing aid in his right ear.

This was the description they gave the tenants now. Had anyone seen a white male fitting that description, in or around the building, at anytime on Memorial Day?

No one had seen anyone fitting that description.

Not on Memorial Day or any other day.

Outside the building again, Willis said, 'Wanna catch a bite to eat?'

Eileen looked at him.

'Maybe go see a movie afterward?' he said.

She hesitated a moment longer.

Then she said, 'Sure. Why not?'

THATEVENING, CHANNEL Four's Six O'Clock News had a big story to tell.

Someone had tried to kill their star investigative reporter, Honey Blair.

Avery Knowles, the show's co-anchor, first announced it on the air at five minutes past six, following the breaking news about a big fire in Calm's Point, where two children left alone had been playing with a kerosene burner while their mother was out scratching numbers off a lottery ticket at the corner grocery store.

'Earlier today,' Avery said, 'an armed assailant tried to murder someone with whom all of our viewers are familiar. You can only see the story now, here on Channel Four, in Honey Blair's own words.'

Only a handful of literate viewers knew that if they could only see the story now, right here on Channel Four, then they could not also hear the story. However, these were probably not Avery Knowles's own words, but instead the words of some network employee who didn't realize that the correct language should have been 'You can see the story now, only here on Channel Four.'

Standing before the camera in her trademark legs-slightly-apart pose, wearing a mini that was also something of a trademark, Honey said (not in her own words, either, even though they were coming from her own mouth), 'This morning at approximately five minutes to eleven, in front of five-seventy-four Jefferson Avenue, a gunman fired some dozen or more shots into a Channel Four vehicle that was driving me here to the studio. I have no idea why I was the target, but if any of our listeners have any information whatsoever regarding the shooting, please call either the police hotline number at the bottom of the screen or our own hotline number listed just below it. Meanwhile, hear this loud and clear, Mr. Shooter! I don't know what might have ticked you off, but I'm going to keep doing my job, rain or shine, bullets or not! Just keep that in mind, mister!'

The camera cut back to the co-anchors. Millie Anderson, the woman on the team, said, "We're with you, Honey. Folks, if you have any information at all, please call one of those hotlines, won't you?'

She glanced at Avery and said, 'A terrible thing, Ave.' Avery nodded in solemn agreement. Millie looked back into the camera again. 'At the Federal Courthouse downtown this afternoon,' she said, 'two women accused

of...'

Cotton Hawes snapped off his television set.

He was wondering why Honey hadn't mentioned he'd

been in the car with her. Or that someone had tried to kill him as he'd come out of her building Wednesday morning. He was merely a cop, but it seemed to him that in all probability he himself, and not Honey Blair, had been the intended target.

But he guessed that was show biz.

EILEEN DIDN'T THINK she should ask him anything about Marilyn Hollis.

Willis didn't think he should ask her anything about Bert Kling.

So over dinner, they talked mostly about the case. The two cases actually. One past, one future. The murder of Gloria Stanford and whatever monkeyshines the Deaf Man might be cooking up for the days ahead. They had worked together for a good long while now — from way back to when Eileen was still with Special Forces — but they'd socialized only once before, dinner with the four of them, Willis and Marilyn, Eileen and Kling. So to make dinner tonight a bit less awkward, they tried to figure out why the Deaf Man had anagramatically confessed to the murder of Gloria Stanford, and why he was now taunting them with Shakespearean quotes that might or might not indicate some crime he was planning for the future. 'Why us?' Willis wondered aloud. T think it's something personal,' Eileen said. 'I think he has something personal against Steve.' 'Or maybe each and every one of us.' 'Maybe. But why? What'd we ever do to him?' 'He's annoyed because we always mess him up.' 'Wellll,' Eileen said, 'I'm not sure I'd say exactly that, Hal. We've never been the ones who actually foiled his plans.'

'Foiled,' Willis said. 'I love that word. Foiled.'

'So do I.'

'You think we'll foil his plans this time?'

Smiling. Stressing the word. He had a nice smile, Eileen noticed.

'How can we foil his plans if we don't even know what they are?' she asked.

'Oh, he'll tell us, never fear.'

'You think so, huh?'

'I really do.'

'Dream on,' Eileen said.

WHEN MELISSA GOT back to the apartment that evening, the first thing he did was ask her to model the wigs.

Her natural hair color — well, as natural as Miss Clairol could make it — was what they called 'Spring Honey,' a sort of soft blondish hue that she felt suited her chocolate-brown eyes. In a wig shop on Sakonsett Street — which name she supposed derived from the American Indians who had once inhabited this island — she'd found a wig shop named Hair Today that was having what it called its 'Late Spring' sale. There were sales going on all over this city, and nobody could tell her this had nothing to do with the shitty economy. She'd bought two wigs — well, gee, these prices! — a red one in a sort of feather cut like the one she wore her own hair in, and a black one, shoulder length with bangs across the forehead. Looked s-o-oo natural with her brown eyes. Cost a bit less than a hundred each, including tax.

'Nice,' he said. 'You don't look at all like yourself.' 'Is that supposed to be a compliment?' she asked. She'd gone to bed with guys who'd asked her to wear

wigs, and then complained that the drapes didn't match the carpet, any excuse to bat her around, some of these creeps you met.

She sure hoped this wasn't going to be the case here tonight.

The wigs and all.

'WELL, I HAVE to tell you,' Willis said, 'this only confirms my theory that you should never go see a movie anybody both wrote and directed.'

They had just come out of the theater and were strolling up the avenue, most of the shops already closed, the evening still somewhat balmy.

'I kind of liked it,' Eileen said.

You did? Even though it withheld facts we needed to know? I mean, to solve the crime?

"Well, you're a cop. You'd naturally be looking for something like that.'

You're a cop, too. Don't you think he should have given us, like . . . some clues'?

'I was more interested in the personal story. I think women look more for that.'

"Witholding evidence doesn't bother you?'

'Only if the Deaf Man does it.'

'This was worse than what the Deaf Man's doing. At least he's playing fair. He gives us everything we need to know . . .'

'We hope.'

'. . . and if we're too dumb to figure it out, that's our own hard luck.'

'Wanna go for some coffee or something?' she asked.

Yes,' Willis said, but he was just gathering steam.

As they walked up the avenue toward a coffee shop on

the corner, and while they ordered, and even after they'd been served, he went on to say that a lot of the movies he saw nowadays claimed to be mysteries in one way or another, and being a cop whose profession was investigating crime, he felt like shooting the damn auteur directors who made these films.

'Uh-huh,' Eileen said. 'Like which movies do you

mean?'

'Any movie that says "written and directed by.'" 'You've got a real thing about that, huh?' 'No, it's just that. . . well, figure it out for yourself. Most writers can't direct, am I right? And most directors can't write. So when you get a movie that's both written and directed by the same person, run for the hills!' 'You really think so, huh?'

'I really think so. Male or female, if it's written and directed by, that's exactly like "Conspiracy to Commit," or "Criminal Facilitation," or "Hindering Prosecution," all of them pretty damn serious crimes.' 'My, such passion!' Eileen said.

'Well, it just isn't fair,' he said, and ducked his head and smiled sheepishly, as though he'd revealed something about himself that might better have stayed concealed. Again, she felt like reaching across the table and taking his hand.

Outside the coffee shop, they went their separate ways. After all, this hadn't been a real date. This had just been two cops having dinner together, and seeing a movie afterward, sharing coffee, sharing a bit of movie

criticism.

She hadn't asked him anything abut Marilyn Hollis. And he hadn't asked her anything about Bert Kling. And tomorrow was another working day.

'STARTING TOMORROW MORNING,' the Deaf Man was saying, 'there'll be notes delivered to the 87th Precinct every day but Sunday.'

'Why not Sunday?' Melissa asked.

'Because even God rested on Sunday.'

'Oh, I see. And what will these notes say?'

You don't have to know that.'

'Starting tomorrow, you say?'

Yes. And continuing through Saturday.'

'That means . . . what's today?'

'The fourth.' He looked at his watch. 'Well, it's almost midnight, almost the fifth.'

'That means the last notes will be delivered on June twelfth.'

Yes.'

'Is that when you're going to do this thing, whatever it is? On June twelfth?'

Yes.'

'What is it you're going to do?'

You don't have to know that.'

'Then why are you telling me all this?'

'Because you'll be delivering the notes.'

'Oh no. Me walk into a police station? Not on your life!'

'Not you personally,' he explained patiently. You'll have to find people who'll deliver the notes for you.'

'It'll still come right back to me. There's no way I would ever do anything like that. Why would I want to do anything like that?'

'Because I'm going to give you thirty-five thousand dollars to do it.'

You are?'

'I am. Five thousand dollars a day for tomorrow, and the six days next week.'

'Gee,' she said.

'That should be enough to buy you the people you need, don't you think?' 'Well, I guess so, yes.' "With quite a bit left over for your trouble, I would

expect.'

'I would expect.'

'You could buy yourself some nice lingerie.'

'I certainly could.'

'Or something.'

'Or something, yes.'

'And there's a lot more coming, Lissie. We're talking seven figures in the coffers here.'

She was remembering that she'd taken eighteen million out of that safe-deposit box for him. Was he talking about seven figures in addition to that? Should she ask? Why not?

'In addition to the other money, you mean?' she said. 'The money from the bank?' 'In addition, yes.' 'Seven figures has to be at least another million,

right?'

'At least,' he said.

'And what's my share of that?' she asked.

'Mustn't be greedy, girl,' he said.

Why not? she thought. And don't call me girl, she thought. But did not say.

'How does a vacation in Tortola sound?' he asked. 'After this is all over?'

'A vacation in Tortola might be very nice,' she said,

'but. . .'

'I've already booked the flight,' he said. 'We leave at nine-thirty Sunday morning, the thirteenth of June. Doesn't that sound nice?'

'Not as nice as a piece of seven figures.'

He chuckled. Actually chuckled. Still chuckling, he said, 'Well, I suppose one can never be too rich or too thin.'

'I'll say.'

'Do you know who said that, Lissie?'

'No, who?'

'The Duchess of Windsor.'

'Who's that?'

A king gave up an empire for her.'

'She must have been very beautiful.'

'Not half as beautiful as you.'

Melissa wondered if he was telling her he'd give up an empire for her. Maybe cut her in on that seven figures he'd just mentioned? She didn't ask. Play the cards you're dealt, she thought. So far, she was a hundred thousand K richer than she'd been before she picked him up in that hotel bar. Or vice versa. Not to mention the sable coat and the mink stole.

'Do you think you can get those notes delivered when they're supposed to be delivered?'

'I think so, yes,' she said. 'But. . . uh . . . these people I hire to deliver them?'

'Yes?'

'They'll be able to describe me, won't they? They'll tell the police exactly what I look like.'

'That's where the wigs come in,' he said.

6.

MELISSA FIGURED THIS WAS what she usually did, anyway, except in reverse. Haggle over a price, that is. What usually happened, the john said, 'Two hundred for the night,' and then you said 'Five hundred.' He said 'Three,' you said 'Four.' You settled for three and a half and everybody was happy - especially you, if he fell asleep after the first go-round.

This was Saturday morning, the fifth day of June. Very early Saturday morning.

Before she left the apartment, Adam had given her five thousand bucks in hundreds. Five thousand dollars! Which didn't seem like very much when you broke it down to a mere fifty $100 bills, oh well.

'That's your outside limit for the day,' he'd told her. 'You get your people for less than that, whatever's left over is yours, you can buy yourself that lingerie we were talking about.'

She had a better idea of what to buy with what was left over, but first she had to buy what she needed to make this work at all.

She figured, correctly as it turned out, that not too many people would be eager to take a letter into a police station. Not with the anthrax scare still a very much alive issue. Would've been different if any of the brilliant masterminds in Washington - some of them should meet Adam Fen, they wanted mastermind — knew what to do about it except stick their thumbs up their asses. As it was, the first three men she approached said flat out,

'What are you, crazy?' This after she'd offered two hundred bucks just to carry a friggin letter inside a police station and hand it to the desk sergeant!

The next person she approached was in a coffee shop on Jefferson. Six in the morning, the girl sitting there drinking coffee was a working girl like herself, Melissa could spot them a hundred miles away. Black girl with hair bright as brass, nail polish a purple shade of Oklahoma Waitress. She'd had a hard night, too, judging from the bedraggled look of her. Melissa started low, no sense spoiling her, and the hell with sisterhood. Turned out the girl was nursing a horrendous hangover, figured Melissa was looking for a little early-morning girlie-girlie sex, told her any muff-diving would cost her two bills.

Melissa tried to explain that no, what she wanted was a letter delivered to a police station. She showed her the letter. It was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. Melissa told the girl this was her boyfriend. She told the girl they'd had an argument last night. She told the girl she was desperate to make up with him. The girl said, 'Honey, you a hooker same as me. If yo boyfrien's a police, I'm the queen of England.'

It sort of insulted Melissa that she'd been spotted for a hooker straight off like that.

After three more tries and three more turndowns, she remembered something her mother had told her as a child: Desperate people do desperate things. So what she needed here was somebody desperate to carry that letter in. For a minute, in fact, since she herself was starting to get a little desperate here — it was already seven A.M. — she thought she might carry it in personally. Tell the cops some guy wearing a hearing aid had given her nine hundred bucks to deliver it, show them nine bills, tell them

she was just a hard-working girl worked nights at a Burger King and had met this guy over the counter, asked her to deliver the letter. She didn't know nothing at all about who he was or what was inside the letter. So please let me go, sirs, as my mother will be wondering why I'm not home yet, my shift ending at eight in the morning and all. Decided against it.

If that girl in the coffee shop had spotted her for a whore, the cops would make her in a minute. Was it really that easy to see what she was? Maybe she'd buy a new dress with whatever the residuals turned out to be today.

At seven-fifteen that morning, she taxied down to a skid row area of flophouses, homeless shelters, bars, and electrical supply houses. First crack out of the box, she found a doorway wino who said he'd deliver the letter for fifty bucks. She taxied uptown again, the wino sitting beside her on the back seat, stinking of piss and belching alcohol fumes. At five past eight, she dropped him off three blocks from the stationhouse, the letter in one pocket of his tattered jacket, and pointed him in the right direction. Told him she'd be watching him so he'd better make sure he kept his end of the bargain. Guy swore on his sainted mother.

Melissa figured he'd be stopped the minute he set foot on the bottom tread of the stationhouse steps, and he was.

Which was why she'd bought the wigs, right?

Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more but play with sparrows

That's what the first note read.

'Is that correct English?' Genero asked. "Has broke his arrows"?'

Nobody answered him.

'"Shoot no more,'" Meyer said. 'He's telling us he's not going to shoot anybody else. Gloria Stanford was the last one.'

'Unless he plans to use arrows,' Willis said.

'Or spears,' Kling suggested.

'No, he's finished with the spears,' Carella said. 'Now he's onto arrows.'

' "Swears he will shoot no more.'"

'Gonna "play with sparrows" instead.'

'Little birdies,' Parker said sourly.

'Did you see that movie Hitchcock wrote?' Genero asked.

'Hitchcock didn't write it,' Kling said.

'Then who did?'

'Daphne somebody.'

'Twice,' Willis said.

'She wrote The Birds twice?' Genero asked, puzzled now.

'No, arrows. He uses arrows twice this time.'

Carella was at the computer again, looking for his rhyme zone. Parker glanced down at the Deaf Man's note.

'I only see arrows once,' he said.

'The second one is buried in another word,' Willis said. 'Arrows in sparrows.'

'So what's the significance of that?' Parker asked, sounding angry.

'The Tempest,' Carella announced. Act Four, Scene One.'

CAPTAIN JOHN MARSHALL FRICK should have retired ten years ago, but he liked to tell himself the 87th Precinct couldn't get along without him. Byrnes thought of him as an old fart. There were men who were Frick's age — sixty, sixty-five, in there, whatever he was — who still thought like much younger men, carried themselves like much younger men, sounded like much younger men, actually looked far younger than they were. John Marshall Frick was not one of them.

Frick belonged to that other category of older men who thought of themselves as 'senior citizens,' men who had nothing to do anymore except send each other old fart jokes via e-mail every day. Men who'd retired from life and living too damn early - although Frick was old when he was fifty and should have retired then. 'Tell us your name,' he told the wino. 'Freddie.'

'Freddie what, Freddie?'

'Freddie Apostolo. That means Freddie the Apostle.' 'You been drinking a little today, Freddie?' 'A little. I drink a little every day.' 'Why'd you write that note, Freddie?' 'I didn't.'

Byrnes looked at his boss. Did the Captain really think this old wino had pulled up a Shakespeare quote from the internet and delivered it in person to the precinct? Did he really think this slovenly old bum stinking of body odor and urine and sweet wine was the notorious Deaf Man who'd slain Gloria Stanford and who so far had delivered all these tantalizing notes designed to infuriate and . . . well. . . intoxicate? He wasn't even wearing a hearing aid!

'Then who wrote it, Freddie?' 'I got no idea.'

'Then where'd you get it?'

'This girl gave it to me.'

'What girl?'

'Pretty girl with black hair and bangs.'

Byrnes almost said She does?

"What's her name?'

'Don't know.'

'Just gave you this note, is that

'No.'

'. . . right? Just handed you . . .'

'No.'

'Then what?'

'Gave me fifty bucks to deliver it. Said I should hand it to the desk sergeant, that's all. Which I tried to do but you guys stopped me at the front door. I used to play piano, you know.'

'Is that right?'

'That's how I started drinking. There's always a drink on a piano, did you ever notice? A drink and a cigarette. I'm lucky I didn't get throat cancer. You play piano, you drink and you smoke, that's it. I guess I drank a little too much, huh?'

'I guess so. Where'd you conduct this transaction with your mysterious black-haired lady?'

'She wasn't mysterious at all. It was down near the Temple Street Shelter. She came over to me and asked would I like to make fifty bucks. So I said yes.'

'Who wouldn't?' Frick said.

'Sure. So what did I do wrong, can you please tell me?'

'Did she tell you her name?'

'No. I didn't tell her mine, either.'

'How'd you get uptown here, all the way from Temple?'

'We took a taxi. She dropped me off on Fourth, said she'd be watching. I believed her.'

'Why's that?'

'She looked like I'd better do what she said.' 'How's that?'

'Her eyes. There was a look in her eyes.' 'What color?' Frick asked. 'The eyes.' 'Brown,' Freddie said. 'How tall?'

'Five-seven, five-eight?' 'White?'

'Sure.' Freddie paused. 'Her eyes said she'd kill me if she had to.'

Byrnes looked at the captain again. 'Okay, go home,' Frick told Freddie. 'Home?' Freddie said.