Hark!

'No question. He told me he'd been shot, and there's blood all over the place here.'

'Better put out a Med alert.'

'He said not to bother. He's got his own doctor.'

'So you think he's gone again?'

'With the wind.'

'How about the girl? Summers, is it?'

'Melissa Summers. He says she's heading out of the country.'

'Where?'

'Didn't say.'

'With the Strad?'

'That's what he told me.'

'Has anyone heard from the Greek yet?'

'Not us. Maybe he called Mid South.'

'Be nice to know what happened.'

'Oh yes.'

'Better contact Homeland, Meyer.'

'I already did. And all the airlines. They'll be watching for her and the fiddle.'

'If that's the name on her passport.' 'If she even has a passport.' There was a long pause on the line. 'So what do we do about him?' Meyer asked. 'Wait, I guess. If we get the girl . . .' 'If

'She may be able to tell us something about him. If not, we grab him when he pops up again.' 'If he pops up again.' 'He always does, Meyer.' 'Death and taxes.' 'Same thing,' Carella said. There was another pause.

'Well . . . I've got work to do here,' Meyer said. 'Go easy.' 'See you Monday.'

'See you,' Carella said, and hung up. He stood by the phone with his hand on the receiver for a moment, looking down at the phone, wondering when next they'd see the Deaf Man, thinking never was soon enough. He almost sighed.

Teddy was waiting for him in the bedroom. He undressed silently, went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and floss, and then went to the bed, and climbed in beside her.

Her hands moved in the air.

It was a lovely wedding, she signed.

He read her hands, nodded.

Didn't you think so? she signed.

He nodded again.

Steve?

He looked into her eyes.

Are you ever going to get over this, or what?

'Get over what?' he asked mischievously, signing the words at the same time, grinning. Then he took her in his arms, still grinning, and kissed her, and held her close, and she remembered a beginning, long long ago, when a detective named Steve Carella stood hatless and gloveless in the falling snow and offered a girl named Theodora Franklin a single red rose on St. Valentine's Day — and filled her life with roses forever.

She turned off the bedside lamp, and snuggled close to him again.

AT 3:00 P.M. the next day, a young blond woman checked in at Spindledrift International Airport for Air France's 5:10 p.m. fight to Paris. Passport Control had been alerted to stop and detain a woman named Melissa Summers. The name in the blonde's passport was Carmela Sammarone. The inspector merely glanced at her photo, stamped the passport, and said, 'Have a nice flight, Miss Sammarone.'

Melissa smiled demurely, and walked towards the security gate, where she placed the violin case she was carrying on the scanning machine.

Yesterday, a Homeland Security officer had listened to Meyer on the telephone, had written down the pertinent information about some valuable violin, asked if this constituted a bomb threat, and when told that it did not, shrugged and thanked Meyer for the 'heads-up,' were the exact words he'd used.

The airport security people who opened and examined Carmela Sammarone's violin case were similarly looking for bombs or guns or knives or tweezers, and in any event would not have known a Stradivarius from a Budweiser.

All they did was pat down the case and shake the violin to see if anything suspicious rattled around inside there.

One of the guards remarked, 'My uncle used to play the fiddle.'

'That's nice,' Melissa said, and watched while they closed the lid on the case, and snapped the clips shut.

'Have a nice flight,' the other guard said.

Waiting for takeoff in the first-class section of the plane, Melissa sipped at a glass of ouzo and leafed through the June issue of Vogue.

'First time to Paris?' the flight attendant asked.

'Yes,' Melissa said, smiling.

It was a beginning.

THE END