Let’s Hear It For The Deaf Man

13

At ten minutes past two, shortly after the second mail had been delivered, the squadroom telephone rang, and Carella picked it up.

“87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Detective Carella.”

He recognized the voice at once, and signaled for Meyer to pick up the extension.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Long time no hear.”

“Has the mail arrived yet?” the Deaf Man asked.

“Few minutes ago.”

“Have you opened it yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“I have a feeling I already know what’s in it.”

“I may surprise you.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Carella said. “The pattern’s been pretty well established by now.”

“Do you have the envelope there?”

“Yes, I have,” Carella said, and separated the manila envelope from the rest of his mail. “By the way, it’s Stephen with a p-h.”

“Oh, forgive me,” the Deaf Man said. “Open it, why don’t you?”

“Will you hold on?”

“Surely,” the Deaf Man said. “Not too long, though. We can’t risk a trace, now can we?”

Carella tore open the flap, reached into the envelope, and pulled out the photostat:

“Big surprise,” Carella said. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“We haven’t been able to dope out any of it,” Carella said.

“I think you’re lying,” the Deaf Man said, and hung up.

Carella waited. He knew the phone would ring again within the next few minutes, and he was not disappointed.

“87th Squad,” he said, “Carella.”

“Please forgive my precautionary measures,” the Deaf Man said. “I’m not yet convinced of the effectiveness of telephone traces, but one can’t be too careful these days.”

“What’s this picture gallery supposed to mean?” Carella said.

“Come, come, Carella, you’re disappointing me.”

“I’m serious. We think you’ve lost your marbles this time. Do you want to give us a hint or two?”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” the Deaf Man said. “I’m afraid you’ll simply have to double your efforts.”

“Not much time left, you know. Today’s Wednesday, and you’re pulling your big job on Friday, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s absolutely true. Perhaps you ought to circle the date, Carella. So you won’t forget it.”

“I already have.”

“Good. In that case, you’re halfway home.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” the Deaf Man said, and again hung up.

Carella thought about it. He had a long time to think about it because the Deaf Man did not call again until three-thirty.

“What happened?” Carella asked. “Get involved in a big executive meeting?”

“I merely like to keep you off balance,” the Deaf Man said.

“You do, you certainly do.”

“What do you make of the most recent picture?”

“Have no idea who he is. Nor the woman, either. We recognized Hoover and Washington, of course... you’re not planning a raid on the FBI, are you?”

“No, nothing as clever as that.”

“We thought maybe you were going to fly to Washington in a Jap Zero and strafe...”

“Ah, then you did recognize the zero?”

“Yes, we did. We’re very well oriented up here.”

“Please, no puns,” the Deaf Man said, and Carella could swear he was wincing.

“But none of it makes any sense,” Carella said. “Hoover, Washington, this guy with the mutton chops. What are you trying to tell us?”

“Does it really seem that difficult to you?”

“It certainly does.”

“In that case, I’d merely accept the facts as they are, Carella.”

“What facts?”

“The fact that you’re incompetent...”

“Well, I wouldn’t...”

“The fact that you’re incapable of stopping me.”

“Do you want us to stop you?”

“I’d like you to try.”

“Why?”

“It’s the nature of the beast, Carella. The delicate symbiosis that keeps us both alive. You might call it a vicious circle,” he said, and this time the word registered, this time Carella realized its use was deliberate. Circle.

“Might I call it that?” Carella said.

“I would strongly suggest it. Otherwise, you may merely come up with a zero,” the Deaf Man said, and hung up.

Carella quickly put his own phone back onto the cradle, opened his top drawer, and removed from it the Isola telephone directory. The zero was a circle; the Deaf Man had just told him as much. And if he correctly recalled his cursory inspection of directory addresses...

He ran his finger swiftly down the page:

Carella went through the entire list in the Isola directory, and then checked all the First Federal addresses in the other four books as well. Only one of them seemed to fit. He buttoned the top button of his shirt, pulled up his tie, and was leaving the squadroom just as Meyer came back from the men’s room down the hall.

“Where you off to?” Meyer asked.

“The library,” Carella said.

That’s who it was, all right.

The man with the fancy hair styling was none other than:

In a city where streets, avenues, boulevards, bridges, airports, high schools, and even race tracks were named after past presidents, it was perhaps no great honor to have a mere circle so-named — but then again, who remembered Van Buren except perhaps in Kinderhook, New York, where he’d been born? Anyway, there it was, Van Buren Circle. And at 14 Van Buren Circle, there was a branch of the First Federal Bank. At last it all made sense — or at least Carella thought it made sense. Which is exactly why he was suddenly so troubled. If everything made sense, then nothing made sense. Why would the Deaf Man pinpoint the exact location of a bank he planned to rob on a date he had already announced? Symbiosis aside, something else was surely coming, and Carella could not guess what.

An apartment is alive only when the people who live in it are there. When they are away, it becomes nothing more than a random collection of possessions, essentially lifeless. To a policeman sitting in the dark in the empty hours of the night, the place resembles a graveyard for furniture.

In the living room of 648 Richardson Drive that night, Bert Kling sat in an easy chair facing the front door, the walkie-talkie in his lap, his revolver in his right hand. It was difficult to stay awake. Occasionally, to relieve the monotony, he would contact Mike Ingersoll, who was in a similarly vacant apartment at 653 Richardson, across the street. Their conversations were almost as dreary as their separate vigils.

“Hello, Mike?”

“Yes, Bert.”

“How’s it going there?”

“Quiet.”

“Same here.”

“Talk to you later.”

At ten minutes to midnight, the telephone rang. Sitting in the darkness, Kling nearly leaped out of the chair on the first ring, and then realized it was only the phone. He listened as it rang six times and then went silent. In as long as it took for the caller to re-dial, the phone began ringing again. This time there were fourteen rings before it went still. The caller might have been someone who did not know the tenants of the apartment were away; he had called once, assumed he’d misdialed, and tried again. On the other hand, the caller might have been the burglar, checking and then double-checking to make certain the tenants were still away. In which case, he now had his information and would come tiptoeing up to unlock the front door, let himself in, and burglarize to his heart’s content.

Kling waited.

At twelve-thirty, Ingersoll contacted him on the walkie-talkie.

“Hello, Bert? Anything?”

“Telephone rang a while back, that’s all.”

“Nothing here, either.”

“It’s going to be a long night, Mike.”

“No longer than last night,” Ingersoll said.

“Talk to you.”

“Right.”

They talked to each other every forty minutes or so. Not one single burglar tried to enter either of the apartments all night long. At the first sign of light in the east, Kling contacted Ingersoll and suggested that they knock off. Ingersoll sighed and said, “Yeah, I guess so. You want some coffee before we head home?”

“Good idea,” Kling said. “Meet you downstairs.”

A patrol car was parked on the street in front of 657 Richardson, the building in which Augusta lived. Kling and Ingersoll walked to it rapidly. The patrolman behind the wheel recognized them and asked if they’d been sent over on the squeal.

“What squeal?” Kling asked.

“Guy ripped off an apartment in there.”

“You’re kidding,” Kling said.

“Would I kid about a felony?” the patrolman asked, offended.

Kling and Ingersoll went into the building and knocked on the superintendent’s door. It was answered by a woman in a bathrobe, who said her husband had gone upstairs to 6D, with the cop. Kling and Ingersoll took the elevator up, got out on the sixth floor, glanced down the hallway, and walked immediately to the left, where the partner of the patrolman in the car was examining a door and jamb for jimmy marks, the super standing just beside him.

“Anything?” Kling asked.

“No, it’s clean, Bert,” the patrolman said. “Guy must’ve got in with a key.”

“Let’s take a look, Mike,” Kling said. To the patrolman, he said, “Have you called this in, Lew?”

“Henry took care of it downstairs. We knew what it was already ’cause the super’d been in here. In fact, I thought you was the detective they sent over.”

“No,” Kling said, and shook his head, and walked through the foyer into the apartment, Ingersoll directly behind him. The layout was identical to Augusta’s apartment on the eleventh floor, and so he knew exactly where the bedroom was. The place was in total disorder, clothing strewn all over the room, drawers pulled from dressers and overturned.

“Something’s missing,” Ingersoll said.

“Huh?”

“No kitten.”

They walked to the dresser. Kling, remembering Mr. Angieri’s experience, looked behind the dresser, thinking the kitten might have fallen there.

“Wait, here it is,” Ingersoll said.

The kitten was a small glass figurine, white, with a blue bow around its neck. It sat next to a sterling-silver comb-and-brush set, which the burglar had apparently decided not to steal.

“Guess he’s running out of live ones,” Ingersoll said.

“Might get some prints from this, though,” Kling said.

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, he’s too smart for that.”

“How do you like this son of a bitch?” Ingersoll said. “We’re sitting in two apartments so close we could spit at him, and he’s got the guts to rip off this joint. Jesus!”

“Let’s talk to the super,” Kling said.

The super’s name was Phillip Trammel. He was a thin man in his sixties wearing bib overalls and a blue denim work shirt.

“How’d you discover the burglary?” Kling asked him.

“I was coming up to get the garbage. We ain’t got no incinerator in this building. What the tenants do is they usually leave their garbage outside the service entrance in plastic bags, and I take it down to the basement for them. It’s a little service we perform, you know? Ain’t nothing says the super’s supposed to go around picking up garbage, but I don’t mind, it’s a little extra service.”

“So what happened?”

“I saw the door to 6D was open, and I knew we’d had that burglary in Miss Blair’s apartment little more’n a week ago, so I went inside and looked around. Somebody’d been in there, all right. So I called the police, and here you are.”

“Here we are,” Ingersoll said, and sighed.