The Heckler

11.

WELL, THE FIFTEENTH was the middle of the month, and a hell of a month it was shaping up to be so far.

All things considered, and not even taking into account the petty little daily crimes which bugged every man working the squad, April so far—despite the lovely weather—was beginning to assume the characteristics of a persistent migraine. And no man on the squad had a bigger headache than Meyer Meyer.

Meyer, it seemed, had become the man officially assigned to the Heckler Case. That it was now a bona fide “case,” there seemed to be no doubt. What had started with David Raskin as a simple series of threatening phone calls and foolish pranks had somehow mushroomed into something with the proportions of an epidemic. Slowly, bit by bit, the complaints had come in until the list of shop or restaurant owners reporting threatening calls and acts of harassment had grown to a total of twenty-two. Some of the complainants were truly terrified by the threats; others were simply annoyed by the disruption of their business. Meyer, taking the calls, became more and more convinced that one man, or group of men, was responsible for the heckling. In any case, themodus operandi seemed identical.

But what he couldn’t understand was what the hell was so important about April thirtieth?

Or why these particular shops had been chosen? A haberdashery, a Chinese restaurant, a tie store, a leather goods shop, a candy shop—what was so important about these particular locations?

Meyer simply couldn’t figure it.

Nor was Steve Carella much better off with his case, the case of the almost-naked dead man found in Grover Park. Why, he wondered, had anyone wanted old John Smith dead? Or, for that matter, why would the dead man have taken an assumed name? And such a phony one at that? John Smith! My God! How many hotel and motel registers in the United States carried that pseudonym daily? And who was this deaf guy? And why had twenty-two-year-old Lotte Constantine wanted to invest time and money in sixty-six-year-old John Smith? (The obvious alias rankled every time he thought of it.) The deaf man. Who? And he pulled a face at the ironies of fate. The one person who meant everything in the world to him was a deaf mute, his wife Teddy. And now his adversary was someone known only as the deaf man. The juxtaposition was irony with a knife-edge, but Carella was not amused. He was only puzzled. Truly and honestly puzzled.

And when it’s going bad, you might expect the people who are causing you trouble to let up for a while, mightn’t you? When two stalwart and intelligent detectives were struggling with two separate nuts which seemed uncrackable and which caused both men a considerable loss of sleep, when these two intrepid protectors of the innocent, these indefatigable investigators, these supporters of law and order, when these two darned nice fellows were trying their utmost to get out from under two miserable cases, wouldn’t it have been decent and only cricket to leave them alone, to allow them a respite from their torments? Friends, wouldn’t it have been the decent thing to do? Cop lovers of the world, wouldn’t it have been the only nice way, the only good way, the only fair way?

Sure.

On April 15, which was a balmy spring day blowing fresh breezes off the River Harb to the north, the harassment began anew.

It began with a difference, however.

It seemed to be concentrated against Dave Raskin, as if all armies had suddenly massed on poor Raskin’s frontiers and were pressing forward with their spring invasion. If you looked at this sudden offensive one way, you could assume the enemy was doing his best to plague Raskin and the cops. But if you looked at it another way, you could think of the concentrated attack as a guide, a signpost, a singling-out of the one store among twenty-five, a divine hand pointing, a divine voice saying, “Look and ye shall see; knock and it shall be opened unto ye.”

Meyer Meyer looked, but he didn’t see at first. Later on, when he knocked, it was truly opened unto him. And he didn’t for a moment suspect that this was what was desired of him, that the sudden spring offensive against Dave Raskin’s loft was designed to alert a police department which, with all due respect to those stalwarts, seemed to be somewhat asleep. You can play percentages only if your opponents are playing some sort of percentages themselves. Whatever the deaf man’s plan, it wouldn’t work if the cops didn’t at leastsuspect what he was up to. And so the tanks rolled into high gear, churning through the spring mud, and the dive bombers warmed up on the airfields and took off into the chill early morning air and from across the city, the big guns began thundering against poor Dave Raskin’s loft.

At ten o’clock on the morning of April 15, four hundred and thirty folding chairs were delivered to Raskin.

They were piled on the floor, and against the wall, and on the tables, and in the hallway, and down the steps, and some of them even overflowed onto the sidewalk. David Raskin insisted that he had not ordered any folding chairs, but the truck driver was a persistent man who told Raskin he always delivered what he was supposed to deliver and if Raskin had a beef he could call the chair company and discuss it with them. David Raskin called both the chair company and the 87th Squad, and then he paced the floor of his loft waiting for the chair people to come pick up the chairs again and waiting for Meyer Meyer to do something. There was, naturally, nothing Meyer Meyer could do except call the chair company who confirmed the fact that David Raskin had ordered the chairs sometime last week for delivery that day which, again naturally, David Raskin had not done.

So Meyer Meyer ran his hand over his bald head and cursed in pig Latin, a trick he had learned as a boy because his mother had not allowed swearing in her house. And David Raskin paced the floor of his loft and cursed in very loud English which, fortunately, his Puerto Rican girls did not understand too well.

At twelve-thirty on the nose, the caterers arrived.

The caterers arrived and with them they brought enough food to feed the entire Russian Army together with a few Yugoslavian partisans, or so it seemed. Actually they brought only enough food to feed the four hundred and thirty lunch guests who were to occupy the four hundred and thirty folding chairs. They brought little bottles containing Martinis and Manhattans, and they brought celery and olives and carrot sticks, and they brought onion soup, and they brought roast beef and turkey and candied sweet potatoes and asparagus tips au gratin and coffee, tea or milk, and orange sherbet and chocolate layer cake and little mints and—man, David Raskin positively flipped! The caterers insisted that he had called them and ordered this veritable feast and Raskin told them he didn’t know four hundred and thirty people in the entire world, let alone four hundred and thirty people he would care to invite for lunch, and the caterers said he had ordered the stuff, they had prepared all the food, what the hell were they supposed to do with it all, this wasn’t folding chairs which you could return, this was food, food, FOOD, especially cooked and prepared for the occasion, who was going to pay the bill?

“The man who ordered thismegillah!” Raskin shouted.

“Youordered it!” the caterers shouted back.

“I ordered nothing! Get it out of here! Get it out! Out! Out! Out!”

And that was when the orchestra arrived.

There were fourteen musicians in the orchestra, and they were all carrying their instruments, instruments like trombones and saxophones, and a bass drum, and a bass fiddle, and trumpets, and even a French horn or two. And they were also carrying music stands and they wanted to know where they should set up, and Raskin told the leader—a small man with a Hitler mustache and a personality to match—that he could go set up in the River Dix, just get the hell out of his loft, he did not order any damned orchestra! To which the man with the Hitler mustache said, “You came down to the union personally and left a twenty-dollar deposit when you hired the band!”

“Me!”Raskin shouted. “Icame down to thefirshtunkenuh union? I don’t even know where your dirty unionis, I came down? Get out of here with those drums!” and that was when the men returned to pick up the chairs, and the way Raskin finally got everybody out of the place was by calling Meyer again, who rushed over and tried to settle things as best he could.

That was on the fifteenth, and a jolly Wednesday that was, by George.

On Monday the twentieth, only four items arrived, and they were obviously a mistake.

The four items were:

2 PICKS

2 SHOVELS

David Raskin mopped his feverish brow.

“I didn’t order these,” he said.

The delivery boy shrugged and consulted the order slip. “Two picks and two shovels. Says so right here.”

Patiently, Raskin said, “I didn’t order them. You see, there’s a crazy man who—”

“Two picks and two shovels,” the delivery boy said firmly. “Deliver to the loft at twelve thirteen Culver Avenue. See? Says so right here. Can you read that, mister?”

“I can read it, but I didn’t order—”

“Deliver to the loft at twelve thirteen Culver Avenue after Darask Frocks, Inc. has vacated the premises. Oh.” The delivery boy’s voice dropped as he continued reading. “Call Frederick 7-3548 before delivery. Oh.”

“I got news for you,” Raskin said. “That’s my phone number, but I ain’t never vacating these premises. So forget this delivery.”

“They’ve already been paid for,” the delivery boy said.

And suddenly, David Raskin felt extremely shrewd. Suddenly, David Raskin was confronted with the single clue which would split this mystery wide open, suddenly David Raskin was presented with that opportunity which comes to all men but once in a lifetime, the chance to solve something, the chance to be a hero.

“Tell me,” he said casually, though his heart was pounding,“who ordered the picks and shovels?”

The delivery boy looked at his slip. “Here’s the name of the man right here,” he said.

“What is it? What is it?” Raskin asked excitedly.

“L. Sordo,” the delivery boy replied.

NOW, WHEREASMeyer Meyer, by his own admission, had not read “The Red-headed League,” hehad read a book by a gentleman known as Ernest Hemingway, and the title of that beautiful volume wasFor Whom the Bell Tolls, which is about a lovely guerilla girl laid in Spain. There is a memorable character called El Sordo in the book and, as any half-wit knows,el sordo in Spanish means “the deaf one” or, because of the masculineo ending, “the deaf man.”

It seemed obvious to Meyer at this point that someone with a hearing deficiency was the person responsible for the various threats everyone had been receiving. The gentleman at the Sandhurst Paper Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, had told Meyer not too long ago that the person who’d ordered the envelopes had said, “Excuse me, but would you talk a little louder? I’m slightly deaf, you know.”

And now someone had ordered two picks and two shovels to be deliveredafter Darask Frocks, Inc. vacated the loft, but those picks and shovels had obviously been delivered by mistakebefore Raskin got out, and the man who’d ordered those tools was a man who called himself L. Sordo. So not only was there a strong possibility that this was the same man who’d ordered the Massachusetts envelopes but there was a sneaking suspicion on Meyer’s part that this fellow wanted to be known, he wanted to be sure he was given credit for his handiwork, wanted to be certain his byline appeared on everything he created, El Sordo, The Deaf Man.

And sitting not three feet away from Meyer Meyer at his own desk was Detective Steve Carella who was fairly convinced that a person who’d used the alias of John Smith had had something cooking with someone known only as the deaf man, and that if he could get some sort of a lead onto this deaf man fellow, he would be a lot closer toward solving the case.

The trouble was, of course, that Meyer Meyer was working on a series of threatening phone calls and harassments and Steve Carella was working on a shotgun homicide and neither man saw fit to discuss his respective case with his colleague. That was the way things were going that April. In a squadroom where everyone generally was willing to discuss anything and everything involving police work, toilet training, marital technique and pennant races, nobody seemed too talkative that April. Even Bert Kling, who managed to finish his volume of Sherlock Holmes stories between phone conversations with his fiancée, failed to discuss any of the yarns with Meyer Meyer. That’s the way things were going that April.

Well, on Monday of the following week, the advertisement appeared in the two morning dailies which carried classified advertisements. The ad read:

WANTED

Redheads! Redheads! Redheads! To model women’s dresses in swank Culver Avenue showroom. No experience necessary. Apply 12 noon. Darask Frocks, Inc. 1213 Culver Avenue, Mr. Raskin. Redheads! Redheads! Redheads!

And, man, the redheads came out of the sewers that day! No one in the world would have believed there were so many redheads in the entire city. Rome is supposed to be the city of redheads, but at twelve noon on April 27 there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of redheads of every conceivable size, shape, and hue standing in a disorderly line in front of Dave Raskin’s loft, trailing past the open doors of the bank and going around the corner. There were fat redheads and skinny redheads, tall ones and short ones, busty ones and flat-chested ones, hippy ones and straight ones, flaming redheads and auburn redheads, natural orange redheads and bleached scarlet redheads, and each and every one of them wanted to see Dave Raskin about this job of modeling women’s dresses in the swank Culver Avenue showroom. The line sailed clear around the block and past the bank and into the open doorway alongside the bank and up the steps and into the loft where Dave Raskin frantically tried to explain he was not hiring any damn models that day.

And all of a sudden, the dawn broke.

All of a sudden, Meyer Meyer tipped to what was afoot.

Just the way he was supposed to.