Hark! (15 page)

In any case, because the police department was at best a sexist organization and Lieutenant Byrnes was still clinging to the notion that Eileen Burke could bring a woman's so-called intuition to this case, she was the one chosen to speak to Alison Kane that Saturday afternoon.

“So where'd you get that letter, Alison?” she asked.

Chummy sort of dormy school-girl approach.

“In the lounge at the Hotel Majestic.”

“Is it nice there? I've never been there.”

“Very nice, yes,” Alison said.

She was perhaps twenty-four, twenty-five years old, some five-six or -seven, slender and curvy but not too buxom. Wearing a not-too-short dark green skirt, with a paler green twin sweater set, crew neck and buttoned cardigan. String of pearls around her neck. Truly looked Ivy League. Eileen figured her for a hooker.

“What were you doing at the Majestic?” she asked.

“Just stopped by for a cup of tea.”

Sounded Ivy League, too.

“Happened to be strolling by the Majestic…”

“I'd been doing some shopping.”

“Went into the lounge…”

“Yes. For a cup of tea.”

“And happened to…well, how
did
that letter come into your hands, can you tell me?”

“A woman gave it to me.”

“Ah. What woman?”

“A woman I met there. She said she'd had an argument with her boyfriend who was a detective up here, and she wanted someone to deliver this letter of apology to him.”

“And you believed her.”

“She seemed sincerely contrite.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Also, she offered me money to deliver the letter.”

“Ah.”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Ah.”

“So I figured I'd help her out. Why not? Her boyfriend's name was on the letter, some Italian name, so I figured her story was genuine. Otherwise, where would she have got the name?”

“And
her
name? Did she tell you her name?”

“Cookie.”

“Cookie, uh-huh.”

“Yes.”

“Cookie what?”

“She didn't say.”

“What did this Cookie look like?”

“Red hair in a feather cut. Brown eyes. About my height, I would guess. Nice figure. About my age, maybe a little younger. Well-dressed.”

“Like you.”

“Thank you.”

“Was she wearing gloves?”

“What?”

“Gloves.”

“No. Gloves?”

“Gloves. I don't suppose
you
were wearing gloves, either, were you?”

“No, I wasn't. Gloves? It's June!”

“Miss Kane, would you mind if we took your fingerprints before you left the precinct?”

“Yes. I mean
no.
I mean yes, I
would
mind. Why do you want my fingerprints?”

“Because they're most likely on that envelope you handled, and we'd like to eliminate them when we run our check.”

“What check?”

“To see what
other
prints may be on it.”

“No,” Alison said. “No fingerprints.”

“Why not?”

“Because I haven't done anything wrong.”

“Uh-huh,” Eileen said, and looked her dead in the eye. “Ever been in trouble with the law, Miss Kane?”

She did not answer.

“Alison? Ever been…?”

Which was when she gave up Ambrose Carter.

 

“W
HUT THIS IS
,” Ambrose told Willis and Eileen, “is a tempest in a teapot.”

He was thinking he'd like to put the redhead in his stable. What the hell could she be making as a cop?

“Girl told us you're her pimp,” Eileen said.

“I been out of that trade a long time now,” Carter said.

“We're not looking at a Two-Thirty bust,” Willis said.

Carter knew the man was referring to Section 230.25 of the Penal Law, which stated that a person was guilty of promoting prostitution when he knowingly advanced or profited from prostitution by managing, supervising, controlling, or owning either a house of prostitution or a prostitution business involving two or more prostitutes.

Which Carter was, in fact, guilty of doing. Owning a prostitution business involving two or more prostitutes. Eleven of them, in fact. But he didn't let on like he knew what Willis was talking about, because that would be the same thing as admitting he was a pimp, and not a mere agent of sorts.

“Then whut is it you
are
looking at, Detective?” he asked Eileen, deferring to her rank and her beauty and her big tits. “And whut do it have to do with me?”

“Alison Kane,” Eileen said again, which was exactly how she'd opened the conversation.

“Said you sent her to meet some woman…”

“I
tole
you I am no longer engaged in that form of occupation.”

“This wasn't a takee-outee call,” Eileen said. “This woman needed someone to deliver a letter.”

“To
us
,” Willis said.

“At the Eighty-seventh Precinct.”

“Woman gave her two bills to do it.”

“I still does not know whut this possibly has to do with me,” Carter said, spreading his hands wide in innocence.

“We want the woman's name.”

“I do not know which woman you is talkin' about.”

“The woman who gave Alison Kane two hundred bucks to deliver a letter to us.”

“I know of no such woman.”

“Alison says you're the one who sent her…”

“I do not know anyone named Alison, either. Kane or otherwise.”

“How about Gloria Stanford?” Willis said.

“Her neither. Who
are
all these women?”

“Gloria Stanford was murdered on Memorial Day,” Willis said.

“And that ain't such a tempest in a teapot,” Eileen suggested.

Which was when Carter gave up Carmela Sammarone.

 

T
HE FEDERAL SEARCH
came up with a hit for a prostitution arrest in Los Angeles six Decembers ago. A set of partials they'd lifted from the envelope Alison Kane had delivered matched the prints on file for
Sammarone, Carmela, NMI
in the AFIS system.

Before now, they'd had good reason to believe that the Deaf Man had killed Gloria Stanford. Problem was they didn't know who he might be, or where they could find him.

Now they also had good reason to believe he'd engaged a prostitute named Carmela Sammarone to recruit at least one other person to deliver his messages to the precinct.

Problem here was they didn't know where
she
might be, either.

Or even that nowadays she was known as Melissa Summers.

T
HE PHONE RANG
at a little past nine that Sunday morning.

They were sleeping in Sharyn's apartment that night, and she always slept on the side of the bed closest to the phone because in this city you never knew when another cop would get shot, and the Deputy Chief Surgeon would have to respond.

Sharyn picked up the receiver and said, “Cooke here,” and then listened, and said, “Where?” and listened again, and said, “I'm on the way,” and hung up and threw back the covers and ran for the bathroom.

Kling was dressed before she was.

“I'll drive you,” he said.

“You don't have to,” she said.

“I want to,” he said. “We'll get breakfast when you're finished there.”

“My dollface,” she said, and went to him and kissed him.

He drove them through a Mickey D's for coffee, and they started the drive to Majesta with the windows down and fresh morning breezes blowing through. There was very little traffic so early on a Sunday morning, and they made it over the bridge in ten minutes flat and were at Mount Pleasant in another ten. Mount Pleasant was one of the city's better hospitals. There'd be no need for Sharyn to arrange a transfer, but a cop had been badly cut trying to break up an early morning gang rumble outside St. Matthew's Church on Camden Boulevard, and she had to be here to make sure he'd get the best possible treatment.

That didn't explain why Dr. James Melvin Hudson was standing outside the main entrance to the hospital.

Kling suddenly remembered that this was where Dr. James Melvin Hudson worked. When he wasn't working at the office of the Deputy Chief Surgeon in Rankin Plaza, four miles and another world away. Medland versus Copland.

Dr. James Melvin Hudson was wearing his hospital togs this morning, looking all pristine and medical in a white tunic with a stethoscope hanging out of the right-hand pocket. Dr. James Melvin Hudson was tall and black and extremely handsome, and he'd been dating Sharyn when she and Kling first met, and here he was now. Standing outside Mount Pleasant Hospital. Where he was Head of the Oncology Department. Which was why he also worked at Rankin Plaza because cops didn't only get shot or knifed or bludgeoned or axed; they sometimes got cancer.

And then Kling remembered that it was someone named Jamie who'd called Sharyn to tell her Hawes had been shot.

And he suddenly wondered if the colleague who'd suggested she give a listen to “Go Ask” was none other than Jamie Hudson himself.

Sharyn got out of the car.

“Hi, Jamie,” she said. “Where is he?”

And went into the hospital without telling Kling where they'd be meeting for breakfast later.

 

T
HERE WAS NOTHING
he appreciated more than thoughtful solitude. Alone in the room he had set aside as his office, sitting behind his computer and contemplating the week ahead, he knew an intense satisfaction he felt lesser men could not possibly enjoy.

For him, the planning was far more exciting than the execution. He had read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcock felt a movie was finished the moment he laid out his storyboard. In many respects, he felt the same way.

The letters he would…

Or rather
Melissa
would…

Or rather Melissa's
minions
would deliver next week had already been composed and printed and placed in their separate envelopes, each of them addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella at the 87th Precinct. Step by step, bit by bit, Monday through Friday, the delivered messages would gradually unfold his meticulous plan, leading the Keystone Kops down the garden path until Saturday, ta-ra! when at last all would be revealed—if they were clever enough. But too late.

Smiling, he hunched over the keyboard and opened first the folder he had titled
SKED
, and next the file he had titled
CALENDAR
:

 

He nodded in satisfaction.

Bit by bit, he thought.

Step by step.

The actual gig next Saturday held little or no interest for him. Neither did the eventual payoff. It was the planning that thrilled him to the marrow—to coin a phrase. And this was a magnificent plan!

He suddenly burst into jubilant song.

 

W
HEN
M
ELISSA HEARD HIM
singing at the top of his lungs, she thought perhaps he'd finally lost it. Sighing, she picked up the receiver and punched out Ambrose Carter's number in Diamondback. He answered on the third ring.

“Ame,” she said, “it's me.”

“Li'l early to be callin, ain' it?”

She looked at the clock on the desk. It was ten minutes past ten.

“Sorry, Ame,” she said, “but I was wondering about tomorrow.”

“Whut about tomorrow?”

“Have you lined up your three people?”

“Whut three people?” he said.

She held the receiver away from her ear, looked at it the way a person might do on television when she'd just heard something she couldn't quite understand or believe. Eyes squinching up. Brow furrowing.

“For the letters,” she said.

“Whut letters?” he said.

“The letters you were going to find people…”

“Whut letters?” he said again.

“The letters I advanced you three fucking thousand dollars to…”

“I don't know whut you talkin bout, girl,” he said, and hung up.

She looked at the phone again.

Just like on television.

 

H
AWES COULDN'T QUITE
imagine himself dating a so-called celebrity, but he guessed that's what Honey Blair was. Which was why he didn't have to prod the detectives of Midtown South to follow up diligently on the drive-by shooting that had taken place outside 574 Jefferson at a few minutes before eleven on Wednesday morning, June second, four days ago. The other person in that perforated limousine had been Hawes himself, by the way, but this didn't seem of much interest to a detective named Brody Hollister, who was heading up the Mid South investigative team.

“Thanks, Colton,” he told Hawes on the phone. “We'll keep that in mind, if, when.”

“Thanks,” Hawes said. “And it's Cotton, by the way.
Cotton
Hawes.”

“Really?” Hollister said, and hung up.

Asshole, Hawes thought, and made his next call to the Eight-Six, where there was no question that he himself, Cotton (sometimes known as Colton) Hawes, had been the intended victim. The detective who'd caught the squeal there was a First named Barney Olson, and he told Hawes he was still working the case, but they'd had a rash of crib burglaries this past week, and he was sorry to admit he hadn't given the sniper case his undivided attention.

He sounded a bit distracted, but also somewhat sarcastic, landing a mite too heavily on the words “undivided attention,” hmm? Crib burglaries were not the theft of infants' beds, but merely burglaries committed in dwellings rather than offices, and doubtless of vast importance in a Silk Stocking precinct like the 8-6. But, shit, man, a person—
Hawes
himself!—had been shot at from a rooftop, and it was very likely, in fact virtually indisputable that the Wednesday morning attempt on his life was linked to the subsequent Friday morning shooting outside his orthopedist's office on Jefferson Avenue. He still wondered what you had to do to get the “undivided attention” of a cop around here.

He did not yet know that a personal note of apology had been delivered yesterday to Channel Four's seventh-floor offices on Moody Street.

Neither did Honey.

Her weekend off had started yesterday. This was still Sunday. This afternoon, in fact, they planned to go downtown to hear the visiting Cleveland Symphony Orchestra perform an all-Stravinsky program in Clarendon Hall's popular “Three at Three” series. Meanwhile, Hawes had finished making his calls, and Honey was taking a luxuriant bubble bath.

He wondered if he should go in there and offer to scrub her back.

 

C
ARELLA'S MIND WAS
on the Deaf Man.

Watching his wife's moving fingers, translating for his mother and sister, his mind was nonetheless on where the Deaf Man might be, and what he might be planning on this Sunday, the sixth day of June.

Carella had checked with the desk sergeant at the 8-7 early this morning, as soon as he'd got up, but as of eight-thirty
A.M
, no message from Mr. Adam Fen had been delivered. He had checked again at twelve-thirty, just about when his mother, and Angela, and Angela's two daughters were arriving for lunch, but again, there had been nothing from the man who'd barraged them with missives the week before.

Now, reading and translating, Carella's mind wandered.

While Teddy explained that they had thought a Northern Italian menu might be appropriate, in honor of Luigi and his children and the dozen or more friends who were coming over from Milan for the wedding, Carella was thinking. Two days of anagrams, starting with
WHO'S IT, ETC?
on Tuesday afternoon and ending the next day with
I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!
All five notes designed to remind them of his previous mischief and to tell them he was the one who'd killed Gloria Stanford.

And, as Teddy's fingers signaled savory but difficult to sign pass-around starters like
bruschetta
and
crostata di funghi
and
tartine di baccala
, Carella simultaneously spoke the words aloud in his halting Italian while silently pondering the fusillade of Shakespearean quotes that had started on Thursday with three
shakes
and a
spear
…

And finally…

Announcing without question that whatever might come next, it would most certainly come from Shakespeare. And indeed it had. On Friday morning…

“Steve? Are you listening to her?”

His sister's voice. Yanking him forward some five centuries in time.

“Sorry,” he said.

Teddy was starting on the main course.

There'll be two choices
, she signed.

“There'll be two choices,” Carella said, reading her hands. “Either the roast lamb loin encrusted with mixed Italian herbs…”

“Yummy,” Angela said.

“Or the Tuscan-style veal tenderloin.”

“I think I prefer the veal,” his mother said.

“Well, there'll be a choice, Mom.”

“I know, honey. I'm just saying I
love
veal.”

I thought no fish
, Teddy signed.
Fish can be tricky.

Which was even trickier to sign.

She went on to explain the entrées would be accompanied by fresh sweet peas and pearl onions…

“And new potatoes,” Carella said, reading.

And a spinach salad
…

“With goat cheese, walnuts, and a warm pancetta dressing,” Carella said.

And, of course, there'll be a choice of desserts,
Teddy signed.

“It sounds
delicious
,” Angela said.

“Steve?” his mother said. “Don't you think so?”

“Can't wait,” he said, nodding, but his mind had begun to wander again.

So while the women lingered over coffee and cannoli, and the children ran around the house giggling and playing whatever game they'd invented
this
week, he went to the computer in Mark's room, and again called up the sources of the three “spear” notes they'd received on Friday.

Tickle our noses with spear-grass
—from
Henry IV.