Hark! (26 page)

“Meaning?”

“According to the e-mails I receive in the hundreds of thousands every day of the week, every man in America is deficient in that department and in serious need of enlargement.”

“Present company excluded,” Melissa said, and glanced shyly at where his legs were crossed in the black cashmere robe.

“Bust enhancement, too,” he said. “According to my e-mails, every woman in the world needs her bust enhanced.”

“Not me,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“Cause I already
had
them done.”

“Oh?”

“Right after I started calling myself Melissa.”

“Oh?”

“I thought I might become an actress, you see.”

“I didn't know that,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, and looked out at the magnificent skyline again. “Girlish dreams, right?”

87+78=165

“Well, now
there's
news,” Parker said.

“But is it
correct
?” Genero asked, and began adding 78 to 87 on his calculator. Much to his surprise, eighty-seven plus seventy-eight did indeed add up to a hundred and sixty-five, more or less.

“What's he trying to
tell
us?” Carella asked.

“Why's he adding those two numbers?”

“Is there a One-Six-Five Precinct?” Eileen asked.

Meyer checked his list again.

“No,” he said. “Highest is the Hun' Twenty-Third.”

“
We're
slow, and
he's
getting faster,” Parker said. “The notes are coming in faster and faster.”

They all looked up at the wall clock.

It was now ten minutes to eleven.

 

T
HE NEXT NOTE
came at 11:47
A.M.

It read:

165+561=726

Genero looked up from his calculator. “Right on the button!” he said triumphantly. “The arithmetic is absolutely
correct
!”

“The sums are getting bigger and bigger, too, did you notice that?” Hawes asked.

“Meaning?” Parker asked.

“Just commenting.”

“Also,” Brown said, “the
size
of the numbers is getting smaller and smaller.”

“No,
bigger
,” Hawes insisted.

“I don't mean the
numerical
value,” Brown said, sounding like a mathematics professor all at once. “I mean the size of the
type.
Go ahead. Compare them.”

87
78
87+78=165
165+561=726

“The Incredible Shrinking Deaf Man,” Willis said, and Eileen laughed.

The door to Lieutenant Byrnes' office opened.

Scowling, he said, “Doesn't anyone have anything to
do
around here?”

T
HEY HAD PLENTY
to do.

This was the 87th Precinct, and this was the Big Bad City.

So while in his apartment crosstown and further downtown the Deaf Man was calling Regal Limousine to arrange for a car and driver to pick him up at one-thirty this afternoon for what he'd described to Melissa as a “trial run…”

…and while further uptown, Melissa herself was once again seeking out those poor deprived and demented individuals who were addicted to controlled substances of every stripe and persuasion to do her bidding for negotiable fees, the smaller the better…

…and while yet further uptown, in Berrigan Square, Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks was himself sitting on a bench in the midst of similarly depraved dope fiends, seeking information leading to the whereabouts of one Melissa Summers, presumed Slayer of Ambrose Carter, Infamous Procurer of Female Flesh…

While all these sundry people scurried about their busy little businesses, the men and women of the Eight-Seven scattered far and wide in pursuit of what was their usual daily routine when someone not quite as glamorous as the Deaf Man wasn't on the scene.

 

A
NGELA WAS THE ONLY
person here who knew sign language. But, of course, she was the bride-to-be, and there were thirty some-odd (some of them mighty odd, yuk yuk) women fluttering about her. And although she came over to Teddy every so often to exchange sister-in-lawly chitchat with her hesitant but well-meaning hands, she had to move on because there were other guests to welcome, other air-kisses to exchange, other…well, Teddy knew she was very busy. This was her shower, after all.

Sitting with the other women, Teddy could not hear their laughter or their speech, and she could not talk to them because her only language was in her hands. Whenever she used her hands, she mouthed the words as well, her lips matching her flying fingers. But without the signing, her mouthing came over as exaggerated grimacing, and people unaccustomed to reading lips merely frowned or smiled patiently in response. By reading lips herself, Teddy could catch words, or phrases, or sometimes even complete sentences, but at a gathering as large as this one, with so many people talking at once, it was impossible to keep track of any single conversation. So she sat essentially alone and apart in the midst of the chattering women, a fixed smile on her face, her dark brown eyes scanning the room, and the faces of the other women, and their lips, trying to read those lips, a silent spectator in a world she had never heard.

She had never heard her children's laughter.

She had never heard her husband's voice.

She imagined his voice to be soft and kind, the way his hands were soft and kind.

Smiling, she sat alone and apart.

 

A
LONE IN THE SQUADROOM
, Carella was manning the phones and the fax machines when the fifth note that day arrived. He pulled on the gloves, and opened the envelope:

726+627=1353

No surprises there. The Deaf Man was merely reversing the number each time out, and then adding it to the existing number. But why? And why was the font size getting smaller and smaller, while the numbers themselves got larger and larger? For comparison, he placed the numbers one under the other yet another time:

87
78
87+78=165
165+561=726
726+627=1353

Did this reversal and addition have something to do with the clues they'd already received from him?
If
you could even
call
them clues, the son of a bitch. Or were the numerals merely a preamble to what was coming? In much the same way the Deaf Man had prepared them for his Shakespearean quotes by sending them first a fistful of anagrams that culminated in
I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!,
the anagram for
I AM THE DEAF MAN!

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, as Carella's mother used to tell him when he was a kid and she was exercising maternal authority, put
that
in your pipe and smoke it, Sonny Boy! His mother who was going to marry Mr. Luigi Fontero from Milano, Italy, on Saturday, the twelfth day of June,
this
Saturday, his mother
Luisa
, mind you, not to mention his sister Angela, God bless us one and all!

Carella looked at the new note again:

726+627=1353

What the hell is he trying to tell us? he wondered.

 

Y
OUR AVERAGE
, run-of-the-mill, everyday office romance flourished around the water cooler or in the supply closet, secret glances, surreptitious touches, furtive kisses hastily exchanged. Rarely during the daily routine did lovers who worked in the same office find themselves alone in an automobile—unless they were detectives.

The burglary to which they'd responded was in a fish store off Seventh Street. The theft had probably taken place the night before but it hadn't been detected until late this morning, when one of the employees went into the freezer and discovered that thirty pounds of shrimp was missing.

“What kind of a world is this?” the owner of the store wished to know. “A person steals
shrimp
? Thirty pounds of
shrimp
? What's he going to do with thirty pounds of
shrimp
? He's got nothing better to steal? He has to steal thirty pounds of
shrimp
?”

“Well, these guys aren't rocket scientists, you know,” Willis said.

“But thirty pounds of
shrimp
?”

“Anyone but you have a key to the place?” Eileen asked.

In the car later, Eileen driving, Willis riding shotgun, he said, “I can understand his point. Why would anyone bother? I mean, thirty pounds of
shrimp
? The guy's risking jail for thirty pounds of
shrimp
?”

“You and the owner ought to start a rock group,” Eileen said.

“How so?”

“You've already got a name for it. Thirty Pounds of Shrimp. I hear that one more time, I'll scream.”

Willis slipped his hand under her skirt.

“Hey!” she said. “I'm driving.”

“So pull over.”

“Why?”

“So I can kiss you.”

“I'm a police officer, I want you to know.”

“So am I.”

“Stop that.”

“Not until you pull over.”

She checked the rear-view mirror, signaled, pulled the car over to the curb. He took her in his arms at once, kissed her fiercely. She yanked her mouth away, looked into his face, her own face flushed, fair complexion, the curse of the Irish. This time she kissed him, even more fiercely, pulled her mouth away again, checked the rear-view mirror, the side mirror, kissed him again, pulled back again, breathless.

“We'll get arrested,” she said.

“Who cares?” he said, and pulled her to him again.

I AM THE DEAF MAN!

And accompanying the announcement that he had returned to plague them once again, he had included the first of his Shakespearean quotes:

Though damned if Carella could find it anywhere on the web. Here in the office, and again at home on his son's computer (which had cost him $999, even discounted) he had gone to the RhymeZone Shakespeare Search again and again and again. He had typed in each and every key word or words he could think of,
went'st so soon,
and
world's stage,
and
grave's tiring room,
and
thought thee dead,
and on and on and on, ad infinitum, straight through to
Actor's Art,
and
act a second part,
with no hits at all. Zero. Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. None at all.