Hark! (29 page)

He'd half expected Dr. James Melvin Hudson to pull up ten minutes later, but instead it was the dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty they'd had coffee with yesterday. He watched as she went into the outer lobby, studied the bell panel, found what she was looking for—Sharyn's apartment, he guessed, bright detective—pressed a button, and waited for the answering buzz. When it came, he could hear it faintly from across the street. The girl let herself in, and walked toward the elevator bank.

He looked at his watch.

It was almost five-thirty.

 

O
LLIE'S MANUSCRIPT WAS
only thirty-six pages long, which he didn't realize was perhaps the length of a mere chapter in most mystery writers' novels, although there were some bestselling practitioners of the craft who seemed to prefer much shorter chapters, like say a page and a half long. In any event, reciting even a thirty-six-page book from memory was not an easy task, especially if you were a drug addict beginning to come down from a truly splendid high.

Almost unable to believe his good fortune, Ollie provided sweets and coffee for his thieving storyteller, and then set a tape recorder going. This was not unlike the good old days when wooly mammoths roamed the earth, and wise old men sat outside caves reciting tales of hunting valor and skill. The other detectives of the Eight-Eight pulled up chairs around Ollie's desk, not so much because they were dying to hear Emilio's story, but more because they wished to sneak a peek or two up Emma's skirt. But as the tale unfolded, they began to get more and more interested in the intricate plot development and intriguing characterization.

It took Emilio precisely an hour and forty-three minutes to recite Ollie's book word for word. By that time, the assembled detectives were all agog.

“Did you really write that?” one of them asked Ollie.

“Ah yes,” he said.

“That is terrific stuff,” one of the other detectives said, shaking his head in wonder and awe. “Absolutely terrific.”

“You got a sure bestseller there.”

“Make a great movie.”

“And, little lady, you did a great job reading it.”

Were it not for the presence of these other detectives, Ollie might have let Emilio go at that point, so grateful was he for the recitation, and the response to it. On the other hand, Emilio was just a no-good little cross-dressing whore who was a disgrace to his fine Puerto Rican heritage, and who, besides, had been pointed out as someone having knowledge pertaining to the hundred-dollar bills Melissa Summers was handing out in the drug community hither and yon, ah yes.

So Ollie picked up a throwdown dime bag of shit which he just happened to find under Emilio's chair, and he said, “Well, well, well, now where do you suppose
this
came from, Emilio?”

Which is how Emilio gave up Aine Duggan.

 

W
AITING FOR THE GIRL
to come downstairs again, Kling visualized all sorts of things, none of them very pleasant.

First there was Sharyn and Hudson.

Sharyn in bed with a man blacker than she herself was.

Pornographic images of them doing all the things Kling felt only he himself did with Sharyn.

A black man fucking Sharyn.

(Was this a racist thought?)

A black man going down on her.

Sharyn slobbering the black man's Johnson.

An expression she had taught him.

A black expression.

(Was this damn thing, whatever it was, turning him racist?)

Well,
whatever
it was…

And at first it had appeared to be merely (merely!) Sharyn and Hudson alone, just the two of them, a sweet little love affair between a pair of colleagues, what the Italians called
una storia
, he would have to ask Carella's intended stepfather if that was correct,
una storia
, some “story” here between these two black medical practitioners, some little goddamn fucking
story
!

But then it had turned into what appeared to be a genuine three-way, Sharyn, Hudson, and the so-far anonymous white woman, Hudson at the center of an Oreo, the cream on the outside this time around, black Sharyn on his right, the white woman on his left, or vice versa, who gave a damn, it was still lucky Pierre, always in the middle! Would the picture in his mind be less detestable if the man in the middle was white? And if Sharyn had longed for a three-way, why the hell hadn't she invited Kling himself?

And now—

Now this white woman rendezvousing with Sharyn on her own, the three-way turning into a possible lesbian relationship, the movie in his mind suddenly becoming black and white, the women hugging, the women kissing, the women fondling, the women muff-diving, Hudson excluded, Kling excluded, just the two women, black and white, locked in secret, steamy embrace.

The deception.

The deceit.

He snapped off the projector in his mind.

The screen went blank.

He looked at his watch.

Seven twenty-three.

It was starting to rain.

 

A
INE
D
UGGAN WAS CURLED
up in a fetal ball when Ollie found her in an alley off Thompson and shook her awake. It had begun to rain lightly. She blinked up at him.

He could barely recognize this woman with long stringy bleached blond hair and a few missing teeth, wearing blue jeans and a soiled gray sweatshirt, loafers without socks, scabs all over her ankles. The hooker he'd briefly questioned about Emilio Herrera shortly after his book was stolen had been wearing a cute short black skirt and a neat pink halter top and her hair was Irish-red and cut short and she looked like a teenager even though she was twenty-five at the time, which had not been all that long ago. She now looked thirty-five.

“Whussup?” she asked.

“I want to become a mailman,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I hear there's money in it.”

“Who told you that?”

“Little birdie.”

“I don't know whut the fuck you're talking about.”

“A woman paying you to deliver a letter.”

“Yeah?”

“To the Eight-Seven.”

“Yeah?”

“Where'd you meet her, Aine?”

“How do you know my name?”

“Little birdie,” he said again.

It was dark in the alley, but if she wasn't so down and out this very minute, she might have recognized Ollie, anyway, from their last encounter in a galaxy far far away. But the black tar had worn off, and she was no longer high, and she knew she didn't have any money and would probably have to jones her next fix, so who was this fat asshole kneeling beside her, with her face getting all wet from the rain? Was he maybe a prospective john?

“You wanna see my pussy?” she asked.

“I wanna see Melissa Summers.”

“Yeah?”

“Where'd you meet her, Aine? Where can I find her?”

“Do I know you?” she asked, and peered at his face through the falling rain.

“Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks,” he said. “You know me.”

“Am I busted?”

“For what, Aine?”

“I don't know. I'm not a bad person, Detective.”

“I know that.”

“I'm just a person needs to be comforted and helped…”

“Sure,” Ollie said.

“…a person to be pitied.”

“Sure, Aine.”

“I'm just a sorry fucked-up piece of shit.”

“I can help you, Aine.”

“I need to make up. I need a fix real bad.”

“I can see that.”

“I need to find the candy man.”

“I can help you do that.”

She blinked at him in the falling rain.

“Tell me where you met Melissa Summers. Tell me where it was.”

“Who?”

“Melissa Summers. Either a redhead or a girl with long black hair.”

“I'm a natural redhead,” Aine said. “Wanna see my pussy?”

“Focus, Aine. Melissa Summers.”

“Black hair. Bangs.”

“Yes.”

“Slipped me a deuce to deliver a letter.”

“That's her.”

“Yeah,” Aine said, and nodded in the falling rain.

“Where?” Ollie said.

“How much?” Aine asked.

 

“S
O HOW'D THE
meeting go?” Kling asked.

It was ten minutes past eleven. They were in his small studio apartment in the shadow of the Calm's Point Bridge. She'd been here waiting for him when he got home. Here in
bed
waiting for him, in fact. Wearing a white baby-doll nightgown.

“Boring stuff,” she said.

“Like what?”

He was in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. In the bedroom, propped against the white pillows behind her, Sharyn was watching the Eleven O'Clock News on Channel Four.

“The new Medicare stuff,” she said. “How we'll be handling prescriptions, who becomes eligible, da-da, da-da, da-da,” she said, twirling her fingers in the air.

Lying.

She hadn't been at any hospital meeting. She'd been in her own apartment with a woman whose name was either C. Lawson, L. Matthews, or J. Curtis.

“What time did it end?” he asked.

“Around eight-thirty,” she said.

Which was the exact time she and either Lawson, Matthews, or Curtis had come down from her apartment, walking together arm in arm to the bus stop on the corner, where Lawson, Matthews, or Curtis had hailed a taxi, and Sharyn…

“Come straight home?” he asked.

“Caught a bus,” she said.

True enough. But not from any damn hospital.

In a second taxi, Kling had followed the white woman, no clue to her name as yet, just a tall, slender woman with dark hair and dark eyes, apparently comfortable enough to afford taxis all over the city, something Kling himself wasn't too cozy with. “Follow that taxi,” he'd told his driver, and flashed the tin like a cop in a movie. Joined at the hip, they came over the bridge, yellow cab glued to yellow cab.

Like a cop in a movie, he'd followed Sharyn's three-way lesbian lover to her building after the taxis let them each off, waited till she entered the elevator, and then watched while the indicator showed her getting off on the fourth floor. He checked the lobby mailboxes, no doorman here, no need to conceal or reveal, all the time in the world to check the mailboxes at his leisure.

There were six apartments on the fourth floor. Three of the mailboxes carried men's names: George Santachiaro, James McReady, and Martin Weinstein. The other three carried androgynous, but most likely female, names: C. Lawson, L. Matthews, and J. Curtis. Kling didn't know why the women in this city thought an initial in front of their surnames would fool anyone into thinking a man lived here. Usually, that single letter was a good invitation to a would-be rapist. He jotted the three names into his notebook, and took the subway uptown. The time was nine-twenty.

He stopped in a Mickey D's for a hamburger and some fries.

Walked around in the rain a little, thinking, wondering what to do.

The city seemed glittery and bleak, bright white lights reflecting on black shiny roadways.

Black, he thought.

White, he thought.

Now, at fifteen minutes past eleven, Sharyn called, “Come look, it's Honey Blair.”

Black skin against white nightgown against white pillows. He climbed into bed beside her.

Honey Blair, blond and white, wearing a sexy little black mini and standing in her trademark legs-slightly-apart pose, was thanking all of the good citizens out there…

“…for phoning or e-mailing tips on the man or woman who tried to kill me, I can't thank you enough. And mister, sister, who
ever
you may be…”

“Is that racist?” Sharyn asked.

“…we're gonna
get
you!” Honey said, pointing her forefinger directly at the camera.

“I mean the
sister
part,” Sharyn said.

“You'd better believe it,” Honey said, and turned to the anchor. “Avery?” she said.

“Now why do I think that girl's lying?” Sharyn asked.

You should know, Kling thought.

H
E HAD BEEN STANDING
outside her building since eight this morning, but no sign of Miss (or possibly Mrs.) Lawson, Matthews, or Curtis. If she had a nine-to-five job, which was possible even though she'd met with Sharyn and her doctor boyfriend at a little before three on Tuesday, she'd be leaving for work sometime between eight and nine, was what he figured. But no sign of her yet.

A white girl, not her, came out of the building at eight-twenty, began walking off into what was shaping up as a sunny day, all that rain last night. Another white girl, again not the one he was looking for, came out at eight-thirty, and then a flurry of them a few minutes later, but still not his target. Was it possible she'd slept with the busy Dr. Hudson at his place last night? Nine o'clock, then nine-fifteen, and nine-thirty, no Lawson, Matthews, or Curtis. Maybe she'd over-slept. The mailman arrived at a quarter to ten. Kling followed him into the building.

“Detective Kling,” he said, and flashed the buzzer. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”

The mailman looked surprised.

“Social Security checks?” he asked.

“Something like that. Do you know any of these women by sight?” he said, and showed the three names.

“Lawson's not a woman,” he said. “Man name of Charles. Charles Lawson.”

“How about these other two? L. Matthews? J. Curtis?”

“Lorraine Matthews is a blonde. Around five-six, sort of stout…”

“And Curtis?”

“Julie, yeah. Julia Curtis. Around thirty, thirty-five, long black hair, brown eyes. Five-seven, five-eight. That the one you're looking for?”

“No,” Kling said.

But that was the one.

“What'd she do?”

“Wrong party,” Kling said. “Sorry to've bothered you.”

 

T
HE FIRST NOTE WAS
delivered at twenty to eleven that Thursday morning, the tenth day of June.

A rod not a bar, a baton, Dora.

This time they were ahead of him.

“It's a palindrome again,” Willis said.

“What's that?” Genero asked. “A palindrome?”

“Something that reads the same forwards or backwards.”

“Same as the 4884s he sent us yesterday,” Carella said.

They felt they'd been ahead of him yesterday, too, but this time there was no doubt. The sentence read exactly the same, letter for letter, forwards or backwards.

“That's very interesting, the way that works,” Genero said, clearly fascinated. “Look at that, Eileen. It's the very same thing, forwards or backwards.”

“Oho!” she said, but nobody got it.

“
Dumb
Dora, he means,” Lieutenant Byrnes said.

“Who's that?” Genero asked.

“It's an expression,” Byrnes said. “Dumb Dora. He's telling us we're dumb.”

“I never heard that, Dumb Dora.”

“You're too young,” Byrnes said. “It was a cartoon back in the Forties. Advertising Ralston.”

“What's Ralston?” Genero asked.

“It used to be a breakfast cereal. I used to eat it.”

“How old are you,
anyway
, Loot?” Parker asked.

“Old enough.”

“Another palindrome, no question,” Willis said, reading the note again, front to back and back again.

“Did I miss something?” Kling asked.

He was back in the squadroom now. About time, Byrnes thought. The clock on the wall read 10:48.

“He's sending palindromes now,” Carella explained.

“Which are?”

“They read the same forwards and backwards.”

Kling looked at the note.

A rod not a bar, a baton, Dora.

“Why?” he asked.

“That's what we're trying to figure out.”

“Join the party,” Brown said.

“A rod is a gun,” Genero said. “Isn't it?”

“Used to be called that, anyway,” Byrnes said, almost on a sigh. “Or even a gat.”

“Has he given up on darts?”

“A gun
would
be a more practical weapon, you have to admit,” Hawes said.

“Then why all that earlier fuss about darts?” Carella asked.

“Slings to arrows to darts, right,” Meyer said, nodding.

“What does he mean by ‘not a bar'?”

“Nothing,” Parker said. “He's full of shit. As usual.”

“ ‘Not a bar,' ” Eileen repeated.

“He's going to use a gun, not some kind of blunt instrument,” Brown said.

They all looked at him.

“Well,
some
perps use crowbars,” he explained.

They were still looking at him.

“As their weapon of choice,” he said, and shrugged.

“You think he means a
police
baton?”

“What we used to call a nightstick,” Byrnes said, again wistfully.

“Or does he mean a
conductor's
baton?” Willis said.

“Oh, Jesus, not another concert!” Parker said.

“Is it the Cow Pasture again?” Hawes asked.

“That was one of his very first references, remember?” Eileen said, nodding.

They scanned the scattered notes:

A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?

“Remember what that became?”

COW PASTURE?
CONCERT?

“Is there a concert scheduled in the Cow Pasture?”

They scanned the city's three daily newspapers for possible events that might require the use of a baton, and came up with only five that possibly qualified. One was a performance by the Cleveland Symphony at eight o'clock tonight, at Palmer Center. Another was a performance by the city's own Philharmonic, again at eight, this one at Clarendon Hall. There were two jazz concerts in clubs downtown, and a student recital at the Kleber School of Performing Arts.

“So what do we do?” Kling asked. “Cover them all?”

“Well, if he's
really
gonna use a gun at one of these events…”

“None of them's in the Eight-Seven, did you notice?” Parker said.

“He's got a point,” Genero agreed.

“So let's just alert these other precincts,” Parker said, and shrugged.

Anyone but us, he was thinking.

 

O
LLIE WAS THINKING LIKE
a novelist instead of a cop, but sometimes the two overlapped, ah yes. In crime fiction, there was an old adage that maintained “The Criminal Always Returns to the Scene of the Crime,” or words to that effect, probably first uttered by Sherlock Holmes himself, a fictitional character created by Charles Dickens. In real life, however, as Ollie well knew, a criminal rarely if ever returned to the scene of the crime. What the criminal usually did was run for the hills, which was what Melissa Summers should have been doing instead of hiring assorted junkies to deliver the Deaf Man's messages, whoever he might be.

But he had been told by a truly sad specimen named Aine Duggan (who pronounced her name Anya Doogan, go figure) that a woman who answered the description he'd given of Melissa had approached her last Tuesday afternoon in Cathleen Gleason Park, a lovely patch of green close to the River Harb and the apartment buildings lining River Place South, where Aine had gone to sit and look out over the river and also to wait for her dealer. So this is where Ollie was on this sunny (thank God) Thursday at a little before noon, waiting for Miss Summers to put in a return engagement, either in her short red wig or her long black wig.

He doubted if she'd come back, but hope springs eternal, ah yes, and hope is also the thing with feathers. So he sat overlapping a park bench in the sunshine, watching the little birdies flutter and twitter, watching too the young mothers with their snot-nosed little toddlers scampering and scurrying, thanking the good lord that he was still a free and single individual, and then—suddenly and quite unexpectedly—wondering where Patricia Gomez was and what she was doing at this very moment.

 

“W
HAT
I
DON'T UNDERSTAND
,” Hawes said, “is how the shooter knew where I'd be.”

Honey merely nodded.

He had gone to meet her outside Channel Four's offices on Moody Street, and they were now having lunch in a little Mexican joint two blocks away. Honey loved to eat. She was now eating
camarones cocoloco
, quite enjoying herself and not particularly eager to talk about whoever had tried to kill her. Despite the evidence of the Note, she had convinced herself by now that the shooter was after no one but herself. This notion was fortified by the thousands of letters, phone calls, and e-mails Channel Four had received, encouraging her to continue her crusade against the would-be assassin.

“Because first he had to know I spent the night in your apartment…”

“Well, that wouldn't take a rocket scientist,” Honey said.

“I know. But it
would
take someone following us. And watching the building, waiting for me to come out.”

“He probably thought we'd be coming out together.”

“No, I came out alone. He could see you weren't with me. He started shooting the moment I stepped foot…”

“Well,” Honey said, dismissing the notion and biting into another butterfly shrimp coated with coconut flakes.

“And next, he knew I'd be going to Jeff Ave. How'd he know that? How'd he know a limo would be dropping me off at Five-Seven-Four Jeff?”

“You're forgetting that
I
was in that limo, aren't you?”

“No, I'm not forgetting that at all. How could I? You broadcast it every night.”

Honey wondered if she was only imagining his sharp tone. She looked up from her plate.

“Who ordered that limo?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Personally?”

“No, my intern did. I asked her…”

“What intern?”

“A girl from Ramsey U. She's been working with me since the semester began.”

“What's her name?”

“Polly Vandermeer.”

“I'd like to talk her,” Hawes said.

“Fine, Sherlock,” she said.

Hawes wondered if he was only imagining her sharp tone.

Look, sire, paper is kool!

“Another palindrome,” Carella said.

“And it's Shakespeare again,” Parker said.

Maybe he was right; the word
sire
certainly did sound like another sly reference to Shakespeare.

“At least he spelled
kool
right,” Genero said.

“Reads the same backwards and forwards,” Willis said.

“I love the way that works,” Eileen said.

“But why?” Meyer asked. “Is he directing us backwards?”

“To
where
?” Brown asked.

He was scowling. He always looked as if he might be scowling, but this time he really was scowling. He remembered the last time the Deaf Man had graced them with his presence, causing a race riot in Grover Park. Brown did not like race riots, and he did not like the Deaf Man. However much these little messages seemed to promise fun and games, Brown was fearful the games would turn sour soon enough.

“To the early messages, that's where,” Kling said. “The ones he used that box number on. 4884. The same backwards and forwards. He's saying go
back.
”

“To the anagrams.”

“To Gloria Stanford's murder.”

“And the first of the Shakespeare poems.”

“I can't find that damn poem anywhere,” Carella said. “I've Googled everywhere, I just can't find it.”

“Maybe he made it up, sire,” Genero suggested.

“It's too good for him to have made up,” Eileen said.

“Let's have another look at it,” Willis said.