Hark! (31 page)

Aunt Dorothy was telling a dirty joke now. She loved dirty jokes. Carella suspected the joke fell upon deaf ears as regarded most of the Fontero tribe. For that matter, Henry Lowell's stiff Wasp relatives didn't seem to be enjoying his aunt's ribald sense of humor, either. His sister's intended sat holding her hand and smiling tolerantly as the joke unfolded endlessly, something about the Pope, sure to be a winner among the Fonteros, the Pope being stopped by a prostitute outside the Vatican (Careful, Aunt Dotty!) and then running back inside to ask the Mother Superior “What's a blowjob?” (Watch it!) and the Mother Superior telling him…

Carella suddenly wondered if his mother and Luigi…

No, he didn't want to go there.

All at once, everyone was laughing.

Even the Fonteros, who, Carella now realized, understood more English than he'd earlier supposed.

The laughter swelled everywhere around him.

He wondered why he couldn't find it in himself to share it.

T
HE ELEVENTH DAY
of June dawned all too soon.

At six-thirty
A.M.
on what looked like the start of a sunny Friday morning, Melissa and the Deaf Man were sitting in the breakfast nook of his seventeenth-floor apartment, overlooking River Place South, Gleason Park, and the River Harb beyond.

“Your job tomorrow,” he was telling her, “will be a very simple one.”

She was thinking that her job
today
wouldn't be a simple one at all. If she didn't get out of here soon to start lining up her junkies…

“The luxury sedan from Regal will be arriving here at half past noon tomorrow,” he said. “All you have to do is deliver the driver to the Knowlton.”

So what else is new? she thought.

“And what will
you
be doing?” she asked.

Far as she could see, all he'd done so far was sit on his brilliant ass while she ran all over the city doing his errands. And he still hadn't told her what her cut of the big seven-figure payoff would be, if there ever
was
a big payoff, which she was honestly beginning to doubt, now that he was into palindromes and all. If he was so intent on screwing up the 87th Precinct, why was he bothering with word games? Why didn't he just lob a hand grenade through the front door? Good question, eh, Adam? What
is
this thing you have with them, anyway?

“What is this thing you have with them, anyway?” she asked, venturing the question out loud, what the hell.

“By this
thing
…?”

“This messing around with their heads.”

“Let's just say our ongoing relationship has been a frustrating one,” he said.

“Okay, but why…?”

“I wouldn't trouble my pretty little head over it,” he said, a line she had heard in many a bad movie, a line she had in fact heard from the late unlamented Ambrose Carter while he was still training her, so to speak, his exact words being, “I wouldn't trouble my pretty little head over it, swee'heart, just suck the man's cock.”

“Yes, but I
do
trouble my pretty little head over it,” she said now, somewhat defiantly. “Because it seems to me you're spending a lot of time and money telling these jerks exactly what you're about to do…”

“Exactly what I'm
not
about to do is more like it,” he said.

“Whatever,” she said. “Why are you
bothering
, that's the question? Why not just do the gig and get out of town?”

“That's precisely what I plan to do. Tortola, remember?”

“Who's Detective Stephen Louis Carella?” she asked, straight out.

“A dumb flatfoot.”

“Then why are you addressing these letters to him? If he's so dumb…”

“It's personal. I shot him once.”

“Why?”

“He was getting on my nerves.”

“Did he send you away, is that it?”

“I've never done time in my life.”

“Did he bust you? Did you beat the rap?”

“Never. Neither Carella nor the Eight-Seven has ever laid a hand on me.”

“Then…I don't get it. Why
bother
with them?”

“Diversion, my dear, it's all diversion.”

“I don't know what that means, diversion.”

“It means smoke and mirr…”

“I
know
what it
means
, I just don't see how it applies here.”

“Try to look at it this way, my dear,” he said patiently. She did not like it when he got so tip-toey patient with her. It was more like condescension when he got so patient. “In these perilous times of High Alert, with a terrorist lurking under every bush—please pardon the pun—one can't be too careful, can one? So, even
with
the assistance of policemen from other precincts, they'll
still
be too late.”

“Who'll be too late?”

“The stalwarts of the Eight-Seven.”

“Too late for
what
?”

“The foul deed that smells above the earth—to paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare in his brilliant
Julius Caesar
—shall already have been done. Too late, my love. Altogether too late.”

“I still don't get it,” she said.

“Well,” he said, and sighed heavily, “I wouldn't trouble my pretty little head over it.”

Which pissed her off all over again.

 

T
HE DRIVER WHO'D BEEN
behind the wheel of the limo last Friday was named Kevin Connelly, and he did not appreciate being awakened at seven in the morning. Associating Hawes at once with the bullets that had come crashing into the car last week, he immediately looked into the hallway past him, as if expecting another fusillade. Satisfied that Hawes was alone, he stepped aside and let him into the apartment.

He was still in his pajamas. He threw on a robe, led Hawes into the kitchen, and immediately set a pot of coffee to brew on the stove. Like two old buddies about to embark on a hunting trip, they sat drinking coffee at a small table adjacent to a small window.

“I want to know about the Honey Blair call last Friday,” Hawes said. “What'd the dispatcher give you?”

“Pickup and delivery for Miss Blair,” Connelly said. “Same as always.”

“So how come you picked me up on the way?”

“Miss Blair told me to stop by for you.”

“Gave you 711 Grover?”

“No, she didn't know the address of the precinct. I had to look it up in my book. This little book I have.”

“How about 574 Jefferson? Did she tell you we'd be dropping me off there?”

“Yes.”

“How long did you figure it'd take from her building to the precinct?”

“About ten minutes.”

“And from there to Jeff Av?”

“Another twenty.”

“Plenty of time for someone to get there ahead of us.”

“Well, sure. As it turned out.”

“But you and Miss Blair were the only ones who knew where we were going.”

“Until I called it in to Base.”

“Base?”

“The Transportation office. At Channel Four. I called in to give them the new itin.”

“Who'd you speak to there?”

“One of the guys.”

“Which one?” Hawes asked.

“God, does he know about the
wedding
?” Carella asked out loud.

“How could he?” Meyer asked.

“He could,” Genero said knowingly. “He's evil.”

Carella was thinking, It
is
a mad marriage.
Two
mad marriages! Like never was or were before. He was already at the computer, searching for the source of the quote. It was eight-thirty in the morning. The other detectives all clustered around the first note that day as if it were a ticking time bomb. Which perhaps it was.

“There's
hark
,” Willis said. “I
told
you it meant listen, didn't I?”

“ ‘Hark, hark!' ” Kling quoted. “He's harking us to death.”

“
Hokking
our
chainiks
,” Meyer said.

“Which means?” Parker demanded, sounding insulted.

“Which means ‘breaking our balls,' excuse me, Eileen.”

“It's from
The Taming of the Shrew
,” Carella said. “Act Three, Scene Two.”

“Think the Minstrels might be a rock group?” Brown asked.

“Here, check it out,” Willis said.

The June 11–18 issue of
Here & Now
magazine had appeared on the newsstands early this morning. Published every Friday, it covered the city's cultural scene for the following week, alerting its readers to what was happening all around town. Handily divided into sections titled Art, Books, Clubs, Comedy, Dance, Film, Gay & Lesbian, Kids, Music, Sports, and Theater, the magazine offered a neat little guide to all that was going on that week.

The Music section this week…

The Deaf Man's note this morning seemed to confirm that his target was a concert someplace…

…was divided into subsections titled “Rock, Pop & Soul,” “Reggae, World & Latin,” “Jazz & Experimental,” “Blues, Folk & Country,” and “Cabaret.” A separate section listed “Classical & Opera” events. The variety of offerings was overwhelming. For this weekend alone, there were 112 listings in the “Rock, Pop & Soul” section; this was not Painted Shrubs, Arizona, kiddies.

The magazine's
DON'T MISS!
column highlighted the “dashing singer-guitarist”
John Pizzarelli
and his trio, appearing nightly at 8:30
P.M.
in the Skyline Room of the Hanover Hotel; “soul legend”
Isaac Hayes
, performing at 8:00 and 10:30 this Friday and Saturday nights at Lou's Place downtown;
Kathleen Landis
, “lovely pianist and song stylist,” nightly at 9:00
P.M.
in the lounge of the Picadilly;
Konstantinos Sallas
, “renowned violin virtuoso, guest-starring with the Philharmonic” at Clarendon Hall this Saturday and Sunday at 3:00
P.M.
; and
William Christie
leading the Paris National Opera and his “stellar early-music ensemble” in
Les Boréades
at the Calm's Point Academy of Music, this Friday at 7:15
P.M.
and this Sunday at 2:00
P.M.

There were groups named the Hangdogs, and Cigar Store Indians, and the Abyssinians, and Earth Wind & Fire, and the White Stripes, and Drive-By Truckers, but nobody named the Minstrels was performing anywhere in the city anytime during the coming week.

“Think there's a group called ‘A Mad Marriage'?” Kling asked.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Meyer said.

“Here, you check it out,” Brown said, and tossed him the magazine. “There's only ten thousand of them listed.”

“How about ‘Never Was Before'?”

“Or ‘A Rout Is Coming'?”

“Good start,” Willis said. “Know any lead guitarists?”

“Anybody got a garage?” Eileen said.

“What's a rout?” Genero asked.

“A disorderly retreat,” Kling said.

“I thought it was some kind of rodent.”

“He's telling us he's got us on the run,” Parker said.

“Maybe he has,” Carella said.

 

I
T BOTHERED HIM
that somehow, in some damn mysterious way, the Deaf Man may have learned about tomorrow's impending wedding,
weddings
, and was planning some mischief for them. Carella hated mysteries. In police work, there were no mysteries. There were only crimes and the people who committed them. But the Deaf Man insisted on creating his own little mysteries, taunting them with clues, making a humorous guessing game of crime.

On Carella's block, there was nothing humorous about crime. Crime was serious business, and the people who committed crimes were nothing but criminals, period. He didn't care if they came from broken homes, he didn't care if they'd been abused as children, he didn't care if they had what they believed were very good reasons for beating the system. The way Carella looked at it, there
were
no very good reasons for beating the system. Maybe President Clinton should have kept his zipper zipped, but he was right when he suggested that everyone should work hard and play by the rules.

Carella worked hard and played by the rules.

The Deaf Man didn't.

That was the difference between them.

Well, maybe the Deaf Man
was
working hard at concocting these riddles of his, but he sure as hell wasn't playing by the rules.

Carella had to admit that there was nothing he'd have liked better than for someone—
anyone
—to pop out of his seat and raise his hand when the priest asked the gathered witnesses to speak now or forever hold their peace. But he did not want that someone to be the Deaf Man. He did not want any surprises at tomorrow's ceremony,
ceremonies.