Hark! (35 page)

“…
della Vila d'Este a Tivoli. Ma, secundo me
…”

“Excuse me,” Carella said.

“…
i piu belli giardini
…”

“
Scusi
,” he said, “excuse me,” and got up and moved through the dancers on the crowded floor—his sister dancing with Uncle Mike now, all suntanned and bald from Florida, his mother dancing with her new son-in-law, the assistant district attorney Henry Lowell—and worked his way to the men's room. On his way back to the table, where he now saw Alberta Fontero was bending somebody else's ear about the fabulous gardens of Rome, he stopped in the banquet hall's office, and asked a twenty-year-old kid behind the desk there if he could use the phone.

“There's a pay phone in the men's room,” the kid said.

“This is police business,” Carella said, and showed his shield. The kid looked at it as if he thought it might be fake, but he indicated the phone, shrugged, and walked out.

Carella began dialing the squadroom.

“Eighty-seventh Squad, Meyer.”

“It's me,” Carella said.

“Is that music I hear?”

“Yeah, let me close this door.”

He got up, came around the desk, closed the door on the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra, and came back to the phone again.

“I'm glad you called,” Meyer said. “Have you got a pencil?”

Carella took a pencil from a cup on the desk. He found a crumpled sheet of paper in the wastebasket, pulled it out, smoothed it, and said, “What've you got?”

“Nostradamus,” Meyer said. “That's N-O-S…”

“T-R-A…” Carella said, nodding.

“You know it?”

“Nostradamus, sure. The Greek prophet.”

“French,” Meyer said.

“Whatever.”

“Write it down.”

Carella wrote it down:

NOSTRADAMUS

“Okay, got it,” he said.

 

I
N THE MOVIES
, this was that stretch of turf alongside the river, under the bridge, where the nasty bad guys pulled up in their big black cars for a face-off about dope or prostitution.

In real life, this was that very same spot.

And Konstantinos Sallas knew this was not Clarendon Hall.

“Driver?” he said, and tapped on the glass partition separating them from the front seat. The glass slid open. “Where are we?” he asked. “Is something…?”

And realized he was looking into the barrel of an automatic weapon.

Jeremy Higel, the Greek's bodyguard, was already reaching under his jacket.

“No, don't,” the Deaf Man said.

The hand stopped.

The Deaf Man gestured with the Uzi.

“Get out,” he said. “Both of you.”

“Wh…?”

“Get out of the fucking
car
!”

Sallas reached for his violin case.

“Leave it,” the Deaf Man said.

NOSTRADAMUS

“That's the latest from our friend,” Meyer said. “Nostradamus.”

“Just the name?” Carella asked.

“That's all. We've been juggling it around up here. So far, we've got ‘A SUM' backwards…”

“Uh-huh, ‘A SUM,' I see it…' ”

A MUS

“Backwards, right?”

“Right. Backwards.”

A SUM

“And ‘DARTS' is buried in there, too. You see it there? ‘DARTS'?”

“Right,” Carella said, “I've got it.”

DARTS

“The way
arrows
was buried in
sparr
—” Meyer started, and then interrupted himself. “Help you?” he asked. Carella heard a muffled voice on the other end, away from the phone. “Thanks,” he heard Meyer say.

“What've you got?” he asked.

“Another one.”

“Another what?”

“A letter. A note. Addressed to you again.”

There was a crackling silence on the line.

“Well,
open
it!” Carella said.

Outside the closed door to the office, he could hear the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra playing
Mezzo Luna, Mezzo Mare
…

Heard wedding guests joining in with the lyrics…

Heard Meyer ripping open the envelope…

“Meyer?”

“Yeah.”

“What does it say?”

“Meyer?”

Meyer read it to him.

“What's he mean?” Carella asked.

“Mama mi, me maritari…”

“I don't know,” Meyer said.

“Figghia mi, a cu…”

Carella glanced at the note on his desk:

NOSTRADAMUS

“Damn it, what's he…?”

“Mama mi, pensaci…”

A SUM

“Si ci dugnu…”

DARTS

“Oh, Jesus, it's DARTS
backwards
!” Carella said.

STRAD

“It's the violin!”

 

T
HE VIOLIN IN THE
case now tucked under the Deaf Man's right arm was one of a precious few created by Antonio Stradivari, the master violin-maker, in the early 1700's—the so-called Golden Period during which he made only twenty-four violins. Sallas's violin was one of them, a year older than the so-called “Kreutzer” Stradivarius that had recently sold at auction for $1,560,000. The “Taft,” another Stradivarius violin made in that same period, sold at Christie's for a million-three. The “Mendelssohn” Strad had sold for a million-six. The “Milanollo” of 1728, conserved rather than played over the centuries, was largely considered to be worth at least that much. By a conservative estimate, the Deaf Man calculated that Sallas's precious little fiddle here was worth something between a million-two and a million-seven—not bad apples for a few weeks' work, eh, Gertie?

He had driven back to the Knowlton Hotel to make certain that Jack the driver was still securely bound and gagged, had patted him on the head, smiled, and gone to change out of the chauffeur's uniform he'd purchased last week at Conan Uniforms on Baxter Street. Driving the Regal luxury sedan to a side street some ten blocks from his apartment, he'd bid the car a fond farewell, and left it there locked. The last words he'd heard on the car radio were, “Jack? Are you there, Jack? Have you got your passenger? What the hell is going
on
, man?”

Now, at twenty minutes to three—wearing a blue suit with the faintest gray shadow stripe, wearing as well a gray shirt that picked up the stripe, and a blue tie that echoed the suit, black shoes, blue socks, the black violin case tucked under his arm—the Deaf Man whistled a merry tune as he strolled jauntily back to the apartment on River Place South—where Melissa Summers was busy cracking his computer.

 

O
N THE PHONE TO
Midtown South, Carella told the lieutenant there what he thought was about to happen; the Deaf Man was planning to steal Konstantinos Sallas's priceless Stradivarius violin. The lieutenant promised to send a contingent of his detectives over to Clarendon at once. He called back five minutes later to say the boys were on the way. But he'd also called Clarendon and the director there was concerned because Sallas hadn't shown up yet, and it was already twenty minutes to three.

“Where was he coming from?” Carella asked.

“The Intercontinental,” the lieutenant told him.

“Right here in the Eight-Seven,” Carella said, and remembered the Deaf Man's first note that Saturday morning:

GO TO A PRECINT'S SHIT!

“How was he getting there?”

“Car and driver.”

And Carella remembered another note from what now seemed a long time ago:

“Carella? You still there?”

“I'm still here,” he said.

Outside, he could hear the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra starting another set, saxophones soaring. The words of the Deaf Man's final note echoed in his mind:

…and he realized all at once that the violin had
already
been stolen, yes, right here in the old Eight-Seven.

Outside, the orchestra was playing a sad sweet song.

For no good reason he could discern, Carella put his head on his folded arms and began sobbing.

 

T
HE THING ABOUT A
computer was that it not only told you where to find things, it also told you where you'd
gone
to find those things. So right here in Adam's little office at the rear of the apartment, there was a pretty good record of all the sites he'd visited in the past few weeks, especially those he'd marked as favorites. Which showed he trusted her. She guessed. Leaving them there for her to see. Or maybe he wasn't as smart as she thought he was.

All this stuff about violins made by this guy Stradivari. Oh my! So
that's
what Adam was after, the Greek's fiddle. My, my, my. Page after page of computer information about Stradivari and Amati and Guarneri and the 18th century, and the prices all these various violins had fetched at various auctions, and who owned which violin when, or even now, and even what kind of varnish was used on them, my, my, my, Melissa thought.

So that's what he'd meant about a seven-figure payday. My, my. A violin. Who'd've imagined it? A mere violin. And, oh my, lookee here. All the sites he'd visited while composing the little notes she'd delivered for him, and folders he'd made to store files from those sites, folders with titles like
SPEARS
, and
ARROWS
, and
DARTS
, and more folders titled
ANAGRAMS
, and
PALINDROMES
, and yet more folders titled
NUMBERS
, and
TIMES
, and on and on, oh my oh my.

There was also a folder titled
SKED
, and when she opened that she found a file titled
CALENDAR
. She thought at first that this might tell her something about their trip to Tortola, but no, it was just a sort of coded timetable for the past week:

 

But he'd been serious about taking her to Tortola once this was all over, because sure enough here was a folder titled
TRAVEL
, and inside that was a file called
AIR
. And there before Melissa's very eyes, right there on the computer screen, was a flight itinerary: