Mischief

by Ed McBain

  “I hate to call some kid’s mother, tell her he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, well, learn how to do it,” Carella said.

  “Thanks a whole fuckinlot ,” Parker said, and opened his desk drawer and pulled out a worn telephone directory. “Probably be ten thousand people named Herrera, this city,” he said to the phone book, and shook his head.

  Almost everything Parker said bordered on the thin edge of open bigotry. Everything else he saidwas open bigotry. It depended on who was in his immediate presence. He knew that someone like Meyer, for example, might possibly take offense if he called him a chiseling kike bastard, so instead he merely mentioned that the Jews had ripped off Easter Sunday. And whereas Carella wasn’t Hispanic, he had a name full of vowels and he might get on his high horse if Parker suggested that the city was overrun by spics, so he’d simply addressed his comment to the telephone book instead.

  As it turned out, he was mistaken.

  There were not ten thousand Herreras in the book, there were only a hundred and forty-six. But that was inthis section of the city alone. There were fourother sections to this bustling metropolis, and just because the dead writer had been found here didn’t mean he lived here. All Parker knew was that he was right now looking at a hundred and forty-six fuckin names that would take him all fuckin day to call all of them. For what? To tell some lady who couldn’t speak English that her shithead son was dead, which it served him right, anyway?

  Sometimes he wished he wasn’t so dedicated.

  HE HIT PAY DIRTon the forty-fourth number he tried. He considered this fortunate. This was now close to twelve noon and he wanted to go out to lunch.

  The woman’s name was Catalina Herrera. When he asked her if she had a son named Alfredo Herrera, she said, “Yes, I have. Who is this calling, please?”

  Heavy Spanish accent. Naturally.

  “This is Detective Andrew Parker of the Eighty-Seventh Precinct,” he said. “Is your son eighteen years old?”

  “Eighteen, yes. Is something…?”

  “Birth date September fourteenth?”

  “Yes? What…?”

  “He’s dead,” Parker said.

  He told her where the body was, asked her if she could meet him there later to make positive identification, and then told the other detectives he was heading out for lunch.

  “Nice bedside manner you got there,” Carella said.

  “Thanks,” Parker said, and went out smiling.

  “There’s this ship in the middle of the Pacific,” Meyer said. “This is World War II. The loudspeaker goes off and the chief bosun’s voice says, ‘All hands, fall to on the quarterdeck. All hands, fall to on the quarterdeck.’”

  “I think I heard this story,” Kling said.

  “Seaman Shavorsky?” Meyer asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, all the sailors gather on the quarterdeck, and the bosun says, ‘At ease, we just got a radio message from the States. Seaman O’Neill, your mother is dead.’ Well, the captain overhears this, and he calls the bosun into his cabin, and he says, ‘That’s no way to break news of this sort. These men are a long way from home, you’ve got to be more considerate if anything like this happens again.’ The bosun salutes and says, ‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry, sir, I certainly will be more careful next time if there is a next time, sir.’”

  “Are you sure I didn’t hear this?” Kling asked.

  “How should I know if you heard it or not? Anyway, a couple of months later, the bosun’s voice comes over the speaker again, ‘All hands, fall to on the quarterdeck, all hands fall to on the quarterdeck,’ and all the sailors gather again, and the bosun says, ‘We just got a radio message from the States. All you men whose mothers are still living, take one step forw—notso fast, Seaman Shavorsky!’”

  Carella burst out laughing.

  “I don’t get it,” Kling said.

  “Maybe cause you heard it already,” Meyer said.

  “No, I don’t think I ever heard it. I just don’t get it.”

  “It has to do with Parker and the dead kid’s mother,” Meyer said.

  “Is that the dead kid’s name? Shavorsky?”

  “Forget it,” Meyer said.

  “I thought it was a Latino name.”

  “Forget it,” Meyer said again, and went to answer the telephone ringing on his desk.

  “Shavorsky doesn’t sound Latino atall ,” Kling said, and winked at Carella.

  “Forget it, forget it,” Meyer said, and picked up the receiver. ‘Eighty-Seventh Squad, Detective Meyer,” he said. He listened, nodded, said, “Just a second, please,” and then, “For you, Steve. On four.”

  Carella hit the four button on his desk extension, and picked up the receiver.

  “Detective Carella,” he said.

  “Good morning,” a pleasant voice said. “Or is it afternoon already?”

  “Twenty past twelve, sir,” Carella answered, glancing up at the wall clock. “How can I help you?”

  “You’ll have to speak louder,” the voice said. “I’m a little hard of hearing.”

  DETECTIVE-LIEUTENANTPeter Byrnes told the three of them they’dalready spent too damn much time on it.

  “I don’t care if it’s the Deaf Man again, or the Deaf Man’sbrother , I don’t want another minute wasted on his damn tomfoolery. Man thinks he can call this squadroom anytime he—what timedid he call?”

  “Around noon,” Carella said.

  The three detectives were standing in a casual semicircle around Byrnes’s desk. The snow had stopped and faint sunlight peeped tentatively through the lieutenant’s corner windows, lending a promise of vernal cheer to the little law-enforcement tableau: Detective/Second Grade Steve Carella looking like a ballplayer sans chewing tobacco, tall and rangy, with dark hair and brown eyes somewhat slanted to give him a slightly Oriental appearance; Detective/Second Grade Meyer Meyer, an inch or so taller than Carella, burly and bald and blue-eyed, a look of infinite patience on his round face; Bert Kling, the baby of the squad, with blond hair and hazel eyes and the look of a cornfed bumpkin though he, too, had known his share of the big bad city. All of them thirtysomething, give or take, nobody was counting. All of them thinking the Deaf Man was back and the lieutenant was brushing him off.

  “What’d he say?” Byrnes asked.

  “He said he missed us,” Carella said.

  “Missed us,” Byrnes repeated blankly, and shook his head. At the age of fiftysomething—but again, who was counting?—the lieutenant was beginning to get a bit crotchety. Years ago, he might have welcomed the appearance of the Deaf Man as a lively diversion in an otherwise tiresome and predictable routine. But now…well, the Deaf Man mightstill represent challenge and provocation—if only his infrequent appearances didn’t cause the lieutenant’s men to behave like a band of bumbling buffoons. Whenever he arrived on the scene, they seemed unable to predict what he was planning even though he gifted them with lavish clues. Fumble-fingered and flat-footed, they stood by foolishly while his latest escapade took place, helpless to stop it no matter how hard they tried. In fact, were it not for the sheerest accidental good fortune, the Deaf Man could have stolen the city from under their noses each and every time, murdering half its population in the bargain.

  His very name seemed to render the squad inoperative. Whether he signed himself L. Sordo (forEl Sordo , which meant the Deaf Man in Spanish) or Taubman (forDer taube mann , which meant the Deaf Man in German) or Dennis Dove, familiarly known as Den Dove (forden döve , which meant the Deaf Man in Swedish), his very presence turned the men of the Eight-Seven into inept constabularies incapable of functioning as anything more effective than clumsy Keystone Kops.

  “What else did he say?” Byrnes asked, suspecting he was beginning to get sucked in despite his best intentions. Sitting behind his desk in a wedge of sunlight, he looked like a man who could beat anyone in a barroom fight, his body small and compact, his face craggy, his hands thick and capable, his hair more white than gray now, his eyes a f
linty blue that glistened in the sun, betraying a secret glint of curiosity even though he was trying to convince his men he was not the slightest bit interested in this damn deaf person.

  “He said it had been a long time…”

  “Mmm,” Byrnes said, and nodded sourly.

  “…but he knew how much we loved him…”

  “Sure.”

  “…and he knew we would welcome him back with a song in our hearts.”

  “Oh, no question.”

  “He also said we wouldn’t have to wait too long to make fools of ourselves this time.”

  “Mmm. What’d the CID show?”

  He was referring to the Caller Identification equipment that had been installed on every desk in the squadroom not two weeks ago. Before then, the detectives had seen the instrument only on television, in dramatized commercials where an obscene caller would be informed by his female victim that she alreadyknew his telephone number and—lo and behold!—there itwas , right there on the phone’s display panel. Now the equipment was standard in the squadroom. No need to trace a call anymore, you knew the caller’s number at a glance.

  “Out-of-state number,” Meyer said. “We checked it with Information, it’s a cellular phone listed to a woman named Mary Callendar.”

  “Did you try the number? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  “I tried it,” Carella said. “Got a message saying the mobile customer had left the vehicle and traveled beyond the service area.”

  “Meaning he’d turned off the power. How about the woman? Marywhat? ”

  “Callendar. Information gave me a listing for her home phone,” Carella said. “When I spoke to her she told me the cellular had been stolen from her car yesterday.”

  “Naturally. So he’s using a stolen phone.”

  “Used itonce , anyway. He’ll probably use a different one next time he calls.”

  “I don’t want you answering.”

  “How can we not ans…?”

  “Then hang up the minute you know it’s him.”

  “Then we’ll never get him, Pete.”

  “I don’tcare if we get him. I don’t want anything to do with him. What else did he say?”

  “That’s all he said.”

  “Didn’t he tell you his name?” Byrnes asked, thinking he was making a little joke.

  “Yes, he did,” Carella said.

  “He gave you hisname ?”

  “I said, ‘Who’s this?’ and he…”

  “He gave you hisname ?” Byrnes said, still astonished.

  “He said, ‘You can call me Sanson.’”

  “Samson?”

  “Sanson. With ann . He spelled it out for me. S-A-N-S-O-N.”

  “Sanson,” Byrnes said. “Look it up.”

  “We did,” Kling said.

  “All five directories,” Meyer said.

  “There are twelve Sansons in the…”

  “No,” Byrnes said. “No, damn it, Iwon’t have you tracking down these people! This is another goddamn game he’s playing, only this time we’re not falling for it! Get back to whatever the hell you were doing before he called. And if he calls again, hang up!”

  “I was just thinking,” Carella said.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Okay, Loot.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “The first of April is only nine days away.”

  “So?”

  “April Fools’ Day,” Carella said.

  THE MAN STANDINGon the bow of the thirty-two-foot Chris-Craft was tall and blond and suntanned and there was a hearing aid in his right ear. He had chartered the boat under the name Harry Gimperde, pronouncing the last syllable of the surname—perde—to rhyme withmerde , in the French manner. Harry Gimperde. TheGim , on the other hand, was pronounced like the beginning ofgimlet or the end ofbegin . Harry Gimperde. Say it over and over again—Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde—and it became Hearing Impaired.

  The woman who’d filled out the papers at Dockside Charters never once suspected that the blond man wearing the hearing aid was creating a little meaningless entertainment for himself, something to lend a touch of humor to the otherwise boring but essential task that lay ahead. The girl accompanying Mr. Gimperde served much the same purpose; she would add a little spice to the outing once the task was completed. The girl thought the Deaf Man’s name wasreally Harry Gimperde. She thought he must be very rich to be able to afford a cellular telephone and to rent a boat this size—not that she’d been on any boat of any size ever in her life before now. She only wished the weather was nicer. She was beginning to think that the best thing about boats was watching them from the shore. She was also beginning to feel a bit neglected, even though the man she thought was Harry Gimperde had poured her a glass of French champagne and had made her comfortable in the back of the boat—what he called the stern—on a bunch of pillows with the bottle sitting in an ice cooler an inch from her elbow, while he went up front to look at the shoreline.

  The building the Deaf Man was watching was close to Isola’s northern shore, a structure shaped somewhat like a very large Quonset hut constructed of concrete rather than tin. In essence, the building consisted of two parts, a rectangular bottom and an arched top, wedded to create a not-unpleasant whole. Affixed to the top of the rectangle facing the river, just where the base of the arch joined it, were the stainless-steel letters

  The facility had been opened in January; it still looked spanking clean even though smoke was billowing out of two tall chimneys on the side of the building farthest from the river. The currents were strong out here on the water. The boat kept bobbing on the heavy chop, causing the building to move in and out of range on the binoculars. Patiently, the Deaf Man kept watching.

  He had begun watching the building on the fifteenth of January, shortly after the facility was officially opened. He had watched it steadily for a solid week, trying to determine if anything but sanitation-department personnel and vehicles would be here on any days but the first Saturday of each month. During all that time he had seen nothing but the spruce-green uniforms of the department’s employees and the hulking trucks they used for moving garbage. He had begun his surveillance again on the twenty-eighth of that same month, and had seen only the same employees and the same trucks each and every day until the first Saturday in February, when at last he was rewarded with the sight of police department vehicles and blue police uniforms.

  On that first day of February, at ten minutes past twelve in the afternoon—while the Deaf Man watched from a different chartered boat with a different girl sitting bundled in deck robes and drinking champagne in the stern—a blue-and-white van with the wordsPOLICE DEPARTMENT lettered on its sides pulled into the parking lot on the river side of the building. Three uniformed policemen got out of the van. Lower-level personnel from the looks of them, silver shields on uniforms sporting neither stripes nor braid. Mere patrolmen. Some five minutes later, an unmarked Lincoln Continental pulled into the parking lot, and three policemen of a higher rank stepped out into the wintry sunshine, the brass on their uniforms catching whatever pale light reflected off the water.

  The Deaf Man kept watching through the binoculars.

  In a little while three blue-and-white radio motor patrol cars came down the ramp from the River Highway, and made the right turn into the parking lot. Two patrolmen got out of the first car. A patrolman and a sergeant got out of the second car. A sergeant and a captain got out of the third car. Each of the patrol cars was marked on its side with the blue lettering 87TH PCT. In the next half hour or so, a television van and several unmarked cars drove into the parking lot. The media and the press. All here to record for posterity this first public spectacle at the spanking-new facility. By five minutes to one on that first day of February, the Deaf Man figured that everyone who was going to be there was already there.

  Today was the twenty-third day of March.

  Across the choppy waters o
f the River Harb, the building sat on the edge of the shore, uniformed men walking in and out of it, but none of them wearing police uniforms. These were sanitation engineers, if one wished to be politically correct. To the Deaf Man, they were garbage men. The police would not assemble again for their little monthly ritual until the fourth of April.

  In February, the commissioner himself had attended the festive little gathering here on the water’s edge. He had not been present at the March seventh meeting. Also present at that first event had been two high-ranking police officers the Deaf Man recognized as Chief of Detectives Louis Fremont and Chief Inspector Curtis Fleet. They were not there in March. Neither were two deputy inspectors whom the Deaf Man had been unable to identify at the February conclave. No one from the media or the press showed up in March. Like everything else in America, only the first time was novelty. EvenDesert Storm , that fine miniseries concocted for television, would have become boring if it had lasted a moment longer.Sic transit gloria mundi . The Deaf Man was not expecting much of a crowd on the fourth of April. Just enough policemen to supervise the job and to record the happening.

  He took the binoculars from his eyes.

  He would check the facility once again next week, to ensure that the routine was, in fact, unchanging. Then, on April fourth, he would be here for the monthly festivities. Until then, there was much to do.

  Smiling, he went to the stern of the boat, where the girl was pouring herself another glass of champagne.

  “Here, let me do that,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Are you all finished with whatever it was you were doing?”

  “The coastal survey, yes,” he said.

  She had a tiny breathless Marilyn Monroe voice and eyes the color of emeralds. He had advised her to wear rubber-soled shoes and to dress for what might turn out to be inclement weather. She had taken this to mean white sneakers without socks, short white shorts and a white T-shirt, a yellow rain slicker, and a yellow nor’wester pulled down over her long blond hair. She sat now with the coat open and the champagne glass in one hand, her long legs crossed, watching him as he poured. He guessed she was twenty-three years old, twenty-four at most.