Mischief

by Ed McBain

  “Can you leave them for me?”

  “The shirts? They’re right here. All you have to…”

  “The patches.”

  “Oh. Sure, if I can get ’em for you. What’s your name?”

  “Ray Gardner.”

  “Okay, Ray, let me see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Hey, come on.”

  As easy as that.

  The garbage truck would be a bit more difficult.

  Sanson wanted him to steal the truck on the day of the job, take it at noon, drive straight over to the river with it. Carter had argued against this. First, it would mean a daylight heist, which increased the risk. And next, the trucks were inuse during the day, they weren’t just sitting around in empty lots all over the city the way they were at night. Cyclone fences around the lots, razor wire on top of the fences, be hard enough getting in atnight , never mind the daytime. Sanson had listened hard—healways listened hard, the deaf fuck—and then he’d said Okay, but it has to be as late as possible the night before, I don’t want some sanitation slob to discover the missing truck and alert the entire department. It was agreed that Carter would steal a truck from the Blatty Street garage in Riverhead sometime during the empty hours of the night before the concert.

  For now, he had to get that laminate.

  He could see movement in the car, Fat Boy wasnever going to sleep. One thing Carter hated was conscientious public servants. He looked over toward the trailer, wondering whether the area near the door was dark enough for him to risk it even with the guard awake. He decided it wasn’t. All he needed was half a minute to pick that lock, couldn’t the guy sneak forty winks for him? He waited another ten minutes, decided Fat Boy would be awake all night, and went into the woods bordering the lake. Hoping he wouldn’t step on any lovers’ asses in there, he circled around toward the access road, picked up a rock the size of a cantaloupe, came up behind the car, and hurled the rock at the rear window. He was back in the woods again even before Fat Boy came out of the car yelling. Took Carter three minutes to run back to the trailer. Another minute to pick the lock and open the door. Over to the left, he could hear Fat Boy chasing shadows on the access road. Still out of breath, he pulled the door shut behind him and locked the door from the inside.

  Taking a Mag-Lite from his pocket, he shielded it before he snapped it on, allowing only a pinpoint of illumination to escape his cupped hands as he began searching the trailer. Nothing was locked in here, nothing to steal but the laminates, and there was a guard outside making surethat wouldn’t happen. He found boxes and boxes of them inside a metal cabinet at the far end of the trailer. All of the laminates were marked in the left-hand corner with the slightly-ajar-window logo of Windows Entertainment. They were color-coded in four different colors: yellow, pink, pastel blue, and orange. There were laminates with the names of the various groups on them, and laminates with big numbers on them1, 2, 3, 4 and then he found the box he needed, the ones with the laminates markedALL ACCESS. He didn’t know which of the colors were for which days, so he took one in each color, and grabbed a handful of lanyards from the shelf. He doused the light and was about to step out of the trailer again when he heard the guard’s footsteps outside.

  He waited in the dark.

  Fat Boy shook the knob.

  Standard procedure.

  Shake it, see if it’s locked.

  Which was why Carter had locked it from the inside.

  He kept waiting.

  Heard footsteps moving off.

  Heard the car door opening and then closing again. Fat Boy on the horn to the home office, Hey, somebody smashed my fuckinwindow !

  Carter stayed inside the trailer for another ten minutes. Then he eased open the door a few inches, looked toward the car, opened the door wider, stepped down onto the grass, and slipped silently into the night.

  THE DEAF MAN’Snext letter was delivered to the squadroom early that Thursday morning, the second day of April. As usual, there was a short note attached to a larger sheet of paper. The note read:

  The paragraph photocopied from Rivera’s book read:

  SISHONA’S BLOND HAIRglistened in the light of the four moons. Everywhere around them, the naked bodies twisted and the voices roared to the night. “The multitude will destroy itself,” she told Tikona. “It will turn upon itself and see in itself the olden enemy. Its fury will blind its eyes. It will know only the enmities of the Ancients.”

  “The river runs fast after the Rites of Spring,” Tikona said.

  “But the fury rises before,” Sishona answered.

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” Carella said.

  “Rivera or the Deaf Man?” Brown asked.

  “TheDeaf Man,” Carella said. “What’s the goddamnjackass trying to tell us?”

  “A jackass he’s not,” Meyer said. “In fact, maybe he’s a genius.”

  “That’s what he’d like us to believe, anyway.”

  “Let’s go over it from the start, okay?” Meyer said. “First he tells us there’s this multitude that’s going to explode.”

  “Let me see that damn thing again,” Carella said. He was beginning to get irritated. The Deaf Man always irritated him. More so because he was deaf. Or pretending to be deaf. The person Carella loved most in his life was a woman who wasreally deaf.This son of a bitch…

  “Here,” Hawes said.

  Yesterday, the dentist had removed the stain from his teeth. He looked normal again. Or almost normal. The dentist had used a fine abrasive stone to clean off the sealant and stain, and then had polished the teeth with fine sandpaper. He told Hawes that the enamel would never come back—something they hadn’t told himbefore he’d given his all for the job—but that the calcium in the teeth would remineralize them, whatever the hellthat meant. Hawes was annoyed. As much by the Deaf Man as by the dentist.

  They all looked at the first message yet another time:

  IFEAR ANexplosion,” Tikona said. “I fear the jostling of the feet will awaken the earth too soon. I fear the voices of the multitude will anger the sleeping rain god and cause him to unleash his watery fury before the fear has been vanquished. I fear the fury of the multitude may not be contained.”

  “I, too, share this terrible fear, my son,” Okino said. “But The Plain is vast, and though the multitude multiplies, it can know no boundaries here, it cannot be restrained by walls. Such was the reason The Plain was chosen by the elders for these yearly rites of spring.”

  “A multitude on a vast plain,” Kling said.

  “A multitude that’smultiplying ,” Brown said.

  “More and more people.”

  “Jostling.”

  “Ready to explode.”

  “Let’s see the next one,” Carella said.

  They all looked at the next message:

  FROM WHERE ANKARAstood on the rock tower erected to the gods at the far end of the vast plain, he could see the milling throng moving toward the straw figure symbolizing the failure of the crop, the frightening twisted arid thing the multitude had to destroy if it were to strangle its own fear. The crowd moved forward relentlessly, chanting, stamping, shouting, a massive beast that seemed all flailing arms and thrashing legs, eager to destroy the victim it had chosen, the common enemy, a roar rising as if from a single throat, “Kill, kill,kill !”

  “Amilling crowd,” Hawes said.

  “Akilling crowd.”

  “A crowd moving toward its victim.”

  “Its common enemy.”

  “Chanting, stamping, shouting.”

  “All flailing arms and thrashing legs.”

  “Kill, kill,kill !”

  “Ihate this son of a bitch,” Carella said.

  “Let’s look at the one we got today,” Kling said.

  They put it on the desk beside the other two:

  SISHONA’S BLONDhair glistened in the light of the four moons. Everywhere around them, the naked bodies twisted and the voices
roared to the night. “The multitude will destroy itself,” she told Tikona. “It will turn upon itself and see in itself the olden enemy. Its fury will blind its eyes. It will know only the enmities of the Ancients.”

  “The river runs fast after the Rites of Spring,” Tikona said.

  “But the fury rises before,” Sishona answered.

  “Where does he get these crazy names?” Kling said. “Sishona.”

  “Never mind Sishona,” Brown said. “What’s he trying totell us here?”

  “Sounds like a goddamn orgy,” Hawes said irritably.

  “The multitude will destroy itself,” Meyer said.

  “Turn upon itself.”

  “See in itself the olden enemy.”

  “The enmities of the Ancients,” Kling said.

  They all looked at each other.

  “What we have to do,” Carella said, “is find this goddamn crowd.”

  TODAY WAS PINK.

  Florry had laminates in four different delightful colors, but the men walking past the security guards were all wearing pink, so he took out his pinkALL ACCESS pass from his pocket, hung it on the lanyard Sanson had provided with the laminate, and then looped the lanyard over his head. He had learned over the years that if you behaved as if you belonged someplace, nobody ever questioned you. The laminate helped. All pink and official-looking, the card passed him through the checkpoint without even a sideward glance from the two security guards.

  The concert site was bustling with activity at nine that morning. The technicians and the work crews had begun arriving at sixA .M., before it was light, picking up their laminates at the production trailer, buying early morning breakfasts from the catering tent, and then beginning to load in as morngloam tinted the sky to the east. The concert was a one-off show, which meant that everything erected here today and tomorrow would be torn down next Monday. Florry had deliberately chosen to arrive late, when the men would already be at work. Union people tended to know one another, and there were hordes of them here today. The same held true for sound technicians. All he wanted to do was blend in with the crowd. Move from space to space as if he belonged. Ask no questions. Move around, look around, get the lay of the land.

  TheUnion, of course, was IATSE, which curt acronym stood for the very long-winded International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the U.S. and Canada. But it was the Teamsters who had unloaded the trucks and it was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who were snaking cables all over the place, and men from the Carpenters Local who were sawing and hammering away at the foundation of what would eventually become a huge stage.

  The ground was still wet after all the rain this week, and the trucks and milling men had turned it into a quagmire. The sun was shining now, though, and the people from Windows Entertainment were hopeful that the ground would dry out before the crowds came in. Meanwhile, things were progressing on schedule, and there was no doubt that everything would be ready when the first of the groups was scheduled to perform.

  Florry enjoyed all this activity.

  There must’ve been close to a hundred people working here, all of them experts at what they were doing, all of them with a deadline to meet: By one o’clock this Saturday the stage and the roof over it, and the lighting hanging from it, and the speakers and amps in the sound towers on either side of it, and the delay towers with more speakers and amps, and the control tower for the house mix had to be up and ready to go, rain or shine.

  Woodstock, you didn’t have any delay towers, they were too unreliable back then. Now you could calibrate your delays so that the sound coming from the stage stacks was exactly in synch with what was coming from the speakers out in the audience. Back then, all you had on the stage was two giant speakers whereas nowadays it wasn’t unusual to have a half-dozen stacks of speakers going at once. Back then, whenever you sent out a high signal, you distorted the mixer, and had to compensate for it by padding your mike line to reduce the signal. Today, you could correct the distortion right at the console, using your pre-amp gain control.

  Still there was nothing today that could match Woodstock for excitement. Well, how could it? You did a Paul Simon concert right here in this same park, you got a crowd of 750,000 people—but that was expected. Woodstock, they were anticipating 200,000 and they got somewhere between half a million and 600,000! This weekend, nobody knew how many would show up. You got rain again, you could fold your tent and go home, even if the concertwas free. Still, there were a couple of headliners scheduled to appear, so if the weather was good, you could draw a tremendous crowd. Free, that was the key word. You walked in, you sat on your blanket, and you listened. Big open crowd here in the outdoors. Listening.

  It was Florry’s job to make sure they heard the right thing at the right time.

  The right time was 1:20P .M.

  The right thing was Sanson’s message.

  Already burned into the chip and ready to go.

  All Florry had to do was get into the console.

  But the console wasn’t even up yet, wouldn’t be up till sometime tomorrow most likely.

  For now, Florry had seen all he had to see.

  He walked toward where a busy crew was erecting a cyclone fence around the backstage area. A pair of security guards were watching the fence go up. Neither of them even glanced at him as he left the construction site.

  DEBRA WILKINSseemed to have gained control of herself. This was now a week and a day since her husband was slain by the person the newspapers were currently calling the Sprayer Slayer. In America, everything needed a title because everything was a miniseries concocted for the enjoyment of the populace. This new miniseries was titledThe Sprayer Slayer and Part I was subtitled “The Hunt.” If they ever caught him, Part II would be subtitled “The Trial.” But if they wanted to keep their audience, they had better catch him soon. In America, nothing bored people more than something that went on for longer than a week or so. Americans had very short attention spans. Maybe this accounted for the fact that whereas Parker had taken Catalina Herrera to bed only the night before, he was this morning giving the widow Wilkins the eye. If they made a miniseries based on Parker’s romantic adventures, it would probably be titledCop Lover .

  “As you know,” he told Debra, “we now havefour victims of this person, and whereas until now there didn’t seem to be any definite link between the four…”

  “Haveyou found a link?” Debra asked.

  “The killer left a note at the scene of the last murder,” Parker said gravely. You had to play different women different ways. You had to impress certain blonde and glacial types with your sincerity. He was hoping Debra Wilkins would see him as a dedicated professional for whom she would happily take off her panties. “If it isn’t too much trouble, Mrs. Wilkins, I wonder if you’d take a look at the note and tell us if you recognize the handwriting. Bert?” he said, as if prompting his presenter-partner at the Academy Awards to hand him the envelope, please.

  Kling produced the photocopy of the note Midtown South had given him. He handed it to Parker who in turn handed it to Debra. She studied it carefully.

  “It doesn’t look at all familiar,” she said.

  “It was written on a scrap of paper he probably picked up at the scene,” Parker said. “One of these throwaway flyers advertising a neighborhood deli. We figure the note was a spur-of-the-moment idea.”

  “We figure he wants to get caught,” Kling said.

  “How do you figure that?” she asked.

  “What my partner’s trying to say,” Parker said, “is thatif we can match this handwriting, then we’ve got him on allfour murders. Because it was found at the scene ofone murder, and he confesses in the note to the otherthree .”

  “I see. But why would he do such a stupid thing?” Debra asked.

  “Like my partner says, he maywant to get caught.”

  “Either that,” she said, “or he’s a copycat who committed only the one murde
r and wants to take credit for the previous ones as well.”

  “Now that isvery good investigative thinking, Mrs. Wilkins,” Parker said, and shook his head in appreciative wonder. “Have you ever done police work?”

  “Never,” she said.

  Kling suddenly wondered if she was employed. The Wilkinses didn’t have any children, and homemaking for a childless couple didn’t seem like much of a fulltime occupation. Before he could ask her, though, Debra said, “I was once a legal secretary. For a firm that mostly handled criminal cases. That’s how I met Peter. He’d negotiated the divorce settlement for a woman whose husband later held up a bank. We were defending the husband in the criminal suit, and we called the former wife in for a deposition. I think he was claiming her as an alibi on the day of the robbery, I forget the exact circumstances. In any case, Peter and his partner…”

  She turned to Kling.

  “Jeffry Colbert,” she said. “You met him here last Saturday.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Kling said. “We talked to him yesterday.”

  “Oh?” Debra said.

  So the son of a bitchdidn’t call her like he said he would, Parker thought.

  Kling was wondering if this would be a good time to bring up the will. He decided it wasn’t. But he felt further explanation about why they’d gone to see Colbert…orwas it necessary?

  “Few questions we wanted to ask him,” he said, and then, immediately, “You were telling us how you’d met your husband.”

  “Yes, he and Jeffry accompanied this woman to the deposition. I started dating Peter and…well…eventually we got married.”

  “How long ago was that?” Kling asked.

  “Three years,” she said.

  Her lip was beginning to quiver again. Maybe she wasn’t quite as much in control as Kling had earlier thought. Partly to move her away from memories of what had been a happier time, partly because the logistics were still bugging him, he said, “I’ve been trying to figure how your husband could have got all those paint cans into the apartment without your noticing. I gather you’re not working now…”