by Ed McBain
All of the notes, when read as anagrams, clearly told them what the Deaf Man had done and possibly why he had done it.
WHO’S IT, ETC?
A DARN SOFT GIRL?
O, THERE’S A HOT HINT!
Rearranged in their proper order, the letters became:
SHOT TWICE?
GLORIA STANFRD?
SHOT IN THE HEART!
Move that dangling “O” from the third line to the first line and you had her full last name: STANFORD.
Similarly:
A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?
…became:
COW PASTURE?
CONCERT?
…the scene of the Deaf Man’s last chaotic diversion in Grover Park.
And once they rearranged:
BRASS HUNT?
CELLAR?
…they got:
STASH BURN?
RECALL?
…which merely asked them to remember his true target the last time out, the incinerator on the River Harb Drive, where thirty million dollars worth of confiscated narcotics was scheduled to be burned by the police.
And lastly:
PORN DIET?
HELL, A TIT ON MOM!
Put in their intended order, the letters in both lines formed the words:
RED POINT?
HAMILTON MOTEL!
…the name of the motel in a town across the river where a man who’d registered as Sonny Sanson had left behind a bloody trail apparently inspired by a woman who’d betrayed him.
Had that woman been GLORIA STANFORD?
A DARN SOFT GIRL-O!
Because, boy-o-boy-o, Sonny Sanson was sure as hell Son’io Sans Son, who was in turn ADAM FEN, who was none other than the DEAF MAN, who’d entered with fanfare and flourish to act yet another part.
I’M A FATHEAD, MEN?
Oh, no, not by a long shot.
I AM THE DEAF MAN!
Bravo, lads, that was more like it!
He was back, and the very thought sent a collective shudder through the detectives gathered in the lieutenant’s office.
“Anyone care for another donut?” Byrnes asked.
4.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date…
“Actually, that’s kind of nice,” Genero said.
“He’s back, all right,” Willis said.
“With more poetry, no less.”
“ ‘The darling buds of May,’ ” Eileen said. “That’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?”
“Sure sounds like Shakespeare.”
“ ‘The darling buds of May.’ ”
“But it’s June already,” Carella said.
“Just barely,” Meyer said.
This was Thursday morning, the third day of June. The lieutenant had virtually double-teamed the squad because whenever the Deaf Man put in an appearance, his people all suddenly began behaving like Keystone Kops, and one could not be too careful lest disapprobation thunder down from the brassy skies above. The nine Shakespearean scholars grouped around Carella’s desk were Carella himself, Meyer, Kling, Genero, Parker, Hawes, Willis, Brown, and Eileen Burke.
“Kind of nice, though,” Genero said. “ ‘The darling buds of May,’ you know? I really like that.”
All the squadroom windows were open to the balmy breezes of early June. The note on Carella’s desk was the first one delivered today. He felt sure there’d be more.
“What’s he trying to tell us this time?” he asked.
“Nothing about the homicide, that’s for sure.”
“He’s already said enough about that,” Meyer said. “I killed Gloria Stanford, I shot her twice in the heart, now come find me, dummies.”
“Where does it say that?” Parker asked.
He had shaved this morning. Maybe he expected another round of coffee and donuts.
“In his previous notes,” Meyer explained. “All those anagrams.”
“Yeah, anagrams, right,” Parker said, not giving a shit one way or the other.
“What does he mean about ‘summer’s lease’?” Willis asked.
“When does summer start this year?” Eileen asked.
Limping around the lieutenant’s office in his soft cast, Hawes didn’t much care when summer started this year. Or any year. He was still fuming because the dicks from the 8-6 hadn’t found any ejected shells on any of the rooftops opposite Honey Blair’s building, and so far nobody knew nothing about whoever had fired half a dozen shots at him yesterday morning. It was one thing to get all excited about someone who might or might not be the Deaf Man perhaps being responsible for the death of a woman named Gloria Stanford, but bygones were bygones, easy come, easy go, and Hawes himself was still in the here-and-now and luckily among the living, and whoever had tried to render him otherwise was still out there someplace, on the loose, so where the hell was a cop when you needed one?
“Miscolo!” Brown yelled.
“ ‘Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,’ ” Eileen quoted.
“Nice,” Genero said again, smiling wistfully.
Miscolo came in from the Clerical Office down the hall. He’d put on a little weight and lost a little hair at the back of his head. But he still resembled a somewhat moist-eyed basset hound. “You want coffee, right?” he said.
“Have you got a Farmer’s Almanac in the Clerical Office?” Brown asked.
“Why would I have a Farmer’s Almanac?”
“We’re trying to find out when summer comes this year.”
“Why?”
“Because it hath all too short a date,” Genero explained.
“You guys,” Miscolo said, and walked out shaking his head.
“Anybody got a calendar?” Brown asked, and went to his own desk. He flipped open the pages to June, ran his forefinger across the dates. The words Summer begins were printed in the box for June 21. “Here it is,” he said. “June twenty-first. First day of summer.”
“ ‘Summer’s lease,’ ” Eileen said.
“Is he planning something for the twenty-first?”
“Or not planning it, as the case may be,” Meyer said. “He never tells us exactly what he’s up to.”
“ ‘All too short a date,’ ” Willis reminded them.
“So it could be short of the twenty-first.”
“Closer to May,” Kling suggested. “ ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.’ ”
“That reminds me of teenage girls,” Parker said.
Then again, many things reminded him of teenage girls.
“ ‘The darling buds of May,’ ” he explained, and shrugged.
“You know what he might be doing?” Carella said. “He might be sending us a new batch of notes just to divert us from the homicide investigation.”
But even he didn’t believe this.
The lieutenant’s door opened.
“Eileen?” he said. “See you a minute?”
“HAVE A SEAT,” Byrnes said.
She took one of the chairs opposite his desk.
Waited.
“I want you to know I appreciate your input on this case,” Byrnes said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Pete,” he said. “Please. Pete.”
“Yes, sir. Pete.”
“Eileen,” he said, “I don’t want you to take what I’m about to say the wrong way.”
Uh-oh, she thought.
“This isn’t just because you’re a woman.”
Am I being transferred? she wondered. To a precinct where a woman—Fat Chance Department—commands the detective squadroom?
She waited.
“I want you to go over to the Stanford apartment. Now that Mobile’s cleared it, I want you to go through her things, her personal items, everything she left behind. Bring a fresh eye to it. Bring a woman’s eye to it. See if you can spot anything a man might have missed.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“It’s not jus
t because you’re a woman,” he said.
Then what is it? she wondered.
“I understand, sir,” she said. “Pete.”
“In my experience,” he said, “aside from crimes of passion, which this might have been…”
“Yes, sir.”
“…the man coming back to take revenge on the woman who done him wrong, that sort of thing…”
“Yes, sir.”
“But if this wasn’t simply that, if instead the man wanted something from her, which in my experience is the motive for many murders, hasn’t that been your experience, too? A person wants something very badly, he gets it, and then, to protect his identity or whatever, he kills the person he took it from. Like an arsonist setting a fire to cover some other crime. Hasn’t that been your experience, Eileen?”
“Well, I haven’t investigated that many homicides, Pete. Sir,” she said. “Or arsons, either, for that matter.”
“So what did the Deaf Man want from her?” Byrnes asked rhetorically. “He masterminded a multimillion-dollar narcotics theft, you know…”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“…so was he coming back after that stash? If so, where is it? Where’s the dope? Or the dope money? I don’t think he’s the sort of man who’d kill someone merely for revenge, do you? So why else might he have killed her? That’s what I want you to bring your woman’s eye to.”
“I understand, sir. It’s like what the Walt Disney studio did a few years back.”
“The what?”
“The movie company.”
“Yes?”
“They hired a nineteen-year-old girl to bring a teenager’s sensibility to a script a man had written for them.”
“Oh,” Byrnes said.
“Turned out she was in her thirties. The female writer they hired.”
“Oh,” Byrnes said again.
“But they figured a man couldn’t possibly know what a woman was thinking or feeling.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Even if he was a writer.”
“I can understand that.”
“So that’s why you want me to shake down Gloria’s apartment. Find out what she might have been thinking or feeling.”
“Find out why he killed her,” Byrnes said, nodding grimly.
MELISSA SUMMERS didn’t know quite what she was feeling.
Never in her entire life had she ever met anyone like Adam Fen, or whatever his name was. Never anyone like him in all the guys she’d fucked for free when she was still just a girl and an amateur, never anyone like him in all the guys she’d fucked since turning pro at the age of sixteen in Los Angeles, California. Well, sort of dabbled at being a pro. She didn’t really become a pro till she came to this city, thank you for that, Ambrose Carter.
But never had she met anyone like Adam Fen.
Never.
A deaf guy, no less!
If he was, in fact, deaf.
Actually, she didn’t know what he was.
One minute, he was kind and gentle with her, stroking her like a kitten, the next he was fierce as a tiger, slapping her around, making her do things even none of the freaks in LaLaLand had asked her to do, some of them movie stars even, would you believe it? Well, TV actors, anyway. Some of them. One of them, actually. Well, a walk-on part in a weekly sitcom, actually. Tipped her five hundred bucks. Told her to catch the show on NBC next Friday night. And there he was! Actually on the show! Walked into this executive’s office, said, “Someone to see you, sir,” and walked right out again. Looked innocent as an angel, the things he’d asked her to do.
Adam Fen was worse. Or better, depending how you looked at it. If that was his real name. Which she sincerely doubted. But Melissa Summers wasn’t her real name, either, so what difference did it make? He’d told her Adam Fen was an anagram for Deaf Man, which was certainly true, the anagram part, but whether or not he was really deaf was another matter. Not that she cared. What she was worried about was getting involved with him. She had the feeling that getting involved with him could be dangerous. Well, getting involved with any man, getting really involved with any man, was a dangerous thing to do.
Take the money and run, that was her motto.
Even when she was still giving it away (boy, talk about naïve!) she’d realized that getting involved with a man—though back then they were all still boys, kids, you know, fifteen, sixteen, a bit older than she was, she’d started when she was fourteen, with a cousin of hers from New Jersey—getting involved meant letting them have the upper hand, and that was putting yourself in a vulnerable position.
He had a gun.
She’d seen the gun.
He’d showed her the gun.
Actually cocked the trigger and used it on her like a cock. The gun. Inserted the barrel inside her. Got her so scared, she almost peed on it. Turned out there were no bullets in it.
But she was afraid if she got involved with this guy, really involved with him—he might one day actually use the gun on her.
That was her fear.
He seemed unpredictable.
Exciting but dangerous.
So why was she running this errand at the bank for him today?
THERE WAS SOMETHING eerily frightening about the murder scene. Maybe it was the yellow tape on the bedroom carpet, the outline of where Gloria Stanford’s body had lain. Maybe it was the silence. Eileen guessed it was the silence.
A stillness so complete that it seemed to exclude the sounds one normally associated with big-city living, the ambulances and police sirens outside, the occasional toilet being flushed somewhere in the building, the low whine of an elevator, the rumble of television voices. All seemed subordinate to the utter silence.
She stood in the entrance door to the dead woman’s bedroom, looking in at the yellow tape on the floor. The stillness was oppressive. It seemed to be challenging her to enter the bedroom. She hesitated on the door sill. At last, she took a step into the room, walked gingerly around the taped outline on the floor, and directly to a drop-leaf desk that must have cost her yearly salary. As a detective/third, Eileen currently earned $55,936 a year; her own one-bedroom flat was furnished with stuff she’d bought at IKEA, across the River Harb.
She lowered the drop-leaf front and sat in a chair upholstered with a satin seat and back.
In one of the desk’s warren of cubbyholes, she found a box of checkbook inserts. Blank checks for FirstBank’s Salisbury Street branch right here in the city. Top sheaf of checks numbered from 151 through 180. Sheaves below it numbered to follow. Lettering across the top of each check was:
GLORIA STANFORD
1113 SILVERMINE OVAL
ISOLA, 30576
In another of the cubbies, she found FirstBank’s most recent statement. Gloria’s checking account balance at the end of March had been $1,674.18. On the third of April, she’d made a cash deposit of $9,800. Another cash deposit on April 12, this time for $7,200. Yet another on April 23, for $8,100. Total cash deposits for the month: $25,100. Total amount of checks written: $24,202.17; her closing balance on April 30 was $2,573.01.
By law, all banks were required to report to the Internal Revenue Service any cash deposits in excess of $10,000. Was it mere coincidence that Gloria’s cash deposits had been for amounts somewhat less than the ten grand? She looked for a savings account passbook and could find none.
So where had those cash deposits come from?
Eileen went through Gloria’s appointment calendar and her address book.
She went through her closets and her dresser drawers.
She went through her medicine cabinet and her refrigerator.
Her “woman’s eye” caught nothing a man’s eye might have missed.
In the living room, on a counter to the right of the entrance door, she found a tote bag with a small-caliber pistol in it. She wondered if Carella and Meyer had simply missed the gun. Or had they turned it over to Ballistics for testing, and then brought it back to the apartment on the
ir second go-round? A place for everything and everything in its place. She would have to ask them. Meanwhile, the apartment had been cleared, so she felt free to take the gun out of the bag (although using a pencil passed through the trigger guard) and sniff the barrel. It did not seem to have been fired recently.
Sliding the gun off the pencil, she dropped it back into the bag. Digging around the way only a woman could—the lieutenant was right in that respect, at least—she also found a tube of lipstick, a mascara pencil, a packet of Kleenex tissues, a small vial of Hermès’ Calèche, and a red leather Coach wallet. Oddly, there was no identification in the wallet. No driver’s license (but that was possible in a big city), no credit cards (which was unusual), no social security card (but you weren’t supposed to carry that with you), not anything with Gloria Stanford’s name or her signature on it.
She went back to the drop-leaf desk in the bedroom, opened the FirstBank statement again.
The statement showed checks written in April to American Express, Visa, and MasterCard.
So where were the credit cards?
Was that what he’d been after?
The lady’s credit cards?
The Deaf Man?
Planning to charge a camcorder or a stereo to the lady’s credit cards?
Come on now.
That hardly seemed his style.
And yet…
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May…
Maybe the poor man had fallen upon hard times.
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date…
Maybe he needed a new wardrobe for the coming summer season.
Still and all…
Credit cards?
Such small-time shit for such a big-time schemer.
She decided to pay a visit to the FirstBank branch on Salisbury Street.
MELISSA HAD PRACTICED signing the name a hundred or more times. Copying it from Gloria Stanford’s driver’s license and credit cards. Gloria Stanford, Gloria Stanford, again and again. She now knew it almost the way she knew her own name. Melissa Summers, Gloria Stanford. Interchangeable.
There was a photo of a good-looking blonde on both the license and in the corner of one of the credit cards. But except for the blond hair, Gloria Stanford—whoever the hell she might be—bore no resemblance to Melissa Summers, none at all.