Hark!

by Ed McBain

  “Same Deaf Man who told us who he killed last Sunday.”

  “Whom,” Genero corrected.

  “Same fuckin murderer,” Parker said heatedly. “Excuse me, Eileen.”

  “Going to shake us up with what he’s planning next.”

  “Big summer movie.”

  “Coming attractions.”

  “You notice they release the lousiest movies in the summer and around Christmastime?”

  “There’s that word again.”

  “What word?”

  “Shake. He’s gonna shake us up. That’s what he’s telling us.”

  “Oh shit!” Eileen said. “Excuse me, Andy.”

  “What?” Carella asked at once.

  “Check out these first three notes again. What’s the word common to all of them?”

  They all studied the notes again:

  Rough winds do SHAKE…

  SHAKE off slumber…

  SHAKE me up…

  “Now take a look at this last note.”

  I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous,

  As full of peril and adventurous spirit

  As to o’er-walk a current roaring loud

  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

  “And single out the last line…”

  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

  “Then skip to the last word in that line….”

  …footing of a SPEAR.

  “Put them all together…”

  “…they spell MOTHER,” Parker said.

  No,” Eileen said. “They spell Shakespeare. Shake and spear spell Shakespeare.”

  “Doesn’t Shakespeare have an e on the end?,” Genero asked.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “He’s telling us all his references will be coming from Shakespeare.”

  “I doped that out from the very start,” Parker said.

  “How come everybody in the world always dopes out everything from the very start?” Willis asked.

  “Well, I did,” Parker insisted. “Right after we got all that anagram shit. I knew that would be his plan. All Shakespeare, all the time. Where’s that note?” he asked, and began rummaging through the messages arranged on Carella’s desktop. “Here,” he said. “This one.”

  We wondred that thou went’st so soon

  From the world’s stage, to the grave’s tiring room.

  We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth,

  Tells thy spectators that thou went’st but forth

  To enter with applause.

  An Actor’s Art,

  Can die, and live, to act a second part.

  “Now if that ain’t Shakespeare,” he said, “then I don’t know what is!”

  WHEN CARELLA GOT HOME that night, he was carrying a thick book he’d borrowed from the library three blocks from his house.

  His daughter, April, was curled up in the armchair under the imitation Tiffany lamp, reading.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, without looking up. “Catch any crooks today?”

  “Hundreds,” he said.

  “Good work, Jones,” she said, and tossed him a salute. He went to her, kissed the top of her head. “What are you reading?” he asked.

  “Math,” she said.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Here,” Mark said, and came striding in from his room down the hall. The twins favored their mother more than Carella, he guessed. Or perhaps hoped. Mark gave him a hug. Carella went into the kitchen. Teddy was at the stove, cooking. She turned her face to him for a kiss. Raven hair pulled back into a ponytail. Long white apron made her look like a French chef or something. She lifted a cover, stirred something, put down the ladle, noticed the book. Her hands moved on the air, signing. He read her flying fingers, read the words she mouthed in accompaniment.

  “Shakespeare,” he answered. “The complete works.”

  Mark materialized in the kitchen doorway.

  “Why Shakespeare, Dad?”

  “Some guy’s sending us quotes from Shakespeare. I want to find out where he’s getting them.”

  “There’s an easier way,” Mark said.

  CARELLA WAS THINKING no home should be without a twelve-year-old boy going on thirteen. Sitting before the computer in his room, Mark went first to GOOGLE, and then typed in the keyword SHAKESPEARE and from the seemingly hundreds of choices there, he zeroed in on a site called RhymeZone Shakespeare Search. To the right of a little picture of Shakespeare’s face were the words Browse: Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Poetry, Coined words, Most popular lines, Help.

  Just below that was the direction Find word or phrase, with a narrow rectangular box to the right of that, and then the boxed word

  Search

  “All you do is type in the word or phrase you’re looking for,” Mark said. “Give me an example.”

  Carella took out his batch of photocopied notes.

  “How about ‘the darling buds of May’?” he said.

  Mark typed in darling buds. He hit the search key. On the computer screen, Carella saw:

  Keyword search results:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, Sonnets: XVIII 1 result returned.

  “Now we click on Sonnets,” Mark said, and clicked on it. The screen filled with:

  XVIII.

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date…

  “That’s amazing,” Carella said.

  “Give me another one,” Mark said.

  CARELLA REMEMBERED the name of the course now. American Romantic Poetry.

  And his term paper had been titled “The Raven” and Poe’s Philosophy of Composition.

  What had fascinated him most about the poem was Poe’s subsequent admission that he’d written it backwards. He could still remember the key passages from the author’s explanation:

  Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning—at the end where all works of art should begin—for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:

  “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—

  prophet still, if bird or devil!”

  I composed this stanza, at this point, first—by establishing the climax…

  Carella had read the entire poem aloud to the class. Wowed the girls. Got an A on the paper, too. But only a B-plus for his final grade. It still rankled.

  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered

  weak and weary,

  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten

  lore—

  Still knew the entire poem by heart. Could recite it at the drop of a hat. Now, weak and weary after a long day in the salt mines, he pondered on his son’s computer many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. And because he’d once been a good student and was now a good cop, he composed a short list he would take to work with him tomorrow morning:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May: Sonnets XVIII

  shake off slumber, and beware: The Tempest: Act II, Scene i

  how he will shake me up: As You Like It: Act I, Scene i

  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear: King Henry IV, part I: Act 1, Scene iii

  Shake plus spear equals Shakespeare.

  But he got no returns at all for any of the words or phrases in one of the earliest quotes they’d received:

  We wondred that thou went’st so soon

  From the world’s stage, to the grave’s tiring room.

  We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth,

  Tells thy spectators that thou went’st but forth

  To enter with applause.

  An Actor’s Art,

  Can die, and live, to act a second part.

  Nothing.

  Nada.

  Zero.

  Zilch.

  BEFORE SHE�
�D LEFT Rankin Plaza that afternoon, Sharyn stopped in at Lorelie Records downstairs from her office, and bought Spit Shine’s last CD. Titled after its hit song, “Go Ask,” it was the final album they’d made before that fateful and fatal Cow Pasture Concert. The title song was on track number seven. In her bedroom that night, she played it for Kling. He listened intently.

  “Can you understand what they’re singing?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he admitted.

  “Guess you got to be black, sugah.”

  “They ought to put subtitles on rap music,” he said, shaking his head.

  “They already do, on TV,” she said. “But here, read the liner notes. The lyrics should be there.”

  “Play it again,” he said, and removed the little pamphlet from the CD’s plastic jewel box, and opened it to the lyrics for “Go Ask.”

  Sharyn clicked back to band seven again.

  “You dig vanilla?

  “Now ain’t that a killer!

  “You say you hate chocolate?

  “I say you juss thoughtless.

  “Cause chocolate is the color

  “Of the Lord’s first children

  “Juss go ask the diggers

  “The men who find the bones

  “Go ask them ’bout chocolate…

  “Go ask them ’bout niggers…”

  “Oops,” Kling said.

  “Why you denyin

  “Whut should senn you flyin?

  “Why you find borin

  “Whut should senn you soarin?

  “You a black woman, woman

  “Who you tryin’a sass?

  “You a black woman, woman,

  “Why you tryin’a pass?”

  “Juss go ask the diggers

  “The men who find the bones

  “Go ask them ’bout chocolate…

  “Go ask them ’bout niggers,

  “Go ask.”

  The song ended. Sharyn turned off the player.

  “That’s kinda nice, actually,” Kling said. “How’d you come across it?”

  “Colleague suggested I give it a listen. I thought you might like it.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly Shakespeare…”

  “Hey, what is?”

  “But I like it. I really do.”

  “Do you think I’m like that woman in the rap?” Sharyn asked, straight out of the blue.

  Kling blinked.

  “Do you think I dig vanilla?”

  “Well, I certainly hope so,” Kling said, and she burst out laughing.

  “You think I’ve forgotten I’m black?”

  “I hope not.”

  “You think I’m trying to pass?”

  “No way. Who’s been telling you such things?”

  “Nobody,” she said, and went to him where he was sitting on the sofa, and curled up in his arms.

  He turned the CD pamphlet over, looked at the picture on the back of it.

  “You think any of these guys are handsome?” he asked.

  She hesitated.

  A tick of an instant too long, he thought.

  Then she said, “No.”

  She took the pamphlet from his hand, thumbed through it till she found the lyrics for another of the songs, something called “Black Woman.”

  “I like these last few couplets, don’t you?” she said.

  “Couplets,” he said. “Now that’s Shakespeare for you.”

  She began reading them aloud.

  “In the night, in the night,

  “All is black, all is white

  “Love the black, love the white

  “Love the woman tonight.”

  She looked up into his face.

  Batted her eyelashes like an ingenue.

  “So what do you say, big boy?” she asked.

  “DO YOU KNOW HOW much money was in that box?” the Deaf Man asked her.

  Melissa debated lying. But she figured it might not be such a good idea to lie to this man.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He looked surprised. She did not think he was the sort of man a person could ever surprise, but he sure looked surprised now.

  “How do you know?”

  “I counted it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She again debated lying. No, she thought. Always tell this man the truth. Or one day he’ll kill you.

  “I counted it so I’d know how much I should ask. For what I did. For walking that money out of the bank for you.”

  “I see. You felt you were entitled to some sort of reward, is that it?”

  “Well…a million-eight,” she said, and raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think that’s worth a tip?”

  Stop thinking like a hooker, she warned herself.

  “How big a tip, would you say?”

  She knew better than to fall into this trap.

  “I’ll leave that entirely to your judgment,” she said.

  “Does a hundred thousand sound okay?” he asked, and smiled.

  She smiled back.

  “A bit low,” she said, “but hey, you’re the boss.”

  SHE FIGURED HE THOUGHT of himself as some kind of mentor.

  The last time she had a mentor was right here in the big bad city, the minute she got off the bus from L.A. Enter Ambrose Carter in his shiny pimp threads, Hey, li’l girlfriend, welcome to town. Got a place to stay? Introduced her to twelve of his homies that very night, cheaper by the dozen, right? Twelve of them who took her under their collective wing, a sort of pimp conglomerate that proceeded to fuck her day and night in a tiny room off the Stem, everywhere, anyplace she had an opening, day and night, twelve of them coming into the room one after the other to let her know she belonged to them, day and night. “Turned her out,” as the expression went in the trade. Taught her she was nothing but a cheap two-bit hooker now, even though in L.A. she’d been getting a hundred bucks a throw for a mere blowjob.

  Well, boys, you should see me now, she thought.

  Adam wasn’t kidding when he’d said a hundred K.

  That’s what he’d given her, cold cash, and he’d also taken her to a fur salon on Hall Avenue, where they were having what they called their Fall Preview Sale, when it wasn’t even summer yet, and he bought her a sable coat that came right down to her ankles, and a mink stole she could wrap around her three times.

  He also told her she could now leave anytime she wanted, but that if she stayed she might learn a thing or two.

  This was what made her think he might want to be her mentor.

  He did not tell her what he was up to, but she figured it had to be something grand. When a man already had a million-eight in the poke—less the hundred grand he’d laid on her, and the sable and the mink—he certainly didn’t have to take risks on any penny-ante scheme. She knew this had something to do with misleading the police, though she didn’t know exactly why he would want to do that. She also suspected that she would somehow figure into his plan later on, he wasn’t just keeping her around because she gave great head, which by the way, she did, and that wasn’t just her opinion.

  She was curious to see how this thing might unfold.

  She was also wondering if he’d cut her into it for another big chunk later on.

  So she figured she would stick around, why not, even though the hundred K could take her around the world three times over, like the mink stole took her shoulders.

  “Do you know the story Frank Sinatra used to tell on himself? Do you like Sinatra?”

  “I don’t know Sinatra all that well,” she said.

  The truth. With him, always the truth.

  “When he was playing Vegas, he would put on his tux each night, and stand in front of the mirror tying his bow tie, can you visualize that?”

  “Sort of,” she said. She found it hard to visualize Sinatra himself. She concentrated instead on some guy trying to tie a bow tie.

  “He’d tweak the tie this way and that…”

 
She loved him using words like “tweak,” which most guys didn’t.

  “…until finally he said to his mirror-image, ‘That’s good enough for jazz.’ Do you understand the meaning of that?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  Never lie to this man, she thought again.

  “He was going out there to sing jazz. This was not grand opera, this was merely jazz. And he wasn’t going to fool around with that tie any longer, it was good enough for jazz. You have to remember, Lissie, that even in his later years, Sinatra could sing rings around any other singer, male or female. Any of them. Name one who could beat him. And he knew exactly how good he was. Never mind who hit the charts that particular week. He knew none of them could come anywhere near him. In fact, he knew how bad most of them really were, million-copy gold records or not. So he was just going out there to sing his splendid jazz in yet another barroom to yet another bunch of people who’d already heard all his tunes. The bow tie was good enough for jazz, do you see?”

  “Gee,” she said.

  “Well, I can always tie my tie so that it’s good enough for jazz, I can do what I plan to do without all this folderol beforehand…”

  Folderol. Another word she liked.

  “But then where would all the fun be?” he asked, and looked deep into her eyes. “Where would all the fun be, Lissie?”

  5.

  HE’S BACK TO spears again,” Genero said.

  The Deaf Man’s first note that Friday morning, the fourth day of June, read:

  Come on, come on; where is your boar-spear, man?

  Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?

  “Or is he telling us he’s just a bore?” Parker asked.

  “Which he spelled wrong, by the way.”

  “Because, you want to know the truth, I think he is a bore. Him and his Shakespeare both.”

  “Never give critics a good line,” Carella said.

  Parker didn’t know what he meant.

  “Anyway, we don’t know for sure that this one is Shakespeare,” Kling said.

  “Well,” Eileen said, “he told us it was going to be Shakespeare from now on, didn’t he? That’s what he told us yesterday, am I right? That’s what the spear and all those shakes were about yesterday.”