Hark!

by Ed McBain

  Another junkie, ho-hum.

  When they unfolded the single sheet of paper inside the envelope, the message fairly leaped off the page:

  87

  “Gee, looka that,” Genero said.

  “That’s us,” Parker deduced.

  THE SECOND NOTE came at 9:30 that morning.

  They didn’t realize it as yet, but there would be a veritable parade of junkies today, one every hour or so. They questioned each new shabby messenger, hoping to pick up a fresh trail for Carmela Sammarone, but she seemed to be recruiting her people from all over town, wherever addicts congregated, which was virtually everywhere.

  The second note read:

  78

  “That’s us backwards,” Parker calculated.

  He felt he was getting good at this.

  “Backwards again,” Meyer said.

  Carella searched for yesterday’s notes, the ones that told them everything was going to be backwards from now on. He hadn’t slept much the night before, and he had trouble finding them. In fact, he almost knocked over his second cup of coffee.

  “Here we go,” he said at last, and displayed the two notes.

  The first one read:

  “Yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?

  Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit

  The second one read:

  Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,

  How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,

  But she would spell him backward

  “You know,” Willis said, “there are many different meanings to the word backward. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘in reverse.’ ”

  “It specifically says ‘spell him backward,’ ” Brown said.

  “Yes, but that could mean cast a spell on him that would make him bashful or hesitant or shy. That’s another meaning of backward.”

  “He’s certainly not bashful or hesitant,” Hawes said.

  “Or shy, either,” Genero agreed.

  “You think he might get her to hypnotize someone?” Brown asked.

  “Who?”

  “The Sammarone woman. Carmela. Get her to cast a spell, you know?”

  “Is she a hypnotist? Do we know that?”

  “It’s just, Hal said it could mean casting a spell.”

  “It also means ‘late in developing,’ ” Willis said. “Backward. You say someone’s backward, you mean he’s retarded.”

  “Retarded ain’t politically correct no more,” Parker said.

  “Slow then,” Willis said. “Backward.”

  “Maybe he’s telling us we’re slow,” Meyer suggested.

  “Maybe we are slow,” Carella said, and looked at the most recent note again.

  Now they had 78.

  First 87 and now 78.

  Which was indeed 87 spelled backwards, or even backward, as the “she” in yesterday’s second note would have it.

  “Do backward and backwards mean the same thing?” Genero asked. “Cause I always said backwards. Is that wrong?”

  “Backwards is the plural of backward, Parker explained.

  “Is something going to happen in the Seven-Eight?” Eileen asked.

  “Where is the Seven-Eight, anyway?” Hawes asked.

  Meyer was already looking through his list of the city’s precincts. It seemed there was a Seventy-eighth Precinct across the river, in Calm’s Point.

  “ ‘Him’ spelled backwards is ‘mih,’ ” Genero observed. “ ‘She would spell him backward.’ ”

  “In Vietnamese, ‘mih’ means ‘son of the crouching tiger,’ ” Parker said.

  They all looked at him.

  “Just kidding,” he said.

  But nobody was laughing.

  YOU SEE A GIRL walking up the avenue at ten o’clock in the morning, wearing a slinky black silk dress and high-heeled black sandals with rhinestone clips, you know she’s either an heiress or a hooker. And unless you’re from Elk Horn, North Dakota, you know she didn’t spend the night sleeping.

  The Deaf Man was still asleep when Melissa let herself into the apartment. She went into the kitchen, poured herself some juice from the fridge, got a pot of coffee going, and then slipped out of her shoes and sat there at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to perk, looking out at the skyline, elbow on the table, chin resting on the heel of her right hand.

  The aroma of the brewing coffee brought back memories of a childhood she’d almost forgotten. How’d I get here all these years later? she wondered. Whatever happened to little Carmela Sammarone? Where’d you go, Mela? she wondered. Mel? Where are you now, honey? Only place the name exists is on my passport, that one time Grandpa took me to Italy with him, to his hometown there, a walled city, she couldn’t even remember the name of it anymore. Sort of sighing, she got up to pour herself the coffee.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  Startled, she turned from the stove.

  He was wearing the black cashmere robe she’d bought him that made his eyes look very blue. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, belt around it. Blond hair tousled, made him look somewhat boyish.

  “Good,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” he said. “Learn anything?”

  “Oh, oodles,” she said, and poured him a cup, carried it to the table, went to the fridge for milk, the cabinet for sugar. Sitting there at the table, in the sunlight streaming through the window, they could have been a cozy married couple having breakfast. She wondered what it was like to be a married couple.

  “So tell me,” he said.

  “His name is Jeremy Higel, he’s not Greek.”

  “He looked Greek. The beard, maybe. Or the association with Sallas.”

  “Are Greeks supposed to have beards?”

  “Anyway…” he prompted.

  “Anyway, he’s not Greek. But he is Sallas’ bodyguard.”

  “That I know.”

  “Who is a violin player.”

  “Correct.”

  “And the concert will take place at three o’clock this Saturday, you were right about that, too.”

  “So far, so good,” he said.

  “Oh, it gets much better.”

  “Tell me,” he said, and smiled.

  “They’ll be picked up at the hotel at two o’clock. Sallas and his bodyguard.”

  “Why so early? The concert doesn’t start till three.”

  “In case there’s traffic. They’re supposed to be at Clarendon by two-thirty.”

  “Who’s picking them up?”

  “A limo.”

  “Which company?”

  “Regal.”

  “Good. You got that, huh?”

  “Regal Limousine, yes. The car will be a luxury sedan, is what they call it.”

  “That’s very good, Melissa.”

  “I think so.”

  “Is he armed…Jeremy, is it?”

  “Jeremy, yes. Jeremy Higel.”

  “Is he armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  “A Smith & Wesson 1911.”

  “I didn’t know you were that familiar with guns.”

  “I’m not. He gave me a guided tour. It’s a forty-five caliber automatic, five-inch barrel length. Magazine holds eight rounds, plus one in the firing chamber. Satin stainless finish with a Hogue rubber grip. Very proud of that gun, he is. Nice-looking weapon, in fact. Big weapon, too. Which is more than I can say for the one in his pants.”

  “Did he give you a guided tour of that one as well?”

  “A walking tour, let us say. Nothing to brag about, believe me.”

  “Par for the course, from what I gather.”

  “Meaning?”

  “According to the e-mails I receive in the hundreds of thousands every day of the week, every man in America is deficient in that department and in serious need of enlargement.”

  “Present company excluded,” Melissa said, and glanced shyly at where his legs were crossed in
the black cashmere robe.

  “Bust enhancement, too,” he said. “According to my e-mails, every woman in the world needs her bust enhanced.”

  “Not me,” she said.

  “I noticed.”

  “Cause I already had them done.”

  “Oh?”

  “Right after I started calling myself Melissa.”

  “Oh?”

  “I thought I might become an actress, you see.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, and looked out at the magnificent skyline again. “Girlish dreams, right?”

  87+78=165

  “Well, now there’s news,” Parker said.

  “But is it correct?” Genero asked, and began adding 78 to 87 on his calculator. Much to his surprise, eighty-seven plus seventy-eight did indeed add up to a hundred and sixty-five, more or less.

  “What’s he trying to tell us?” Carella asked.

  “Why’s he adding those two numbers?”

  “Is there a One-Six-Five Precinct?” Eileen asked.

  Meyer checked his list again.

  “No,” he said. “Highest is the Hun’ Twenty-Third.”

  “We’re slow, and he’s getting faster,” Parker said. “The notes are coming in faster and faster.”

  They all looked up at the wall clock.

  It was now ten minutes to eleven.

  THE NEXT NOTE came at 11:47 A.M.

  It read:

  165+561=726

  Genero looked up from his calculator. “Right on the button!” he said triumphantly. “The arithmetic is absolutely correct!”

  “The sums are getting bigger and bigger, too, did you notice that?” Hawes asked.

  “Meaning?” Parker asked.

  “Just commenting.”

  “Also,” Brown said, “the size of the numbers is getting smaller and smaller.”

  “No, bigger,” Hawes insisted.

  “I don’t mean the numerical value,” Brown said, sounding like a mathematics professor all at once. “I mean the size of the type. Go ahead. Compare them.”

  87

  78

  87+78=165

  165+561=726

  “The Incredible Shrinking Deaf Man,” Willis said, and Eileen laughed.

  The door to Lieutenant Byrnes’ office opened.

  Scowling, he said, “Doesn’t anyone have anything to do around here?”

  THEY HAD PLENTY to do.

  This was the 87th Precinct, and this was the Big Bad City.

  So while in his apartment crosstown and further downtown the Deaf Man was calling Regal Limousine to arrange for a car and driver to pick him up at one-thirty this afternoon for what he’d described to Melissa as a “trial run…”

  …and while further uptown, Melissa herself was once again seeking out those poor deprived and demented individuals who were addicted to controlled substances of every stripe and persuasion to do her bidding for negotiable fees, the smaller the better…

  …and while yet further uptown, in Berrigan Square, Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks was himself sitting on a bench in the midst of similarly depraved dope fiends, seeking information leading to the whereabouts of one Melissa Summers, presumed Slayer of Ambrose Carter, Infamous Procurer of Female Flesh…

  While all these sundry people scurried about their busy little businesses, the men and women of the Eight-Seven scattered far and wide in pursuit of what was their usual daily routine when someone not quite as glamorous as the Deaf Man wasn’t on the scene.

  ANGELA WAS THE ONLY person here who knew sign language. But, of course, she was the bride-to-be, and there were thirty some-odd (some of them mighty odd, yuk yuk) women fluttering about her. And although she came over to Teddy every so often to exchange sister-in-lawly chitchat with her hesitant but well-meaning hands, she had to move on because there were other guests to welcome, other air-kisses to exchange, other…well, Teddy knew she was very busy. This was her shower, after all.

  Sitting with the other women, Teddy could not hear their laughter or their speech, and she could not talk to them because her only language was in her hands. Whenever she used her hands, she mouthed the words as well, her lips matching her flying fingers. But without the signing, her mouthing came over as exaggerated grimacing, and people unaccustomed to reading lips merely frowned or smiled patiently in response. By reading lips herself, Teddy could catch words, or phrases, or sometimes even complete sentences, but at a gathering as large as this one, with so many people talking at once, it was impossible to keep track of any single conversation. So she sat essentially alone and apart in the midst of the chattering women, a fixed smile on her face, her dark brown eyes scanning the room, and the faces of the other women, and their lips, trying to read those lips, a silent spectator in a world she had never heard.

  She had never heard her children’s laughter.

  She had never heard her husband’s voice.

  She imagined his voice to be soft and kind, the way his hands were soft and kind.

  Smiling, she sat alone and apart.

  ALONE IN THE SQUADROOM, Carella was manning the phones and the fax machines when the fifth note that day arrived. He pulled on the gloves, and opened the envelope:

  726+627=1353

  No surprises there. The Deaf Man was merely reversing the number each time out, and then adding it to the existing number. But why? And why was the font size getting smaller and smaller, while the numbers themselves got larger and larger? For comparison, he placed the numbers one under the other yet another time:

  87

  78

  87+78=165

  165+561=726

  726+627=1353

  Did this reversal and addition have something to do with the clues they’d already received from him? If you could even call them clues, the son of a bitch. Or were the numerals merely a preamble to what was coming? In much the same way the Deaf Man had prepared them for his Shakespearean quotes by sending them first a fistful of anagrams that culminated in I’M A FATHEAD, MEN!, the anagram for I AM THE DEAF MAN!

  So put that in your pipe and smoke it, as Carella’s mother used to tell him when he was a kid and she was exercising maternal authority, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sonny Boy! His mother who was going to marry Mr. Luigi Fontero from Milano, Italy, on Saturday, the twelfth day of June, this Saturday, his mother Luisa, mind you, not to mention his sister Angela, God bless us one and all!

  Carella looked at the new note again:

  726+627=1353

  What the hell is he trying to tell us? he wondered.

  YOUR AVERAGE, run-of-the-mill, everyday office romance flourished around the water cooler or in the supply closet, secret glances, surreptitious touches, furtive kisses hastily exchanged. Rarely during the daily routine did lovers who worked in the same office find themselves alone in an automobile—unless they were detectives.

  The burglary to which they’d responded was in a fish store off Seventh Street. The theft had probably taken place the night before but it hadn’t been detected until late this morning, when one of the employees went into the freezer and discovered that thirty pounds of shrimp was missing.

  “What kind of a world is this?” the owner of the store wished to know. “A person steals shrimp? Thirty pounds of shrimp? What’s he going to do with thirty pounds of shrimp? He’s got nothing better to steal? He has to steal thirty pounds of shrimp?”

  “Well, these guys aren’t rocket scientists, you know,” Willis said.

  “But thirty pounds of shrimp?”

  “Anyone but you have a key to the place?” Eileen asked.

  In the car later, Eileen driving, Willis riding shotgun, he said, “I can understand his point. Why would anyone bother? I mean, thirty pounds of shrimp? The guy’s risking jail for thirty pounds of shrimp?”

  “You and the owner ought to start a rock group,” Eileen said.

  “How so?”

  “You’ve already got a name for it. Thirty Pounds of Shrimp
. I hear that one more time, I’ll scream.”

  Willis slipped his hand under her skirt.

  “Hey!” she said. “I’m driving.”

  “So pull over.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can kiss you.”

  “I’m a police officer, I want you to know.”

  “So am I.”

  “Stop that.”

  “Not until you pull over.”

  She checked the rear-view mirror, signaled, pulled the car over to the curb. He took her in his arms at once, kissed her fiercely. She yanked her mouth away, looked into his face, her own face flushed, fair complexion, the curse of the Irish. This time she kissed him, even more fiercely, pulled her mouth away again, checked the rear-view mirror, the side mirror, kissed him again, pulled back again, breathless.

  “We’ll get arrested,” she said.

  “Who cares?” he said, and pulled her to him again.

  I AM THE DEAF MAN!

  And accompanying the announcement that he had returned to plague them once again, he had included the first of his Shakespearean quotes:

  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.

  Though damned if Carella could find it anywhere on the web. Here in the office, and again at home on his son’s computer (which had cost him $999, even discounted) he had gone to the RhymeZone Shakespeare Search again and again and again. He had typed in each and every key word or words he could think of, went’st so soon, and world’s stage, and grave’s tiring room, and thought thee dead, and on and on and on, ad infinitum, straight through to Actor’s Art, and act a second part, with no hits at all. Zero. Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits. None at all.

  It suddenly occurred to him…

  Christopher Marlowe.

  One of the writers suspected of being the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Or his sonnets. Or whatever.

  He went to the computer again, and Googled to the name.

  THE OWNER OF THE liquor store was certain that the man who’d come in wearing a ski mask and gloves was black.