by Ed McBain
“Leave it,” the Deaf Man said.
NOSTRADAMUS
“That’s the latest from our friend,” Meyer said. “Nostradamus.”
“Just the name?” Carella asked.
“That’s all. We’ve been juggling it around up here. So far, we’ve got ‘A SUM’ backwards…”
“Uh-huh, ‘A SUM,’ I see it…’ ”
A MUS
“Backwards, right?”
“Right. Backwards.”
A SUM
“And ‘DARTS’ is buried in there, too. You see it there? ‘DARTS’?”
“Right,” Carella said, “I’ve got it.”
DARTS
“The way arrows was buried in sparr—” Meyer started, and then interrupted himself. “Help you?” he asked. Carella heard a muffled voice on the other end, away from the phone. “Thanks,” he heard Meyer say.
“What’ve you got?” he asked.
“Another one.”
“Another what?”
“A letter. A note. Addressed to you again.”
There was a crackling silence on the line.
“Well, open it!” Carella said.
Outside the closed door to the office, he could hear the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra playing Mezzo Luna, Mezzo Mare…
Heard wedding guests joining in with the lyrics…
Heard Meyer ripping open the envelope…
“Meyer?”
“Yeah.”
“What does it say?”
To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late
“Meyer?”
Meyer read it to him.
“What’s he mean?” Carella asked.
“Mama mi, me maritari…”
“I don’t know,” Meyer said.
“Figghia mi, a cu…”
Carella glanced at the note on his desk:
NOSTRADAMUS
“Damn it, what’s he…?”
“Mama mi, pensaci…”
A SUM
“Si ci dugnu…”
DARTS
“Oh, Jesus, it’s DARTS backwards!” Carella said.
STRAD
“It’s the violin!”
THE VIOLIN IN THE case now tucked under the Deaf Man’s right arm was one of a precious few created by Antonio Stradivari, the master violin-maker, in the early 1700’s—the so-called Golden Period during which he made only twenty-four violins. Sallas’s violin was one of them, a year older than the so-called “Kreutzer” Stradivarius that had recently sold at auction for $1,560,000. The “Taft,” another Stradivarius violin made in that same period, sold at Christie’s for a million-three. The “Mendelssohn” Strad had sold for a million-six. The “Milanollo” of 1728, conserved rather than played over the centuries, was largely considered to be worth at least that much. By a conservative estimate, the Deaf Man calculated that Sallas’s precious little fiddle here was worth something between a million-two and a million-seven—not bad apples for a few weeks’ work, eh, Gertie?
He had driven back to the Knowlton Hotel to make certain that Jack the driver was still securely bound and gagged, had patted him on the head, smiled, and gone to change out of the chauffeur’s uniform he’d purchased last week at Conan Uniforms on Baxter Street. Driving the Regal luxury sedan to a side street some ten blocks from his apartment, he’d bid the car a fond farewell, and left it there locked. The last words he’d heard on the car radio were, “Jack? Are you there, Jack? Have you got your passenger? What the hell is going on, man?”
Now, at twenty minutes to three—wearing a blue suit with the faintest gray shadow stripe, wearing as well a gray shirt that picked up the stripe, and a blue tie that echoed the suit, black shoes, blue socks, the black violin case tucked under his arm—the Deaf Man whistled a merry tune as he strolled jauntily back to the apartment on River Place South—where Melissa Summers was busy cracking his computer.
ON THE PHONE TO Midtown South, Carella told the lieutenant there what he thought was about to happen; the Deaf Man was planning to steal Konstantinos Sallas’s priceless Stradivarius violin. The lieutenant promised to send a contingent of his detectives over to Clarendon at once. He called back five minutes later to say the boys were on the way. But he’d also called Clarendon and the director there was concerned because Sallas hadn’t shown up yet, and it was already twenty minutes to three.
“Where was he coming from?” Carella asked.
“The Intercontinental,” the lieutenant told him.
“Right here in the Eight-Seven,” Carella said, and remembered the Deaf Man’s first note that Saturday morning:
GO TO A PRECINT’S SHIT!
“How was he getting there?”
“Car and driver.”
And Carella remembered another note from what now seemed a long time ago:
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch, and rob our passengers.
“Carella? You still there?”
“I’m still here,” he said.
Outside, he could hear the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra starting another set, saxophones soaring. The words of the Deaf Man’s final note echoed in his mind:
To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late
…and he realized all at once that the violin had already been stolen, yes, right here in the old Eight-Seven.
Outside, the orchestra was playing a sad sweet song.
For no good reason he could discern, Carella put his head on his folded arms and began sobbing.
THE THING ABOUT A computer was that it not only told you where to find things, it also told you where you’d gone to find those things. So right here in Adam’s little office at the rear of the apartment, there was a pretty good record of all the sites he’d visited in the past few weeks, especially those he’d marked as favorites. Which showed he trusted her. She guessed. Leaving them there for her to see. Or maybe he wasn’t as smart as she thought he was.
All this stuff about violins made by this guy Stradivari. Oh my! So that’s what Adam was after, the Greek’s fiddle. My, my, my. Page after page of computer information about Stradivari and Amati and Guarneri and the 18th century, and the prices all these various violins had fetched at various auctions, and who owned which violin when, or even now, and even what kind of varnish was used on them, my, my, my, Melissa thought.
So that’s what he’d meant about a seven-figure payday. My, my. A violin. Who’d’ve imagined it? A mere violin. And, oh my, lookee here. All the sites he’d visited while composing the little notes she’d delivered for him, and folders he’d made to store files from those sites, folders with titles like SPEARS, and ARROWS, and DARTS, and more folders titled ANAGRAMS, and PALINDROMES, and yet more folders titled NUMBERS, and TIMES, and on and on, oh my oh my.
There was also a folder titled SKED, and when she opened that she found a file titled CALENDAR. She thought at first that this might tell her something about their trip to Tortola, but no, it was just a sort of coded timetable for the past week:
MON 6/7 DARTS
TUE 6/8 BACK TO THE FUTURE
WED 6/9 NUMBERS
THU 6/10 PALS
FRI 6/11 WHEN?
SAT 6/12 NOW!
But he’d been serious about taking her to Tortola once this was all over, because sure enough here was a folder titled TRAVEL, and inside that was a file called AIR. And there before Melissa’s very eyes, right there on the computer screen, was a flight itinerary:
Date: 13JUNE–SUNDAY
Flight: AMERICAN AIRLINES 1635
Departure: SPNDRFT INTL 9:30 AM
Arrival: SAN JUAN PR 2:11 PM
……………………………
Date: 13JUNE–SUNDAY
Flight: AMERICAN AIRLINES 5374
Departure: SAN JUAN PR 3:00 PM
Arrival: TORTOLA BEEF IS 3:39 PM
Which made her wonder if he’d already booked the flights.
So she kept surfing.
CARELLA WAS SITTING there at the desk with his head on his folded arms, w
ondering why this wedding today had been so joyless for him, wondering why he hadn’t danced with either his mother or his sister today, wondering why both the champagne and the music had seemed so flat today. And he thought, My father should be here today. He thought, My father should still be alive. But of course, his father was dead.
Luigi Fontero stopped in the doorway to the banquet hall’s small office, looked in, puzzled, and then went to the desk, and came around it, and put his hand on Carella’s shoulder.
“Steve?” he said. “Ma che cosa? What’s the matter?”
Carella looked up into his face.
“Figlio mio,” Luigi said. “My son. Dica mi. Tell me.”
And Carella said, “I miss him so much,” and threw himself into Luigi’s arms, and began sobbing again.
SHE WAS WAITING FOR HIM when he got back to the apartment with the violin. He set it down on the hall table, next to the phone there, as casually as if the Strad were worth a nickel instead of more than a million. He put the blue sports bag containing the Uzi on the floor then, just under the table. Turning to her, he said, “I see you got back all right.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Took a taxi over from the Knowlton. Hardly any traffic at all.” She nodded at the violin case. “I see you got back all right, too,” she said.
“Indeed.” He came across the room to her, arms outstretched. “What’ve you been doing?” he asked.
“Surfing your computer,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her. Arms still stretched to embrace her, but not so sure now. She couldn’t tell whether the look on his face was quizzical or amused or just what. She didn’t much care what it was; she knew what she knew.
“Now why’d you do that?” he asked.
Quizzical, she guessed. The look. Or amused. Not at all menacing. Not yet, anyway.
“Oh, just keeping myself busy,” she said. “A girl can learn lots of things from a computer.”
“And did you learn lots of things?”
“I learned how much the fiddle there is worth.”
“I told you how much it’s worth.”
“Seven figures, you said. Isn’t that right?”
“Yep.”
“That’s what the computer said, too.”
“Why’d you have to go to the computer to learn what I’d already…?”
“You didn’t tell me you were stealing a precious violin, Adam.”
“There was no need for you to know that.”
“No, there was only a need for me to socialize with junkies…”
“You were free to choose your own messeng…”
“…and fuck a bodyguard, and let a chauffeur think I was about to fuck him.”
“Is something wrong, Lissie?” he asked, trying to look concerned and pleasant and caring.
“Oh yes, something is wrong,” she said, and reached into her handbag, and pulled out an American Airlines ticket folder and flapped it on the air. “This is wrong,” she said.
“Where’d you get that, Liss?”
“Top drawer of your office desk. Right under the computer.”
“You have been busy.”
“It’s a one-way ticket to Tortola,” she said. “Made out to Adam Fen.”
“There’s another ticket in that drawer, Liss.”
“No, there isn’t. I turned it upside down and inside out, I looked through that whole damn desk, and your dresser, too, and all the pockets in all the suits and jackets in your closet, and there is no other ticket. There is just this one ticket, Adam. Your ticket. You never planned to take me with you at all, did you?”
“Where’d you get such an idea, Liss? Of course you’re coming with me. Let me find the other ticket. Let me show you…”
“There is no other ticket, Adam.”
“Liss.”
“There is none!” she said, and shook the folder on the air again. “You never planned to give me any part of that million-whatever, did you? You just used me, the same way Ame Carter used me. I was just a handy little whore to you, wasn’t I?”
“Well,” he said, and smiled, and spread his hands reasonably, “that’s what you are, isn’t it, Liss.”
Which was perhaps a mistake.
He realized this when he saw her dip into her bag again and come up with not another airline ticket, but with what looked instead like a small nine-millimeter pistol.
“Careful,” he said.
“Oh yes, careful,” she said, and waved the gun recklessly in the air. “Know what else I found on your computer, Adam? I found…”
“I can assure you, Lissie, there is another ticket in my desk. Let’s go look for it, shall…?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“We’ll look for it togeth…”
“No, we won’t look for it together because it doesn’t exist. Would you like to know what else I found?”
He said nothing.
He was wondering how he could get to that blue sports bag under the hall table, wondering how he could get his hands on the Uzi in that bag before she did something foolish here. He was not eager to get shot again. It had taken too long for Dr. Rickett to fix him up after the last time a woman shot him. He did not think she was going to shoot him, but he did not like the way she kept tossing that gun around so negligently.
“I found a file titled ‘PROSPECTS,’ ” she said, “and another one titled ‘BUYERS,’ which had some of the same names and addresses in them, little bit of duplication there, Adam? Little redundancy?”
He said nothing.
He was wondering how he could back slowly away from her, toward the sports bag, without tipping his hand. He certainly did not want to get shot here. Not again.
“I’m figuring these are the names of people who might care to own that little Stradivarius across the room, Adam, am I right?”
He still said nothing.
“Names and addresses of all those prospects and buyers, I don’t think they’d give a rat’s ass who they bought that fiddle from, you or me, so long as they get their hands on it, am I right?”
“Backups, Liss. Merely backups. In case the fiddler refuses to pay the piper.”
“Meaning?”
“We’ll offer the Strad to Sallas first. If he pays what we want for it…”
“We?”
“Of course, Liss. You and I. We. Us. If he gives us what the fiddle’s worth, it’s his again. If not, as you surmised, there are all those redundant prospects and buyers out there. Can you imagine such people in this world, Liss? People who don’t know how to play the violin, who don’t care at all about music, people who just want to own something beautiful and precious.”
“I can imagine them, yes.”
“Like you,” he said, and tried a smile. “Beautiful and…”
“Bull shit!” she said, and waved the gun again.
“Careful with that thing,” he said, and spread the fingers of his right hand on the air, sort of patting the air with them, urging caution.
“What I’m going to do right now,” she said, “is buy myself a ticket to Paris or London or Rome or Berlin or Buenos Aires or Mexico City or Riyadh, where all these backups seem to live, and see which one of them might care to take this fiddle off my hands. I feel sure…”
“Why don’t we just do that together?” he suggested.
“No, why don’t we just not do that together!” she said, and rattled the gun on the air again. “I want to be on that plane alone. Without you, Mr. Fen. Just me and the Strad, Mr. Fen. And then I’ll see about all these violin-lovers all over the world. Maybe they’ll be willing to pay a handy little whore even more than…”
“I never called you a…”
“Oh, didn’t you?” she said, and waved the gun at the floor. “Lie down, Adam. Face down. Hands behind your head. Do it!”
“Liss…”
“Do it! Now!”
“You’re making a big mis…”
“I said now!
”
He turned swiftly and moved closer to the hall table, and then got down on his knees, and then lowered himself flat on the floor, positioning himself so that his head and his hands were close to the hall table. He could feel her presence behind him, the gun level in her hand. If he did not make his move now…
In that next crackling instant, she realized he was reaching into the blue sports bag on the floor under the table, and she saw what was in that bag, saw his hand closing around the handle of the automatic weapon there. And in that same crackling instant, he saw from the corner of his eye the little gun leveling in her hand, steady now, no longer uncertain, and he tried desperately to shake the Uzi loose of the bag before…
Almost simultaneously, they thought exactly the same thing: No, not again!
She meant getting fucked by yet another pimp.
He meant getting shot by yet another woman.
Actually, she did manage to say just that single word aloud, “No!”, before she shot him in the back the same way she’d shot that other pimp, Ambrose Carter.
Twice.
The same way.
16.
IN THIS CITY, there are beginnings, and there are sometimes endings. And sometimes those endings aren’t quite the ones imagined when you and I were young, Maggie, but who says they have to be? Where is it written that anyone ever promised you a rose garden? Where is it written?
“I understand someone sent you a note,” Hawes said.
“I get notes all the time,” Honey said.
“This note was an important one,” he said.
They were in her apartment. The apartment on the seventeenth floor of the building where Eddie Cudahy had taken a potshot at him on Wednesday morning, the second day of June. Several potshots, in fact.
It was now three o’clock on the afternoon of the twelfth, ten days and some eight hours later, but who was counting? Hawes had already arrested, questioned, and booked Eddie Cudahy, but Honey Blair was still in her nightgown and peignoir, trying to look innocent when she knew exactly which note Hawes was talking about. He was talking about the Note.
DEAR HONEY:
PLEASE FORGIVE ME AS I DID NOT KNOW YOU WERE IN THAT AUTOMOBILE.