by Ed McBain
“Are you still there?” the Deaf Man asked.
“Still here,” Meyer said.
“I hope you’re not doing what I think you’re doing. I’ll be gone long before you get here.”
“What is it you think I’m doing?”
“Please, dummy,” the Deaf Man said, “you’re way out of your league. Give this message to Carella. Have you got a pencil?”
“Ready,” Meyer said.
“Tell him a woman named Melissa Summers may try to leave the country in the next few days. Tell him…”
At his own desk, Parker was talking to a phone company supervisor, trying to get an address for the 377 number. With his free hand, Meyer gestured Hurry up!
“…to watch the airports. She’s in possession of…”
“How do you spell that name, please?”
“Summer with an s on the end!” the Deaf Man shouted. “Melissa Summers. Stop…stop trying to keep me on this line!”
He seemed to be suddenly struggling for breath.
“Are you okay?” Meyer asked.
“No, as a matter of fact, I’ve been shot. But don’t…” He struggled for breath again. “Don’t bother putting out…a med alert, I’ve got my own doctor, thanks.”
“Why don’t you let us come help you?” Meyer suggested. We’ll get you to a hos…”
“Please don’t be ridiculous,” the Deaf Man said, and caught his breath again.
Across the room, Parker was just getting off the phone.
“Tell Carella she has the Strad.”
“The what?”
“Tell him I hope he gets her.”
There was a click on the line.
“It’s 328 River Place South,” Parker said.
GENERO KICKED IN the door to apartment 17D at four-fifteen that Saturday afternoon. It was the first time in his life he’d ever kicked in a door. It made him feel like a television cop. He was not alone—in storming the apartment, that is. Parker and Meyer had both done this sort of thing before, and they did not feel like television cops at all. In fact, they felt more like firemen, breaking down the door this way.
Whoever had lived here—
According to the super, the man renting the apartment was named Adam Fen, though recently a good-looking blonde had begun living with him. They figured this had to be the Melissa Summers the Deaf Man had mentioned, but the super didn’t know her name.
Whoever had lived here had left in a very big hurry.
There were blood stains in the entry hall, on the carpet near the hall table. Heavy stains. They figured this was where he’d got shot and where he’d done most of his bleeding. There was also a trail of blood leading first to the bathroom, where a roll of cotton gauze on the sink seemed to indicate he’d tried to stanch the blood and bind the wound, and next to a small office at the rear of the apartment, where blood smears on the computer keyboard seemed to indicate he’d been typing something before he left.
When they booted up the machine, they discovered that all the files had been deleted. The only thing that popped up on the screen was a yellow Stickie note that read:
I’LL BE SEEING YOU, BOYS!
“Guy’s bleeding all over the floor, he stops to write us a note,” Genero said.
“That’s his style, all right,” Meyer agreed.
“I’LL BE SEEING YOU, HUH?” Carella said into the phone.
“Is what the Stickie said.”
“And you think he’s wounded, is that it?”
“No question. He told me he’d been shot, and there’s blood all over the place here.”
“Better put out a Med alert.”
“He said not to bother. He’s got his own doctor.”
“So you think he’s gone again?”
“With the wind.”
“How about the girl? Summers, is it?”
“Melissa Summers. He says she’s heading out of the country.”
“Where?”
“Didn’t say.”
“With the Strad?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Has anyone heard from the Greek yet?”
“Not us. Maybe he called Mid South.”
“Be nice to know what happened.”
“Oh yes.”
“Better contact Homeland, Meyer.”
“I already did. And all the airlines. They’ll be watching for her and the fiddle.”
“If that’s the name on her passport.”
“If she even has a passport.”
There was a long pause on the line.
“So what do we do about him?” Meyer asked.
“Wait, I guess. If we get the girl…”
“If.”
“She may be able to tell us something about him. If not, we grab him when he pops up again.”
“If he pops up again.”
“He always does, Meyer.”
“Death and taxes.”
“Same thing,” Carella said.
There was another pause.
“Well…I’ve got work to do here,” Meyer said.
“Go easy.”
“See you Monday.”
“See you,” Carella said, and hung up.
He stood by the phone with his hand on the receiver for a moment, looking down at the phone, wondering when next they’d see the Deaf Man, thinking never was soon enough. He almost sighed.
Teddy was waiting for him in the bedroom.
He undressed silently, went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and floss, and then went to the bed, and climbed in beside her.
Her hands moved in the air.
It was a lovely wedding, she signed.
He read her hands, nodded.
Didn’t you think so? she signed.
He nodded again.
Steve?
He looked into her eyes.
Are you ever going to get over this, or what?
“Get over what?” he asked mischievously, signing the words at the same time, grinning. Then he took her in his arms, still grinning, and kissed her, and held her close, and she remembered a beginning, long long ago, when a detective named Steve Carella stood hatless and gloveless in the falling snow and offered a girl named Theodora Franklin a single red rose on St. Valentine’s Day—and filled her life with roses forever.
She turned off the bedside lamp, and snuggled close to him again.
AT 3:00 P.M. THE NEXT DAY, a young blond woman checked in at Spindledrift International Airport for Air France’s 5:10 P.M. fight to Paris. Passport Control had been alerted to stop and detain a woman named Melissa Summers. The name in the blonde’s passport was Carmela Sammarone. The inspector merely glanced at her photo, stamped the passport, and said, “Have a nice flight, Miss Sammarone.”
Melissa smiled demurely, and walked towards the security gate, where she placed the violin case she was carrying on the scanning machine.
Yesterday, a Homeland Security officer had listened to Meyer on the telephone, had written down the pertinent information about some valuable violin, asked if this constituted a bomb threat, and when told that it did not, shrugged and thanked Meyer for the “heads-up,” were the exact words he’d used.
The airport security people who opened and examined Carmela Sammarone’s violin case were similarly looking for bombs or guns or knives or tweezers, and in any event would not have known a Stradivarius from a Budweiser. All they did was pat down the case and shake the violin to see if anything suspicious rattled around inside there.
One of the guards remarked, “My uncle used to play the fiddle.”
“That’s nice,” Melissa said, and watched while they closed the lid on the case, and snapped the clips shut.
“Have a nice flight,” the other guard said.
Waiting for takeoff in the first-class section of the plane, Melissa sipped at a glass of ouzo and leafed through the June issue of Vogue.
“First time to Paris?” the flight attendant asked.
“Yes,” Melissa said, smiling.
&
nbsp; It was a beginning.
Acknowledgments
Ever since 1982, a man named Daniel Starer has been doing my research for me. Whether I was writing about life in a convent, or the vicissitudes of the music business, or what it’s like to be eaten alive in a lion’s cage, he has always been there when I needed him. My research requests for Hark! were particularly demanding, but—as always—he came through with patience, good humor, boundless energy, and limitless creativity. I cannot begin to thank him enough. He can be found at http://www.researchforwriters.com.
About the Author
IN 1998, ED MC BAIN WAS the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association’s highest award. He also holds the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Grand Master Award. His most recent 87th Precinct novel was The Frumious Bandersnatch. Under his own name—Evan Hunter—he has enjoyed a writing career that has spanned five decades, from his first novel, The Blackboard Jungle, in 1954, to the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, to Candyland, written in tandem with his alter ego, Ed McBain, to The Moment She Was Gone, published in 2002.