Lightning

by Ed McBain

  That second time around, he had senselessly killed the parks commissioner, and then the deputy mayor (and a handful of unselected targets who happened to be in the immediate vicinity when the deputy mayor’s car exploded) and then had threatened to kill the mayor himself, all as part of his grander scheme. The scheme? To extort $5,000 from each of a hundred selected wealthy citizens. The dubious reasoning for believing they would pay? Well, the Deaf Man had warned his previous targets in advance, hadn’t he? And then had carried out his threats. And now he was promising to strike without warning if his new targets didn’t pay. So what would $5,000 mean to men who were worth millions? Even figuring on a mere 1 percent return, the Deaf Man’s expenses would be more than covered. Never mind that he had already killed two selected victims and a handful of innocent bystanders. Never mind that he planned to kill yet a third, the mayor himself. All part of the game. Fun and games. Every time the Deaf Man put in an appearance, a laugh riot was all but guaranteed. For everyone but the cops of the 87th Precinct.

  If those young girls hanging from lampposts were harbingers of something bigger the Deaf Man planned, the Eight-Seven was in for more trouble than it already had or needed. Carella shuddered with the thought, and suddenly pulled his wife close.

  Sarah Meyer was wondering how to tell her husband that she thought their daughter should go on the pill. Meyer was wondering whether she liked his hairpiece. He was also wondering if the Deaf Man was once again in their midst. Not in their immediate midst, since he knew that he and Sarah were alone in bed together, but in the midst of hanging young women from lampposts.

  Meyer did not like the Deaf Man. It had been Meyer’s misfortune, on three separate occasions now, to be the first detective contacted by the Deaf Man. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The first time around, it had been Dave Raskin who’d contacted him about the Deaf Man, who they didn’t even know was deaf at the time, if he really was deaf, which maybe he wasn’t. There were a lot of things they didn’t know about the Deaf Man. Like who he was, for example. Or where he’d been all these years. Or why he was back now, if indeed he was back, which Meyer hoped he wasn’t, but feared he was.

  All Meyer wanted to do was ask Sarah if she liked him better with his hairpiece or without his hairpiece. He was not wearing his hairpiece to bed. If she told him she liked him better with it, he would get out of bed and put it on, and then he would make wild passionate love to her. Either way, with or without the hairpiece, he planned to make wild passionate love to her. He did not want to be thinking about the Deaf Man. He wanted to be thinking instead about Sarah’s splendid legs, thighs, and breasts.

  Sarah was worrying about their only daughter, Susan, who was sixteen years old. More specifically, Sarah was worried about genetics. Her husband had told her on more occasions than she could count that she was blessed with splendid legs, thighs, and breasts. She wasn’t so sure now how she felt about her legs or thighs, but she agreed that she had very good breasts, and there was nothing she liked better (well, almost nothing) than having her breasts fondled. That was where genetics came in. She did not have to worry about her older boy, Alan, so far as genetics were concerned. Nor did she have to worry about her youngest son, Jeff. Alan was seventeen and Jeff was thirteen and the only thing she had to worry about where they were concerned was the possibility that they might begin smoking dope or something, in which case Meyer would break their respective heads. But genetics, ah, genetics.

  Susan, from all external evidence, had inherited the splendid legs, thighs, and breasts Meyer was always telling Sarah she possessed. She had also inherited Sarah’s bee-stung lips, her own and Meyer’s blue eyes, plus blond hair that come from God knew where, and all of this put together made for a very attractive young lady who Sarah hoped was not as fond of being fondled as she herself was.

  That was why Sarah wanted to suggest to Meyer that they both suggest to Susan that Susan suggest to their family doctor that perhaps he ought to put her on the pill. Sarah did not know whether or not her daughter was still a virgin. Susan had become awfully close-mouthed about personal matters in the past several months, a possible sign that she had already been initiated by some hot-blooded high school cowboy (I’ll kill him, Sarah thought), or, on the other hand, a possible sign that she was seriously considering initiation. Either way, Sarah did not want her daughter to become pregnant at the age of sixteen.

  The problem, however, was explaining all of this to Meyer.

  It was Sarah’s firm belief that Meyer thought their daughter had never been kissed.

  Simultaneously, they both began speaking.

  “I’ve been thinking…”

  “Sarah, do you…?”

  They both fell silent.

  “Go ahead,” Meyer said. “You first.”

  “No, you first.”

  Meyer took a deep breath.

  “They’re kidding me about the hairpiece,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The guys.”

  “So?”

  “All the guys,” Meyer said.

  “So?”

  “So…Sarah…do you like the hairpiece?”

  “It’s not me who has to like it,” Sarah said. “It’s on your head.”

  “Well…do you think I look better with it or without it?”

  Sarah considered this for what seemed a long time.

  “Meyer,” she said, “I love you with hair or without hair. To me, you’re you, with hair or without hair. You can go around bald, if you like, or you can wear the wig you’ve already got, or you can buy a blond wig or a redheaded wig, you can grow a mustache or a beard, or you can paint your toenails purple, whatever you do I’ll love you. Because I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too,” he said, and hesitated. “But do you like the wig?”

  “You want an honest answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love to kiss your shiny bald head,” she said.

  “Then I’ll burn the wig,” he said.

  “Yes, burn it.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Whenever,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he would burn it. He sort of liked the way he looked in it. The wig made him look like a detective. He liked looking like a detective. He liked being a detective. Except when the Deaf Man was around. Why did the Deaf Man have to be around again? If it was the Deaf Man. But who else would be hanging girls from lampposts and then leaving identification around to make the job easy? It had to be the Deaf Man. He wondered suddenly if the Deaf Man wore a wig? The Deaf Man was blond, Carella had positively identified him that time he’d got shot. A tall blond man wearing a hearing aid in his right ear. But suppose the blond hair was a wig. Suppose the Deaf Man was really bald? Would they have to start calling him the Bald Man? Did people call Meyer himself the Bald Man behind his back? Was he known throughout the 87th Precinct as the Bald Detective? Throughout the entire city perhaps? The world? He did not want to be known as the bald anything. He wanted to be known as Meyer Meyer. Himself.

  Sarah was talking.

  He had missed the first several words of what she was saying, but it had something to do with people growing up to be beautiful and naturally attracting the attention of other people. He remembered the last time the Deaf Man had come to plague them. Why didn’t he pick on some other precinct, what the hell was it with him? Why the Eight-Seven? Sent photographs to them. Sent each photograph twice. Made it easy for them—well, not so easy, a philanthropist he wasn’t. But threw the challenge in their laps: Dope out what these pictures mean, and you’ll know what I’m up to this time. The pictures, once they doped them out, indicated that he was going to rob another bank. And rob a bank he did. Twice. Sent in a team he knew would be caught if the detectives had properly figured out the pictures he’d sent them, and then sent in a second team an hour and a half later. Almost got away with it, too. Called himself “Taubman” that time around. “Taubman” was German for the Deaf Man. Der taube Mann
. God, Meyer hoped he wasn’t back again.

  “So what do you think?” Sarah said.

  “I hope he isn’t back again,” Meyer said aloud.

  “Who?”

  “The Deaf Man.”

  “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Well, sure, I—”

  “Or are you deaf, too?” Sarah asked.

  “What is it?” Meyer said.

  “I asked you about Susan.”

  “What about Susan?”

  “She’s sixteen.”

  “I know she’s sixteen.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Like her mother.”

  “Thank you. She’s beginning to attract boys.”

  “She’s been attracting them since she was twelve,” Meyer said.

  “You know that?”

  “Of course I know it, am I blind? In fact, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Don’t you think it’s time she saw a doctor?”

  “A doctor?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah. To prescribe the pill for her.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said.

  “I know the idea may be upsetting to you…”

  “No, no,” Sarah said.

  “But I think it’s best to take the necessary precautions. Really. This isn’t the Middle Ages, you know.”

  “I know,” Sarah said.

  “So will you talk to her?”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Sarah said. She was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, “I love you, you know that?” and kissed his shiny bald head.

  Hawes loved to undress women.

  He especially loved undressing women who wore eyeglasses.

  Taking off their eyeglasses was tantamount to stripping them naked. A woman looked particularly soft and desirable once her eyeglasses were removed. He loved to kiss the closed eyelids of a woman whose eyeglasses he had just removed. When he started to take off Annie’s eyeglasses, she said, “No, don’t.”

  They were in her bedroom. They had carried their brandy snifters into her bedroom, and they were sitting on the edge of Annie’s king-sized bed. They had kissed once, gently and exploratively, and then he started to take off her eyeglasses, and he was thinking now that it was starting wrong. If a woman refused to let you take off her eyeglasses, how would she react when you asked her to swing from the chandelier?

  When Hawes was seventeen years old, he had dated a girl who wore eyeglasses, and he had done something he thought was very clever. He had gently taken her eyeglasses from the bridge of her nose, and had breathed on both lenses, and when she asked him why he was doing that, he replied, “So you won’t be able to see what my hands are doing.” The girl had asked him to drive her home at once. He had since learned not to breathe on girl’s eyeglasses; you could fog up a potential situation that way. The situation with Annie Rawles seemed fraught with potential, but she had just told him not to take off her eyeglasses, and he was thinking he had pulled a gaffe equal to the one when he was but a mere callow youth. He looked at her, puzzled.

  “I want to see you,” she whispered.

  He kissed her again. She kissed very nicely, her lips parting slightly to receive his, soft and pliable, a slight inhalation of breath causing an airtight seal between their mouths, he wondered how Sam Grossman at the lab would have explained the phenomenon of such a vacuum, lips pressing to lips, inhalation causing suction suddenly disrupted by the intrusion of probing tongues—he knew suddenly that everything was going to be all right, eyeglasses or no.

  The first time was the most important time; he always listened skeptically when any of the squadroom pundits declared that sex got better as it went along, you learned with practice. In his experience, if the first time wasn’t any good, the next time would be worse, and the time after that would be impossible. In police work, that was an adage: A bad situation can only get worse. It applied to sex as well. He got a little dizzy kissing Annie Rawles, a sure indication that everything was going to be very good indeed. He could not recall ever having grown dizzy just kissing someone. There’s magic in your lips, Kate, he thought, and wondered which Shakespearean play that was from, or had Spencer Tracy said it to Katharine Hepburn in some movie? There’s magic in your lips, he thought, and said aloud, “There’s magic in your lips.”

  “Kate,” Annie whispered. “Henry the Fifth,” and kissed him again.

  It was funny how dizzy he got kissing her. His head was actually buzzing. Not too many people knew how to kiss nowadays. People rushed through kissing as if it were the curtain-raiser to the play itself, an introduction to be hurried through before the real performance started—Henry the Fifth? Was that where the line came from? He’d known once, he was sure, but he’d forgotten. Had Annie been an English major in college? Had she been a kissing major? Jesus, he really did like kissing her. He was reluctant to stop kissing her. He had never in his life felt that he’d be content to spend a night just kissing somebody, but he was close to feeling that now. He remembered that there were things besides kissing, but feeling the way he did—feeling! That was one of the other things besides kissing.

  Once, when he was nineteen, he had dated a girl who didn’t wear eyeglasses, and he had done something else he thought was very clever, with almost the identical result. He had touched the lapel of the jacket the girl was wearing, and he had asked, “Can this be wool?” And then he had touched the collar of the blouse she was wearing, and he had asked, “Can this be silk?” And then he had put his hand on her breast and asked, “Can this be felt?” The girl hadn’t asked him to drive her home, the way the girl with the eyeglasses had. Instead, she just got out of the car and walked home.

  Hawes wondered now if he should touch Annie’s breast. He was having a very good time kissing her, but he was beginning to think he should touch something, too, and her breast seemed a good place to start. His hand was cupped under her chin, he was drinking kisses from her mouth. He allowed his hand to slide tentatively over her throat, and past her collar bone, and onto the silky-feeling fabric of the blue dress she was wearing, and then onto her left breast—

  “No, don’t,” Annie said.

  He thought at once that there were some things grown men never learn, even if they’d been burned often as teenagers. He also thought that he’d been wrong about things going right. Maybe Annie was one of those ladies who thought it was perfectly okay to kiss the night away, something he himself had thought was okay just a moment earlier, but which was not really okay for consenting adults in the privacy of their own home, although the home was hers and not his. He was very confused all at once, in addition to being very dizzy.

  “I want you to undress me first,” Annie whispered.

  He was suddenly more excited than he’d ever been in his life. More excited than that first time on the roof with Elizabeth Parker (every time he saw Andy Parker in the squadroom, he thought of Elizabeth Parker, although the two were not related) when he was sixteen years old and she’d had to teach him where to find it. More excited than that time with a black whore in Panama, when he was twenty years old and serving in the US Navy, a joyously beautiful woman who had taught him more about sex in two hours than he’d learned the rest of his life. (He had never mentioned this to Brown; one day he thought he might.) More excited than that time at a dinner party when the married woman sitting next to him and wearing a slinky green gown cut to her navel slid her hand under the table and onto his thigh, close to his groin, and said while forking shrimp cocktail into her deliciously wicked mouth, “Do you find you have to use your gun often, Detective Hawes?”

  She looked like a schoolteacher in her simple blue dress, Annie Rawles did. Eyeglasses perched on her nose, a faint smile on her mouth. She turned her back to him as if she were about to write something on the blackboard. “The zipper,” she said, and lowered her head, even though she wore her black hair in a wedge cut that exposed the back of her slender neck and the place at the top of her dress where the zipper tab nestled. He kissed the back of her neck. He felt her sh
udder. He reached for the zipper tab and lowered the zipper on her back, exposing the line of her brassiere strap, a blue paler than the dress, crossing her pale white skin. He was reaching for the brassiere clasp, when again she said, “No, don’t,” and turned to face him, and shivered out of the dress, allowing it to cascade over her hips to her ankles. She stepped out of the dress.

  She was wearing lingerie out of the pages of Penthouse, the schoolteacher vanishing in the crumpled pile of simple blue dress on the carpet, the hard-nosed cop transformed in the wink of an instant into a hard-porn sex goddess. A flimsy, lace-edged, pale blue bra lifted her cupcake breasts, revealing the sloping white tops of both, and—in the instance of her left breast—carelessly exposing the roseate and a stubby pink nipple already erect to bursting. The gold chain and pendant dangled between them, as if seeking sanctuary. She wore a garter belt under sheer panties of the same pale blue hue, the darker outline of her black pubic triangle forming a swelling mound at the joining of her legs, the garters taut against firm white thighs. She suddenly seemed full-blown without her protective blue dress, not half so thin as he’d imagined her to be, hips rounded and womanly, shapely legs molded by blue nylons tapering to narrow ankles and high-heeled, patent leather shoes.

  A wisp of black hair curled recklessly from under the lace-edged leg of the sheer panties.

  He was suddenly and outrageously erect. Her eyes moved to the bulge inside his trousers, and the smile she flashed him was as knowing as the one the black whore in Panama had given him when she’d opened the backstreet door of her narrow crib to his timorous knocking. Fiona, her name had been. Fiona of the two short hours and thousand lingering nights.

  He moved toward her, suffocating on a musk he imagined or actually breathed.

  “No, don’t,” she said.

  He stopped.