Hark! (14 page)

He still considered her the one who'd got away. Partially because he hadn't been able to hook her on any kind of controlled substance, she'd been too smart for that, but primarily because she'd been socking away bit by bit, piece by piece, what came to a total of fifty-five grand over a period of five years, which she'd offered him in exchange for her freedom. Well, figure it out, man. He wasn't holding her passport or no shit like that, and fifty-five in the here-and-now was worth grabbing on the spot, you never knew how fast these girls would age and become worthless. So he'd said So long, darlin, and kissed her off. But here she was, back again. And asking him to represent her again in a different sort of way.

“You want me to fine however many people it is you'll need in the next however many days…”

“That's right.”

“…screen them for you befo'hand so you'll be sure they willin to march into a
po
-lice station…”

“Yes, Ame.”

“…and then senn 'em to way'ever you be waitin for 'em, so you can pay 'em a hunnerd bucks each to deliver an envelope,
separate
envelopes actually…”

“Separate envelopes, yes.”

“…into this
po
-lice station, whichever one it may be.”

“That's exactly right.”

“And what's in this for me, may I be so bold? What do I
get
for fine-in' these people for you?”

“A thousand bucks today, and a grand a day starting Monday.”

“Till when?”

“Last one'll be next Saturday.”

“That's a total of seven large.”

“Seven, correct.”

Carter thought this over.

“How do I know this won't come back on me?” he asked. “These people marchin up to a
po
-lice station, they sure to be stopped, Mel.”

“I know that. They tell the cops they got the money from me. You're out of this completely. I'm the one pays them, I'm the one they describe.”

“You don't mine bein' made?”

“Not at all.”

Carter thought this over for another moment.

“Make it an even ten K,” he said.

“You've got it,” she said. “I'll need two people today. I'll tell you where they can meet me.”

“Male or female? Or do it matter?”

“As suits you,” Melissa said. “I wouldn't send me one of your whores, though….”

“Now do I look stupid, Mel?” he asked.

“No one could ever say that about you, Ame,” she said, and grinned.

“How do I get paid?” he asked.

“Three now,” she said. “Two grand Monday morning, a grand every morning after that, straight through the twelfth.”

“You trust me that far, huh?”

“Got no reason not to, Ame.”

“That when it's going down?” he asked. “The twelfth? Whatever this thing may be?”

“Now do
I
look stupid, Ame?” she asked.

 

T
HE SECOND NOTE
that Saturday morning was addressed to Miss Honey Blair at Channel Four News. It read:

It was unsigned.

T
HE
D
EAF
M
AN'S
second note was delivered to the 87th Precinct at a little past noon that day by a man who admitted under intense questioning that a pretty redhead had paid him a hundred dollars to take it over here. Before he'd met her at a bar called the Lucky Diamond down on Lewis and Ninth, he'd never seen her in his life. Did this mean they would take the money from him?

“That's
Macbeth
,” Genero said.

Even Parker knew this was definitely not
Macbeth.

“It's
Romeo and Juliet
,” he said.

Eileen did not think the quote on the lieutenant's desk was from
Romeo and Juliet.
She knew that play virtually by heart, or at least she knew the Baz Luhrmann movie version, which she'd seen seven times when it was first released, falling in love with Leonardo di Caprio, who now seemed rather pudgy and middle-aged to her. But this was definitely not
Romeo and Juliet.

Carella knew the quote was from
Hamlet
because back in his green and salad days, he'd played a bearded drama-club Claudius to a zaftig Sarah Gelb's Gertrude. Sarah had thrown herself much too seriously into the Oedipal theory of Hamlet's relationship with his mother, French-kissing twenty-year-old Aaron Epstein during the famous “Now, mother, what's the matter?” scene in the Queen's closet. “What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?” young Sarah had demanded, her breasts heaving in the low-cut Elizabethan gown she wore, a crown tilted saucily on her reddish curls.

After the opening night party, Sarah performed the same osculatory acrobatics with Carella, in the back seat of his father's automobile, which led to a somewhat steamy interlude interrupted by two uniformed cops driving past in a radio motor patrol car. Tossing the beams of their torches through both open back windows, surprising the coupling young lovers—Sarah pulling up her panties, Carella zipping up his fly—those two diligent vigilantes caused him to hate all cops for a good long time. But he would never forget
Hamlet
, oh no, and this now was most definitely
Hamlet.

Hal Willis was wondering why the Deaf Man—if indeed the
Hamlet
quotation had been sent by him—had chosen to bring up the second-act curtain on their dreary Saturday morning routine with perhaps the most famous soliloquy in all literature. Did he feel he had given them information enough about spears and such, and was now ready to move on to another topic? In which case, what might this new topic be, hmmm?

The note had undoubtedly been computer-generated, printed on the same white bond paper he'd used for his previous messages.

“Why
Hamlet
?” Willis asked.

“Why
Macbeth
?” Genero insisted.

“Something in Grover Park again?” Brown suggested. “Like his mischief last time around? Some kind of event in the Cow Pasture?”

“When does Shakespeare on the Green start?” Eileen asked.

“Sometime later this month?”

“Around the fifteenth?”

“Later, I think.”

“But even if it
is
Shakespeare on the Green…”

“Right,” Eileen said.

“Of course,” Meyer agreed.

“…it'd be bullshit, anyway.”

“He never tells us what he's
really
up to.”

“So toss the letter,” Parker suggested, and shrugged.

“He's got to be telling us
something
,” Carella said.

“Even if it's something misleading?”

“Poetry,” Brown said, shaking his head.

“Shakespearean poetry, no less.”

“
Macbeth
, no less!” Genero said, agreeing.

 

M
ELISSA CALCULATED THAT
of the thirty-five large Adam was allotting for operating expenses, Carter was costing her ten, and the various messengers would cost her another, say, two, three thou, depending on how far upward any of them negotiated the basic hundred-dollar delivery fee. That would leave her with a cool profit of, say, twenty thousand.

She had already given Carter three as the down payment for his work, and had paid the twelve o'clock delivery boy a hundred. Because the girl looked so neat and clean and innocent and all, Melissa had given
two
hundred to the four o'clock messenger Ame had sent; she wondered where the hell in Diamondback he'd found somebody who resembled a college girl. So out of the five K Adam had laid on her this morning, she now had something like sixteen hundred left, after cab fares and drinks and coffees and such while she'd waited for the messengers to show up first at the Lucky Diamond and then at the Hotel Majestic lounge, the separate venues (she liked that word) she'd chosen for their meeting places.

Now what she
could
have done was take that sixteen hundred and buy herself some goodies with it, including the lingerie Adam had suggested, but she figured a more profitable investment would be a gift for Adam himself. She decided she'd look for a cashmere robe for him; a nice black cashmere robe would put him in a good mood, his blond hair and all.

But then, because at the back of her mind she still had the feeling that one day he might shoot her dead if he became dissatisfied with one thing or another…

…and since she was already uptown here where she knew most of the criminal element from the days when she was either on her back or her knees, working either day or night to fill the coffers, whatever they were, of her erstwhile representative, Ambrose Carter…

…she decided to visit a man named Blake Fuller, who sold her a neat little Kahr PM 9, which at only 16.9 ounces empty and measuring only four by five-and-a-half inches overall, would fit nicely into her purse, just in case push came to shove later on down the line.

Only cost her five bills, too, which Fuller advised her was a bargain.

That left eleven hundred for the robe.

Thinking she'd done a good day's work so far, she grabbed a taxi and headed for the big department stores midtown.

Along about then, the cute little college girl lookalike was delivering the Deaf Man's third and final note of the day.

 

T
HE NOTE
read:

“At least he spelled everything right this time,” Genero said. “Didn't he?”

Carella was already at his computer, looking for
RhymeZone Shakespeare Search.

“An arrow again,” Eileen said, just as Carella typed in “as stand in narrow lanes.” “Buried in the word
narrow.
”

“First spears, now arrows,” Kling said.

“Arrows all day long.”

“
King Richard II
, Act Five, Scene Three,” Carella read from the screen.

“First
The Tempest,
then
Hamlet
, and now
Richard II,
” Willis said.

“Any importance to these plays he's choosing?” Hawes asked. He was being very careful not to get his open-toed boot stepped on by any of the detectives milling around Carella's desk.

“He's just choosing them at random,” Parker said. “It's all total bullshit.”

“I don't think so,” Carella said. “First off, he's telling us it's going to happen on our watch. He's going to ‘beat our watch.' ”

“That's very clever,” Genero said.

“Thanks,” Carella said.

“I meant
him.
It's very clever of him to have found that reference.”

“He's going to rob our passengers,” Eileen said.

“We don't have any passengers,” Parker said.

“It's something to do with passengers,” she insisted.

“A train?”

“An airplane?”

“A boat?”

“Oh, Jesus, not another boat.”

“Not another rock star, please!”

“Who stands in narrow lanes?” Hawes asked.

“Hookers,” Parker said at once.

This he knew for sure.

 

P
ARKER SUGGESTED THAT
he should be the one who interrogated the girl because he was older and therefore more avuncular than either Hawes, Willis, Genero, or Kling, and perhaps younger but more experienced than Carella, which he wasn't; Carella had been a cop longer than Parker had, and Carella had just turned forty whereas Parker was forty-two.