Hark! (17 page)

Well, she was here tonight to teach
him
a lesson.

Teach Mr. Ambrose Carter a lesson.

Teach him you don't go taking money from a person, even if she was a whore, and then not deliver on your promise. You just don't do that.

Not to Melissa Summers, anyway.

She waited till he finished his drink, waited till he paid for it and came out of the bar, walking a bit unsteadily, watched him from across the street, and then caught up with him just as he was unlocking the door to his car.

“Ame?” she said.

He turned.

He was looking at a small gun in her hand. Seemed like some kind of toy gun made out of plastic.

“Well, look who the fuck's here,” he said.

“I'll need my money back, Ame,” she said.

“Get lost, ho,” he said, and went back to unlocking his car door, turning his back on her.

It was calling her a whore that did it, she supposed. He shouldn't have called her a whore. Shouldn't have turned his back on her, either. Shouldn't have dissed her that way. She thought maybe that was why she shot him twice in the back, once while he was still standing, and another time after he'd crumpled to the sidewalk.

Or maybe it was because she'd sucked too many cocks for the son of a bitch in the five years she'd worked for him.

Maybe that was it.

 

S
HE CAME OUT
of the bathroom wearing only a white garter belt and red high-heeled pumps. The garter belt, white, made her look somewhat virginal. The pumps matched her lipstick, a red much brighter than her hair, too bright to be worn by anyone but a whore. She had pulled the hair back into a ponytail that again made her appear girlish, a teenager surprised, echoing the pristine white of the garter belt. The garter belt exposed the wild red tangle of her pubic hair, enforcing the whore image again. She was a study in contrasts tonight, Eileen Burke.

“I think I look beautiful,” she said, sounding amazed by the discovery.

“You are beautiful,” Willis said, and held out his hand to her.

She came to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He kissed first her hand, and then the faint scar on her left cheek. He kissed the hollow of her throat and her nipples. He kissed her below, where the red hair curled recklessly beneath and around the garter belt, and then he found her lips and kissed her longingly and tenderly, murmuring “Eileen, Eileen, Eileen” against her mouth, and her hair and her ears and her shoulders and her neck, making her feel beautiful, genuinely beautiful and clean for the first time since she was raped and stabbed.

He took her in his arms and lowered her onto the bed.

Discovering her, marveling at her presence beside him, he repeated over and over again, “Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, Eileen.”

Her name.

No one else's name.

Hers alone.

W
ELL, WELL, WELL,
now what have we here?” Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks asked.

He was talking to the uniformed cops who'd called in what appeared to be a homicide at eight-fifteen this bright Monday morning, June 7, which was when Police Officers Mary Hannigan and Roger Bradley found what appeared to be a dead body on the sidewalk alongside what appeared to be a BMW sedan.

Long before the two officers happened across the stiff on their first circuit of Adam Sector during the first half-hour of the day shift, a great many other people had noticed it lying there on the sidewalk in a huge puddle of blood. All through the livelong night and early morning, these passersby glanced down at the body and hurried on along because, this neighborhood being what it was, nobody thought it prudent to report what sure as hell looked like a murder. Especially those good citizens who recognized the corpse as being the remains of one Ambrose Carter, an influential, what you might call, pimp.

Ollie recognized Carter the moment the ME rolled him over.

“Ambrose Carter, Pimp,” he announced, spreading his hands on the air and raising his voice to the world at large, but especially to the two Homicide cops who'd been sent over to lend authority to the vile goings-on up here in the Eight-Eight.

“I know all the girls in his stable,” Weeks said.

“Biblically, no doubt,” the ME commented drily.

“You think one of them might've aced him?” Muldoon asked.

“It's been heard of,” Mulready said.

The two Homicide dicks were wearing black suits, black socks and shoes, black ties, white shirts, black snap-brimmed fedoras. They looked like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, except that they were both white. They had already decided there was nothing important for them up here. A dead pimp? Who cared?

“Shell casings there,” Muldoon said, indicating them with a nod of his head.

“I saw them,” Weeks said.

“By the way, you ever find the guy who stole your book?”

“Not yet,” Ollie said. “But I will.”

“What book?” Mulready asked.

“Detective Weeks here wrote a book,” Muldoon said.

“You're kidding me.”

“Tell him, Ollie.”

“I wrote a book, yes,” Ollie said. “What's so strange about that?”

“Nothing at all,” Muldoon said. “Every detective I know has written a book.”

“Not me,” Mulready said.

“Not me, neither,” Muldoon said. “But we're exceptions to the rule, right, Ollie?”

“I don't need this,” Ollie said.

“Can I buy this book on Amazon?” Mulready asked.

“It ain't been published yet,” Muldoon said. “That's what's so fascinating about it. The manuscript was stolen from the back seat of Detective Weeks's car by some transvestite hooker.”

“You're kidding me, right?” Mulready said.

“Who you ain't caught yet, am I right, Ollie?”

“Shove it up your ass,” Ollie explained.

The Mobile Crime boys were just arriving.

 

M
ELISSA HAD BEGUN
looking for her next three messengers immediately after she ran from what she supposed the cops would now be calling the “crime scene.” Hadn't thought to clean up after herself, pick up those little brass thingies from the sidewalk, whatever you called them, she'd thought of that only later; they could identify a weapon from stuff like that, couldn't they? She just wanted to get the hell out of there fast. Before last night, she'd never shot a person in her life, no less killed one, and she was just plain scared.

But that was last night and now was now.

Sitting in the Starbucks on Rafer and Eleventh, her hand shaking only slightly as she lifted a cup of espresso macchiato to her lips, she read both morning newspapers and could not find a single article about the death of a pimp named Ambrose Carter. Not a single paragraph. Not a single word. As her mother was fond of saying:
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

She was feeling exceptionally fine this morning.

'Tis pity she's a whore and all that, but it wasn't every day you got to kill the pimp who'd turned you out.

Smiling secretly, she sipped serenely.

Along about now, the first of the three envelopes should be arriving at the Eight-Seven. She had arranged to meet later with her next two chosen messengers, exchange cash for envelopes. One, two, three, and finished for the day.

The way she'd found all three delivery boys was by remembering once again what her mother had taught her at her knee:
Desperate people do desperate things.

Only this time, she'd looked for the
most
desperate people she could find.

Simple.

She took another satisfying sip of espresso.

Maybe she'd even buy herself one more cup.

Maybe a double this time.

And a chocolate chip cookie.

What the hell.

 

“A
sword
now?” Meyer asked.

“From spears to arrows to a sword,” Carella said.

He was already at the computer.

“Shouldn't it be ‘
Has
a sharp edge'?” Genero asked.

“
Hath
is what they said back in those days,” Parker explained.

“Sounds like a lisp,” Genero said.

“Maybe he's gay,” Parker suggested. “This guy whose sword
hath
a sharp edge.”

“Don't forget it's
long
, too,” Eileen said, looking all wide-eyed and innocent.

“And reaches far,” Willis added.

Kling darted a look at both of them.

“Party's getting rough again,” Hawes said.

“ ‘Bosom,' yeah,” Genero said, grinning.

“It's from
King Henry VIII
,” Carella said. “Act One, Scene One.”

“Which tells us nothing at all,” Kling said.

“It tells us we
know
him,” Brown said, “and we know he's out for revenge.”

“That's for sure.”

“You think he's
really
gonna use a sword?” Hawes asked. “For whatever he's planning?”

“Well, he
said
no more arrows, didn't he? Where's that other note?”

Carella went searching through the notes they'd received the week before. He found the one he was looking for, put it on the desk for the others to look at again:

“Doesn't say anything about swords,” Parker said. “Just says from now on he's gonna play with sparrows.”

“Does he mean girls?” Genero asked. “Chicks?”

“They call 'em birds in England,” Willis said, nodding.

“Sparrows,” Meyer said, and shrugged. “Could be. Who the hell knows?”

“The Shadow knows,” Genero said.

“Dee Shadow know,” Brown said, affecting a thick, down-home, watermelon-eating accent.

“
Sparrows
has
arrows
in it, you know,” Willis said.

“Hath,”
Parker corrected.

“I mean, the
word sparrows.
It has the word
arrows
in it.”

“So you told us,” Hawes said.

“Just mentioning it. I mean, if we're still on the spears-to-arrows-to-swords kick.”

“Don't forget he hath a
long
sword,” Eileen said, looking innocent again.

“And that thither he will dart it,” Willis said.

“It doesn't say that,” Kling said, sounding annoyed.

Carella looked at him.

“Well, more or less,” Willis said, and shrugged.

Eileen shrugged, too.

“Or maybe we're missing the
point
,” Hawes said, and grinned.

“Is that another sword joke?” Genero asked.

 

K
ONSTANTINOS
S
ALLAS
seemed to be a creature of habit.

The Deaf Man had been trailing him for the past week now, and his routine never varied. The man was staying at the new Intercontinental Hotel on Grover Avenue, at the high-rent reaches of the 87th Precinct, facing Grover Park. Enter the park at Sakonuff Street, follow the footpath uptown, past the zoo, wander crosstown past the lake, under the arches, and you'd come out a few blocks from the 87th Precinct stationhouse, where just about now—he glanced at his watch—someone should be delivering the second of his notes that day.

Every day since he'd arrived from Athens, Sallas left his hotel at 8:30
A.M.
and in the company of his bodyguard walked directly to Clarendon Hall, which took him precisely seventeen minutes. At 8:48, he entered the concert hall by the stage door, where a uniformed guard challenged him on only the first day.

It was no different today.

It was now 8:48:17 by the Deaf Man's digital watch, and Sallas was just entering the hall, the bodyguard trailing dutifully behind him.

Later, the Deaf Man thought.

 

T
HE
D
EAF
M
AN
was not the only cheap thief working the Eight-Seven and environs that Monday morning.

At a quarter past nine, Parker and Genero went to investigate the apparent strangulation of a seven-month-old baby in her crib. The father, a letter carrier, had left for work at five this morning. The mother was in hysterics when she let the detectives into the apartment. There were purple bruises on the infant's throat. Her tongue bulged out of her mouth. A window alongside the baby's bed was open to the fresh breezes of early June. The mother told them she was sleeping soundly when her husband left for work. She didn't know the baby was dead till she woke up around a quarter to nine. She'd called the police at once.

In the hallway outside, Genero said, “The father did it.”

“Wrong, Richard,” Parker said. “The mother.”

Twenty minutes later, Willis and Eileen went out together to investigate a burglary in a lingerie shop the night before. The owner of the shop, a woman who spoke English with a French accent, told them she'd opened the shop at ten o'clock this morning to find everything “t'rown all over zee place like you see it now, eh?” Waving her hands on the air. Indeed, there were panties and slips, bras and garter belts, kimonos and teddies, tangas and boyshorts, merry widows and bustiers strewn all over the shop. The cash register drawer was open, but the lady told them she'd taken its contents home with her when she left last night at seven. Which might have accounted for why the intruder had gone berserk inside there.

“In England, they call these ‘suspenders,' ” Willis told Eileen, lifting from the floor a garter belt trimmed in black lace.

“Do you have this in white?” Eileen asked the lady.

Cost her sixty bucks.

She winked at Willis when they left the shop.

At ten-thirty that morning, Carella and Hawes went out to investigate an apparent suicide on Silvermine Oval, in a building not too far from where Gloria Stanford had been shot to death a week ago today. The woman in the tub was naked. The ME pronounced her dead, and suggested she'd electrocuted herself by dropping a hair dryer into the water.

“Nice tits, though,” Monoghan said.

“Great jugs, you mean,” Monroe corrected.

Carella wondered if someone other than the dead woman had dropped that dryer into the tub. The super of the building told them the woman's husband was a stockbroker downtown, left for work very early every morning. At a little before eleven, they headed down to the financial district to ask him a few questions.

Kling and Brown, the Good Cop / Bad Cop team, caught a squeal closer to home at five past eleven. Drive-by shooting. Gang stuff. Dead boy on the sidewalk. Nobody saw or heard anything. They were back in the squadroom by twelve-fifteen. Everyone else drifted in by the half-hour.