Hark! (22 page)

Carella wheeled their luggage cart out to the curb for them, and hailed a taxi for them. He watched as the taxi pulled away. They both waved back at him through the rear window, beaming. It occurred to him that his mother really could have come out here by herself.

Alone, he walked back to the parking lot where he'd left the car.

 

574 J
EFFERSON
A
VENUE
was a monolithic polished black granite structure flanked by a fur emporium on one side and a huge bookstore on the other.

When Hawes came walking up from the subway kiosk four blocks away, a full-scale demonstration was going on outside the fur place. The manager of the bookstore was out on the sidewalk, telling a police sergeant that these fur freaks were keeping customers away from his store. The sergeant was telling him this was a free country.

“Then you should be free to wear
furs
if you like,” the manager said. He himself owned a raccoon hat that had cost him a hundred and eighty dollars, though not in the fur emporium next door.

Hawes walked through the line of chanting pickets and into the fur shop. A smartly dressed saleswoman in her fifties, he guessed, came over to him, the smile on her face belying the obvious concern in her eyes. Neatly coiffed hair. Blue eyes in a porcelain face. Eyes darting toward the plate glass windows fronting the store, afraid a brick would come crashing through at any moment. Store dummies wearing mink, sable, red fox, silver fox, raccoon, muskrat, coyote, and a veritable zoo of other animal furs stared eyeless at the protesters outside.

“Yes, sir, may I help you?” the woman asked.

Faint accent there? Nordic? He wondered if they protested the wearing of furs in Sweden or Denmark. He showed her his shield.

“Detective Hawes,” he said. “I'm investigating the shooting outside last Friday.”

“Why don't you do something about the
shouting
outside right this minute?” the woman said.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he said, “but I'm not here about that. May I speak to the manager, please?”

“I
am
the manager,” she said.

“I'd like to talk to whoever may have been working here last Friday morning at eleven o'clock,” he said. “Whoever may have seen or heard anything at all.”

“Do you realize what's happening here?” the woman said.

“Yes, ma'am, I have some idea. But someone tried to kill two people last Friday…”

“Someone's trying to kill
us
right now!”

“I'm sure the sergeant outside will keep it under control.”

“I'm not talking about physical violence. They're too smart for that. I'm talking about ruining our pre-season
business.
”

“Yes, ma'am,” Hawes said.

It occurred to him that not too many good citizens were eager to help a cop investigating a crime, whether it was uptown in the asshole of creation or here in a fancy fur palace on the city's luxury shopping avenue. He was thinking he should have become a dentist, as his mother had suggested.

“Could I talk to your people, please?” he said softly.

She stared at him a moment longer, incredulously, and then said, “I'll see who was here,” and walked off toward the back of the store.

Hawes stood there among all the dead animals, waiting.

 

T
HE SECOND NOTE
arrived at twenty minutes to one.

Hawes was just telling them he'd struck out at the fur salon, where everyone had either been deaf or blind last Friday, where nobody working in the place had heard any shots or seen anyone pumping a dozen or so slugs into the limo. The manager of the bookstore was so incensed about the marchers next door that he could hardly concentrate on anything Hawes was asking. In any case, there were thirty-eight employees in the shop and they serviced thousands of customers every day, so how did he expect them to have heard or seen a mere murder attempt right outside? Why don't you go get those freakin fur freaks off the sidewalk? he'd wanted to know.

Which was when a uniform brought in an envelope that had been delivered downstairs not five minutes ago, interrupting Hawes' doctoral dissertation on the indifference of the citizenry. At that very moment, Murchison was questioning the indisputable hophead who'd delivered it. The addict interrogations had moved from Captain to mere Sergeant in the space of a mere three days.
Sic transit gloria mundi
, even though it was Tuesday.

The note read:

“There's
backward
again,” Meyer said.

“Is he referring to Carmela Sammarone?”

“The
she
, you mean?”

“First time he's used the word
she.
”

“His little hooker emissary.”

“And all the ‘wise, noble, young, rarely featured' goddamn junkies she's sending up here,” Parker said.

“He may also be commenting on his own bad spelling,” Genero said. “All his ‘haths,' you know.”

Nobody thought the Deaf Man was commenting on his own bad spelling. Or Shakespeare's, for that matter.

In fact, Willis was of the opinion that the word
spell
as used herein referred to the woman in question placing a
spell
on someone, a hex, that is, causing him to fall backwards, as it were, as though in a charmed faint.

“Referring to the ‘fall backward,' ” Willis said. “In his first note today.”

“In any case, the key word is
backward
,” Meyer insisted. “Four, three, two. Spears to arrows to darts. In fact, he's telling us we've already cracked the code. ‘Why, you speak
truth
,' he says. The truth is he's going to tell it to us backwards.”

“Tell us
what
backwards?”

“Whatever he's going to do with these darts of his.”

Sitting at the computer, Carella was already shaking his head.

So was Genero.

Two wops in concert, Parker thought.

“Can you imagine him throwing
darts
?” Carella said.

“Or blowing them from some kind of
pipe
?” Genero said.

“I can imagine that,” Meyer said.

“When did you ever see that?” Hawes asked.

“I'm sure I've seen that,” Meyer said. “This city?”

“In which case, who's the friggin
victim
?” Parker asked. “Who's he gonna blow these darts
at
?”

“Whom,” Willis corrected.

“Thank you, Professor, Parker said.

“Well, he's right,” Eileen said protectively.

Kling wondered what the hell was going on between these two all of a sudden.

“It's from
Much Ado About Nothing
,” Carella said. “Act Three, Scene One.”

“Which is exactly what this is,” Parker said. “Much ado about nothing. A whole bunch of bullshit. He's not gonna kill anybody, he's not gonna rob a bank or blow up a building, he's just breaking our balls.”

“Not mine,” Eileen said.

Willis laughed.

Kling was sure now that something was going on here.

“Wanna get some lunch?” Hawes asked him.

 

T
HE TWO MEN
chose a diner a few blocks away from the stationhouse. Hawes ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, a coffee, and a side of fries. Kling ordered the bean soup, a chicken salad, and an iced tea.

“Maybe the crime
already
took place,” he was saying.

“Maybe so,” Hawes said.

“Maybe he's just leading us back to Gloria Stanford. Go
back
, he's telling us. Rubbing our noses in it, you know? Nyaa nyaa, I killed her, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

“That's possible, I guess.”

Both men seemed preoccupied.

Even though they were discussing the Backward-Forward-
Whatever
machinations of the Deaf Man, Kling kept looking up at the clock behind the counter and Hawes kept using his fork to move French fries around in the ketchup on his plate.

“You gonna eat those or just play with them?” Kling asked.

“You want them?”

“No, I'm okay.”

Hawes kept playing with the fries. At last, he looked up and said, “Bert…there's something I want to ask you.”

Ah, Kling thought.
This
is why he wanted to have lunch. Never mind Mr. Adam Fen.

“It's about Augusta.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Will it bother you to talk about her?”

“No. All water under the bridge.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Actually, in fact, it's about Augusta as she
relates
to Honey.”

“Uh-huh. Their names, do you mean?”

“No. Their names? What about their names?”

“Augusta Blair, Honey Blair. I was wondering if you…”

“No, that isn't…”

“…thought maybe they were related or something.”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“Because Blair is a common name, you know,” Kling said.

“Sure. Hey,
Tony
Blair, right?”

“Exactly. Anyway, Blair isn't Gussie's real name.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blair isn't the name on her birth certificate.”

“Then what is it?”

“Bludge.”

“What?”

“Augusta Bludge.”

“You're kidding me.”

“No. She changed it when she went into modeling.”

“Why does that always fascinate people?” Hawes asked. “Who cares
what
name is on a person's birth certificate? Nobody is
born
with a name, you know, there isn't a
name
stamped on anyone's forehead. A person is given a name by his or her parents. A person inherits a surname, like it or not, and then he's given a first name. That's why it's called a ‘given' name. Because it's
given
to him. So if a guy wants to
give
himself a new name, that's entirely
his
business, isn't it? You think I like the name ‘Cotton'?” he asked, gathering steam. “How would you like to go through life with the name ‘Cotton'? Or ‘Hawes,' for that matter. You know how many times I was called ‘Horse' when I was a kid? You know how many times I've been tempted to change it? Cotton Hawes? So who cares
what
Augusta's real name was? Anyway, you don't mean her
real
name, do you? Because the minute she changed it, her
real
name became Blair, didn't it? You mean her
birth
name, don't you? Isn't that what you mean?”

“I guess so,” Kling said, sorry he'd brought up the entire matter.

“Because Augusta Blair is her
real
name now,” Hawes insisted. “What
ever
it used to be. Bludge, Shmudge, who cares?”

“I guess so,” Kling agreed. “She even kept Blair when we got married.”

“Bludge, who'da thought? What is that, German? She looks so Irish. I mean that red hair…”

“Auburn, actually.”

“Who'da thought?” Hawes said, and moved some more fries around on his plate.

“Anyway, I don't think they're related,” Kling said. “Her and Honey. If that's what you wanted to ask.”

“Unless Honey's
real
name,” Hawes said, landing hard on the
real
to make his point yet another time, “was Henrietta Bludge or something.”

“Yes, in which case, they might be sisters,” Kling said.

“Or cousins,” Hawes said.

“Small world, sure,” Kling said.

Both men fell silent.

“But what I wanted to know,” Hawes said, and moved another fry, “is what it was like being married to a celebrity.”