Hark! (3 page)

Carella was on the phone with his sister, Angela. She had just told him he was a cad. Not in those words, exactly. What she'd actually said was “Sometimes you behave like a spoiled brat.”

This from his kid sister.

Not such a kid anymore, either.

All grown up, divorced once, and about to marry the district attorney who'd let their father's killer escape justice. Or so it seemed to Carella. Which was probably why his sister expressed the opinion that he sometimes behaved like a spoiled brat.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said into the phone, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper because a squadroom was not particularly the most private place in the world.

“What you said to Mama,” Angela said.

She was referring to dinner at their mother's house yesterday. Carella felt like telling her that what had made that Memorial Day memorable for a woman named Gloria Stanford was getting shot twice in the chest, with both bullets passing through her heart, and that this morning, he had looked down into that woman's dead eyes, staring up at him wide open before the ME gently lowered her lids. He wanted to tell her that it had been a long, tiring day, and that he had just finished typing up the details of the case, and was ready to call home to tell Teddy he'd be on the way in fifteen—he glanced up at the wall clock—make that thirteen minutes, and he didn't need a scolding just now from his kid sister, was what he felt like telling her.

Instead, he said, “I told Mama I was very happy. In fact, I told
both
of you…”

“It was your tone,” Angela said.

“My what?”

“The tone of your voice.”

“I meant what I said. I'm very happy Mama is getting married so soon after Papa got killed, and I'm very happy you're…”

“That's exactly what I mean. That sarcastic, sardonic tone of voice.”

“I did not mean to sound either sarcastic
or
sardonic. You're both getting married, and I'm very happy for you.”

“You still think Henry ran a shoddy trial.”

“No, I think he did his best to convict Papa's murderer. I just think the defense outfoxed him.”

“And you still hold that against him.”

“Sonny Cole is dead,” Carella said. “It doesn't matter anymore.”

“Then why do you keep harping on it?”

“I don't.”

“Why do you keep
behaving
as if I shouldn't marry Henry, and Mama shouldn't marry Luigi?”

“I wish he'd change his name to Lou,” Carella said.

“That's just what I mean.”

“And I wish he'd move here instead of taking Mama with him to Italy.”

“His business is in Italy.”

“And mine is here.”

“You're not the one marrying Mama!” Angela said.

“That's true,” Carella said. “I'm not the one marrying Henry Lowell, either.”

There was a long silence on the line. In the background, Carella could hear the voices of the other detectives in the squadroom, all of them on their own phones, at their own desks.

At last, Angela said, “Get over it, Steve.”

“I'm over it,” he said. “You're both getting married on June twelfth. I'm giving both of you away. Period.”

“You even make that sound ominous. Giving us away. You make it sound so final. And yes, ominous.”

“Sis,” he said, “I love you both.
You
get over it, okay?”

“Do you really?” Angela asked. “Love us both?”

“With all my heart,” he said.

“Do you remember when you used to call me ‘Slip'?” she asked.

“How could I forget?”

“I was thirteen. You told me a thirteen-year-old girl shouldn't still be wearing cotton slips.”

“I was right.”

“You gave me an inferiority complex.”

“I gave you an insight into the mysterious ways of womanhood.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” Angela said, but he could swear she was smiling.

“I love you, bro,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he said, “I have to get out of here. Talk to you later.”

“Give my love to Teddy and the kids.”

“I will,” he said. “Bye, sweetie.”

He pressed the receiver rest button, waited for a dial tone, and then began dialing home.

 

A
RELATIONSHIP CAN
settle down into a sort of complacency, you know. You forget the early passion, you forget the heat, you begin to feel comfortable in another sort of intimacy that has nothing to do with sex. Or if it does, it's only because the idea of being loved so completely, of loving someone back so completely, is in itself often sexually exciting. This profound concept did not cross the minds of either Bert Kling or Sharyn Cooke as they spoke on the telephone at eighteen minutes to four that afternoon. They simply felt snug and cozy with each other, sharing their thoughts as their separate days wound down in separate parts of the city.

Sharyn worked in the police department's Chief Surgeon's Office at 24 Rankin Plaza, over the bridge in Majesta. As the city's only female Deputy Chief, she was also its only black one. A board-certified surgeon with four years of medical school, plus five years of residency as a surgeon, plus four years as the hospital's chief resident, she now earned almost five times as much as Kling did. Today, one of the cops she'd seen on a follow-up had been shot in the face at a street demonstration six months earlier. Blinded in the left eye, he was now fully recovered and wanted to go back to active duty. She had recommended psychiatric consultation first: a seriously wounded cop is often thought of as a jinx by his fellow officers, who sometimes tended to shun him. She told this to Kling now.

“I'm seriously wounded, too,” he said.

“Oh? How's that, hon?”

“We've been on the phone for five minutes, and you haven't yet told me you love me.”

“But I
adore
you!” she said.

“It's too late to apologize,” he said.

“Where do you want to eat tonight?”

“You pick it, Shar.”

“There's a place up in Diamondback serves real down-home soul food. Want to try it?”

“Wherever.”

“Such enthusiasm,” she said.

“I'm not very hungry. Cotton and I were working a burglary over on Mason, we stopped for a couple of late pizzas afterward.”

“Shall we just order in?”

“Whatever,” he said. “
Law and Order
is on tonight, you know.”

“
Law and Order
is on
every
night,” she said.

“I thought you liked
Law and Order.
”

“I adore
Law and Order.
”

“That's just what I mean,” he said. “You say you adore me, but you
also
adore
Law and Order.
”

“Ahh, yes, but I
love
you,” she said.

“At last,” he said.

Not exactly hot and heavy.

But they'd been living together for quite a while now.

And neither of them ever once thought trouble might be heading their way.

Had they but known.

 

T
HIS WAS STILL
the early days of their relationship. Everything was still whispers and heavy breathing. Innuendos. Promises. Wild expectations. Covert glances around the room to see if the phone conversation was being overhead. Hand cupped over the mouthpiece. Everything hot and heavy.

Honey Blair was in a large, open room at Channel Four News, sitting at a carrel desk, her back to the three other people, two men and a woman, occupying the room at the moment. What they were doing was frantically compiling some last-minute news segments that would go on the air at six
P.M.
Honey was telling Hawes that before she saw him tonight, she would have to run downtown to do a remote from the Lower Quarter, where some guy had jumped out the window of a twenty-first-floor office. She'd be heading out in half an hour or so.

“I can't wait,” she whispered into the phone.

“To scrape your jumper off the sidewalk?” Hawes asked.

“Yes, that, too. But, actually…”

She lowered her voice even further.

“…I can't wait to jump on
you
!”

“Careful,” he warned, and glanced around to where the other detectives all seemed preoccupied with their own phone conversations.

“Tell me what
you
can't wait to do,” she whispered.

“I'd get arrested,” he whispered.

“You're a cop, tell me, anyway.”

“Do you know that little restaurant we went to the other night?”

“Y-e-ess?”

“That very crowded place where everyone turned to look at you when we walked in…?”

“Flatterer.”

“It's true. Because you're so beautiful.”

“Don't stop, sweet talker.”

“I want you…”

“I want you, too.”

“I'm not finished,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“I want you to go to the ladies room…”

“Right now?”

“No, in that restaurant.”

“Y-e-ess?”

“And take off your panties…”

“Oooo.”

“And bring them back to the table and stuff them in the breast pocket of my jacket.”

“Then what?”

“Then you'll be sitting there in that crowded room with everyone knowing you're Honey Blair from Channel Four News…”

“Honey Blair, Girl Reporter.”

“Yes, but I'll be the only one who knows you're not wearing panties.”

“Even though they're sticking out of your jacket pocket like a handkerchief?”

“Even though,” he said.

“And then what?”

“Then we'll see.”

“Oh, I'll just
bet
we will,” Honey whispered.

Hot and heavy.

Like that.

Not a worry in sight.

Little did they know.

 

T
HE BICYCLE COURIER
was a Korean immigrant who not five minutes earlier had almost caused a serious accident when he ran a red light on Culver Avenue and almost smacked into a taxi driven by a Pakistani immigrant whose Dominican immigrant passenger began cursing in Spanish at the sudden brake-squealing stop that hurled her forward into the thick plastic partition separating her from the driver.

Now, safe and sound, and smiling at the desk sergeant, the courier asked in his singsong tongue if there was a Detective Stephen Carella here. Murchison took the slender cardboard envelope, signed for it, and sent it upstairs.

The packet was indeed addressed to Carella, the words
DETECTIVE STEPHEN LOUIS CARELLA
scrawled across the little insert slip, and below that the address of the precinct house on Grover Avenue. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ripped open the tab along the top end of the stiff envelope, and found inside a white business-size envelope with his name handwritten across it again,
DETECTIVE STEPHEN LOUIS CARELLA
.
He opened this smaller envelope, and pulled from it a plain white sheet of paper upon which were the typewritten words:

WHO'S IT, ETC?
A DARN SOFT GIRL?
O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

“Who's it from?” Meyer asked, walking over.

“Dunno,” Carella said, and turned the packet over in his hands. The return name on the delivery insert, in the same handwriting as Carella's scribbled name, was
ADAM FEN
.
The return address was for a post office box at the Abernathy Station downtown.

“Anybody you know?” Meyer asked.

“Nope,” Carella said, and looked at the note again.

WHO'S IT, ETC?
A DARN SOFT GIRL?
O, THERE'S A HOT HINT!

“He spelled
oh
wrong,” Genero said. “Didn't he?” he asked, not certain anymore. He had walked into the squadroom as part of the relieving night-shift team, and was now at Carella's desk, peering at the two envelopes and the note. “Isn't
oh
supposed to be spelled with an
h
?”