Hark! (34 page)

“Go ask her, you don't believe me,” Cudahy said.

Hawes guessed he'd have to.

 

M
EYER AND HIS TWO
brilliant sleuths were still pondering the first two notes when the third one arrived at twelve minutes to ten.

It read:

Meyer called Carella at once.

“He's zeroing in on three,” he told him.

“Going backwards, too,” Carella said. “Halving the numbers each time. First twelve, then six, now three.”

“Backwards and
smaller.
”

“Right. Spears, arrows, darts, remember?”

“If he's saying three o'clock,” Meyer said, “then it's still either Clarendon Hall or the library.”

“Neither of which is in our precinct.”

“So what was all that about ‘a precinct's shit'?”

“Might've had nothing to do with anything. Just an anagram for ‘prognosticate this.' Just him telling us to predict.”

“Or…”
Meyer said.

“Yeah?”

“Did you notice he said ‘
a
precinct's shit'? Not ‘
the
precinct's shit.' What he said was ‘Go to
a
precinct's shit.' ”

“So?”

“So…if it's three o'clock, then it's Clarendon Hall or the library. It's either the Eight-Four's shit, or Mid South's. Not ours.”

“Yeah, I get what you're saying.”

“Although…”

“Yeah?”

“He says, ‘
Go
to a precinct's shit.'
Go
to it. Maybe he's telling us to send some of our own people to both venues.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“It's a thought, isn't it?” Meyer said.

Carella could almost see him smiling.

“It's a good thought,” he said. “Let's see what he sends next.”

“You put on your tuxedo yet?”

“Just about to.”

 

T
HE NEXT NOTE
came at 10:27
A.M.

“Three o'clock for sure,” Meyer told Carella on the phone. “That still makes it either Sallas and the Eight-Four, or the folio and Mid South.”

“We're covered either way,” Carella said.

“Right.”

Both men fell silent.

“The thing is…”

“I know.”

“If it's either Mid South or the Eight-Four, why's he breaking
our
balls?”

“Maybe we're reading this all wrong,” Meyer said.

“You think?”

“No, I think we've got it right.”

“But, you know…”

“Yeah.”

“All that tight security.”

“Right.”

“He can't
really
be telling us it's three o'clock, can he?”

Both men were silent again.

“So how do you want to work this?”

“I've got a wedding to go to.”

“You know what I think?”

“Say.”

“We have nothing to worry about. The Eight-Four is sending its people over, and so is Mid South.”

“Right. So we're okay.”

“I think so.”

“Me, too.”

“Don't you think?”

“I guess.”

“What?”

“I don't know. It's just…with this guy…”

“I know.”

“He may be planning to blow up the Calm's Point Bridge, who the hell knows? All the rest of it may be bullshit, just like Parker says.”

“Yeah, well, Parker,” Meyer said, lowering his voice.

Carella looked at the clock again.

“I gotta get out of here,” he said.

“Good luck,” Meyer said.

NOSTRADAMUS
!

It was writ large. And the slanted exclamation point lent urgency to the word, demanding attention.

“Another anagram, right?” Genero said.

“Wrong,” Parker said. “Nostra Damus is a college in the Midwest.”

Meyer was thinking about the anagram they'd received first thing this morning:

GO TO A PRECINT'S SHIT!

Which they'd rearranged as:

PROGNOSTICATE THIS!

He'd been taught by his grandfather that Nostradamus was a sixteenth-century French physician who'd become famous during his lifetime and afterward because of his talent for prophesying the future. Prophecies. Prognostications. Prognosticate
this
, amigo! And now Nostradamus, who had fascinated Meyer's grandfather only because he'd been born of Jewish parents.

“Nostradamus was…” Meyer started to explain, but Genero said, “There's ‘SUM' again.”

“Where?” Parker asked.

“Backwards,” Genero said. “Don't you remember?”

“Remember
what
?” Parker asked impatiently.

“All those notes we got. Where are those copies, Meyer?”

Meyer found the copied notes, spread them on his desktop.

“Here you go,” Genero said. “Here's the one I mean.”

But she would spell him backward

“So?” Parker said.

“And this one,” Genero said.

MUST SELL AT TALLEST SUM

“
So
?” Parker insisted.

“So here's ‘SUM'
again
,” he said. “
Backwards
,” he said, and tapped the most recent note:

NOSTRADAMUS
!

“Start at the end of the word,” he said.

“It's not a word, it's a
name
,” Meyer said. “Nostradamus. He was…”

“Whatever,” Genero said. “M-U-S is S-U-M backwards. The last four letters of the word…”

“The
name.
”

“…are an anagram for ‘A SUM.' ”

Parker was nodding. He had to admit the little jackass was right. “A sum,” he said. “The ransom he'll be asking.”

“In fact,” Genero said, if you
keep
going backwards…look at this, willya?…you get ‘DARTS.' Isn't that what he was telling us a long time ago. Arrows to slings to darts? Here…where is it?” he said, and began rummaging through the notes on Meyer's desk. “Here. Here you go.”

“Three o'clock is the hour he gave us,” Meyer said, and looked up at the clock; this very hour was now a quarter to twelve.

“The point is,” Genero said, beginning to enjoy his role as visiting lecturer, “we've got anagrams for both ‘A SUM' and ‘DARTS'…so what
else
might there be in this single word?”

“It's a name,” Meyer told him again.

“The name of a college,” Parker agreed.

They all looked at the note again:

NOSTRADAMUS
!

“As a matter of fact,” Parker said, “it's ‘
NO
DARTS.' ”

“We're back to him using a gun again,” Meyer said.

“A rod, right.”

“At a concert.”

“Maybe.”

“Let's see what that looks like,” Parker said, beginning to have a little fun here himself. “ ‘NO DARTS' and ‘A SUM,' ” he said, and lettered the words on a sheet of blank paper:

NO DARTS A SUM!

“Try it backwards,” Meyer said. “He keeps telling us to go backwards.”

A SUM NO DARTS!

“Add a comma to it,” Meyer suggested.

“Where?”

“After ‘SUM.' ”

Parker pencilled it in:

A SUM, NO DARTS!

“Pay a
sum
,” Genero said, “a
ransom
, and I won't shoot you with poisoned
darts.
”

“That's ridiculous,” Parker said.

“He says so right in this other note here,” Genero said, and found it, and, using his forefinger, tapped it with great certainty:

“Poisoned
darts
,” he said, nodding in agreement with his own deduction. “If you don't pay the ransom, I'll shoot you in your
ears
with poisoned
darts
!”

“No, he's talking
music
there,” Meyer said.

“Where?” Parker asked.

“Here.”

“He's referring to music. ‘Welcome to the ears.' The violinist again.”

“Sallas.”

“Clarendon Hall.”

“Three o'clock,” Meyer said, and again looked up at the clock.

The time was now 11:56
A.M.

 

H
ERE COME THE BRIDES
, Carella thought, all dressed in white, one on each arm, mother and daughter looking somewhat alike in their nuptial threads and short coiffed hairdos, neither wearing a veil, each radiant in anticipation.

And there at the altar, looking up the center aisle of the church as Carella approached with their imminent wives…

There at the altar were the two grooms, Luigi Fontero and Henry Lowell, each looking serious albeit nervous, the priest standing behind them and between them and looking happier than either of them.

The organ music stopped.

They were at the altar now.

Carella handed off his mother to Luigi on his left, and his sister to Lowell on his right…

So long, Mom, he thought. So long, Slip.

…and went to sit beside Teddy in the first row of pews. Teddy took his hand and squeezed it. He nodded.

He listened dry-eyed as the priest first told the gathered assemblage that they were here today to join in holy wedlock not just Louise Carella and Luigi Fontero, but
also
Angela Carella and Henry Lowell…

Someone in the pews behind Carella tittered at the novelty of it all; some novelty, he thought.

…and listened dry-eyed as the priest first recited the words for his mother and Luigi to repeat…

…and watched dry-eyed as Luigi slipped the wedding band onto his mother's hand and kissed his bride, Carella's mother…

…and listened again dry-eyed as his sister and Henry Lowell repeated the same words…

…and watched dry-eyed as the man who'd allowed his father's killer to walk sealed their marriage with a golden circlet and a chaste kiss…

Till death us do part, Carella thought.

Teddy squeezed his hand again.

Again, he nodded.

He felt no joy.

I
T WAS ALMOST
twelve-thirty when Sharyn got back to the apartment. Kling was waiting for her, waiting to confront her. He'd known she was lying the moment she told him she was going to her office this morning. He knew the office in Rankin Plaza was closed on Saturdays, and he knew her private office on Ainsley Avenue was similarly closed. So while she was in the shower, he yelled to her that he was heading out, and then he went downstairs and waited for her to come out of the building. He then followed her not to Rankin and not to Ainsley but to a coffee shop on Belvedere and Ninth where who should be waiting for her but Dr. James Melvin Hudson himself in person.

Kling had watched them through the plate glass windows fronting the street.

Hudson leaning over the table.

Sharyn's head close to his.

Taking earnestly, seriously.

Taking her hands at one point.

Crying?

Was he
crying
?

Now, at three minutes to one, he waited for her in his own apartment, waited for the sound of her key in the latch, the key he had given her, waited to confront her.

He was sitting on the couch facing the entrance door. On one end of the couch was the small pillow she'd had needlepointed with the words:

…the first letters of which spelled out the word
SHLEP
, a Yiddish word that translated literally as “to drag, or pull, or lag behind,” but which in this city's common usage had come to mean “a long haul,” a “drag” indeed, as in “a shlep and a half.”

The words on Kling's pillow were needlepointed in white on black. Those on the identical pillow in Sharyn's apartment were black on white. They were in this together, for the long haul. Or so he'd thought. They knew it would be a shlep and a half, a white man and a black woman. But they knew they could get through it if they merely respected those five simple rules:
S
hare,
H
elp,
L
ove,
E
ncourage,
P
rotect. Or so he'd believed until now.

He heard the key turning in the lock.

The door opened.

 

W
HEN THE DOORMAN
called upstairs to tell her the driver from Regal was here, Melissa said, “Ask him to wait, please. I'll be right down.”

She checked herself in the hall mirror…

Sweater tight enough to warrant admiration, skirt short enough to inspire whistles, strappy high-heeled sandals, altogether the image of either a top fashion model or a high-priced call girl, often indistinguishable one from the other these days. Satisfied, she picked up her purse, and went downstairs to meet whatever destiny awaited her on this bright Saturday afternoon.

 

L
UIGI'S BROTHER WAS
taking to Carella. Or rather, the brother—who possessed another fine old ginzo name, Mario—was talking
at
him, regaling him in broken English with stories about Luigi when he was young.

Mario Fontero was telling him they'd been born into a poor family in Milan. Luigi and Mario, the Nintendo brothers. Mario was telling him that even when he was a boy, Luigi had been a hard worker. Mario was telling him that Luigi had gone to university and graduated with honors. Mario was telling him that Luigi had started his own furniture business.

On the dance floor, Luigi was holding Carella's mother close.

His wife now.

Luigi Fontero's wife.

 

S
HARYN CLOSED THE
door behind her.

Locked it.

“How'd it go at the office?” Kling asked.

“I didn't go to the office,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Why'd you follow Julie?” she asked.

“What?”

“Julia Curtis. Why'd you go to her building and ask her letter carrier…?”

“Why'd
you
go meet Jamie Hudson this morn…?”

“What the hell is going on, Bert!”

“You tell me!”

The room went silent.

“Have you been following me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Have you…”

“Why?”

“…been
lying
to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

She cut herself short.

“Yes, tell me. Why'd you lie to me?”

“To protect Julie.”

“Who the hell
is
she, Sharyn? Have you and Hudson been…?”

“She's a very troubled girl…”

“Oh, please, spare me the…”

“…who has to make the most difficult decision in her life. And if she decides the wrong way…”

“Is she in trouble with the law?”

“Of
course
not!”

“Then why do you have to protect her from me?”

“Because you wouldn't understand the situation.”

“What situation? You and your
colleague
Dr. Hudson meeting her on the…”

“What's wrong with you? You surely don't think…”

“…sly? You mean you and your little
Jamie
boy…”

“Is
that
what you th…?”

“What am I
supposed
to think? You go sneaking around…”

“Julie has a serious problem!”

“Oh? Does her Mama disapprove of a three-way with two black…?”

Sharyn slapped him.

“I'm sorry,” she said at once.

The room went utterly still.

“It's not what you think,” she said.

“Then tell me what it is,” he said.

 

T
HE DRIVER'S NAME
was Jack.

“Is it still Burtonwood's, ma'am?” he asked.

Burtonwood's was a department store downtown on Jefferson. Adam had given this as the destination when he'd called Regal.

“Yes, but I have to make a stop first,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“I have to pick up a lamp,” she said. “To return to the store.”

“Very well, ma'am,” he said.

She was sitting on the backseat, positioned so that he could see her in the rear-view mirror. She wasn't wearing panties, and her skirt was high enough on her thighs for Jack here to see China 'crost the bay.

“Will it fit in the trunk, ma'am?” he asked. “The lamp?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and gave him the address of the Knowlton Hotel on Ludlow Street.

The game was afoot.

NOSTRADAMUS
!

“Here's
another
one spelled backwards,” Genero said.

“Where?” Meyer asked.

“Right here,” Genero said, pointing. “ ‘MAD ARTS.' That's ‘STRADAM' spelled backwards.”

Indeed it was:

STRADAM
MAD ARTS

“ ‘STRADAM' ain't even a word,” Parker said.

“Who said it was?”

“Just what
are
you saying, Richard?”

“I'm saying ‘MAD ARTS' is a word.
Two
words, in fact.”

“And just what is ‘MAD ARTS' supposed to mean?”

“A crazy modern painting.”

“Right,” Parker said. “He's gonna kidnap the Mona Lisa.”

“Or some
other
crazy modern painting,” Genero said.

Meyer looked again at the anagram in Parker's handwriting:

A SUM, NO DARTS!

He still didn't get it.

 

“K
NOWLTON
H
OTEL, MA'AM
,” Jack said. “Shall I just wait here?”

“Can you help me carry it down?” she asked. “The lamp?”

He looked as if he didn't fully understand, but his role in all this would be over in the next ten minutes or thereabouts, so it didn't matter whether he quite got it or not.

“It's sort of heavy,” she said, and uncrossed her legs to afford him a better view of the dawn coming up like thunder.

“Of course, ma'am,” he said, thinking he was beginning to get the drift. “I'll be happy to.”

He followed her into the elevator and up to the sixth floor. He followed her down the hall to room 642. He waited behind her while she inserted a key into the lock. She felt certain he was checking out her splendid ass in its short tight skirt.

“Come in, please, Jack,” she said, and smiled over her shoulder in blatant invitation.

He stepped into the room, thinking there wasn't a lamp at all, and grinning in sly anticipation, when all at once all the lamps in the world went out because that was when the Deaf Man hit him on the head with a somewhat blunt instrument.

 

A
T TWO O'CLOCK SHARP
, a uniformed driver from Regal Limousine pulled up to the parking area in front of the Intercontinental Hotel, stepped out of the luxury sedan, and told the doorman he was here for Mr. Konstantinos Sallas.

The doorman went inside, buzzed the suite upstairs, and told Mr. Sallas that his car was here. Sallas, in turn, rang his bodyguard's room, told him the car was here, told his wife he'd see her backstage after the concert, kissed her goodbye, and picked up his violin case. He met Jeremy Higel at the elevators, and together they went down to the lobby and out into the street, where the uniformed driver was standing outside the black car, waiting for them.

“Mr. Sallas?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” the driver said, and rushed to open the rear door for them. When they were comfortably seated, he climbed in behind the wheel, turned to them, and asked, “Would you be more comfortable with the violin up front, sir?”

“Thank you, no, I'll keep it here,” Sallas said, and gave the case a little proprietary pat.

“Clarendon Hall then,” the driver said, and started the car.

Neither of them noticed that there was a hearing aid in his right ear.

L
UIGI
F
ONTERO'S SISTER
was telling Carella all about the gardens of Rome, where she lived. He gathered this was what she was talking about since he heard the word
Roma
and also the word
giardini.
Otherwise, he caught little else of what she was saying because she was speaking in rapid-fire Italian.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“
A Roma
,” she said and rolled her eyes, “bella
Roma, ci sono molti giardini
…”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“
Per esempio,
” she said, “
ci sono i giardini della Villa Aldobrandini a Frascati, ed anche i giardini
…”

“Uh-huh,” he said.