Hark! (6 page)

“Who's this Adam Fen?” Byrnes asked.

“I checked the phone books yesterday,” Willis said. “Fen is a Chinese name…”

“Told you,” Genero said.

“…but I didn't get an Adam anyplace in the city.”

“Was there an
Eve
?” Parker asked. “Adam and
Eve
?
Porn
diet?”

Byrnes glared at him.

“Just a thought,” Parker said, and picked up another donut.

“What about this P.O. box number?” Byrnes asked.

“Nonexistent,” Willis said.

“Why'd he pick 4884?”

“Why'd he pick
us
?” Genero asked.

“He's crazy is why,” Meyer said.

“Like a fox,” Carella said.

“Let's go over it again,” Byrnes said.

 

I
N A PENTHOUSE APARTMENT
not a mile from where the detectives mulled over the various missives he'd sent them, the Deaf Man was trying to explain the meaning of the word
anagram
to the girl who sat beside him on his living room couch.

The girl was blond, and perhaps twenty-three years old, certainly no older than that. He had helped her to remove her white blouse not three minutes ago, so she was at the moment wearing only a black miniskirt, black panties and bra, and black, high-heeled, strapped sandals. Altogether a dangerous look.

“Think of it this way,” he said. “Suppose I told you your breasts are as ripe as berries.”

“Well, you don't know that yet, do you?” the girl said.

“I can speculate,” the Deaf Man said.

“I suppose we can all speculate,” she said.

“As ripe as berries,” he repeated, and lifted a clean white pad from the coffee table, and with a marking pen wrote on it:

AS BERRIES

“Is that for emphasis?” the girl asked.

Her name was Melissa, Lissie for short. She'd told him this at the bar in the cocktail lounge of the Olympia Hotel, where he'd picked her up. He knew she was a hooker. A hooker was what he needed. But he had never in his life paid anyone for sex, and he did not intend to pay for it now.

“Now if we rearrange those letters,” he said, “placing them in a different order, we get the word…”

And here he wrote on the pad again:

BRASSIERE

…and reached behind her back to unclasp it, freeing her breasts.

“As ripe as berries,” he said, and tried to kiss her nipples, but she crossed her arms over her breasts, and crossed her legs, too, and began jiggling one black-sandaled foot.

“And
what'd
you call that?” she asked. “Rearranging the letters that way?”

“An anagram,” he said.

“That's a neat trick,” she said. “Can you do an anagram for Melissa?”

“Aimless,” he said at once. “But how about this one?” he asked, and on the pad he wrote:

A PET SIN

…and reached under her skirt to lower them over her thighs, before writing on the pad:

PANTIES

“Neat,” she said, and uncrossed her legs and her arms, and lifted herself slightly so he could lower the panties to her ankles. She kicked them free. They sailed halfway across the room, hitting the sliding glass doors that opened onto the seventeenth-floor terrace and a spectacular view of the city.

“Let's hope no one can spy us,” he said, and wrote the last two words on the pad:

SPY US

“Can you rearrange those?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, and took the marker from his hand, and wrote:

PUSSY

“Neat,” he said.

“
But
,” she said, and wrote:

MORE'S NIFTY

“I'll bet it is,” he said.

“Oh, you bet your ass it is,” she said. “But it's your game, Adam.”

“Which game do you mean?” he asked.

His hand was between her legs, but her thighs were closed tight on it, refusing entrance.

“This one,” she said, and wrote on the pad:

SNAG A RAM

“Anagrams, do you mean?”

“Bingo,” she said.

“You want an anagram for ‘more's nifty.' Is that it?”

“Try it,” she said, and handed him the marker.

He thought for merely an instant, and then wrote:

MONEY FIRST

“How clever of you,” she said, and spread her legs wide, and held her hand out to him, palm upwards.

“I think not,” he said, and slapped her so hard he almost knocked her off the couch.

 

L
ATER, WHILE
M
ELISSA
was still tied to the bed, he asked if she knew that “Adam Fen” was an anagram for “Deaf Man.”

Aching everywhere, she said she guessed she did.

He wrote both words on the pad for her, one under the other:

ADAM FEN
DEAF MAN

“Gee, yeah,” she said.

Along about then, a courier was delivering the final note in what the Deaf Man thought of as the first movement of his ongoing little symphony.

 

T
HE NOTE IN THE
inside envelope read:

I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!

There was also a line drawing in the envelope:

“Who the hell is
that
supposed to be?” Parker asked.

“Looks like a rag picker,” Byrnes said. “You have rag pickers in your neighborhood?”

“We called him the Rags Man,” Brown said, nodding.

“Why would he be sending us a picture of a rag picker?” Meyer asked.

“No, Artie's got it,” Carella said. “It's a rags man. Oh, Jesus, it's a rags man!”

They all looked at him.

He seemed about to have a heart attack.

“It's an anagram!” he said.

“Huh?” Genero said.

“An anagram, an anagram, a rags man! That's an anagram for
anagrams
!”

“Huh?” Genero said again.

All at once the letters under the note's poetry seemed to spring from the page,
I'M A FATHEAD, MEN,
leaping into the air before Carella's very eyes, rolling and tumbling in random order,
I A F M H A T D E A N M E,
until at last they fell into place in precisely the order Adam Fen had intended.

I AM THE DEAF MAN!

“Shit,” Carella said, “he's back.”

 

A
ND NOW
, of course, all of it made sense.

All of the notes, when read as anagrams, clearly told them what the Deaf Man had done and possibly why he had done it.

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

Rearranged in their proper order, the letters became:

SHOT TWICE?
GLORIA STANFRD?
SHOT IN THE HEART!

Move that dangling “O” from the third line to the first line and you had her full last name:
STANFORD.

Similarly:

A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?

…became:

COW PASTURE?
CONCERT?

…the scene of the Deaf Man's last chaotic diversion in Grover Park.

And once they rearranged:

BRASS HUNT?
CELLAR?

…they got:

STASH BURN?
RECALL?

…which merely asked them to remember his true target the last time out, the incinerator on the River Harb Drive, where thirty million dollars worth of confiscated narcotics was scheduled to be burned by the police.

And lastly:

PORN DIET?
HELL, A TIT ON MOM!

Put in their intended order, the letters in both lines formed the words:

RED POINT?
HAMILTON MOTEL!

…the name of the motel in a town across the river where a man who'd registered as Sonny Sanson had left behind a bloody trail apparently inspired by a woman who'd betrayed him.

Had that woman been
GLORIA STANFORD?

A DARN SOFT GIRL-O!

Because, boy-o-boy-o, Sonny Sanson was sure as hell
Son'io Sans Son
, who was in turn
ADAM FEN,
who was none other than the
DEAF MAN,
who'd entered with fanfare and flourish to act yet another part.

I'M A FATHEAD, MEN?

Oh, no, not by a long shot.

I AM THE DEAF MAN!

Bravo, lads, that was more like it!

He was back, and the very thought sent a collective shudder through the detectives gathered in the lieutenant's office.

“Anyone care for another donut?” Byrnes asked.

“Actually, that's kind of nice,” Genero said.

“He's back, all right,” Willis said.

“With more poetry, no less.”

“ ‘The darling buds of May,' ” Eileen said. “That's Shakespeare, isn't it?”

“Sure sounds like Shakespeare.”

“ ‘The darling buds of May.' ”

“But it's June already,” Carella said.

“Just barely,” Meyer said.

This was Thursday morning, the third day of June. The lieutenant had virtually double-teamed the squad because whenever the Deaf Man put in an appearance, his people all suddenly began behaving like Keystone Kops, and one could not be too careful lest disapprobation thunder down from the brassy skies above. The nine Shakespearean scholars grouped around Carella's desk were Carella himself, Meyer, Kling, Genero, Parker, Hawes, Willis, Brown, and Eileen Burke.

“Kind of nice, though,” Genero said. “ ‘The darling buds of May,' you know? I really like that.”

All the squadroom windows were open to the balmy breezes of early June. The note on Carella's desk was the first one delivered today. He felt sure there'd be more.

“What's he trying to tell us this time?” he asked.

“Nothing about the homicide, that's for sure.”

“He's already said enough about that,” Meyer said. “I killed Gloria Stanford, I shot her twice in the heart, now come find me, dummies.”

“Where does it say that?” Parker asked.

He had shaved this morning. Maybe he expected another round of coffee and donuts.

“In his previous notes,” Meyer explained. “All those anagrams.”

“Yeah, anagrams, right,” Parker said, not giving a shit one way or the other.

“What does he mean about ‘summer's lease'?” Willis asked.

“When does summer start this year?” Eileen asked.

Limping around the lieutenant's office in his soft cast, Hawes didn't much care
when
summer started this year. Or
any
year. He was still fuming because the dicks from the 8-6 hadn't found any ejected shells on any of the rooftops opposite Honey Blair's building, and so far nobody knew nothing about whoever had fired half a dozen shots at him yesterday morning. It was one thing to get all excited about someone who might or might not be the Deaf Man perhaps being responsible for the death of a woman named Gloria Stanford, but bygones were bygones, easy come, easy go, and Hawes himself was still in the here-and-now and luckily among the living, and whoever had tried to render him otherwise was still out there someplace, on the loose, so where the hell was a cop when you needed one?

“Miscolo!” Brown yelled.

“ ‘Summer's lease hath all too short a date,' ” Eileen quoted.

“Nice,” Genero said again, smiling wistfully.

Miscolo came in from the Clerical Office down the hall. He'd put on a little weight and lost a little hair at the back of his head. But he still resembled a somewhat moist-eyed basset hound. “You want coffee, right?” he said.

“Have you got a
Farmer's Almanac
in the Clerical Office?” Brown asked.

“Why would I have a
Farmer's Almanac
?”

“We're trying to find out when summer comes this year.”

“Why?”

“Because it hath all too short a date,” Genero explained.

“You guys,” Miscolo said, and walked out shaking his head.

“Anybody got a calendar?” Brown asked, and went to his own desk. He flipped open the pages to June, ran his forefinger across the dates. The words
Summer begins
were printed in the box for June 21. “Here it is,” he said. “June twenty-first. First day of summer.”

“ ‘Summer's lease,' ” Eileen said.

“Is he planning something for the twenty-first?”

“Or
not
planning it, as the case may be,” Meyer said. “He
never
tells us exactly what he's up to.”

“ ‘All too short a date,' ” Willis reminded them.

“So it could be short of the twenty-first.”

“Closer to May,” Kling suggested. “ ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.' ”

“That reminds me of teenage girls,” Parker said.

Then again,
many
things reminded him of teenage girls.

“ ‘The darling buds of May,' ” he explained, and shrugged.

“You know what he
might
be doing?” Carella said. “He might be sending us a new batch of notes just to divert us from the homicide investigation.”

But even he didn't believe this.

The lieutenant's door opened.

“Eileen?” he said. “See you a minute?”

 

“H
AVE A SEAT
,” Byrnes said.

She took one of the chairs opposite his desk.

Waited.

“I want you to know I appreciate your input on this case,” Byrnes said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Pete,” he said. “Please. Pete.”

“Yes, sir. Pete.”

“Eileen,” he said, “I don't want you to take what I'm about to say the wrong way.”

Uh-oh, she thought.

“This isn't just because you're a woman.”

Am I being transferred? she wondered. To a precinct where a
woman
—Fat Chance Department—commands the detective squadroom?

She waited.

“I want you to go over to the Stanford apartment. Now that Mobile's cleared it, I want you to go through her things, her personal items, everything she left behind. Bring a fresh eye to it. Bring a
woman's
eye to it. See if you can spot anything a man might have missed.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“It's not just because you're a woman,” he said.

Then what is it? she wondered.

“I understand, sir,” she said. “Pete.”

“In my experience,” he said, “aside from crimes of passion, which this might have been…”

“Yes, sir.”

“…the man coming back to take revenge on the woman who done him wrong, that sort of thing…”

“Yes, sir.”

“But if this
wasn't
simply that, if instead the man
wanted
something from her, which in my experience is the motive for many murders, hasn't that been your experience, too? A person
wants
something very badly, he
gets
it, and then, to protect his identity or whatever, he kills the person he took it from. Like an arsonist setting a fire to cover some other crime. Hasn't that been your experience, Eileen?”

“Well, I haven't investigated that many homicides, Pete. Sir,” she said. “Or arsons, either, for that matter.”

“So what did the Deaf Man want from her?” Byrnes asked rhetorically. “He masterminded a multimillion-dollar narcotics theft, you know…”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“…so was he coming back after that stash? If so, where is it? Where's the dope? Or the dope money? I don't think he's the sort of man who'd kill someone merely for revenge, do you? So why
else
might he have killed her? That's what I want you to bring your woman's eye to.”

“I understand, sir. It's like what the Walt Disney studio did a few years back.”

“The what?”

“The movie company.”

“Yes?”

“They hired a nineteen-year-old girl to bring a teenager's sensibility to a script a man had written for them.”

“Oh,” Byrnes said.

“Turned out she was in her thirties. The female writer they hired.”

“Oh,” Byrnes said again.

“But they figured a man couldn't possibly know what a woman was thinking or feeling.”

“That's right,” he said.

“Even if he was a writer.”

“I can understand that.”

“So that's why you want me to shake down Gloria's apartment. Find out what she might have been thinking or feeling.”

“Find out why he
killed
her,” Byrnes said, nodding grimly.

 

M
ELISSA
S
UMMERS
didn't know quite what she was feeling.

Never in her entire life had she ever met anyone like Adam Fen, or whatever his name was. Never anyone like him in all the guys she'd fucked for free when she was still just a girl and an amateur, never anyone like him in all the guys she'd fucked since turning pro at the age of sixteen in Los Angeles, California. Well, sort of
dabbled
at being a pro. She didn't
really
become a pro till she came to this city, thank you for that, Ambrose Carter.

But never had she met anyone like Adam Fen.

Never.

A
deaf
guy, no less!

If he was, in fact, deaf.

Actually, she didn't know
what
he was.

One minute, he was kind and gentle with her, stroking her like a kitten, the next he was fierce as a tiger, slapping her around, making her do things even none of the freaks in LaLaLand had asked her to do, some of them movie stars even, would you believe it? Well, TV actors, anyway. Some of them.
One
of them, actually. Well, a walk-on part in a weekly sitcom, actually. Tipped her five hundred bucks. Told her to catch the show on NBC next Friday night. And there he was! Actually on the show! Walked into this executive's office, said, “Someone to see you, sir,” and walked right out again. Looked innocent as an angel, the things he'd asked her to do.

Adam Fen was worse. Or better, depending how you looked at it.
If
that was his real name. Which she sincerely doubted. But Melissa Summers wasn't her real name, either, so what difference did it make? He'd told her Adam Fen was an anagram for Deaf Man, which was certainly true, the anagram part, but whether or not he was really deaf was another matter. Not that she cared. What she was worried about was getting involved with him. She had the feeling that getting involved with him could be dangerous. Well, getting involved with
any
man, getting
really
involved with any man, was a dangerous thing to do.

Take the money and run, that was her motto.

Even when she was still
giving
it away (boy, talk about naïve!) she'd realized that getting
involved
with a man—though back then they were all still boys, kids, you know, fifteen, sixteen, a bit older than she was, she'd started when she was fourteen, with a cousin of hers from New Jersey—getting involved meant letting them have the upper hand, and that was putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

He had a gun.

She'd seen the gun.

He'd showed her the gun.

Actually cocked the trigger and used it on her like a cock. The gun. Inserted the barrel inside her. Got her so scared, she almost peed on it. Turned out there were no bullets in it.

But she was afraid if she got involved with this guy,
really
involved with him—he might one day actually use the gun on her.

That was her fear.

He seemed unpredictable.

Exciting but dangerous.

So why was she running this errand at the bank for him today?