Hark! (9 page)

“Going to shake us up with what he's planning next.”

“Big summer movie.”

“Coming attractions.”

“You notice they release the lousiest movies in the summer and around Christmastime?”

“There's that word again.”

“What word?”

“Shake. He's gonna shake us up. That's what he's telling us.”

“Oh
shit
!” Eileen said. “Excuse me, Andy.”

“What?” Carella asked at once.

“Check out these first three notes again. What's the word common to all of them?”

They all studied the notes again:

“Now take a look at this last note.”

“And single out the last line…”

“Then skip to the last word in that line….”

“Put them all together…”

“…they spell MOTHER,” Parker said.

No,” Eileen said. “They spell Shakespeare.
Shake
and
spear
spell
Shakespeare.
”

“Doesn't Shakespeare have an
e
on the end?,” Genero asked.

“Don't you see?” she said. “He's telling us all his references will be coming from Shakespeare.”

“I doped that out from the very start,” Parker said.

“How come everybody in the world always dopes out everything from the very start?” Willis asked.

“Well, I
did
,” Parker insisted. “Right after we got all that anagram shit. I knew that would be his plan. All Shakespeare, all the time. Where's that note?” he asked, and began rummaging through the messages arranged on Carella's desktop. “Here,” he said. “This one.”

“Now if that ain't Shakespeare,” he said, “then I don't know what is!”

 

W
HEN
C
ARELLA GOT HOME
that night, he was carrying a thick book he'd borrowed from the library three blocks from his house.

His daughter, April, was curled up in the armchair under the imitation Tiffany lamp, reading.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, without looking up. “Catch any crooks today?”

“Hundreds,” he said.

“Good work, Jones,” she said, and tossed him a salute. He went to her, kissed the top of her head. “What are you reading?” he asked.

“Math,” she said.

“Where's your brother?”

“Here,” Mark said, and came striding in from his room down the hall. The twins favored their mother more than Carella, he guessed. Or perhaps hoped. Mark gave him a hug. Carella went into the kitchen. Teddy was at the stove, cooking. She turned her face to him for a kiss. Raven hair pulled back into a ponytail. Long white apron made her look like a French chef or something. She lifted a cover, stirred something, put down the ladle, noticed the book. Her hands moved on the air, signing. He read her flying fingers, read the words she mouthed in accompaniment.

“Shakespeare,” he answered. “The complete works.”

Mark materialized in the kitchen doorway.

“Why Shakespeare, Dad?”

“Some guy's sending us quotes from Shakespeare. I want to find out where he's getting them.”

“There's an easier way,” Mark said.

 

C
ARELLA WAS THINKING
no home should be without a twelve-year-old boy going on thirteen. Sitting before the computer in his room, Mark went first to GOOGLE, and then typed in the keyword SHAKESPEARE and from the seemingly hundreds of choices there, he zeroed in on a site called
RhymeZone Shakespeare Search.
To the right of a little picture of Shakespeare's face were the words
Browse
:
Comedies
,
Tragedies
,
Histories
,
Poetry
,
Coined words
,
Most popular lines,
Help.

Just below that was the direction
Find word or phrase
, with a narrow rectangular box to the right of that, and then the boxed word

“All you do is type in the word or phrase you're looking for,” Mark said. “Give me an example.”

Carella took out his batch of photocopied notes.

“How about ‘the darling buds of May'?” he said.

Mark typed in
darling buds.
He hit the search key. On the computer screen, Carella saw:

“Now we click on
Sonnets
,” Mark said, and clicked on it. The screen filled with:

“That's amazing,” Carella said.

“Give me another one,” Mark said.

 

C
ARELLA REMEMBERED
the name of the course now. American Romantic Poetry.

And his term paper had been titled
“The Raven” and Poe's Philosophy of Composition.

What had fascinated him most about the poem was Poe's subsequent admission that he'd written it
backwards.
He could still remember the key passages from the author's explanation:

Carella had read the entire poem aloud to the class. Wowed the girls. Got an A on the paper, too. But only a B-plus for his final grade. It still rankled.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered
weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore—

Still knew the entire poem by heart. Could recite it at the drop of a hat. Now, weak and weary after a long day in the salt mines, he pondered on his son's computer many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. And because he'd once been a good student and was now a good cop, he composed a short list he would take to work with him tomorrow morning:

Shake
plus
spear
equals Shakespeare.

But he got no returns at all for any of the words or phrases in one of the earliest quotes they'd received:

Nothing.

Nada.

Zero.

Zilch.

 

B
EFORE SHE'D LEFT
Rankin Plaza that afternoon, Sharyn stopped in at Lorelie Records downstairs from her office, and bought Spit Shine's last CD. Titled after its hit song, “Go Ask,” it was the final album they'd made before that fateful and fatal Cow Pasture Concert. The title song was on track number seven. In her bedroom that night, she played it for Kling. He listened intently.

“Can you understand what they're singing?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“I can't,” he admitted.

“Guess you got to be black, sugah.”

“They ought to put subtitles on rap music,” he said, shaking his head.

“They already do, on TV,” she said. “But here, read the liner notes. The lyrics should be there.”

“Play it again,” he said, and removed the little pamphlet from the CD's plastic jewel box, and opened it to the lyrics for “Go Ask.”

Sharyn clicked back to band seven again.

The song ended. Sharyn turned off the player.

“That's kinda nice, actually,” Kling said. “How'd you come across it?”

“Colleague suggested I give it a listen. I thought you might like it.”

“Well, it's not exactly Shakespeare…”

“Hey, what is?”

“But I like it. I really do.”

“Do you think I'm like that woman in the rap?” Sharyn asked, straight out of the blue.

Kling blinked.

“Do you think I dig vanilla?”

“Well, I certainly
hope
so,” Kling said, and she burst out laughing.

“You think I've forgotten I'm black?”

“I hope not.”

“You think I'm trying to pass?”

“No way. Who's been telling you such things?”

“Nobody,” she said, and went to him where he was sitting on the sofa, and curled up in his arms.