He wondered what this Dennis Dove character with the hearing aid in his ear wanted with seven different wanted flyers. That was on the list he’d given Henry: seven wanted flyers. If Henry had known wanted flyers were so valuable, he’d have asked the cops to send him the one of him that had been in a couple of post offices after he’d killed that hooker in New Orleans. They were still looking for him for that one. That one was after he’d got out of prison for slitting that guy’s throat in Tulsa. He’d headed back east by way of New Orleans, and he’d got into an argument with this hooker who kept insisting he’d given her a phony C-note, which happened to be true, but it wasn’t fuckin’ polite to tell a man he was passing Monopoly money, not after you’d just blown him. So he’d slapped her around a little, and when she started screaming she was gonna get her pimp to beat the shit out of him, he juked her, plain and simple. Served her right, the dumb cunt. Accusing him of handing her a phony bill, true or not. A customer was a customer. And anyway it had been a lousy blowjob.
He wondered if there were any wanted flyers of him up here in any of the precincts. Be a real gas if he walked into a station house in his telephone company suit and saw his own face looking down at him from a bulletin board. Well, that’s what made his line of work so interesting. You never knew what was gonna happen next.
‘Where you got your primary terminal?’ he asked a cop who was taking a walkie-talkie from the charging rack in the muster room. Henry didn’t know what a primary terminal was. He’d made that up on the spot.
‘How the fuck do I know?’ the cop said.
‘They’re usually in the basement,’ Henry said.
‘So go down the basement,’ the cop said, and hung the walkie-talkie on his belt.
Henry waited until he turned his back. He took a quick look at the muster desk, lifted a walkie-talkie from the rack, and dropped it into his canvas bag.
‘Hey, you,’ somebody said.
His blood froze.
He turned.
A huge guy was standing near the iron-runged steps leading to the second floor. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and a pistol was hanging in a shoulder holster on his chest.
‘While you’re here,’ he said, ‘the buttons on my phone ain’t workin’. The extension buttons. Upstairs in the squadroom.’
‘I’ll take a look,’ Henry said. ‘You know where the primary terminal is?’
* * * *
The sixth letter from the Deaf Man arrived in that afternoon’s mail.
It was addressed to Carella, but Carella was out of the squadroom, and all the detectives knew it was from their old pal, so they debated opening it for about thirty seconds, and then nominated Meyer as the person to intrude upon their colleague’s right to private communication.
There was, to no one’s great surprise, a single folded white sheet of paper inside the envelope.
Meyer unfolded the sheet of paper.
The other detectives crowded around him.
What they were looking at was:
* * * *
CHAPTER SIX
Thanksgiving Day always fell on the fourth Thursday in November, and this year it would fall on November 24.
Every detective on the squad wanted Thanksgiving Day off. On Christmas or Yom Kippur it was possible for detectives of different faiths to swap the duty so that they could celebrate their own holidays. Thanksgiving Day, however, was nondenominational.
The detectives of the Eight-Seven knew of a squad farther uptown that had an Indian detective on it. An Indian Indian. Come Thanksgiving, he was in very popular demand because he had come to this country only four years ago—after having served as a captain of police in Bombay—and he did not understand the peculiar ways of the natives here, and he did not celebrate Thanksgiving. Everyone always wanted him to take the Thanksgiving Day duty because he didn’t know lamb chops from turkeys and cranberry sauce.
There were no Indian detectives on the 87th Squad.
There was a Japanese detective, but he’d been born here and knew all about Thanksgiving, and no one would have dreamed of asking him to forego his turkey dinner.
Genero asked him to forego his turkey dinner.
‘You’re a Buddhist, ain’t you?’ Genero said.
‘No, I’m a Catholic,’ Fujiwara said.
‘This is a nondeterminational holiday,’ Genero said.
‘So what’s your point?’
‘My point is I got the duty tomorrow,’ Genero said, ‘and I’d like to swap with you.’
‘No,’ Fujiwara said.
‘You people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, do you?’ Genero said, ‘Buddhists?’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Fujiwara said.
Genero figured he was sensitive about being the only Jap on the squad.
Genero asked Andy Parker if he would like to swap the Thanksgiving Day duty with him.
‘You got no family to eat turkey with,’ Genero said.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Parker said.
Genero tried Kling.
‘You just been through a divorce,’ Genero said. ‘Holidays are the worst time of year for people just been through a divorce.’
Kling merely looked at him.
Genero figured everybody on this goddamn squad was all of a sudden getting very touchy.
The cops working the day shift on November 24 were Genero, O’Brien, Willis, and Hawes. Genero was annoyed because his mother’s big Thanksgiving Day dinner was at two o’clock. The other three detectives didn’t mind working on Thanksgiving Day. Like Genero, they were all single, but they’d made plans for later on in the day. Hawes, in particular, was very much looking forward to the plans he’d made for later on in the day; he had not seen Annie Rawles for almost a week.
‘Don’t any of you guys have mothers?’ Genero asked, still sulking.
The detectives on duty were thankful that there’d be no mail deliveries today.
They had not heard from the Deaf Man since the fourteenth, ten days ago. They all hoped they would not hear from him ever again. But they were certain they would not hear from him today. As they ate the turkey sandwiches they had ordered from the local deli, they thanked God for small favors.
* * * *
The two men sitting at a corner table in a restaurant not ten blocks from the police station were eating turkey with all the trimmings. They were drinking the good white wine ordered by the one with the hearing aid in his right ear. They were talking mayhem.
‘How’d you get onto me in the first place?’ Gopher Nelson asked.
He’d been nicknamed Gopher during the Vietnam War. His first name was really Gordon. But he’d been a demolitions man back then, and whenever there was any kind of discussion as to whether it was feasible to blow up a bridge or a tunnel or a cache of Cong supplies, Gordon would say, ‘Let’s go for broke,’ which is how he got the name Gopher. Nothing was too difficult or too risky for Gopher back then. A chopper would drop him and his gear in the boonies someplace, and he’d sneak into a deserted enemy enclave and wire the place from top to bottom and then sit in the jungle waiting for the little bastards in their black pajamas to come trotting back in. Little Gopher Nelson, all by himself in the jungle, waiting to throw the switch that would blow them all to smithereens. Gopher loved blowing up things. He also loved setting things on fire. In fact, Gopher thought back most fondly on the incendiary devices he had wired back then. There’d been something very satisfying about first seeing the flames and all them fuckin’ gooks running for their lives, and then hearing the explosions when the fire touched off the ammo in the underground bunkers, all them fuckin’ tunnels they’d dug clear across the country. Very satisfying. First you got your roast gook, and then you got the Fourth of July. Gopher wished the Vietnam War had never ended. It was hard for a civilian to find work that was as completely satisfying.