Genero was still a patrolman at the time. He'd been pressed into undercover service only because there was a shortage of detectives in the squadroom that Saturday. Unaccustomed to the art of surveillance, he jumped up the moment he saw somebody picking up the lunch pail, yanked off his blind man's dark glasses, unbuttoned the third button of his overcoat the way he'd seen detectives do on television, reached in for his revolver, and promptly shot himself in the leg.
This was not the same thing as getting shot by a sniper from a rooftop across the way. Or maybe it was.
Grumbling to himself, Hawes threw open the front door of the stationhouse, nodded to the uniformed cop bravely protecting homeland security on the steps outside, and limped down to the sidewalk, where he planned to make a right turn that would take him to the subway kiosk up the street.
A black stretch limo was standing at the curb, its
engine running. Stenciled onto the rear door of the car was the Channel Four logo — a silhouette of the city's skyline with the huge numeral 4 superimposed on it. The tinted rear window on the street side slid down noiselessly. Honey Blair's grinning face appeared in the opening.
'Want a lift, gorgeous?' she asked.
Hawes walked over to the car. 'Hey!' he said. 'What're you doing here?'
'Thought I'd surprise you,' she said.
He climbed in beside her, pulled the door shut behind him. 'Nice wheels,' he said.
'One of the perks of being a media staaahj she said, rolling her eyes on the last word.
'Five seventy-four Jefferson,' Hawes told the driver.
'I've already got that, sir,' the driver said.
Honey tapped a button. The tinted glass partition between the driver's seat and rear compartment slid up, closing them off, sealing them in a soundless, moving cocoon.
'Here's another perk,' she said, and unzipped his fly.
'Uh-oh,' Hawes said.
'You know why Clinton got impeached, don't you?' she asked.
'I think so, yes.'
'It was because right-wing conservatives didn't know what the word "blowjob" meant.'
'Is that right?'
'Uh-huh. They thought "blowjob" was the code word for two villains running around the White House.'
'Now where'd they get that idea?'
'From James Bond.'
'I see. Two villains from James Bond, huh?'
'Yep.'
'Which ones?'
'Blofeld and Oddjob,' she said.
She didn't say anything else after that.
Or if she did, he didn't hear her.
DR. STEPHEN HANNIGAN was one of the orthopedists approved by the PD for the treatment of police personnel injured in the line of duty. Whether getting shot as you left your girlfriend's house in the early morning qualified as 'injured in the line of duty' was a matter for the Police Benevolent Association to sort out later. Meanwhile, a civil servant who earned $62,587 a year as a Detective/ Second Grade pulled up in a stretch limo in front of 574 Jefferson Avenue at the corner of Jefferson and Meade. Hawes kissed Honey goodbye, and was just stepping out on the curb side of the car, when —
He hurled himself and Honey to the floor of the car the instant he heard the first shot. He wasn't counting, but enough shots were fired, in the next thirty seconds to shatter the tinted glass window of the limo, rip through the Channel Four logo on the rear door, tear up the interior upholstery, smash the whiskey and brandy decanters in both side door panels, and narrowly miss killing Honey and Hawes both.
Picking himself up off the floor of the car, Hawes yelled 'I wasn't angry until right now!' never realizing how close he'd come to echoing Shakespeare's 'I was not angry since I came to France' line in King Henry V, Act IV, Scene vii.
THE SECOND NOTE that day read:
I am disgraced, impeach 'd and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear
'That first line is intended for us,' Meyer said. 'He's telling us by now we should be feeling disgraced, impeach'd
'Which he also spelled wrong,' Genero said.
'. . . and baffled here. That's what he's saying.'
'No, I don't think any personal message is intended here,' Eileen said. 'I think he's simply calling our attention to the last word in the couplet. Spear. It's spear again.'
'I quite agree,' Genero said, sounding somewhat Shakespearean himself. 'But what's a couplet?'
'And why? Kling asked.
'Why what?' Parker said.
'Why's he pointing us to spear again?'
'A poisoned spear.'
'Where does it say that?'
'Venom'd. That means poisoned.'
'Shakespeare keeps dropping his e's, you notice that?'
'What's slander?' Genero asked.
'A lie,' Carella said.
'MEANWHILE WE'VE GOT a dead girl here,'Lieutenant Byrnes said.
He had asked Willis and Eileen to step into his office, and now they were sitting in chairs opposite his desk, listening attentively. Eileen figured the Loot was old enough to call a thirtysomething dead woman a 'girl' and get away with it, so she forgave him. 'Let's forget what this hard-of-hearing shmuck plans to do next,' Byrnes said, 'and concentrate instead on what he's already done. He's committed murder, is what he's done. He can quote
Shakespeare from here to Christmas, and that won't change the fact that he killed that girl!'
'Yes, sir,' Eileen said.
Byrnes glared at her.
'Pete,' she corrected.
'What'd the FBI report tell us, Hal?'
'Nothing,' Willis said. 'No matching prints anywhere. Means she doesn't have a record, was never in the armed forces, and never worked for any governmental agency'
'Which is not surprising,' Byrnes said. 'How many people do you know who have their fingerprints on file?'
Willis thought this over. Except for the hundreds of assorted thieves he met in this line of work, he couldn't think of a single soul.
'I want both of you to go back to the girl's building,' Byrnes said. 'He got into that apartment somehow. How'd he get past the doorman? Did anybody see him going in or coming out? He's not invisible, how'd he manage it? Talk to everybody and anybody. Get a description, get something.'
As they started out of his office, he added, 'Anything.'
THE CATERER WAS as gay as a bowl of fresh daisies.
His name was Buddy Mears, and he was wearing a fawn-colored suit with a lavender shirt open at the throat. He had blond hair and blue eyes. A nose Caesar would have died for. High cheekbones. Taut skin. Teddy Carella wondered if he'd had a face lift. They were sitting in his office on Henley and Rhynes, in Riverhead, not far from the hall in which the reception would take place on June twelveth. Carella had driven here on his lunch hour. Teddy had taken a bus over. Sample menus were open on
Buddy's desk. Several framed culinary awards were hanging on his walls. Plaques, too. Early June sunshine streamed through the windows and splashed onto the open menus.
'How many guests are we expecting?' he asked.
About a hundred,' Carella said.
Teddy signed to him.
Buddy looked politely puzzled.
A hundred and twelve,' Carella corrected.
Buddy already knew that Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute, speech-and-hearing impaired as they were calling it these days, but nonetheless a woman with devastating black hair and luscious dark brown eyes to match, absolutely gorgeous even when her fingers were flashing on the air, as they were now.
Carella watched her flying fingers.
'The numbers keep changing every day,' he translated for her. And then added, 'Either my mother or my sister keep inviting new people all the time.'
'This is so-o-oo cute, what they're doing,' Buddy said. 'The double wedding. Adorable. So let's figure a hundred and ten people