6.
MELISSA FIGURED THIS WAS what she usually did, anyway, except in reverse. Haggle over a price, that is. What usually happened, the john said, 'Two hundred for the night,' and then you said 'Five hundred.' He said 'Three,' you said 'Four.' You settled for three and a half and everybody was happy - especially you, if he fell asleep after the first go-round.
This was Saturday morning, the fifth day of June. Very early Saturday morning.
Before she left the apartment, Adam had given her five thousand bucks in hundreds. Five thousand dollars! Which didn't seem like very much when you broke it down to a mere fifty $100 bills, oh well.
'That's your outside limit for the day,' he'd told her. 'You get your people for less than that, whatever's left over is yours, you can buy yourself that lingerie we were talking about.'
She had a better idea of what to buy with what was left over, but first she had to buy what she needed to make this work at all.
She figured, correctly as it turned out, that not too many people would be eager to take a letter into a police station. Not with the anthrax scare still a very much alive issue. Would've been different if any of the brilliant masterminds in Washington - some of them should meet Adam Fen, they wanted mastermind — knew what to do about it except stick their thumbs up their asses. As it was, the first three men she approached said flat out,
'What are you, crazy?' This after she'd offered two hundred bucks just to carry a friggin letter inside a police station and hand it to the desk sergeant!
The next person she approached was in a coffee shop on Jefferson. Six in the morning, the girl sitting there drinking coffee was a working girl like herself, Melissa could spot them a hundred miles away. Black girl with hair bright as brass, nail polish a purple shade of Oklahoma Waitress. She'd had a hard night, too, judging from the bedraggled look of her. Melissa started low, no sense spoiling her, and the hell with sisterhood. Turned out the girl was nursing a horrendous hangover, figured Melissa was looking for a little early-morning girlie-girlie sex, told her any muff-diving would cost her two bills.
Melissa tried to explain that no, what she wanted was a letter delivered to a police station. She showed her the letter. It was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. Melissa told the girl this was her boyfriend. She told the girl they'd had an argument last night. She told the girl she was desperate to make up with him. The girl said, 'Honey, you a hooker same as me. If yo boyfrien's a police, I'm the queen of England.'
It sort of insulted Melissa that she'd been spotted for a hooker straight off like that.
After three more tries and three more turndowns, she remembered something her mother had told her as a child: Desperate people do desperate things. So what she needed here was somebody desperate to carry that letter in. For a minute, in fact, since she herself was starting to get a little desperate here — it was already seven A.M. — she thought she might carry it in personally. Tell the cops some guy wearing a hearing aid had given her nine hundred bucks to deliver it, show them nine bills, tell them
she was just a hard-working girl worked nights at a Burger King and had met this guy over the counter, asked her to deliver the letter. She didn't know nothing at all about who he was or what was inside the letter. So please let me go, sirs, as my mother will be wondering why I'm not home yet, my shift ending at eight in the morning and all. Decided against it.
If that girl in the coffee shop had spotted her for a whore, the cops would make her in a minute. Was it really that easy to see what she was? Maybe she'd buy a new dress with whatever the residuals turned out to be today.
At seven-fifteen that morning, she taxied down to a skid row area of flophouses, homeless shelters, bars, and electrical supply houses. First crack out of the box, she found a doorway wino who said he'd deliver the letter for fifty bucks. She taxied uptown again, the wino sitting beside her on the back seat, stinking of piss and belching alcohol fumes. At five past eight, she dropped him off three blocks from the stationhouse, the letter in one pocket of his tattered jacket, and pointed him in the right direction. Told him she'd be watching him so he'd better make sure he kept his end of the bargain. Guy swore on his sainted mother.
Melissa figured he'd be stopped the minute he set foot on the bottom tread of the stationhouse steps, and he was.
Which was why she'd bought the wigs, right?
Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more but play with sparrows
That's what the first note read.
'Is that correct English?' Genero asked. "Has broke his arrows"?'
Nobody answered him.
'"Shoot no more,'" Meyer said. 'He's telling us he's not going to shoot anybody else. Gloria Stanford was the last one.'
'Unless he plans to use arrows,' Willis said.
'Or spears,' Kling suggested.
'No, he's finished with the spears,' Carella said. 'Now he's onto arrows.'
' "Swears he will shoot no more.'"
'Gonna "play with sparrows" instead.'
'Little birdies,' Parker said sourly.
'Did you see that movie Hitchcock wrote?' Genero asked.
'Hitchcock didn't write it,' Kling said.
'Then who did?'
'Daphne somebody.'
'Twice,' Willis said.
'She wrote The Birds twice?' Genero asked, puzzled now.
'No, arrows. He uses arrows twice this time.'
Carella was at the computer again, looking for his rhyme zone. Parker glanced down at the Deaf Man's note.
'I only see arrows once,' he said.
'The second one is buried in another word,' Willis said. 'Arrows in sparrows.'
'So what's the significance of that?' Parker asked, sounding angry.
'The Tempest,' Carella announced. Act Four, Scene One.'
CAPTAIN JOHN MARSHALL FRICK should have retired ten years ago, but he liked to tell himself the 87th Precinct couldn't get along without him. Byrnes thought of him as an old fart. There were men who were Frick's age — sixty, sixty-five, in there, whatever he was — who still thought like much younger men, carried themselves like much younger men, sounded like much younger men, actually looked far younger than they were. John Marshall Frick was not one of them.
Frick belonged to that other category of older men who thought of themselves as 'senior citizens,' men who had nothing to do anymore except send each other old fart jokes via e-mail every day. Men who'd retired from life and living too damn early - although Frick was old when he was fifty and should have retired then. 'Tell us your name,' he told the wino. 'Freddie.'
'Freddie what, Freddie?'
'Freddie Apostolo. That means Freddie the Apostle.' 'You been drinking a little today, Freddie?' 'A little. I drink a little every day.' 'Why'd you write that note, Freddie?' 'I didn't.'
Byrnes looked at his boss. Did the Captain really think this old wino had pulled up a Shakespeare quote from the internet and delivered it in person to the precinct? Did he really think this slovenly old bum stinking of body odor and urine and sweet wine was the notorious Deaf Man who'd slain Gloria Stanford and who so far had delivered all these tantalizing notes designed to infuriate and . . . well. . . intoxicate? He wasn't even wearing a hearing aid!
'Then who wrote it, Freddie?' 'I got no idea.'
'Then where'd you get it?'
'This girl gave it to me.'
'What girl?'
'Pretty girl with black hair and bangs.'
Byrnes almost said She does?
"What's her name?'
'Don't know.'
'Just gave you this note, is that
'No.'
'. . . right? Just handed you . . .'
'No.'
'Then what?'
'Gave me fifty bucks to deliver it. Said I should hand it to the desk sergeant, that's all. Which I tried to do but you guys stopped me at the front door. I used to play piano, you know.'