Hark!

cardigan. String of pearls around her neck. Truly looked Ivy League. Eileen figured her for a hooker.

"What were you doing at the Majestic?' she asked.

'Just stopped by for a cup of tea.'

Sounded Ivy League, too.

'Happened to be strolling by the Majestic . . .'

'I'd been doing some shopping.'

"Went into the lounge

'Yes. For a cup of tea.'

'And happened to . . . well, how did that letter come into your hands, can you tell me?'

'A woman gave it to me.'

'Ah. What woman?'

A woman I met there. She said she'd had an argument with her boyfriend who was a detective up here, and she wanted someone to deliver this letter of apology to him.'

And you believed her.'

'She seemed sincerely contrite.'

'Uh-huh.'

Also, she offered me money to deliver the letter.'

Ah.'

'Two hundred dollars.'

Ah.'

'So I figured I'd help her out. Why not? Her boyfriend's name was on the letter, some Italian name, so I figured her story was genuine. Otherwise, where would she have got the name?'

And her name? Did she tell you her name?'

'Cookie.'

'Cookie, uh-huh.'

'Yes.'

'Cookie what?'

'She didn't say'

'What did this Cookie look like?'

'Red hair in a feather cut. Brown eyes. About my height, I would guess. Nice figure. About my age, maybe a little younger. Well-dressed.'

'Like you.'

'Thank you.'

'Was she wearing gloves?'

'What?'

'Gloves.'

'No. Gloves?'

'Gloves. I don't suppose you were wearing gloves, either, were you?'

'No, I wasn't. Gloves? It's June!'

'Miss Kane, would you mind if we took your fingerprints before you left the precinct?'

Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I would mind. Why do you want my fingerprints?'

'Because they're most likely on that envelope you handled, and we'd like to eliminate them when we run our check.'

'What check?'

'To see what other prints may be on it.'

'No,' Alison said. 'No fingerprints.'

'Why not?'

'Because I haven't done anything wrong.'

'Uh-huh,' Eileen said, and looked her dead in the eye. 'Ever been in trouble with the law, Miss Kane?'

She did not answer.

'Alison? Ever been . . . ?'

Which was when she gave up Ambrose Carter.

'WHUT THIS IS,' Ambrose told Willis and Eileen, 'is a tempest in a teapot.'

He was thinking he'd like to put the redhead in his

stable. What the hell could she be making as a cop? 'Girl told us you're her pimp,' Eileen said. 'I been out of that trade a long time now,' Carter said. "We're not looking at a Two-Thirty bust,' Willis said. Carter knew the man was referring to Section 230.25 of the Penal Law, which stated that a person was guilty of promoting prostitution when he knowingly advanced or profited from prostitution by managing, supervising, controlling, or owning either a house of prostitution or a prostitution business involving two or more prostitutes. Which Carter was, in fact, guilty of doing. Owning a prostitution business involving two or more prostitutes. Eleven of them, in fact. But he didn't let on like he knew what Willis was talking about, because that would be the same thing as admitting he was a pimp, and not a mere agent of sorts.

'Then whut is it you are looking at, Detective?' he asked Eileen, deferring to her rank and her beauty and her big tits. 'And whut do it have to do with me?'

'Alison Kane,' Eileen said again, which was exactly how she'd opened the conversation.

'Said you sent her to meet some woman 'I tole you I am no longer engaged in that form of occupation.'

'This wasn't a takee-outee call,' Eileen said.  'This woman needed someone to deliver a letter.' 'To us,' Willis said. 'At the Eighty-seventh Precinct.' 'Woman gave her two bills to do it.' 'I still does not know whut this possibly has to do with me,' Carter said, spreading his hands wide in innocence.

'We want the woman's name.'

'I do not know which woman you is talkin' about.'

'The woman who gave Alison Kane two hundred bucks to deliver a letter to us.'

'I know of no such woman.'

'Alison says you're the one who sent her . . .'

'I do not know anyone named Alison, either. Kane or otherwise.'

'How about Gloria Stanford?' Willis said.

'Her neither. Who are all these women?'

'Gloria Stanford was murdered on Memorial Day,' Willis said.

'And that ain't such a tempest in a teapot,' Eileen suggested.

Which was when Carter gave up Carmela Sammarone.

THE FEDERAL SEARCH came up with a hit for a prostitution arrest in Los Angeles six Decembers ago. A set of partials they'd lifted from the envelope Alison Kane had delivered matched the prints on file for Sammarone, Carmela, NMI in the AFIS system.

Before now, they'd had good reason to believe that the Deaf Man had killed Gloria Stanford. Problem was they didn't know who he might be, or where they could find him.

Now they also had good reason to believe he'd engaged a prostitute named Carmela Sammarone to recruit at least one other person to deliver his messages to the precinct.

Problem here was they didn't know where she might be, either.

Or even that nowadays she was known as Melissa Summers.

7.

THE PHONE RANG at a little past nine that Sunday morning. They were sleeping in Sharyn's apartment that night, and she always slept on the side of the bed closest to the phone because in this city you never knew when another cop would get shot, and the Deputy Chief Surgeon would have to respond.

Sharyn picked up the receiver and said, 'Cooke here,' and then listened, and said, 'Where?' and listened again, and said, 'I'm on the way,' and hung up and threw back the covers and ran for the bathroom. Kling was dressed before she was. 'I'll drive you,' he said. 'You don't have to,' she said.

'I want to,' he said. 'We'll get breakfast when you're finished there.'

'My dollface,' she said, and went to him and kissed him.

He drove them through a Mickey D's for coffee, and they started the drive to Majesta with the windows down and fresh morning breezes blowing through. There was very little traffic so early on a Sunday morning, and they made it over the bridge in ten minutes flat and were at Mount Pleasant in another ten. Mount Pleasant was one of the city's better hospitals. There'd be no need for Sharyn to arrange a transfer, but a cop had been badly cut trying to break up an early morning gang rumble outside St. Matthew's Church on Camden Boulevard, and she had to be here to make sure he'd get the best possible treatment.

That didn't explain why Dr. James Melvin Hudson was standing outside the main entrance to the hospital.

Kling suddenly remembered that this was where Dr. James Melvin Hudson worked. When he wasn't working at the office of the Deputy Chief Surgeon in Rankin Plaza, four miles and another world away. Medland versus Copland.

Dr. James Melvin Hudson was wearing his hospital togs this morning, looking all pristine and medical in a white tunic with a stethoscope hanging out of the right-hand pocket. Dr. James Melvin Hudson was tall and black and extremely handsome, and he'd been dating Sharyn when she and Kling first met, and here he was now. Standing outside Mount Pleasant Hospital. Where he was Head of the Oncology Department. Which was why he also worked at Rankin Plaza because cops didn't only get shot or knifed or bludgeoned or axed; they sometimes got cancer.

And then Kling remembered that it was someone named Jamie who'd called Sharyn to tell her Hawes had been shot.

And he suddenly wondered if the colleague who'd suggested she give a listen to 'Go Ask' was none other than Jamie Hudson himself.

Sharyn got out of the car.