'Hi, Jamie,' she said. 'Where is he?'
And went into the hospital without telling Kling where they'd be meeting for breakfast later.
THERE WAS NOTHING he appreciated more than thoughtful solitude. Alone in the room he had set aside as his office, sitting behind his computer and contemplating
the week ahead, he knew an intense satisfaction he felt lesser men could not possibly enjoy.
For him, the planning was far more exciting than the execution. He had read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcock felt a movie was finished the moment he laid out his storyboard. In many respects, he felt the same way.
The letters he would . . .
Or rather Melissa would . . .
Or rather Melissa's minions would deliver next week had already been composed and printed and placed in their separate envelopes, each of them addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella at the 87th Precinct. Step by step, bit by bit, Monday through Friday, the delivered messages would gradually unfold his meticulous plan, leading the Keystone Kops down the garden path until Saturday, ta-ra! when at last all would be revealed — if they were clever enough. But too late.
Smiling, he hunched over the keyboard and opened first the folder he had titled SKED, and next the file he had titled CALENDAR:
MON 6/7 DARTS
TUE 6/8 BACK TO THE FUTURE
WED 6/9 NUMBERS
THU 6/10 PALS
FRI6/11 WHEN?
SAT 6/12 NOW!
He nodded in satisfaction. Bit by bit, he thought. Step by step.
The actual gig next Saturday held little or no interest for him. Neither did the eventual payoff. It was
the planning that thrilled him to the marrow — to coin a phrase. And this was a magnificent plan! He suddenly burst into jubilant song.
WHEN MELISSA HEARD him singing at the top of his lungs, she thought perhaps he'd finally lost it. Sighing, she picked up the receiver and punched out Ambrose Carter's number in Diamondback. He answered on the third ring.
'Ame,' she said, 'it's me.'
'Li'l early to be callin, ain' it?'
She looked at the clock on the desk. It was ten minutes past ten.
'Sorry, Ame,' she said, 'but I was wondering about tomorrow.'
'Whut about tomorrow?'
'Have you lined up your three people?'
'Whut three people?' he said.
She held the receiver away from her ear, looked at it the way a person might do on television when she'd just heard something she couldn't quite understand or believe. Eyes squinching up. Brow furrowing.
'For the letters,' she said.
'Whut letters?' he said.
'The letters you were going to find people
'Whut letters?' he said again.
'The letters I advanced you three fucking thousand dollars to . . .'
'I don't know whut you talkin bout, girl,' he said, and hung up.
She looked at the phone again.
Just like on television.
*
HOWES COULDN'T QUITE imagine himself dating a so-called celebrity, but he guessed that's what Honey Blair was. Which was why he didn't have to prod the detectives of Midtown South to follow up diligently on the drive-by shooting that had taken place outside 574 Jefferson at a few minutes before eleven on Wednesday morning, June second, four days ago. The other person in that perforated limousine had been Hawes himself, by the way, but this didn't seem of much interest to a detective named Brody Hollister, who was heading up the Mid South investigative team.
'Thanks, Colton,' he told Hawes on the phone. 'We'll keep that in mind, if, when.'
'Thanks,' Hawes said. 'And it's Cotton, by the way. Cotton Hawes.'
'Really?' Hollister said, and hung up.
Asshole, Hawes thought, and made his next call to the Eight-Six, where there was no question that he himself, Cotton (sometimes known as Colton) Hawes, had been the intended victim. The detective who'd caught the squeal there was a First named Barney Olson, and he told Hawes he was still working the case, but they'd had a rash of crib burglaries this past week, and he was sorry to admit he hadn't given the sniper case his undivided attention.
He sounded a bit distracted, but also somewhat sarcastic, landing a mite too heavily on the words 'undivided attention,' hmm? Crib burglaries were not the theft of infants' beds, but merely burglaries committed in dwellings rather than offices, and doubtless of vast importance in a Silk Stocking precinct like the Eight-Six. But, shit, man, a person — Hawes himself! — had been shot at from a rooftop, and it was very likely, in fact virtually indisputable that the Wednesday morning
attempt on his life was linked to the subsequent Friday morning shooting outside his orthopedist's office on Jefferson Avenue. He still wondered what you had to do to get the 'undivided attention' of a cop around here.
He did not yet know that a personal note of apology had been delivered yesterday to Channel Four's seventh-floor offices on Moody Street.
Neither did Honey.
Her weekend off had started yesterday. This was still Sunday. This afternoon, in fact, they planned to go downtown to hear the visiting Cleveland Symphony Orchestra perform an all-Stravinsky program in Clarendon Hall's popular 'Three at Three' series. Meanwhile, Hawes had finished making his calls, and Honey was taking a luxuriant bubble bath.
He wondered if he should go in there and offer to scrub her back.
CARELLA'S MIND WAS on the Deaf Man.
Watching his wife's moving fingers, translating for his mother and sister, his mind was nonetheless on where the Deaf Man might be, and what he might be planning on this Sunday, the sixth day of June.
Carella had checked with the desk sergeant at the Eight-Seven early this morning, as soon as he'd got up, but as of eight-thirty A.M, no message from Mr. Adam Fen had been delivered. He had checked again at twelve-thirty, just about when his mother, and Angela, and Angela's two daughters were arriving for lunch, but again, there had been nothing from the man who'd bar-raged them with missives the week before.
Now, reading and translating, Carella's mind wandered.
While Teddy explained that they had thought a Northern Italian menu might be appropriate, in honor of Luigi and his children and the dozen or more friends who were coming over from Milan for the wedding, Carella was thinking. Two days of anagrams, starting with WHO'S IT, ETC? on Tuesday afternoon and ending the next day with I'M A FATHEAD, MEN! All five notes designed to remind them of his previous mischief and to tell them he was the one who'd killed Gloria Stanford.
And, as Teddy's fingers signaled savory but difficult to sign pass-around starters like bruschetta and crostata di funghi and tartine di baccala, Carella simultaneously spoke the words aloud in his halting Italian while silently pondering the fusillade of Shakespearean quotes that had started on Thursday with three shakes and a spear . . .
Rough winds do SHAKE ... SHAKE off slumber ... SHAKE me up ...
And finally . . .
... footing of a SPEAR.
Announcing without question that whatever might come next, it would most certainly come from Shakespeare. And indeed it had. On Friday morning . . .
'Steve? Are you listening to her?'
His sister's voice. Yanking him forward some five centuries in time.
'Sorry,' he said.
Teddy was starting on the main course.
There'll be two choices, she signed.
'There'll be two choices,' Carella said, reading her
hands. 'Either the roast lamb loin encrusted with mixed Italian herbs . . .'
'Yummy,' Angela said.
'Or the Tuscan-style veal tenderloin.'
'I think I prefer the veal,' his mother said.
'Well, there'll be a choice, Mom.'
'I know, honey. I'm just saying I love veal.'