Hark!

'In England, they call these "suspenders,"' Willis told Eileen, lifting from the floor a garter belt trimmed in black lace.

'Do you have this in white?' Eileen asked the lady. Cost her sixty bucks.

She winked at Willis when they left the shop. At ten-thirty that morning, Carella and Hawes went out to investigate an apparent suicide on Silvermine Oval, in a building not too far from where Gloria Stanford had been shot to death a week ago today. The woman in the tub was naked. The ME pronounced her dead, and suggested she'd electrocuted herself by dropping a hair dryer into the water.

'Nice tits, though,' Monoghan said. 'Great jugs, you mean,' Monroe corrected. Carella wondered if someone other than the dead woman had dropped that dryer into the tub. The super of the building told them the woman's husband was a stockbroker downtown, left for work very early every morning. At a little before eleven, they headed down to the financial district to ask him a few questions.

Kling and Brown, the Good Cop / Bad Cop team, caught a squeal closer to home at five past eleven. Drive-by shooting. Gang stuff. Dead boy on the sidewalk. Nobody saw or heard anything. They were back in the squadroom by twelve-fifteen. Everyone else drifted in by the half-hour.

IT WAS NOW twelve-thirty, and here came Konstantinos!

Striding out of the stage door, saying hello to the armed guard there, and then marching off up the avenue toward his favorite little deli.

Dutifully, the Deaf Man followed.

Every day so far, Sallas left the concert hall at twelve-thirty, walked to the Greek delicatessen — surprise! — on Sakonuff, had lunch there, and then walked back to the

hall to resume rehearsal at 1:00 P.M. At 4:00 P.M. every day, he exited through the stage door, bodyguard beside him, violin case swinging from his right hand, took a brief brisk stroll up Grover Avenue, pasr the museum and the 87th Precinct stationhouse, and then turned back toward the hotel again. Later, the Deaf Man thought.

IT WAS ONLY after the second messenger arrived that the police detected a pattern here: Carmela Sammarone was drafting junkies to do her legwork. At least today, anyway. At least in the selection of her delivery boys.

It wasn't too difficult to find a junkie on any street corner in this city. Lay some shit on him, or just the cash to buy the shit, and he'd go out to kill his own mother for you. It wasn't difficult to recognize a junkie, either. There were always the red watery eyes, the pupils either roo large or too small. There was the puffy face, or the cold, sweaty palms, or the shaking hands, or the pale skin. Sometimes there was the smell of this week's substance of choice — cocaine or heroin or ecstasy or merh or OxyContin — on the breath or the body or the clothes.

But more than any of these, there was the blank desperate stare of the addict. And behind those dead eyes, the knowledge that he or she was married to a tyrannical slaveholder. And the further knowledge that not a single soul on earth — sister, mother, brother, father, spouse, significant other, social worker, doctor, or cop — looked upon you with anything but pity or contempt because they felt you had no one but yourself to blame for your predicament.

'Where'd you get this letter, Joseph?' they asked the first messenger.

At the time, they suspected he might be a junkie, but they didn't yet realize a pattern was about to emerge.

'Girl give it to me Langley Park.'

'What girl?'

'Doan know who she was.'

'She give you a name?'

'Nossir. Lay a C-note on me, say she be watchin me deliver the en'lope.'

'Where was this, Joseph?'

Tole you. Langley Park.'

'How old was she?'

'Ain' no good with ages. Young.'

'How young? Young like you?'

'Older.'

'How old are you, Joseph?'

'Seventeen.'

'What'd she look like?'

'Short red hair, brown eyes.'

The second messenger was a girl with bleached blond hair and green eyes. Her hair was matted and stringy and greasy. Her eyes had lost all their luster, and she was as thin as a rail, and her clothes were bedraggled and stained and smelled of vomit and Christ knew what else. She was probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, but she could easily have been mistaken for a woman in her thirties. Maybe even older. A tired woman in her thirties.

Speaking with a Calm's Point accent — the Irish, not the black or Italian variety — she told them she'd been an addict since she was seventeen, a hooker since she was eighteen. Started with crack, which was all the rage then, moved on to gremmies and sherms and even did some fry before starting to shoot hop directly into the vein, welcome to the club, sweetheart! She told them this girl

with long black hair had made her an offer she couldn't refuse, two bills to deliver this envelope here, told her she didn't know who the girl was, didn't know her name, had never seen her before this morning, wouldn't recognize her again if she tripped over her in church.

She was stoned out of her mind when she delivered the envelope, and she couldn't remember where, or even when, she'd met the girl with the long black hair.

'I'm a natural redhead, wanna see?' she said, and lifted her skirt.

She spelled her name Aine Duggan, but she pronounced it Anya Doogan.

They figured her for a lost cause.

But now they knew for sure that Carmela Sammarone was finding her messengers in the city's pool of drug addicts.

And the pool was bottomless.

I may say, thrusting it;

For piercing steel and darts envenomed

Shall be as welcome to the ears

'He's sticking it to us,' Parker said.

'That's what he means by "thrusting it," ' Genero agreed.

'Sticking it right in our eye.'

' "Thrusting it.'"

'"I may say,'" Meyer said, quoting from the note. 'He sounds like Rumsfeld. Next thing you know, he'll be saying "Golly!" and "Gee whiz!'"

'There's that sword again,' Eileen said.

'Where?' Willis asked.

'"Piercing steel.'"

'Poisoned darts, too,' Kling said.

'I don't see any poisoned darts,' Genero said.

' "Darts envenomed."' That's poisoned darts, Dickie-boy.'

'No one calls me "Dickie,"' Genero told Parker.

'Not even your mama?'

'Everyone calls me Richard.'

' "Darts envenomed" are poisoned darts, Richard.'

'Thanks for the information.'

'"Welcome to the ears,'" Carella said, typing the words into the computer.

'Joking about his own infirmity,' Hawes said.

'You think so?'

'Signing the note, in effect. I am the Deaf Man,

remember?'

'Julius Caesar, Act Five, Scene Three,' Carella said,

reading from the screen. 'How many is that so far?' 'How many is what?' 'The plays he's quoted from.' 'Nine?' Kling said. 'No, ten, I think.' 'No, wait

'Plus one from the sonnets. The one about the darling buds of May,' Eileen said, and glanced at Willis.

'And we still don't know where the first one came from,' Carella said. 'Which one?'

About "an actor's art," all that.' ' "An actor's art can die, and live, to act a second part,"' Kling quoted.

'So how many is that?'

'Nine plays for sure. Or ten. Plus the sonnet.'

'Out of how many?' Genero asked.

They all looked at him.

'How many did he write?'

'Thousands,' Parker said.

'Must be a place we can find out,' Genero said. 'Isn't there a collection or something?'

'What difference does it make how many he wrote, Richard?'

'I thought if there was a collection someplace

'Yes, Richard?'

'We could figure out how many he wrote.'

And then what?'

'One thing could lead to another,' Genero said, and shrugged.

THE DEAF MAN was thinking that almost anywhere in America, almost anyone could walk in with a bomb and blow the place to smithereens. Walk into any restaurant, any theater, any sporting event, any prayer meeting with a bomb strapped around your waist, and the rest was late-night news. When death was preferable to life, when death promised a heaven where there'd be seven, or seventeen, or seventy waiting virgins, however many there were supposed to be — he personally didn't think there were any virgins left in the entire world — then what was to stop any lunatic from walking in with his ticket to paradise strapped around his waist?