'You think he might get her to hypnotize someone?' Brown asked.
'Who?'
'The Sammarone woman. Carmela. Get her to cast a spell, you know?'
'Is she a hypnotist? Do we know that?'
'It's just, Hal said it could mean casting a spell.'
'It also means "late in developing," Willis said. 'Backward. You say someone's backward, you mean he's retarded.'
'Retarded ain't politically correct no more,' Parker said.
'Slow then,' Willis said. 'Backward.'
'Maybe he's telling us we're slow,' Meyer suggested.
'Maybe we are slow,' Carella said, and looked at the most recent note again.
Now they had 78.
First 87 and now 78.
Which was indeed 87 spelled backwards, or even backward, as the 'she' in yesterday's second note would have it.
'Do backward and backwards mean the same thing?' Genero asked. 'Cause I always said backwards. Is that wrong?'
'Backwards is the plural of backward,' Parker explained.
'Is something going to happen in the Seven-Eight?' Eileen asked.
'Where is the Seven-Eight, anyway?' Hawes asked.
Meyer was already looking through his list of the city's precincts. It seemed there was a Seventy-eighth Precinct across the river, in Calm's Point.
'"Him" spelled backwards is "mih,"' Genero observed. "She would spell him backward."'
'In Vietnamese, "mih" means "son of the crouching tiger,'" Parker said.
They all looked at him. 'Just kidding,' he said. But nobody was laughing.
YOU SEE A girl walking up the avenue at ten o'clock in the morning, wearing a slinky black silk dress and high-heeled black sandals with rhinestone clips, you know she's either an heiress or a hooker. And unless you're from Elk Horn, North Dakota, you know she didn't spend the night sleeping.
The Deaf Man was still asleep when Melissa let herself into the apartment. She went into the kitchen, poured herself some juice from the fridge, got a pot of coffee going, and then slipped out of her shoes and sat there at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to perk, looking out at the skyline, elbow on the table, chin resting on the heel of her right hand.
The aroma of the brewing coffee brought back memories of a childhood she'd almost forgotten. How'd I get here all these years later? she wondered. Whatever happened to little Carmela Sammarone? Where'd you go, Mela? she wondered. Mel? Where are you now, honey? Only place the name exists is on my passport, that one time Grandpa took me to Italy with him, to his hometown there, a walled city, she couldn't even remember the name of it anymore. Sort of sighing, she got up to pour herself the coffee.
'How'd it go?' he asked.
Startled, she turned from the stove.
He was wearing the black cashmere robe she'd bought him that made his eyes look very blue. Broad shoulders,
narrow waist, belt around it. Blond hair tousled, made him look somewhat boyish.
'Good,' she said. 'Want some coffee?'
'Yes, please,' he said. 'Learn anything?'
'Oh, oodles,' she said, and poured him a cup, carried it to the table, went to the fridge for milk, the cabinet for sugar. Sitting there at the table, in the sunlight streaming through the window, they could have been a cozy married couple having breakfast. She wondered what it was like to be a married couple.
'So tell me,' he said.
'His name is Jeremy Higel, he's not Greek.'
'He looked Greek. The beard, maybe. Or the association with Sallas.'
'Are Greeks supposed to have beards?'
Anyway . . .'he prompted.
Anyway, he's not Greek. But he'is Sallas' bodyguard.'
'That I know.'
'Who is a violin player.'
'Correct.'
And the concert will take place at three o'clock this Saturday, you were right about that, too.'
'So far, so good,' he said.
'Oh, it gets much better.'
'Tell me,' he said, and smiled.
'They'll be picked up at the hotel at two o'clock. Sallas and his bodyguard.'
'Why so early? The concert doesn't start till three.'
'In case there's traffic. They're supposed to be at Clarendon by two-thirty.'
'Who's picking them up?'
'A limo.'
'Which company?'
'Regal.'
'Good. You got that, huh?'
'Regal Limousine, yes. The car will be a luxury sedan, is what they call it.'
'That's very good, Melissa.'
'I think so.'
'Is he armed . . . Jeremy, is it?'
'Jeremy, yes. Jeremy Higel.'
'Is he armed?'
'Yes.'
'What kind of weapon?'
'A Smith & Wesson 1911.'
'I didn't know you were that familiar with guns.'
'I'm not. He gave me a guided tour. It's a forty-five caliber automatic, five-inch barrel length. Magazine holds eight rounds, plus one in the firing chamber. Satin stainless finish with a Hogue rubber grip. Very proud of that gun, he is. Nice-looking weapon, in fact. Big weapon, too. Which is more than I can say for the one in his pants.'
'Did he give you a guided tour of that one as well?'
'A walking tour, let us say. Nothing to brag about, believe me.'
'Par for the course, from what I gather.'
'Meaning?'
'According to the e-mails I receive in the hundreds of thousands every day of the week, every man in America is deficient in that department and in serious need of enlargement.'
'Present company excluded,' Melissa said, and glanced shyly at where his legs were crossed in the black cashmere robe.
'Bust enhancement, too,' he said. 'According to my e-mails, every woman in the world needs her bust enhanced.'
'Not me,' she said. 'I noticed.'
'Cause I already had them done.' 'Oh?'
'Right after I started calling myself Melissa.' 'Oh?'
'I thought I might become an actress, you see.' 'I didn't know that,' he said.
Yeah,' she said, and looked out at the magnificent skyline again. 'Girlish dreams, right?'
87+78=165
'Well, now there's news,' Parker said.
'But is it correct?' Genero asked, and began adding 78 to 87 on his calculator. Much to his surprise, eighty-seven plus seventy-eight did indeed add up to a hundred and sixty-five, more or less.
'What's he trying to tell us?' Carella asked.
'Why's he adding those two numbers?'
'Is there a One-Six-Five Precinct?' Eileen asked.
Meyer checked his list again.
'No,' he said. 'Highest is the Hun' Twenty-Third.'
'We're slow, and he's getting faster,' Parker said. 'The notes are coming in faster and faster.'
They all looked up at the wall clock.
It was now ten minutes to eleven.
THE NEXT NOTE came at 11:47 A.M. It read:
165+561=726
Genero looked up from his calculator. 'Right on the button!' he said triumphantly. 'The arithmetic is absolutely correct]'
'The sums are getting bigger and bigger, too, did you notice that?' Hawes asked.
'Meaning?' Parker asked.
'Just commenting.'
'Also,' Brown said, 'the size of the numbers is getting smaller and smaller.'
'No, bigger,' Hawes insisted.
'I don't mean the numerical value,' Brown said, sounding like a mathematics professor all at once. 'I mean the size of the type. Go ahead. Compare them.'
87
78
87+78=165 165+561=726
'The Incredible Shrinking Deaf Man,' Willis said, and Eileen laughed.
The door to Lieutenant Byrnes' office opened.
Scowling, he said, 'Doesn't anyone have anything to do around here?'
THEY HAD PLENTY to do.
This was the 87th Precinct, and this was the Big Bad City.
So while in his apartment crosstown and further downtown the Deaf Man was calling Regal Limousine to
arrange for a car and driver to pick him up at one-thirty this afternoon for what he'd described to Melissa as a 'trial run . . .'