'You can tell,' the owner said.
'You can tell a man wearing a ski mask and gloves is black?' Brown said.
'The voice,' the owner said. 'No offense meant.'
'None taken,' Brown said. 'He sounded black, is that what you're saying?'
'Is exactly what I'm saying,' the owner said. 'No offense.'
Kling tended to agree that black people sounded different from white people. Brown was inclined to agree as well. Both men could instantly identify a black person on the phone, even if he wasn't wearing gloves and a ski mask. So why were they both offended now — and they both were — by this scrawny little white man wearing a shabby maroon sweater and smoking a cigarette, telling them that he could tell the man who'd come in and stuck a gun in his face in broad daylight was black because he sounded black?
Was it because his identification was premised less on the robber's voice than on the fact that he was wearing a ski mask and gloves on the ninth day of June? Was the liquor store owner saying, in effect, 'Only a black man would be stupid enough to wear a ski mask and gloves on a holdup in June?'
Neither Kling nor Brown knew exactly why they were offended, but they were. They went about their business, nonetheless, saying nothing about the possibly racist ID, taking down all the details of the robbery, and then telling the owner, who was already on his fourth cigarette in the past twenty minutes, that they'd get back to him if they got anything, to which he replied simply, 'Sure.'
Neither did they discuss the ID when they were alone in the car together, heading back to the stationhouse.
Kling wondered about this.
So did Brown.
AMONG THE MANY quotes attributed to Marlowe were:
Comparisons are odious and Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? and Come live with me, and be my love and Love me little, love me long (which was an Elvis Presley song, wasn't it?) and Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships?
But when Carella typed in the keywords in that first little poem they'd received, he got nothing again. So Marlowe hadn't written it, either. In which case, who was the culprit? Was it Sir Francis Bacon, another candidate for Shakespearean authorship, if Carella remembered correctly; college was a long time ago. Was it Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, or the Tenth Earl of Warwick, or whoever he might have been?
He Googled over to Bacon, typed in the keywords, and got nothing. He typed in de Vere, went through the exercise yet another time. Nothing again. No hits, all misses. Something like a Broadway season in New York. So who had written those lines?
Or was the Deaf Man himself the author?
THE FAMILY DISPUTE had turned violent. That's why Genero and Parker were here. The woman, who'd had about enough of being slapped around by a husband half her size, grabbed a cast-iron skillet from the stove and swung it at her husband's head, splashing fried peppers and eggs all over his face together with the blood that gushed from the big gash the skillet had opened.
The uniforms who'd responded earlier were still at the scene. An ambulance had carted Agustin Mendez to the hospital, but his wife, Milagros, was still here in the apartment, her arms folded across ample breasts. The detectives had to watch where they were stepping
because peppers and eggs were still all over the kitchen floor.
'He slipped and fell in the oil on the floor,' Milagros said.
Perfect English, faintest trace of an accent. Damned if she was going to get sent up for finally striking back at her son of a bitch husband. Parker couldn't blame her. Neither could Genero.
'How'd the oil get on the floor, ma'am?' he asked.
Agustin spilled it.'
'Spilled the oil and then slipped in it, right?' Parker said.
'That's how it happened, yes,' she said, and nodded defiantly.
In the street outside, walking back to the car, Parker said, 'She's lying, you know.'
'Oh, sure.'
'They lie, these spics.'
'Sure.'
'Ollie's dating one, you know,' Parker said.
'I didn't know.'
'A mistake,' Parker said, and shook his head gravely.
CARELLA LOOKED AT the note again.
726+627=1353
If the Deaf Man was reversing the number and then adding it to itself, then why not. . .
Well, let's try it, he thought.
He picked up a pen, pulled a pad in front of him, and wrote 1353 on it. He reversed the number . . . 3531 . . . and then added them together:
1353 +3531
4884
I'll be damned, he thought.
Unless he was mistaken, 4884 was the nonexistent postal box number the Deaf Man had used on his early messenger-service deliveries.
He was leading them back to the very beginning again.
He was telling them to go back.
Backward, men! Backward, you backward men!
And then something sprang off the pad, almost hitting Carella in the left eye.
4884
The number read the same forwards and backwards!
11.
THE DRIVER FROM Regal Limousine was waiting outside 328 River Place South when his customer - a Mr. Adam Fen — came out of the luxury apartment building at precisely one-thirty that Wednesday afternoon. He tipped his peaked hat and immediately went to the curb-side rear door, snapping it open, holding it open as his customer stepped in, and then closing the door behind him. Coming around to the driver's side of the car, he climbed in behind the wheel, and said, 'I'm David, Mr. Fen.'
'How do you do, David?'
'Nice day, i'n it, sir?'
Slight Cockney accent, the Deaf Man noticed. Or Australian, perhaps? Sometimes, they sounded alike. David was a man in his late forties, the Deaf Man guessed, some five-feet eight-inches tall, quite thin, a slight man by anyone's reckoning. He was wearing black trousers and a matching jacket, black shoes and socks, little black cap with a shiny black peak, white shirt, and black tie.
'And where shall it be this afternoon, Mr. Fen?'
'Clarendon Hall, please.'
'Clarendon it is, sir.'
The Deaf Man had ordered what Regal called its 'luxury sedan' because this was the type of limo Konstantinos Sallas and his bodyguard would be riding to Clarendon this Saturday afternoon. He was not at all interested in the backseat reading lamps or vanity mirrors or any of
the other amenities, preferring instead to concentrate on how much room there was in the front seat, where David sat behind the wheel with a blank smile on his face.
The weapon the Deaf Man had chosen was an Uzi submachine gun. Manufactured in Israel, the Oo-zee, as it was pronounced, was a boxy, lightweight weapon measuring only some 470 millimeters, and weighing but 3.5 kilograms. When converted to inches and pounds, this came to a sweet little firearm that was a bit more than eighteen inches long, and weighed a bit less than eight pounds. Certainly small enough to fit in a sports bag on the front seat alongside the driver. Glancing there now, he saw that David had placed on that front seat a folded black raincoat.
'I like the way Regal outfits its drivers,' he said.
'Do you now, sir?'
'Indeed. Do they pay for the uniforms? Or do you . . . ?'
'Sir?'
'I asked whether they pay for the uniforms, or do you supply them yourselves?'
'They gives us an allowance, sir. We can go to any outfitter we choose, so long as the uniform meets Regal specifications, yes, sir.'
'And where did you get your uniform?'
'There's a uniform supply house downtown on Baxter Street, yes, sir. That's where I was outfitted.'
'The raincoat, too?'
'Yes, sir, the raincoat. They know Regal's specifications, they're most accommodating.'