'Detective Kling,' he said, and flashed the buzzer. 'Eighty-seventh Squad.'
The mailman looked surprised.
'Social Security checks?' he asked.
'Something like that. Do you know any of these women by sight?' he said, and showed the three names.
'Lawson's not a woman,' he said. 'Man name of Charles. Charles Lawson.'
'How about these other two? L. Matthews? J. Curtis?'
'Lorraine Matthews is a blonde. Around five-six, sort of stout
'And Curtis?'
'Julie, yeah. Julia Curtis. Around thirty, thirty-five, long black hair, brown eyes. Five-seven, five-eight. That the one you're looking for?'
'No,' Kling said.
But that was the one.
'What'd she do?'
'Wrong party,' Kling said. 'Sorry to've bothered you.'
THE FIRST NOTE was delivered at twenty to eleven that Thursday morning, the tenth day of June.
A rod not a bar, a baton, Dora.
This time they were ahead of him.
'It's a palindrome again,' Willis said.
'What's that?' Genero asked. 'A palindrome?'
'Something that reads the same forwards or backwards.'
'Same as the 4884s he sent us yesterday,' Carella said.
They felt they'd been ahead of him yesterday, too, but this time there was no doubt. The sentence read exactly the same, letter for letter, forwards or backwards.
'That's very interesting, the way that works,' Genero said, clearly fascinated. 'Look at that, Eileen. It's the very same thing, forwards or backwards.'
'Oho!' she said, but nobody got it.
'Dumb Dora, he means,' Lieutenant Byrnes said.
'Who's that?' Genero asked.
'It's an expression,' Byrnes said. 'Dumb Dora. He's telling us we're dumb.'
I never heard that, Dumb Dora.'
'You're too young,' Byrnes said. 'It was a cartoon back in the Forties. Advertising Ralston.'
'What's Ralston?' Genero asked.
'It used to be a breakfast cereal. I used to eat it.'
'How old are you, anyway, Loot?' Parker asked.
'Old enough.'
'Another palindrome, no question,' Willis said, reading the note again, front to back and back again.
'Did I miss something?' Kling asked.
He was back in the squadroom now. About time, Byrnes thought. The clock on the wall read 10:48.
'He's sending palindromes now,' Carella explained.
'Which are?'
'They read the same forwards and backwards.'
Kling looked at the note.
A rod not a bar, a baton, Dora.
'Why?' he asked.
'That's what we're trying to figure out.'
'Join the party,' Brown said.
A rod is a gun,' Genero said. 'Isn't it?'
'Used to be called that, anyway,' Byrnes said, almost on a sigh. 'Or even a gat.'
'Has he given up on darts?'
A gun would be a more practical weapon, you have to admit,' Hawes said.
'Then why all that earlier fuss about darts?' Carella asked.
'Slings to arrows to darts, right,' Meyer said, nodding.
'What does he mean by "not a bar"?'
'Nothing,' Parker said. 'He's full of shit. As usual.'
"Not a bar,"' Eileen repeated.
'He's going to use a gun, not some kind of blunt instrument,' Brown said.
They all looked at him.
'Well, some perps use crowbars,' he explained.
They were still looking at him.
'As their weapon of choice,' he said, and shrugged.
'You think he means a police baton?'
'What we used to call a nightstick,' Byrnes said, again wistfully.
'Or does he mean a conductor's baton?' Willis said.
'Oh, Jesus, not another concert!' Parker said.
'Is it the Cow Pasture again?' Hawes asked.
'That was one of his very first references, remember?' Eileen said, nodding.
They scanned the scattered notes:
A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?
'Remember what that became?'
COW PASTURE? CONCERT?
'Is there a concert scheduled in the Cow Pasture?' They scanned the city's three daily newspapers for possible events that might require the use of a baton, and came up with only five that possibly qualified. One was a performance by the Cleveland Symphony at eight o'clock tonight, at Palmer Center. Another was a performance by the city's own Philharmonic, again at eight, this one at Clarendon Hall. There were two jazz concerts in clubs downtown, and a student recital at the Kleber School of Performing Arts.
'So what do we do?' Kling asked. 'Cover them all?'
'Well, if he's really gonna use a gun at one of these events . . .'
'None of them's in the Eight-Seven, did you notice?' Parker said.
'He's got a point,' Genero agreed.
'So let's just alert these other precincts,' Parker said, and shrugged.
Anyone but us, he was thinking.
OLLIE WAS THINKING like a novelist instead of a cop, but sometimes the two overlapped, ah yes. In crime fiction, there was an old adage that maintained 'The Criminal Always Returns to the Scene of the Crime,' or words to that effect, probably first uttered by Sherlock Holmes himself, a fictitional character created by Charles Dickens. In real life, however, as Ollie well knew, a criminal rarely if ever returned to the scene of the crime. What the criminal usually did was run for the hills, which was what Melissa Summers should have been doing instead of hiring assorted junkies to deliver the Deaf Man's messages, whoever he might be.
But he had been told by a truly sad specimen named Aine Duggan (who pronounced her name Anya Doogan, go figure) that a woman who answered the description he'd given of Melissa had approached her last Tuesday afternoon in Cathleen Gleason Park, a lovely patch of green close to the River Harb and the apartment buildings lining River Place South, where Aine had gone to sit and look out over the river and also to wait for her dealer. So this is where Ollie was on this sunny (thank God) Thursday at a little before noon, waiting for Miss Summers to put in a return engagement, either in her
short red wig or her long black wig.
He doubted if she'd come back, but hope springs eternal, ah yes, and hope is also the thing with feathers. So he sat overlapping a park bench in the sunshine, watching the little birdies flutter and twitter, watching too the young mothers with their snot-nosed little toddlers scampering and scurrying, thanking the good lord that he was still a free and single individual, and then - suddenly and quite unexpectedly — wondering where Patricia Gomez was and what she was doing at this very moment.
'WHAT I DON'T understand,' Hawes said, 'is how the shooter knew where I'd be.'
Honey merely nodded.
He had gone to meet her outside Channel Four's offices on Moody Street, and they were now having lunch in a little Mexican joint two blocks away. Honey loved to eat. She was now eating camarones cocoloco, quite enjoying herself and not particularly eager to talk about whoever had tried to kill her. Despite the evidence of the Note, she had convinced herself by now that the shooter was after no one but herself. This notion was fortified by the thousands of letters, phone calls, and e-mails Channel Four had received, encouraging her to continue her crusade against the would-be assassin.
'Because first he had to know I spent the night in your apartment
'Well, that wouldn't take a rocket scientist,' Honey said.
'I know. But it would take someone following us. And watching the building, waiting for me to come out.'