Hark!

'Why'd you go meet Jamie Hudson this morn . . . ?'

'What the hell is going on, Bert!'

'You tell me!'

The room went silent.

'Have you been following me?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'Have you . . .'

'Why?'

'. . . been lying to me?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Because . . .'

She cut herself short.

'Yes, tell me. Why'd you lie to me?'

'To protect Julie.'

'Who the hell is she, Sharyn? Have you and Hudson been . . . ?'

'She's a very troubled girl . . .'

'Oh, please, spare me the

'. . . who has to make the most difficult decision in her life. And if she decides the wrong way

'Is she in trouble with the law?'

'Of course not!'

'Then why do you have to protect her from me?'

'Because you wouldn't understand the situation.'

'What situation? You and your colleague Dr. Hudson meeting her on the

'What's wrong with you? You surely don't think . . .'

'. . . sly? You mean you and your little Jamie boy . . .'

'Is that what you th . . . ?'

'What  am I supposed to think? You go sneaking around

'Julie has a serious problem!'

'Oh? Does her Mama disapprove of a three-way with two black . . . ?'

Sharyn slapped him.

'I'm sorry,' she said at once.

The room went utterly still.

'It's not what you think,' she said.

'Then tell me what it is,' he said. *

THE  DRIVER'S NAME was Jack.

'Is it still Burtonwood's, ma'am?' he asked.

Burtonwood's was a department store downtown on Jefferson. Adam had given this as the destination when he'd called Regal.

'Yes, but I have to make a stop first,' she said.

Yes, ma'am,' he said.

'I have to pick up a lamp,' she said. 'To return to the store.'

'Very well, ma'am,' he said.

She was sitting on the backseat, positioned so that he could see her in the rear-view mirror. She wasn't wearing panties, and her skirt was high enough on her thighs for Jack here to see China 'crost the bay.

'Will it fit in the trunk, ma'am?' he asked. 'The lamp?'

'Oh yes,' she said, and gave him the address of the Knowlton Hotel on Ludlow Street.

The game was afoot.

NOSTRADAMUS!

'Here's another one spelled backwards,' Genero said. 'Where?' Meyer asked.

'Right here,' Genero said, pointing. "MAD ARTS." That's "STRADAM" spelled backwards.' Indeed it was:

STRADAM MAD ARTS

"STRADAM" ain't even a word,' Parker said.

'Who said it was?'

'Just what are you saying, Richard?'

'I'm saying "MAD ARTS" is a word. Two words, in fact.'

'And just what is "MAD ARTS" supposed to mean?'

A crazy modern painting.'

'Right,' Parker said. 'He's gonna kidnap the Mona Lisa.'

'Or some other crazy modern painting,' Genero said.

Meyer looked again at the anagram in Parker's handwriting:

A SUM, NO DARTS!

He still didn't get it.

'KNOWLTON HOTEL, M A'AM,' Jack said. 'Shall I just wait here?'

'Can you help me carry it down?' she asked. 'The lamp?'

He looked as if he didn't fully understand, but his role in all this would be over in the next ten minutes or thereabouts, so it didn't matter whether he quite got it or not.

'It's sort of heavy,' she said, and uncrossed her legs to afford him a better view of the dawn coming up like thunder.

'Of course, ma'am,' he said, thinking he was beginning to get the drift. 'I'll be happy to.'

He followed her into the elevator and up to the sixth floor. He followed her down the hall to room 642. He waited behind her while she inserted a key into the lock. She felt certain he was checking out her splendid ass in its short tight skirt.

'Come in, please, Jack,' she said, and smiled over her shoulder in blatant invitation.

He stepped into the room, thinking there wasn't a lamp at all, and grinning in sly anticipation, when all at once all the lamps in the world went out because that was when the Deaf Man hit him on the head with a somewhat blunt instrument.

AT TWO O'CLOCK sharp, a uniformed driver from Regal Limousine pulled up to the parking area in front of the Intercontinental Hotel, stepped out of the luxury sedan, and told the doorman he was here for Mr. Konstantinos Sallas.

The doorman went inside, buzzed the suite upstairs, and told Mr. Sallas that his car was here. Sallas, in turn, rang his bodyguard's room, told him the car was here, told his wife he'd see her backstage after the concert, kissed her goodbye, and picked up his violin case. He met Jeremy Higel at the elevators, and together they went down to the lobby and out into the street, where the uniformed driver was standing outside the black car, waiting for them.

'Mr. Sallas?' he asked.

'Yes?'

'Nice to meet you, sir,' the driver said, and rushed to open the rear door for them. When they were comfortably seated, he climbed in behind the wheel, turned to them, and asked, "Would you be more comfortable with the violin up front, sir?'

'Thank you, no, I'll keep it here,' Sallas said, and gave the case a little proprietary pat.

'Clarendon Hall then,' the driver said, and started the car.

Neither of them noticed that there was a hearing aid in his right ear.

LUIGI FONTERO'S SISTER was telling Carella all about the gardens of Rome, where she lived. He gathered this was what she was talking about since he heard the word Roma and also the word giardini. Otherwise, he caught little else of what she was saying because she was speaking in rapid-fire Italian.

'Uh-huh,' he said.

'A Roma,' she said and rolled her eyes, 'bella Roma, ci sono molti giardini . . .'

'Uh-huh,' he said.

'Per esempio,' she said, 'ci sono i giardini della Villa Aldobrandini a Frascati, ed anche i giardini

'Uh-huh,' he said.

'. . . della Vila d'Este a Tivoli. Ma, secundo me . . .'

'Excuse me,' Carella said.

'. . . ipiu belli giardini . . .'

'Scusi,' he said, 'excuse me,' and got up and moved through the dancers on the crowded floor — his sister dancing with Uncle Mike now, all suntanned and bald from Florida, his mother dancing with her new son-in-law, the assistant district attorney Henry Lowell — and worked his way to the men's room. On his way back to the table, where he now saw Alberta Fontero was bending somebody else's ear about the fabulous gardens of Rome, he stopped in the banquet hall's office, and asked a twenty-year-old kid behind the desk there if he could use the phone.

'There's a pay phone in the men's room,' the kid said.

'This is police business,' Carella said, and showed his shield. The kid looked at it as if he thought it might be fake, but he indicated the phone, shrugged, and walked out.

Carella began dialing the squadroom.

'Eighty-seventh Squad, Meyer.'

'It's me,' Carella said.

'Is that music I hear?'

'Yeah, let me close this door.'

He got up, came around the desk, closed the door on the Sonny Sabatino Orchestra, and came back to the phone again.

I'm glad you called,' Meyer said. 'Have you got a pencil?'

Carella took a pencil from a cup on the desk. He found a crumpled sheet of paper in the wastebasket, pulled it out, smoothed it, and said, 'What've you got?'

'Nostradamus,' Meyer said. 'That's N-O-S

'T-R-A . . .' Carella said, nodding.

'You know it?'

'Nostradamus, sure. The Greek prophet.'

'French,' Meyer said.

'Whatever.'

'Write it down.'

Carella wrote it down:

NOSTRADAMUS

'Okay, got it,' he said.

IN THE MOVIES, this was that stretch of turf alongside the river, under the bridge, where the nasty bad guys pulled up in their big black cars for a face-off about dope or prostitution.