Upstairs in the squadroom, Bob O'Brien shouldn't have opened it because it wasn't addressed to him, but he thought if a person used a same-day delivery service, thete might be some urgency involved. Besides, the graveyard shift still had an hour-fifteen to go, and things were pretty quiet. So he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ripped open the MetroFlash envelope, and plucked from it a white business-size envelope. The note folded inside it read:
A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?
O'Brien figured their trigger-happy lunatic from yesterday was still bragging about his dead broad.
EARLY STAGES OF a romance, when you go to the bathroom to pee, you make sure the door is locked, and you run water in the sink to cover the sound of your urination, lest it be your ruination. When Hawes came back into the bedroom, Honey was awake and sitting up in bed.
'I have to pee, too,' she said, and climbed over the side of the bed, long legs flashing beneath the hem of a white baby-doll nightgown. On her way to the bathroom, she tossed him a sassy moon, grinned over her shoulder, and then disappeared behind the closed door. He did not hear
the lock clicking shut. Neither did he hear water running in the sink.
He wondered if he should call in sick. If the squad hadn't caught a homicide yesterday, he might have given it serious thought. Was there time, anyway? He looked at his watch. Six forty-five. Figure half an hour to get uptown to the precinct. No way he could manage it.
Honey came out of the bathroom.
Reading his mind, she asked, 'Do we have time?'
'I have to be in at a quarter to eight,' he said.
She looked at the bedside clock.
'Nuts,' she said, and went to him and kissed him anyway.
It was almost a goodbye kiss.
THE FIRST SHOT cracked on the early morning air the moment Hawes stepped out of the building. He was about to say 'Good morning' to Honey's doorman when he heard the shot and instinctively ducked. He had been a cop for a good long time now, and he knew the difference between a backfire and a rifle shot, and this was a rifle shot, and he knew that even before he heard the bullet whistling past his right ear, even before he saw brick dust exploding from the wall of the building where the first slug hit it.
Because he was an officer of the law, and because he was sworn to protect the citizenry of this fair city, the first thing he did was shove the doorman back into the building and out of harm's way, and the second thing he did was drop to the sidewalk, which was when the second shot came, ripping air where Hawes' head had been not ten seconds earlier. On his hands and knees, he scrabbled for cover behind a car parked at the curb to
the left of the building's canopy, reaching it too late to drag his right foot from the sniper's line of fire.
He felt only searing pain at first, and then a wave of fleeting nausea, and then anger, and then immediate self-recrimination — how could he have let this happen to himself? His gun was already in his hand, too late. He was already scanning the rooftops across the way, too late. The doorman was starting out of the building .. .
'Stay back!' Hawes shouted, just as another shot splintered the suddenly surreal stillness. There were two more shots, and then a genuine stillness. He signaled to the doorman with his outstretched left hand, patting the air, wait, wait, his hand was saying. There were no further
shots.
The doorman came rushing out of the building.
'Call an ambulance,' Hawes said.
A small puddle of blood was forming on the sidewalk.
SHARYN COOKE WAS asleep in Bert Kling's bed when the phone rang in his apartment near the Calm's Point Bridge. He was not due in until seven forty-five, and this was now a quarter past seven and he was just heading out the door. He picked up the phone, said, 'Kling,' listened, said, 'Just a moment, please,' and then went to the bed and gently shook Sharyn awake. 'For you,' he said.
Sharyn scowled at him, but she took the phone.
'Deputy Chief Cooke,' she said.
And listened.
'What?' she said.
And listened again.
"Where is he?'
She looked at Kling, shook her head. Her face was grim.
'I'll get there right away,' she said. 'Thanks, Jamie,' she said, and hung up.
'What?' Kling asked.
'Cotton Hawes got shot,' Sharyn said. And then immediately, seeing his face, 'It's not serious. Just his foot. But he's at Satan's Fluke, and I want him moved out of there fast.'
'I'll come with you,' Kling said.
She was already in the bathroom.
'Who's Jamie?' he asked.
But she'd just turned on the shower.
THE SECOND NOTE that day arrived at twenty minutes to eight. Sergeant Murchison handed Carella the envelope the moment he walked into the muster room.
'Arrived five minutes ago,' he said.
Carella nodded, said, 'Thanks, Dave,' and studied the envelope as he climbed the steps to the second floor of the old building. Name of the courier service was Speed-O-Gram. The envelope was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. The return name on it was Adam Fen, the return address P.O. Box 4884, Abernathy Station. Willis had drawn a blank on each of those yesterday. There were only five Fens listed in all of the city's telephone directories. None of them was an Adam. Willis had called each and every one of them, with no luck. He got Chinese accents each and every time, 'So solly, no Adam Fen here'; for a change, Genero had been right. There were only 300 post office boxes at the Abernathy Station downtown. A box numbered 4884 simply did not exist.
'See you got another one,' O'Brien said. Carella didn't know what he was talking about. O'Brien handed him the MetroFlash envelope and the note that had been inside it:
A WET CORPUS? CORN, ETC?
'Meaning?' Carella asked.
'You're the detective,' O'Brien said.
'He's still trying to confess,' Carella said.
'You think?'
'Telling us there's a dead body wet with her own
blood.'
'Maybe so,' O'Brien admitted dubiously, not wishing to press his good fortune by venturing a true opinion. O'Brien was known far and wide as a hard-luck cop. Not only just here in the confines of the Eight-Seven. Everywhere in the city. Far and wide. Walk down the street with Detective Bob O'Brien, there'd be shooting. Just standing beside him here in the squadroom, Carella was wondering if a bullet would come smashing through one of the windows.
'But what does he mean by "corn, etc?" ' O'Brien asked, stepping out boldly.
'He's referring to the same old routine,' Carella said. 'A body, an investigation, like that. He's telling us this is all corny by now. We've seen it a thousand times on television.'
You think?' O'Brien said again.
'I'm guessing. Same as you.'
'What's the new one say?' O'Brien asked.
He knew his own hard-luck reputation. Shrugged it aside. He'd had to shoot only six, or maybe seven, people in his entire career, but who was counting? And, anyway,
that wasn't so much. Besides, if they couldn't take a joke, fuck 'em.
Carella fished a pair of latex gloves from his desk drawer, pulled them on, opened the Speed-O-Gram envelope. A business-size envelope inside. A pattern here. Same lunatic. He slit open the inner envelope, removed from it a folded white sheet of paper. The message on it read:
BRASS HUNT? CELLAR?
'So what's that got to do with your wet corpse?' O'Brien asked.
'I haven't the foggiest,' Carella said.
Which was when the telephone rang.
It was Bert Kling telling him that Cotton Hawes had been shot and that Sharyn was having him moved from the notorious St. Luke's to Boniface, one of the city's better hospitals.
On the way to Boniface, Carella and Meyer tried to dope out what the three notes meant. The first one said: