“Tell me,” he said casually, though his heart was pounding,“who ordered the picks and shovels?”
The delivery boy looked at his slip. “Here’s the name of the man right here,” he said.
“What is it? What is it?” Raskin asked excitedly.
“L. Sordo,” the delivery boy replied.
NOW, WHEREASMeyer Meyer, by his own admission, had not read “The Red-headed League,” hehad read a book by a gentleman known as Ernest Hemingway, and the title of that beautiful volume wasFor Whom the Bell Tolls, which is about a lovely guerilla girl laid in Spain. There is a memorable character called El Sordo in the book and, as any half-wit knows,el sordo in Spanish means “the deaf one” or, because of the masculineo ending, “the deaf man.”
It seemed obvious to Meyer at this point that someone with a hearing deficiency was the person responsible for the various threats everyone had been receiving. The gentleman at the Sandhurst Paper Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, had told Meyer not too long ago that the person who’d ordered the envelopes had said, “Excuse me, but would you talk a little louder? I’m slightly deaf, you know.”
And now someone had ordered two picks and two shovels to be deliveredafter Darask Frocks, Inc. vacated the loft, but those picks and shovels had obviously been delivered by mistakebefore Raskin got out, and the man who’d ordered those tools was a man who called himself L. Sordo. So not only was there a strong possibility that this was the same man who’d ordered the Massachusetts envelopes but there was a sneaking suspicion on Meyer’s part that this fellow wanted to be known, he wanted to be sure he was given credit for his handiwork, wanted to be certain his byline appeared on everything he created, El Sordo, The Deaf Man.
And sitting not three feet away from Meyer Meyer at his own desk was Detective Steve Carella who was fairly convinced that a person who’d used the alias of John Smith had had something cooking with someone known only as the deaf man, and that if he could get some sort of a lead onto this deaf man fellow, he would be a lot closer toward solving the case.
The trouble was, of course, that Meyer Meyer was working on a series of threatening phone calls and harassments and Steve Carella was working on a shotgun homicide and neither man saw fit to discuss his respective case with his colleague. That was the way things were going that April. In a squadroom where everyone generally was willing to discuss anything and everything involving police work, toilet training, marital technique and pennant races, nobody seemed too talkative that April. Even Bert Kling, who managed to finish his volume of Sherlock Holmes stories between phone conversations with his fiancée, failed to discuss any of the yarns with Meyer Meyer. That’s the way things were going that April.
Well, on Monday of the following week, the advertisement appeared in the two morning dailies which carried classified advertisements. The ad read:
WANTED
Redheads! Redheads! Redheads! To model women’s dresses in swank Culver Avenue showroom. No experience necessary. Apply 12 noon. Darask Frocks, Inc. 1213 Culver Avenue, Mr. Raskin. Redheads! Redheads! Redheads!
And, man, the redheads came out of the sewers that day! No one in the world would have believed there were so many redheads in the entire city. Rome is supposed to be the city of redheads, but at twelve noon on April 27 there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of redheads of every conceivable size, shape, and hue standing in a disorderly line in front of Dave Raskin’s loft, trailing past the open doors of the bank and going around the corner. There were fat redheads and skinny redheads, tall ones and short ones, busty ones and flat-chested ones, hippy ones and straight ones, flaming redheads and auburn redheads, natural orange redheads and bleached scarlet redheads, and each and every one of them wanted to see Dave Raskin about this job of modeling women’s dresses in the swank Culver Avenue showroom. The line sailed clear around the block and past the bank and into the open doorway alongside the bank and up the steps and into the loft where Dave Raskin frantically tried to explain he was not hiring any damn models that day.
And all of a sudden, the dawn broke.
All of a sudden, Meyer Meyer tipped to what was afoot.
Just the way he was supposed to.
12.
HE SLAMMED THE PHONE DOWN angrily and said, “Raskin again! The heckler sent him thousands of redheads! I’m telling you, Bert, this is driving me nuts. All of a sudden, he’s concentrating on poor Dave. What does he want from the guy? What’s he after?”
Kling, working hard at his desk, looked up and said, “What’s a four-letter word for walking sticks?”
“Huh?”
“The puzzle,” Kling said, tapping the newspaper on his desk.
“Is that all you’ve got to do with your time?”
“What’s a four-letter—”
“There are no four-letter words in my vocabulary.”
“Come on. Walking sticks. A four-letter word.”
“Legs,” Meyer answered. “So what could that crazy nut want from Raskin? Why does he want him out of that loft?”
“You think itcould be?”
“Could be what? What are you talk—”
“Legs.”
“I don’t know. Don’t bother me. Why did he stop calling all the other guys? Twenty-three stores by the last count, and all of a sudden silence except for Raskin. What does he want from him? His money? But who keeps money in a loft? Where people keep money is in—”
Meyer stopped talking. A look of shocked recognition had crossed his face. His eyes had opened wide, and his mouth had dropped open in surprise. The word caught in his throat, refusing to budge.
“What’s a four-letter word that means a slope or acclivity?” Kling asked.
“A bank,” Meyer said breathlessly, pushing the word out of his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s right. Like the bank of a riv—”
“A bank,” Meyer said again, his mouth still hanging open, a dazed and glassy look in his eyes.
“I heard you the—”
“A bank!” he said. “The bank! The bank under the loft! The bank, Bert! The goddammed bank!”
“Huh? What?”
“That’s why he wants Raskin out! He wants to chop through that loft floor and come through the ceiling of the bank vault! That’s what those picks and shovels were for! But they were delivered too early by mistake! He’s going to rob that bank, but he’s got to do it before the thirtieth of April because the bank is moving then!That’s why all the pressure on Raskin! Oh man, how could I have—”
“Yeah, that was a good story,” Kling said, not looking up from his paper.
“Whatwas a good story?” Meyer asked confused.
“The Red-headed League,” Kling said.
Meyer shrugged. “Come on,” he said. “I want to talk to the lieutenant.
He grabbed Kling’s wrist and dragged him across the room. He almost forgot to knock on Byrnes’s door.
THE SQUADROOM WAS EMPTYwhen Carella entered it not five minutes later. He looked around, yelled “Anybody home?” and went to his desk. “Hey, where is everybody?” he yelled again.