Ed McBain - Hark!

Honey tapped a button. The tinted glass partition between the driver's seat and rear compartment slid up, closing them off, sealing them in a soundless, moving cocoon.

'Here's another perk,' she said, and unzipped his fly.

'Uh-oh,' Hawes said.

'You know why Clinton got impeached, don't you?' she asked.

'I think so, yes.'

'It was because right-wing conservatives didn't know what the word "blowjob" meant.'

'Is that right?'

'Uh-huh. They thought "blowjob" was the code word for two villains running around the White House.'

'Now where'd they get that idea?'

'From James Bond.'

'I see. Two villains from James Bond, huh?'

'Yep.'

'Which ones?'

'Blofeld and Oddjob,' she said.

She didn't say anything else after that.

Or if she did, he didn't hear her.

DR. STEPHEN HANNIGAN was one of the orthopedists approved by the PD for the treatment of police personnel injured in the line of duty. Whether getting shot as you left your girlfriend's house in the early morning qualified as 'injured in the line of duty' was a matter for the Police Benevolent Association to sort out later. Meanwhile, a civil servant who earned $62,587 a year as a Detective/ Second Grade pulled up in a stretch limo in front of 574 Jefferson Avenue at the corner of Jefferson and Meade. Hawes kissed Honey goodbye, and was just stepping out on the curb side of the car, when —

He hurled himself and Honey to the floor of the car the instant he heard the first shot. He wasn't counting, but enough shots were fired, in the next thirty seconds to shatter the tinted glass window of the limo, rip through the Channel Four logo on the rear door, tear up the interior upholstery, smash the whiskey and brandy decanters in both side door panels, and narrowly miss killing Honey and Hawes both.

Picking himself up off the floor of the car, Hawes yelled 'I wasn't angry until right now!' never realizing how close he'd come to echoing Shakespeare's 'I was not angry since I came to France' line in King Henry V, Act IV, Scene vii.

THE SECOND NOTE that day read:

I am disgraced, impeach 'd and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear

'That first line is intended for us,' Meyer said. 'He's telling us by now we should be feeling disgraced, impeach'd

'Which he also spelled wrong,' Genero said.

'. . . and baffled here. That's what he's saying.'

'No, I don't think any personal message is intended here,' Eileen said. 'I think he's simply calling our attention to the last word in the couplet. Spear. It's spear again.'

'I quite agree,' Genero said, sounding somewhat Shakespearean himself. 'But what's a couplet?'

'And why? Kling asked.

'Why what?' Parker said.

'Why's he pointing us to spear again?'

'A poisoned spear.'

'Where does it say that?'

'Venom'd. That means poisoned.'

'Shakespeare keeps dropping his e's, you notice that?'

'What's slander?' Genero asked.

'A lie,' Carella said.

'MEANWHILE WE'VE GOT a dead girl here,'Lieutenant Byrnes said.

He had asked Willis and Eileen to step into his office, and now they were sitting in chairs opposite his desk, listening attentively. Eileen figured the Loot was old enough to call a thirtysomething dead woman a 'girl' and get away with it, so she forgave him. 'Let's forget what this hard-of-hearing shmuck plans to do next,' Byrnes said, 'and concentrate instead on what he's already done. He's committed murder, is what he's done. He can quote

Shakespeare from here to Christmas, and that won't change the fact that he killed that girl!'

'Yes, sir,' Eileen said.

Byrnes glared at her.

'Pete,' she corrected.

'What'd the FBI report tell us, Hal?'

'Nothing,' Willis said. 'No matching prints anywhere. Means she doesn't have a record, was never in the armed forces, and never worked for any governmental agency'

'Which is not surprising,' Byrnes said. 'How many people do you know who have their fingerprints on file?'

Willis thought this over. Except for the hundreds of assorted thieves he met in this line of work, he couldn't think of a single soul.

'I want both of you to go back to the girl's building,' Byrnes said. 'He got into that apartment somehow. How'd he get past the doorman? Did anybody see him going in or coming out? He's not invisible, how'd he manage it? Talk to everybody and anybody. Get a description, get something.'

As they started out of his office, he added, 'Anything.'

THE CATERER WAS as gay as a bowl of fresh daisies.

His name was Buddy Mears, and he was wearing a fawn-colored suit with a lavender shirt open at the throat. He had blond hair and blue eyes. A nose Caesar would have died for. High cheekbones. Taut skin. Teddy Carella wondered if he'd had a face lift. They were sitting in his office on Henley and Rhynes, in Riverhead, not far from the hall in which the reception would take place on June twelveth. Carella had driven here on his lunch hour. Teddy had taken a bus over. Sample menus were open on

Buddy's desk. Several framed culinary awards were hanging on his walls. Plaques, too. Early June sunshine streamed through the windows and splashed onto the open menus.

'How many guests are we expecting?' he asked.

About a hundred,' Carella said.

Teddy signed to him.

Buddy looked politely puzzled.

A hundred and twelve,' Carella corrected.

Buddy already knew that Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute, speech-and-hearing impaired as they were calling it these days, but nonetheless a woman with devastating black hair and luscious dark brown eyes to match, absolutely gorgeous even when her fingers were flashing on the air, as they were now.

Carella watched her flying fingers.

'The numbers keep changing every day,' he translated for her. And then added, 'Either my mother or my sister keep inviting new people all the time.'

'This is so-o-oo cute, what they're doing,' Buddy said. 'The double wedding. Adorable. So let's figure a hundred and ten people

Reading his lips, Teddy again signed, A hundred and twelve.

'Yes, I know, darling,' Buddy said, almost as if he could read her hands. 'I'm approximating. But let's say a hundred and ten, a hundred and twelve. Will we be passing fingerlings around before dinner?'

'Fingerlings?' Carella said, and looked at Teddy.

Finger food, she signed.

'Fig with liver mousse,' Buddy said, nodding. 'Seared tuna on toast tips . . . well, here,' he said, and moved one of the sample menus to where Carella and Teddy sat opposite him. 'Potato pancakes with avocado salsa

. . . salmon and cucumber bites . . . goat cheese tartlets . . . and so on. We've got fifty or more fingerlings we can pass around before dinner is served.'

'Do you think we'll want fingerlings?' Carella asked.

I think they might be nice, Teddy signed. With the drinks.

Beforehand.

'How many different kinds of fingerlings would you

suggest?' he asked Buddy.

'Oh, four or five. Half a dozen. That should be enough. We don't want to get too complicated. And we don't want to spoil our appetites for dinner, do we?'

Reading his lips, Teddy signed, Maybe we should choose the dinner menu first.

Carella translated.

And come back to the hors d'oeuvres later.

Hors d'oeuvres was a difficult word to sign. Or to read. She saw the puzzled look on her husband's face. She corrected it at once.

Finger food.

Carella told Buddy what she'd said.

'Well, yes, certainly, we can do it backwards if you prefer,' he said, sounding miffed.

For the appetizers, he suggested three dishes from which the guests could choose. Either the lobster salad with black truffle dressing, or the Hamachi tuna tartare with caviar creme fraiche and smoked salmon, or the jumbo shrimp cocktail. For the main course, again a choice of three dishes. Either the roasted branzino stuffed with seafood, button mushrooms, roasted artichokes, and fennel, or the chicken curry with pearl onions, red peppers, and madras rice, or the braised rabbit in Riesling with spaetzle, fava beans, and wild mushrooms.