Ed McBain - Hark!

It sort of insulted Melissa that she'd been spotted for a hooker straight off like that.

After three more tries and three more turndowns, she remembered something her mother had told her as a child: Desperate people do desperate things. So what she needed here was somebody desperate to carry that letter in. For a minute, in fact, since she herself was starting to get a little desperate here — it was already seven A.M. — she thought she might carry it in personally. Tell the cops some guy wearing a hearing aid had given her nine hundred bucks to deliver it, show them nine bills, tell them

she was just a hard-working girl worked nights at a Burger King and had met this guy over the counter, asked her to deliver the letter. She didn't know nothing at all about who he was or what was inside the letter. So please let me go, sirs, as my mother will be wondering why I'm not home yet, my shift ending at eight in the morning and all. Decided against it.

If that girl in the coffee shop had spotted her for a whore, the cops would make her in a minute. Was it really that easy to see what she was? Maybe she'd buy a new dress with whatever the residuals turned out to be today.

At seven-fifteen that morning, she taxied down to a skid row area of flophouses, homeless shelters, bars, and electrical supply houses. First crack out of the box, she found a doorway wino who said he'd deliver the letter for fifty bucks. She taxied uptown again, the wino sitting beside her on the back seat, stinking of piss and belching alcohol fumes. At five past eight, she dropped him off three blocks from the stationhouse, the letter in one pocket of his tattered jacket, and pointed him in the right direction. Told him she'd be watching him so he'd better make sure he kept his end of the bargain. Guy swore on his sainted mother.

Melissa figured he'd be stopped the minute he set foot on the bottom tread of the stationhouse steps, and he was.

Which was why she'd bought the wigs, right?

Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more but play with sparrows

That's what the first note read.

'Is that correct English?' Genero asked. "Has broke his arrows"?'

Nobody answered him.

'"Shoot no more,'" Meyer said. 'He's telling us he's not going to shoot anybody else. Gloria Stanford was the last one.'

'Unless he plans to use arrows,' Willis said.

'Or spears,' Kling suggested.

'No, he's finished with the spears,' Carella said. 'Now he's onto arrows.'

' "Swears he will shoot no more.'"

'Gonna "play with sparrows" instead.'

'Little birdies,' Parker said sourly.

'Did you see that movie Hitchcock wrote?' Genero asked.

'Hitchcock didn't write it,' Kling said.

'Then who did?'

'Daphne somebody.'

'Twice,' Willis said.

'She wrote The Birds twice?' Genero asked, puzzled now.

'No, arrows. He uses arrows twice this time.'

Carella was at the computer again, looking for his rhyme zone. Parker glanced down at the Deaf Man's note.

'I only see arrows once,' he said.

'The second one is buried in another word,' Willis said. 'Arrows in sparrows.'

'So what's the significance of that?' Parker asked, sounding angry.

'The Tempest,' Carella announced. Act Four, Scene One.'

CAPTAIN JOHN MARSHALL FRICK should have retired ten years ago, but he liked to tell himself the 87th Precinct couldn't get along without him. Byrnes thought of him as an old fart. There were men who were Frick's age — sixty, sixty-five, in there, whatever he was — who still thought like much younger men, carried themselves like much younger men, sounded like much younger men, actually looked far younger than they were. John Marshall Frick was not one of them.

Frick belonged to that other category of older men who thought of themselves as 'senior citizens,' men who had nothing to do anymore except send each other old fart jokes via e-mail every day. Men who'd retired from life and living too damn early - although Frick was old when he was fifty and should have retired then. 'Tell us your name,' he told the wino. 'Freddie.'

'Freddie what, Freddie?'

'Freddie Apostolo. That means Freddie the Apostle.' 'You been drinking a little today, Freddie?' 'A little. I drink a little every day.' 'Why'd you write that note, Freddie?' 'I didn't.'

Byrnes looked at his boss. Did the Captain really think this old wino had pulled up a Shakespeare quote from the internet and delivered it in person to the precinct? Did he really think this slovenly old bum stinking of body odor and urine and sweet wine was the notorious Deaf Man who'd slain Gloria Stanford and who so far had delivered all these tantalizing notes designed to infuriate and . . . well. . . intoxicate? He wasn't even wearing a hearing aid!

'Then who wrote it, Freddie?' 'I got no idea.'

'Then where'd you get it?'

'This girl gave it to me.'

'What girl?'

'Pretty girl with black hair and bangs.'

Byrnes almost said She does?

"What's her name?'

'Don't know.'

'Just gave you this note, is that

'No.'

'. . . right? Just handed you . . .'

'No.'

'Then what?'

'Gave me fifty bucks to deliver it. Said I should hand it to the desk sergeant, that's all. Which I tried to do but you guys stopped me at the front door. I used to play piano, you know.'

'Is that right?'

'That's how I started drinking. There's always a drink on a piano, did you ever notice? A drink and a cigarette. I'm lucky I didn't get throat cancer. You play piano, you drink and you smoke, that's it. I guess I drank a little too much, huh?'

'I guess so. Where'd you conduct this transaction with your mysterious black-haired lady?'

'She wasn't mysterious at all. It was down near the Temple Street Shelter. She came over to me and asked would I like to make fifty bucks. So I said yes.'

'Who wouldn't?' Frick said.

'Sure. So what did I do wrong, can you please tell me?'

'Did she tell you her name?'

'No. I didn't tell her mine, either.'

'How'd you get uptown here, all the way from Temple?'

'We took a taxi. She dropped me off on Fourth, said she'd be watching. I believed her.'

'Why's that?'

'She looked like I'd better do what she said.' 'How's that?'

'Her eyes. There was a look in her eyes.' 'What color?' Frick asked. 'The eyes.' 'Brown,' Freddie said. 'How tall?'

'Five-seven, five-eight?' 'White?'

'Sure.' Freddie paused. 'Her eyes said she'd kill me if she had to.'

Byrnes looked at the captain again. 'Okay, go home,' Frick told Freddie. 'Home?' Freddie said.

SHE HAD WATCHED from the park across the street, and had seen the uniformed cop on the front steps first challenge and next detain the wino she'd enlisted. But that was okay because she knew the letter would now be delivered one way or another, and she didn't much care if they later locked the bum up, or hanged him by his thumbs from a lamppost, or whatever.

She now knew that whoever she might recruit to deliver all the remaining letters would also be stopped, but this didn't bother her, either. The letters would get inside the precinct, they would be read, the messengers would protest, 'Hey, I'm only the messenger!', and that would be that. In this city, there had to be two million girls with shoulder-length black hair and bangs. Or feather-cut red hair, for that matter. Well, maybe a million, the redheads.

The problem was rounding up two more guys today, and however many more she'd need for every day next

week, Monday through Saturday, the twelfth of June, which was the date Adam had announced for whatever it was, she didn't know. His caper? His escapade? His prank, his practical joke, his whatever it was that would add seven figures to the coffers, whatever they might be, coffers. She sometimes wished she was smarter than she was.