Ed McBain - Hark!

But she was smart enough to know that she couldn't keep running back and forth between all the way downtown and up here to secure new messengers all the time. That would be both exhausting and time-consuming. So whereas she didn't like to cut anyone else in on the thirty-five grand Adam had allotted for the project, she knew that she needed a middleman here. And the only middleman she could think of was the first pimp she'd had, or vice versa, when she arrived in this rotten city five years ago.

AMBROSE CARTER WAS a black man who still ran a stable of eleven whores, four of them white, and he was very happy to see little Mela Sammarone again because he thought she might be coming back to work for him again. As it turned out, she wanted him to work for her.

'Now juss lemme get this straight,' he said, putting on a baffled black man look. In truth, nothing ever baffled him. He was too damn smart to ever be baffled.

They were sitting in a bar in what was called the Overlook section of Diamondback, appropriately named in that a lot of drug and prostitution shit was conveniently overlooked by the police here. Ambrose was nursing a Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola. Melissa was drinking a Coke without the bourbon. The two wigs she'd purchased were in her tote bag. Sitting there au naturelle, more or less, as it were, she looked as blond and as pert and as pretty as a young Meg Ryan. Ambrose really

regretted not representing her any longer. He thought of himself as not a pimp but a representative.

He still considered her the one who'd got away. Partially because he hadn't been able to hook her on any kind of controlled substance, she'd been too smart for that, but primarily because she'd been socking away bit by bit, piece by piece, what came to a total of fifty-five grand over a period of five years, which she'd offered him in exchange for her freedom. Well, figure it out, man. He wasn't holding her passport or no shit like that, and fifty-five in the here-and-now was worth grabbing on the spot, you never knew how fast these girls would age and become worthless. So he'd said So long, darlin, and kissed her off. But here she was, back again. And asking him to represent her again in a different sort of way.

'You want me to fine however many people it is you'll need in the next however many days . . .'

'That's right.'

'. . . screen them for you befo'hand so you'll be sure they willin to march into apo-lice station

'Yes, Ame.'

'. . . and then senn 'em to way'ever you be waitin for 'em, so you can pay 'em a hunnerd bucks each to deliver an envelope, separate envelopes actually . . .'

'Separate envelopes, yes.'

'. . . into this po-lice station, whichever one it may be.'

'That's exactly right.'

'And what's in this for me, may I be so bold? What do I get for fine-in' these people for you?'

'A thousand bucks today, and a grand a day starting Monday.'

'Till when?'

'Last one'll be next Saturday.'

'That's a total of seven large.'

'Seven, correct.'

Carter thought this over.

'How do I know this won't come back on me?' he asked. 'These people marchin up to a po-lice station, they sure to be stopped, Mel.'

'I know that. They tell the cops they got the money from me. You're out of this completely. I'm the one pays them, I'm the one they describe.'

You don't mine bein' made?'

'Not at all.'

Carter thought this over for another moment.

'Make it an even ten K,' he said.

You've got it,' she said. 'I'll need two people today. I'll tell you where they can meet me.'

'Male or female? Or do it matter?'

'As suits you,' Melissa said. 'I wouldn't send me one of your whores, though.

'Now do I look stupid, Mel?' he asked.

'No one could ever say that about you, Ame,' she said, and grinned.

'How do I get paid?' he asked.

'Three now,' she said. 'Two grand Monday morning, a grand every morning after that, straight through the twelfth.'

'You trust me that far, huh?'

'Got no reason not to, Ame.'

'That when it's going down?' he asked. 'The twelfth? Whatever this thing may be?'

'Now do / look stupid, Ame?' she asked.

THE SECOND NOTE that Saturday morning was addressed to Miss Honey Blair at Channel Four News. It read:

DEAR HONEY:

PLEASE FORGIVE ME AS I DID NOT KNOW

YOU WERE IN THAT AUTOMOBILE.

It was unsigned.

THE DEAF MAN'S second note was delivered to the 87th Precinct at a little past noon that day by a man who admitted under intense questioning that a pretty redhead had paid him a hundred dollars to take it over here. Before he'd met her at a bar called the Lucky Diamond down on Lewis and Ninth, he'd never seen her in his life. Did this mean they would take the money from him? 'That's Macbeth,' Genero said.

To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing, end them?

Even Parker knew this was definitely not Macbeth.

'It's Romeo and Juliet,' he said.

Eileen did not think the quote on the lieutenant's desk was from Romeo and Juliet. She knew that play virtually by heart, or at least she knew the Baz Luhrmann movie version, which she'd seen seven times when it was first released, falling in love with Leonardo di Caprio, who now seemed rather pudgy and middle-aged to her. But this was definitely not Romeo and Juliet.

Carella knew the quote was from Hamlet because back in his green and salad days, he'd played a bearded drama-club Claudius to a zaftig Sarah Gelb's Gertrude. Sarah

had thrown herself much too seriously into the Oedipal theory of Hamlet's relationship with his mother, French-kissing twenty-year-old Aaron Epstein during the famous 'Now, mother, what's the matter?' scene in the Queen's closet. 'What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?' young Sarah had demanded, her breasts heaving in the low-cut Elizabethan gown she wore, a crown tilted saucily on her reddish curls.

After the opening night party, Sarah performed the same osculatory acrobatics with Carella, in the back seat of his father's automobile, which led to a somewhat steamy interlude interrupted by two uniformed cops driving past in a radio motor patrol car. Tossing the beams of their torches through both open back windows, surprising the coupling young lovers — Sarah pulling up her panties, Carella zipping up his fly — those two diligent vigilantes caused him to hate all cops for a good long time. But he would never forget Hamlet, oh no, and this now was most definitely Hamlet.

Hal Willis was wondering why the Deaf Man — if indeed the Hamlet quotation had been sent by him — had chosen to bring up the second-act curtain on their dreary Saturday morning routine with perhaps the most famous soliloquy in all literature. Did he feel he had given them information enough about spears and such, and was now ready to move on to another topic? In which case, what might this new topic be, hmmm?

The note had undoubtedly been computer-generated, printed on the same white bond paper he'd used for his previous messages.

'Why Hamlet?' Willis asked.

'Why Macbeth?' Genero insisted.

'Something in Grover Park again?' Brown suggested.

'Like his mischief last time around? Some kind of event in the Cow Pasture?'

'When does Shakespeare on the Green start?' Eileen asked.

'Sometime later this month?'

'Around the fifteenth?'

'Later, I think.'

'But even if it is Shakespeare on the Green . . .'

'Right,' Eileen said.

'Of course,' Meyer agreed.

'. . . it'd be bullshit, anyway.'

'He never tells us what he's really up to.'

'So toss the letter,' Parker suggested, and shrugged.

'He's got to be telling us something,' Carella said.