Ed Mcbain: Mischief

“I don’t care if it’s the Deaf Man again, or the Deaf Man’s brother , I don’t want another minute wasted on his damn tomfoolery. Man thinks he can call this squadroom anytime he—what time did he call?”

“Around noon,” Carella said.

The three detectives were standing in a casual semicircle around Byrnes’s desk. The snow had stopped and faint sunlight peeped tentatively through the lieutenant’s corner windows, lending a promise of vernal cheer to the little law-enforcement tableau: Detective/Second Grade Steve Carella looking like a ballplayer sans chewing tobacco, tall and rangy, with dark hair and brown eyes somewhat slanted to give him a slightly Oriental appearance; Detective/Second Grade Meyer Meyer, an inch or so taller than Carella, burly and bald and blue-eyed, a look of infinite patience on his round face; Bert Kling, the baby of the squad, with blond hair and hazel eyes and the look of a cornfed bumpkin though he, too, had known his share of the big bad city. All of them thirtysomething, give or take, nobody was counting. All of them thinking the Deaf Man was back and the lieutenant was brushing him off.

“What’d he say?” Byrnes asked.

“He said he missed us,” Carella said.

“Missed us,” Byrnes repeated blankly, and shook his head. At the age of fiftysomething—but again, who was counting?—the lieutenant was beginning to get a bit crotchety. Years ago, he might have welcomed the appearance of the Deaf Man as a lively diversion in an otherwise tiresome and predictable routine. But now…well, the Deaf Man might still represent challenge and provocation—if only his infrequent appearances didn’t cause the lieutenant’s men to behave like a band of bumbling buffoons. Whenever he arrived on the scene, they seemed unable to predict what he was planning even though he gifted them with lavish clues. Fumble-fingered and flat-footed, they stood by foolishly while his latest escapade took place, helpless to stop it no matter how hard they tried. In fact, were it not for the sheerest accidental good fortune, the Deaf Man could have stolen the city from under their noses each and every time, murdering half its population in the bargain.

His very name seemed to render the squad inoperative. Whether he signed himself L. Sordo (for El Sordo , which meant the Deaf Man in Spanish) or Taubman (for Der taube mann , which meant the Deaf Man in German) or Dennis Dove, familiarly known as Den Dove (for den döve , which meant the Deaf Man in Swedish), his very presence turned the men of the Eight-Seven into inept constabularies incapable of functioning as anything more effective than clumsy Keystone Kops.

“What else did he say?” Byrnes asked, suspecting he was beginning to get sucked in despite his best intentions. Sitting behind his desk in a wedge of sunlight, he looked like a man who could beat anyone in a barroom fight, his body small and compact, his face craggy, his hands thick and capable, his hair more white than gray now, his eyes a flinty blue that glistened in the sun, betraying a secret glint of curiosity even though he was trying to convince his men he was not the slightest bit interested in this damn deaf person.

“He said it had been a long time…”

“Mmm,” Byrnes said, and nodded sourly.

“…but he knew how much we loved him…”

“Sure.”

“…and he knew we would welcome him back with a song in our hearts.”

“Oh, no question.”

“He also said we wouldn’t have to wait too long to make fools of ourselves this time.”

“Mmm. What’d the CID show?”

He was referring to the Caller Identification equipment that had been installed on every desk in the squadroom not two weeks ago. Before then, the detectives had seen the instrument only on television, in dramatized commercials where an obscene caller would be informed by his female victim that she already knew his telephone number and—lo and behold!—there it was , right there on the phone’s display panel. Now the equipment was standard in the squadroom. No need to trace a call anymore, you knew the caller’s number at a glance.

“Out-of-state number,” Meyer said. “We checked it with Information, it’s a cellular phone listed to a woman named Mary Callendar.”

“Did you try the number? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“I tried it,” Carella said. “Got a message saying the mobile customer had left the vehicle and traveled beyond the service area.”

“Meaning he’d turned off the power. How about the woman? Mary what? ”

“Callendar. Information gave me a listing for her home phone,” Carella said. “When I spoke to her she told me the cellular had been stolen from her car yesterday.”

“Naturally. So he’s using a stolen phone.”

“Used it once , anyway. He’ll probably use a different one next time he calls.”

“I don’t want you answering.”

“How can we not ans…?”

“Then hang up the minute you know it’s him.”

“Then we’ll never get him, Pete.”

“I don’t care if we get him. I don’t want anything to do with him. What else did he say?”

“That’s all he said.”

“Didn’t he tell you his name?” Byrnes asked, thinking he was making a little joke.

“Yes, he did,” Carella said.

“He gave you his name ?”

“I said, ‘Who’s this?’ and he…”

“He gave you his name ?” Byrnes said, still astonished.

“He said, ‘You can call me Sanson.’”

“Samson?”

“ Sanson . With an n . He spelled it out for me. S-A-N-S-O-N.”

“Sanson,” Byrnes said. “Look it up.”

“We did,” Kling said.

“All five directories,” Meyer said.

“There are twelve Sansons in the…”

“No,” Byrnes said. “ No , damn it, i won’t have you tracking down these people! This is another goddamn game he’s playing, only this time we’re not falling for it! Get back to whatever the hell you were doing before he called. And if he calls again, hang up!”

“I was just thinking,” Carella said.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay, Loot.”

“What were you thinking?”

“The first of April is only nine days away.”

“So?”

“April Fools’ Day,” Carella said.

THE MAN STANDINGon the bow of the thirty-two-foot Chris-Craft was tall and blond and suntanned and there was a hearing aid in his right ear. He had chartered the boat under the name Harry Gimperde, pronouncing the last syllable of the surname— perde —to rhyme with merde , in the French manner. Harry Gim perde . The Gim , on the other hand, was pronounced like the beginning of gimlet or the end of begin . Harry Gimperde. Say it over and over again—Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde, Harry Gimperde—and it became Hearing Impaired.

The woman who’d filled out the papers at Dockside Charters never once suspected that the blond man wearing the hearing aid was creating a little meaningless entertainment for himself, something to lend a touch of humor to the otherwise boring but essential task that lay ahead. The girl accompanying Mr. Gimperde served much the same purpose; she would add a little spice to the outing once the task was completed. The girl thought the Deaf Man’s name was really Harry Gimperde. She thought he must be very rich to be able to afford a cellular telephone and to rent a boat this size—not that she’d been on any boat of any size ever in her life before now. She only wished the weather was nicer. She was beginning to think that the best thing about boats was watching them from the shore. She was also beginning to feel a bit neglected, even though the man she thought was Harry Gimperde had poured her a glass of French champagne and had made her comfortable in the back of the boat—what he called the stern—on a bunch of pillows with the bottle sitting in an ice cooler an inch from her elbow, while he went up front to look at the shoreline.