Ed McBain - Lullaby

-was called a Telecommunication Device for the Deaf and was known in the trade as a TDD.

It looked like a typewriter that had married a telephone and given birth to a character display and an adding machine. When the TDD was in use, a telephone rested at the very top of the unit, where two soft, molded cups were shaped to fit the handset. Between these was a roll of paper some two and a quarter inches wide, upon which printed messages appeared in uppercase type. Beneath this, and running horizontally across the face of the unit, was the display line. Twenty-character display. Blue-green vacuum fluorescent illumination. Half-inch character height. Angled so it could be read from above. Just under the display screen was a forty-five key, four-row keyboard with almost the same lettering layout as on a typewriter.

State of the art was not yet able to translate voice to type or vice versa. This would have made things simple indeed for any hearing - or speech-impaired person in the world. But, listen, it was simple enough the way it was. In the Carella house, there was a TDD on the kitchen counter under the wall phone. On Carella's desk at the office, there was an identical TDD alongside his phone. Either of the telephones could be used for normal use, but when Teddy - or any other hearing-impaired person, for that matter - wished to make a call, she first turned the TDD power switch on, placed the handset of her phone onto the acoustic cups, waited for the steady red light that told her she had a dial tone, and then dialed the number she wanted. A slow-flashing red light on the unit told her the phone was ringing. A fast-flashing red light told her the line was busy.

Whenever the phone on Carella's desk rang, he picked up and said 'Eighty-seventh Squad, Carella.' If the call was from a hearing, speaking person, the conversation continued as it normally would. But if this was Teddy calling - as it was at three o'clock that afternoon, while Willis was mildly intimidating Fats Donner - Carella would hear beeping that sounded like a very rapid diddle-ee-dee. This was caused by Teddy repeatedly hitting the space bar on her machine to let the person on the other end know this was a hearing-impaired caller.

If Carella had been calling her, a master ring-signal jacketed to the telephone line and linked to remote receivers throughout the house would flash lamps in several different rooms, letting Teddy know the phone was ringing. A similar device told her when someone was ringing the doorbell. But meanwhile, back at the Eight-Seven Corral, when Carella heard that rapid beeping - as he did now - he immediately knew it was Teddy calling, and he cradled the handset of his phone onto the TDD, and switched on the power, and by golly Moses, what you got was two people talking!

Or, to be more exact, two people typing.

HI HON, he typed, GA.

The words appeared on both his display line and the one Teddy was watching at her kitchen counter all the way up in Riverhead. It was magic. Moreover, a printer on each machine simultaneously printed out the message on the roll of paper. GA was the abbreviation for Go Ahead. On many TDD units - as was the case with theirs - a separate GA key was on the right-hand side of the keyboard. To save time, TDD users often abbreviated commonly used words or expressions.

Teddy typed HI SWEETIE HV U GOT A MIN GA.

Carella typed FOR U I HV HRS GA.

RMBR BERT/EILEEN TONITE, Teddy typed, GA.

Carella typed YES 8 O'CLOCK GA.

PLS WEAR TIES, Teddy typed, GA.

They continued talking for the next several moments. When Carella pulled the printout from the machine later, the twenty-character lines looked like this:

HI HON GA HI SWEETIE

HV U GOT A MIN GA FO

R U I HV HRS GA RMBR

BERT/EILEEN TONITE G

A YES 8 O'CLOCK GA PL

S WEAR TIES GA I'LL

TELL BERT HV TO GO N

OW SEE YOU LTR LUV Y

OU SK LUV YOU TOO SK

SK

The letters SK were also on a separate key. SK meant Signing Off.

They were both smiling.

* * * *

Peter Hodding hadn't gone back to work yet.

'I don't think I could stand looking into people's eyes,' he told Carella. Knowing they know what happened. I had a hard enough time at the funeral.'

Carella listened.

The sky outside was darkening rapidly, but the Hoddings had not yet turned on the lights. The room was succumbing to shadows. They sat on the living room couch opposite Carella. Hodding was wearing jeans, a white button-down shirt, a cardigan sweater. His wife Gayle was wearing a wide skirt, a bulky sweater, brown boots.

'He'll go back on Monday,' she said.

'Maybe,' Hodding said.

'We have to go on,' she said, as if to herself.

'I wonder if you can tell me,' Carella said, 'whether Annie Flynn ever mentioned a boy named Scott Handler.'

'Gayle?' Hodding said.

'No, she never mentioned anyone by that name.'

'Not to me, either,' Hodding said.

Carella nodded.

He and Meyer were eager to talk to the Handler boy - if they could find him. But where the hell was he? And why had he fled? Carella did not tell the Hoddings that they'd been looking for the boy for the past two days. There was no sense in building false hopes and even less sense in implicating someone before they'd even talked to him.

Gayle Hodding was telling him how strange life was.

'You make plans, you . . .'

She shook her head.

Carella waited. He was very good at waiting. He sometimes felt that ninety percent of detective work was waiting and listening. The other ten percent was luck or coincidence.

'I quit college in my junior year,' she said, 'oh, this was seven, eight years ago, I went into modeling.'

'She was a very good model,' Hodding said.

Carella was thinking she still had the good cheekbones, the slender figure. He wondered if she knew Augusta Kling, Bert's former wife. He did not ask her if she did.

'Anyway,' she said, 'about a year and a half ago, I decided to go back to school. Last September a year ago. How long is that, Peter?'

'Sixteen months.'

'Yes,' she said, 'sixteen months. And I was about to enroll for the new semester in September when the agency called and my whole life changed again.'

'The modeling agency?' Carella said.

'No, no, the adoption agency.'

He looked at her.

'Susan was adopted,' she said.

'I'd better put some lights on in here,' Hodding said.

* * * *

He'd had to come down from the roof.

Security in the building, he knew this, twenty-four-hour doorman, elevator operator, no way to get in unobserved through the front door.

You had to do gymnastics. Go up on the roof of the connecting building, no security there after midnight, go right on up in the elevator, break the lock on the roof door, cross the roof and climb over the parapet to the building you wanted, 967 Grover.

Down the fire escapes.

Past windows where you could see people still partying, having a good time. He'd ducked low on each landing, sidling past the lighted windows. Counting the floors. Eighteen floors in the building, he knew which window he wanted, a long way down.

Fourth-floor rear.

He'd eased the window open.

The baby's bedroom.

He knew this.

Dark except for a shaft of light spilling through the open doorway from somewhere else in the apartment. The living room. Silence. He could hear the baby's soft, gentle breathing. Two o'clock in the morning. The baby asleep.

The master bedroom was at the other end of the apartment.

He knew this.

In the middle, separating the sleeping wings, were the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room.

He leaned in over the crib.

Everything changed in the next several seconds.

In the next several seconds, the baby was screaming.