Fiddlers

was sorry for. Never smiled. Hardly even said hello when he came to work. Just got into costume… we wear these red-silk ruffled shirts

Okay, so they’d figured white.

‘… and tight black pants, give the old ladies a thrill, you know. Then he went out to do his thing. Which was to play this dark, brooding, gypsy music. Which he did superbly, I must say.’

‘We understand he was trained as a classical musician.’

‘I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. Where, would you know?’

‘Kleber.’

‘The best. I’m not surprised.’

‘This terrible thing he did, whatever it was…’

‘Well, I’m just guessing.’

‘Did he ever mention what it might have been, specifically?’

‘No. He never told me any of this, you understand, he never said, “Gee, I’m so guilty and sad because I threw my teenage sweetheart off the roof,” never anything like that. But there was this… this abiding sense of guilt about him. Guilt and grief. Yes. Grief. As if he was so very sorry.’

‘For what?’ Carella asked.

‘Maybe for himself,’ Handelman said.

* * * *

First time Kling ever called her was from a phone booth in the rain. Less a booth, really, than one of these little plastic shells, rain pouring down around him. He was calling from a similar enclosure today, the heat rising from the pavement in shimmering waves he could actually see, talk about palpable.

He hadn’t spoken to her in six days, but who was counting? You go from sharing apartments, his and hers, alternately, to simply not speaking, that was a very serious contrast. He was calling her at her office, he hoped he wouldn’t get the usual medical menu, hoped he wouldn’t get a nurse asking him where he itched or hurt. Sharyn Cooke was the police department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon. Bert Kling was a Detective/Third Grade. Big enough difference right there. Never mind the fact that she was black and he was white. Blond, no less.

‘Dr. Cooke’s office,’ a female voice said.

He was calling her uptown, in Diamondback, where she had her private practice. Her police office was in Rankin Plaza, across the river. They knew him at both places. Or at least used to know him. He hoped she hadn’t given orders otherwise.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘it’s Bert. May I speak to her, please?’

‘Just a moment, please.’

He almost said, ‘Jenny, is that you?’ Knew all the nurses. But she was gone. He waited. And waited. Heat rose from the sidewalk and the street.

‘Hello?’

‘Sharyn?’ he said.

‘Yes, Bert.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Shar…”

Silence.

‘I’d like to see you.’

More silence.

‘Shar, we have to talk.’

‘I can’t talk yet,’ she said.

‘Shar…’

‘I’m still too hurt.’ Heat rising.

‘You don’t know how much you hurt me,’ she said. “ Fire truck going by somewhere on the street. Siren blaring.

‘Please don’t call me for a while,’ she said.

There was a click on the line.

For a while, he thought.

He guessed that was a hopeful sign.

* * * *

Alicia was certain someone was following her. She’d confided this to her boss, who told her she was nuts. ‘Who’d want to follow you?’ he’d said, which she considered a bit of an insult. Like what? She wasn’t good-looking enough to be followed?

Alicia was fifty-five years old, a tall Beauty Plus blonde (what they called Honey Melt, actually) with excellent legs and fine breasts, a woman who’d provoked many a construction-worker whistle on the streets of this fair city - so what had Jamie meant by his remark? Besides, she was being followed, she was certain of that. In fact, she checked the street this way and that the minute she stepped out onto the sidewalk that Friday evening.

Beauty Plus was located in a twenty-seven-story building on Twombley Street midtown. The Lustre Nails Care Division was located in a string of eight offices on the seventeenth floor of the building. Fanning out from these offices every weekday were the twenty-two sales reps Beauty Plus hoped would vigorously sell its nail-care products to the four-thousand-plus manicure salons all over the city. Alicia had written out her day’s report by a quarter to five, had mentioned to Jamie Dewes that she hoped she wouldn’t be followed again tonight (hence his snide remark) and was stepping out onto the sidewalk at a few minutes past five.

The June heat hit her like a closed fist.

She looked up and down the street again. No sign of whoever it was she felt sure was following her. She stepped out in a long-legged stride, heading for the subway kiosk on the next corner.

* * * *

Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks had lost ten pounds. This caused him to look merely like a hippopotamus. Patricia Gomez thought he was making real progress.

‘This is truly remarkable, Oll,’ she told him. ‘Ten pounds in two weeks, do you know how wonderful that is?’

Ollie did not think it was so wonderful.

Ollie felt hungry all the time.

Patricia was still in uniform. She told Ollie she’d signed out late because her sergeant had something brilliant to say about the way the team had handled a joint operation with Street Crime. Seemed a confidential informant wasn’t where he was supposed to be when the bust went down, some such bullshit. Her sergeant was always complaining about something or other, the old hairbag. Ollie told her he’d have a word with the man, ah yes, get him off her case. Patricia told him to never mind. They were strolling up Culver Av, in the Eight-Eight territory they called home during their working day. If she wasn’t in uniform, he’d have been holding her hand.

‘Are you nervous about tonight?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Why should I be nervous?’

Actually, he was nervous.

‘You don’t have to be,’ she said, and took his hand, uniform or not.

* * * *

On the way to Calm’s Point, Alicia kept eyeing the subway crowd. The man who’d been following her was bald, she was sure of that. More of a Patrick Stewart bald than a Bruce Willis bald. Tall slender guy with a slick bald pate, had to be in his mid-to-late fifties.

He scared hell out of her.

She’d spotted him on two separate occasions now, just quick glimpses, each time ducking out of sight when she’d turned to look.

There was only one bald guy in the subway car, and he had to be in his seventies, sitting there reading a Spanish-language newspaper.

* * * *