'I checked the phone books yesterday,' Willis said. 'Fen is a Chinese name . . .'
'Told you,' Genero said.
'. . . but I didn't get an Adam anyplace in the city.'
'Was there an Eve?' Parker asked. 'Adam and Eve? Porn
diet?'
Byrnes glared at him.
'Just a thought,' Parker said, and picked up another
donut.
'What about this P.O. box number?' Byrnes asked.
'Nonexistent,' Willis said.
'Why'd he pick 4884?'
'Why'd he pick us?' Genero asked.
'He's crazy is why,' Meyer said.
'Like a fox,' Carella said.
'Let's go over it again,' Byrnes said.
IN A PENTHOUSE apartment not a mile from where the detectives mulled over the various missives he'd sent them, the Deaf Man was trying to explain the meaning of the word anagram to the girl who sat beside him on his living room couch.
The girl was blond, and perhaps twenty-three years old, certainly no older than that. He had helped her to
remove her white blouse not three minutes ago, so she was at the moment wearing only a black miniskirt, black panties and bra, and black, high-heeled, strapped sandals. Altogether a dangerous look.
'Think of it this way,' he said. 'Suppose I told you your breasts are as ripe as berries.'
'Well, you don't know that yet, do you?' the girl said.
'I can speculate,' the Deaf Man said.
'I suppose we can all speculate,' she said.
'As ripe as berries,' he repeated, and lifted a clean white pad from the coffee table, and with a marking pen wrote on it:
AS BERRIES
'Is that for emphasis?' the girl asked.
Her name was Melissa, Lissie for short. She'd told him this at the bar in the cocktail lounge of the Olympia Hotel, where he'd picked her up. He knew she was a hooker. A hooker was what he needed. But he had never in his life paid anyone for sex, and he did not intend to pay for it now.
'Now if we rearrange those letters,' he said, 'placing them in a different order, we get the word
And here he wrote on the pad again:
BRASSIERE
. . . and reached behind her back to unclasp it, freeing her breasts.
'As ripe as berries,' he said, and tried to kiss her nipples, but she crossed her arms over her breasts, and crossed her legs, too, and began jiggling one black-sandaled foot.
'And what'd you call that?' she asked. 'Rearranging the letters that way?' 'An anagram,' he said. 'That's a neat trick,' she said. 'Can you do an anagram
for Melissa?'
'Aimless,' he said at once. 'But how about this one?' he asked, and on the pad he wrote:
A PET SIN
. . . and reached under her skirt to lower them over her thighs, before writing on the pad:
PANTIES
'Neat,' she said, and uncrossed her legs and her arms, and lifted herself slightly so he could lower the panties to her ankles. She kicked them free. They sailed halfway across the room, hitting the sliding glass doors that opened onto the seventeenth-floor terrace and a spectacular view of the city.
'Let's hope no one can spy us,' he said, and wrote the last two words on the pad:
SPY US
'Can you rearrange those?' he asked. 'Sure,' she said, and took the marker from his hand, and wrote:
'Neat,' he said.
'But,' she said, and wrote:
MORE'S NIFTY
'I'll bet it is,' he said.
'Oh, you bet your ass it is,' she said. 'But it's your game, Adam.'
'Which game do you mean?' he asked.
His hand was between her legs, but her thighs were closed tight on it, refusing entrance.
'This one,' she said, and wrote on the pad:
SNAG A RAM
'Anagrams, do you mean?'
'Bingo,' she said.
'You want an anagram for 'more's nifty.' Is that it?'
'Try it,' she said, and handed him the marker.
He thought for merely an instant, and then wrote:
MONEY FIRST
'How clever of you,' she said, and spread her legs wide, and held her hand out to him, palm upwards.
'I think not,' he said, and slapped her so hard he almost knocked her off the couch.
LATER, WHILE MELISSA was still tied to the bed, he asked if she knew that 'Adam Fen' was an anagram for 'Deaf Man.'
Aching everywhere, she said she guessed she did.
He wrote both words on the pad for her, one under the other:
ADAM FEN DEAF MAN
'Gee, yeah,' she said.
Along about then, a courier was delivering the final note in what the Deaf Man thought of as the first movement of his ongoing little symphony.
THE NOTE IN the inside envelope read:
We wondred that thou went'st so soon From the world's stage, to the grave's tiring room. We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth, Tells thy spectators that thou went'st but forth To enter with applause.
An Actor's Art,
Can die, and live, to act a second part.
I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!
There was also a line drawing in the envelope: 'Who the hell is that supposed to be?' Parker asked. 'Looks like a rag picker,' Byrnes said. 'You have rag
pickers in your neighborhood?'
'We called him the Rags Man,' Brown said, nodding.
'Why would he be sending us a picture of a rag picker?' Meyer asked.
'No, Artie's got it,' Carella said. 'It's a rags man. Oh, Jesus, it's a rags man!'
They all looked at him.
He seemed about to have a heart attack.
'It's an anagram!' he said.
'Huh?' Genero said.
'An anagram, an anagram, a rags man! That's an anagram for anagrams!'
'Huh?' Genero said again.
All at once the letters under the note's poetry seemed to spring from the page, I'M A FATHEAD, MEN, leaping into the air before Carella's very eyes, rolling and tumbling in random order, IAFMHATDEAN M E, until at last they fell into place in precisely the order Adam Fen had intended.
I AM THE DEAF MAN!
