'I got better things to do,' Parker said, and went off to the men's room to pee.
'He's telling us to wake up.'
'Or else.'
' 'Shake off slumber and beware.' '
' 'Awake, awake!''
'It doesn't even rhyme,' Genero said.
DR. JAMES MELVIN Hudson was head of the Oncology Department at Mount Pleasant Hospital, not too distant from where Sharyn Cooke maintained her private practice in Diamondback. As a member of the medical team in the Deputy Chief Surgeon's Office in Majesta, however, he reported only to Sharyn, his immediate
superior.
At twelve noon that Thursday, while Detective Eileen Burke was on her way downtown for her court order, Hudson asked Sharyn if she'd like to go down for lunch, and they both went downstairs to a sandwich joint called the Burger and Bun, right there in the Rankin Plaza complex. The strip mall in which the Deputy Chief Surgeon's Office was located also housed a dry-cleaning establishment, a fitness center, a Mail Boxes, Etc., and a branch of the Lorelie Records chain of music shops. A cop who'd recently been shot or merely kicked in the ass could therefore have coffee or lunch before being exam-
ined by a doctor, get his uniform jacket pressed while he was having his chest X-rayed, develop his pecs or his abs after his exam, and then buy and mail a CD to his mother for her birthday, all in the same little mall. Location, location. All was location.
Timing was important, too.
At a quarter past noon, when Hudson and Sharyn entered the Burger and Bun, it was jammed with similarly minded lunchers. Heads turned nonetheless. Here was a strikingly good-looking black couple, both obvious professionals, both wearing white tunics, a stethoscope hanging around Sharyn's neck, another one dangling from Hudson's pocket. He was six-feet two-inches tall. She was five-nine. All conversation almost stopped when they came through the door. The proprietor showed them to a booth near the rear of the shop. They ordered soups and sandwiches, and then earnestly and seriously discussed a patient they'd both seen earlier that morning, Sharyn because the cop had been shot two months ago, Hudson because the cop had revealed to him that two non-malignant tumors had been removed from his bladder three weeks before the shooting. When their food came, they dropped shop talk for a while, Sharyn mentioning a movie she and Kling had seen over the weekend, Hudson telling her he was getting sick and tired of movies aimed at fifteen-year-old boys.
'There's nothing made for grownups anymore,' he said.
'Not all movies are that bad,' Sharyn said.
She was bone weary.
Her police workday was only three hours old, and she was ready to go home. Still had to bus back to the city for her own office hours this afternoon. Sometimes, she wondered.
I'd rather stay home and listen to music,' Hudson said. And then, without preamble, 'Are you familiar with the work of a rap group called Spit Shine?' 'No,' she said. 'I don't much like rap.' 'Well, it's come a long way from 'Let's All Kill the Police,' if that's what you're thinking.'
'I don't know what 'Let's All Kill the Police' is.' 'I'm categorizing a form of gangsta rap,' Hudson said. 'Spit Shine went beyond that. Spit Shine addressed the ills of black society itself. Didn't try to lay it all on Whitey. Asked us what we ourselves were doing to denigrate . . .'
'I don't like the expression 'Whitey,'' Sharyn said. 'Sorry. Didn't mean it in a derogatory way. In any case, Spit Shine no longer exists. Guy who wrote their stuff got killed in the Grover Park riot a few years back. Remember the riot thete?'
'Yes.'
She remembered. The day after the riot, a white detective named Bert Kling had called her from a phone booth in the rain to ask if she'd like to go to dinner and a movie
with him.
'Twenty-three years old when a stray bullet killed him,' Hudson said. 'His name was Sylvester Cummings, his rapper's handle was 'Silver.' Wrote wonderful lyrics. Wonderful.' And again without preamble, he began beating out a rhythm on the table top, and began singing in a low, somehow urgent voice.
'You dig vanilla? 'Now ain't that a killer! 'You say you hate chocolate? 'I say you juss thoughtless. 'Cause chocolate is the color
'Of the Lord's first children 'Juss go ask the diggers 'The men who find the bones 'Go ask them 'bout chocolate . . . 'Go ask them 'bout niggers . . .'
'I don't like that word, either,' Sharyn said. 'Man was trying to make a point,' Hudson said. Their food arrived.
He seemed about to say something more. Instead, he just shook his head, and began eating.
Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.
'Adam,' Meyer said.
'Adam Fen,' Carella said.
'The Chinese guy again,' Genero said.
'The Deaf Man,' Kling said.
'If he's deaf, then how can he hear? Parker asked.' 'Thou shalt hear.''. . . And what's with all this Quaker talk all at once?' Willis asked. 'Thou shalt hear?' What's that supposed to be?'
''Thy hat and thy glove,'' Eileen said. 'That was a good movie.'
This was now ten minutes past three. She'd been back in the squadroom since a quarter to. As she'd suspected, the FirstBank safe-deposit box was empty. She was wondering now if it was worth sending Mobile over there to dust it for prints. Had 'Gloria Stanford' put on gloves before opening it?
'Friendly Persuasion,' Kling said, remembering.
They had seen it together on television, Eileen lying in
his arms on the couch in his studio apartment near the Calm's Point Bridge. That was when they were still living together. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.
''Thee I love,'' Eileen said, remembering.
'He's telling us he plans to shake us up,' Parker said.
He bated this fucking Deaf Man. Made him feel stupid. Which maybe he was. But he didn't even like to consider that possibility.
'Shake us up how?' Brown asked.
'You think he's gonna tell us all at once?'
'Oh no, not him.'
'Piece by piece.'
'Bit by bit.'
'Listen.'
'Go apart and listen.'
'Hark!' Willis said.
And this time, no one questioned his use of the word.
THE CALL FROM Milan came at three-thirty, which Carella figured was either nine-thirty or ten-thirty over there in Italy. The call was from Luigi Fontero, the man who was about to marry Carella's mother on June twelfth and whisk her off to Italy shortly thereafter. Life With Luigi, he thought.
'Hey, Luigi,' he said, feigning a jovial camaraderie he did not feel. 'What a surprise! How are you?'
'Fine, Steve, and you?' Fontero said.
Mild Italian accent. Somehow it grated.
'Busy, busy,' Carella said. 'We're having trouble again with a criminal we call the Deaf Man. That would be 'El Sordo' in your language.'
'II Sordo,' Fontero corrected.
'Right,' Carella said.
Thanks, he thought.
'So what can I do for you?' he asked.
'I don't know how to begin.'
