'I want to,' he said. 'We'll get breakfast when you're finished there.'
'My dollface,' she said, and went to him and kissed him.
He drove them through a Mickey D's for coffee, and they started the drive to Majesta with the windows down and fresh morning breezes blowing through. There was very little traffic so early on a Sunday morning, and they made it over the bridge in ten minutes flat and were at Mount Pleasant in another ten. Mount Pleasant was one of the city's better hospitals. There'd be no need for Sharyn to arrange a transfer, but a cop had been badly cut trying to break up an early morning gang rumble outside St. Matthew's Church on Camden Boulevard, and she had to be here to make sure he'd get the best possible treatment.
That didn't explain why Dr. James Melvin Hudson was standing outside the main entrance to the hospital.
Kling suddenly remembered that this was where Dr. James Melvin Hudson worked. When he wasn't working at the office of the Deputy Chief Surgeon in Rankin Plaza, four miles and another world away. Medland versus Copland.
Dr. James Melvin Hudson was wearing his hospital togs this morning, looking all pristine and medical in a white tunic with a stethoscope hanging out of the right-hand pocket. Dr. James Melvin Hudson was tall and black and extremely handsome, and he'd been dating Sharyn when she and Kling first met, and here he was now. Standing outside Mount Pleasant Hospital. Where he was Head of the Oncology Department. Which was why he also worked at Rankin Plaza because cops didn't only get shot or knifed or bludgeoned or axed; they sometimes got cancer.
And then Kling remembered that it was someone named Jamie who'd called Sharyn to tell her Hawes had been shot.
And he suddenly wondered if the colleague who'd suggested she give a listen to 'Go Ask' was none other than Jamie Hudson himself.
Sharyn got out of the car.
'Hi, Jamie,' she said. 'Where is he?'
And went into the hospital without telling Kling where they'd be meeting for breakfast later.
THERE WAS NOTHING he appreciated more than thoughtful solitude. Alone in the room he had set aside as his office, sitting behind his computer and contemplating
the week ahead, he knew an intense satisfaction he felt lesser men could not possibly enjoy.
For him, the planning was far more exciting than the execution. He had read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcock felt a movie was finished the moment he laid out his storyboard. In many respects, he felt the same way.
The letters he would . . .
Or rather Melissa would . . .
Or rather Melissa's minions would deliver next week had already been composed and printed and placed in their separate envelopes, each of them addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella at the 87th Precinct. Step by step, bit by bit, Monday through Friday, the delivered messages would gradually unfold his meticulous plan, leading the Keystone Kops down the garden path until Saturday, ta-ra! when at last all would be revealed — if they were clever enough. But too late.
Smiling, he hunched over the keyboard and opened first the folder he had titled SKED, and next the file he had titled CALENDAR:
MON 6/7 DARTS
TUE 6/8 BACK TO THE FUTURE
WED 6/9 NUMBERS
THU 6/10 PALS
FRI6/11 WHEN?
SAT 6/12 NOW!
He nodded in satisfaction. Bit by bit, he thought. Step by step.
The actual gig next Saturday held little or no interest for him. Neither did the eventual payoff. It was
the planning that thrilled him to the marrow — to coin a phrase. And this was a magnificent plan! He suddenly burst into jubilant song.
WHEN MELISSA HEARD him singing at the top of his lungs, she thought perhaps he'd finally lost it. Sighing, she picked up the receiver and punched out Ambrose Carter's number in Diamondback. He answered on the third ring.
'Ame,' she said, 'it's me.'
'Li'l early to be callin, ain' it?'
She looked at the clock on the desk. It was ten minutes past ten.
'Sorry, Ame,' she said, 'but I was wondering about tomorrow.'
'Whut about tomorrow?'
'Have you lined up your three people?'
'Whut three people?' he said.
She held the receiver away from her ear, looked at it the way a person might do on television when she'd just heard something she couldn't quite understand or believe. Eyes squinching up. Brow furrowing.
'For the letters,' she said.
'Whut letters?' he said.
'The letters you were going to find people
'Whut letters?' he said again.
'The letters I advanced you three fucking thousand dollars to . . .'
'I don't know whut you talkin bout, girl,' he said, and hung up.
She looked at the phone again.
Just like on television.
*
HOWES COULDN'T QUITE imagine himself dating a so-called celebrity, but he guessed that's what Honey Blair was. Which was why he didn't have to prod the detectives of Midtown South to follow up diligently on the drive-by shooting that had taken place outside 574 Jefferson at a few minutes before eleven on Wednesday morning, June second, four days ago. The other person in that perforated limousine had been Hawes himself, by the way, but this didn't seem of much interest to a detective named Brody Hollister, who was heading up the Mid South investigative team.
'Thanks, Colton,' he told Hawes on the phone. 'We'll keep that in mind, if, when.'
'Thanks,' Hawes said. 'And it's Cotton, by the way. Cotton Hawes.'
'Really?' Hollister said, and hung up.
Asshole, Hawes thought, and made his next call to the Eight-Six, where there was no question that he himself, Cotton (sometimes known as Colton) Hawes, had been the intended victim. The detective who'd caught the squeal there was a First named Barney Olson, and he told Hawes he was still working the case, but they'd had a rash of crib burglaries this past week, and he was sorry to admit he hadn't given the sniper case his undivided attention.
He sounded a bit distracted, but also somewhat sarcastic, landing a mite too heavily on the words 'undivided attention,' hmm? Crib burglaries were not the theft of infants' beds, but merely burglaries committed in dwellings rather than offices, and doubtless of vast importance in a Silk Stocking precinct like the Eight-Six. But, shit, man, a person — Hawes himself! — had been shot at from a rooftop, and it was very likely, in fact virtually indisputable that the Wednesday morning
attempt on his life was linked to the subsequent Friday morning shooting outside his orthopedist's office on Jefferson Avenue. He still wondered what you had to do to get the 'undivided attention' of a cop around here.
He did not yet know that a personal note of apology had been delivered yesterday to Channel Four's seventh-floor offices on Moody Street.
Neither did Honey.
Her weekend off had started yesterday. This was still Sunday. This afternoon, in fact, they planned to go downtown to hear the visiting Cleveland Symphony Orchestra perform an all-Stravinsky program in Clarendon Hall's popular 'Three at Three' series. Meanwhile, Hawes had finished making his calls, and Honey was taking a
