hairy man — and then Deep Throat him, which would be a piece of cake, so to speak, in his case. Then, when he was close to imminent ejaculation, you should pardon the expression, she would start asking him questions which, if he didn't answer them, she'd leave him hanging here till next month at this time.
How does that sound, Jere?
Sounds good to me, she thought, and finger-walked the forefinger and middle finger of her right hand down his hairy chest and across his hairy belly and down into the wild bushiness of his crotch to discover at last, hidden there in the weedy black forest of his pubic hair, a weapon of mass destruction so formidable that it would have shocked and awed Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and indeed the entire civilized world - all two and a half inches of it.
Wake up, Woolly Bear, she thought.
We've got some serious pillow-talking to do.
THE FIRST NOTE was delivered at eight-thirty that Wednesday morning.
Another junkie, ho-hum.
When they unfolded the single sheet of paper inside the envelope, the message fairly leaped off the page:
87
'Gee, looka that,' Genero said. 'That's us,' Parker deduced.
THE SECOND NOTE came at 9:30 that morning.
They didn't realize it as yet, but there would be a veritable parade of junkies today, one every hour or so. They questioned each new shabby messenger, hoping to pick up a fresh trail for Carmela Sammarone, but she seemed to be recruiting her people from all over town, wherever addicts congregated, which was virtually everywhere.
The second note read:
78
'That's us backwards,' Parker calculated.
He felt he was getting good at this.
'Backwards again,' Meyer said.
Carella searched for yesterday's notes, the ones that told them everything was going to be backwards from now on. He hadn't slept much the night before, and he had trouble finding them. In fact, he almost knocked over his second cup of coffee.
'Here we go,' he said at last, and displayed the two notes.
The first one read:
'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit
The second one read:
Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, But she would spell him backward
'You know,' Willis said, 'there are many different meanings to the word backward. It doesn't necessarily have to mean 'in reverse.''
'It specifically says 'spell him backward'' Brown said.
'Yes, but that could mean cast a spell on him that would make him bashful or hesitant or shy. That's another meaning of backward.'
'He's certainly not bashful or hesitant,' Hawes said.
'Or shy, either,' Genero agreed.
'You think he might get her to hypnotize someone?' Brown asked.
'Who?'
'The Sammarone woman. Carmela. Get her to cast a spell, you know?'
'Is she a hypnotist? Do we know that?'
'It's just, Hal said it could mean casting a spell.'
'It also means 'late in developing,' Willis said. 'Backward. You say someone's backward, you mean he's retarded.'
'Retarded ain't politically correct no more,' Parker said.
'Slow then,' Willis said. 'Backward.'
'Maybe he's telling us we're slow,' Meyer suggested.
'Maybe we are slow,' Carella said, and looked at the most recent note again.
Now they had 78.
First 87 and now 78.
Which was indeed 87 spelled backwards, or even backward, as the 'she' in yesterday's second note would have it.
'Do backward and backwards mean the same thing?' Genero asked. 'Cause I always said backwards. Is that wrong?'
'Backwards is the plural of backward,' Parker explained.
'Is something going to happen in the Seven-Eight?' Eileen asked.
'Where is the Seven-Eight, anyway?' Hawes asked.
Meyer was already looking through his list of the city's precincts. It seemed there was a Seventy-eighth Precinct across the river, in Calm's Point.
''Him' spelled backwards is 'mih,'' Genero observed. 'She would spell him backward.''
'In Vietnamese, 'mih' means 'son of the crouching tiger,'' Parker said.
They all looked at him. 'Just kidding,' he said. But nobody was laughing.
YOU SEE A girl walking up the avenue at ten o'clock in the morning, wearing a slinky black silk dress and high-heeled black sandals with rhinestone clips, you know she's either an heiress or a hooker. And unless you're from Elk Horn, North Dakota, you know she didn't spend the night sleeping.
The Deaf Man was still asleep when Melissa let herself into the apartment. She went into the kitchen, poured herself some juice from the fridge, got a pot of coffee going, and then slipped out of her shoes and sat there at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to perk, looking out at the skyline, elbow on the table, chin resting on the heel of her right hand.
The aroma of the brewing coffee brought back memories of a childhood she'd almost forgotten. How'd I get here all these years later? she wondered. Whatever happened to little Carmela Sammarone? Where'd you go, Mela? she wondered. Mel? Where are you now, honey? Only place the name exists is on my passport, that one time Grandpa took me to Italy with him, to his hometown there, a walled city, she couldn't even remember the name of it anymore. Sort of sighing, she got up to pour herself the coffee.
'How'd it go?' he asked.
Startled, she turned from the stove.
He was wearing the black cashmere robe she'd bought him that made his eyes look very blue. Broad shoulders,
narrow waist, belt around it. Blond hair tousled, made him look somewhat boyish.
'Good,' she said. 'Want some coffee?'
'Yes, please,' he said. 'Learn anything?'
'Oh, oodles,' she said, and poured him a cup, carried it to the table, went to the fridge for milk, the cabinet for sugar. Sitting there at the table, in the sunlight streaming through the window, they could have been a cozy married couple having breakfast. She wondered what it was like to be a married couple.
'So tell me,' he said.
'His name is Jeremy Higel, he's not Greek.'
'He looked Greek. The beard, maybe. Or the association with Sallas.'
'Are Greeks supposed to have beards?'
Anyway . . .'he prompted.
Anyway, he's not Greek. But he'is Sallas' bodyguard.'
'That I know.'
'Who is a violin player.'
'Correct.'
