And the concert will take place at three o'clock this Saturday, you were right about that, too.'
'So far, so good,' he said.
'Oh, it gets much better.'
'Tell me,' he said, and smiled.
'They'll be picked up at the hotel at two o'clock. Sallas and his bodyguard.'
'Why so early? The concert doesn't start till three.'
'In case there's traffic. They're supposed to be at Clarendon by two-thirty.'
'Who's picking them up?'
'A limo.'
'Which company?'
'Regal.'
'Good. You got that, huh?'
'Regal Limousine, yes. The car will be a luxury sedan, is what they call it.'
'That's very good, Melissa.'
'I think so.'
'Is he armed . . . Jeremy, is it?'
'Jeremy, yes. Jeremy Higel.'
'Is he armed?'
'Yes.'
'What kind of weapon?'
'A Smith & Wesson 1911.'
'I didn't know you were that familiar with guns.'
'I'm not. He gave me a guided tour. It's a forty-five caliber automatic, five-inch barrel length. Magazine holds eight rounds, plus one in the firing chamber. Satin stainless finish with a Hogue rubber grip. Very proud of that gun, he is. Nice-looking weapon, in fact. Big weapon, too. Which is more than I can say for the one in his pants.'
'Did he give you a guided tour of that one as well?'
'A walking tour, let us say. Nothing to brag about, believe me.'
'Par for the course, from what I gather.'
'Meaning?'
'According to the e-mails I receive in the hundreds of thousands every day of the week, every man in America is deficient in that department and in serious need of enlargement.'
'Present company excluded,' Melissa said, and glanced shyly at where his legs were crossed in the black cashmere robe.
'Bust enhancement, too,' he said. 'According to my e-mails, every woman in the world needs her bust enhanced.'
'Not me,' she said. 'I noticed.'
'Cause I already had them done.' 'Oh?'
'Right after I started calling myself Melissa.' 'Oh?'
'I thought I might become an actress, you see.' 'I didn't know that,' he said.
Yeah,' she said, and looked out at the magnificent skyline again. 'Girlish dreams, right?'
87+78=165
'Well, now there's news,' Parker said.
'But is it correct?' Genero asked, and began adding 78 to 87 on his calculator. Much to his surprise, eighty- seven plus seventy-eight did indeed add up to a hundred and sixty-five, more or less.
'What's he trying to tell us?' Carella asked.
'Why's he adding those two numbers?'
'Is there a One-Six-Five Precinct?' Eileen asked.
Meyer checked his list again.
'No,' he said. 'Highest is the Hun' Twenty-Third.'
'We're slow, and he's getting faster,' Parker said. 'The notes are coming in faster and faster.'
They all looked up at the wall clock.
It was now ten minutes to eleven.
THE NEXT NOTE came at 11:47 A.M. It read:
165+561=726
Genero looked up from his calculator. 'Right on the button!' he said triumphantly. 'The arithmetic is absolutely correct]'
'The sums are getting bigger and bigger, too, did you notice that?' Hawes asked.
'Meaning?' Parker asked.
'Just commenting.'
'Also,' Brown said, 'the size of the numbers is getting smaller and smaller.'
'No, bigger,' Hawes insisted.
'I don't mean the numerical value,' Brown said, sounding like a mathematics professor all at once. 'I mean the size of the type. Go ahead. Compare them.'
87
78
87+78=165 165+561=726
'The Incredible Shrinking Deaf Man,' Willis said, and Eileen laughed.
The door to Lieutenant Byrnes' office opened.
Scowling, he said, 'Doesn't anyone have anything to do around here?'
THEY HAD PLENTY to do.
This was the 87th Precinct, and this was the Big Bad City.
So while in his apartment crosstown and further downtown the Deaf Man was calling Regal Limousine to
arrange for a car and driver to pick him up at one-thirty this afternoon for what he'd described to Melissa as a 'trial run . . .'
. . . and while further uptown, Melissa herself was once again seeking out those poor deprived and demented individuals who were addicted to controlled substances of every stripe and persuasion to do her bidding for negotiable fees, the smaller the better . . .
. . . and while yet further uptown, in Berrigan Square, Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks was himself sitting on a bench in the midst of similarly depraved dope fiends, seeking information leading to the whereabouts of one Melissa Summers, presumed Slayer of Ambrose Carter, Infamous Procurer of Female Flesh . . .
While all these sundry people scurried about their busy little businesses, the men and women of the Eight- Seven scattered far and wide in pursuit of what was their usual daily routine when someone not quite as glamorous as the Deaf Man wasn't on the scene.
ANGELA WAS THE only person here who knew sign language. But, of course, she was the bride-to-be, and there were thirty some-odd (some of them mighty odd, yuk yuk) women fluttering about her. And although she came over to Teddy every so often to exchange sister-in-lawly chitchat with her hesitant but well-meaning hands, she had to move on because there were other guests to welcome, other air-kisses to exchange, other . . . well, Teddy knew she was very busy. This was her shower, after all.
Sitting with the other women, Teddy could not hear their laughter or their speech, and she could not talk to them because her only language was in her hands.
Whenever she used her hands, she mouthed the words as well, her lips matching her flying fingers. But without the signing, her mouthing came over as exaggerated grimacing, and people unaccustomed to reading lips merely frowned or smiled patiently in response. By reading lips herself, Teddy could catch words, or phrases, or sometimes even complete sentences, but at a gathering as large as this one, with so many people talking at once, it was impossible to keep track of any single conversation. So she sat essentially alone and apart in the midst of the chattering women, a fixed smile on her face, her dark brown eyes scanning the room, and the faces of the other women, and their lips, trying to read those lips, a silent spectator in a world she had never heard.
