She had never heard her children's laughter.
She had never heard her husband's voice.
She imagined his voice to be soft and kind, the way his hands were soft and kind.
Smiling, she sat alone and apart.
ALONE IN THE squadroom, Carella was manning the phones and the fax machines when the fifth note that day arrived. He pulled on the gloves, and opened the envelope:
726+627=1353
No surprises there. The Deaf Man was merely reversing the number each time out, and then adding it to the existing number. But why? And why was the font size getting smaller and smaller, while the numbers themselves got larger and larger? For comparison, he placed the numbers one under the other yet another time:
87
78
87+78=165
165+561=726
726+627=1353
Did this reversal and addition have something to do with the clues they'd already received from him? //you could even call them clues, the son of a bitch. Or were the numerals merely a preamble to what was coming? In much the same way the Deaf Man had prepared them for his Shakespearean quotes by sending them first a fistful of anagrams that culminated in I'M A FATHEAD, MEN!, the anagram for I AM THE DEAF MAN!
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, as Carella's mother used to tell him when he was a kid and she was exercising maternal authority, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sonny Boy! His mother who was going to marry Mr. Luigi Fontero from Milano, Italy, on Saturday, the twelfth day of June, this Saturday, his mother Luisa, mind you, not to mention his sister Angela, God bless us one and all!
Carella looked at the new note again:
726+627=1353
What the hell is he trying to tell us? he wondered.
YOUR AVERAGE, RUN-of-the-mill, everyday office romance flourished around the water cooler or in the supply closet, secret glances, surreptitious touches, furtive kisses hastily exchanged. Rarely during the daily routine did lovers who worked in the same office find themselves alone in an automobile — unless they were detectives.
The burglary to which they'd responded was in a fish store off Seventh Street. The theft had probably taken place the night before but it hadn't been detected until late this morning, when one of the employees went into the freezer and discovered that thirty pounds of shrimp was missing.
'What kind of a world is this?' the owner of the store wished to know. 'A person steals shrimp? Thirty pounds of shrimp? What's he going to do with thirty pounds of shrimp? He's got nothing better to steal? He has to steal thirty pounds of shrimp?'
'Well, these guys aren't rocket scientists, you know,' Willis said.
'But thirty pounds of shrimp?'
'Anyone but you have a key to the place?' Eileen asked.
In the car later, Eileen driving, Willis riding shotgun, he said, 'I can understand his point. Why would anyone bother? I mean, thirty pounds of shrimp? The guy's risking jail for thirty pounds of shrimp?'
'You and the owner ought to start a rock group,' Eileen said.
'How so?'
'You've already got a name for it. Thirty Pounds of Shrimp. I hear that one more time, I'll scream.'
Willis slipped his hand under her skirt.
'Hey!' she said. 'I'm driving.'
'So pull over.'
'Why?'
'So I can kiss you.'
'I'm a police officer, I want you to know.'
'So am I.'
'Stop that.'
'Not until you pull over.'
She checked the rear-view mirror, signaled, pulled the car over to the curb. He took her in his arms at once, kissed her fiercely. She yanked her mouth away, looked into his face, her own face flushed, fair complexion, the curse of the Irish. This time she kissed him, even more fiercely, pulled her mouth away again, checked the rear- view mirror, the side mirror, kissed him again, pulled back again, breathless.
'We'll get arrested,' she said.
'Who cares?' he said, and pulled her to him again.
I AM THE DEAF MAN!
And accompanying the announcement that he had returned to plague them once again, he had included the first of his Shakespearean quotes:
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.
Though damned if Carella could find it anywhere on the web. Here in the office, and again at home on his
son's computer (which had cost him $999, even discounted) he had gone to the RhymeZone Shakespeare Search again and again and again. He had typed in each and every key word or words he could think of, went'st so soon, and world's stage, and grave's tiring room, and thought thee dead, and on and on and on, ad infinitum, straight through to Actor's Art, and act a second part, with no hits at all. Zero. Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. None at all.
It suddenly occurred to him . . .
Christopher Marlowe.
One of the writers suspected of being the real author of Shakespeare's plays. Or his sonnets. Or whatever.
He went to the computer again, and Googled to the name.
THE OWNER OF the liquor store was certain that the man who'd come in wearing a ski mask and gloves was black.
'Big black man wearing a ski mask and gloves,' he said. 'In June. Didn't he know that'd look suspicious? A ski mask? And gloves? In June? How could anyone be so stupid?'
'How'd you know he was black?' Brown asked.
Being black himself - or rather, being more like the color of his name — he was naturally curious. Kling was curious, too, even though he was white and blond. They had responded to the call not ten minutes ago. The robber had cleaned out the cash register and taken a bottle of Johnny Walker Black from the shelf before he'd departed. Maybe that was why the owner thought he was black. The Johnny Black and all. Black by association, so to speak.
'You can tell,' the owner said.
'You can tell a man wearing a ski mask and gloves is black?' Brown said.
'The voice,' the owner said. 'No offense meant.'
'None taken,' Brown said. 'He sounded black, is that what you're saying?'
'Is exactly what I'm saying,' the owner said. 'No offense.'
Kling tended to agree that black people sounded different from white people. Brown was inclined to agree as well. Both men could instantly identify a black person on the phone, even if he wasn't wearing gloves and a ski mask. So why were they both offended now — and they both were — by this scrawny little white man wearing a shabby maroon sweater and smoking a cigarette, telling them that he could tell the man who'd come in and stuck
