Hark!: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (87th Precinct Mysteries) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

*Starred Review* The Deaf Man is not a dead man. The brilliant criminal, double-crossed by his female partner in Mischief (1993) and left for dead, is back to make life miserable for the detectives of the 87th Precinct. The cops' frustration begins with the murder of the Deaf Man's former accomplice, a crime that leads the investigating officers down a dead end. But then come the notes, hand delivered to the precinct by a parade of junkies, prostitutes, and panhandlers, and containing combinations of Shakespearean quotes, encrypted anagrams, and palindromes. The Deaf Man is providing clues to the crime he is going to commit, if only the detectives are clever enough to decipher their meaning. As Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, and Fat Ollie Weeks--who also has a lead on his missing novel (see Fat Ollie's Book, 2003)--struggle with the Deaf Man's missives, the Deaf Man himself is dealing with the fallout from his own nearly fatal flaw: underestimating his new female partner. Melissa Summers may be a hooker, but she's no victim and is slowly hatching her own plan as the Deaf Man executes his. McBain has written the series since the mid-1950s yet his key players keep evolving--there are always character-driven subplots woven carefully into the crime story--and the setting is always contemporary. McBain remains the quintessential Grand Master of the genre. If his name's on it, read it. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"The Deaf Man is still a holy terror..."

-- The New York Times

"A treat that die-hard fans of the hard-boiled police procedural should not pass up."

-- The New York Times

"Ed McBain is, by far, the best at what he does. Case closed."

--People

I'm a Fathead, Men!

I Am the Deaf Man!

Unscrambling the cryptic messages -- anagrams, Detective Carella called them -- delivered to the 87th Precinct confirmed that the master criminal who has eluded them time and again is not only alive and well, but may or may not be behind a deadly revenge shooting. For that matter, the Deaf Man may or may not be deaf. But he's getting through loud and clear with clues drawn from Shakespeare's works -- taunting hints and maddening riddles pointing to his next plan of attack. It doesn't take a literary scholar to know there's no room for misinterpretation. For when the Deaf Man talks, everybody listens...or somebody gets hurt.

Ed McBain, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award, was also the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. His books have sold more than one hundred million copies, ranging from the more than fifty titles in the 87th Precinct series (including the Edgar Award-nominated Money, Money, Money) to the bestselling novels written under his own name, Evan Hunter -- including The Blackboard Jungle (now in a 50th anniversary edition from Pocket Books) and Criminal Conversation. Fiddlers, his final 87th Precinct novel, was recently published in hardcover. Writing as both Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, he broke new ground with Candyland, a novel in two parts. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. He died in 2005.

Visit www.edmcbain.com.

Chapter One

Gloria knew that someone was in her apartment the moment she unlocked the door and entered. She was reaching into her tote bag when a man's voice said, "No, don't."

Her fingertips were an inch away from the steel butt of a .380 caliber Browning.

"Really," the voice said. "I wouldn't."

She closed the door behind her, reached for the switch to the right of the door jamb, and snapped on the lights.

He was sitting in an easy chair across the room, facing the entrance door. He was wearing gray slacks, black loafers, blue socks, and a matching dark blue, long-sleeved linen shirt. The throat of the shirt was unbuttoned two buttons down. The cuffs were rolled up on his forearms. There was a hearing aid in his right ear.

"Well, well," she said. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"Indeed," he said.

"Long time no see," she said.

"Bad penny," he said, and shrugged almost sadly.

It was the shrug that told her he was going to kill her. Well, maybe that and the gun in his right hand. Plus the silencer screwed onto the muzzle of the gun. And their history. She knew he was not one to forget their history.

"I'll give it all back," she said at once. "Whatever's left of it."

"And how much is that, Gloria?"

"I haven't been frugal."

"So I see," he said, and with a slight arc of the gun barrel indicated her luxurious apartment. She almost reached into the tote again. But the gun regained its focus at once, steady in his hand, tilted up directly at her heart. She didn't know what kind of gun it was; some sort of automatic, it looked like. But she knew a silencer when she saw one, long and sleek and full of deadly promise.

"What's left of the thirty million?" he asked.

"I didn't get nearly that much."

"That was the police estimate. Thirty million plus."

"The estimate was high."

"How much did you get, Gloria?"

"Well, the smack brought close to what they said it was worth...."

"Which was twenty-four mil."

The gun steady in his fist. Pointing straight at her heart.

"But I had to discount it by ten percent."

"Which left two-sixteen."

Lightning fast calculation.

"If you say so," she said.

"I say so."

A thin smile. The gun unwavering.

"Go on, Gloria."

"The police sheet valued the zip at three mil. I got two for it."

"And the rest?"

"I'm not sure I have all this in my head."

"Try to find it in your head, Gloria," he said, and smiled again, urging her with the gun, wagging it encouragingly. But not impatiently, she noticed. Maybe he didn't plan to kill her after all. Then again, there was the silencer. You did not attach a silencer to a gun unless you were concerned about the noise it might make.

"The rocks brought around half a mil. The lucy was estimated at close to a mil. I got half that for it. The ope, I had a real hard time dealing. The cops said eighty-four large, I maybe got twenty-five for it. If I got another twenty-five for the hash, that was a lot. The gage brought maybe one-fifty large for the bulk. The fatties, I smoked myself." She smiled. "Over a period of time," she said.

"Over a long period of time," he said. "So let me see. You got two-sixteen for the heroin and another two for the coke. Half a mil for the crack and another half for the LSD. Twenty-five for the opium and the same for the hashish. Another one-fifty for the marijuana. That comes to two hundred and nineteen million, two hundred thousand dollars. The cigarettes are on the house," he said, and smiled again. "You owe me a lot of money, Gloria."

"I spent a lot of it."

"How much is left?"

"I haven't counted it lately. Whatever's left is yours."

"Oh, you bet it is," he said.

"Maybe two mil, something like that? That's a lot of cash, Sonny."

The name he'd used on the job was Sonny Sanson. Sonny for "Son'io," which in Italian meant, "I am." The Sanson was for "Sans son," which in French meant, "without sound." I am without sound. I am deaf. Maybe.

"Where's the money?" he asked.

"In a safe-deposit box."

"Do you have the key?"

"I do."

"May I have it, please?"

"And then what? You kill me?"

"You shouldn't have done what you did, Gloria."

"I know. And I'm sorry. Put down the gun. Let's have a drink, share a joint."

"No, I don't think so. The key, please. And let me see your hands at all times."

He followed her into a lavishly decorated bedroom, a four-poster bed, a silk coverlet, a chest that looked antique Italian, silk drapes to match the bedspread. From a drop-leaf desk that also looked Italian, hand-painted with flowery scrollwork, she removed a black-lacquered box, and from it took a small, red snap-button envelope. The printing on the envelope read FirstBank.

"Open it," he said.

She unsnapped the envelope, took out a small key, showed it to him.

"Fine," he said. "Put it back, and let me have it."

She put the key back into the envelope, snapped it shut, and held it out to him. He took it with his left hand, the gun steady in his right, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

"So here we are in my bedroom," she said, and smiled.

"Took me a long time to find you, Gloria."

"Thought you'd never get here," she said. Still smiling.

"Didn't even have a last name for you," he said.

"Yes, I know."

"All I knew was you'd been a driver since you were sixteen, that your end of a bank job in Boston enabled you to buy a house out on Sand's Spit...."

"Sold it the minute I came into some money."

"My money."

"Well, actually the ill-gotten gains from narcotics the police were going to burn anyway."

"Still my money, Gloria."

"Well, yes, it was your plan, so I suppose the dope was rightfully yours. And we all got paid for what we did, so it wasn't really right of me to...well...run off with the stash, I know that, Sonny. The plan was a brilliant one, oh, God, what a plan! First the diversion in the Cow Pasture...."

"I see you remember."

Smiling.

"How could I forget? And then the heist itself, at the Department of Sanitation incinerator...."

"Yes."

Nodding. Remembering.

"Houghton Street on the River Harb Drive," she said. "Remember, Sonny? Me driving the truck, you sitting right beside me?"

"Went off like clockwork," he said.

Still smiling, remembering.

"Like clockwork," she said. Smiling with him now. Beginning to feel this would go all right after all.

"I found the house you used to live in, Gloria. Took me a while, but I found it."

"What took you so long?"

"Recuperating. You almost did me in. A doctor named Felix Rickett fixed me up. Dr. Fixit, I called him," he said, and smiled again.

"Yeah, well, like I said, I'm sorry about that."

"I'm sure you are," he said, and glanced knowingly at the gun in his hand. "The present owner of the house told me he'd bought it from a woman named Gloria Anstdorf."

"Yep, that was me, all right."

"German ancestry?"

"I suppose so. I know the dorf part means 'village' in German. My grandmother thinks the anst may have come from 'badieanstalt,' which means 'baths' in German. A village where they had thermal baths, you know? She thinks the Customs people at Ellis Island shortened it when her parents got to America. To Anstdorf, you know?"

"But that's not the name in your mailbox, Gloria."

"No, it isn't."

"You bought this apartment as Gloria Stanford."

"Yes. What I did was rearrange the letters a little. From Anstdorf to Stanford. Made the name a little more American, you know?"

"A lot more American."

"Never hurts to rearrange the letters of your name here in the land of the free and home of the brave, does it? Especially when someone might be looking for you."

"It's called an anagram, Gloria."

"What is?"

...