relation. Played Daniel Boone on TV.â
âThat was Fess Parker,â Hawes said.
Parker shrugged.
âAnyway,â Genero said, nodding in agreement with himself, âAdam Fen is most definitely Chinese. Adam is a popular name in Hong Kong.â
âHow do you happen to know that?â Parker asked.
âItâs common knowledge,â Genero said.
Willis almost sighed. He turned to the three detectives who were now fifteen minutes late getting relieved.
âGo home,â he told them. âWeâll get on this shit.â He tapped the courier envelope. âMaybe weâll learn something.â
â Mazeltov ,â Meyer said.
âWhich means what ?â Parker asked, making it sound like a challenge.
âWhich means âgood luck,â â Carella said.
He had no expectation that either Lightning Delivery or the Abernathy Station would provide any clue to Adam Fen.
He was right.
3.
I T WOULD SEEM ODD that in this vast and bustling metropolis, in the mightiest nation on earth, a message from someone intent on mischief could enter a police station unchallenged. After the anthrax mailingsâand what with Homeland Security and allâone might have thought that a barrier of screening machines would have been erected at the portals of every police station in the country. Nay.
In the good old days (ah, the good old days) whenever you were in trouble, you ran right into a police station, any police station, past the hanging green globes flanking the wooden entrance doors, and you rushed to the desk sergeant and yelled, âIâve been raped!â âIâve been robbed!â âIâve been mugged!â and somebody would take care of you. Nowadays, there was a uniformed cop standing guard at the entrance, and he asked you to state your business and show some ID before he let you inside. This was still the big bad city and a great many choices were available to you. âIâve been stabbed, Iâve been axed, Iâve been shot in the foot!â But he wouldnât let you inside there unless he felt you had legitimate business with the police.
Well, a same-day, courier-service messenger certainly has legitimate business with the police if heâs delivering a letter. Besides, what are you supposed to do? Examine each and every letter in his pouch? Impossible. In fact, what you do is you say, âHow goes it today, Mac?â and you let him in. Same way you let in the courier from Lightning Delivery yesterday, whom you also called âMacâ even though you didnât know him from Adam.
Adam Fen was the return name on the letter the messenger carried to the muster desk at six-thirty that Wednesday morning, the second day of June. The letter was once again addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. Sergeant Murchison asked an officer to take the letter upstairs.
Upstairs in the squadroom, Bob OâBrien shouldnât have opened it because it wasnât addressed to him, but he thought if a person used a same-day delivery service, there might be some urgency involved. Besides, the graveyard shift still had an hour-fifteen to go, and things were pretty quiet. So he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ripped open the MetroFlash envelope, and plucked from it a white business-size envelope. The note folded inside it read:
A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?
OâBrien figured their trigger-happy lunatic from yesterday was still bragging about his dead broad.
Â
E ARLY STAGES OF a romance, when you go to the bathroom to pee, you make sure the door is locked, and you run water in the sink to cover the sound of your urination, lest it be your ruination. When Hawes came back into the bedroom, Honey was awake and sitting up in bed.
âI have to pee, too,â she said, and climbed over the side of the bed, long legs flashing beneath the hem of a white baby-doll nightgown. On her way to the bathroom, she tossed him a sassy moon,
âThat was Fess Parker,â Hawes said.
Parker shrugged.
âAnyway,â Genero said, nodding in agreement with himself, âAdam Fen is most definitely Chinese. Adam is a popular name in Hong Kong.â
âHow do you happen to know that?â Parker asked.
âItâs common knowledge,â Genero said.
Willis almost sighed. He turned to the three detectives who were now fifteen minutes late getting relieved.
âGo home,â he told them. âWeâll get on this shit.â He tapped the courier envelope. âMaybe weâll learn something.â
â Mazeltov ,â Meyer said.
âWhich means what ?â Parker asked, making it sound like a challenge.
âWhich means âgood luck,â â Carella said.
He had no expectation that either Lightning Delivery or the Abernathy Station would provide any clue to Adam Fen.
He was right.
3.
I T WOULD SEEM ODD that in this vast and bustling metropolis, in the mightiest nation on earth, a message from someone intent on mischief could enter a police station unchallenged. After the anthrax mailingsâand what with Homeland Security and allâone might have thought that a barrier of screening machines would have been erected at the portals of every police station in the country. Nay.
In the good old days (ah, the good old days) whenever you were in trouble, you ran right into a police station, any police station, past the hanging green globes flanking the wooden entrance doors, and you rushed to the desk sergeant and yelled, âIâve been raped!â âIâve been robbed!â âIâve been mugged!â and somebody would take care of you. Nowadays, there was a uniformed cop standing guard at the entrance, and he asked you to state your business and show some ID before he let you inside. This was still the big bad city and a great many choices were available to you. âIâve been stabbed, Iâve been axed, Iâve been shot in the foot!â But he wouldnât let you inside there unless he felt you had legitimate business with the police.
Well, a same-day, courier-service messenger certainly has legitimate business with the police if heâs delivering a letter. Besides, what are you supposed to do? Examine each and every letter in his pouch? Impossible. In fact, what you do is you say, âHow goes it today, Mac?â and you let him in. Same way you let in the courier from Lightning Delivery yesterday, whom you also called âMacâ even though you didnât know him from Adam.
Adam Fen was the return name on the letter the messenger carried to the muster desk at six-thirty that Wednesday morning, the second day of June. The letter was once again addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella. Sergeant Murchison asked an officer to take the letter upstairs.
Upstairs in the squadroom, Bob OâBrien shouldnât have opened it because it wasnât addressed to him, but he thought if a person used a same-day delivery service, there might be some urgency involved. Besides, the graveyard shift still had an hour-fifteen to go, and things were pretty quiet. So he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ripped open the MetroFlash envelope, and plucked from it a white business-size envelope. The note folded inside it read:
A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?
OâBrien figured their trigger-happy lunatic from yesterday was still bragging about his dead broad.
Â
E ARLY STAGES OF a romance, when you go to the bathroom to pee, you make sure the door is locked, and you run water in the sink to cover the sound of your urination, lest it be your ruination. When Hawes came back into the bedroom, Honey was awake and sitting up in bed.
âI have to pee, too,â she said, and climbed over the side of the bed, long legs flashing beneath the hem of a white baby-doll nightgown. On her way to the bathroom, she tossed him a sassy moon,