Read Online Hark! by Ed McBain - Free Book Online Page A

showed Eileen the signature card Miss Stanford had signed. Eileen knew she’d now have to go all the way downtown for a court order to open that safe-deposit box. She also knew that when she opened it, she would find it empty.
    Just as she was going down into the subway kiosk to catch a train to High Street, the second message that day was being delivered to the stationhouse.
    Shake off slumber, and beware:
    Awake, awake!
    â€œThere he goes again!” Meyer said. “Taunting us with Shakespeare.”
    â€œIf it is Shakespeare,” Kling said.
    â€œWhat else could it be but Shakespeare?”
    â€œCalling us dummies,” Meyer said.
    â€œMaybe we are dummies,” Genero said.
    No one disagreed with him.
    â€œLet’s try to figure out what he’s saying,” Carella said. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
    â€œI got better things to do,” Parker said, and went off to the men’s room to pee.
    â€œHe’s telling us to wake up.”
    â€œOr else.”
    â€œ ‘Shake off slumber and beware.’ ”
    â€œ ‘Awake, awake!’ ”
    â€œIt doesn’t even rhyme,” Genero said.
    Â 
    D R . J AMES M ELVIN H UDSON was head of the Oncology Department at Mount Pleasant Hospital, not too distant from where Sharyn Cooke maintained her private practice in Diamondback. As a member of the medical team in the Deputy Chief Surgeon’s Office in Majesta, however, he reported only to Sharyn, his immediate superior.
    At twelve noon that Thursday, while Detective Eileen Burke was on her way downtown for her court order, Hudson asked Sharyn if she’d like to go down for lunch, and they both went downstairs to a sandwich joint called the Burger and Bun, right there in the Rankin Plaza complex. The strip mall in which the Deputy Chief Surgeon’s Office was located also housed a dry-cleaning establishment, a fitness center, a Mail Boxes, Etc., and a branch of the Lorelie Records chain of music shops. A cop who’d recently been shot or merely kicked in the ass could therefore have coffee or lunch before being examined by a doctor, get his uniform jacket pressed while he was having his chest X-rayed, develop his pecs or his abs after his exam, and then buy and mail a CD to his mother for her birthday, all in the same little mall. Location, location. All was location.
    Timing was important, too.
    At a quarter past noon, when Hudson and Sharyn entered the Burger and Bun, it was jammed with similarly minded lunchers. Heads turned nonetheless. Here was a strikingly good-looking black couple, both obvious professionals, both wearing white tunics, a stethoscope hanging around Sharyn’s neck, another one dangling from Hudson’s pocket. He was six-feet two-inches tall. She was five-nine. All conversation almost stopped when they came through the door. The proprietor showed them to a booth near the rear of the shop. They ordered soups and sandwiches, and then earnestly and seriously discussed a patient they’d both seen earlier that morning, Sharyn because the cop had been shot two months ago, Hudson because the cop had revealed to him that two non-malignant tumors had been removed from his bladder three weeks before the shooting. When their food came, they dropped shop talk for a while, Sharyn mentioning a movie she and Kling had seen over the weekend, Hudson telling her he was getting sick and tired of movies aimed at fifteen-year-old boys.
    â€œThere’s nothing made for grownups anymore,” he said.
    â€œNot all movies are that bad,” Sharyn said.
    She was bone weary.
    Her police workday was only three hours old, and she was ready to go home. Still had to bus back to the city for her own office hours this afternoon. Sometimes, she wondered.
    â€œI’d rather stay home and listen to music,” Hudson said. And then, without preamble, “Are you familiar with the work of a rap group called Spit