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the Eight-Six gets a sniper.”
    â€œTell them one of the slugs is in the wall to the left of the entrance doors.”
    â€œGuy’s probably in China by now.”
    â€œMaybe not,” Hawes said, and looked suddenly concerned. “This guy was serious. I got the distinct impression he wanted me dead.”
    Carella looked at him.
    â€œYeah,” Hawes said, and nodded. “And also, I have to wear like this open kind of boot for the next little while.”
    Â 
    T HE NEXT NOTE arrived ten minutes after Meyer and Carella got back to the squadroom. Yet another courier service. Same phony Adam Fen return name, same non-existent Abernathy Station P.O. Box 4884. The note read:
    PORN DIET?
HELL, A TIT ON MOM!
    â€œParty’s getting rough,” Meyer said.
    Carella merely nodded.
    â€œI think he’s beginning to lose it,” Meyer said. “I mean, this is pure bullshit , is what this is here.”
    â€œYou know what I think?”
    â€œNo, what do you think?” Meyer asked. He sounded angry. Not as angry as Hawes had sounded half an hour ago, but angry enough for a man who hadn’t been shot in the foot.
    â€œI think it’s coffee and donuts time.”
    Â 
    T HE T HURSDAY M ORNING M EETING wasn’t supposed to take place till tomorrow, this still being Wednesday and all, but when Carella laid out the five notes for Lieutenant Byrnes to study, he agreed that the changing of the guard this afternoon might be a good time to summon together the great minds of the 87th Squad. Coffee and donuts were de rigueur , paid for from the squad’s slush fund, and arranged on top of the long bookcase on one wall of the lieutenant’s corner office.
    The team being relieved was Meyer, Kling, and Carella; Hawes would have been there, too, but he was in the hospital, still fuming. The relieving team was Willis, Parker, Genero, and Brown. Andy Parker, relieving five minutes late, was nonetheless the first to pour himself a cup of coffee and heap three donuts onto his paper plate.
    â€œSo what’ve we got here?” Byrnes asked. “A nut?”
    He sounded annoyed. White-haired and blue-eyed, the map of Ireland all over his craggy phizz, he sat behind his desk in his corner-windowed office, glaring out at his men as though challenging them to tell him this nut was as sane as any of them.
    â€œBeginning to ramble a bit, right,” Meyer agreed, and rolled his eyes.
    â€œWhose mom is he referring to?” Parker asked.
    Naturally, his interest would have been drawn to mention of a porn diet and a tit, any tit. He had not shaved this morning. Upon awakening, he’d told himself he would shave this afternoon, before coming in. But it was now a little past four P.M. , and he still hadn’t shaved, and he wouldn’t be relieved until midnight, so he probably wouldn’t shave at all today. But such were the vagaries of police work; one never knew when he might be called upon to impersonate some kind of shabby street person.
    â€œWho cares whose mom?” Meyer said. “Mom’s tit is where he starts to lose it.”
    â€œ And us,” Carella added.
    â€œWhen were you not lost?” Byrnes wanted to know.
    â€œWell, at first we thought he was referring to the homicide we caught yesterday morning. In his first note…”
    â€œLet me see that again,” Byrnes said, and extended his hand across his desk. Carella gave him the note in its plastic shield:
    WHO’S IT, ETC?
A DARN SOFT GIRL?
O, THERE’S A HOT HINT!
    â€œAnd this arrived when?” Byrnes asked.
    â€œAround this time yesterday afternoon.”
    â€œSo you figured the ‘darn soft girl’ was…what was the vic’s name again?”
    â€œGloria Stanford. Yes.”
    â€œAnd that was the perp’s hot hint, is that what you figured? That Gloria Stanford was the darn soft girl?”
    â€œYes. Well…yes.”
    â€œSome hint,” Parker