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“Isn’t oh supposed to be spelled with an h ?”
    â€œIt’s sexier without the h ,” Parker said.
    He, too, had just walked in as part of the relieving team. All in all, there were now six detectives crowded around Carella’s desk, all of them looking at what he’d just received by same-day delivery. Cotton Hawes, all suffused with heat from his conversation with Honey Blair, had to agree that o was sexier than oh , even if he couldn’t say exactly why. Detective Richard Genero was still pondering the exact spelling of the word oh , when Hal Willis suggested that perhaps Adam Fen was an Irishman, a “fen” being an Irish bog or marsh…
    â€œâ€¦or swamp or something like that, isn’t it?” he asked.
    â€¦and the Irish sometimes waxing a bit romantic, which might account for dropping the h in the word oh , confirming Genero’s lucky surmise.
    Kling had already gone home, so he didn’t have any opinion at all. Eileen Burke was just coming through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside. She hadn’t yet seen the stuff on Carella’s desk, so she didn’t have an opinion, either. As yet.
    Meyer was remembering that Monoghan—or Monroe, or one or the other of them—had remarked earlier today that the dead woman on the bedroom floor of the Silvermine Oval apartment was “zaftig,” which in Yiddish meant “juicy” or “succulent,” but which in everyday English slang meant “having a full or shapely figure,” which Meyer supposed could be translated as “a darn soft girl.” He hesitated before mentioning this aloud because he knew in his heart of hearts that Detective Andy Parker was at best a closet anti-Semite and he didn’t want to introduce religious conflict into what seemed to be a mere note from a possible homicidal nut named Adam Fen. But the coincidence seemed too rare not to have specific meaning.
    â€œYou know,” he said, “the word zaftig …”
    And Carella immediately nodded and said, “Gloria Stanford.”
    â€œYou think there’s a connection?”
    â€œSome crazy trying to tell us he did it?”
    â€œDid what ?” Parker asked. “And what the hell is zaftig?”
    â€œA darn soft girl,” Meyer said.
    â€œIs that some kind of sexist remark?” Eileen asked.
    Unlike the female detectives she saw on television, Eileen was not wearing a tight sweater. Instead, she had on an olive-green pants suit that complemented her red hair and green eyes. On every cop television show, at least one of the leading characters was a female detective. Sometimes, you had two or three female detectives in the same squadroom. Sometimes, even the lieutenant in command of the squad was a woman. In Eileen’s experience, this was total bullshit. Of the eighteen detectives on the 87th Squad, she was the only woman.
    â€œWe caught a shooting death this morning,” Meyer explained.
    â€œBeautiful woman.”
    â€œGloria Stanford.”
    â€œTwo in the chest.”
    â€œSo is this a written confession?” Genero asked hopefully.
    â€œOh, there’s a hot hint!” Parker said, and rolled his eyes.
    â€œWhere’s the Abernathy Station?” Willis asked.
    â€œDowntown near the Arena,” Hawes said.
    â€œShould be easy to check that P.O. box.”
    â€œYou don’t think Mr. Fen here would give us a real address, do you?” Parker asked.
    â€œWhat’s the name of that courier service?” Hawes asked.
    Carella turned the envelope over again.
    â€œLightning Delivery.”
    â€œShy and unassuming,” Eileen said.
    â€œModest, too.” Willis agreed.
    â€œFen sounds Chinese to me,” Genero said. “Like Moo Goo Gai Fen.”
    They all looked at him.
    â€œNo, Fen is American,” Parker said. “There was once an actor named Fen Parker, no