Silence flowed into the parlor, broken only by the tap of the gas chromatograph cooling. The device worked by subjecting its samples to temperatures that were about fifty degrees Celsius higher than the boiling point of the least volatile element of the sample. An inferno, in other words.
Sachs fielded a call. She stepped aside to take it. In a corner of the parlor, she stood with head down. Eventually she nodded and relief was obvious in her face. She disconnected. “The Borough Shooting Team was convened.” Rhyme recalled—the incident review after she parked a slug in the escalator motor to try to save Greg Frommer’s life. “Madino—the captain—says it’s a good panel. Uniforms and shields from the street. I’ll write up the FD/AR and that’ll be it, he said.”
Rhyme was pleased for her. The NYPD had so many regulations and formalities that they could overwhelm an officer just trying to do the job.
Cooper said, “Something else here. Traces of rubber, ammonia and the fiber, probably from paper—a paper towel.” He then ran through a lengthy laundry list of trace chemicals.
“Glazing compound,” Rhyme said absently.
“You knew that?” the intern asked, staring at the mouthful of substances, three lines long.
He explained. There’d been a case years ago in which a wife had slashed her husband’s jugular with the sharp edge of a pane of glass she’d worked out of the rec room window. As he slept she drew the glass over his jugular and he bled out quickly. She’d cleaned the glass and replaced it in the window, glazing the pane back in place. (Her bizarre strategy was that no murder weapon, that is, knife or other blade, could be traced back to her. Not true, of course, since she neglected to clean from her blouse the traces of glazing compound she’d used on the window after the murder. It took officers all of five minutes to find the pane; a luminol test confirmed the presence of blood.)
Sachs took another call. A cryptic reaction. Eyes flitting from window to floor to rococo ceiling. What was this about? he wondered.
She disconnected and grimaced. She walked to Rhyme. “I’m sorry. My mother.”
“She’s all right?”
“Fine. But they moved up a test.” Her face remained troubled. He knew she was torn between the case and her only living family member.
“Sachs, go,” he said.
“I—”
“Go. You have to.”
Without a word, Sachs headed out of the parlor.
Rhyme stared after her then turned slowly, the motor of his chair uttering a soft whine, and gazed at the challenging whiteboards.
CRIME SCENE: 390 E. 35TH STREET,
MANHATTAN (SITE OF ARSON)
-Offense: Arson/homicide.
-Victim: Abraham Benkoff, 58, account director advertising agency, well known.
-COD: Burns/hemorrhaging.
-Means of death:
-Gas leak from CookSmart Deluxe range, equipped with DataWise5000 controller.
-No accelerant.
-Additional elements of profile of suspect:
-Dark clothes, baseball cap.
-Observing scene to make sure only adult victim killed?
-Another message from the People’s Guardian.
-Again playing down intelligence.
CRIME SCENE: 388 E. 35TH STREET,
MANHATTAN (SITE OF UNSUB’S SURVEILLANCE).
-Evidence:
-Shards of glass. Window glass, old.
-Xylene, toluene, iron oxide, amorphous silica, dioctyl phthalate and talc (glazing compound).
-His profession? Probably not.
-Paper towel fibers.
-Ammonia.
-Rubber fragments.
-Diesel fuel.
-Two soil samples, indigenous to shoreline.
-Connecticut or Westchester County.
-New Jersey.
-Soda, differing dilutions, several sources.
-White wine, high sugar content. Typical of inexpensive sparkling white wine.
Archer too was studying the writing carefully. “More questions than answers,” she muttered.
Welcome to the world of forensics, Rhyme thought.
CHAPTER 29
Sweeney Todd, now, that was a challenge.
Joe Heady, a carpenter at the Whitmore Theater in Times Square, was thinking of the successful revival of the Sondheim play a year ago. He and the other set builders and gaffers had had to create a working barber’s chair—well, working to the extent that it would drop open on command, allowing the customer to slide into the pit below after the Demon Barber of Fleet Street had sliced open his throat.
They’d worked for months to get the chair to function seamlessly—and to create a wonderfully gothic Dickensian set.
But the set for this job? Damn child’s play. Downright boring.
Heady lugged some two-by-four pieces of common-grade pine into the set construction workshop behind the theater on 46th Street and dumped them on the concrete floor. For this play his job was to build a large maze, the sort that a rat—make that a two-foot holographic projection rat—would poke through at various points in the play, which was about some family gathering and arguing and a bunch of other crap. Not a single cut throat for the entire two hours and change. Having read the script, Heady decided a little literal blood would have helped.
But a maze was what the set designer wanted and a maze she was going to get.
A big man, with bushy black-and-gray hair, Heady arranged the pieces of wood in the order in which he’d cut them and then stiffly rose. Actually grunting. Sixty-one years old, he’d given retirement a shot; he and the wife had moved here after his thirty-six years on the assembly line in Detroit. Living closer to the kids and grandkids in Jersey was great. Up to a point. But Heady wasn’t ready to hang up his tools yet, and his son-in-law hooked him up with this job. Heady was basically a machinist—the Detroit thing—but handy is handy, and the theater hired him on the spot for set-building carpentry. He loved the work. Only problem: The wood weighed a lot more than it did twenty years ago. Funny how that happens.
He spread the plans for the maze on a table nearby, then plucked a steel tape measure off his belt and a pencil—an old-time pencil, which he sharpened with a locking-blade knife—from his pocket and set them beside the plans. Pulling on his reading glasses, he reviewed the schematics.
This was one of the nicer theaters on Broadway and definitely one of the best set-building workshops in Manhattan. It was large, sixty by sixty feet, with the south wall stocked with more wood than most lumberyards had in inventory. Against the west wall were the bins of hardware (nails, nuts, bolts, springs, screws, washers, you name it), hand and small power tools, workbenches, paint and a small kitchen area. In the middle, mounted to the floor, were the big power tools.
The day was pleasant and the massive double doors—large enough for the delivery of the biggest props—were open onto 46th Street. A breeze wafted in, carrying smells that Heady liked: car exhaust, perfume from who knew where, charcoal smoke from the nut and pretzel vendors. The traffic was chaotic and people in every style of clothing you could imagine streamed past constantly, surging in every direction. He’d never developed affection for Motown. But now, a convert, he was a devout Manhattanite, even though he lived in Paramus.
And he loved his job too. On nice days like this, with the doors open, passersby sometimes stopped and glanced in, curious to watch the set builders at work. One of Heady’s proudest days was when someone called him to the door. The carpenter, anticipating a question about a tool or what set he was working on, was astonished when the man asked for an autograph. He’d loved the sets from the revival of The King and I and wanted Heady to sign the Playbill.
Heady heated up some water in the microwave, poured in some instant Starbucks coffee and sipped the black brew while he made notes about the cuts he was about to make. He glanced at the bench to make sure a necessary accessory was handy: sound-dampening earmuffs. He absolutely had to wear these because of a device that sat in the middle of the workshop.
The huge Ayoni table saw was the latest addition. The bulk of the work done in set building on Broadway is carpentry—cutting, framing, joining and painting. The Ayoni was rapidly becoming a workhorse for that task. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds, the device featured circular blades with edges sharp as shark’s teeth. The steel blades were interchangeable, in varying thicknesses and tooth depth and shape—the thicker, with larger teeth, were meant for rough frames, the thinner and finer for finishing work. These wicked disks spun at nearly two thousand RPM and screamed as loudly as a jet plane’s engines.
Heady loved the saw. It would slice through the thickest wood like tearing newsprint and featured a computer chip that remembered setting and dimensions for the past fifty jobs.
To cut the two-by-four pieces for the base of the maze, Heady got a heavy, rough-cut blade from a rack on the wall. Before removing the blade presently mounted to the Ayoni, however, and replacing it with this one, he’d have to shut the power off. The unit was hardwired into the theater’s electrical system, since its motor—running at a gutsy eight horsepower—drew 220 volts and many amps.
The manufacturer recommended that you shut off the power to the entire facility at the main circuit breaker before replacing blades, but here at the theater no workers ever did, since the breaker was in the basement. But perhaps because the Ayoni Corporation knew that purchasers might not always cut the main juice, the saw itself had two power cutoffs. One was the device’s own circuit breaker. The second was the on/off switch that started the blade spinning. It was a bit inconvenient to reach down, to the base of the machine, find the circuit breaker and click it off, but no way was Heady going to swap blades without doing so. The tool was as dangerous as a guillotine. (He’d heard about an accident in which an assistant had fallen next to an Ayoni as it ran and instinctively reached out to steady himself. His forearm hit the blade and was severed halfway between wrist and elbow in an instant. The poor man had felt not a bit of pain for a good ten seconds, so fast and clean was the cut.)
So he now reached down and popped the breaker.
Then, just to double-check, he flipped on the power switch; nothing. He returned it to the off position. Heady now gripped the blade with his left hand and held it steady while, with a socket wrench in his right, he began to loosen the nuts fixing the disk to the shaft. He was glad that he’d taken the redundant precautions; it occurred to him that should the unit happen to start, not only would he lose the fingers of his left hand but the wrench would crush his right to a pulp.
Two thousand RPM.
But in five minutes the blade was changed safely. The power was back on. And he readied the first piece to cut.
There was no doubting the saw’s efficiency; it made all the carpenters’ lives so much easier. On the other hand, Healy had to admit he wasn’t looking forward to spending the next few hours changing blades and slicing up the wood for the maze.
Fact was, the thing scared the hell out of him.
The waitress offered a flirt.
Mid-thirties, Nick guessed. With a pretty, heart-shaped face, black hair, black as oil, tied up tight, the curls just waiting to escape. Tight uniform too. Low cut. That was one thing he’d change if he became owner of the restaurant. He’d like a little more family-friendly staff. Though maybe the old farts in the neighborhood liked the view Hannah offered.
He smiled back, but a different smile from hers, polite and formal, and asked for Vittorio. She stepped away, returned and said he’d be out in a few minutes. “Have a seat, have some coffee.”
She tried another flirt.
“Black please. One ice cube.”
“Iced coffee?”
“No. A cup. Hot coffee but an ice cube in it.”
Sitting down in the window booth she took him to, Nick looked around at the place. Nice, he assessed. He liked it right away. The linoleum would have to go—too many heel marks—and he’d lose the wallpaper and paint the place. Maybe dark red. The place had plenty of windows and good lighting. The room could handle walls that color. And he’d put up some paintings. Find some of old Brooklyn, this very neighborhood if he could.
Nick loved the borough. People didn’t know that BK had been a city unto itself until 1898, when it got absorbed and became a part of New York. In fact, Brooklyn had been one of the biggest cities in the country (was still the biggest borough). He’d find some prints of the waterfront and Prospect Park. Maybe portraits of some famous Brooklynites. Walt Whitman. Sure, had to have him. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” the poem—good, he’d get a ferry print. And Amelia’s father—also from BK—had told him that George Washington and the colonial troops had fought the British here (and lost, but retreated safely to Manhattan, thanks to a frozen river). George Gershwin. Mark Twain supposedly named his character Tom Sawyer after a heroic firefighter from Brooklyn. He’d get pictures of them all. Maybe those pen-and-ink drawings. They were cool. They were classy.
Definitely not one of native son Al Capone, though.
A shadow over him and Nick rose.
“Vittorio Gera.” A thick man, both olive-skinned and ill-colored at the same time. His suit was one size too big and Nick wondered if the reason the restaurant was on the block was his poor health. Probably. The perfect hair, gray, was a piece.
“Nick Carelli.”
“Italian. Where’s the family from?”
“Flatbush.”
“Ha!”
Nick added, “Long time ago, Bologna.”
“We’ve got Italian on the menu.”
“The lasagna’s good, I hear.”
“It is.” Gera sat. “But have you ever had bad lasagna?”
Nick smiled.
The waitress brought the coffee. “Anything for you?” she asked Gera.
“No, I’m fine, Hannah. Thank you.” She turned and left.
The man brought his weathered hands together and lowered his head. “So, I’m Vito.”
“Well, Vito, I’m interested in your place.”
“You ever done restaurants?
“Eaten in them. All my life.”
Well, most of my life . . .
The large man laughed. “It’s not for everybody.”
“It’s the sort of thing I’d like to do. Always have. A neighborhood place, you know. People can hang out here. Friendly. Socialize. And whatever happens to the economy, people still have to eat.”
“That’s all true. But hard work. Hard work.” Looking him over. “Though you don’t seem to be the sort of man who’s afraid of work.”
“No, I’m not. Now, I’ve gotten the deal sheet from my lawyer and I’ve looked it over. Seems good. And the asking price? I’ve got some money I inherited from my mother when she passed—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. And I’m talking to a couple of banks. Now, we’re in the ballpark. About the price. A little horse trading and I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”
“Sure—you pay what I’m asking and it’s an agreement.” The man was sort-of joking, sort-of not. This was business.
Nick leaned back and said confidently, “Before we go any farther I have to tell you something.”
