Well, now, shit. A real shame about Freddy. The guilt prodded. And the man a father too.
Twins’re boys. The four- and five-year-old’re girls . . .
That hurt.
But sorry. There had to be some casualties. Nick was owed. What had happened to him had been so unfair—a little hijacking, a little pistol-whipping (the driver of the tractor-trailer he’d hit had been a complete asshole) and the system had come down on him with both feet, when he’d done pretty much what everybody did. The whole fucking world got away with all kinds of shit. And what was he rewarded with? Years and years of his life stolen.
I’m owed . . .
Nick waited for a light and then crossed the street. He felt the gym bag, with the cityscape inside, pressing lightly on his back, like a loving arm. He was picturing Amelia, her fashion model’s face, her straight red hair, full lips. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Remembering her asleep the other night, fingers in a partial fist, breathing shallow and soft.
He turned onto his block and as he did he thought of someone else: Lincoln Rhyme.
Nick had nothing but respect for the man. Hell, if Rhyme’d been running the ’jacking case on the bridge, Nick and the crews he fenced to would’ve been busted months before—and the charges would’ve been a lot worse. You couldn’t help but admire a mind like that.
And Rhyme cared for Amelia. That was good.
Sure, it’d be tough to take her away from him. But, of course, Nick took solace in the fact that she really couldn’t love him. How could you love somebody who was . . . well, like that. She was with him out of sympathy, had to be, and that was a good thing. Rhyme would have to know that. He’d get over it.
Maybe in the future they could all be friends.
Amelia Sachs had finished walking the grid at Alicia Morgan’s apartment, which had revealed few, if any, clues as to Vernon Griffith’s whereabouts, and she was in a reflective mood, thinking—of all things—about the nature of evil.
So many different faces.
Alicia Morgan was one manifestation. Lincoln Rhyme had called and told her what happened at the town house, how Alicia was mastermind of the product liability killings. That her motive was revenge for a terrible injustice seemed to put the evil she’d perpetrated in a different category from that of, say, a serial rapist or a terrorist.
Then there was yet another evil: Those in the stream of commerce who had decided not to correct a vehicle that they knew might injure or kill. Perhaps greed or perhaps the layers of corporate structure shielded them from conscience, the way an exoskeleton protects the liquid heart of a beetle. And maybe the car and fuel injector executives had truly hoped, or even prayed in their spotless churches on Sunday, that the worst would not come to pass and the passengers who drove about in their gadgety and sleek ticking-time-bomb cars would live long, unhurt lives.
Then there was Vernon Griffith, seduced—literally—by a woman who had preyed on his insecurities.
And what is the worst evil? Amelia Sachs asked herself.
She was sitting on a couch at the moment, leaning back against the well-worn leather. Thinking now: Where are you, Vernon? Hiding out a mile away? Ten thousand?
If anyone could determine his whereabouts it would be herself, Rhyme and Cooper. Oh, and Juliette Archer too. The intern. She was good for a newbie. Her mind was quick and she displayed a detachment that was so like Rhyme’s. And so necessary to this odd world of forensic analysis. Rhyme had been good before his accident, Sachs was sure, though she hadn’t known him then, but she believed that his condition had allowed him truly to soar as a criminalist. Juliette would excel in the field if the surgery she was facing in a few months rendered her a quad, which seemed likely, Rhyme had explained.
You two make a good team . . .
She looked around this apartment. The place seemed washed out; there were no lights on and the overcast illumination from the street filtered in. This was one interesting aspect of city life—so little direct sunlight. It bled into your home or office, bouncing off windows and walls and signs and storefronts and other façades. For only two or three hours a day were most city spaces illuminated by actual sun, apart from the blessed rich, dwelling at lofty heights. Sachs had imagined a phrase some time ago: Living in reflected light. this seemed to describe the urban experience.
My, aren’t we thoughtful today?
Wonder why . . .
Just then from the front door came a jangle of keys. One click, then another. In suburbia or rural America one can get away with a single lock. In cities, New York at least, a knob lock and dead bolt are the minimum.
A faint squeak sounded as the door pushed inward. And Sachs drew her Glock smoothly and aimed it, steady, on her target’s chest.
“Amelia.” A shocked whisper.
“Drop the bag, Nick. And get on the floor, facedown. I don’t want either hand out of my sight for one second. Do you understand me?”
CHAPTER 56
Two Pulaskis sat in a deli in Greenwich Village, not far from the 6th Precinct.
The 6 was Tony Pulaski’s house and the twin brothers came here pretty frequently.
He and Ron were nursing coffee in thick cups. Thick so that if they got banged up, which happened a lot and loudly in the dive of an eating establishment, they wouldn’t chip so much.
Ron’s, however, was missing a heart-shaped chunk from the lip. He minded the sharp edge with every sip.
“So,” Tony was saying, “just to get this straight. You’re running an unauthorized undercover op, using your own buy money, though you’re not buying, or if you are you flush the evidence right after. You have no Major Cases or ESU backup. Is that about it?”
“Pretty much. Oh, and it’s in the worst part of New York. Statistically.”
“Good to add that to the mix,” Tony said.
People would turn their eyes onto the brothers occasionally. They were used to it, being identical twins. Similar uniforms. Tony had a few more decorations. He was older.
By seven minutes.
Amelia Sachs had told Ron to have somebody watching his back when he went in for the meeting with the drug czar Oden, in his quest to find out what the man’s connection was with Baxter and about this new drug Catch. And the only person Pulaski could think of was Tony.
“You’re doing this for Lincoln, then?”
Ron nodded. Didn’t need to repeat what Tony already knew. That after the head injury Ron had suffered he would’ve left the force if Rhyme hadn’t gotten him to stay—by saying bluntly, Get off your ass and get back to work. Rhyme hadn’t played the look-at-me card: me, the gimp, still catching bad guys. He just said, “You’re a good cop, Rookie. And you can be one hell of a good crime scene investigator if you stick to it. You know that people depend on you.”
“Who?” the officer’d asked. “My family? I can get another job.”
Rhyme had twisted his face up, in that way only Lincoln Rhyme could do, when people didn’t get what he was saying. “Who do you think? I’m talking about the vics who’re going to die because you were doing public relations or some shit and not walking the grid at scenes in the field to nail the perp who’s going to kill them in six months. Do I have to spell it out? Get off your ass and get back to work. Last. Word. From. Me.”
So Ron Pulaski had gotten back to work.
“What’s your plan, you meet this Oden? Wait. Isn’t that a god or something? Like in Germany?”
“Norse, I think. Spelled different.”
“Does that mean he’s from Norway. Wouldn’t that be Norwegian?”
“I don’t know.
“Oh. What’s the plan?”
“I’ve got the name of somebody, some kid knows where he hangs.”
“Oden the Norse dealer.”
“Are you listening? I’m serious.”
“Go on,” Tony said and looked serious.
“I meet Oden. I’m going to say I knew Baxter. He was going to hook me up with him, Oden, but then he got busted.”
“Hooked up for what?”
“That’s just to get in the door. Then I’ll make a buy, this Catch stuff. The super drug. I bust him. You come in. Ta-da. We negotiate. He tells us what Baxter did and we let him go. I’m betting Baxter bankrolled him. I tell Lincoln and he realizes Baxter was really a dangerous shit. Not that he deserved to die. But he wasn’t a lamb.”
Tony scowled. “That isn’t much of a plan.”
Ron scowled back. “Any other thoughts? I’m happy to entertain them.”
“Just saying. It’s not much of a plan.”
“So?” Pulaski asked. “You up for it?”
“What the hell,” Tony muttered. “I haven’t risked my job, my pension, my reputation and—what else?—oh, yeah, my life in the last couple days. Why not?”
“What is this?”
Nick was speaking not to Sachs but to her backup, a uniform stepping out of the kitchen, a slim African American borrowed from the 84. The officer stepped forward and frisked Nick carefully. A grimace toward Sachs as he removed a Smittie hammerless .38 from the man’s jacket pocket.
“That. Wait. I can explain.”
Sachs grimaced. The gun alone was enough to put him away for five years. She’d have thought he was smarter than that.
“Cuffs?”
“Yes,” Sachs replied.
“Hey, you don’t need . . .” Nick’s voice faded.
The patrolman handed the weapon to Sachs then cuffed Nick’s hands behind him and helped him up. She emptied the rounds from the weapon and slipped it into an evidence bag. The cartridges went into another. She set them on a table, well out of Nick’s reach.
“I was going to report it,” Nick blustered, his voice higher, in the register of guilt, as Sachs thought of it. “The piece. I was going to turn it in. I wasn’t carrying.”
Though, yeah, he pretty much was.
“You don’t understand,” he continued. The desperation was thick. “I’ve been on the street, trying to find that man I told you about, who could help me. Could prove I was innocent. I was in Red Hook and this guy comes out of nowhere, pulled that Smittie, going to mug me. I took the piece away from him. I couldn’t toss it away. Some kid might’ve found it.”
Sachs didn’t even bother to run down the lie. “Jon Perone,” she began. And let that sit.
Nick gave absolutely no reaction.
“When you met with Perone we had a team outside his office.”
The man tried to take this in. Then: “Well, yeah, Perone was the one had information about Donnie. He was going to do some digging, find what he needed to prove I wasn’t anywhere near the ’jacking—”
“We turned Ralph Seville, Nick. Perone’s muscle. The one you two sent to kill Freddy Caruthers.”
Mouth open slightly. Eyes zipping throughout his apartment. She thought of the tiny fish in Vernon Griffith’s aquarium.
She added, “Two of our people followed Seville to the mall where you had Freddy waiting. He moved on Freddy, in the garage, and they nailed him. He dimed you all out.”
“But—?”
“Seville told Perone he bodied Freddy. That was the script. Perone doesn’t know we’ve got Seville. Freddy’s in protective custody for the time being.”
Nick’s face remained adamant. “Lying. That son of a bitch is lying. Seville. He’s a prick.”
“Enough,” Sachs whispered. “Enough.”
With that, Nick changed. Instantly. He became a wolf. “How’d you get a team to Perone’s? Bullshit. You’re fucking bluffing.”
She blinked at his fury. His words stabbed like a blade. “We knew you’d be smart, switching cars in a garage or leading us off. The night I stayed here? I got a tracker app on your phone after you fell asleep. We followed you to Perone’s. I couldn’t get a warrant—we couldn’t hear what you and Perone said. But Seville told us you did ’jack the Algonquin truck near the Gowanus back then and you did pistol-whip the driver. Donnie had nothing to do with it. And the reason you wanted the case files: to get your money from whoever’d taken the ’jacked drugs.”
His shoulders slumped in defeat, and he reverted to pathetic. “I go back and I’m dead, Amelia. Either I’ll kill myself or somebody’ll do me.” His voice cracked.
She looked him over, head to knees. “I don’t want you to go back, Nick.”
Relief, like a hurt child collected in his mother’s arms.
“Thank you. You have to understand. What happened a few years ago. I didn’t want to do it. The ’jacking. You know, Mom was sick, Donnie was having problems. All that merch is insured. It wasn’t that big a deal. Really.”
Sachs’s phone buzzed. She regarded the screen, and sent a reply text. A moment later the front door opened and a tall, lean man, dark-skinned, walked inside. He was wearing a brown suit, yellow shirt and bold crimson tie. The colors may have clashed but the garb fit well.
“Well, lookie here. Lookie this. Caughtcha, din’t we?” He ran long fingers over his short salt-and-pepper hair.
Nick grimaced. “Shit.”
Fred Dellray, a senior FBI special agent, was known for several things. One, his love of philosophy, a subject in which he was somewhat famous in academic circles. Two, his outlandish fashion choices. Then there was his unusual vocabulary. Dellray-speak, it was called.
“So, Mr. Nick, you been doing some naughty oops stuff, considerin’ you’re still hot off the presses from prison.”
Nick remained silent.
Dellray turned a chair around and sat, the back between him and Nick, and looked him over, even more intensely than Sachs had done.
“A-melia?”
“Fred?”
“M’I allowed to push the plunger.”
“Do what you need.”
Dellray teepeed his fingers. “By the power vested in her, thanks to the great state of New York, Detective Sachs here will be arresting you for a large number o’ things. Many, many come to my mind, at least, hers too, I’ll betcha. Shhh, shhh, don’t make your mouth go that way, ’bout to form words. I’m speaking. She will be arresting you and then with the agreement of her boss and my boss, way high ups, you will be working for me, call me the great eagle of the federal government.”
“What’re you—”
“Shhh, shhh. You miss that part? You’ll be a CI for me, a con-fidential informant. And oh what a dangle you’ll be. Former cop, former con. The plan is you produce for us. Five years or so, doing just what you’re sposta—which’s what I tellya, and all’s happy, happy. Then off you go to house arrest, and pretty soon you’ll be free to become a Walmart greeter. If they hire former felons. Hm. Have to check that.”
Dellray, a former undercover agent, was now the foremost runner of informants in the Northeast.
“You want Perone.” Nick was nodding.
“Hell-o. But that boy’s suspendered minder, Seville, has burned him nice and toasty already. But he’s jus’ a starter, an appetizer, an aperitivo. We’ll go onward and upward from there. The world awaits. Now I wanta hear, all I wanta hear, is Yessir, I’m on board. I don’t, I’ll be squeezing some parts of your life you don’t want nail marks in. We all together on that?”
A sigh. A nod.
“Delighted. But . . .” Dellray said, his dark face furiously screwed up. “Can’t hear you and more important, the micro-phones can’t hear you. Of which we got more than the sets o’ the Bachelor and Survivor combined. So?”
