Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 10

On this second trip he looked the other way-at all the cars on the street in front of and near the house. Obviously no NYPD cruisers but no unmarkeds either that he could sense.

He walked up to the door, reaching into his backpack and withdrawing a six-inch length of capped pipe, filled with lead shot. He wrapped his right hand around this, making a fist. The point of the pipe was to give support to the inside of the fingers so that if he happened to connect with bone or some other solid portion of his victim when he swung, the metacarpals wouldn't snap. He'd learned this the hard way-by missing a blow to the throat and striking a man on the cheek, which had cracked his little finger. He'd regained control of the situation but the pain in his right hand was excruciating. He'd found it was very difficult to flay skin with the knife in one's non-dominant hand.

Swann took a blank, sealed envelope from his bag too.

A glance around. n.o.body on the street. He rang the bell with his knuckle, put a cheerful smile on his face.

No response. Was he asleep?

He lifted a paper napkin from his pocket and tried the k.n.o.b. Locked. This was always the case in New York. Not so in the suburbs of Cleveland or Denver-where he'd killed an information broker last month. All the doors in Highlands Ranch were unlocked, windows too. The man hadn't even locked his BMW.

Swann was about to walk around behind the house and look for a window he might break through.

But then he heard a thud, a click.

He rang the bell again, just to let Mr. Nikolov know that his presence was still requested. This is what any normal visitor would have done.

A grain of suspicion...

A voice, m.u.f.fled by the thickness of the door. Not impatient. Just tired.

The door opened and Swann was surprised-and pleased-to see that Robert Moreno's preferred driver was only about five feet, six inches and couldn't have weighed more than 160 pounds, 25 fewer than Swann himself.

"Yes?" he asked in a thick Slavic accent, looking at Swann's left hand, the white envelope. The right was not visible.

"Mr. Nikolov?"

"That's right." He was wearing brown pajamas and was in house slippers.

"I've got a TLC refund for you. You gotta sign for it."

"What?"

"Taxi Limousine Commission, the refund."

"Yeah, yeah, TLC. What refund?"

"They overcharged fees."

"You with them?"

"No, I'm the contracting agent. I just deliver the checks."

"Well, they p.r.i.c.ks. I don't know about refund but they p.r.i.c.ks, what they charge. Wait, how do I know they not ripping me off? I sign, I sign away my rights? Maybe I should get a lawyer."

Swann lifted the envelope. "You can read this. Everybody's taking the checks but it says you don't have to, you can talk to an arbitrator. I don't care. I deliver checks. You don't want it, don't take it."

Nikolov unlatched the screen door. "Lemme have it."

Swann appreciated that he had no sense of humor but he couldn't help but be struck by the man's unfortunate choice of words.

When the door opened, Swann stepped forward fast and drove his right fist, holding the pipe, into the man's solar plexus, aiming not for the ugly brown cloth of the PJs but for a spot about two inches beyond-inside the man's gut. Which is where blows should always be aimed, never the surface, to deliver the greatest impact.

Nikolov gasped, retched and went down fast.

In an instant Swann stepped past him, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him well inside before the vomiting started. Swann kicked him once, also in the belly, hard, and then looked out a lacy window.

A quiet street, a pleasant street. Not a dog walker, not a pa.s.serby. Not a single car.

He pulled on latex gloves, flicked the lock, slipped the pipe away.

"h.e.l.looooo? h.e.l.loooo?" Swann called.

Nothing. They were alone.

Gripping the driver by the collar again, he pulled the man along the recently waxed floor, then deposited him in a den, out of view of the windows.

Swann looked down at the gasping man, wincing from the pain.

The beef tenderloin, the psoas major muscle tucked against the short loin and sirloin, lives up to its name-you need only a fork to cut it when prepared right. But the elongated trapezoid of meat, known for Wellington and tournedos, starts in a much less agreeable state and takes some prep time. Most of this is knife work. You have to remove any tougher side muscle, of course, but most challenging is the silverskin, a thin layer of connective tissue that encases much of the cut.

The trick is to remove the membrane completely but leave as much flesh intact as you can. Doing this involves moving the knife in a sawing motion, while keeping the blade at a precise angle. You need to practice a great deal to get this right.

Jacob Swann was thinking of the technique now as he withdrew the Kai Shun from its waxed wooden sheath and crouched down.

CHAPTER 16.

EN ROUTE TO THE HOUSE of Robert Moreno's limo driver, Amelia Sachs enjoyed being out from under the Overseer's thumb.

Okay, she thought, not fair.

Nance Laurel was seemingly a good prosecutor. From what Dellray said, from the woman's preparation for the case.

But that doesn't mean I have to like her.

Find out what church Moreno went to, Amelia, and how much he donated to good causes and how many old ladies he helped across the street.

If you would...

I don't think so.

Sachs was at least moving. And moving fast. She was driving her maroon 1970 Ford Torino Cobra, heir to the Fairlane. The car delivered 405 sleek horsepower and boasted 447 foot-pounds of torque. Sachs had the optional four-speed transmission, of course. The Hurst s.h.i.+fter was hard and temperamental but for Sachs this was the only way to run through the gears-for her a more sensuous part of the car than the engine. The only incongruous aspect of the vehicle-aside from its anachronistic appearance on the streets of modern-day New York-was the Chevrolet Camaro SS horn b.u.t.ton, a memorial from her first and favorite muscle car, which had been the victim of a run-in with a perp a few years ago.

She now piloted the Cobra over the 59th Street Bridge-the Queensboro. Her father had told her that Paul Simon had written a song about the bridge. She'd meant to look it up on iTunes after he'd told her that. Meant to look it up after he died. Meant to look it up every year or so since.

She never had.

A pop song about a bridge. Interesting. Sachs reminded herself to look it up.

Eastbound traffic was good. The speed nudged a bit higher and she slammed down the clutch and popped the Cobra's gearbox into third.

Pain. And she winced.

G.o.dd.a.m.n it. Her knee again. If it wasn't the knee it was the hip.

G.o.dd.a.m.n.

The arthritis had plagued her all her adult life. Not rheumatoid-that insidious immune system disorder that works its evil in all your joints. Hers was the more common osteo, whose genesis might have been genes or the consequences of a motorcycle race at age twenty-two-or, more precisely, a spectacular landing after the Benelli decided to launch itself off the dirt track only a quarter mile from the finish line. But whatever the cause, oh, how the condition tortured her. She'd learned that aspirin and ibuprofen worked some. She'd learned that chondroitin and glucosamine didn't-at least not for her. Sorry, shark bone lovers. She'd had hyaluronan injections, but they'd sidelined her for several days from inflammation and pain. And, of course, rooster combs could only be a temporary fix. She learned to swallow pills dry and never touch anything that had a Refill Only 3 Times label on it.

But the most important thing she'd learned was to smile and pretend the pain wasn't there and that her joints were those of a healthy twenty-year-old.

When you move they can't getcha...

And yet this pain, the joints breaking down, meant she couldn't move nearly as fast as she had. Her metaphor: an emergency brake cable, slack from rusting, that wouldn't quite disengage the shoe.

Dragging, dragging...

And the worst of all: the specter that she'd be sidelined because of the condition. She wondered again: Had Captain Bill Myers's eyes been aimed her way that morning in the lab when a jolt nearly made her stumble? Every time she was around bra.s.s she struggled to hide the condition. Had she this morning? She believed so.

She cleared the bridge and downs.h.i.+fted hard into second, matched revs to protect the boisterous engine. She'd done this to prove to herself that the pain wasn't so bad. She was blowing it out of proportion. She could s.h.i.+ft whenever she wanted.

Except that lifting her left knee to stomp on the clutch had sent a fierce burst through her.

A reactive tear eased into one eye. She wiped it away furiously.

She drove more moderately toward her destination.

In ten minutes she was easing through a pleasant neighborhood in Queens. Tidy, tiny lawns, shrubs well trimmed, trees rising from perfect circles of mulch.

She checked house numbers. Halfway up the block she found Robert Moreno's driver's house. A single-story bungalow, very well maintained. In the driveway, half in the garage, half out, was a Lincoln Town Car, black and polished like a recruit's gun for parade.

Sachs double-parked and tossed the NYPD card onto the dash. Glancing at the house, she saw the flimsy curtain in the living room open slightly then fall back.

So the driver was home. Good. Sometimes when police come a-calling, residents suddenly remember errands they have to run far across town. Or they simply hide in the bas.e.m.e.nt and don't answer the door.

She stepped out, testing her left leg.

Acceptable, though it still hurt. She was between pill times and resisted the urge to take another ibuprofen. That little liver failure thing.

Then she grew impatient with herself for fussing. For G.o.d's sake, Rhyme has the use of 5 percent of his body and he never complains. Shut up and get to work. Standing on the front stoop of the driver's house, she pressed the doorbell, heard a Westminster chime inside, an elaborate trilling that seemed ironic, given the minuscule house.

What could the driver tell them? Had Moreno commented that he'd been followed, that he'd received death threats, that someone had broken into his hotel room? Had the driver gotten a description of someone conducting surveillance?

Then footsteps.

She felt, more than saw, someone peering through the gauzy curtain covering the window in the door.

Perfunctorily, she held her badge and s.h.i.+eld up.

The lock clicked.

The door swung open.

CHAPTER 17.

h.e.l.lO, OFFICER. NO, DETECTIVE. You are a detective? That's what you said when you called."

"Detective, yes."

"And I am Tash. You can call me Tash." He was cautious, as he'd been on the phone when she called earlier, but perhaps because she was a woman and a not unattractive one, he relaxed his guard. His Mideast accent was just as thick as earlier but he was easier to understand face-to-face.

Beaming, he ushered her into the house, decorated largely with Islamic art. He was a slight man, with a dark complexion, thick black hair, and Semitic features. Iranian, she guessed. He was wearing a white s.h.i.+rt and chino slacks. His full name was Atash Farada and he'd been a driver with Elite Limousines for the past ten years, he explained. Somewhat proudly.

A woman about the same age-Sachs made it mid-forties-greeted her pleasantly and asked if she wanted tea or anything else.

"No, thank you."

"My wife, Faye."

They shook hands.

Sachs said to Farada, "Your company, Elite, said Robert Moreno generally used another driver, right?"

"Yes, Vlad Nikolov."

She asked for the spelling, which he gave. Sachs jotted.

"But he was sick on May first and so they called me instead to drive. Could you tell me what this is about, please?"

"I have to tell you that Mr. Moreno was killed."

"No!" Farada's expression darkened. He was clearly upset. "Please, what happened?"

"That's what we're trying to find out."

"This is such bad news. He was quite the gentleman. Was it robbery?"