FaceOff

by Lee Child

  Mona looked in his direction once again. But didn’t lock eyes.

  He was getting angry now. Who the hell was she talking to?

  Another scan. Little black dresses were a coward’s choice—worn by women afraid to make a statement. But in Mona’s case, he forgave her. The silk plunged and hovered just where it ought to and the cloth clung like latex paint to her voluptuous figure.

  And what hands! Long fingers, tipped in black nails.

  Hair was tough to duplicate, but hands were the most arduous of sculptors’ challenges. Michelangelo was a genius at them, finding perfect palms and digits and nails in the heart of marble.

  And James Robert Verlaine, who knew he was an artistic, if not blood, descendant of the great master, created the same magic, though with metal, not stone.

  Which was much, much tougher to accomplish.

  The crowd in Rasta’s, Midtown, was typical for this time of night—artsy sorts who were really ad agency account managers, nerds who were really artists, hipsters pathetically clinging to their fading youth like a life preserver, players from Wall Street. Packed already. Soon to be more packed.

  Finally, he caught Mona’s eye. Her gaze flickered. Could be flirt, could be fuck off.

  But Verlaine doubted the latter. He believed she liked what she saw. Why wouldn’t she? He had a lean, wolfish face, which looked younger than his forty years. His hair, a mop, thick and inky. He worked hard to keep the do in a state of controlled unruliness. His eyes were as focused as lasers. Thin hips, encased in his trademark black jeans, tight. His work shirt was DKNY, but suitably flecked and worn. The garment was two-buttons undone with the pecs just slightly visible. Verlaine humped ingots and bars of metal around his studio and the junkyards where he bought his raw materials. Carried oxygen and propane and acetylene tanks, too.

  Another glance at Mona. He was losing control, as that familiar feeling rippled through him from chest to crotch.

  Picking up his Basil Hayden’s, he pushed away from the bar to circle Mona’s way. He tried to get past a knot of young businessmen in suits. They ignored him. Verlaine hated people like this. He detested their conformity, their smugness, their utter ignorance of culture. They’d judge art by the price tag; Verlaine bet he could wipe his ass with a canvas, spray some varnish on it, and set a reserve price of a hundred thousand bucks—and philistines like this’d fight to outbid themselves at Christie’s.

  L’art du merde.

  He pushed through the young men.

  “Hey,” one muttered. “Asshole, you spilled my—”

  Verlaine turned fast, firing off a searing gaze, like a spurt of pepper spray. The businessman, though taller and heavier, went still. His friends stirred, but chose not to come to his defense, returning quickly to a stilted conversation about the game.

  When it was clear Mr. Brooks Brothers wasn’t going to do something stupid and get a finger or face broken, or worse, Verlaine gave him a condescending smile and moved on.

  Easing up to Mona, Verlaine hovered. He wasn’t going to play the let’s-ignore-each-other game. He was too worked up for that. He whispered, “I’ve got one advantage over who you’re talking to.” A nod at the phone.

  She stopped speaking and turned to him.

  Verlaine grinned. “I can buy you a drink and he can’t.”

  Tense. Would she balk?

  Mona looked him over. Slow. Not smiling now. She said into the phone, “Gotta go.”

  Click.

  His index finger crooked for the bartender.

  “So, I’m James.”

  Playing it coy, of course. She said something. He couldn’t hear. The music at Rasta’s was a one-hundred-decibel remix of groups from twenty years ago, the worst of CBGBs.

  He leaned closer and smelled a luscious floral scent rising from her skin.

  Man, he wanted her. Wanted her tied down. Wanted her sweating. Wanted her crying.

  “What’s that?” he called.

  Mona shouted, “I said, so what do you do, James?”

  Of course. This was Manhattan. That was always question number one.

  “I’m a sculptor.”

  “Yeah?” A faint Brooklyn lilt. He could tolerate that. The skepticism in her eyes, no.

  His iPhone appeared and, shoving it her way, he flipped through the pictures.

  “Jesus, you really are.”

  Then Mona looked past him. He followed her gaze and saw a tall redhead, smiling as she made her way through the crowd. A stunner. His eyes did the triplet glance: face, tits, ass. And he didn’t care that she saw him doing it.

  As tasty as Mona.

  And no LBD for her. Leather miniskirt, fishnets, low-cut dark-blue sequined top, strapless.

  The arrivee tossed her beautiful hair off her shoulders, glistening with sweat. She cheek-kissed Mona. Then pitched a smile Verlaine’s way.

  Mona said, “This is James. He’s a real sculptor. He’s famous.”

  “Cool,” the redhead said, eyes wide and impressed—just the way he liked the pretties to be.

  He shook their hands.

  “And you are?” he asked the redhead.

  “I’m Amelia.”

  Mona turned out to be Lily.

  Verlaine got Amelia a Pinot gris and a refill of his bourbon.

  Conversation wandered. Protocol demanded that, and Verlaine had to play the game a little longer before he could bring up the subject. You had to be careful. You could ruin an evening if you moved too fast. A girl by herself? You got her drunk enough, you could usually get her to “try something different” back at your place without too much effort.

  But two together? That took a lot more work.

  In fact, he wasn’t sure he could pull this one off. They seemed, fuck it, smart, savvy. They weren’t going to fall for lines like, “I can open up a whole new world for you.”

  No, may have to write this evening off. Hell.

  But just then Lily leaned forward and whispered, “So what’re you into, James?”

  “Hobbies, you mean?” he asked.

  The women regarded each other and broke out in laughs. “Yeah, hobbies. You have any hobbies?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “If we tell you about our hobby, will you tell us about yours?”

  When a sultry raven-haired pretty in a tight LBD asks you that question, there’s only one answer: “You bet.”

  The redhead reached into her tiny purse and displayed a pair of handcuffs.

  Okay, maybe the night was going to be easier than he thought.

  JAMES ROBERT VERLAINE HAD A certain charm, Amelia Sachs gave him that.

  The clothes were weird—Midnight Cowboy meets Versace—and he probably owned more hair products than she did. But, despite that, his witty attention was completely on her and Lily.

  With Lincoln Rhyme as a romantic as well as professional partner, Amelia had been freed from the madness of the dating world. But before him there’d been innumerable evenings in restaurants and bars with men who were anything but present. Their thoughts kept zipping back to Nokias or BlackBerrys in jacket pockets, to business deals sitting on office desktops, to girlfriends or wives they’d forgotten to mention.

  A woman knows right away when a man’s with her or not.

  And Jim Bob—she loved Lucas Davenport’s nic for him—definitely was. His sniper eyes bored into theirs, he touched arms, he asked questions, made jokes. He inquired.

  Of course, this wasn’t typical bar meeting talk—about family and exes, about the Mets, the Knicks, politics, and the latest retreads from Hollywood. No, the theme for tonight was such esoterica as describing the type of rope he enjoyed tying “girls” up with, where to get the best mouth gags, and what kind of whips and canes caused the most pain but left the fewest marks.

  Back at Lincoln’s loft, the four investigators had decided the way to Verlaine’s psyche was through his fly. His sado-sexual history would give them entry. Lily had gone to the bar first—strategizing that a single bulb
might draw the moth less suspiciously. Yep on that one. Then Amelia—in an outfit she’d had to purchase an hour earlier—had arrived to seal the deal. And it had taken a whole sixty seconds to find out that Verlaine usually came to Rasta’s before heading to his fave S&M dives.

  Thank you, Facebook.

  Verlaine’s phone appeared again and he punched in a passcode. A private photo album opened. And he leaned forward to show off his prize shots.

  Amelia struggled not to show her disgust. She heard Lily inhale fast, but the senior detective turned the sound into a whisper of admiration. Verlaine missed her dismay.

  The first image was of a naked woman, wearing only a necklace, blindfolded, with her hands taped or tied behind her. She was kneeling on a slab of concrete. Interesting, Amelia thought, and caught Lily’s eye. Concrete, just like the victims.

  The woman in the picture had been crying—her makeup had run to her chin—and her breasts were streaked with ugly welts.

  Verlaine, obviously aroused, eagerly scrolled through more images, which Amelia found increasingly hard to look at. It took all her willpower to appear aroused by the images of cruelty.

  He gave a running narrative of the “partners.” Amelia only heard the word “victims.”

  Ten minutes.

  Fifteen.

  At that point Verlaine said, “Excuse me, ladies. I need to run to the little boy’s room. Behave while I’m away. Or not!” He laughed. “Back in a sec.”

  “Wait,” Lily said.

  Verlaine turned.

  “Always wondered something.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “What’s the plural of sec?”

  · · ·

  “That son of a bitch,” Lily said. She wasn’t smiling.

  “God, that was awful,” Amelia added. “What do you think?” She was nodding back toward the toilets where Jim Bob might be emptying his bladder but was sure to be filling his nostrils.

  “Sleazy, scummy, I want to take a shower in hand sanitizer.”

  “Agreed. But is he a killer?”

  “Those pictures,” Lily whispered. “I’ve worked sex crimes but that’s about the worst I’ve seen. From some of those wounds, I guarantee he put one or two of them in the hospital.” She considered the question. “Yeah, I could see him taking it a step further and killing somebody. You?”

  “I think so.”

  Lily continued, “I hope so. Man, I really do. I don’t want the crew from Narcotics Four to be behind this.”

  Amelia didn’t much care for the detectives running the elite unit—Martin Glover, Danny Vincenzo, and Candy Preston all had egos like runaway stallions—but no cop wants to think that colleagues are torturing and killing wits just to up their conviction rate, however noble their cause.

  Amelia looked over her friend. “So. You and Lucas, you had a thing, right?”

  “A while ago, yeah. In Minnesota and when he came here. Really clicked between us. Still does. But not that way. We’ve moved on. And you and Lincoln seem like a good fit.”

  “Just like you were saying. It clicks. Can’t explain it, don’t think about it.”

  “Lucas has some problems with him. You know, being in the chair.”

  “Happens some.” Amelia laughed. “Of course, Lincoln rides people hard and then they get fed up and go, ‘You’re such an asshole.’ Or, ‘Fuck you.’ They forget he’s a quad. That breaks the ice and it’s all good.”

  “With Lucas, I think it’s something more. He won’t talk about it.” Lily lowered her voice. “For me, I have to say, when Lucas and I met, it was, a lot of it was physical. I need that. You and Lincoln?”

  “Oh, yeah. Believe it or not, it’s good. Different obviously. But good . . . Ah, here comes our lord and master.”

  Wiping his nose with his fingers, Verlaine was oozing his way through the crowd. Amelia was sure he turned sideways intentionally to rub against an ass or two.

  One of his “accidental” victims—a petite redhead in a leather skirt and black blouse—turned fast and, eyes dark angry disks, shouted words they couldn’t hear. Fast as a gun hammer falling on a primer, he wheeled and shoved his face into hers.

  “Christ,” Amelia muttered, reaching toward her purse, where a baby Glock rested. “He’s going to hurt her.”

  “Wait. We move in, that fucks up the whole op.”

  They watched closely. A cold smile blossomed on Verlaine’s face as the woman looked at him warily. She was attractive and her figure was perfect, though it was clear she’d had acne in her youth or some illness that left scarring.

  In the space of a few seconds, as he spoke to her, still smiling coolly, her expression morphed from confused to shocked to devastated; Amelia knew he was commenting on her complexion. He kept leaning forward, taunting, taunting, until she picked up her purse and fled into the bathroom, sobbing.

  Amelia said to Lily, “His expression. What’s it look like to you?”

  “Like he just fucked somebody and wants a cigarette.”

  Verlaine eased through the crowd back to the bar.

  “Hey, there, ladies. Miss me?”

  THE THING ABOUT BURGLARY WAS, the careful burglar was rarely disturbed by the homeowner. It was always some snoopy neighbor who did him in.

  Lucas sat on a darkened stoop across the street from Verlaine’s building, just watching and listening. The neighborhood was a tough one, not far from the East River, and not yet gentrifying; the buildings might be a little too rotten, a little too undistinguished, a little too far upriver. Verlaine’s building was a bit of a puzzle—only two stories tall, but wide and deep. Too large for a single inhabitant, Lucas thought. It had a shallow entrance above a wide one-step stoop, with bricked-up spaces on the bottom floor that were once windows. The place could have been a hardware store at one time, with walk-up apartments above it; in another neighborhood, farther downtown, it would have become a nightclub, or a restaurant. Here, it was just a derelict building, without a single light showing, either through the barred windows on the main door, or from the windows on the second floor. Was there somebody else in there? Verlaine himself, Lucas knew, was at a Midtown bar.

  Nothing moving. And still Lucas waited.

  He’d had a little heart-to-heart with Lincoln. When the women were gone, Lincoln said, “If you go to the black cabinet by the window, in the bottom section, the left side, there’s a drawer.”

  Lucas went to the cabinet, opened a lower-level door, pulled out the drawer, and found an electric lock rake.

  He took it out and pulled the trigger. Dead.

  “An artifact from my former life. It’ll still work, but you’ll have to put some double-A batteries in it.”

  “You want me to crack Verlaine’s apartment?”

  “Lily said you occasionally used unconventional tactics.”

  Lucas said, “I’ll take a look at it. Even if this thing works, there could be other problems. Might be other people around, locks have gotten better.”

  “So then you don’t go in,” Lincoln said. “I just feel it would be useful if somebody could take a preliminary look. Can’t use it as evidence, of course.”

  Lucas nodded. “Yeah. Once you know, everything else gets easier.”

  Then he said, “Look, I know I pissed you off because I was having trouble dealing with your disability.”

  “You did. Piss me off,” Lincoln said.

  “Yeah, well,” Lucas scratched his neck. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s purely out of fear. This scar”—he touched his neck again—“a little girl shot me in the throat with a .22. Went through a coat collar, through my windpipe, got to my spine, but not into it. The kid should have killed me—she would have, but there was a doc right there, and she did a tracheotomy, and kept me breathing until we got to the hospital. But if the kid had had any other kind of gun, or if the slug hadn’t gone through the collar first, she would have either blown my spine out, and I would have been dead on the spot, or I would have been like you.
It was a matter of a quarter inch or so, or any other caliber. I look at you and I see me.”

  “Interesting,” Lincoln said.

  “After the accident, did you think about suicide?”

  “Yes. Quite considerably,” Lincoln said. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I made the right choice, staying alive. But my curiosity keeps me going; I always seem to have work.” He smiled. “God bless all the little criminals.”

  “And then there’s Amelia,” Lucas said.

  “Yes. Then there’s Amelia.”

  “You’re a lucky man, Lincoln,” Lucas said.

  Lincoln laughed and said, “It’s been a while since anyone told me that.”

  · · ·

  After an hour on the stoop, Lucas decided that he’d either have to make a move on the building, or go away. He stood up, dusted off the seat of his jeans, and saw a man walking along the sidewalk toward him, alone. The man spit in the gutter and came on. When he got to Lucas, he stopped and said, “You got an extra twenty?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not really asking,” the man said.

  “Take a close look at me,” Lucas said.

  The man took a closer look, then said, “Fuck you,” and went on down the street. He looked back once, then turned the corner and was gone. Lucas waited another few minutes, to see if the man came back, then crossed the street and, using his cell phone as a flashlight, looked at the lock. An old one—a good one, when it was made, but now old. With a last look around, Lucas took the rake out of his pocket, slipped the pick-arm into the lock. The rake chattered for a moment, as Lucas kept the turning pressure on, and then the lock went.

  He stepped inside, closed the door, and called, “Anybody home?”

  He listened, got no response, except a scrabbling sound in the ceiling—a rat.

  “Hey, anybody? Anybody here?”

  Nobody answered. He took a flashlight from his pocket, turned it on. He was in a wide hallway, with steps going up to his right, and with a double door to the left. The hallway smelled of burned metal, as though somebody had been working with a welding torch. He was in the right place.

  He tried the double door and found it open, with a bank of light switches on the wall to the left. He closed the door behind him and turned on the lights. He was in a wide-open studio with several two-foot-tall bronze sculptures sitting on heavy wooden tables, with a variety of metalworking tools—files, electric grinders, polishers, hand scribes. The air inside smelled of burned metal and polishing compound.