The Steel Kiss

by Jeffery Deaver

  But the good news now was that the Internal Affairs cops on his case, and the regular gold shields, had really done their homework, and he had paperwork galore to prowl through. Probably there was so much because they'd thought they had a crooked cop and a crooked cop is the best kind of perp. You nail a boy in blue who's screwed up and the world's your oyster. Press, promotion, adulation from the public.

  In his apartment now. Sitting at a table he'd been meaning to level with a folded piece of paper since he'd moved back in, Nick was looking through what Amelia had brought him, ream upon ream of paperwork. Looking for a key to his salvation.

  He sipped coffee, black and lukewarm. Not hot, not iced. Tepid. He didn't know why, but this was the way he always drank coffee. He remembered being with Amelia and she'd make it the old-fashioned drip way--pre-Keurig days--pouring it through a cone filter. One of his favorite memories, a freezing-cold morning, sharing the ugliest pair of striped beige pajamas on earth. Her toenails blue from polish. His blue from the cold.

  He'd gulped several mugs of Folgers since he'd started going through the files Ame--no, Amelia--had brought him. How many hours had it been? He didn't want to guess.

  He suddenly was aware of a scent that took him back years. He cocked his head, inhaled. Yes, definitely. The source? He lifted one of the file folders. Where Amelia had undoubtedly held it. She wasn't into perfume. But she tended to use the same lotions and shampoos, which had their own distinctive fragrance. This was what he now smelled. Hand cream, Guerlain, he believed. Amazed the name came back to him.

  He discarded a few other memories, with difficulty, and returned to the paperwork. Page after page.

  An hour crawled past. Another. Numbing. He decided to go for a late-night run. Five more minutes.

  But finding what he so desperately wanted took only two.

  Jesus. Oh, my sweet Jesus!

  He was reading from a report that had been put together as part of the larger investigation into police involvement in hijackings. It was dated nearly a year after he had gone to jail. There was a photocopy of a detective's handwritten notes, very hard to read--it looked like the officer had used pencil.

  2/23. Interv albert constanto olice investigation 44-3452--operation take back subject not involved in jackings but sheet on drug missed court rants, dropped one, kicked down to lesser included, subject reported overheard... in flannigan's bar key man for stolen merch, always behind scenes, layers of protection knows "everything" in BK, white male, fifties, first name starts with j married nanci , "j" is key constanto says.

  I'll say he's key, Nick Carelli thought. For my mission at least. Flannigan's was one of the underground meeting places for organized crime operations. This mysterious "J" figure, who'd operated in BK--Brooklyn--with connections and a wife, Nanci, would know who was who in the hijacking scene back then. And if he couldn't directly help Nick, he'd probably know somebody who could. He flipped through the remaining pages, hoping to find a transcript of the notes, which would be easier to read, but no. There wasn't much else. And no follow-up finding the "J" figure and his wife Nanci.

  Then he saw why.

  An NYPD memo announced the end of Operation Take Back. The commissioner praised the officers for greatly reducing the incidence of hijackings and the involvement of corrupt police officers in them. Many 'jackers and their police allies were behind bars; others, against whom cases could not be made, had been driven out of the business. The real answer was made clear in several other memos, announcing the formation of several anti-terrorist and -drug task forces. Resources within the NYPD were limited, always true, and stolen TVs fall pretty low on the gotta-stop-it scale, compared with al-Qaeda wannabes in Westchester targeting synagogues and Times Square.

  Well, good news for him. This meant it was all the more likely J and Nanci were still free and would be able to help him.

  His first reaction was to pick up the phone and call Amelia, tell her that what she'd done--betting on him--had paid off. But then he decided not to. He'd called her earlier but she hadn't picked up. He sensed she wouldn't pick up now either. Anyway, he wanted something more substantive to tell her and he still had to track down this J, convince him to help. And Nick didn't have a lot of street cred. Former cop and former con. That meant a lot of folks, from both sides of the swamp, wouldn't be real inclined to help him out.

  Also, talking to Amelia would give free rein to those feelings again, and that was not, he guessed, a good idea.

  Or was it?

  He pictured her again, that long red hair, her face, the full lips. She seemed hardly to have aged while he was inside. He remembered waking up beside her, listening to the clock radio, the announcer: "Ten-ten WINS... you give us twenty-two minutes, we'll give you the world."

  Reflect later, he told himself bluntly. Get your ass in gear. You've got work to do.

  CHAPTER 25

  Their first argument of substance.

  About something small. But an essential aspect of forensic work is that something small can mean the difference between a killer killing once more or never again.

  "It's your database," Juliette Archer was saying to Rhyme. "You put it together." A concession of sorts. But then she added, "That was, of course, a while ago, no?"

  They were in the parlor. Mel Cooper was the only one present. Pulaski was home, as was Sachs, with her mother.

  Cooper was holding a dry marker, glancing with his infinitely patient face from Rhyme to Archer, waiting for a conclusion to settle like a bee on a stamen. So far, only flutter.

  Rhyme replied, "Geologic shifts happen rather slowly in my experience. Over millions of years, in fact." A subtle but acerbic assault on her position.

  The issue was a simple one, having to do with the humus--decomposed earth--Sachs had found at the earlier crime scene. The composition of the humus, Rhyme believed, dictated that its source was Queens, and, because of the large amounts of fertilizer and weed killer (he too largely discounted bombs and human poisons), it was a place where an impressive lawn was important, like a country club, resort, mansion, golf course.

  Archer thought Queens was too restrictive, even though Rhyme's soil database, which, yes, he'd compiled years ago at the NYPD, suggested that the trace Sachs had found came from the eastern portion of the borough, where it bordered Nassau County.

  She explained her reasoning: "I'll give you that the soil material might've originated in Queens. But how many gardening and landscaping businesses are there? Tons."

  "Tons?" Rhyme's tone sneered at the imprecise word.

  "Many," Archer corrected. "It could have been shipped to a resort in Westchester, where it picked up the herbicides and fertilizer. Or a golf course on Staten Island, for a dirt trap or something there--"

  Rhyme said, "I don't think they have those at golf courses. Dirt traps."

  "Whatever they might have, the courses order landscaping supplies and soil from Queens and have them shipped to New Jersey, Connecticut, the Bronx," she replied. "Our unsub might've picked the trace in Bergen County, where he lives or works, and left a sample at the scene. He does woodworking at a posh country club there."

  "Possibly. But we play the odds," Rhyme explained. "It's more likely than not that our perp was in Queens when he picked up the humus."

  Archer would not back down. "Lincoln, when we do medical investigations in epidemiology, tracing infectious diseases, the worst thing you can do is draw a conclusion prematurely. Do you know the myopia study?"

  Nearsightedness was relevant why? Rhyme wondered. "Missed it." His own eyes were on the single-malt whisky bottle, perfectly in focus but hovering just out of reach.

  Archer continued, "A few years ago some doctors noticed that children who slept with the lights on were more likely to develop myopia. The MDs began to create programs to modify children's sleeping habits, change the lighting in the room, arrange for counseling if children were anxious in the dark. Lots of money was spent on campaigns to reduce myopia."

  "And
?"

  "The researchers got the causation fixed in their head at the beginning. Lights on leads to myopia."

  Despite his impatience he was intrigued. "But that wasn't the case."

  "Nope. Myopia is genetic. Because of their vision problems, parents with severe myopia tended to leave the lights on in their children's rooms more frequently than parents with normal eyesight. Leaving lights on didn't cause myopia; it followed from myopia. And that causation error set research back years. My point, in our case, is that if we're convinced he has a connection with Queens, we'll stop looking at the other possibilities. Once you get something into your head do you know how hard it is to dislodge?"

  "Like the Pachelbel Canon? I truly dislike that piece of music."

  "I find it lovely."

  Rhyme said stridently, "We know for a fact he has a Queens connection. White Castle burgers and the car service he used there. Probably some shops he goes to. The plastic bag, recall?"

  "That's western Queens. By the East River. The soil and fertilizer are from miles away, east. Look, I'm not saying ignore Queens but give it gradiently less importance."

  He didn't believe he'd ever heard that adverb.

  Archer persisted. "Look for other locales in the New York City area where landscaping supplies from Queens were delivered. That's all. He might've picked up the trace in the Bronx or Newark, New Jersey."

  "Or Montana," Rhyme mused with the cool, sardonic tone he quite loved. "Let's get a dozen officers together and have them canvass Helena for somebody who visited an eastern Queens landscaping company for a lawn gnome."

  Patience finally depleting, Mel Cooper brandished the marker again and asked, "What do you want me to write up on the board?"

  Rhyme said, "Put the humus originated in Queens but that our perp might have picked it up in Montana. No, let's start alphabetically. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas..."

  "Lincoln. It's getting late," Cooper said.

  He asked Archer, "Can you live with Queens with a question mark?"

  "Two question marks," she countered.

  Ridiculous. Did the woman ever back down? "All right. Two goddamn question marks."

  Cooper wrote.

  Rhyme said, "And don't forget the 'well-tended lawn.'" He glanced at Archer, who seemed to have no objections.

  The fact was that he enjoyed this. Debate was the heart-and-soul of crime scene work, the back-and-forth. He and Sachs used to do this all the time.

  Thom appeared in the doorway. "Lincoln."

  "Oh, I know that tone. You better get used to it, Juliette: the caregiver of the iron fist. Make sure you brush the little teeth and tinkle and hit the hay."

  "You've been up for too many hours today," Thom said. "And your blood pressure's been high lately."

  "It's high because you hound me to check my blood pressure."

  "Whatever the reason," the aide said with infuriating cheer, "we can't afford it to be so high. Can we?"

  In fact, no, he couldn't. A quad's physical condition leads to several maladies that could be life threatening. Sepsis from bedsores, respiratory problems, blood clots and the ace of spades: autonomic dysreflexia. When an even minor irritation--like a full bladder--goes unrelieved, because the brain's unaware of it, various changes occur as the body tries to regulate itself. Often the heart rate slows and, in compensation, the blood pressure rises. It can lead to strokes and death.

  "All right," he said, surrendering. He would have fought longer but it occurred to him that he had to be a reasonable model for Archer. She too would be at risk from dysreflexia and she'd have to take the threat seriously.

  "My brother'll be here any minute, anyway," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow." She wheeled into the front hallway.

  "Yes, yes, yes," Rhyme muttered, staring at the evidence charts. Thinking: What do the clues tell us--where is your next move going to be, Unsub 40? And where do you hang your hat?

  Is it Montana, Alabama, Westchester... the Bronx?

  Or is it Queens??

  "Man walks into a bar. Says, 'Hell, that hurt.'"

  Nick was speaking to the back of a man he'd snuck up behind, sitting at a bar--the other kind.

  Freddy Caruthers didn't turn. He kept his eyes on the TV above the premium booze. This was happening in a somewhat classy pub in Brooklyn, Park Slope. "Hell. I know that voice. No. No way. Nick?"

  "Hey."

  Now Freddy turned, looked Nick up and down and waited all of a half second to hug him.

  The man pretty much resembled a toad.

  Though a friendly, cheerful one, a grin burned onto his toady face.

  "Man, man, man. Heard you were out." He backed off and gave an arm's-length gaze. "Damn."

  Freddy and Nick went way back. They'd been classmates, public school classmates (no private schools in Sandy Hook, at least not for them). Nick was the good-looking one, the athlete. Freddy--five two then and now--couldn't swing a bat or catch a pass, let alone dunk. But he had other skills. You needed a term paper, he'd write one for you. Free of charge. You needed to know if Myra Handleman had a date for the prom, he'd tell you who and give good advice how to convince her to break it and say yes to you instead. You needed help on a test, Freddy had a knack for knowing what questions would be asked (students speculated that he broke into teachers' offices late at night--some said in a ninja outfit--but Nick suspected that Freddy simply thought the way the teachers thought).

  Nick had built his cred on an impressive batting average and the class officer thing--looks too, sure.

  Freddy had nurtured his differently, by working the system the way Amelia would needle-valve a carburetor. The rumor was Freddy got laid more than anybody else in high school. Nick doubted it but he still remembered that the plum Linda Rawlins, a foot taller and Cosmo beautiful, was Freddy's date to the junior prom. Nick stayed home with TV and the Mets.

  "So. What're you up to, man?" Nick asked, sitting down. He gestured to the bartender and ordered a ginger ale.

  Freddy was nursing a beer. A lite.

  "Consulting." And Freddy laughed. "How's that for a job title? Ha! Really. Sounds like I'm a hit man or some shit. But it's like Shark Tank."

  Nick shook his head. No clue.

  "A TV show about business start-ups. I hook entrepreneurs up with investors. Small business. I learned Armenian and--"

  "You what?"

  "Armenian. It's a language."

  "I know it is. But what?"

  "Lot of Armenians here."

  "Where?"

  "New York. I put together Armenian businessmen with money people. Not just Armenians but anybody. Lot of Chinese."

  "You speak--"

  "Nee-how!"

  "Rich." They high-fived.

  Freddy grimaced. "Mandarin's a bitch. So, you did your time. You're out. That's good. Say, I heard your brother passed. I'm sorry about that."

  Nick looked around. He took a breath. Then, in a soft voice, told Freddy about his brother, his own innocence.

  Toady eyes narrowed. "No shit, man... That's heavy."

  "Donnie didn't know what he was getting into. You remember him, a child."

  "We always thought he had some problems, sure. Nobody cared. Just, he wasn't quite right. All respect."

  "No worries," Nick said, sipping the soda he'd ordered.

  "Delgado. Doesn't surprise me. Piece of crap. Total floating crap. Deserved what he got."

  Nick said, "You treated him good--Donnie."

  "And there's no way he could've done time." Freddy toyed with his beer bottle, peeling the wet label down. "You did the right thing. Jesus, I don't know I could've done that." He grinned. "Course, my brother's an asshole. I woulda let him spin in the wind."

  Nick laughed hard. "But now I've got to get my life back. I've lost some years. I'm going to get a business going."

  "Find a lady, Nick. Man needs a woman in his life."

  "Oh, I'm working on that."

  "Good for you. And you can still have kids."

&nbs
p; "You've got the twins, right?"

  "And two more. Twins're boys. The four-and five-year-old're girls. The wife said enough is enough. But, hell, that's what God put us here for, right? So you need some money? I can stand you to some. Not a lot. Ten, twelve K."

  "No, no, I'm fine there, got some inheritance."

  "Shit, really?"

  "But, Freddy, I do need a favor."

  "What?"

  "I found out that there's somebody who might know about the 'jacking Donnie was behind. Maybe he was a fence, maybe he just took delivery of some merch. Maybe he financed the job. I'm hoping he knows I wasn't behind it. I gotta find him."

  "Who is it?"

  "That's the problem. I don't have much to go on. I could ask around the 'hood, but you know--"

  "Sure, nobody'd trust you. Think you were a CI or something."

  "Well, that, yeah. But mostly, if this guy was actually connected, I can't really be seen talking to him."

  "Oh, shit, sure. The parole thing."

  "That's it."

  "You need me to ask around?"

  Nick raised his hands. "You can say no."

  "Nick, I gotta say there was a lot of people in the 'hood who didn't believe it. They thought some other cop fucked you over 'cause you wouldn't play along. Everybody liked you. You were a golden boy. Sure, I'll help."

  Nick slapped Freddy's arm and felt his eyes welling up. "Means everything to me, man."

  "What kind of business you looking at?"

  "Restaurant, I've decided."

  "Yeah. Ballbreaker work. But there's money to be made. I do some Armenian restaurant deals. You ever have Armenian food?"

  "No. I never have. Don't think so."

  "You'd like it. Middle Eastern, you know. I do more shoe stores and clothes and prepaid phone card operations but some restaurants."

  "My lawyer's looking for one."

  "So this guy?" Energetic, Freddy drained his beer and ordered another.

  "This guy I was mentioning? Yeah. He hangs in Flannigan's. Or did."

  "Oh, then likely connected."

  "Right. His first name starts with a J. And he's got a wife named Nanci."

  "And that's it? That's all you know?"

  "'Fraid so."

  "Well, it's a start. I'll do what I can, man."

  "One way or another I'll make it up to you."

  "Don't worry about it." Freddy laughed. "Those were the days, high school. Going to Shea or up to the Bronx. Remember that feeling, early in the season? You--"