The Coffin Dancer (24 page)

The high, unsteady voice said, “Drop your gun over there. And your walkie-talkie.”

Walkie-talkie?

“Come on, do it. I’ll blow your brains out.” The voice crackled with desperation. He sniffled wetly.

Soldier, do professionals threaten?

Sir, they do not. This man is an amateur. Should we immobilize him?

Not yet. He still represents a threat.

Sir, yessir.

Stephen dropped his gun on a cardboard box.

“Where ... ? Come on, where’s your radio?”

“I don’t have a radio,” Stephen said.

“Turn around. And don’t try anything.”

Stephen eased around and found himself looking at a skinny man with darting eyes. He was filthy and looked sick. His nose ran and his eyes were an alarming red. His thick brown hair was matted. And he stank. Homeless, probably. A wino, his stepfather would have called him. Or a hophead.

The old battered snub-nose Colt was thrust forward at Stephen’s belly and the hammer was back. It wouldn’t take much for the cams to slip, especially if it was old. Stephen smiled a benign smile. He didn’t move a muscle. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Where’s your radio?” the man blurted.

“I don’t
have
a radio.”

The man nervously patted his captive’s chest. Stephen could have killed him easily—the man’s attention kept wandering. He felt the skittering fingers glide over his body, probing. Finally the man stepped back. “Where’s your partner?”

“Who?”

“Don’t give me any shit. You know.”

Suddenly cringey again. Wormy ... Something was wrong. “I really don’t know what you mean.”

“The cop who was just here.”

“Cop?” Stephen whispered. “In
this
building?”

The man’s rheumy eyes flickered with uncertainty. “Yeah. Aren’t you his partner?”

Stephen walked to the window and looked out.

“Hold it. I’ll shoot.”

“Point that someplace else,” Stephen commanded, glancing over his shoulder. No longer worried about slipping cams. He was beginning to see the extent of his mistake. He felt sick to his stomach.

The man’s voice cracked as he threatened, “Stop. Right there. I fucking mean it.”

“Are they in the alley too?” Stephen asked calmly.

A moment of confused silence. “You really aren’t a cop?”

“Are they in the alley too?” Stephen repeated firmly.

The man looked uneasily around the room. “A bunch of them were a while ago. They’re the ones put those trash bags there. I don’t know ’bout now.”

Stephen stared into the alley. The trash bags ... They’d been left there to lure me out. False cover.

“If you signal anybody, I swear—”

“Oh, be quiet.” Stephen scanned the alley slowly, patient as a boa, and finally he saw a faint shadow on the cobblestones—behind a Dumpster. It moved an inch or two.

And on top of the building behind the safe house—on the elevator tower—he saw a ripple of shadow. They were too good to let their gun muzzles show but not good enough to think about blocking the light reflecting upward from the standing water that covered the roof of the building.

Jesus, Lord ... Somehow Lincoln the Fucking Worm had known that Stephen wouldn’t buy the setup about the Twentieth Precinct. They’d been expecting him
here
all along. Lincoln had even figured out his strategy—that Stephen would try to get through the alley from
this
very building.

The face in the window ...

Stephen suddenly had the absurd idea that it had been Lincoln the Worm in Alexandria, Virginia, standing in the window, lit with rosy light, looking at him. He couldn’t have been the one, of course. Still, that impossibility didn’t stop the cringey, pukey nausea from unfurling in Stephen’s gut.

The chocked door, the open window, and the fluttering curtain ... a fucking welcome mat. And the alley: a perfect kill zone.

The only thing that had saved him was his instinct.

Lincoln the Worm had set him up.

Who the hell
is
he?

Rage boiled him. A wave of heat swept over his body. If they were expecting him they’d be following S&S procedures—search and surveillance. Which meant the cop this little shit had seen would be coming back soon to check this room. Stephen spun around to the thin man. “When was the last time the cop checked in here?”

The man’s apprehensive eyes flickered, then blossomed with fear.

“Answer me,” Stephen snapped, despite the black bore of the Colt pointed at him.

“Ten minutes ago.”

“What kind of weapon does he have?”

“I don’t know. I guess one of those fancy ones. Like a machine gun.”

“Who
are
you?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t have to answer your fucking questions,” the man said defiantly. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. And made the mistake of doing this with his gun hand. In a flash Stephen lifted the gun away from him and shoved the little man to the floor.

“No! Don’t hurt me.”

“Shut up,” Stephen barked. Instinctively he opened the little Colt to see how many rounds were in the cylinder. There were none. “It’s empty?” he asked, incredulous.

The man shrugged. “I—”

“You were threatening me with an unloaded weapon?”

“Well ... See, if they catch you and it’s not loaded, they don’t put you away for as long.”

Stephen didn’t understand the point. He thought he might just kill the man for the stupidity of carrying an unloaded gun. “What’re you doing here?”

“Just go away and leave me alone,” the man whimpered, struggling to climb to his feet.

Stephen dropped the Colt into his pocket then snagged his Beretta and trained it at the man’s head. “What are you doing here?”

He wiped his face again. “There’re doctors’ offices upstairs. And nobody’s here on Sunday so I hit ’em for, you know, samples.”

“Samples?”

“Doctors get all these free samples of drugs and shit and there’s no record, so you can steal as much as you want and nobody knows. Percodan, Fiorinal, diet pills, stuff like that.”

But Stephen wasn’t listening. He felt the chill of the Worm again. Lincoln was very close.

“Hey, you all right?” the man asked, looking at Stephen’s face.

Oddly, the worms went away.

“What’s your name?” Stephen asked.

“Jodie. Well, Joe D’Oforio. But everybody, like, calls me Jodie. What’s yours?”

Stephen didn’t answer. Staring out the window. Another shadow moved on top of the building behind the safe house.

“Okay, Jodie. Listen up. You want to make some money?”

“Well?” Rhyme asked impatiently. “What’s going
on?”

“He’s still in the building to the east of the safe house. He hasn’t gone into the alley yet,” Sellitto reported.

“Why not? He
has
to. There’s no reason for him not to. What’s the problem?”

“They’re checking every floor. He’s not in the office we thought he’d go for.”

The one with the open window. Damn! Rhyme had debated about leaving the window open, letting the curtain blow in and out, tempting him. But it was too obvious. The Dancer’d become suspicious.

“Everybody’s loaded and locked?” Rhyme asked.

“Of course. Relax.”

But he couldn’t relax. Rhyme hadn’t known exactly how the Dancer would try his assault on the safe house. He’d been sure, though, it would be through the alley. He’d hoped that the trash bags and Dumpsters would lull him into thinking there was enough cover to make his approach from that direction. Dellray’s agents and Haumann’s 32-E teams were surrounding the alley, in the office building itself, and on the buildings around the safe house. Sachs was with Haumann, Sellitto, and Dellray in a fake UPS van parked up the block from the safe house.

Rhyme had been temporarily fooled by the feint with the supposed gas truck bomb. That the Dancer would drop a tool at a crime scene was improbable but somewhat credible. But then Rhyme grew suspicious about the quantity of detonating cord residue on the clippers. It suggested that the Dancer had smeared the blade with explosive to make sure the police thought he’d try an assault on the precinct house with a bomb. He decided that, no, the Dancer hadn’t been losing his touch—as he and Sachs had originally thought. Being spotted surveiling his intended route of attack and then leaving a guard alive so that the man could call the police and tell them about the theft of the truck—those were intentional.

The final gram tipping the scales, though, was physical evidence. Ammonia bound to a paper fiber. There are only two sources for that combination—old architectural blueprints and land plat maps, which were reproduced by large-sheet ammonia printers. Rhyme had had Sellitto call Police Plaza and ask about break-ins at architectural firms or the county deeds office. A report came back that the recorder’s office had been broken into. Rhyme asked them to check East Thirty-fifth Street, amazing the city guards, who reported that, yes, those plats were missing.

Though how the Dancer’d found out that Percey and Brit were at the safe house and what its address was remained a mystery.

Five minutes ago two ESU officers had found a broken window on the first floor of the office building. The Dancer’d shunned the open front door but had still moved in for the assault on the safe house through the alley just as Rhyme had predicted. But something had spooked him. He was loose in the building and they had no idea where. A poisonous snake in a dark room. Where was he, what was he planning?

Too many ways to die ...

“He wouldn’t wait,” Rhyme muttered. “It’s too risky.” He was growing frantic.

An agent called in, “Nothing on the first floor. We’re still making our rounds.”

Five minutes passed. Guards checked in with negative reports but all Rhyme really heard was the static rustling in his headset.

Jodie answered, “Who doesn’t wanna make money? But I don’t know doing what.”

“Help me get out of here.”

“I mean, what’re you doing here? Are they looking for
you?”

Stephen looked the sad little man up and down. A loser, but not crazy or stupid. Stephen decided it was best tactically to be honest. Besides, the man’d be dead in a few hours anyway.

He said, “I’ve come here to kill somebody.”

“Whoa. Like, are you in the Mafia or something? Who’re you gonna kill?”

“Jodie, be quiet. We’re in a tough situation here.”

“
We?
I didn’t do anything.”

“Except you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Stephen said. “And that’s too bad, but you’re in the same situation I am because they want me and they aren’t going to believe you’re not with me. Now, you gonna help me or not? All I’ve got time for is yes or no.”

Jodie tried not to look scared, but his eyes betrayed him.

“Yes. Or. No.”

“I don’t want to get hurt.”

“If you’re on my side you’ll never get hurt. One thing I’m good at is making sure who gets hurt and who doesn’t.”

“And you’ll pay me? Money? Not a check.”

Stephen had to laugh. “Not a check. No. Cash.”

The jelly beans of eyes were considering something. “How much?”

The little crud was negotiating.

“Five thousand.”

The fear remained in the eyes but it was pushed aside by shock. “For real? You’re not shitting me?”

“No.”

“What if I get you out and you kill me so you don’t have to pay?”

Stephen laughed again. “I’m getting paid a lot more than that. Five’s nothing to me. Anyway, if we get out of here I could use your help again.”

“I—”

A sound in the distance. Footsteps coming closer.

It was the S&S cop, looking for him.

Just one, Stephen could tell, listening to the steps. Made sense. They’d be expecting him to go for the first-floor office with the open window, where Lincoln the Worm would’ve stationed most of the troopers.

Stephen replaced the pistol in his book bag and pulled out his knife. “You going to help me?”

A no-brainer, of course. If Jodie didn’t help he’d be dead in sixty seconds. And he knew it.

“Okay.” He extended his hand.

Stephen ignored it and asked, “How do we get out?”

“See those cinder blocks there? You can pull ’em out. See, there? It leads to an old tunnel. There’re these delivery tunnels going underneath the city. Nobody knows about them.”

“There are?” Stephen wished he’d known about them before.

“I can get us to the subway. That’s where I live. This old subway station.”

It was two years since Stephen had worked with a partner. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t killed the man.

Jodie started toward the concrete blocks.

“No,” Stephen whispered. “Here’s what I want you to do. You stand against that wall. There.” He pointed to a wall opposite the doorway.

“But he’ll see me. He checks in here with his flashlight and I’ll be the first thing he’ll see!”

“Just stand there and put your hands up.”

“He’ll shoot me,” Jodie whimpered.

“No, he won’t. You’ve got to trust me.”

“But ...” His eyes darted toward the door. He wiped his face.

Is this man going to buckle, Soldier?

That is a risk, sir, but I’ve considered the odds and I think he won’t. This is a man who wants money badly.

“You’ll have to trust me.”

Jodie sighed. “Okay, okay ...”

“Make sure your hands are up or he
will
shoot.”

“Like this?” He lifted his arms.

“Step back so your face is in the shadows. Yeah, like that. I don’t want him to see your face ... Good. Perfect.”

The footsteps were coming closer now. Walking softly. Hesitating.

Stephen touched his fingers to his lips and went prone, disappearing into the floor.

The footsteps grew soft and then paused. The figure appeared in the doorway. He was in body armor and wore an FBI windbreaker.

He pushed into the room, scanning with the flashlight attached to the end of his H&K. When the beam caught Jodie’s midriff he did something that astonished Stephen.

He started to pull the trigger.

It was very subtle. But Stephen had shot so many animals and so many people that he knew the ripple of muscles, the tension of stance, just before you fired your weapon.