Legends

THE SANCTUM LINCOLN HAD SUSSED OUT WAS AS SUITABLE AS A sniper’s blind gets. Most of the panes were missing from the window, which meant he could steady the Whitworth on a sash at shoulder height—Lincoln shot best standing up, with his left elbow braced against a rib. The window itself was covered with a canopy of ivy that had spread across the facade of the abandoned hospital across the street and slightly uphill from the U-shaped tenement at 621 Crown Street, off Albany Avenue. For a sharpshooter, weather conditions—it was sunny and cold—were ideal; humid air could slow down a bullet and cause it to drop, dry hot air could cause it to fire high. Lugging the rifle and a shopping bag up the stairs littered with broken glass and trash to the corner room on the fourth floor, Lincoln had removed the thick work gloves and coated all of his finger tips with Super Glue, then set out the bottles of drinking water, the Mars bars and the containers of liquid yogurts on a sheet of newspaper. He knotted Dante Pippen’s lucky white silk scarf around his neck before sighting in the Whitworth. He judged the distance from the front door of the hospital to the sidewalk in front of the tenement to be eighty yards, then calculated his height above ground and the length of the hypotenuse of the resulting triangle. He adjusted the small wheels on the rear of the brass telescopic sight atop the Whitworth, focusing on the crucifix hanging in a ground floor window giving out onto the street. Sighted correctly and fired with a firm arm, the hexagonal barrel of the Whitworth—rifled to spit out a .45-caliber hex-shaped lead bullet that made one complete turn every twenty yards—could hit anything the marksman could see. Queen Victoria herself had once gotten a bull’s eye at four-hundred yards; she’d been so thrilled with the exploit that she had knighted Mr. Whitworth, the rifle’s inventor, on the spot. Lincoln tapped home the ramrod, working the hand-rolled cartridge into the barrel, then carefully fitted the primer cap over the rifle’s nipple. Finally he removed the brass tampon on the barrel and stretched a condom over the muzzle to protect the barrel from dust and moisture. With his weapon ready to fire, Lincoln crouched at the sill to study the target building across the street from what had once been the Carson C. Peck Memorial Hospital.

Lincoln had made use of one of Martin Odum’s old tricks to find the address that corresponded to the unlisted phone number 718-555-9291. He’d called the local telephone company from a booth on Eastern Parkway. A woman had come on the line. Like Martin in London, Lincoln had retrieved Dante Pippen’s rusty Irish accent for the occasion.

“Could you tell me, then, how I can get my hands on a new phone book after my dog chewed the bejesus out of the old one?”

“What type of directory do you want, sir?”

“Yellow pages for Brooklyn.”

“We’ll be glad to send it to you. Could I trouble you for your phone number?”

“You’re not troubling me,” Lincoln had said. “It’s 718-555-9291.”

The woman had repeated the number to be sure she had it right. Then she’d asked, “What kind of dog do you have?”

“An Irish setter, of course.”

“Well, hide the phone book from him next time. Will you be needing anything else today?”

“A new yellow pages will do me fine. Are you sure you know where to send it?”

The woman had said, “Let me check the screen. Here it is. You’re at 621 Crown Street, Brooklyn, New York, right?”

“That’s it, darlin’.”

“Have a nice day.”

“I plan to,” Lincoln had said just before he hung up.