The Steel Kiss

Rhyme heard the front door shut and not long after that the big engine of her Torino fire up. He wasn’t surprised that the acceleration was modest. For Amelia Sachs, unleashing her vehicle’s horses was done out of joy, never anger.

CHAPTER 62

At first Lincoln Rhyme didn’t recognize the man who stepped into his parlor.

He glanced at Thom, irritated. Why no warning that a stranger had arrived?

But in a few seconds he realized: This was Evers Whitmore, Esq., the stiff, understated attorney with the precise handwriting and more precise mannerisms.

The reason for the missed identification was that the man was incognito: wearing gray wool slacks, a blue plaid shirt sans tie, and a green sweater (he should have tipped immediately; the sweater was a cardigan, all three buttons done in the best style of a 1950s sitcom father, patiently enduring his children’s mischievous but benign antics). On the man’s head was a Titleist golf cap, bright green and yellow

“Mr. Rhyme.”

“Mr. Whitmore.” Rhyme had, as he put it to himself, given up on given names.

The lawyer was aware of Rhyme’s scan of his outfit. “I’m coaching a soccer game in an hour. My sons.”

“Oh, you have a family. I didn’t know.”

“I choose not to wear my wedding ring most of the time because it tends to give away a fact about me to opposing counsel. I myself would not use another attorney’s personal information tactically but there are some who don’t feel the same. As I’m sure will be no surprise to you.”

“You said sons?”

“I also have daughters. Three of each.”

Well.

“The boys are triplets, and they’re all on the same soccer team. It tends to confound the opponents.” A smile. Was this his first? In any event, it was small and brief.

Whitmore looked around. “And Detective Sachs?”

“At the hospital. Her mother’s having surgery. Bypass.”

“My. Any word?”

Rhyme shook his head. “But she’s a feisty one. If that’s indicative of a good prognosis.”

The literal-minded attorney didn’t seem to comprehend. “When you talk to Detective Sachs, wish her my best. And to her mother, as well.”

“I will.”

“I understand that you had a run-in with the suspect. A firsthand run-in.”

“That’s right. I wasn’t injured. Juliette Archer was, but it’s not serious.”

Without unbuttoning his sweater, the man sat pristinely in a chair and hoisted his briefcase to his lap. A double click of the spring clasps and then he lifted the lid.

“I’m afraid I have bad news. I’m sorry to report that I’ve had my investigator take a thorough look at the finances of both Alicia Morgan and Vernon Griffith. She had a savings account worth about forty thousand dollars and he had about one hundred and fifty-seven thousand in assets, plus a retirement plan—but that’s protected against creditors.”

“So a total of about two hundred thousand.”

“I’ll pursue it but, if there are other plaintiffs, and there will be, I assure you, that will have to be divided among all the other survivors and family members. Abe Benkoff’s wife. Todd Williams’s survivors. Even the carpenter who was injured at the Broadway theater.”

“And the people ruined forever because they can’t take escalators,” Rhyme added, referring to the bandwagon clients Juliette Archer had initially mentioned and that Whitmore had assured them will be standing in line, hat in hand.

The lawyer continued, “And there’ll be my contingent fee. Mrs. Frommer will collect perhaps twenty thousand at most.”

The check to be delivered to a garage in Schenectady.

Whitmore was setting documents on a nearby rattan coffee table, probably his investigator’s financial analysis of the two perpetrators, carefully ordered. Rhyme didn’t know why he was delivering them. He believed the lawyer’s PI had done his homework and that the results were accurate. There was no need for proof.

“So,” Whitmore said, ordering the paperwork even more precisely. “We’ll have to go with Plan A.”

“Plan A.”

The team hadn’t established any alphabetized contingencies that Rhyme was aware of, but after the Midwest Conveyance bankruptcy and the absence of any culpability by CIR Microsystems, he’d assumed that the only recourse was to target the conspirators’ own assets, a strategy that was now defunct.

Rhyme mentioned this. And Whitmore regarded him through a thin gauzy veil of confusion. “No, Mr. Rhyme. That was Plan B. Our first approach—product liability against the manufacturer—has always been viable. Here.” He pushed forward one of the documents he’d just off-loaded and Rhyme wheeled closer to the table to read it. He saw it was not, in fact, a financial analysis.