The Steel Kiss

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 just arrived 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 to thank her and 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.”