The Watchmaker’s Hand

Blond kept coming back to the end of the briefing Sellitto’d done, when he asked what the teams should do if he was spotted. He’d replied, “Call it in, follow. Keep watching. He makes you, or he moves on somebody, you take him.” Sellitto had then hesitated and grumbled, “Standard procedures apply, but...”

The qualifier he ended his sentence with was a tough one.

He was talking about deadly force, while not really talking about it.

Officers can kill a suspect only when their lives or someone else’s is in direct danger.

But...

With that one word, Sellitto was suggesting that Hale fell into a different category.

Meaning, without saying: take him out at the least presentation of threat.

But it wouldn’t come to that.

Blond had decided that Sellitto was wrong. No way would Hale, if he really was that smart, risk getting collared or shot just to see a fucking clock, legendary or otherwise.

Especially the one they were parked across from. The timepiece that jutted out over the coffee shop in the Baker and Williams Building up here in Harlem was, the detective concluded, really just so-so.

26

Charles Hale was moving through the crowded streets, just another man in Harlem, on his way to eat, to an ad presentation, to see a cousin who’d moved here recently, to meet his mistress for a fast lunchtime, to meet his wife for a real lunch.

Not jaunty, not cautious.

Walking in New York City mode.

Purposeful yet distracted.

Eyes ahead of him on the Baker and Williams clock.

“Excuse me.”

He turned to see a woman in her thirties, blond hair pulled back, taut. She was tanned from the out-of-doors, not a machine. (Having tinted himself for various jobs, he knew the difference.) She wore a skirted suit of navy blue, a white blouse, pearls. She held a shopping bag from an upscale 58th Street boutique.

She displayed her phone. “I’m trying to find this mural.” On the screen was a picture of the street painting depicting the poet Langston Hughes, a native son of Harlem.

He looked down at it. Then he drew his phone and called up a map. She looked at his screen.

Green dots appeared in the upper right-hand corner of both phones as the retinal scans did their duty. This form of proving ID had the lowest false acceptance and false rejection rate of all biometric security measures.

“There,” he said, and they turned away from the huge clock and walked into the shop behind them, sat in the window. He ordered black coffee. It was chamomile tea for her.

“Did you get out to the Hamptons I didn’t even bother the train the cab I wasn’t sure if she’d get fired but sure enough and not a minute too soon the bottom line was a disaster...”

The rambling conversation, unrehearsed, ceased when the drinks arrived and they’d each assessed those sitting nearby were no threat.

Turning her deep blue eyes his way, she said, “Brad told me you’ve subbed out work to him before.”

Brad was the leader of the crew she worked for much of the time. They were, in effect, mercenaries, though the half dozen operated far more subtly than the camo-wearing, inked and bearded grunts one thought of when hearing that job description. When Hale had contacted Brad Garland with his needs, the man had instantly recommended the woman who sat in front of him now.

“That’s right.” Hale didn’t need to say the results had been good. If they hadn’t been, she wouldn’t be here now.

She sipped tea and sat back. “To let you know. Somebody saw me at the drop site.”

A dialectologist would situate her somewhere between the rust belt and cornfields.

“Yes?”

She went on to explain that the real estate agent who’d leased her the drop had lied or been mistaken. The buildings on either side of hers were supposed to be unoccupied, but the one to the west had been sold. A young stockbroker had seen her and insisted on helping her move some things into her space.

“Would have been too obvious to refuse. But it’s handled.” She added matter-of-factly, “I gave him a beer laced with thiopental and midazolam. My recipe. I know the dosage. He’ll be in a coma for four, five days. I drove to the South Bronx to get rid of the truck and dumped him on the way. Not a high-traffic area, but he’d be spotted. Wall Street boy buys drugs in a bad area, ODs. Nobody’ll think it’s more than that.”

“Are you sure he’ll wake up?”

“No.” Nothing followed that stark assessment but a sip of tea.

“What name are you using?” he asked. Pseudonyms were common in this line of work.

“With you, my real one. Simone.”

“And Charles.”

But they would stick to first names only.

He glanced at her ringless fingers and noticed that her right index pad seemed calloused. This happened occasionally when one practiced repetitively with handguns, firing hundreds of rounds a session.

“Did you build it yourself?”

“Some of it. Not the software. I can code, but I needed somebody special. I hired a good kid. He’s an expert at reverse engineering source codes. You need to know Assembly for that.”