The Watchmaker’s Hand

He continued down the sidewalk.

He had to be completely nuts. A businessman glanced at him and tried to slip a bill into his cup. He missed and it fluttered to the ground.

The homeless man glanced back — it looked like it was a ten or twenty — and just let it lie there as he continued down the sidewalk once more, walking with what almost seemed to be an intense purpose.

44

Sachs was breathless as she strode along the sidewalk to where the license plate number recognition system had placed the Mercedes owned by Willis Tamblyn, the developer who had possibly — likely? — hired the Watchmaker to create chaos in the New York real estate market.

She called, “Rhyme, you there? I’m on my way.”

“How far?”

“Three, four minutes. Odds that Tamblyn came here to meet the Watchmaker?”

“Don’t know. And I’m thinking,” Rhyme added slowly. “It might be a setup. Maybe Hale’s one step ahead of us. Or thinks he is.”

“And the car’s a trap?”

“Possibly.”

“The flash-bangs and breaching charges that Gilligan stole? An IED in the Merc.”

Rhyme said, “Or more HF acid. If there’s nobody in it, stand down and wait for Bomb Squad.”

“K. I’m almost there.”

She signed off and changed to the tactical frequency.

“Detective Five Eight Eight Five. ESU. Further to the attempted incident at Twenty-Third. Over.” The words came out between gasps. She might have been fine, but her lungs didn’t completely believe the assessment.

A clatter then: “Amelia. Bo Haumann. K.”

This time the operation warranted the chief of the Emergency Service Unit himself, not just a captain commander.

“Bo.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Three minutes out. On foot. And you?”

“Six or seven.” The man’s voice was raspy, and she’d always wondered why. As far as she knew, he didn’t smoke. At any rate, the lean, grizzled man certainly looked the part of someone with a voice like this. “What’s the scenario?”

“Got a car owned by a Willis Tamblyn. Real estate developer. Possible he hired Charles Hale—”

“The Watchmaker.”

“Right. To take down the cranes.”

“Why?”

“Money.”

“One motive that never fails.”

“I’m about there, Bo. I can see the vehicle. I’m taking a look. Over.”

“K.”

Ahead was the long, gleaming black limo. Fast, sleek, intelligent. But like that luxurious piece of machinery she’d seen earlier in the day, the Bentley, the Mercedes drove by electronics, not heart, and she wouldn’t have owned one for the world.

Sachs slowed to a casual businessperson lope as she crossed the street onto the block where the vehicle was parked, then caught her breath. This was a stretch of wholesale shops and warehouses, so there was minimal foot traffic. It was a good location for a takedown — low risk for collateral damage, though there was a downside to the sparsity; she and other officers, even in street clothes, would be more obvious to the observant Watchmaker, whose survival skills were legendary.

If this was a trap, though, she doubted he would spring it when she was outside the vehicle. The amount of explosives Gilligan had stolen was not nearly enough to create a big enough bang to injure anyone unless they were in the vehicle itself.

It would take a huge IED — pounds of C4 — to create a blast radius that large to kill officers merely nearby the car.

Still, she moved up slowly.

When she was even with the car, she casually looked inside and noted that it was occupied. So, not a trap.

A large man, complexion nearly as dark as the car’s paint job, sat in the driver’s seat, reviewing texts, or playing a game on his phone. He was in a black suit and a white shirt. In the backseat was a brown suitcase, a wheelie model. It was closed.

Before the man looked her way, she veered left and stepped into a store that sold buttons, of which there had to be a hundred thousand on display.

An Asian woman in a flowery dress called, “Wholesale only.”

Sachs, a former model, remembered the days of fashion shoots, when a product manager for the designer’s house would send a very nervous young assistant scurrying off to a store just like this to find an accessory for a gown because he didn’t feel the existing one “spoke to his vision.”

She held up her ID. “Police action. Go in the back. Stay there.”

The wide-eyed woman blinked and then turned one-eighty and headed for the door.

“And don’t make any calls.”

The clerk dropped her phone on the counter as if it were on fire and disappeared into the back.

She radioed, “Bo. I’m in Feldstein’s Buttons and Fixtures. Vehicle is occupied. Black male, thirties. He’s muscle. Couldn’t tell about weapons. He didn’t make me. Suitcase in the back, closed. I don’t think it’s a trap, but the luggage is making me nervous.”

Haumann said, “Bomb Squad and Fire’s on silent roll ups, six, seven minutes out. We’re there in four.”

The driver tapped his earpiece and sat forward slightly. The Merc’s engine turned over.

“Bo. Driver took a call and’s starting the engine. And he’s looking behind. Tamblyn’s on his way here. Maybe with the Watchmaker. I’m going to get the muscle out of the vehicle.”

“Can you wait for backup?”