Jeffery Deaver: The Deliveryman

“Well, yes.” Rhyme nodded at him. What was the boy’s name again? He’d forgotten already. “We’re doing—”

“You in one of those chairs. Damn. Wheels. And a motor. I’ve seen them. Why?”

“I can’t walk.”

He blinked. “You can’t walk? How d’you play soccer?”

“I can’t.”

“Shit.”

Rhyme now smiled genuinely. “Yeah. Shit.”

Sachs said, “Javier? These men’re going to use all this equipment, like you see on TV. They’re going to find that man.”

“Yeah.” The boy’s eyes had grown cloudy again. He wasn’t going to cry, Rhyme assessed, and he wasn’t going to give in to a temper tantrum. But he seemed to be shrinking, withdrawing.

“I’ll be back in a half hour, Rhyme,” Sachs said.

She turned. Javier, however, remained where he was, staring at Rhyme’s chair. He pointed to a screen — the one attached to the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. He said, “There’s this game. FIFA. A video game. You know FIFA?”

He had no idea. He said, “Sure.”

“This game, you can play soccer. Any team you want. Chelsea. Liverpool. Galaxy. It’s cool. You can play it in your chair. You don’t have to run around. You can play it sitting there.”

“Thanks, Javier.”

“Yeah. It’s a good game.”

Then he turned and together he and Sachs walked out the door.

“Seems like a good kid,” Cooper said. “Too bad what happened.”

“The trace, Mel,” Rhyme reminded. “The trace.” And nodded emphatically at the GC/MS.

The foster family, living in a small townhouse on the Upper West Side, seemed perfect for their task. Unflappable, calm, casual. Just the sort to take the edge off children wrested from traumatic home lives.

Sally Abbott was a pretty brunette — in her thirties, Amelia Sachs estimated. She was in jeans and a burgundy sweater. Her husband, a few years older, short but athletic, wore an affable smile and shook Sachs’s hand vigorously, then turned his attention to Javier. He engaged the boy immediately in conversation — all of it about the boy himself, what he liked to do and eat and, of course, what teams he liked. They appeared easygoing but the Child and Family Services caseworker had assured Sachs that some of their past placements had been kids from similar backgrounds as Javier — even tougher ones. However the boy reacted to them, the couple would be prepared to deal.

The attention and good cheer behind these first few minutes seemed natural but Sachs also guessed this was standard procedure for the foster process. There would be times in the future for serious talk, tears at night, angry outbursts at fate or at spilled soda or at nothing at all, but people like this generous couple knew their job. Now was simply the time for welcome and reassurance.

Peter Abbott took the boy to show him to his room. Javier wheeled the suitcase himself — he wouldn’t let the man take it.

Sachs was glad for the moment alone with Mrs. Abbott. She said in a low voice, “There’s no reason to be concerned, but I’m having an officer stay outside in an unmarked car. You’ll see it, an SUV.” She explained that they were still investigating his father’s killing. Her belief was that it was probably a random murder. The incident did not appear to be an organized crime hit; the circumstances suggested a chance mugging gone bad or a personal fight. “Still, until we know more, we just want to be safe.”

The foster mother said she understood and that this had happened before, usually in the context of protecting children from natural parents who were unstable and under restraining orders. But she asked, “Can we go to the park, to games?”

“Oh, sure. Officer Lamont’ll just hang out with you. He’ll be in plain clothes. Javier met him. They get along well. They’re Mets fans.”

She smiled. “So’m I. Peter roots for the Cubs... I know, I know. But I love him anyway.”

Sachs too offered a grin.

She and Mrs. Abbott then walked to the boy’s bedroom, on the second floor, and Sachs was impressed. It was clean and cozy, filled with gender-neutral toys and decorations. A desktop computer with a sign: Call Mom Sally or Dad Peter before you go online.

She approved of that.

Sachs didn’t know the protocol about physical contact but when she said goodbye to the boy, he threw his arms around her. “You come see me, Miss Amelia?”

“Sure will!” Sachs hugged back firmly. She handed both him and Mrs. Abbott business cards. “Anything, anytime, you need me, please, give me a call.”

She watched Javier drop down on the bed, unzip his Minecraft box and take from it some colored pencils. He began to draw.

Outside, Sachs had taken no more than two steps toward her Ford Torino when her phone hummed. It was Rhyme.

“Hi, I just dropped him off. He seems pretty—”

His voice cut her off. “We’ve got a lead. You know the old armory on West Fifty?”

“Sure.” It was a decrepit abandoned facility dating from early in the last century. The place was, she’d read, scheduled for demolition... though it seemed that articles about that fate had been popping up in the papers for decades.

“How’d you nail it?”

“Rinaldo’s shoes and his truck’s tread marks. Mel and I found trace from horse shit and recycled oil. The front of the armory’s on Five-one and Eleven but — Mel checked — there’s a back entrance at Fifty and Ten, near a stable where they house Central Park horses. And next to that is a recycled oil warehouse.”

“I’m on my way.”

Stan Coelho was smoking, leaning against an office building wall, on the far West Side of Manhattan, admiring the Intrepid aircraft carrier. Big effing ship. He’d never been in an armed service, but if he had been, he’d want to be a sailor on a boat like that.

Well, now that he studied it, a new carrier. This one looked like the accommodations wouldn’t be exactly four star.

A pointless glance at his phone. He put it away.

Just as impatience got the better of him and he pushed off his perch to find a greasy spoon to duck into for lunch, the Samsung hummed. The sound announced an arriving text.

’Bout time.

Ah, great! The punk had come through. Bless him. The text reported the location where Ecco, well, Echi , Rinaldo had picked up the delivery yesterday at eleven thirty in the morning. No more details about where he might’ve taken it for safekeeping. But the transfer point was a good start. He texted back, acknowledging the info.

The location was only about three blocks away. Coelho turned in the direction and made his way over the sidewalks, which here ran in front of car dealerships and repair shops, graphic design studios, small ad agencies, warehouses, apartments and what he’d been checking out earlier — the oiliest of greasy spoons. It was changing, though, and maybe someday soon the ’hood would be the new chic, now that most of the rest of Manhattan — even Harlem — was getting too cool, too hipster for words.

In ten minutes he spotted the building that he sought.

The West Side Armory was quite a piece of work. Two stories high, resembling a redbrick castle. Downright ugly, Coelho thought, though who was he to talk? He’d never bothered to pitch out the pink flamingos that had been standing one-legged in front of his Queens bungalow when he’d moved in two years ago. (And the color of his brick — dried blood red — was the same as the armory’s.)

Looking about, making sure no one was paying him any mind, he walked to the entrance of the place on Eleventh Avenue. The graffiti-marred doors were locked and chained. They were ten feet tall and solid oak — the place was, after all, an armory , and presumably had once contained weapons of mass destruction (for the time), which the National Guard or army wished to keep out of the hands of assorted bad guys.