Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Oh, there were those lamenting the demise of hip-hop, which had become BET, multimillionaire rappers in chrome Humvees, Bad Boys II , big business, suburban white kids, iPods and MP3 downloads and satellite radio. It was…well, case in point: Jax was watching a double-decker tour bus ease to the curb nearby. On the side was the sign Rap/Hip-Hop Tours. See the Real Harlem . The passengers were a mix of black and white and Asian tourists. He heard snatches of the driver’s rehearsed spiel and the promise that they’d soon be stopping for lunch at an “authentic soul food” restaurant.

But Jax didn’t agree with the claimers bitching that the old days were gone. The heart of Uptown remained pure. Nothing could ever touch it. Take the Cotton Club, he reflected, that 1920s institution of jazz and swing and stride piano. Everybody thought it was the real Harlem, right? How many people knew that it was for white-only audiences (even the famed Harlem resident W. C. Handy, one of the greatest American composers of all time, was turned away at the door, while his own music was playing inside).

Well, guess what? The Cotton Club was fucking gone. Harlem wasn’t. And it never would be. The Renaissance was done and hip-hop had changed. But percolating right now in the streets around him was some brand-new movement. Jax wondered what exactly this one would be. And if he’d even be around to see it – if he didn’t handle this thing with Geneva Settle right he’d be dead or back in prison within twenty-four hours.

Enjoy your soul food, he thought to the tourists as the bus pulled away from the curb.

Continuing up the street for a few blocks, Jax finally found Ralph, who was – sure enough – leaning against a boarded-up building.

“Dog,” Jax said.

“S’up?”

Jax kept on walking.

“Where we goin’?” Ralph asked, speeding up to keep pace beside the large man.

“Nice day for a walk.”

“It cold out.”

“Walking’ll warm you up.”

They kept going for a time, Jax ignoring whatever the fuck Ralph was whining about. He stopped at Papaya King and bought four dogs and two fruit drinks, without asking Ralph if he was hungry. Or a vegetarian or puked when he drank mango juice. He paid and walked out onto the street again, handing the skinny man his lunch. “Don’t eat it here. Come on.” Jax looked up and down the street. Nobody was following. He started off again, moving fast. Ralph followed. “We walkin’ ’cause you don’ trust me?”

“Yeah.”

“So why you ain’t trust me all of a sudden?”

“‘Cause you had time to dime me out since I saw you last. What exactly is the mystery here?”

“Nice day fo’ a walk,” was Ralph’s answer. He snuck a bite of hot dog.

They continued for a half block to a street that seemed deserted and the pair turned south. Jax stopped. Ralph did too and leaned against a wrought-iron fence in front of a brownstone. Jax ate his hot dogs and sipped the mango juice. Ralph wolfed down his own lunch.

Eating, drinking, just two workers on their meal break from a construction job or window washing. Nothing suspicious about this.

“That place, shit, they make good dogs,” Ralph said.

Jax finished the food, wiped his hands on his jacket and patted down Ralph’s T-shirt and jeans. No wires. “Let’s get to it. What’d you find?”

“The Settle girl, okay? She goin’ to Langston Hughes. You know it? The high school.”

“Sure, I know it. She there now?”

“I don’t know. You ask where, not when. Only I hear something else from my boys in the hood.”

The hood…

“They be saying somebody got her back. Stayin’ on her steady.”

“Who?” Jax asked. “Cops?” Wondering why he even bothered. Of course it’d be them.

“Seem to be.”

Jax finished his fruit juice. “And the other thing?”

Ralph frowned.

“That I asked for.”

“Oh.” The pharaoh looked around. Then pulled a paper bag from his pocket and slipped it into Jax’s hand. He could feel the gun was an automatic and that it was small. Good. Like he asked. Loose bullets clicked in the bottom of the sack.

“So,” Ralph said cautiously.

“So.” Jax pulled some benjamins from his pocket and handed them to Ralph and then leaned close to the man. He smelled malt and onion and mango. “Now, listen up. Our business’s done with. If I hear you told anybody ’bout this, or even mention my name, I will find you and cap your fucked-up ass. You can ask DeLisle and he will tell you I am one coal-bad person to cross. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir,” Ralph whispered to his mango juice.

“Now get the fuck outa here. No, go that way. And don’t look back.”

Then Jax was moving in the opposite direction, back to 116th Street, losing himself in the crowds of shoppers. Head down, moving fast, despite the limp, but not so fast as to attract attention.

Up the street another tour bus squealed to a stop in front of the site of the long-dead Harlem World, and some anemic rap dribbled from a speaker inside the gaudy vehicle. But at the moment the blood-painting King of Graffiti wasn’t reflecting on Harlem, hip-hop or his criminal past. He had his gun. He knew where the girl was. The only thing he was thinking about now was how long it would take him to get to Langston Hughes High.

The petite Asian woman eyed Sachs cautiously.

The uneasiness was no wonder, the detective supposed, considering that she was surrounded by a half dozen officers who were twice her size – and that another dozen waited on the sidewalk outside her store.

“Good morning,” Sachs said. “This man we’re looking for? It’s very important we find him. He may’ve committed some serious crimes.” She was speaking a bit more slowly than she supposed was politically correct.

Which was, it turned out, a tidy faux pas.

“I understand that,” the woman said in perfect English, with a French accent, no less. “I told those other officers everything I could think of. I was pretty scared. With him trying the stocking cap on, you understand. Pulling it down like it was a mask. Scary.”

“I’m sure it was,” Sachs said, picking up her verbal pace a bit. “Say, you mind if we take your fingerprints?”

This was to verify that they were her prints on the receipt and merchandise found at the museum library scene. The woman agreed, and a portable analyzer verified that they were hers.

Sachs then asked, “You’re sure you don’t have any idea who he is or where he lives?”

“None. He’s only been in here once or twice. Maybe more, but he’s the sort of person you never seem to notice. Average. Didn’t smile, didn’t frown, didn’t say anything. Totally average.”

Not a bad look for a killer, Sachs reflected. “What about your other employees?”

“I asked them all. None of them remember him.”

Sachs opened the suitcase, replaced the fingerprint analyzer and pulled out a Toshiba computer. In a minute she’d booted it up and loaded the Electronic Facial Identification Technique software. This was a computerized version of the old Identikit, used to re-create images of suspects’ faces. The manual system used preprinted cards of human features and hair, which officers combined and showed to witnesses to create a likeness of a suspect. EFIT used software to do the same, producing a nearly photographic image.

Within five minutes, Sachs had a composite picture of a jowly, clean-shaven white man with trim, light brown hair, in his forties. He looked like any one of a million middle-aged businessmen or contractors or store clerks you’d find in the metro area.

Average…