Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

The counter girl dropped a plate of dishes into the busboy pan with a huge crash. As the diners turned to look, Wilson felt something tap his leg under the booth. He touched the envelope, slipped it into his bell-bottoms pocket. It seemed surprisingly thin to be holding $5,000. But Wilson knew it was all there. One thing about Boyd: He paid what he owed, and he paid on time.

A moment passed. So, they weren’t eating together. They were sitting and Boyd was drinking tea and Wilson was being hungry. Even though Boyd had to leave in a “minute or two.”

What was this about?

Then he got the answer. Boyd glanced out the window and saw a battered, unmarked white van slow and turn into the alley that led to the back of the restaurant. Wilson got a glimpse of the driver, a small man with light brown skin and a beard.

Boyd’s eyes watched it closely. When it disappeared into the alley he rose, hefting the shopping bag. He left money on the table for his bill and nodded to Wilson. Then he started toward the door. He stopped, turned back. “Did I thank you?”

Wilson blinked. “Did you -”

“Did I thank you?” A nod down to the bag.

“Well, no.” Thompson Boyd smiling and thanking people. Must be a fucking full moon.

“I appreciate it,” the killer said. “Your hard work, I mean. Really.” The words came out as if he were a bad actor. Then, this was odd too, he winked a good-bye to the counter girl and walked out the door onto the bustling streets of the financial district, circling through the alley to the back of the restaurant, with the heavy bag at his side.

On 118th Street, Roland Bell eased his new Crown Victoria up in front of Geneva ’s building.

Barbe Lynch nodded from her guard station: the Chevy Malibu, which Bell had returned to them. He hustled Geneva inside and hurried up the stairs to the apartment, where her uncle gave her a big hug and shook Bell ’s hand again, thanking him for looking out for the girl. He said he was going to pick up a few things at the grocery store and stepped outside.

Geneva went on to her room. Bell glanced in and saw her sitting on the bed. She opened her book bag and rummaged through it.

“Anything I can do for you, miss? You hungry?”

“I’m pretty tired,” she said. “I think I’ll just do my homework now. Maybe take a nap.”

“Now that’s a fine idea, after all you’ve been through.”

“How’s Officer Pulaski?” she asked.

“I talked to his commander earlier. He’s still unconscious. They don’t know how he’ll be. Wish I could tell you different, but there it is. I’m going to go stop by and check in on him later.”

She found a book and handed it to Bell. “Could you give him this?”

The detective took it. “I will, you bet… Don’t know that, even if he wakes up, he’ll be in any shape to read it, I oughta say.”

“We’ll hope for the best. If he does wake up, maybe somebody could read it to him. Might help. Sometimes it does. Just hearing a story. Oh, and tell him or his family there’s a good luck charm inside.”

“That’s right kind of you.” Bell closed her door and walked to the living room to call his boys and tell them that he’d be home in a little while. He then checked with the other guards on his SWAT team, who reported that all was secure.

He settled down in the living room, hoping that Geneva’s uncle was doing some serious grocery shopping. That poor niece of his surely needed some meat on her bones.

On his route to Geneva Settle’s apartment, Alonzo “Jax” Jackson slowly made his way down one of the narrow passages separating the brownstones in western Harlem.

He wasn’t, however, at this particular moment Jax the limpin’ ex-con, the blood-spraying Graffiti King of Harlem past. He was some unnamed, wack homeless dude in dusty jeans and a gray sweatshirt, pushing a perped grocery cart, which held five dollars’ worth of newspapers, all wadded up. And a bunch of empties he’d racked from a recycling bin. He doubted that up close anybody would buy the role – he was a little too clean for your typical homeless guy – but there were only a few people he needed to fool: like the cops staying steady on Geneva Settle.

Out of one alleyway, across the street, into another. He was about three blocks from the back door of the apartment building that poor-ass Kevin Cheaney had pointed out.

Nice place, damn.

Feeling shitty again, thinking of his own plans for family gone bad.

Sir, I must talk to you. I am sorry. The baby…We could not save him.

Was a him?

I’m sorry, sir. We did what we could, I promise you but…

It was a him…

He pushed those thoughts away. Fighting a bum wheel on the cart, which kept veering to the left, talking to himself a bit, Jax moved slowly but with determination, thinking: Man, funny if I got nailed for jacking a shopping cart. But then he decided, no, it wouldn’t be so funny at all. It’d be just like a cop to decide to roust him for something little like that and find the gun. Then run the ID and he’d get his ass violated back to Buffalo. Or someplace even worse.

Clatter, clatter – the littered passageway was hell on the broken wheel of the cart. He struggled to keep it straight. But he had to stick to this dark canyon. To approach a nice town house from the sidewalk, in this fancy part of Harlem, would flag him as suspicious. In the alley, though, pushing a cart wasn’t that wack. Rich people throw their empties out more’n the poor. And as for the garbage, it was a better quality round here. Naturally a homeless dude’d rather scrounge in West Harlem than in Central.

How much farther?

Jax the homeless dude looked up and squinted. Two blocks to the girl’s apartment.

Almost there. Almost done.

He felt an itch.

In Lincoln Rhyme’s case this could be literal – he had sensation on his neck, shoulders and head, and, in fact, this was a nondisabled, sensate condition he could do without; for a quadriplegic, not being able to scratch an itch was the most fucking frustrating thing in the world.

But this was a figurative itch he was feeling.

Something wasn’t right. What was it?

Thom asked him a question. He didn’t pay attention.

“Lincoln?”

“I’m thinking. Can’t you see?”

“No, that happens on the inside,” the aide retorted.

“Well, be quiet.”

What was the problem?

More scans of the evidence charts, the profile, the old letters and clippings, the curious expression on the inverted face of The Hanged Man…But somehow the itch didn’t seem to have anything to do with the evidence.

In which case he supposed he should just ignore it.

Get back to -

Rhyme cocked his head. Almost grabbed the thought. It jiggled away.

It was some anomaly, words someone had said recently that didn’t quite mesh.

Then:

“Oh, goddamn it,” he snapped. “The uncle!”

“What?” Mel Cooper asked.

“Jesus, Geneva’s uncle.”

“What about him?”

“Geneva said he was her mother’s brother.”

“And?”

“When we just talked to him, he said that he’d talked to his brother.”

“Well, he probably meant brother-in-law.”

“If you mean brother-in-law, that’s what you say… Command, dial Bell.”

The phone rang and the detective answered on the first note of the cell phone tone that meant the call was from Lincoln Rhyme’s town house.

“ Bell here.”

“Roland, you’re at Geneva ’s?”

“Right.”

“Your cell doesn’t have a speaker, does it?”

“No. Go ahead.” The detective instinctively pulled his jacket aside and unsnapped the thong holding the larger of his two pistols. His voice was as steady as his hand, though his heart ratcheted up a few beats per second.