The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 53





You can do this.

Ron Pulaski was minding his steps on the sidewalk in the West 50s, which was encrusted with gray snow and grayer ice. His breath popped out as wispy clouds in the relentlessly cold air and he realized he was having trouble feeling his fingers.

A trigger pull of nine pounds? Thinking of the Smittie Bodyguard pistol on his ankle. His standard weapon, a Glock 17, had a pull of one-third that. Of course, the issue wasn’t the effort to pull the trigger. Nine pounds of effort were easily handled by anybody over the age of six. The problem was accuracy. The harder to pull the trigger, the less accurate the shot.

But it wasn’t going to come to a shootout, Pulaski reminded himself. And even if it did, the backup team would be positioned in the hotel, ready to, well, back him up.

He was— Jesus! The street spun. He nearly ended up on his ass, thanks to a patch of ice he hadn’t seen, inhaling hard in surprise, taking in air so cold it burned.

Hate winter.

Then reminded himself it wasn’t even winter yet, only the sinkhole of an autumn.

He looked up, through the sleet. Three blocks away – long blocks, crosstown blocks – he could see the hotel. A red neon disk, part of the logo.

He increased his pace. Just a couple of days ago, he and Jenny and the kids had spent the night in front of the fireplace because there’d been a problem with the gas line for the block. The cold had seeped in and he’d gotten a fire going, real logs, not Duraflames, the kids in PJs and sleeping bags nearby, and he and Jenny on an air mattress. Pulaski had told the worst jokes – children’s jokes – until the youngsters had fallen asleep.

And he and Jenny had cuddled fiercely, until the caress of chill went away under their combined bodies. (No, not that, of course; they were in pajamas as chaste and comical as the children’s.)

How he wanted to be back with his family now. But he pushed aside those thoughts.

Undercover. That was his job. His only job. Jenny was married to Ron Pulaski, not Stan Walesa. The kids didn’t exist.

And neither did Lincoln Rhyme or Amelia Sachs.

All that mattered was finding the associates of the late and not very lamented Watchmaker. Who were they? What were they up to? And most important: Did the killer have a successor?

Ron Pulaski had a thought on this topic, though he’d decided not to say anything to Lincoln or Amelia, for fear that he’d look stupid if proven wrong. (The head injury again. It plagued him every day, every day.)

His theory was this: The lawyer himself was the main associate of the Watchmaker. He’d been lying about never meeting the man. He appeared to be a real lawyer – they’d checked that out. And had a firm in LA. (The assistant who answered the phone said Mr Weller was out of town on business.) But the website looked dicey – bare bones – and it gave only a P.O. box, not a street address. Still, it was typical of an ambulance chaser’s site, Pulaski supposed.

And what was Weller’s plan here?

The same as Pulaski’s maybe. After all, why come to New York to collect ashes when it would have been far easier and cheaper simply to FedEx them to the family?

No, Pulaski was now even more convinced that Weller was here on a fishing expedition himself – to find other partners of the Watchmaker, who had been the sort of master planner to have several projects going on at the same time, without telling one set of colleagues that the others even existed. He guessed that—

His phone vibrated. He answered. It was an NYPD officer from the team at the hotel. He and his partner were in position in the lobby and bar. Pulaski had relayed the details on Weller’s appearance but the undercover reported that there was nobody fitting that description in the lobby yet. It was, however, still early.

‘I’ll be there in five, six minutes.’

‘K,’ said the man with a serenity that Pulaski found reassuring and they disconnected.

A gust of wind slashed. Pulaski pulled his coat more tightly around him. Didn’t do much good. He and Jenny had been talking about getting to a beach, any beach. The kids were in swimming class and he was really looking forward to taking them to an ocean. They’d been to a few lakes Upstate but a sandy beach, with crashing waves? Man, they would love –

‘Hi, there, Mr. Walesa.’

Pulaski stopped abruptly and turned. He tried to mask his surprise.

Ten feet behind him was Dave Weller. What was going on? They were still two blocks from the hotel. Weller had stopped and was standing under the awning of a pet shop, not yet open for business.

Pulaski thought: Act cool. ‘Hey. Thought we were going to meet at the hotel.’ A nod up the street.

Weller said nothing, just looked Pulaski up and down.

The officer said, ‘Hell of a day, hm? This sucks. Been sleeting like this off and on for almost a week.’ He nearly said, ‘You don’t get this in L.A.’ But then he wasn’t supposed to know that the lawyer had his office – or un-office – in California. Of course, maybe it would’ve been less suspicious and more inscrutable to let Weller know he’d done some homework on the man. Hard to tell.

Hell, this undercover stuff, you really had to think ahead.

Pulaski joined Weller in front of the pet store, out of the sleet. In the window, just behind them, was a murky aquarium.

A beach, any beach …

Weller said, ‘Thought this’d be safer.’ That faint Southern accent again.

But, of course, Stan Walesa might be wondering why safety was an issue. He said, ‘Safer?’

But Weller said nothing in reply. He didn’t wear a hat, and his bald head was dotted with moisture.

Pulaski gave a shrug. ‘You were saying you have a client who might want to meet with me.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m into import-export. Is that what your client needs?’

‘Could be.’

‘And what specifically you have in mind?’

‘Exactly’ would’ve been better than ‘specifically’. Tough guys wouldn’t use the S word.

Weller’s voice dipped, hard to hear over the wind. ‘You know that project that Richard put together down in Mexico?’

Pulaski’s gut thudded. Getting even better. The man was referring to an attempted hit of a Mexican anti-drug officer a few years ago. Logan had orchestrated an elaborate plan to kill the federale. This was great. If Weller knew about that, he wasn’t quite who he claimed to be.

My theory …

‘Sure. I know it. He told me that that a*shole f*cked it up, Rhyme.’

So the lawyer did know about the criminalist, after all.

Pulaski offered, ‘But Richard came up with a good plan.’

‘Yeah, it was.’ Weller seemed more comfortable now that Pulaski had given him some details not known in public about Richard Logan. He eased closer. ‘Well, my client might be interested in talking to you about that situation.’

Your client or you? Pulaski wondered. He kept his eyes locked on Weller’s. This was hard but he didn’t waver.

‘What’s there to talk about?’

Weller said evasively: ‘Could be renewed interest in an alternative approach to the situation. In Mexico. Mr Logan had been working on it when he died.’

‘I’m not sure what we’re talking about,’ Pulaski said.

‘A new approach.’

‘Oh.’

‘If it’s to everybody’s advantage.’

‘What kind of advantage?’ Pulaski inquired. This seemed like a good question.

‘Significant.’

That didn’t seem like a particularly good answer. But he knew you had to play games like these – well, he supposed you did, since what he’d learned about undercover work was mostly from Blue Bloods and movies.

‘My client is looking for people he can trust. You might be one of those people. But we’d need to check you out more.’

‘I’ll have to do some checking too.’

‘We’d expect that. And,’ Weller said slowly, ‘my client would need something from you. To show your commitment. Can you bring something to the table?’

‘What sort of “something”?’

‘You have to spend money to make money,’ Weller said.

So, he was being asked to invest. Cash. Good. Much better than having to bring them the head of a rival drug dealer to prove his loyalty.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Pulaski said dismissively, as if he could jump in his private jet, fly to Switzerland and pluck stacks of hundreds from his private bank.

‘What would you be willing to cough up?’

This was a stumper. It was tough to get buy-money for sting operations. The brass knew there was always a chance of losing it. But he had no idea what the limits were. What would they do on Blue Bloods? He shrugged. ‘A hundred K.’

Weller nodded. ‘That’s a good figure.’

And it was then that Pulaski thought: How did he know I’d come this way? There were three or four possible approaches to the hotel. And, hell, for that matter, how did he know I’d be on foot and not take a cab or drive? Earlier Weller had referred to parking in front of the Huntington Arms.

One answer was that Weller, or somebody, had been following Pulaski.

And there was only one reason for that. To set him up. Maybe he’d seen him come out of Rhyme’s and looked up the owner of the townhouse.

And here I am without a f*cking wire and two blocks from the backup team and a gun on my ankle, a thousand miles away.

‘So. Glad this is moving along. Let me see about that money and—’

But Weller wasn’t listening. His eyes flickered past Pulaski, who spun around.

Two unsmiling men in leather jackets approached. One with shaggy hair, one with a shaved head.

When they noted Pulaski’s gaze, they drew pistols and lunged.

The young officer turned and started to sprint. He made it all of two yards before the third killer stepped out from behind the truck where he’d been waiting, wrapped his massive arm around the patrolman’s throat and slammed the officer against the window of the pet shop.

Weller stepped back. The hit man touched the gun muzzle to Pulaski’s temple while, inside the store, a colorful toucan in a flamboyant Polynesian cage ruffled its feathers and watched with scant interest the goings-on outside.