The Twelfth Card

by Jeffery Deaver

  Dellray shook his head. "Half the city eats that stuff. You can get gyros and falafel on every street corner in the city. They . . . " The agent stopped talking as his eyes met Rhyme's.

  "Pushcarts!"

  Sellitto said, "There were a half dozen of them around the museum yesterday."

  "Perfect for surveillance," Rhyme snapped. "And what a cover. He delivers supplies to them every day, so nobody pays attention to him. I want to know who supplies the street vendors. Move!"

  *

  According to the board of health, only two companies delivered Middle Eastern food to the pushcarts in the blocks around the jewelry exchange. Ironically, the largest of them was owned by two Jewish brothers with family in Israel and who were active in their temple; they were hardly suspects.

  The other company didn't own the carts but sold gyros, kabobs and falafel, along with the condiments and sodas (as well as the heathen but ever-profitable pork hot dogs), to dozens of carts in Midtown. The operation was based out of a restaurant/deli down on Broad Street, whose owners hired a man to make the deliveries around town.

  With Dellray and a dozen other agents and cops surrounding them, these owners became extremely--almost tearfully--cooperative. The name of their deliveryman was Bani al-Dahab, and he was a Saudi national, here on a visa long expired. He'd been a professional of some sort in Jeddah and had worked as an engineer for a time in the U.S. but after he went illegal he'd taken what work he could--cooking occasionally and delivering food to pushcarts and other Middle Eastern restaurants around Manhattan and Brooklyn.

  The jewelry exchange had been evacuated and swept--no devices were found there--and an emergency vehicle locator was out on al-Dahab's delivery van, which, according to the owners, might be anywhere in the city; the man was free to set his own delivery schedule.

  It was at moments like this that Rhyme would have paced, had he been able to. Where the hell is he? Is the man driving around with a van full of explosives at the moment? Maybe he'd given up on the jewelry exchange and was going after a secondary target: a synagogue or an El-Al airlines office.

  "Let's get Boyd down here, put some pressure on him," he snapped. "I want to know where the hell this guy is!"

  It was at that moment that Mel Cooper's phone rang.

  Then Sellitto's, followed by Amelia Sachs's.

  Finally, the main laboratory phone began to chirp.

  The callers were different but the message was virtually the same.

  Rhyme's question about the bomber's whereabouts had just been answered.

  *

  Only the driver died.

  Which considering the force of the explosion and the fact that the van was in the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Fifty-fourth, surrounded by other cars, was pretty miraculous.

  When the bomb went off, the direction of the blast was mostly upward, through the roof, and out the windows, scattering shrapnel and glass and injuring a score of people, but the main damage was confined to the interior of the E250. The burning van had lurched up on the sidewalk, where it slammed into a light post. A crew from the fire station up the street on Eighth Avenue got the flames out fast and kept the crowd back. As for the driver, there was no point in even trying to save him; the two largest pieces of his remains were separated by several yards.

  The Bomb Squad had cleared the scene and the main job of the police now was to wait for the medical examiner tour doctor and the crime scene crew.

  "What's that smell?" the detective from Midtown North asked. The tall, balding officer was creeped out by the stink, which he took to be burnt human flesh. The problem was that it smelled good.

  One of the detectives from the Bomb Squad laughed at the green-faced detective. "Gyros."

  "Gear-o, what?" the detective asked, thinking it was short for something--like FUBAR, meaning "fucked up beyond all recognition."

  "Look." The Bomb Squad cop held up a chunk of burnt meat in his latex-gloved hands. He smelled it. "Tasty."

  The Midtown North detective laughed and didn't reveal how close to puking he was.

  "It's lamb."

  "It's--"

  "The driver was delivering food. That was his job. The back of the van's filled with meat and falafel and shit like that."

  "Oh." The cop still didn't feel any less nauseous.

  It was then that a bright red Camaro SS--one hell of a car--skidded to a stop in the middle of the street, just kissing the yellow police tape. Out climbed a stunning redhead, who looked over the scene, nodding to the detective.

  "Hey," he said.

  As the woman detective hooked a headset onto her Motorola and waved to the crime scene bus, just pulling up as well, she sniffed the air, taking several deep breaths. She nodded. "Haven't run the scene yet," she said into the microphone, "but from the smell, Rhyme, I'd say we've got him."

  It was then that the tall, bald detective swallowed and said, "You know, I'll be right back." He jogged to a nearby Starbucks, praying he'd make it to the restroom in time.

  *

  With Detective Bell at her side, Geneva walked into the laboratory portion of Mr. Rhyme's town house, downstairs. She glanced at her father, who looked at her with those big puppy-dog eyes of his.

  Damnit. She looked away.

  Mr. Rhyme said, "We've got some news. The man who hired Boyd's dead."

  "Dead? The jewelry store robber?"

  "Things weren't quite what they seemed," Mr. Rhyme said. "We were--well, I was wrong. I was thinking whoever it was wanted to rob the jewelry exchange. But, no, he wanted to blow it up."

  "Terrorists?" she asked.

  Mr. Rhyme nodded toward a plastic folder that Amelia was holding. Inside was a letter, addressed to The New York Times. It said the bombing of the jewelry exchange was yet another step in the holy war against Zionist Israel and its allies. It was the same paper that was used for the note about killing Geneva and the map of West Fifty-fifth Street.

  "Who is he?" she asked, trying to remember a van and a Middle Eastern man in the street outside the museum a week or so ago. She couldn't.

  "An illegal Saudi national," Detective Sellitto said. "Worked for a restaurant downtown. The owners're pretty freaked, of course. They think we think they're a cover for al-Qaeda or something." He chuckled. "Which they might be. We'll keep checking. But they all come up clean--citizens, been here for years, couple kids in the army, even. I will say they're a bunch of very nervous folks at the moment."

  The most important aspect about the bomber, Amelia went on to say, was that this man, Bani al-Dahab, didn't appear to associate with any suspected terrorists. The women he'd dated recently and coworkers said that they didn't know of any times he'd met with people who might be in a terrorist cell, and his mosque was religiously and politically moderate. Amelia had searched his Queens apartment and found no other evidence or connections to other terrorist cells. His phone records were being checked for possible links to other fundamentalists, though.

  "We'll keep looking over the evidence," Mr. Rhyme said, "but we're ninety-nine percent sure he was working alone. I think it means you're probably safe."

  He wheeled his chair to the evidence table and looked over some bags of burnt metal and plastic. He said to Mr. Cooper, "Add it to the chart, Mel: Explosive was TOVEX, and we've got pieces of the receiver--the detonator--the casing, wire, a bit of blasting cap. All contained in a UPS box addressed to the jewelry exchange, attention of the director. "

  "Why'd it go off early?" Jax Jackson asked.

  Mr. Rhyme explained that it was very dangerous to use a radio-controlled bomb in the city because there were so many ambient radio waves--from construction-site detonators, walkie-talkies and a hundred other sources.

  Detective Sellitto added, "Or he may've killed himself. He might've heard that Boyd was arrested or that the jewelry exchange was being searched for a bomb. He must've thought it was only a matter of time until he'd be nabbed."

  Geneva felt uneasy, confused. These people around her were
suddenly strangers. The reason they'd come together in the first place no longer existed. As for her father, he was more alien to her than the police. She wanted to be back in her room in the Harlem basement with her books and her plans for the future, college, dreams about Florence and Paris.

  But then she realized Amelia was looking at her closely. The policewoman asked, "What're you going to do now?"

  Geneva glanced at her father. What would happen? She had a parent, true, but one who was an ex-con, who couldn't even be here in the city. They'd still probably try to put her in a foster home.

  Amelia glanced at Lincoln Rhyme. "Until things get sorted out, why don't we stick with our plan? Have Geneva stay here for a while."

  "Here?" the girl asked.

  "Your father's got to get back to Buffalo and take care of things there."

  Not that living with him is an option anyway, Geneva thought. But kept this to herself.

  "Excellent idea." This came from Thom. "I think that's what we'll do." His voice was firm. "You'll stay here."

  "Is that all right with you?" Amelia asked Geneva.

  Geneva wasn't sure why they wanted her to stay. She was initially suspicious. But she constantly had to remind herself that, after living alone for so long, suspicion trailed her like a shadow. She thought of another rule about lives like hers: You take your family how you find them.

  "Sure," she said.

  *

  Shackled, Thompson Boyd was brought into Rhyme's lab and the two guards deposited him in front of the officers and Rhyme. Geneva was once again upstairs in her room, guarded at the moment by Barbe Lynch.

  The criminalist rarely did this, meeting the perpetrators face-to-face. For him, a scientist, the only passion in his job was the game itself, the pursuit, not the physical incarnation of the suspect. He had no desire to gloat over the man or woman he'd captured. Excuses and pleas didn't move him, threats didn't trouble him.

  Yet now he wanted to make absolutely certain that Geneva Settle was safe. He wanted to assess her attacker himself.

  His face bandaged and bruised from his confrontation with Sachs at the arrest, Boyd looked around the laboratory. The equipment, the charts on the whiteboards.

  The wheelchair.

  No emotion whatsoever, no flicker of surprise or interest. Not even when he nodded toward Sachs. It was as if he'd forgotten that she'd brained him repeatedly with a rock.

  Somebody asked Boyd about it, how'd it feel, bein' in a electric chair. He said it didn't feel like anythin'. It just felt "kinda numb." He said that a lot toward the end. He felt numb.

  He asked, "How'd you find me?"

  "A couple of things," Rhyme answered. "For one, you picked the wrong tarot card to leave as evidence. It put me in mind of executions."

  "The Hanged Man," Boyd said, nodding. "Right you are. I never thought about that. Just seemed like kind of a spooky one. To lead you off, you know."

  Rhyme continued, "What got us your name, though, was your habit."

  "Habit?"

  "You whistle."

  "I do that. I try not to on the job. But sometimes it slips out. So you talked to . . . "

  "Yep, some people in Texas."

  Nodding, Boyd glanced at Rhyme with red, squinting eyes. "So you knew 'bout Charlie Tucker? That unfortunate excuse for a human being. Making the last days of my people's time on earth miserable. Telling 'em they were going to burn in hell, nonsense talk about Jesus and whatnot."

  My people . . .

  Sachs asked, "Was Bani al-Dahab the only one who hired you?"

  He blinked in surprise; it seemed the first true emotion to cross his face. "How--?" He fell silent.

  "The bomb went off early. Or he killed himself."

  A shake of the head. "No, he wasn't any suicide bomber. It would've gone off by accident. Fella was careless. Too hotheaded, you know. Didn't do things by the book. He probably armed it too early."

  "How'd you meet him?"

  "He called me. Got my name from somebody in prison, Nation of Islam connection."

  So that was it. Rhyme had wondered how a Texas prison guard had hooked up with Islamic terrorists.

  "They're crazy," Boyd said. "But they have money, those Arab people."

  "And Jon Earle Wilson? He was your bomb maker?"

  "Jonny, yes, sir." He shook his head. "You know 'bout him too? You people're good, I must say."

  "Where is he?"

  "That I don't know. We left messages from pay phones to a voice-mail box. And met in public. Never traded more'n a dozen words."

  "The FBI'll be talking to you about al-Dahab and the bombing. What we want to know about is Geneva. Is there anybody else who'd want to hurt her?"

  Boyd shook his head. "From what he told me, al-Dahab was working alone. I suspect he talked to people over in the Middle East some. But nobody here. He didn't trust anyone." The Texas drawl came and went, as if he'd been working on losing it.

  Sachs said ominously, "If you're lying, if something happens to her, we can make sure the rest of your life's totally miserable."

  "How?" Boyd asked, genuinely curious, it seemed.

  "You killed the librarian, Dr. Barry. You attacked and tried to kill police officers. You could get consecutive lifetimes. And we're looking into the death of a girl yesterday on Canal Street. Somebody pushed her in front of a bus near where you were escaping from Elizabeth Street. We're running your picture past witnesses. You'll go away forever."

  A shrug. "Doesn't hardly matter."

  "You don't care?" Sachs asked.

  "I know you people don't understand me. I don't blame you. But, see, I don't care about prison. I don't care about anything. Y'all can't really touch me. I'm dead already. Killing somebody doesn't matter to me, saving a life doesn't matter." He glanced at Amelia Sachs, who was staring at him. Boyd said, "I see that look. You're wond'ring what kinda monster is this fella? Well, fact is, y'all made me who I am."

  "We did?" she asked.

  "Oh, yes, ma'am . . . You know my profession."

  "Executions control officer," Rhyme said.

  "Yes, sir. Now something I'll tell you 'bout that line of work: You can find the names of every human legally executed in these United States. Which is a lot. And you can find the names of all the governors who waited up till midnight or whenever to commute them if the inclination was there. You can find the names of all the victims the condemned murdered, and much of the time the names of their next of kin. But do you know the one name you won't find?"

  He looked at the officers around him. "Us people who push the button. The executioners. We're forgotten. Ever'body thinks 'bout how capital punishment affects the families of the condemned. Or society. Or the victims' families. Not to mention the man or woman gets put down like a dog in the process. But nobody ever spends a drop of sweat on us executioners. Nobody ever stops and thinks what happens to us.

  "Day after day, living with our people--men, women too, course, who're gonna die, getting to know 'em. Talking to 'em. 'Bout everything under the sun. Hearing a black man ask how come is it the white guy who did the exact same crime gets off with life, or maybe even less, but he himself's gonna die? The Mexican swearing he didn't rape and kill that girl. He was just buying beer at 7-Eleven and the police come up and next he knows he's on Death Row. And a year after he's in the ground they do a DNA test and find out they did have the wrong man, and he was innocent all along.

  "Course, even the guilty ones're human beings too. Living with all of them, day after day. Being decent to them because they're decent to you. Getting to know 'em. And then . . . then you kill 'em. You, all by yourself. With your own hands, pushing the button, throwing the switch . . . It changes you.

  "You know what they say? You heard it. 'Dead man walking.' It's supposed to mean the prisoner. But it's really us. The executioners. We're the dead men."

  Sachs muttered, "But your girlfriend? How could you shoot her?"

  He fell silent. For the first time a darkness clouded his fac
e. "I pondered firing that shot. I'd hoped maybe I'd have this feeling that I shouldn't do it. That she meant too much to me. I'd let her be and run, just take my chances. But . . . " He shook his head. "Didn't happen. I looked at her and all I felt was numb. And I knew that it'd make sense to shoot her."

  "And if the children had been home and not her?" Sachs gasped. "You'd've shot one of them to escape?"

  He considered this for a moment. "Well, ma'am, I guess we know that would've worked, wouldn't it? You would've stopped to save one of the girls 'stead of coming after me. Like my daddy told me: It's only a question of where you put the decimal point."

  The darkness seemed to lift from his face, as if he'd finally received some answer or come to some conclusion in a debate that had been troubling him for a long time.

  The Hanged Man . . . The card often foretells a surrendering to experience, ending a struggle, accepting what is.

  He glanced at Rhyme. "Now, you don't mind, I think it's time for me to get back home."

  "Home?"

  He looked at them curiously. "Jail."

  As if, what else would he possibly mean?

  *

  Father and daughter got off the C train at 135th street and started east, toward Langston Hughes High.

  She hadn't wanted him to come but he'd insisted on looking after her--which Mr. Rhyme and Detective Bell had insisted on too. Besides, she reflected, he'd be back in Buffalo by tomorrow and she supposed she could tolerate an hour or two with him.

  He nodded back at the subway. "Used to love to write on C trains. Paint stuck real nice . . . I knew a lot of people'd see it. Did an end-to-end in 1976. It was the Bicentennial that year. Those tall ships were in town. My 'piece was of one of those boats, 'long with the Statue of Liberty." He laughed. "The MTA didn't scrub that car for at least a week, I heard. Maybe they were just busy but I like to think somebody liked what I painted and kept it up for longer than normal."

  Geneva grunted. She was thinking that she had a story to tell him. A block away she could see the construction scaffolding in front of the same building she'd been working on when she'd been fired. How'd her father like to know that her job had been scrubbing graffiti off the redeveloped buildings? Maybe she'd even erased some of his. Tempted to tell him. But she didn't.

  At the first working pay phone they found on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Geneva stopped, fished for some change. Her father offered her his cell phone.