The Twelfth Card

by Jeffery Deaver

  But something was wrong. Rhyme could read it in Bell's eyes. The detective said to Cooper, "We need a DMV check. Fast." He jotted a tag number on a Post-it note then hung up, handed the slip of paper to the CS tech.

  "What's happening?" Sachs asked.

  "Geneva and her father were at the bus stop near the school. A car pulled up. They got inside. Luis wasn't expecting that and couldn't get across the street fast enough to stop them."

  "Car? Who was driving?"

  "Heavyset black woman. Way he described her, sounds like it might've been that counselor, Barton."

  Nothing to worry about necessarily, Rhyme reflected. Maybe the woman just saw them at the bus stop and offered them a ride.

  Information from the DMV flickered over his screen.

  "What do we have, Mel?" Rhyme asked.

  Cooper squinted as he read. He typed some more. He looked up, eyes wide through his thick glasses. "A problem. We have a problem."

  *

  Mrs. Barton was heading into south-central Harlem, moving slowly though the early evening traffic. She slowed as they drove past yet another real estate redevelopment project.

  Her father shook his head. "Look at all this." He nodded at the billboard. "Developers, banks, architects." A sour laugh. "Betcha there's not a single black person running any of 'em."

  Lame, Geneva thought. She wanted to tune him out.

  Whining about the past . . .

  The counselor glanced at the site and, shrugged. "You see that a lot around here." She braked and turned down an alley between one of the old buildings being gutted and a deep excavation site.

  In response to her father's questioning glance, Mrs. Barton said, "Shortcut."

  But her father looked around. "Shortcut?"

  "Just to miss some of the southbound traffic."

  He looked again, squinted. Then spat out, "Bullshit."

  "Dad!" Geneva cried.

  "I know this block. Road's closed off up ahead. They're tearing down some old factory."

  "No," Mrs. Barton said. "I just came this way and--"

  But her father grabbed the parking brake and pulled up as hard as he could, then spun the wheel to the left. The car skidded into the brick wall with the wrenching sound of metal and plastic grinding into stone.

  Grabbing the counselor's arm, the man shouted, "She's with them, baby. Trying to hurt you! Get out, run!"

  "Dad, no, you're crazy! You can't--"

  But the confirmation came a moment later as a pistol appeared from the woman's pocket. She aimed it at her father's chest and pulled the trigger. He blinked in shock and jerked back, gripping the wound. "Oh. Oh, my," he whispered.

  Geneva leapt back as the woman turned the silver gun toward her. Just as it fired, her father swung his fist into the woman's jaw and stunned her. Flame and bits of gunpowder peppered Geneva's face but the bullet missed. It blew the car's rear window into a thousand tiny cubes.

  "Run, baby!" her father muttered and slumped against the dashboard.

  Get her down, cut her, cut the bitch . . . .

  Sobbing, Geneva crawled out the shattered back window and fell to the ground. She struggled to her feet and started sprinting down the ramp into the murky demolition site.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Alina Frazier--the woman fronting as the counselor Patricia Barton--didn't have the cool of her partner. Thompson Boyd was ice itself. He never got rattled. But Alina had always been emotional. She was furious, cursing, as she scrabbled over the body of Geneva's father and stumbled out into the alley, looking left and right for the girl.

  Furious that Boyd was in jail, furious that the girl was getting away.

  Breathing deeply, looking up and down the deserted alley. Stalking back and forth. Where could the little bitch--?

  A flash of gray to her right: Geneva was crawling out from behind a scabby blue Dumpster and disappearing deeper into the job site. The woman started off in pursuit, panting. She was large, yes, but also very strong and she moved quickly. You could let prison soften you, or you could let prison turn you into stone. She'd chosen the second.

  Frazier'd been a gangsta in the early nineties, the leader of a girl wolf pack roaming Times Square and the Upper East Side, where tourists and residents--who'd be suspicious of a cluster of teen boys--didn't think anything of a handful of boisterous sistas, toting Daffy Dan and Macy's shopping bags. That is, until the knives or guns appeared and the rich bitches lost their cash and jewelry. After stints in juvie she'd gone down big and done time for manslaughter--it should've been murder, but the kid prosecutor had fucked up. After release she'd returned to New York. Here, she'd met Boyd through the guy she was living with, and when Frazier broke up with the claimer, Boyd had called her. At first she thought it was just one of those white-guy-hot-for-a-black-girl things. But when she'd taken up his invitation for coffee, he hadn't come on to her at all. He'd just looked her over with those weird, dead eyes of his and said that it'd be helpful to have a woman work with him on some jobs. Was she interested?

  Jobs? she'd asked, thinking drugs, thinking guns, thinking perped TVs.

  But he'd explained in a whisper what his line of work was.

  She'd blinked.

  Then he'd added it could net her upwards of fifty thousand bucks for a few days' work.

  A brief pause. Then a grin. "Damn straight."

  For the Geneva Settle job, though, they were making five times that. This turned out to be a fair price, since it was the hardest kill they'd ever worked. After the hit at the museum yesterday morning hadn't worked out, Boyd had called her and asked for her help (even offering an extra $50,000 if she killed the girl herself). Frazier, always the smartest in her crews, had come up with the idea of fronting as the counselor and had a fake board of education ID made up. She'd started calling public schools in Harlem, asking to speak to any of Geneva Settle's teachers, and had received a dozen variations on, "She's not enrolled here. Sorry." Until Langston Hughes High, where some office worker had said that, yes, this was her school. Frazier had then simply put on a cheap business suit, dangled the ID over her imposing chest and strolled into the high school like she owned the place.

  There, she'd learned about the girl's mysterious parents, the apartment on 118th Street and--from that Detective Bell and the other cops--about the Central Park West town house and who was guarding Geneva. She'd fed all this information to Boyd to help in planning the kill.

  She staked out the girl's apartment near Morningside--until it got too risky because of Geneva's bodyguards. (She'd been caught in the act this afternoon, when a squad car pulled her over near the place, but it turned out the cops hadn't been looking for her.)

  Frazier had talked a guard at Langston Hughes into giving her the security video of the school yard, and with that prop, she managed to get inside the crippled man's town house, where she learned yet more information about the girl.

  But then Boyd had been nailed--he'd told her all along how good the police were--and now it was up to Alina Frazier to finish the job if she wanted the rest of the fee, $125,000.

  Gasping for breath, the big woman now paused thirty feet down a ramp that led to the foundation level of the excavation site. Squinting against a blast of low sun from the west, trying to see where the little bitch had gone. Damn, girl, show yourself.

  Then: movement again. Geneva was making her way to the far side of the deserted job site, crawling fast over the ground, using cement mixers, Bobcats and piles of beams and supplies for cover. The girl disappeared behind an oil drum.

  Stepping into the shadows for a better view, Frazier aimed at the middle of the drum and fired, hitting the metal with a loud ring.

  It seemed to her that dirt danced up into the air just past the container. Had it slammed through the girl too?

  But, no, she was up and moving fast to a low wall of rubble--brick, stone, pipes. Just as she vaulted it, Frazier fired again.

  The girl tumbled over the other side of the wall with a s
hrill scream. Something puffed into the air. Dirt and stone dust? Or blood?

  Had Frazier hit the girl? She was a good shot--she and her ex-boyfriend, a gunrunner in Newark, had spent hours picking off rats in abandoned buildings on the outskirts of town, trying out his products. She thought she'd been on the mark now. But she couldn't wait long to find out; people would've heard the gunshots. Some'd ignore them, sure, and some'd think the workers were still on the job with heavy equipment. But at least one or two good citizens might be calling 911 just about now.

  Well, go see . . .

  She started slowly down the truck ramp, making sure she didn't fall; the incline was very steep. But then a car horn began blaring from the alley, behind and above her. It was coming from her car.

  Fuck, she thought angrily, the girl's father was still alive.

  Frazier hesitated. Then decided: time to get the hell out of here. Finish dad off. Geneva was probably hit and wouldn't survive long. But even if she wasn't wounded, Frazier could track her down later. There'd be plenty of opportunities.

  Fucking horn . . . It seemed louder than the gunshot and had to be attracting attention. Worse, it would cover up the sound of any approaching sirens. Frazier climbed to the street level up the dirt ramp, gasping from the effort. But as she got to the car, she frowned, seeing that it was empty. Geneva's father wasn't in the driver's seat, after all. A trail of blood led to a nearby alleyway, where his body lay. Frazier glanced inside her car. That's what'd happened: Before he'd crawled away he'd pulled out the car's jack and wedged it against the horn panel on the steering wheel.

  Furious, Frazier yanked it away.

  The piercing sound stopped.

  She tossed the jack into the backseat and glanced at the man. Was he dead? Well, if not he soon would be. She walked toward him, her gun at her side. Then she paused, frowning . . . . How had a man as badly wounded as this poor motherfucker opened the trunk, unscrewed the jack, lugged it to the front seat and rigged it against the wheel?

  Frazier started to look around.

  And saw a blur to her right, heard the whoosh of air as the tire iron swept down and crashed into her wrist, sending the gun flying and shooting a breathtaking jolt of pain through her body. The big woman screamed and dropped to her knees, lunging for the gun with her left hand. Just as she grabbed it, Geneva swung the iron again and caught the woman in the shoulder with a solid clonk. Frazier rolled to the ground, the gun sliding out of her reach. Blinded by the pain and the rage, the woman lunged and tackled the girl before she could swing the rod again. Geneva went down hard, the breath knocked out of her.

  The woman turned toward where the pistol lay but, choking and gasping, Geneva crawled forward, grabbed her right arm and bit Frazier's shattered wrist. The pain that could be no worse rose like a shriek through her. Frazier swung her good fist into the girl's face and connected with her jaw. Geneva gave a cry and blinked tears as she rolled, helpless, onto her back. Frazier climbed unsteadily to her feet, cradling her bloody, broken wrist, and kicked the girl in the belly. The teenager began to retch.

  Standing unsteadily, Frazier looked for the gun, which was ten feet away. Don't need it, don't want it. The tire iron'd do just fine. Seething with anger, she picked it up and started forward. She looked down at the girl with undiluted hate and lifted the metal rod above her head. Geneva cringed and covered her face with her hands.

  Then a voice from behind the big woman shouted, "No!"

  Frazier turned to see that redheaded policewoman from the crippled man's apartment walking slowly forward, her large automatic pistol held in both hands.

  Alina Frazier looked down at the revolver nearby.

  "I'd like the excuse," the policewoman said. "I really would."

  Frazier slumped, tossed the tire iron aside and, feeling faint, dropped into a sitting position. She cradled her shattered hand.

  The cop moved close and kicked the pistol and tire iron away, as Geneva rose to her feet and staggered toward a duo of medics who were running forward. The girl directed them toward her father.

  Tears of pain in her eyes, Frazier demanded, "I need a doctor."

  "You'll have to wait in line," the policewoman muttered and slipped a plastic restraint around her wrists with what, under the circumstances, Frazier decided, was really a pretty gentle touch.

  *

  "He's in stable condition," Lon Sellitto announced. He'd fielded the phone call from an officer on duty at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. "He didn't know what that means. But there you have it."

  Rhyme nodded at this news about Jax Jackson. Whatever "stable" meant, at least the man was alive, for which Rhyme was immensely grateful--for Geneva's sake.

  The girl herself had been treated for contusions and abrasions and released.

  It had been a photo finish to save her from Boyd's accomplice. Mel Cooper had run the tags on the car that the girl and her father had gotten into and found it registered to someone named Alina Frazier. A fast check of NCIC and state databases revealed that she had a record: a manslaughter charge in Ohio and two assaults with deadly weapons in New York, as well as a slew of sealed juvie offenses.

  Sellitto had put out an Emergency Vehicle Locator, which alerted all law enforcers in the area to look for Frazier's sedan. A traffic enforcement cop had radioed a short time later that the vehicle had been seen near a demolition site in South Harlem. There'd also been a report of shots fired in the vicinity. At Rhyme's town house Amelia Sachs jumped into her Camaro and sped to the scene, where she found Frazier about to beat Geneva to death.

  Frazier had been interrogated but was no more cooperative than her accomplice. Rhyme guessed that one had to think long and hard about betraying Thompson Boyd, especially in jail, given the long reach of his prison connections.

  Was Geneva finally safe or not? Most likely she was. Two killers under wraps and the main actor blown to pieces. Sachs had searched Alina Frazier's apartment and found nothing except weapons and cash--no information that would suggest there was anyone else who wanted to kill Geneva Settle. Jon Earle Wilson, the ex-con from New Jersey who'd made the booby trap in Boyd's Queens safe house, was presently en route to Rhyme's, and the criminalist hoped he'd confirm their conclusions. Still, Rhyme and Bell decided to dedicate a uniformed officer in a squad car to protection detail for Geneva.

  Now, a computer sounded a friendly chirp and Mel Cooper looked over at the screen. He opened an email. "Ah, the mystery is solved."

  "Which mystery would that be?" Rhyme said this gruffly. His moods, forever fragile, tended to sour toward the end of a case, when boredom loomed.

  " 'Winskinskie.' "

  The Indian word on the ring Sachs had found around the finger bone beneath the ruins of Potters' Field tavern.

  "And?"

  "This's from a professor at the University of Maryland. Aside from the literal translation in the Delaware language, 'Winskinskie' was a title in the Tammany Society."

  "Title?"

  "Sort of like a sergeant at arms. Boss Tweed was the Grand Sachem, the big chief. Our boy"--a nod toward the bones and skull Sachs had found in the cistern--"was the Winskinskie, the doorkeeper."

  "Tammany Hall . . . " Rhyme nodded as he considered this, letting his mind wander back in time, past this case, into the smoky sepia world of nineteenth-century New York. "And Tweed hung out in Potters' Field. So he and the Tammany Hall machine were probably behind setting Charles up."

  He ordered Cooper to add the recent findings to the chart. He then spent some moments looking over the information. He nodded. "Fascinating."

  Sellitto shrugged. "The case is over with, Linc. The hitmen, excuse me, hit people've been collared. The terrorist is dead. Why's something that happened a hundred years ago so fascinating?"

  "Nearly a hundred and forty years, Lon. Let's be accurate." He was frowning as he stared intently at the evidence chart, the maps--and the placid face of the Hanged Man. "And the answer to your question is: You know how much I hate loose ends."
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  "Yeah, but what's loose?"

  "What's the one thing we've forgotten all about in the heat of battle, if we may tread through a minefield of cliches again, Lon?"

  "I give," Sellitto grunted.

  "Charles Singleton's secret. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with constitutional law or terrorists, I, at least, am dying to know what it was. I think we should find out."

  VAN BOMBING SCENE

  * Van registered to Bani al-Dahab (see profile).

  * Delivered food to Middle Eastern restaurants and carts.

  * Letter taking responsibility for jewelry exchange bombing recovered. Paper matches earlier documents.

  * Components of explosive device recovered: residue of Tovex, wires, battery, radio receiver detonator, portions of container, UPS box.

  THOMPSON BOYD'S RESIDENCE AND PRIMARY SAFE HOUSE

  * More falafel and yogurt, orange paint trace, as before.

  * Cash (fee for job?) $100,000 in new bills. Untraceable. Probably withdrawn in small amounts over time.

  * Weapons (guns, billy club, rope) traced to prior crime scenes.

  * Acid and cyanide traced to prior crime scenes, no links to manufacturers.

  * No cell phone found. Other telephone records not helpful.

  * Tools traced to prior crime scenes.

  * Letter revealing that G. Settle was targeted because she was a witness to jewelry heist in the planning. More pure carbon--identified as diamond dust trace.

  * Sent to Parker Kincaid in Washington, D.C., for document examination.

  * Writer's first language most likely Arabic.

  * Improvised explosive device, as part of booby trap. Fingerprints are those of convicted bomb maker Jon Earle Wilson.

  * Located. En route to Rhyme's for interviewing.

  POTTERS' FIELD SCENE (1868)

  * Tavern in Gallows Heights--located in the Eighties on the upper West Side, mixed neighborhood in the 1860s.

  * Potters' Field was possible hangout for Boss Tweed and other corrupt New York politicians.

  * Charles came here July 15, 1868.