The Bone Collector

“It’s freezing,” Thom complained. His reaction was to open the window. Immediate gratification. Youth.

“Don’t open the window,” Rhyme ordered. “And tell me who the hell’s here.”

“It’s freezing.”

“You’ll disturb the bird. You can turn the air conditioner down. I’ll turn it down.”

“We were here first,” Thom said, further lifting the huge pane of window. “The birds moved in with full knowledge of you.” The falcons glanced toward the noise, glaring. But then they always glared. They remained on the ledge, lording over their domain of anemic ginkgo trees and alternate-side-of-the-street parkers.

Rhyme repeated. “Who is it?”

“Lon Sellitto.”

“Lon?”

What was he doing here?

Thom examined the room. “The place is a mess.”

Rhyme didn’t like the fuss of cleaning. He didn’t like the bustle, the noise of the vacuum – which he found particularly irritating. He was content here, as it was. This room, which he called his office, was on the second floor of his gothic townhouse on the Upper West Side of the city, overlooking Central Park. The room was large, twenty-by-twenty, and virtually every one of those feet was occupied. Sometimes he closed his eyes, playing a game, and tried to detect the smell of the different objects in the room here. The thousands of books and magazines, the Tower of Pisa stacks of photocopies, the hot transistors of the TV, the dust-frosted lightbulbs, the cork bulletin boards. Vinyl, peroxide, latex, upholstery.

Three different kinds of single-malt Scotch.

Falcon shit.

“I don’t want to see him. Tell him I’m busy.”

“And a young cop. Ernie Banks. No, he was a baseball player, right? You really should let me clean. You never notice how filthy someplace is till people come to call.”

“Come to call? My, that sounds quaint. Victorian. How does this sound? Tell ’em to get the hell out. How’s that for fin-de-siècle etiquette?”

A mess…

Thom was speaking of the room but Rhyme supposed he meant his boss too.

Rhyme’s hair was black and thick as a twenty-year-old’s – though he was twice that age – but the strands were wild and bushy, desperately in need of a wash and cut. His face sprouted a dirty-looking three days’ growth of black beard and he’d wakened with an incessant tickle in his ear, which meant that those hairs needed trimming as well. Rhyme’s nails were long, finger and toe, and he’d been wearing the same clothes for a week – polka-dotted pajamas, god-awful ugly. His eyes were narrow, deep brown, and set in a face that Blaine had told him on a number of occasions, passionate and otherwise, was handsome.

“They want to talk to you,” Thom continued. “They say it’s very important.”

“Well, bully for them.”

“You haven’t seen Lon for nearly a year.”

“Why does that mean I want to see him now? Have you scared off the bird? I’ll be pissed if you have.”

“It’s important, Lincoln.”

“Very important, I recall you saying. Where’s that doctor? He might’ve called. I was dozing earlier. And you were out.”

“You’ve been awake since six a.m.”

“No.” He paused. “I woke up, yes. But then I dozed off. I was sound asleep. Did you check messages?”

Thom said, “Yes. Nothing from him.”

“He said he’d be here midmorning.”

“And it’s just past eleven. Maybe we’ll hold off notifying air-sea rescue. What do you say?”

“Have you been on the phone?” Rhyme asked abruptly. “Maybe he tried to call while you were on.”

“I was talking to -”

“Did I say anything?” Rhyme asked. “Now you’re angry. I didn’t say you shouldn’t be making phone calls. You can do that. You’ve always been able to do that. My point is just that he might’ve called while you were on the line.”

“No, your point this morning is to be a shit.”

“There you go. You know, they have this thing – call waiting. You can get two calls at once. I wish we had that. What does my old friend Lon want? And his friend the baseball player?”

“Ask them.”

“I’m asking you.”

“They want to see you. That’s all I know.”

“About something vay-ree im-por-tant.”

“ Lincoln.” Thom sighed. The good-looking young man ran his hand through his blond hair. He wore tan slacks and a white shirt, with a blue floral tie, immaculately knotted. When he’d hired Thom a year ago Rhyme had said he could wear jeans and T-shirts if he wanted. But he’d been dressed impeccably every day since. Rhyme didn’t know why it contributed to the decision to keep the young man on, but it had. None of Thom’s predecessors had lasted more than six weeks. The number of those who quit was exactly equal to the firees.

“All right, what did you tell them?”

“I told them to give me a few minutes to make sure you were decent then they could come up. Briefly.”

“You did that. Without asking me. Thank you very much.”

Thom retreated a few steps and called down the narrow stairway to the first floor, “Come on, gentlemen.”

“They told you something, didn’t they?” Rhyme said. “You’re holding out on me.”

Thom didn’t answer and Rhyme watched the two men approach. As they entered the room Rhyme spoke first. He said to Thom, “Close the curtain. You’ve already upset the birds way too much.”

Which really meant only that he’d had enough of the sputtering sunlight.

Mute.

With the foul, sticky tape on her mouth she couldn’t speak a word and that made her feel more helpless than the metal handcuffs tight on her wrists. Than the grip of his short, strong fingers on her biceps.

The taxi driver, still in his ski mask, led her down the grimy, wet corridor, past rows of ducts and piping. They were in the basement of an office building. She had no idea where.

If I could talk to him…

T.J. Colfax was a player, the bitch of Morgan Stanley’s third floor. A negotiator.

Money? You want money? I’ll get you money, lots of it, boy. Bushels. She thought this a dozen times, trying to catch his eye, as if she could actually force the words into his thoughts.

Pleeeeeeeease, she begged silently, and began thinking about the mechanics of cashing in her 401(k) and giving him her retirement fund. Oh, please…

She remembered last night: The man turning back from the fireworks, dragging them from the cab, handcuffing them. He’d thrown them into the trunk and they’d begun driving again. First over rough cobblestones and broken asphalt then smooth roads then rough again. She heard the whir of wheels on a bridge. More turns, more rough roads. Finally, the cab stopped and the driver got out and seemed to open a gate or some doors. He drove into a garage, she thought. All the sounds of the city were cut off and the car’s bubbling exhaust rose in volume, reverberating off close walls.

Then the cab trunk opened and the man pulled her out. He yanked the diamond ring off her finger and pocketed it. Then he led her past walls of spooky faces, faded paintings of blank eyes staring at her, a butcher, a devil, three sorrowful children – painted on the crumbling plaster. Dragged her down into a moldy basement and dumped her on the floor. He clopped upstairs, leaving her in the dark, surrounded by a sickening smell – rotting flesh, garbage. There she’d lain for hours, sleeping a little, crying a lot. She’d wakened abruptly at a loud sound. A sharp explosion. Nearby. Then more troubled sleep.

A half hour ago he’d come for her again. Led her to the trunk and they’d driven for another twenty minutes. Here. Wherever here was.

They now walked into a dim basement room. In the center was a thick black pipe; he handcuffed her to it then gripped her feet and pulled them out straight in front of her, propping her in a sitting position. He crouched and tied her legs together with thin rope – it took several minutes; he was wearing leather gloves. Then he rose and gazed at her for a long moment, bent down and tore her blouse open. He walked around behind her and she gasped, feeling his hands on her shoulders, probing, squeezing her shoulder blades.