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Rhyme said, "We'll compromise. A small glass."
"That's not a compromise. That would be a win for you and a loss for me. You can drink after the surgery." He disappeared into the kitchen.
Rhyme closed his eyes, pushed his head back into the chair angrily. Imagining--a moment of absurd fantasy--that the operation would actually fix the nerves that operated his entire arm. He told no one this--not even Amelia Sachs--but, though walking was out of the question, he often fantasized that the surgery would actually let him lift things. He now pictured grabbing the Macallan and taking a hit directly from the bottle. Rhyme could almost feel his hand around the cool, round glass.
A clink on the table beside him made him blink. The astringent smoky smell of whisky rose up and engulfed his head. He opened his eyes. Sachs had placed a small glass of scotch on the wheelchair armrest.
"It's not very full," the criminalist muttered to her. But the subtext of the comment, both Lincoln an
d she understood, was: thank you.
She winked in reply.
He drank deeply through the straw and felt the warm burn of the liquor in his mouth and throat.
Another sip.
He enjoyed the liquor but found that it did little to dull the urgency and frustration he felt at the slow pace of the case. His eyes fell on the whiteboard. One entry caught his eye.
"Sachs," he called. "Sachs!"
"What?"
"I need a phone number. Fast."
*
The Ghost held his Model 51 pistol against his cheek.
The hot metal, redolent of oil and sweet grease, gave him reassurance. Yes, he wanted a new weapon, something bigger and more dependable--like the Uzi and the Beretta he'd lost on the Dragon. But this was a good-fortune gun, one he'd had for years. He believed it was lucky because he'd come by the pistol in this way: near Taipei once, he'd gone to a temple to pray. Someone had tipped the police that he was inside and two officers stopped him as he came down the stairs. One of them, though, had hesitated to pull a gun at a Buddhist temple and, flustered, he'd dropped this very weapon on the grass. The Ghost had scooped it up, shot both of the young policemen to death, then escaped.
From that day on this gun had been his good-luck charm, a present from his bowman god, Yi.
It had been nearly an hour since Kashgari had gone inside to make sure the Wus' children stayed put. The shops had closed along this part of Canal--the armed guards were gone, he was sure, and the sidewalks were largely deserted. Let's get on with it, the Ghost thought and stretched. He was tired of waiting. Yusuf and the other Turk were too. They'd been complaining about hunger but he guessed that even some of the restaurants and delis here had security cameras and the Ghost was not going to let himself or any associate be recorded on tape for something as frivolous as food. They'd have to--
"Look," he whispered, glancing up the street.
At the end of the block, he saw two people climb from a cab, nervously keeping their heads down. The Wus. The Ghost recognized them clearly from the cheap running suits they wore. They paid the driver and walked into a drugstore on the corner, the husband clutching his wife around the waist. Her arm was in a cast or was wrapped with thick bandages. He carried a shopping bag.
"Get the masks ready. Check your weapons."
The two Turks complied.
Five minutes later the Wus left the drugstore. They were walking as quickly as they could, considering the wife's condition.
He said to Hajip, "You stay with the car. Keep the engine running. He and I"--a nod toward Yusuf--"will follow the Wus inside. We push them into their apartment and close the door. We'll use pillows for silencers. I want to bring the daughter with us. We'll keep her for a while."
Yindao would, he knew, forgive this infidelity.
The Wus were now five meters from their doorway, shuffling fast, heads down, oblivious to the gods of death who fluttered nearby.
The Ghost found his cell phone and called the Turk in the Wus' apartment.
"Yes?" Kashgari answered.
"The Wus're close to the building. Where are the children?"
"The boy's in the bathroom. The girl's with me."
