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"Ah."
Li looked away from Rhyme and he knew immediately that Sachs had slipped the Chinese cop the weapon after she was through processing it.
Well, good for him, the criminalist thought. If not for the Chinese detective, then Deng, Sachs and the Wus' daughter might've been killed tonight. Let him have some protection.
Sachs gave Cooper the serial number of the Walther and he ran it through the firearms database. "Zip," he said. "Made in the 1960s. Probably's been stolen a dozen times since then."
Sellitto called, "Just got through to a senior VP at Arnold Textile. Woke him up but he was pretty cooperative, considering. That particular carpeting is for commercial sale only--original developers and installers--and it's the top of their line. He gave me a list of twelve big developers in the area who buy directly from the manufacturer and twenty-six distributors who market to installers and subcontractors."
"Hell," Rhyme said. It would be a marathon of canvassing to find the addresses of buildings where Lustre-Rite had been installed. He said, "Get somebody on it."
Sellitto said, "I'll have 'em start waking people up. Fuck--I'm awake; why the hell shouldn't the rest of the world be?" He made a call to the Big Building to line up some detectives to help and faxed the list downtown to them.
Then Rhyme's private line rang and he answered it.
"Lincoln?" a woman's voice asked through the speakerphone.
He was thrilled to hear the caller's voice. "Dr. Weaver."
Rhyme's neurosurgeon, who'd be performing the operation next week.
"I know it's late. Am I interrupting anything? You busy?"
"Not a thing," Rhyme said and ignored Thom's exaggerated glance at the whiteboard, which attested to the fact that he was somewhat occupied at the moment.
"I've got the details for the surgery. Manhattan Hospital. Week from Friday at 10 A.M. Neurosurgery pre-op. Third floor."
"Excellent," he replied.
Thom jotted the information down and Rhyme and the doctor said good night.
"You going to doctor, Loaban?"
"Yes," he said.
"About . . . " The Chinese cop couldn't seem to think of a way to summarize Rhyme's condition and he waved toward his body.
"That's right."
Sachs said nothing, just stared at the sheet of instructions that Dr. Weaver had dictated to Thom. Rhyme knew that she would prefer he not have the operation. Most of the successes with the technique had occurred with patients whose injuries were far less severe than Rhyme's, those with the damage much lower on the spinal cord, at the lumbar or thoracic level. The surgery, as she'd told him, would probably produce no discernible benefit and was risky--it might even make him worse. And, given his lung impairment, it was possible that he could die on the table. But Sachs understood how important it was to him and was going to support him.
"So," she finally said, a stoic smile on her face, "we'll make sure we nail the Ghost before next Friday."
Rhyme noticed that Thom had been studying him closely.
"What?" the criminalist snapped.
The aide took Rhyme's blood pressure. "Too high. And you don't look good."
"Well, thank you very much," he snapped back, "but I don't think my appearance has anything to do--"
"It's quitting time," the aide said firmly. And he wasn't speaking to his boss.
Sellitto and Cooper also voted to call it a night.
"Mutiny," Rhyme muttered.
"No," Thom retorted. "Common sense."
