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As Gilligan started the engine, Hale asked, “The GPS is disconnected, right?”
“Yeah. I made sure.”
“Head south. Then east. We’re going to Webber and Blenheim.”
After twenty minutes of negotiating the narrow downtown streets, which grew increasingly deserted, they arrived at the intersection. A vacant lot took up half the block. Mostly dirt, some clumps of grass. A dead tree. Trash. In a few places, the sunken brownstone remains of tenements, typical of nineteenth-century Lower East Side.
“What’s here?”
“Part of my plans for Rhyme.”
The detective pulled the sleek car to the curb—carefully; he’d be afraid of scratching the wheels. “He really is an arrogant son of a bitch, you know.”
“No doubt about that.”
They climbed from the car and walked to the six-foot-high chain-link fence around the lot. The gate had been stretched open, so it was easy to slip through.
Hale pointed to a row of abandoned tenements on the other side of the lot.
Gilligan said, “I was thinking about Rhyme.”
“Yes?”
“My brother and me, we hunt. Have all our lives. We’re fucking good shots. Rhyme gets out of the town house some.”
Hale was thinking: Rhyme goes to the Manhattan School of Criminal Justice for the courses he teaches. Tuesday and Thursday and every other weekend. The school was two thousand, three hundred feet from the town house. Usually, his aide drove him in the disabled-accessible van, but on nice days he sometimes motored his way to and from class.
“I could get up on one of those buildings. Two shots. That’d be it. A third for his aide, so he doesn’t try any lifesaving shit. I’d only charge an extra fifty K. What do you think?”
Hale was silent. Then: “No, I think we’ll stick to what I’ve planned.”
Gilligan laughed. “We negotiating? Okay,thirtyK.”
“The plan.”
“Like building a watch,” Gilligan said. “You don’t change the design halfway through.”
“Just like that.”
Hale had slowed and Gilligan walked ahead a few paces. When he turned back, he found that he was looking at Hale’s hand, which held a silenced weapon pointed his way.
His eyes revealed shock.
Disbelief too, as if having seen Hale put his Glock back into the compartment beside the trailer door, it was impossible to fathom the concept that someone could actually owntwopistols.
11.
LON SELLITTO:“So what is it, kryptonite?”
A pop culture reference, Rhyme guessed. Maybe some weapon used by a villain in a movie.
“An inorganic acid. Hydrofluoric. HF’s the chemical symbol. Technically it’s classified as a weak acid.”
Sachs scoffed and Sellitto grumbled, “Weak? Tellhimthat.” Nodding toward the pictures of the dead construction worker.
“That only means it partially dissociates in water. It’s an ion issue. It can be as corrosive as any other acid. But with HF, corrosion isn’t the real problem. It’s the combination of the elements that makes it so deadly. It’s a one-two punch. The H—hydrogen—burns through the top layer of skin so fast you hardly feel it … Though you definitely do an hour or two later. Then, once it’s in your body, the F—fluoride—attacks internal cells. The result is liquefaction necrosis. And the name of that condition pretty much says it all. Poisoning occurs by contact or inhalation. Breathe it and it’ll burn all the way through your lungs. Dyspnea, cyanosis, pulmonary edema.”
This description coincided with Sachs hitting the oxygen once more.
