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“We have to listen to that?” Brunet, slightly older, asked with an unnecessary glance at the radio. It was disgorging soft rock.
“So change it. Whatever you want. What’re the odds he’ll show up here?”
“You’re not saying that you really mean what’re the odds. You’re saying it like you mean this’s a waste of time.”
Blond: “Ex-act-ly. No, that’s country. Find another station.”
“You said whatever I wanted. I changed it to country.”
“Hip-hop.”
“I could do hip-hop.”
The NYPD unwritten rule was that on stakeout it was okay to listen to music because that tended to keep you awake. Sports were forbidden because games distracted from your mission of observing bad guys doing bad things. This was tough. Nine-tenths of the force loved sports. The rest were assholes.
The cultural compromise ironed out, they sat back and continued to watch the street.
“Uhm. Where’d this come from?” Brunet asked the question.
He hadn’t been at the briefing. Blond had snagged him for the detail because they got along pretty well and agreed on most stuff. Important stuff. Teams and politics. Music didn’t count.
“You know that guy in the wheelchair? Ex-cop.”
“Who doesn’t? Rhyme. Captain. Crime Scene.”
Blond told him, “There’s somebody got into the country. Terrorist or something. Snuck in in the wheel well of a plane. From England.”
“Calling bogus. You couldn’t do that. Impossible.”
“A hundred bucks?” Blond reached into his pocket and pulled out bills. He counted. “Eighty-seven bucks?”
Brunet grew cautious. “Put it away. But how the fuck?”
“Oxygen tank and a heater.”
“No shit.” Brunet was both impressed at the feat and relieved that he hadn’t lost the price of dinner for him and the wife.
“So this guy’s the one behind the crane this morning.”
“And Rhyme’s running the case? How’s that work? He’s a civie.”
“Sellitto out of Major Cases, downtown? He’s lead.”
“Oh, the sourpuss.”
“But Rhyme kind of runs it.”
Moments passed, more scanning the street. Brunet said: “So, he really can’t walk? Rhyme?”
“Sure, he can walk. He runs marathons too. He just sits in a wheelchair all day ’cause it gets him sympathy.”
“I’m only saying.”
Sipping more of the Cuban coffee, Blond looked at the printout once more, then scanned the street again for a sighting of the man depicted on the sheet.
Charles Vespasian Hale.
A more ordinary-looking man you could not find.
