Silence.
“Lon?”
“Fucking hell,” the lieutenant muttered.
“What is it?”
“Just saw on the wire: Forty-Seven got another vic.”
Sachs asked, “Engaged couple?”
“No.” A pause, while Sellitto presumably read. “But it’s related. Somehow. Got to be. The vic was Kirtan Boshi. About Vimal’s age, Indian. Worked in the diamond business. An apprentice cutter. Just like Vimal. Can’t be a coincidence.”
“Circumstances?” Sachs asked.
“Basement of a coffee shop in the Fashion District. About a block from where he worked.” Sellitto paused. “Some employees just found the body but looks like he was killed around lunchtime today. Son of a bitch broke his windpipe. Killed him with the box cutter.”
“Kirtan was probably a friend of Vimal’s and knew where he lived. He probably gave the address up.”
“Yeah. He’d been tortured. A mess. And the unsub cut Kirtan’s ring finger off and put it in his mouth. Postmortem, but still.”
“Goddamn it,” Sachs muttered.
Rhyme looked her way.
“We canvassed for anybody who knew Vimal in every store in the Diamond District, Jackson Heights, other parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Never occurred to me to look for diamond cutters in the Fashion District. But Forty-Seven did. He outthought me.”
Us, Rhyme corrected silently. He outthought us. But he knew the words would mean little to her. Any failing to which she contributed, however small her part, she owned.
Sellitto said, “He’s got the Lahoris’ address now and he doesn’t know the boy’s on the run. Amelia, tell your security team at their house to stay out of sight and expect Forty-Seven might show up.”
“I will,” Sachs said. “Though I think he’s too smart to fall into a trap like that.” She sighed. “I’ll walk the grid at the coffee shop.”
Sellitto gave her the address and she hurried from the parlor, tugging her jacket on absently. A moment later Rhyme heard the engine of her big car fire up and a squeal as the tires slung her into traffic.
His eyes drifted toward the sounds out the window, gazing over the dun dusk.
So Unsub 47 had spent all day, last week, planting gas bombs meant to mimic the fires after earthquakes. Presumably more existed, and announcing that the authorities knew the quakes were being faked wouldn’t change the fact that they were timed to explode.
And even if his plans were now exposed, Unsub 47 would have no incentive whatsoever to remove the devices or let the police know where they were.
Chapter 44
The Promisor’s backup plan.
Vladimir Rostov steered the stolen Toyota carefully along the streets of Queens. East Elmhurst to be specific.
Somewhat carefully. He was used to driving in Moscow, where one didn’t need to be very careful; the congestion left little risk of high-speed collisions.
Here, though, the weaving was due to the fact he was digging beneath the passenger seat, as best he could. Making a sharp turn had catapulted his Roll N Roaster beef sandwich to the space between front passenger seat and door.
Where, where the hell, where?
Ah, he got a corner of the bag and pulled it out, ripped the paper apart with his teeth and began chewing the cold, but still tasty, sandwich.
Why the fuck don’t we have these in Moscow?
In three minutes the sandwich and fries were consumed. He belched and lit a cigarette. He noted that in America very few people smoked in cars any longer, unlike Russia. Of course, when he was through finding Vimal, the little kuritsa, and he was done with the car, he’d make sure it did plenty of smoking. This was a joke: The only way to get rid of the evidence in a vehicle was to burn it to the rims — which was, in fact, the source of an expression used in certain criminal circles in Russian. “Rim it,” a mob boss might say. Usually the automobile flambé contained merely evidence. Sometimes, a corpse. Sometimes, depending on your playful mood, the person might not yet be a corpse when you tied them up inside and set the gas tank ablazing.
Rostov now thought of the red-haired kuritsa cop once more. A fantasy blossomed in his mind: the woman as cowgirl. Vladimir Rostov happened to love the Louis L’Amour novels of the American West. He thought they were finely crafted jewels, adventure tales that gave you a peek at life back then. Russia had the Cossacks and, from Mongolia, the Tartars. But there was nothing romantic about marauding drunks and rapists. The American West... ah, those were the days of heroes! He owned all the Sergio Leone films. John Ford’s movies, too, starring John Wayne. And there was no better Western than Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.
He sometimes thought about living back then. The Germans were in Mexico. The Spanish and Portuguese in South and Central America. The French in Canada and the Caribbean.
There must have been some Russians in the nineteenth-century New World.
Oh, how he would have loved to be among them.
With his six-shooter and horse. And bourbon, of course.
And the whores.
His thoughts returned to the cowgirl kuritsa, the one with the red hair and the blue diamond on her white finger.
His blue diamond, his white finger.
He turned the corner and slowed. Vladimir Rostov was feeling proud of himself, for being smarter than the cowgirl cop.
Because I know where Vimal Lahori is going.
His backup plan.
When Rostov had his chat with Kirtan in the basement of the diner in the Fashion District, he’d learned more about Vimal than just his name and address and family. A cut here, a cut there. He’d found out Vimal had a girlfriend.
I’ll tell you but don’t hurt her!! Kirtan had written (the crushed throat matter).
“No, no, kuritsa. I won’t hurt a hair on her head. I just need to have a talk with Vimal. I won’t hurt him either. That’s a peeing promise.”
Rostov had had to read the response twice, to make it out — the kid’s hand was shaking so. The message was: Will die before I tell you if you hurt her.
Which made no sense.
“Hair on head. Really.”
Peeing promise. Rostov had just made that phrase up but he liked it. He’d use it again.
He’d bent down and slid the knife along the kid’s fingernail.
In three minutes, poof. Vimal’s girlfriend was Adeela Badour. And she lived in East Elmhurst, Queens, a mile or so from Vimal’s family.
A check of Google revealed that a Mohammad Badour lived at the address. And, yes, he had two daughters, Adeela and Taalia, twenty-two and ten. Though, sadly, no online pictures of the little creatures. Some parents were so protective.
“Anyone else?” Rostov had asked. “That Vimal is close to?”
Kirtan had shaken his head vigorously. His last gesture. Rostov had slit his throat then. It was a favor, he reasoned. The kid would have lived with guilt his whole life, for having given up Vimal and his friend.