Another thud.
Ah, that one hurt bad.
There was some asphalt but a lot of stone, brick and road repair steel plates.
The Torino Cobra is a car made for smooth.
Sachs had always had a soft spot in her heart for the neighborhood — abbreviated by some as the LES, which she could never accept. Far too precious and hipster a moniker, the antithesis of the place. It had a more colorful and varied history than any other part of Manhattan: In the late nineteenth century, the place became the home of Germans, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and other European immigrants. The teeming neighborhood, filled with dark and claustrophobic tenements and chaotic pushcart-cluttered streets, gave birth to entertainers like James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and the Gershwins. Film companies like Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox could trace their ancestry to the Lower East Side.
The neighborhood became the first truly integrated enclave in New York City after the Second World War, when black and Puerto Rican families joined the white longtimers and everyone lived in relative harmony.
The Lower East Side was also the site of the city’s worst tragedy until September 11. The General Slocum, a ship chartered to take thirteen hundred German Americans to a church event, caught fire in the East River. More than a thousand passengers perished, and the sorrow that spread like plague through the community spawned a migration. Virtually every resident of Little Germany on the Lower East Side moved several miles north and resettled in Yorkville.
Discovery Channel stuff aside, Amelia Sachs had a special connection with the area. It was here, many years ago, that she had made her first felony bust — stopping an armed robbery in progress while off duty. She’d been on a Sunday brunch date, and she and — what was his name? Fred. No, Frank. She and Frank were walking back from a numbingly massive meal at Katz’s Deli when her companion had stopped abruptly. He’d pointed with an uneasy finger. “Hey. Does that guy, see him? Does he have a gun?”
Then Sachs’s doggy bag was tumbling to the sidewalk, her Glock was in her hand and Frank was being shoved unceremoniously to safety behind a Dumpster. She charged forward, crying to passersby, “Get down, get down, police!” Then things turned ugly. She traded a few rounds with the crackhead, who’d had the doubly bad judgment to stick up a wholesale lamp store (a window sign read, Credit Cards Only) and to point his weapon her way. NYPD procedure dictated that if an officer shoots, he or she should shoot to kill, but Sachs hadn’t been prepared to make an existential decision under those circumstances. She’d sent a slug into his hand, removing the weapon and any future threat. An easy shot for her and, far better, less paperwork than with a fatality. Chatting manically the entire time, Frank had walked her to the subway and never asked her out again.
She now turned off this very same High Noon street — the Bowery — and made her way through the labyrinth until she came to a shadowy canyon. Those same tenements that had survived for 150 years still rose five stories toward the rectangle of, today, gray sky. The tall buildings bristled with fire escapes. One featured a real, old-fashioned laundry line, on which ghosts of shirts and jeans and skirts fluttered. Maybe to lessen, in a small, small way, a carbon footprint.
The street was mostly residential, but there were some ground-floor retail stores. A dry cleaner. A “vintage” (that is, used) clothing shop. A secondhand bookstore, specializing largely in the occult.
And Blaustein’s Jewelry.
She parked half on the sidewalk, tossed the NYPD placard on the dash and climbed out. The cool day kept people home and the absence of much to do on this street kept the sightseers elsewhere. The sidewalk was deserted.
She walked to the front of the store. There was a Closed sign on the door, but Edward Ackroyd had told her that Abe Blaustein was expecting her. She peered inside. The showroom, filled with display cases, was empty and dark but there was a light in the back and she saw some motion there. A man in a dusty black suit and wearing a yarmulke glanced up and waved her in.
The door wasn’t locked and she pushed inside.
Sachs got no more than three feet. She tripped over something she hadn’t seen and fell forward, landing hard on the old, oak floor with a grunt of pain.
Just as she was noting with shock the thick wire strung at ankle level, the man charged forward and dropped onto her back, his knee knocking the air from her lungs, filling her with nausea. Pain consumed her and she cried out. The yarmulke was gone and he’d donned the familiar ski mask.
As she reached for her weapon, he fished it from her holster and pocketed it, along with her phone. His hands were encased in cloth gloves. Then he snapped her own cuffs around her wrists, behind her. And, unnecessarily, slammed a fist into her lower back. She cried out as a new agony radiated through her body, next door to the pain from the fall against the plank at the jobsite.
The man paused, as he had a coughing fit. She felt his breath and spittle on her neck. The smell was of liquor and garlic and copious, sweet aftershave.
She was aware of the assailant leaning close. She tensed, waiting for his fist again. But, no, this was weird. He was only rubbing the third finger of her left hand, as if he was studying her wedding or engagement ring.
She began, “People know I’m here. This is a bad idea—”
“Shhh, little kuritsa,” came the Russian-accented voice. “Shhh.”
She then was half carried, half dragged into the back of the shop. He deposited her hard on the carpeted floor of the office, right next to the still, pale body of a man, surely Abraham Blaustein, the owner. From his pocket, the Russian extracted a utility knife and worked the thumb button, to slide out a shiny razor blade.
And she recalled what Lincoln Rhyme had said.
I won’t make that mistake again...
The last words he would ever speak to her.
Chapter 55
Poor Abe,” the Russian was muttering.
He was looking through her wallet, her shoulder bag, clumsily because of the gloves. None of the contents seemed to interest him. He tossed everything aside.
“Poor kuritsa. Abe-ra-ham. Poor Jew. Did stupid things, talking about Ezekiel Shapiro and me.” He clicked his tongue. “I saw him talking to asshole insurance man. Was stupid, don’t you think he was stupid?”
He crouched beside her. “Now, now. I am needing some things. I need to know where to find boy, Vimal? You know him, yes, you do. And insurance man. Abraham told me — after we play a few games.” A nod at the knife. “He told me he was talking to this Edward. You tell me where Vimal and this Edward’s last name and where to find them... and all good. All good for you.”
A trap, of course. The unsub had forced Blaustein to call Ackroyd and arrange a meeting with the police. But not just anyone. The unsub wanted her. She knew where Vimal Lahori was.
The pain assaulted from all directions, her ribs, her head — and her wrists. She realized she’d never been cuffed before and the steel was tight against bone and skin. Sachs was helpless. Still stunned and in searing pain from the crippling drop of his knee into her back. It had emptied her lungs. She still was struggling for breath.
Fainting...
No, can’t faint.
Not acceptable.
He had, it seemed, realized just then that he was still in disguise. He brusquely pulled Blaustein’s jacket off and tossed it aside.
“Jew jacket.” He coughed briefly. Wiped his mouth and looked at the napkin. “Good, good. All good.”