"Lincoln?" Sellitto asked.
"Yessir. Some help. From me. I heard."
Banks kept an inappropriate smile on his face while he shuffled his butt uneasily in the chair.
"I've got an appointment in, well, any minute now," Rhyme said.
"An appointment."
"A doctor."
"Really?" Banks asked, probably to murder the silence that loomed again.
Sellitto, not sure where the conversation was going, asked, "And how've you been?"
Banks and Sellitto hadn't asked about his health when they'd arrived. It was a question people tended to avoid when they saw Lincoln Rhyme. The answer risked being a very complicated, and almost certainly an unpleasant, one.
He said simply, "I've been fine, thanks. And you? Betty?"
"We're divorced," Sellitto said quickly.
"Really?"
"She got the house and I got half a kid." The chunky cop said this with forced cheer, as if he'd used the line before, and Rhyme supposed there was a painful story behind the breakup. One he had no desire to hear. Still, he wasn't surprised that the marriage had tanked. Sellitto was a workhorse. He was one of the hundred or so first-grade detectives on the force and had been for years--he got the grade when they were handed out for merit not just time served. He'd worked close to eighty hours a week. Rhyme hadn't even known he was married for the first few months they'd worked together.
"Where you living now?" Rhyme asked, hoping a nice social conversation would tucker them out and send them on their way.
"Brooklyn. The Heights. I walk to work sometimes. You know those diets I was always on? The trick's not dieting. It's exercise."
He didn't look any fatter or thinner than the Lon Sellitto of three and a half years ago. Or the Sellitto of fifteen years ago for that matter.
"So," collegiate Banks said, "a doctor, you were saying. For a . . ."
"A new form of treatment?" Rhyme finished the dwindling question. "Exactly."
"Good luck."
"Thank you so much."
It was 11:36 a.m. Well past midmorning. Tardiness is inexcusable in a man of medicine.
He watched Banks's eyes twice scan his legs. He caught the pimply boy a second time and wasn't surprised to see the detective blush.
"So," Rhyme said. "I'm afraid I don't really have time to help you."
"But he's not here yet, right, the doctor?" asked Lon Sellitto in the same bulletproof tone he'd used to puncture homicide suspects' cover stories.
Thom appeared at the doorway with a coffeepot.
Prick, Rhyme mouthed.
"Lincoln forgot to offer you gentlemen something."
"Thom treats me like a child."
"If the bootie fits," the aide retorted.
"All right," Rhyme snapped. "Have some coffee. I'll have some mother's milk."