The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

"The fuck you doing, man?"

"Shut up." Hands patted him down and found the hidden pistol. Handcuffs ratcheted on and Jax was jerked into a sitting position. He found himself looking over an FBI identification card. The first name on it was Frederick. The second was Dellray.

"Oh, man," Jax said, his voice hollow. "I don't need this shit."

"Well, guess what, sonny, there a lot more manure comin' yo' way. So you better get used to it." The agent stood up and a moment later Jax heard, "This is Dellray. I'm outside. I think I got Boyd's boyfriend down. I just saw him slip some bills to a kid coming out of Lincoln's town house. Black kid, maybe thirteen. What was he doing there? . . . A bag? Fuck, it's a device! Probably gas. Boyd must've given it to this piece of crap to sneak inside. Get everybody out and call in a ten thirty-three . . . . And get somebody to Geneva now!"

*

In Rhyme's lab the big man sat cuffed and leg-shackled in a chair, surrounded by Dellray, Rhyme, Bell, Sachs and Sellitto. He'd been relieved of a pistol, wallet, knife, keys, a cell phone, cigarettes, money.

For a half hour, utter chaos had reigned in Lincoln Rhyme's town house. Bell and Sachs had literally grabbed Geneva and hustled her out the back door and into Bell's car, which sped off in case there was yet another assailant planning to move on Geneva outside. Everyone else evacuated into the alley. The Bomb Squad, again in bio suits, had gone upstairs and X-rayed and then chemically tested the books. No explosives, no poison gas. They were just books, the purpose being, Rhyme assumed, to make them think there was a device in the bag. After they'd evacuated the town house, the accomplice would sneak in through the back door or enter with firefighters or police and wait for a chance to kill Geneva.

So this was the man Dellray had heard rumors about yesterday, who'd almost gotten to Geneva at the Langston Hughes school yard, who'd found out where she lived and who'd followed her to Rhyme's to carry out yet another attempt on her life.

He was also the man, Rhyme hoped, who could tell them who'd hired Boyd.

The criminalist now looked him over carefully, this large, unsmiling man. He'd traded in his combat jacket for a tattered tan sports coat, probably assuming that they'd spotted him at the school yesterday in the green jacket.

He blinked and looked down at the floor, diminished by his arrest but not intimidated by the crescent of officers around him. Finally he said, "Look, you don't--"

"Shhhhh," Dellray said ominously and continued to rifle through the man's wallet, as he explained to the team what had happened. The agent had been coming to deliver reports about the FBI's jewelry district money-laundering investigations when he'd seen the teenage boy come out of Rhyme's. "Saw the beast pass the kid some bills then get his ass up off a bench and leave. Descrip and the limp matched what we heard before. Looked funny to me, 'specially when I saw he had a de-formed ankle." The agent nodded toward the small .32 automatic he'd found in the man's sock. Dellray explained that he'd pulled off his own jacket, wrapped it around the files and slipped them behind some bushes, then smeared some dirt on his running suit to impersonate a homeless man, a role he'd made famous in New York when he was an undercover agent. He'd then proceeded to collar the man.

"Let me say something," Boyd's partner began.

Dellray wagged a huge finger at the man. "We'll give ya this real clear little nod, we want any words trickling outa yo' mouth. We altogether on that?"

"I--"

"Al-to-gether?"

He nodded grimly.

The FBI agent held up what he'd found in the wallet: money, a few family pictures, a faded, shabby photograph. "What's this?" he asked.

"My tag."

The agent held the snapshot closer to Rhyme. It was an old boxy New York City subway. The colorful graffiti on the side read, Jax 157.

"Graffiti artist," Sachs said, lifting an eyebrow. "Pretty good, too."

"You still go by Jax?" Rhyme asked.

"Usually."

Dellray was holding up a picture ID card. "You may've been Jax to the fine folk at the Transit Authority, but it's lookin' like you're Alonzo Jackson to the rest of the world. Also known by the illuminating moniker Inmate Two-two-oh-nine-three-fo', hailin' from the Department of Co-rrections in the bee-yootiful city of Alden, New York."

"That's Buffalo, right?" Rhyme asked.

Boyd's accomplice nodded.

"The prison connection again. That how you know him?"

"Who?"

"Thompson Boyd."

"I don't know anybody named Boyd."