"Me?" a surprised Rhyme asked.
Kara nodded. "You're all about perception and reality. People'd look at you and see that you're handicapped. . . . Is that what you say?"
"The politically correct call it 'disabled.' I myself just say that I'm fucked."
Kara laughed and continued, "They see you can't move. They probably think you've got mental problems or you're slow. Right?"
This was true. People who didn't know him often spoke slower and louder, explained the obvious in simple terms. (To Thom's disgust, Rhyme would sometimes respond by muttering incoherently or feigning Tourette's syndrome and driving the horrified visitors out of the room.) "An audience'd have instant opinions about you and be convinced that you couldn't possibly be behind the illusions they were seeing. Half of them'd be obsessing with your condition. The other half wouldn't
even look at you. That's when you'd hook 'em. . . . Anyway, there I was meeting you and you were in this wheelchair and'd obviously gone through a tough time. And I wasn't sympathetic, didn't ask how you were doing. I didn't even say, 'I'm sorry.' I was just thinking, damn, what a performer you'd be. That was pretty crass and I had a feeling you picked up on it."
This delighted him completely. He reassured her, "Believe me, I don't do well with sympathy or kid gloves. Crass scores a lot more points."
"Yeah?"
"Yep."
She lifted her coffee cup. "To the famous illusionist, the Immobilized Man."
"Sleight of hand'd be a bit of a problem," Rhyme pointed out.
Kara replied, "Like Mr. Balzac's always saying, sleight of mind's the better skill."
Then they heard the front door open and the voices of Sachs and Sellitto speaking as they walked into the hallway. Rhyme lifted an eyebrow and leaned for the straw in the tumbler. He whispered, "Watch this. It's a routine I call Vanishing the Incriminating Evidence."
*
Lon Sellitto asked, "First of all, do we think he's dead? Sleepin' wit' da fishes?"
Sachs and Rhyme looked at each other and simultaneously said, "No."
The big detective said, "You know how rough that water is in the Harlem? Kids try and swim it and you never see 'em again."
"Bring me his corpse," Rhyme said, "and I'll believe it."
He was encouraged about one thing, though: that they'd had no reports of a homicide or disappearance. The near capture and the swim in the river had probably spooked the killer; maybe now that he knew the police were close on his trail he'd either give up the attacks or at least go to ground for a while, giving Rhyme and the team a chance to find where he was hiding out.
"What about Larry Burke?" Rhyme asked.
Sellitto shook his head. "We've got dozens of people out searching. Lot of volunteers too, officers and firemen off-duty, you know. The mayor's offering a reward. . . . But I gotta say, it's not looking good. I'm thinking he might be in the trunk of the Mazda."
"They haven't brought it up yet?"
"They haven't found it yet. Water's black as night and, with that current, a diver was telling me a car could drift a half mile before it hit the bottom."
"We have to figure," Rhyme pointed out, "that he's got Burke's weapon and radio. Lon, we should change the frequency so he can't hear what we're up to."
"Sure." The detective called downtown and had all transmissions about the Conjurer case changed to the citywide special-ops frequency.
"Let's get back to the evidence. What do we have, Sachs?"
"Nothing in the Greek restaurant," she said, grimacing. "I told the owner to preserve the scene but somehow it didn't translate. Or he didn't want it to translate. By the time we got back the staff had cleaned the table and mopped the floor."
"How 'bout the pond? Where you found him."
"We found some things there," Sachs said. "He blinded us with more of that flash cotton and then set off some squibs. We thought he was shooting at first."
Cooper looked over the burned residue. "Just like the others. Can't source it."