The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

Sir, I am . . . Sir, no sir.

Are you going soft on me, Soldier? Are you feeling like a little pussy schoolgirl?

Sir, no sir. I am a knife blade, sir. I am pure death. I have a hard-on to kill, sir!

Breathed deeply. Slowly calmed.

He hid the guitar case containing the Model 40 on the roof, under a wooden water tower. The rest of the equipment he transferred to a large book bag, and then pulled on a Columbia University windbreaker and his baseball cap.

He climbed down the fire escape and disappeared into the alley, feeling ashamed, even scared--not of his enemy's bullets but of the piercing hot gaze of Lincoln the Worm, moving closer, easing slowly but relentlessly through the city, looking for him.

Stephen had planned on an invasive entry, but he didn't have to kill a soul. The office building next to the safe house was empty.

The lobby was deserted and there were no security cameras inside. The main door was wedged partly open with a rubber doorstop and he saw dollies and furniture pads stacked beside it. It was tempting, but he didn't want to run into any movers or tenants, so he stepped outside again and slipped around the corner, away from the safe house. He eased behind a potted pine tree, which hid him from the sidewalk. With his elbow he broke the narrow window leading into a darkened office--of a psychiatrist, it turned out--and climbed in. He stood completely still for five minutes, pistol in hand. Nothing. He then eased silently out the door and into the first-floor corridor of the building.

He paused outside the office he believed was the one with the window opening onto the alley--the one with the blowing curtain. Stephen reached for the doorknob.

But instinct told him to change his plans. He decided to try the basement. He found the stairs and descended into the musty warren of basement rooms.

Stephen worked his way silently toward the side of the building closest to the safe house and pushed open a steel door. He walked into a dimly lit twenty-by-twenty room filled with boxes and old appliances. He found a head-high window that opened onto the alley.

It'd be a tight fit. He'd have to remove the glass and the frame. But once he was out he could slip directly behind a pile of trash bags and in a sniper's low crawl make his way to the fire door of the safe house. Much safer than the window upstairs.

Stephen thought: I've done it.

He'd fooled them all.

Fooled Lincoln the Worm! This gave him as much pleasure as killing the two victims would.

He took a screwdriver from his book bag and began to work the glazier's putty out of the window. The gray wads came away slowly and he was so absorbed in his task that by the time he dropped the screwdriver and got his hand on the butt of his Beretta, the man was on top of him, shoving a pistol into Stephen's neck and telling him in a whisper, "You move an inch and you're dead."

III

Craft smanship

[The falcon] began to fly. To fly: the horrible aerial toad, the silent-feathered owl, the humpbacked aviating Richard III, he made toward me close to the ground. His wings beat with a measured purpose, the two eyes of his low-held head fixed me with a ghoulish concentration.

The Goshawk,

T. H. White

. . . Chapter Nineteen

Hour 23 of 45

Short-barrel, probably Colt or Smittie or Dago knockoff, not fired recently. Or oiled.

I smell rust.

And what does a rusty gun tell us, Soldier?

Plenty, sir.

Stephen Kall lifted his hands.

The high, unsteady voice said, "Drop your gun over there. And your walkie-talkie."

Walkie-talkie?