"Tell him to make the call."
"Okay, Linc. Here we go."
The radio clicked off.
Waiting.
To see if this time the Dancer had faltered. To see if this time Rhyme had out-thought the cold brilliance of the man's mind.
Waiting.
Stephen's cell phone brayed. He flipped it open.
"'Lo."
"Hi. It's me. It's--"
"I know," Stephen said. "Don't use names."
"Right, sure." Jodie sounded nervous as a cornered 'coon. A pause, then the little man said, "Well, I'm here."
"Good. You got that Negro to help you?"
"Uhm, yeah. He's here."
"And where are you? Exactly?"
"Across the street from that town house. Man, there're a lot of cops. But nobody's paying any attention to me. There's a van just pulled up a minute ago. One of those four-by-fours. A big one. A Yukon. It's blue and it's easy to spot." In his discomfort he was rambling. "It's really, really neat. It has mirrored windows."
"That means they're bulletproof."
"Oh. Really. It's neat how you know all this stuff."
You're going to die, Stephen said to him silently.
"This man and a woman just ran out of the alley with, like, ten cops. I'm sure it's them."
"Not decoys?"
"Well, they didn't look like cops and they were looking pretty freaked out. Are you on Lexington?"
"Yeah."
"In a car?" Jodie asked.
"Of course in a car," Stephen said. "I stole some little shit Jap thing. I'm going to follow them. Then wait till they get to some deserted area and do it."
"How?"
"How what?"
"How're you going to do it? Like a grenade or a machine gun?"
Stephen thought, Wouldn't you like to know?
He said, "I'm not sure. It depends."
"You see 'em?" Jodie asked, sounding uncomfortable.