The Deliveryman (Lincoln Rhyme 11.50)

Rhyme was frowning. "Curious. He left them in the armory after the meeting. He wasn't that concerned that they'd be found so he wasn't particularly troubled about leaving his prints there."

"But," Sachs continued his thought, "he was worried about prints on whatever he was holding--something that either he or the other driver had with them."

"He was a deliveryman," Rhyme pointed out. "And since the truck was empty when he was killed, and locked, he either transferred something to the other driver or took delivery and then dropped it off at another location." He frowned. "What the hell was the shipment?...Mel," Rhyme ordered, "find out what trace there is on the outside of the gloves."

He prepared the sample.

As he did, Rhyme's computer dinged with the sound of an incoming email. He read the subject and the sender. "Ah, it's from Rodney."

Rodney Szarnek, their computer crimes expert down in One Police Plaza.

"He cracked Rinaldo's phone," Rhyme said, reading. "It was a burner, naturally."

Prepaid mobiles with no link to the purchaser or his or her actual address had made cops' lives far more difficult.

Rhyme continued. "It had only four texts. And five incoming calls from the same number--also an untraceable burner, now out of service. The calls weren't answered. Voice mail wasn't set up."

She walked around behind him and he could feel her gloved hand on his shoulder, just north of the DMZ where all sensation stopped.

They read the messages. The first one, from Rinaldo's burner, was sent at eleven forty.

Have package. Will hide. Have good place. Will meet U @ 7, where planned, with details. Tonight, you'll be the king of the dead.

And the below was the simple response

K

At four thirty there, Rinaldo had texted the other phone:

All hidden. We're good. No tails. Seems safe.

The answer again:

K

The incoming calls, Rhyme observed, were all made a few minutes apart and they started at 7:05 p.m., presumably his client calling with increasing agitation to inquire as to why Rinaldo was not at the delivery site. He had been murdered, Rhyme recalled, at 6 p.m.

Sachs said, "So, that answers the question. Rinaldo took delivery at the armory and then hid it somewhere, in anticipation of taking it to the final consignee that night."

King of the dead, Rhyme reflected. He had a thought. "Mel, do you have the results of the trace on the gloves?"

"I do." The tech said, "Present are--"

Rhyme said, "Lead, antimony, and barium, calcium, silicon...and, I'll go out on a limb, rubber."

"Well, no silicon, but yes, everything else. And in significant amounts. How on earth did you figure that out?" He was smiling.

But the expression faded as he regarded Rhyme's grim face. "King of the dead," he mused. "The chemicals're gunshot residue. And the rubber from a silencer of some sort. I said 'out on a limb.'" He scowled. "But of course there had to be rubber. From baffles of a silencer. Rinaldo tested the product he was picking up to make sure it worked...and he could hardly fire off a gun in Midtown without using a silencer."

Sachs said, "And given the amounts of the residue you mentioned, it's automatic weapons?"

"I hadn't thought of that. But yes, of course. There's our answer: Mr. Echi Rinaldo was taking delivery of machine guns. And I'd imagine quite a few of them, given the size of the trucks involved. The good news, I suppose, is that he didn't deliver them to the purchaser."

The bad, which went unstated, was that a large number of deadly weapons were loose in the City of New York, free for the taking to whoever found them first.

The mantle of King of the Dead was apparently up for grabs.

As head of the 128 Lords, Miguel Angel Morales was largely oblivious to politics.