The Deliveryman (Lincoln Rhyme 11.50)

The door swung open and he cried out, seeing the two men look their way. They turned and walked inside, putting their guns away. And behind them was Mr. Abbott.

Only it turned out he wasn't really Mr. Abbott. The skinny Latino man in a checkered jacket said to him. "What do we do now, Mr. Morales?"

"Bring him downstairs. We've wasted too much time."

The plan was working out.

Miguel Angel Morales himself had come up with the idea of having his lieutenant, Raphael Ortiz, conduct surveillance and infiltrate Child and Family Services and learn which foster family Echi Rinaldo's son was going to be temporarily placed with. If they'd had more time, he would have found a couple to pretend to be the Abbotts, the foster family for Javier. But the matter had moved too quickly and the only two people available for masquerade were Morales and his wife, Connie.

They'd gotten this address and hurried here. Morales himself had murdered the Abbotts and managed to clean the place of any pictures of the real couple just before that redheaded cop brought the boy here.

Morales at first intended to use the child as bait, in hopes that whoever had killed Rinaldo had possession of the shipment and would come for the child to eliminate him as a witness. But as his triggerman, Stan Coelho, had learned--and as Morales himself had guessed--it looked like Rinaldo's killing was random and had nothing to do with the guns.

But then he came up with another idea: using the boy to track down where the deliveryman might have hidden the shipment. He'd been amused when Connie had told him that the redheaded cop, Sachs, had actually suggested the kid do the same--drawing pictures of where he and his father had been.

Now, on the main floor, Connie said, "Javier, you don't have to be afraid. These men, they didn't kill your father. They were friends with him. We're all friends."

"True, kid. We were buddies, me and your dad." Coelho was smiling, though the expression looked somewhat sinister to Morales. "I want the assholes who killed him as much as you do. I find 'em, they're fucked."

Connie frowned and clicked her tongue.

The ATF agent said, "He's heard the word before, ain't you, kid?"

Javier swallowed and gazed from face to face. "He call you Mr. Morales." Confusion filled his small face.

"We're just pretending to be the Abbotts. We're borrowing their house here."

"Where are they?" He looked around the rooms.

In the basement in garbage bags, soon to be in the Jersey swamplands, according to the plans Ortiz had made.

"They're away for a while. They agreed to help us. We have to be careful. Because the men who killed your father are very dangerous. We have to stay undercover. You know undercover, right?"

"Men who killed him?" Javier shook his head. "I only saw one man. That's all."

"But we think he was working for others." Morales was adlibbing but he thought he sounded pretty reasonable, and even a little scared, and the boy seemed to buy it. He nodded and fiddled with his tablet. "Why you don't, you know, go to the police?"

Connie said, "We're working with them, Javier. That Detective Amelia. She knows who we are. She's just keeping up the cover when she called us the Abbotts."

Morales nodded. "Remember what she asked you? Where you and your father were yesterday? That's what we're trying to find out. How're you coming with the pictures?"

"I couldn't remember very much."

Morales had looked at the tablet earlier. The boy had done some cartoon sketches but none related to the redheaded cop's assignment.

Morales said, "My associate here, Mr. Ortiz, has found out almost everywhere he went. Except for an hour about three p.m. Three in the afternoon. Do you know what delivery he made then? If we can figure that out we can figure out who killed him. And catch him."

"Them," the boy said. "You said 'men.'"

"Them." Morales smiled.

But Javier was shaking his head. "I dunno. I was drawing. Just hanging in the truck, you know."

"Think back. At around two thirty he made a delivery at...?" He looked at Ortiz.

"Tony's Auto Supply. It's on Fourteenth and the river."

Morales smiled. "That's near the garbage scows. You remember that? There'd be seagulls. Thousands of seagulls. And the place stinks too."