The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Policing, Nick Carelli knew, was mostly paperwork.

You wanted collars but you hated collars because of all the forms, the notes, the triplicate, quadruplicate and whatever the hell five copies of something was.

But the good news now was that the Internal Affairs cops on his case, and the regular gold shields, had really done their homework, and he had paperwork galore to prowl through. Probably there was so much because they'd thought they had a crooked cop and a crooked cop is the best kind of perp. You nail a boy in blue who's screwed up and the world's your oyster. Press, promotion, adulation from the public.

In his apartment now. Sitting at a table he'd been meaning to level with a folded piece of paper since he'd moved back in, Nick was looking through what Amelia had brought him, ream upon ream of paperwork. Looking for a key to his salvation.

He sipped coffee, black and lukewarm. Not hot, not iced. Tepid. He didn't know why, but this was the way he always drank coffee. He remembered being with Amelia and she'd make it the old-fashioned drip way--pre-Keurig days--pouring it through a cone filter. One of his favorite memories, a freezing-cold morning, sharing the ugliest pair of striped beige pajamas on earth. Her toenails blue from polish. His blue from the cold.

He'd gulped several mugs of Folgers since he'd started going through the files Ame--no, Amelia--had brought him. How many hours had it been? He didn't want to guess.

He suddenly was aware of a scent that took him back years. He cocked his head, inhaled. Yes, definitely. The source? He lifted one of the file folders. Where Amelia had undoubtedly held it. She wasn't into perfume. But she tended to use the same lotions and shampoos, which had their own distinctive fragrance. This was what he now smelled. Hand cream, Guerlain, he believed. Amazed the name came back to him.

He discarded a few other memories, with difficulty, and returned to the paperwork. Page after page.

An hour crawled past. Another. Numbing. He decided to go for a late-night run. Five more minutes.

But finding what he so desperately wanted took only two.

Jesus. Oh, my sweet Jesus!

He was reading from a report that had been put together as part of the larger investigation into police involvement in hijackings. It was dated nearly a year after he had gone to jail. There was a photocopy of a detective's handwritten notes, very hard to read--it looked like the officer had used pencil.

2/23. Interv albert constanto olice investigation 44-3452--operation take back subject not involved in jackings but sheet on drug missed court rants, dropped one, kicked down to lesser included, subject reported overheard... in flannigan's bar key man for stolen merch, always behind scenes, layers of protection knows "everything" in BK, white male, fifties, first name starts with j married nanci , "j" is key constanto says.

I'll say he's key, Nick Carelli thought. For my mission at least. Flannigan's was one of the underground meeting places for organized crime operations. This mysterious "J" figure, who'd operated in BK--Brooklyn--with connections and a wife, Nanci, would know who was who in the hijacking scene back then. And if he couldn't directly help Nick, he'd probably know somebody who could. He flipped through the remaining pages, hoping to find a transcript of the notes, which would be easier to read, but no. There wasn't much else. And no follow-up finding the "J" figure and his wife Nanci.

Then he saw why.

An NYPD memo announced the end of Operation Take Back. The commissioner praised the officers for greatly reducing the incidence of hijackings and the involvement of corrupt police officers in them. Many 'jackers and their police allies were behind bars; others, against whom cases could not be made, had been driven out of the business. The real answer was made clear in several other memos, announcing the formation of several anti-terrorist and -drug task forces. Resources within the NYPD were limited, always true, and stolen TVs fall pretty low on the gotta-stop-it scale, compared with al-Qaeda wannabes in Westchester targeting synagogues and Times Square.

Well, good news for him. This meant it was all the more likely J and Nanci were still free and would be able to help him.

His first reaction was to pick up the phone and call Amelia, tell her that what she'd done--betting on him--had paid off. But then he decided not to. He'd called her earlier but she hadn't picked up. He sensed she wouldn't pick up now either. Anyway, he wanted something more substantive to tell her and he still had to track down this J, convince him to help. And Nick didn't have a lot of street cred. Former cop and former con. That meant a lot of folks, from both sides of the swamp, wouldn't be real inclined to help him out.

Also, talking to Amelia would give free rein to those feelings again, and that was not, he guessed, a good idea.

Or was it?

He pictured her again, that long red hair, her face, the full lips. She seemed hardly to have aged while he was inside. He remembered waking up beside her, listening to the clock radio, the announcer: "Ten-ten WINS... you give us twenty-two minutes, we'll give you the world."

Reflect later, he told himself bluntly. Get your ass in gear. You've got work to do.

CHAPTER 25

Their first argument of substance.

About something small. But an essential aspect of forensic work is that something small can mean the difference between a killer killing once more or never again.

"It's your database," Juliette Archer was saying to Rhyme. "You put it together." A concession of sorts. But then she added, "That was, of course, a while ago, no?"

They were in the parlor. Mel Cooper was the only one present. Pulaski was home, as was Sachs, with her mother.

Cooper was holding a dry marker, glancing with his infinitely patient face from Rhyme to Archer, waiting for a conclusion to settle like a bee on a stamen. So far, only flutter.

Rhyme replied, "Geologic shifts happen rather slowly in my experience. Over millions of years, in fact." A subtle but acerbic assault on her position.

The issue was a simple one, having to do with the humus--decomposed earth--Sachs had found at the earlier crime scene. The composition of the humus, Rhyme believed, dictated that its source was Queens, and, because of the large amounts of fertilizer and weed killer (he too largely discounted bombs and human poisons), it was a place where an impressive lawn was important, like a country club, resort, mansion, golf course.