The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Joe Heady, a carpenter at the Whitmore Theater in Times Square, was thinking of the successful revival of the Sondheim play a year ago. He and the other set builders and gaffers had had to create a working barber's chair--well, working to the extent that it would drop open on command, allowing the customer to slide into the pit below after the Demon Barber of Fleet Street had sliced open his throat.

They'd worked for months to get the chair to function seamlessly--and to create a wonderfully gothic Dickensian set.

But the set for this job? Damn child's play. Downright boring.

Heady lugged some two-by-four pieces of common-grade pine into the set construction workshop behind the theater on 46th Street and dumped them on the concrete floor. For this play his job was to build a large maze, the sort that a rat--make that a two-foot holographic projection rat--would poke through at various points in the story, which was about some family gathering and arguing and a bunch of other crap. Not a single cut throat for the entire two hours and change. Having read the script, Heady decided a little literal blood would have helped.

But a maze was what the set designer wanted and a maze she was going to get.

A big man, with bushy black-and-gray hair, Heady arranged the pieces of wood in the order in which he'd cut them and then stiffly rose. Actually grunting. Sixty-one years old, he'd given retirement a shot; he and the wife had moved here after his thirty-six years on the assembly line in Detroit. Living closer to the kids and grandkids in Jersey was great. Up to a point. But Heady wasn't ready to hang up his tools yet, and his son-in-law hooked him up with this job. Heady was basically a machinist--the Detroit thing--but handy is handy, and the theater hired him on the spot for set-building carpentry. He loved the work. Only problem: The wood weighed a lot more than it did twenty years ago. Funny how that happens.

He spread the plans for the maze on a table nearby, then plucked a steel tape measure off his belt and a pencil--an old-time pencil, which he sharpened with a locking-blade knife--from his pocket and set them beside the plans. Pulling on his reading glasses, he reviewed the schematics.

This was one of the nicer theaters on Broadway and definitely one of the best set-building workshops in Manhattan. It was large, sixty by sixty feet, with the south wall stocked with more wood than most lumberyards had in inventory. Against the west wall were the bins of hardware (nails, nuts, bolts, springs, screws, washers, you name it), hand and power tools, workbenches, paint and a small kitchen area. In the middle, mounted to the floor, were the big power tools.

The day was pleasant and the massive double doors--large enough for the delivery of the biggest props--were open onto 46th Street. A breeze wafted in, carrying smells that Heady liked: car exhaust, perfume from who knew where, charcoal smoke from the nut and pretzel vendors. The traffic was chaotic and people in every style of clothing you could imagine streamed past constantly, surging in every direction. He'd never developed affection for Motown. But now, a convert, he was a devout Manhattanite, even though he lived in Paramus.

And he loved his job too. On nice days like this, with the doors open, passersby sometimes stopped and glanced in, curious to watch the set builders at work. One of Heady's proudest days was when someone called him to the door. The carpenter, anticipating a question about a tool or what set he was working on, was astonished when the man asked for an autograph. He'd loved the sets from the revival of The King and I and wanted Heady to sign the Playbill.

Heady heated up some water in the microwave, poured in some instant Starbucks coffee and sipped the black brew while he made notes about the cuts he was about to make. He glanced at the bench to make sure a necessary accessory was handy: sound-dampening earmuffs. He absolutely had to wear these because of a device that sat in the middle of the workshop.

The huge Ayoni table saw was the latest addition here. The bulk of the work done in set building on Broadway is carpentry--cutting, framing, joining. The Ayoni was rapidly becoming a workhorse for that task. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds, the device featured circular blades with edges sharp as shark's teeth. The steel blades were interchangeable, in varying thicknesses and tooth depth and shape--the thicker, with larger teeth, were meant for rough frames, the thinner and finer for finishing work. These wicked disks spun at nearly two thousand RPM and screamed as loudly as a jet plane's engines.

The saw would slice through the thickest wood like tearing newsprint and featured a computer chip that remembered settings and dimensions for the past fifty jobs.

To cut the two-by-four pieces for the base of the maze, Heady got a heavy, rough-cut blade from a rack on the wall. Before removing the blade presently mounted to the Ayoni, however, and replacing it with this one, he'd have to shut the power off. The unit was hardwired into the theater's electrical system, since its motor--running at a gutsy eight horsepower--drew 220 volts and many amps.

The manufacturer recommended that you shut off the power to the entire facility at the main circuit breaker before replacing blades, but here at the theater no workers ever did, since the breaker was in the basement. But perhaps because the Ayoni Corporation knew that purchasers might not always cut the main juice, the saw itself had two power cutoffs. One was the device's own circuit breaker. The second was the on/off switch that started the blade spinning. It was a bit inconvenient to reach down, to the base of the machine, find the circuit breaker and click it off, but no way was Heady going to swap blades without doing so. The tool was as dangerous as a guillotine. (He'd heard about an accident in which an assistant had fallen next to an Ayoni as it ran and instinctively reached out to steady himself. His forearm hit the blade and was severed halfway between wrist and elbow in an instant. The poor man had felt not a bit of pain for a good ten seconds, so fast and clean was the cut.)

So he now reached down and popped the breaker.

Then, just to double-check, he flipped on the power switch; nothing. He returned it to the off position. Heady now gripped the blade with his left hand and held it steady while, with a socket wrench in his right, he began to loosen the nuts fixing the disk to the shaft. He was glad that he'd taken the redundant precautions; it occurred to him that should the unit happen to start, not only would he lose the fingers of his left hand but the wrench would crush his right to a pulp.

Two thousand RPM.

But in five minutes the blade was changed safely. The power was back on. And he readied the first piece to cut.

There was no doubting the saw's efficiency; it made all the carpenters' lives so much easier. On the other hand, Healy had to admit he wasn't looking forward to spending the next few hours changing blades and slicing up the wood for the maze.

Fact was, the thing scared the hell out of him.

The waitress offered a flirt.

Mid-thirties, Nick guessed. With a pretty, heart-shaped face, black hair, black as oil, tied up tight, the curls just waiting to escape. Tight uniform too. Low cut. That was one thing he'd change if he became owner of the restaurant. He'd like a little more family-friendly staff. Though maybe the old farts in the neighborhood liked the view Hannah offered.

He smiled back, but with a different smile from hers, polite and formal, and asked for Vittorio. She stepped away, returned and said he'd be out in a few minutes. "Have a seat, have some coffee."

She tried another flirt.

"Black please. One ice cube."

"Iced coffee?"

"No. A cup. Hot coffee but an ice cube in it."

Sitting down in the window booth she took him to, Nick looked around at the place. Nice, he assessed. He liked it right away. The linoleum would have to go--too many heel marks--and he'd lose the wallpaper and paint the walls. Maybe dark red. The place had plenty of windows and good lighting. The room could handle walls that color. And he'd put up some paintings. Find some of old Brooklyn, this very neighborhood if he could.

Nick loved the borough. Most people didn't know that BK had been a city unto itself until 1898, when it got absorbed and became a part of New York. In fact, Brooklyn had been one of the biggest cities in the country (was still the biggest borough). He'd find some prints of the waterfront and Prospect Park. Maybe portraits of some famous Brooklynites. Walt Whitman. Sure, had to have him. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," the poem--good, he'd get a ferry print. And Amelia's father--also from BK--had told him that George Washington and the colonial troops had fought the British here (and lost, but retreated safely to Manhattan, thanks to a frozen river). George Gershwin. Mark Twain supposedly named his character Tom Sawyer after a heroic firefighter from Brooklyn. He'd get pictures of them all. Maybe those pen-and-ink drawings. They were cool. They were classy.