Well, the one in his gym bag was just as nice. Better, actually. Bigger and the colors were brighter.
She'd love it. Yeah, Nick was feeling good.
Whistling...
Jon Perone had left a message that he was getting Nick's money together, writing up the fake loan documents. Nick would look them over carefully. He had to make sure the deal appeared legitimate, so that anyone close to him--well, mostly his parole office and Amelia--would believe he came by the cash legitimately. He'd convince them. And he knew Ame would accept it. He knew this because he'd seen in her eyes that she wanted to accept it.
Then Vittorio, the restaurant owner, would accept the offer, because Perone and his minder Ralph Seville, the suspender guy, would make sure he did. He'd get the place up and going--red paint, better uniforms--secure a liquor license waiver and rename the joint Carelli's Cafe. Nick would slip into legitimacy. His past buried. No one the wiser.
As for his quest to prove his innocence, Nick would just let it peter out. Tell Amelia and her mother and their friends that the leads had dried up, that one witness from back then was dead, that another had Alzheimer's and couldn't remember anything. He'd get a long face and look sad that the search wasn't working. Hell, and I tried so hard...
Ame would take his hand and say it was all right. She knew in her heart he was innocent--and she'd already been hearing the word on the street, thanks to Perone, that Nick hadn't been guilty after all. He felt bad lying to her--making up that crap about Delgado, who couldn't have run a 'jacking operation if his life depended on it--but some sacrifices had to be made.
A half block later he thought of Freddy Caruthers again.
Ralph Seville, Perone's minder, had called Nick and told him that Freddy's corpse was in Newtown Creek, wrapped in chain link and decorated with thirty-pound barbells. Nick supposed Seville knew what he was doing but he'd picked a hell of a resting place for Freddy. That body of water, separating Brooklyn and Queens, was one of the most polluted in the country and had been the site of the infamous Greenpoint oil spill, worse than that from the Exxon Valdez.
Well, now, shit. A real shame about Freddy. The guilt prodded. And the man a father too.
Twins're boys. The four-and five-year-old're girls...
That hurt.
But sorry. There had to be some casualties. Nick was owed. What had happened to him had been so unfair--a little hijacking, a little pistol-whipping (the driver of the tractor-trailer he'd hit had been a complete asshole) and the system had come down on him with both feet, when he'd done pretty much what everybody did. The whole fucking world got away with all kinds of shit. And what was he rewarded with? Years and years of his life stolen.
I'm owed...
Nick waited for a light and then crossed the street. He felt the gym bag, with the cityscape inside, pressing lightly on his back, like a loving arm. He was picturing Amelia, her fashion model's face, her straight red hair, full lips. He couldn't get her out of his mind. Remembering her asleep the other night, fingers in a partial fist, breathing shallow and soft.
He turned onto his block and as he did he thought of someone else: Lincoln Rhyme.
Nick had nothing but respect for the man. Hell, if Rhyme'd been running the 'jacking cases, Nick and the crews he fenced to would've been busted months before--and the charges would've been a lot worse. You couldn't help but admire a mind like that.
And Rhyme cared for Amelia. That was good.
Sure, it'd be tough to take her away from him. But, of course, Nick took solace in the fact that she really couldn't love him. How could you love somebody who was... well, like that. She was with him out of sympathy, had to be. Rhyme would have to know that. He'd get over it.
Maybe in the future they could all be friends.
Amelia Sachs had finished walking the grid at Alicia Morgan's apartment, which had revealed few, if any, clues as to Vernon Griffith's whereabouts, and she was in a reflective mood, thinking--of all things--about the nature of evil.
Bad had so many different faces.
Alicia Morgan was one manifestation. Lincoln Rhyme had called and told her what happened at the town house, how Alicia was the mastermind of the product liability killings. That her motive was revenge for a terrible injustice seemed to put the evil she'd perpetrated in a different category from that of, say, a serial rapist or a terrorist.
Then there was yet another evil: Those in the stream of commerce who had decided not to correct a vehicle that they knew might injure or kill. Perhaps greed or perhaps the layers of corporate structure shielded them from conscience, the way an exoskeleton protects the liquid heart of a beetle. And maybe the car and fuel injector executives had truly hoped, or even prayed in their spotless suburban churches on Sunday, that the worst would not come to pass and the passengers who drove about in their gadgety and sleek ticking-time-bomb cars would live long, unhurt lives.
Then there was Vernon Griffith, seduced--literally--by a woman who had preyed on his insecurities.
And what is the worst evil? Amelia Sachs asked herself.
She was sitting on a couch at the moment, leaning back against the well-worn leather. Thinking now: Where are you, Vernon? Hiding out a mile away? Ten thousand?
If anyone could determine his whereabouts it would be herself, Rhyme and Cooper. Oh, and Juliette Archer too. The intern. She was good for a newbie. Her mind was quick and she displayed a detachment that was so Lincoln Rhyme. And so necessary to this odd world of forensic analysis. Rhyme had been good before his accident, Sachs was sure, though she hadn't known him then, but she believed that his condition had allowed him truly to soar as a criminalist. Juliette would excel in the field if the surgery she was facing in a few months rendered her
a quad, which seemed likely, Rhyme had explained.
You two make a good team...