The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

"Are you listening? I'm serious."

"Go on," Tony said and looked serious.

"I meet Oden. I'm going to say I knew Baxter. He was going to hook me up with him, Oden, but then Baxter got busted."

"Hooked up for what?"

"That's just to get in the door. Then I'll make a buy, this Catch stuff. The super drug. I bust him. You come in. Ta-da. We negotiate. He tells us what Baxter did and we let him go. I'm betting Baxter bankrolled him. I tell Lincoln and he realizes Baxter was really a dangerous shit. Not that he deserved to die. But he wasn't a lamb. And Lincoln un-retires."

Tony scowled. "That isn't much of a plan."

Ron scowled back. "Any other thoughts? I'm happy to entertain them."

"Just saying. It's not much of a plan."

"So?" Pulaski asked. "You up for it?"

"What the hell," Tony muttered. "I haven't risked my job, my pension, my reputation and--what else?--oh, yeah, my life in the last couple days. Why not?"

"What is this?"

Nick was speaking not to Sachs but to her backup, a uniform stepping out of the kitchen, a slim African American borrowed from the 84. The officer frisked Nick carefully. A grimace toward Sachs as he removed a Smittie hammerless .38 from the man's jacket pocket.

"That. Wait. I can explain."

Sachs grimaced. The gun alone was enough to put him away for five years. She'd have thought he was smarter than that.

"Cuffs?"

"Yes," Sachs replied.

"Hey, you don't need..." Nick's voice faded.

The patrolman handed the weapon to Sachs then cuffed Nick's hands behind him and helped him up. She emptied the rounds from the weapon and slipped it into an evidence bag. The cartridges went into another. She set them on a table, well out of Nick's reach.

"I was going to report it," Nick blustered, his voice higher, in the register of guilt, as Sachs thought of it. "The piece. I was going to turn it in. I wasn't carrying."

Though, yeah, he pretty much was.

"You don't understand," he continued. The desperation was thick. "I've been on the street, trying to find that man I told you about, who could help me. Could prove I was innocent. I was in Red Hook and this guy comes out of nowhere, pulled that Smittie, going to mug me. I took the piece away from him. I couldn't toss it. Some kid might've found it."

Sachs didn't even bother to run down the lie. "Jon Perone," she began. And let that sit.

Nick gave absolutely no reaction.

"When you met with Perone we had a team outside his office."

The man tried to take this in. Then: "Well, yeah, Perone was the one had information about Donnie. He was going to do some digging, find what he needed to prove I wasn't anywhere near the 'jacking--"

"We turned Ralph Seville, Nick. Perone's muscle. The one you two sent to kill Freddy Caruthers."

Mouth open slightly. Eyes zipping throughout his apartment. She thought of the tiny fish in Vernon Griffith's aquarium.

She added, "Two of our people followed Seville to the mall where you had Freddy waiting. He moved on Freddy, in the garage, and they nailed him. He dimed you both out."

"But--?"

"Seville told Perone he bodied Freddy. That was the script. Perone doesn't know we've got Seville. Freddy's in protective custody for the time being."