The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

Alice 3895 in that nice pink dress, accentuating her breasts, flirting at the hip (I also think of her as 38-26-36, but that's a joke on my part). Pretty enough, perfume the sc

ent of Asian flowers.

My plans for her had only partly to do with the Harvey Prescott painting that she was lucky enough to snatch off the market (or unlucky, as it turned out for her). Once I was sure she'd received the delivery, out would come the duct tape and I'd spend the next few hours with her in the bedroom. But she'd ruined it all. Just as I was coming up behind her she turned and gave that nightmare scream. I had no choice but to slice her neck like tomato skin, grab my beautiful Prescott and sneak out--through the window, so to speak.

No, I can't stop thinking about pretty-enough Alice 3895, in a skimpy pink dress, her skin floral-scented like a tea house. So, bottom line, I need a woman.

Strolling along these sidewalks, glancing at the sixteens through my sunglasses. They, on the other hand, don't really see me. As I intend; I groom myself to be invisible and there's no place like Manhattan to be invisible.

I turn corners, slip along an alleyway, make a purchase--cash, of course--then plunge into a deserted area of the city, formerly industrial, becoming residential and commercial, near SoHo. Quiet here. That's good. I want it peaceful for my transaction with Myra Weinburg, 9834-4452-6740-3418, a sixteen I've had my eye on for a while.

Myra 9834, I know you very well. The data have told me everything. (Ah, that debate again: data . . . plural or singular? Data has told or data have told? Merriam-Webster's assures us either is correct. By myself, I tend to be purist: data plural. But in public I try hard to treat the word as singular, like most of society, and hope I don't slip up. Language is a river; it goes where it will and if you swim against that current you get noticed. And that, of course, is the last thing in the world I want.)

Now, the data on Myra 9834: She lives on Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, in a building the owner wants to sell as co-op units via an eviction plan. (I know this, though the poor tenants don't yet, and judging from incomes and credit histories, most of them are totally screwed.)

The beautiful, exotic, dark-haired Myra 9834 is a graduate of NYU and has worked in New York for several years at an advertising agency. Her mother's still alive, but her father's dead. Hit and run, the John Doe warrant still outstanding after all these years. Police don't pull out the stops for crimes like that.

At the moment Myra 9834 is between boyfriends, and friendships must be problematic because her recent thirty-second birthday was marked with a single order of moo shu pork from Hunan Dynasty on West Fourth (not a bad choice) and a Caymus Conundrum white ($28 from overpriced Village Wines). A subsequent trip to Long Island on Saturday, coinciding with local travel by other family members and acquaintances and a large bill, with copious Brunello, at a Garden City restaurant of which Newsday speaks highly, made up for the solitary evening, I imagine.

Myra 9834 sleeps in a Victoria's Secret T, a fact I deduce because she owns five of them in a size too big to wear out in public. She wakes early to the thought of an Entenmann's danish pastry (never low-fat, I'm proud of her for that) and home-brewed Starbucks; she rarely goes to the coffee shops. Which is a shame, since I do like to observe in person the antelope I've had my eye on, and Starbucks is among the best places on the veldt to do so. Around eight-twenty she leaves her apartment and heads for work in Midtown--Maple, Reed & Summers advertising, where she's a junior account executive.

Onward and upward. I continue on my way this Sunday, wearing a nondescript baseball cap (they account for 87.3 percent of all men's headgear in the metro area). And, as always, eyes down. If you think a satellite can't record your smiling face from thirty miles up in space, think again; somewhere in a dozen servers around the world there are hundreds of pictures of you taken from on high, and let's hope all you were doing when they snapped the shutter was squinting away the sun while you glanced up at the Goodyear blimp or a cloud shaped like a lamb.

My passion for collecting includes not only these daily facts but the minds of the sixteens I'm interested in, and Myra 9834 is no exception. She goes for drinks with friends after work with some frequency and I've noticed that she picks up the tab often, too often, in my opinion. Clearly she's buying their love--right, Dr. Phil? Possibly had acne during the adolescence terrible; she still sees a dermatologist once in a while, though the bills are low, as if she's just debating dermabrasion (completely unnecessary from what I've seen) or checking to make sure the zits aren't returning like ninjas in the night.

Then, after the three rounds of Cosmopolitans with the gals, or a visit to a fit-and-start health club, it's home to phone calls, the ubiquitous computer and basic, not premium, cable. (I enjoy tracking her viewing habits; her show selections suggest extreme loyalty; she changed networks when Seinfeld did, and she blew off two dates to spend the night with Jack Bauer.)

Bedtime follows, and she sometimes enjoys a bit of distraction (buying double-A batteries in bulk tells the tale, her digital camera and iPod being rechargeable).

Of course, those are the data on her weekday life. But today's a glorious Sunday, and Sundays are different. This is when Myra 9834 climbs aboard her beloved, and very expensive, bicycle, and heads out to cruise the streets of her city.

The routes vary. Central Park might figure, as does Riverside Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. But whatever the path, Myra 9834 makes one particular stop without fail toward the end of her journey: Hudson's Gourmet Deli on Broadway. And then, food and shower beckoning, she takes the fastest bike route home--which, owing to the madness of downtown traffic, is right past the very spot where I'm standing at the moment.

I'm in front of a courtyard leading to a ground-floor loft, owned by Maury and Stella Griszinski (imagine--buying ten years ago for $278,000). The Griszinskis aren't home, though, because they're enjoying a springtime cruise in Scandinavia. They've stopped the mail and have hired no plant waterers or pet sitters. And there's no alarm system.

No sign of her yet. Hm. Has something intervened? I might be wrong.

But I rarely am.

Five agonizing minutes pass. I pull images of the Harvey Prescott painting out of my mental collection. I enjoy them for a time and tuck them back. I glance around and I resist a salivating urge to go through the fat trash bin here to see what treasures it might hold.

Stay in the shadows. . . . Stay off the grid. Especially at times like this. And avoid the windows at all costs. You'd be amazed at the lure of voyeurism and how many people are watching you from the other side of the glass, which, to you, is only a reflection or glare.

Where is she? Where?

If I don't get my transaction soon--

And then, ah, I feel the slam within me as I see her: Myra 9834.

Moving slowly, low gear, beautiful legs pumping away. A $1,020 bike. More than my first car cost.

Ah, the bicycle outfit is tight. My breath is fast. I need her so badly.

A glance up and down the street. Empty, except for the approaching woman, who's now getting close, thirty feet away. Cell phone off but flipped open and up to my ear, Food Emporium bag dangling. I glance at her once. Stepping to the curb, as I carry on an animated and entirely fictitious conversation. I pause to let her pass. Frowning, looking up. Then smiling. "Myra?"

She slows. Biking outfit so tight. Control it, control it. Act casual.

Nobody in the empty windows facing the street. No traffic.