“THERE ARE NO STOCKYARDS IN MANHATTAN.”

“The past, Lon,” Rhyme reminded him. “Old things turn him on. Get his juices flowing. We should think of old stockyards. The older the better.”

In researching his book, Rhyme had read about a murder that gentleman mobster Owney Madden was accused of committing: gunning down a rival bootlegger outside his Hell’s Kitchen townhouse. Madden was never convicted – not for this particular murder, at any rate. He took the stand and, in his melodious British-accented voice, lectured the courtroom about betrayal. “This entire case has been trumped up by my rivals, who are speaking lies about me. Your honor, do you know what they remind me of? In my neighborhood, in Hell’s Kitchen, the flocks of lambs were led through the streets from the stockyards to the slaughterhouses on Forty-second Street. And you know who led them? Not a dog, not a man. But one of theirs. A Judas lamb with a bell around its neck. He’d lead the flock up that ramp. But then he’d stop and the rest of them would go on inside. I’m an innocent lamb and those witnesses against me, they’re the Judases.”

Rhyme continued. “Call the library, Banks. They must have a historian.”

The young detective flipped open his cellular phone and called. His voice dropped a tone or two as he spoke. After he explained what they needed he stopped speaking and gazed at the map of the city.

“Well?” Rhyme asked.

“They’re finding someone. They’ve got -” He lowered his head as someone answered and the young man repeated his request. He started nodding and announced to the room, “I’ve got two locations… no, three.”

UNSUB 823

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

“Who is it?” Rhyme barked. “Who’re you talking to?”

“The curator of the city archives… He says there’ve been three major stockyard areas in Manhattan. One on the West Side, around Sixtieth Street… One in Harlem in the 1930s or ’40s. And on the Lower East Side during the Revolution.”

“We need addresses, Banks. Addresses!”

Listening.

“He’s not sure.”

“Why can’t he look it up? Tell him to look it up!”

Banks responded, “He heard you, sir… He says, in what? Look them up in what? They didn’t have Yellow Pages back then. He’s looking at old -”

“Demographic maps of commercial neighborhoods without street names,” Rhyme groused. “Obviously. Have him guess.”

“That’s what he’s doing. He’s guessing.”

Rhyme called, “Well, we need him to guess fast.”

Banks listened, nodding.

“What, what, what, what?”

“Around Sixtieth Street and Tenth,” the young officer said. A moment later: “ Lexington near the Harlem River… And then… where the Delancey farm was. Is that near Delancey Street? -”

“Of course it is. From Little Italy all the way to the East River. Lots of territory. Miles. Can’t he narrow it down?”

“Around Catherine Street. Lafayette… Walker. He’s not sure.”

“Near the courthouses,” Sellitto said and told Banks, “Get Haumann’s teams moving. Divide ’ em up. Hit all three neighborhoods.”

The young detective made the call, then looked up. “What now?”

“We wait,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto muttered, “I fucking hate waiting.”

Sachs asked Rhyme, “Can I use your phone?”

Rhyme nodded toward the one on his bedside table.

She hesitated. “You have one in there?” She pointed to the hallway.

Rhyme nodded.

With perfect posture she walked out of the bedroom. In the hallway mirror he could see her, solemn, making the precious phone call. Who? he wondered. Boyfriend, husband? Day-care center? Why had she hesitated before mentioning her “friend” when she told them about the collie? There was a story behind that, Rhyme bet.

Whomever she was calling wasn’t there. He noticed her eyes turn to dark-blue pebbles when there was no answer. She looked up and caught Rhyme gazing at her in the dusty glass. She turned her back. The phone slipped to the cradle and she returned to his room.

There was silence for a full five minutes. Rhyme lacked the mechanism most people have for bleeding off tension. He’d been a manic pacer when he was mobile, drove the officers in IRD crazy. Now, his eyes energetically scanned the Randel map of the city as Sachs dug beneath her Patrol cap and scratched at her scalp. Invisible Mel Cooper cataloged evidence, calm as a surgeon.

All but one of the people in the room jumped inordinately when Sellitto’s phone brayed. He listened; his face broke into a grin.

“Got it!” One of Haumann’s squads is at Eleventh and Sixtieth. They can hear a woman’s screams coming from somewhere around there. They dunno where for sure. They’re doing a door-to-door.”

“Get your running shoes on,” Rhyme ordered Sachs.

He saw her face sag. She glanced at Rhyme’s phone, as if it might be ringing with a reprieve call from the governor at any minute. Then a look at Sellitto, who was poring over the ESU tactical map of the West Side.

“Amelia,” Rhyme said, “we lost one. That’s too bad. But we don’t have to lose any more.”

“If you saw her,” she whispered. “If you only saw what he did to her -”

“Oh, but I have, Amelia,” he said evenly, his eyes relentless and challenging. “I’ve seen what happened to T.J. I’ve seen what happens to bodies left in hot trunks for a month. I’ve seen what a pound of C4 does to arms and legs and faces. I worked the Happy Land social club fire. Over eighty people burned to death. We took Polaroids of the vics’ faces, or what was left of them, for their families to identify – because there’s no way in hell a human being could walk past those rows of bodies and stay sane. Except us. We didn’t have any choice.” He inhaled against the excruciating pain that swept through his neck. “See, if you’re going to get by in this business, Amelia… If you’re going to get by in life, you’re going to have to learn to give up the dead.”

One by one the others in the room had stopped what they were doing and were looking at the two of them.

No pleasantries now from Amelia Sachs. No polite smiles. She tried for a moment to make her gaze cryptic. But it was transparent as glass. Her fury at him – out of proportion to his comment – roiled through her; her long face folded under the dark energy. She swept aside a lock of lazy red hair and snatched the headset from the table. At the top of the stairs she paused and looked at him with a withering glance, reminding Rhyme that there was nothing colder than a beautiful woman’s cold smile.

And for some reason he found himself thinking: Welcome back, Amelia.

“Whatcha got? You got goodies, you got a story, you got pictures?”

The Scruff sat in a bar on the East Side of Manhattan, Third Avenue – which is to the city what strip malls are to the ’burbs. This was a dingy tavern, soon to be rockin’ with Yuppies on the make. But now it was the refuge of badly dressed locals, eating suppers of questionable fish and limp salads.

The lean man, skin like knotty ebony, wore a very white shirt and a very green suit. He leaned closer to the Scruff. “You got news, you got secret codes, you got letters? You got shit?”

“Man. Ha.”

“You’re not laughing when you say ha,” said Fred Dellray, really D’Ellret but that had been generations ago. He was six foot four, rarely smiled despite the Jabberwocky banter, and was a star special agent in the Manhattan office of the FBI.