Maybe a little of both.
Everett closed his eyes until the pain subsided. He looked around him. The chamber where he was handcuffed was beneath a rotting pier. A lip of wood dipped from the edge toward the churning water, which was about six inches below the bottom of the rim. Lights from boats on the river and the industrial sites of Jersey reflected through the narrow slit. The water was up to his neck now and although the roof of the pier was several feet above his head the cuffs were extended as far as they’d go.
The pain swept up from his finger again and Everett’s head roared with the agony and dipped toward the water as he passed out. A noseful of water and the racking cough that followed revived him.
Then the moon tugged the plane of water slightly higher and with a sodden gulp the chamber was sealed off from the river outside. The room went dark. He was aware of the sounds of groaning waves and his own moaning from the pain.
He knew he was dead, knew he couldn’t keep his head above the greasy surface for more than a few minutes. He closed his eyes, pressed his face against the slick, black column.
TWENTY-ONE
“ALL THE WAY DOWNTOWN, SACHS,” Rhyme’s voice clattered from the radio.
She punched the accelerator of the RRV, red lights flashing, as they screamed downtown along the West Side Highway. Ice-cool, she goosed the wagon up to eighty.
“Okay, whoa,” said Jerry Banks.
Counting down. Twenty-third Street, Twentieth, the skidding jog at the Fourteenth Street garbage-barge dock. As they roared through the Village, the meatpacking district, a semi pulled out of a side street directly into her path. Instead of braking she nudged the wagon over the center curb like a steeple-chaser, drawing breathless oaths from Banks and a wail from the air horn of the big White, which jackknifed spectacularly.
“Oops,” said Amelia Sachs and swung back into the southbound lane. To Rhyme she added, “Say again. Missed that.”
Rhyme’s tinny voice popped through her earphones. “Downtown is all I can tell you. Until we figure out what the leaf means.”
“We’re coming up on Battery Park City.”
“Twenty-five minutes to high tide,” Banks called.
Maybe Dellray’s team could get the exact location out of him. They could drag Mr. 823 into an alley somewhere with a bag of apples. Nick had told her that was the way they talked perps into “cooperating.” Whack ’em in the gut with a bag of fruit. Really painful. No marks. When she was growing up she wouldn’t have thought cops did that. Now she knew different.
Banks tapped her shoulder. “There. A bunch of old piers.”
UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 4)
Appearance
Caucasian male, slight build
•Dark clothing
•Old gloves, reddish kidskin
Residence
•Prob. has safe house
•Located near:B’way & 82nd,
•ShopRite B’way &96th,
• Anderson Foods
Vehicle
•Yellow Cab
Other
•knows CS proc.
•possibly has record
•knows FR prints
•gun =.32 Colt
UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 4)
Appearance
•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?
•Ski mask? Navy blue?
•Gloves are dark
Residence
• Greenwich & Bank,
•ShopRite 2nd Ave., 72nd-73rd,
• Grocery World Battery Park City,
•J &G’s Emporium 1709 2nd Ave.,
Vehicle
•Recent model sedan
Other
•Ties vics w/ unusual knots
•“Old” appeals to him
•Called one vic “Hanna”
UNSUB 823 (page 3 of 4)
Appearance
•Aftershave = Brut
•Hair color not brown
Residence
• Anderson Foods 34th & Lex.,
•Food Warehouse 8th Ave. & 24th,
•ShopRite Houston & Lafayette,
•ShopRite 6th Ave. & Houston,
Vehicle
•Lt. gray, silver, beige
Other
•Knows basic German
•Underground appeals to him
•Dual personalities
UNSUB 823 (page 4 of 4)
Appearance
•Deep scar, index finger
•Casual clothes
Residence
•J &G’s Emporium Greenwich & Franklin,
•Grocery World
•Old building, pink marble
Vehicle
•Rental car;
prob. stolen
Other
•Maybe priest, soc. worker, counselor
•Unusual wear on shoes, reads a lot?
Rotten wood, filthy? Spooky places.
They skidded to a stop and climbed out, running toward the water.
“You there, Rhyme?”
“Talk to me, Sachs. Where are you?”
“A pier just north of Battery Park City.”
“I just heard from Lon, on the East Side. He hasn’t found anything.”
“It’s hopeless,” she said. “There’re a dozen piers. Then the whole promenade… And the fireboat house and ferry docks and the pier at Battery Park… We need ESU.”
“We don’t have ESU, Sachs. They’re not on our side anymore.”
Twenty minutes to high tide.
Her eyes darted along the waterfront. Her shoulders sagged with helplessness. Hand on her weapon, she sprinted to the river, Jerry Banks not far behind.
“Get me something on that leaf, Mel. A guess, anything. Wing it.”
Fidgeting, Cooper looked from the microscope to the computer screen.
Eight thousand varieties of leafy plants in Manhattan.
“It doesn’t fit the cell structure of anything.”
“It’s old,” Rhyme said. “How old?”
Cooper looked at the leaf again. “Mummified. I’d put it at a hundred years, little less maybe.”
“What’s gone extinct in the last hundred years?”
“Plants don’t go extinct in an ecosystem like Manhattan. They always show up again.”
A ping in Rhyme’s mind. He was close to remembering something. He both loved and hated this feeling. He might grab the thought like a slow pop-up fly. Or it might vanish completely, leaving him with only the sting of lost inspiration.
Sixteen minutes to high tide.
What was the thought? He grappled with it, closed his eyes…
Pier, he was thinking. The vic’s under a pier.
What about it? Think!
Pier… ships… unloading… cargo.
Unloading cargo!
His eyes snapped open. “Mel, is it a crop?”
“Oh, hell. I’ve been looking at general-horticulture pages, not cultivated crops.” He typed for what seemed like hours.
“Well?”
“Hold on, hold on. Here’s a list of the encoded binaries.” He scanned it. “Alfalfa, barley, beets, corn, oats, tobacco…”
“Tobacco! Try that.”
Cooper double clicked his mouse and the image slowly unfurled on the screen.
“That’s it!”
“The World Trade Towers,” Rhyme announced. “The land from there north used to be tobacco plantations. Thom, the research for my book – I want the map from the 1740s. And that modern map Bo Haumann was using for the asbestos-cleanup sites. Put them up there on the wall, next to each other.”
The aide found the old map in Rhyme’s files. He taped them both onto the wall near his bed. Crudely drawn, the older map showed the northern part of the settled city – a cluster on the lower portion of the isle – covered with plantations. There were three commercial wharves along the river, which was then called not the Hudson but the West River. Rhyme glanced at the recent map of the city. The farmland was gone of course, as were the original wharves, but the contemporary map showed an abandoned wharf in the exact location of one of the tobacco exporter’s old piers.
Rhyme strained forward, struggling to see the street name it was near. He was about to shout for Thom to come hold the map closer when, from downstairs, he heard a loud snap and the door crashed inward. Glass shattered.