Hour 33 of 45

WORMS…

Stephen Kall, sweating, stood in a filthy bathroom in the back of a Cuban Chinese restaurant.

Scrubbing to save his soul.

Worms gnawing, worms eating, worms swarming…

Clean ’ em away… Clean them away!!!

Soldier -

Sir, I’m busy, sir.

Sol -

Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.

Lincoln the Worm is looking for me.

Everywhere Lincoln the Worm looks, worms appear.

Go away!!!

The brush moved whisk, whisk, back and forth until his cuticles bled.

Soldier, that blood is evidence. You can’t -

Go away!!!

He dried his hands then grabbed the Fender guitar case and the book bag, pushed into the restaurant.

Soldier, your gloves -

The alarmed patrons stared at his bloody hands, his crazed expression. “Worms,” he muttered in explanation to the entire restaurant, “fucking worms,” then burst outside onto the street.

Hurrying down the sidewalk, calming. He was thinking about what he had to do. He had to kill Jodie, of course. Have to kill him have to kill him have to… Not because he was a traitor, but because he’d given away so much information -

And why the fuck d’you do that, Soldier?

– about himself to the man. And he had to kill Lincoln the Worm because… because the worms would get him if he didn’t.

Have to kill have to have to have…

Are you listening to me, Soldier? Are you?

That was all there was left to do.

Then he’d leave this city. Head back to West Virginia. Back to the hills.

Lincoln, dead.

Jodie, dead.

Have to kill have to have to have to…

Nothing more to keep him here.

As for the Wife – he looked at his watch. Just after 7p.m. Well, she was probably dead already.

“ ’Sbulletproof.”

“Against those bullets?” Jodie asked. “You said they blowup!”

Dellray assured him it was effective. The vest was thick Kevlar on top of a steel sheet. It weighed forty-two pounds and Rhyme didn’t know a cop in the city who wore a vest like this, or ever would.

“But what if he shoots my head?”

“He wants me a lot more than he wants you,” Rhyme said.

“And how’s he gonna know I’m staying here?”

“How d’ya think, mutt?” Dellray snapped. “I’ma tell him.”

The agent cinched up the little man tight in the vest and tossed him a windbreaker. He’d showered – after protesting – and had been given a set of clean clothes. The large navy blue jacket, covering the bulletproof vest, was a little lopsided but actually gave him a muscular physique. He caught sight of himself in the mirror – his scrubbed and newly attired self – and smiled for the first time since he’d been here.

“Okay,” Sellitto said to two undercover officers, “take him downtown.”

The officers ushered him out the door.

After he’d left, Dellray looked at Rhyme, who nodded. The lanky agent sighed and flicked open his cell phone, placed a call to Hudson Air Charters, where another agent was waiting to pick up the phone. The fed’s tech group had found a remote tap on a relay box near the airport, clipped into the Hudson Air phone lines. The agents hadn’t removed it, though; in fact at Rhyme’s insistence they checked to make sure it was working and had replaced the weak batteries. The criminalist was relying on the device for the new trap.

On the speakerphone, several rings then a click.

“Agent Mondale,” came the deep voice. Mondale wasn’t Mondale and he was speaking according to a prewritten script.

“Mondale,” Dellray said, sounding lily white, to a Connecticut manor born. “Agent Wilson here, we’re at Lincoln’s now.” (Not “Rhyme”; the Dancer knew him as “Lincoln.”)

“How’s the airport?”

“Still secure.”

“Good. Listen, got a question. We’ve got a CI working for us, Joe D’Oforio.”

“He was the one -”

“Right.”

“- turned. You’re working with him?”

“Yeah,” said Wilson, aka Fred Dellray. “Bit of a mutt, but he’s cooperating. We’re going to run him down to his hidey-hole and back here.”

“Where’s ‘here’? You mean, back to Lincoln’s?”

“Right. He wants his stuff.”

“Fuck you doing that for?”

“He cut a deal. He dimes this killer and Lincoln agreed he could have some stuff from his place. This old subway station… Anyway, we’re not doing a convoy. Just one car. Reason I called, we need a good driver. You worked with somebody you liked, right?”

“Driver?”

“On the Gambino thing?”

“Oh, yeah… Lemme think.”

They stretched it out. Rhyme was, as always, impressed with Dellray’s performance. Whoever he wanted to be, he was.

The phony agent Mondale – who deserved a best-supporting award himself – said, “I remember. Tony Glidden. No, Tommy. The blond guy, right?”

“That’s him. I want to use him. He around?”

“Naw. He’s in Phillie. That carjacking sting.”

“Phillie. Too bad. We’re going in about twenty minutes. Can’t wait any longer than that. Well, I’ll just do it myself then. But that Tommy. He -”

“Fucker could drive a car! He could lose a tail in two blocks. Man was amazing.”

“Sure could use him now. Listen, thanks, Mondale.”

“Later.”

Rhyme winked, a quad’s equivalent of applause. Dellray hung up, exhaled long and slow. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

Sellitto uttered an optimistic “The third time we’re baiting him. This should be it.”

Lincoln Rhyme didn’t believe that was a rule of law enforcement, but he said, “Let’s hope.”

Sitting in a stolen car not far from Jodie’s subway station, Stephen Kall watched a government-issue sedan pull up.

Jodie and two uniformed cops climbed out, scanning the rooftops. Jodie ran inside and, five minutes later, escaped back to the car with two bundles under his arm.

Stephen could see no backup, no tail cars. What he’d heard on the tap was accurate. They pulled into traffic and he started after them, thinking there was no place in the world like Manhattan for following and not being seen. He couldn’t be doing this in Iowa or Virginia.

The unmarked car drove fast, but Stephen was a good driver too and he stayed with it as they made their way uptown. The sedan slowed when they got to Central Park West and drove past a town house in the Seventies. There were two men in front of it, wearing street clothes, but they were obviously cops. A signal – probably “All clear” – passed between them and the driver of the unmarked sedan.

So that’s it. That’s Lincoln the Worm’s house.

The car continued north. Stephen did too for a little ways, then parked suddenly and climbed out, hurrying into the trees with the guitar case. He knew there’d be some surveillance around the apartment and he moved quietly.

Like a deer, Soldier.

Yes, sir.

He vanished into a stand of brush and crawled back toward the town house, finding a good nest on a stony ledge under a budding lilac tree. He opened the case. The car containing Jodie, now going south, screeched up to the town house. Standard evasive practice, Stephen recognized – it had made an abrupt U-turn in heavy traffic and sped back here.

He was watching the two cops climb out of the sedan, look around, and escort a very scared Jodie along the sidewalk.

Stephen flipped the covers off the telescope and took careful aim on the traitor’s back.

Suddenly a black car drove past and Jodie spooked. His eyes went wide and he pulled away from the cops, running into the alley beside the town house.

His escorts spun around, hands on their weapons, staring at the car that had startled him. They looked at the quartet of Latino girls inside and realized it was just a false alarm. The cops laughed. One of them called to Jodie.

But Stephen wasn’t interested in the little man right now. He couldn’t get both the Worm and Jodie, and Lincoln was the one he had to kill now. He could taste it. It was a hunger, a need as great as scrubbing his hands.