The parlor phone rang and Gordon ignored it. But a few moments later the heavy set tat artist – working on the motorcycle – stuck his head through the curtain of beads.

‘Hey, TT.’ A nod to Sellitto.

‘What?’

‘Got a call. Can we ink a hundred dollar bill on a guy’s neck?’ The accent was southern. Sellitto couldn’t place where.

‘A hundred? Yeah, why not?’

‘I mean, ain’t it illegal to reproduce money?’

Gordon rolled his eyes. ‘He’s not going to feed himself into any slots in Atlantic City.’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘It’s okay.’

The artist said into his phone, ‘Yessir, we’ll do it.’ Then disconnected. He started to turn but Gordon said, ‘Hold on a sec.’ To Sellitto he added, ‘Eddie’s been around. You might want to talk to him too.’

The detective nodded, and Gordon introduced them. ‘Eddie Beaufort, Detective Sellitto.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ A Mid Atlantic Southern lilt, Sellitto decided. The man had a genial face, which didn’t fit with the elaborate sleeves – mostly of wild animals, it seemed. ‘Detective. Police. Hm.’

‘Tell Eddie what you were telling me.’

Sellitto explained the situation to Beaufort, whose look of astonishment and dismay matched Gordon’s. The detective now asked, ‘You ever heard of anybody using ink or tattoo guns as a weapon? Poison or otherwise? Either of you?’

‘No,’ Beaufort whispered. ‘Never.’

Gordon said to his colleague, ‘Good inking.’

‘Yup. Man knows what he’s about. That’s poison, hm?’

‘That’s right.’

Gordon asked, ‘How’d he get her, I mean, how’d she stay still for that long?’

‘Knocked her out with drugs. But it didn’t take him very long. We think he did that tat in about fifteen minutes.’

‘Fifteen? ’ Gordon asked, astonished.

‘That’s unusual?’

Beaufort said, ‘Unusual? Church, man. I don’t know anybody could lay a work like that in fifteen. It’d take an hour, at least.’

‘Yep,’ Gordon offered.

Beaufort nodded to the front of the shop. ‘Got a half nekkid man. Better git.’

Sellitto nodded thanks. He asked Gordon, ‘Well, looking at that, is there anything  you can tell me about the guy did it?’

Gordon leaned forward and examined the photos of the inking on Chloe Moore’s body. His brows V’ed together. ‘It’s not all that clear. Do you have anything closer up? Or in better definition?’

‘We can get it.’

‘I could come to the station. Heh. Always wanted to do that.’

‘We’re working out of a consultant’s office. We– Hold on.’ Sellitto’s phone was humming. He looked at the screen, read the text. Interesting. Responded briefly.

He turned to Gordon. ‘I’ve gotta be someplace but get over here.’ Sellitto wrote down Rhyme’s name and address. ‘That’s the consultant’s place. I’ve gotta stop by headquarters then I’ll meet you there.’

‘Okay. Like when?’

‘Like ASAP.’

‘Sure. Hey, you want a Glock or something?’

‘What?’ Sellitto screwed up his face.

‘I’ll ink you for free. A gun, a skull. Hey, how about an NYPD badge?’

‘No skulls, no badges.’ He jabbed his finger at the card, containing the Central Park address. ‘All I need is you to show up.’

‘ASAP.’

‘You got it, dude.’

‘How’re we doing, rookie?’

Sitting on a stool in Rhyme’s parlor, Ron Pulaski was hunched over the computer keyboard. He was narrowing down the locations in the city from which the Inwood marble trace might have come. ‘Moving slow. It’s not just blasting for foundations. There’s a lot of demolition going on in the city too. And it’s November. In this weather. Who would’ve thought? I–’

A mobile phone buzzed. The young officer fished into his pocket and removed the unit. It was the prepaid.

The Watchmaker undercover assignment was heating up. Rhyme was encouraged that somebody had called the officer so quickly.

And what would the substance of the conversation be?

He heard some pleasantries. Then: ‘Yes, about the remains. Richard Logan. Right.’ He wandered off to the corner. Rhyme could hear no more.

But he noted Pulaski’s grave expression – a pun that Rhyme decided not to share, given that this assignment seemed to be weighing on the man.

After two or three minutes Pulaski disconnected and jotted notes.

‘And?’ Rhyme asked.

Pulaski said, ‘They transferred Logan’s body to the Berkowitz Funeral Home.’

‘Where?’ Rhyme asked. It sounded familiar.

‘Not far from here. Upper Broadway.’

‘A memorial service?’

‘No, just somebody’s coming to pick up his ashes on Thursday.’

Without looking up from the large computer monitor, Rhyme muttered, ‘Nothing from the FBI on sources for the poisons and not a goddamn thing about “the second”. Though I suppose we can’t be too optimistic about that. Who?’

Neither Pulaski nor Cooper responded. Sachs too was silent.

‘Well?’ Rhyme called.

‘Well what?’ From Cooper.

‘I’m asking Pulaski. Who’ll be where? To pick up Logan’s ashes? Did you ask the funeral director who’d be there?’

‘No.’

‘Well, why not?’

‘Because,’ the patrol officer replied, ‘it’d seem suspicious, don’t you think, Lincoln? What if it’s the Watchmaker’s silent partner coming to pay his last respects and the director casually mentions that somebody was curious who’s going to be there – which isn’t really a question you’d ask–’

‘All right. Made your point.’

‘A good point,’ Cooper said.

A fair  point.

Then Rhyme was thinking again about the message of the tattoo on Chloe Moore’s body. He doubted that ‘the second’ was part of a findable quotation at all. Maybe it was something that the unsub had spontaneously chosen and couldn’t be tracked down. And maybe there was no meaning at all behind it.

A distraction, a misdirection.

Smoke and mirrors …

But if you do  mean something, what could it be? Why are you playing your thoughts out like fishing line?

‘I don’t know,’ Cooper said.

Apparently Rhyme had spoken the query to the cryptic perp aloud.

‘Damn message,’ he muttered.

Everyone in the room looked at it once more.

‘… the second, the second …’

‘Anagram?’ the tech suggested.

Rhyme scanned the letters. Nothing significant appeared by rearranging them. ‘Anyway, I have a feeling the message is mysterious enough. He doesn’t need to play Scrabble with us. So, rookie, you’ll be going undercover to the funeral home. You okay with that?’

‘Sure.’

Spoken too quickly, Rhyme reflected. He knew this reluctance about the job had nothing to do with physical risk. Even if the late Watchmaker’s mantle had been inherited by an associate, and he was the one collecting the ashes, he wasn’t going to pull out a gun in a funeral parlor and start a shootout with an undercover cop. No, it was a fear of inadequacy that plagued the young officer, all thanks to the head injury he’d suffered some years ago. Pulaski was great in searching crime scenes. He was good, for a non scientist, in the lab. But when he had to deal with people and make fast decisions, uncertainties and hesitations arose. ‘We’ll talk about what to wear, how to act, who to be, later.’

Pulaski nodded, slipped away the phone, which he’d been kneading nervously in his hand, and returned to the Inwood marble job.

Rhyme now eased his Merits wheelchair close to the examination table on which rested evidence from the Chloe Moore murder in SoHo. Then he lifted his gaze to the monitor above it, the one displaying the photos Sachs had taken at the scene, glowing in difficult, high definition glory. He studied the dead woman’s face, the flecks of spittle, the rictus, the vomit, the wide, glazed eyes. The expression reflected her last moments on earth. The deadly toxin extracted from a water hemlock would have induced fierce seizures and excruciating abdominal pain.

Why poison? Rhyme wondered again.