‘He’s staying at the Huntington Arms. West Fifty Sixth.’

Rhyme shook his head. He didn’t know the hotel. But Mel Cooper looked up the place. ‘One of those boutiques on the West Side.’

It was just north of Hell’s Kitchen, that neighborhood of the city – named after a dangerous ’hood in Victorian London – that had at one point been a thug infested den of crime. Now it was gentrification personified, though occasional blocks of decrepit color remained. The hotel the man described, Cooper explained, was in a block in which were tucked overpriced restaurants and hotels.

Pulaski said, ‘We’re going to meet in a half hour. How should I handle it?’

‘Mel, what’s the layout of the neighborhood and the hotel?’

The tech went to Google Earth on one computer and the New York Department of Buildings on another. In less than sixty seconds he slapped onto the main monitor an overhead view of the street and a blueprint of the hotel itself.

There was an outdoor patio, on 56th, which would have been a great place for surveillance if the weather had been less Arctic, but the meeting would take place inside today.

‘Sachs, can we get a surveillance team in the lobby?’

‘I’ll call. See what I can do.’ After a few minutes on the phone, she said, ‘No time to go through channels. But I pulled some strings at Major Cases. There’ll be two undercovers inside in twenty minutes.’

‘We’ll need a bigger operation in place, Pulaski. You’ve got to buy time. A couple of days. What did he sound like? Did he make it seem urgent?’

Running a hand through his blond hair, the officer said, ‘Not really. He’s got an idea he wants to pitch, I got the impression. He told me not to park in front of the hotel if I was driving. He was pretty, you know, mysterious. Wasn’t going to say anything on the phone.’

Rhyme looked him over. ‘You have an ankle holster?’

‘Ankle – oh, for a backup piece? I don’t even own one.’

‘Not for backup. Your only  piece. You may be frisked. And most friskers stop at the thigh. Sachs?’

Sachs said, ‘I’ll hook him up. A Smith and Wesson Bodyguard. A three eighty. It’s got a laser built in but don’t bother with that. Use the iron sights.’ She dug into a drawer and handed him a small, black automatic. ‘I put nail polish on the sights. Easier to seat a target in bad light. You okay with fiery pink?’

‘I can cope.’

She handed him a small cloth holster with a buckling leather strap. Rhyme recalled she never liked Velcro to secure her weapons. Amelia Sachs left very little to chance.

Pulaski lifted his foot onto a nearby chair and strapped on the holster. It was invisible. Then the officer examined the small, boxy gun. He chambered a round, took another bullet from Sachs and loaded it into the magazine. Six in the hallway, one in the bedroom. He snapped the mag back in.

‘What’s the pull?’

‘It’s heavy. Nine pounds.’

‘Nine. Well.’

‘And double action only. Your finger’s almost all the way back before it fires. But it’s small as a minnow. Leave the safety off. I don’t even know why they added one. With a pull like that.’

‘Got it.’

Pulaski looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got twenty five minutes. No time for a wire.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ Rhyme agreed. ‘But the surveillance team’ll have microphones up. You want body armor?’

Shaking his head. ‘They’ll spot that faster than a piece. No, I’ll go in clean.’

‘You sure?’ Sachs asked. ‘Entirely up to you.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You need to draw them out, rookie. Tell them you want to meet again. Act coy and cautious but insist. Even if it’s in a different state. We’ll get Fred Dellray involved. Federal backup. They do spying right. And don’t go anywhere with them now. We won’t be able to keep tabs on you.’

Pulaski nodded. He walked into the hallway and looked at himself in the mirror. He mussed his hair a bit. ‘Am I inscrutable enough?’

Rhyme said, ‘You are the epitome of unscrupulousness.’

‘Dangerous too,’ Mel Cooper said.

The officer smiled and pulled on his overcoat then disappeared into the front hallway of the town house.

The criminalist called, ‘Keep us posted.’

As he heard the door open to the howling wind, Rhyme asked himself, And what kind of pointless request was that?

You can do this.

Ron Pulaski was minding his steps on the sidewalk in the West 50s, which was encrusted with gray snow and grayer ice. His breath popped out as wispy clouds in the relentlessly cold air and he realized he was having trouble feeling his fingers.

A trigger pull of nine pounds? Thinking of the Smittie Bodyguard pistol on his ankle. His standard weapon, a Glock 17, had a pull of one third that. Of course, the issue wasn’t the effort to pull the trigger. Nine pounds of effort were easily handled by anybody over the age of six. The problem was accuracy. The harder to pull the trigger, the less accurate the shot.

But it wasn’t going to come to a shootout, Pulaski reminded himself. And even if it did, the backup team would be positioned in the hotel, ready to, well, back him up.

He was– Jesus! The street spun. He nearly ended up on his ass, thanks to a patch of ice he hadn’t seen, inhaling hard in surprise, taking in air so cold it burned.

Hate winter.

Then reminded himself it wasn’t even winter yet, only the sinkhole of an autumn.

He looked up, through the sleet. Three blocks away – long blocks, crosstown blocks – he could see the hotel. A red neon disk, part of the logo.

He increased his pace. Just a couple of days ago, he and Jenny and the kids had spent the night in front of the fireplace because there’d been a problem with the gas line for the block. The cold had seeped in and he’d gotten a fire going, real logs, not Duraflames, the kids in PJs and sleeping bags nearby, and he and Jenny on an air mattress. Pulaski had told the worst jokes – children’s jokes – until the youngsters had fallen asleep.

And he and Jenny had cuddled fiercely, until the caress of chill went away under their combined bodies. (No, not that, of course; they were in pajamas as chaste and comical as the children’s.)

How he wanted to be back with his family now. But he pushed aside those thoughts.

Undercover. That was his job. His only job. Jenny was married to Ron Pulaski, not Stan Walesa. The kids didn’t exist.

And neither did Lincoln Rhyme or Amelia Sachs.

All that mattered was finding the associates of the late and not very lamented Watchmaker. Who were they? What were they up to? And most important: Did the killer have a successor?

Ron Pulaski had a thought on this topic, though he’d decided not to say anything to Lincoln or Amelia, for fear that he’d look stupid if proven wrong. (The head injury again. It plagued him every day, every day.)

His theory was this: The lawyer himself  was the main associate of the Watchmaker. He’d been lying about never meeting the man. He appeared to be a real lawyer – they’d checked that out. And had a firm in LA. (The assistant who answered the phone said Mr Weller was out of town on business.) But the website looked dicey – bare bones – and it gave only a P.O. box, not a street address. Still, it was typical of an ambulance chaser’s site, Pulaski supposed.

And what was Weller’s plan here?

The same as Pulaski’s maybe. After all, why come to New York to collect ashes when it would have been far easier and cheaper simply to FedEx them to the family?

No, Pulaski was now even more convinced that Weller was here on a fishing expedition himself – to find other partners of the Watchmaker, who had been the sort of master planner to have several projects going on at the same time, without telling one set of colleagues that the others even existed. He guessed that–

His phone vibrated. He answered. It was an NYPD officer from the team at the hotel. He and his partner were in position in the lobby and bar. Pulaski had relayed the details on Weller’s appearance but the undercover reported that there was nobody fitting that description in the lobby yet. It was, however, still early.