The Twelfth Card

Friday, October 12, to Friday, October 26

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The fifty-four-year-old white man in a Brooks Brothers suit sat in one of his two Manhattan offices, engaging in an intense debate with himself.

Yes or no?

The question was important, literally a matter of life and death.

Trim, solidly built William Ashberry, Jr., sat back in a creaking chair and looked over the horizon of New Jersey. This office was not as elegant or stylish as the one in lower Manhattan but it was his favorite. The twenty-by-thirty-foot room was in the historic Sanford Mansion on the Upper West Side, owned by the bank of which he was a senior officer.

He pondered: Yes? No?

Ashberry was a financier and entrepreneur of the old school, meaning, for instance, he’d ignored the eagle of the Internet when it soared into the heavens, and hadn’t lost a night’s sleep when it turned on its masters, except to superficially console clients who hadn’t listened to his advice. This refusal to be wooed by fad, combined with solid investing in blue chip companies and, especially, New York City real estate, had made both himself and Sanford Bank and Trust a huge amount of money.

Old school, sure, but only to a point. Oh, he had the lifestyle afforded by a million-plus annual salary, along with the revered bonuses that were the mainstay of Wall Street, several homes, memberships in nice country clubs, pretty, well-educated daughters, and connections with a number of charities that he and his wife were pleased to help out. A private Grumman for his not-infrequent trips overseas was an important perk.

But Ashberry was also atypical of your Forbes-level business executives. Scratch the surface and you’d find pretty much the same tough kid from South Philly, whose father’d been a head-knocking factory worker and whose grandfather’d done some book cooking, and tougher work, for Angelo Bruno – the “Docile Don” – and later for Phil “Chicken Man” Testa. Ashberry had run with a tough crowd himself, made money with blades and brains and did some things that could have come back to haunt him in a big way if he hadn’t made absolutely sure they were forever buried. But in his early twenties he had the presence of mind to realize that if he kept loan-sharking and busting heads for protection money and hanging out on Dickson and Reed streets in Philly, his only rewards’d be cheese-steak change and a good shot at prison. If he did more or less the same thing in the world of business and hanging out on lower Broadway and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he’d get fucking rich and have a good shot at Albany or Washington. He might even try to fill Frank Rizzo’s shoes. Why not?

So it was law school at night, a real estate license and eventually a job at Sanford Bank – first on a cash drawer, then moving his way up through the ranks. The money did indeed start coming in, slowly at first, then in a steady stream. He rose fast to be head of the bank’s hottest division, the real estate operation, rolling over competitors – both within the bank and outside – with his bare-knuckle approach to business. Then he’d finagled the job as head of the Sanford Foundation, the philanthropic side of the bank, which was, he’d learned, the best way to make political connections.

Another glance at the Jersey horizon, another moment of debate, rubbing his hand compulsively up and down his thigh, solid from his tennis sessions, jogging, golf, yachting. Yes or no?

Life and death…

Calculating, one foot forever rooted on South Philly’s Seventeenth Street, Bill Ashberry played with the big boys.

Men, for instance, like Thompson Boyd.

Ashberry had gotten the killer’s name from an arsonist who’d made the mistake of burning down one of Ashberry’s commercial properties – and got caught in the process – some years ago. After Ashberry realized he had to kill Geneva Settle, he’d hired a private eye to track down the paroled burn-man and had paid him $20,000 to put him in touch with a professional killer. The scruffy man (for God’s sake, a mullet?) had suggested Boyd. Ashberry had been impressed with the choice. Boyd was fucking scary, yes, but not in some over-the-top, ballsy South Philly way. What was scary was that he was so calm, so flat. Not a spark of emotion behind his eyes, never spitting out a single “fuck” or “prick.”

The banker had explained what he needed and they’d arranged for payment – a quarter million dollars (even that figure hadn’t gotten a rise out of Boyd; he seemed more interested – you couldn’t say excited – about the prospect of killing a young girl, as if he’d never done that before).

It looked for a time like Boyd would be successful and the girl would die, and all of Ashberry’s problems would be over with.

But then, disaster: Boyd and his accomplice, that Frazier woman, were in jail.

Hence, the debate: Yes, no…Should Ashberry kill Geneva Settle himself?

With his typical approach to business, he considered the risks.

Despite his zombie personality, Boyd had been as sharp as he was frightening. He knew the business of death, knew about investigating crimes too, and how you could use motive to point the police in the wrong direction. He’d come up with several phony motives to mislead the cops. First, an attempted rape, which hadn’t worked. The second was more subtle. He’d planted seeds where they’d be sure to grow nowadays: a terrorist connection. He and his accomplice had found some poor raghead who delivered Middle Eastern food to carts and restaurants near the jewelry exchange, the building that was across the street from where Geneva Settle was to be killed. Boyd located the restaurant he worked for and staked out the place, learned which van was his. Boyd and his partner set up a series of clues to make it seem that the Arab loser was a terrorist planning a bombing and that he wanted Geneva dead because she’d seen him planning the attack.

Boyd had gone to the trouble of stealing sheets of scrap office paper from the trash behind the exchange. He’d drawn a map on one sheet and on another written a note about the girl in Arabic-tinted English (an Arabic language website had been helpful there) – to fool the cops. Boyd was going to leave these notes near crime scenes but it’d worked out even better than that; the police found them in Boyd’s safe house before he’d planted them, which gave more credibility to the terrorism hook. They’d used Middle Eastern food for clues and called in fake terrorist bomb threats to the FBI from pay phones around the area.

Boyd hadn’t planned to go any further with the charade than this. But then a goddamn policewoman – that Detective Sachs – showed up right here, at the foundation, to dig through their archives! Ashberry still remembered how he’d struggled to stay calm, making small talk with the beautiful redhead and offering her the run of the stacks. He’d used all his willpower to keep from heading downstairs himself and casually asking her what she was looking into. But there was too great a chance that this would arouse suspicion. He’d agreed to let her take some materials and when he looked over the log after she left, he didn’t see anything too troubling.

Still, her presence alone at the foundation and the fact she wanted to check out some materials told the banker that the cops hadn’t caught on to the terrorist motive. Ashberry had immediately called Boyd and told him to make the story more credible. The hitman had bought a working bomb from the arsonist who’d put Ashberry in touch with Boyd. He’d planted the device in the delivery van, along with a ranting letter to the Times about Zionists. Boyd was arrested just after that but his partner – that black woman from Harlem – had detonated the bomb, and finally the police got the message: terrorism.

And, since the raghead was dead, they’d pull back the protection on the girl.

This gave Alina Frazier the chance to finish the job.

But the police had outsmarted her too, and she’d been caught.

The big question now was: Did the police believe the threat to the girl was finally gone, with the mastermind dead, and the two professional killers arrested?

He decided they might not be completely convinced, but their defenses would be lowered.

So what was the level of risk if he went ahead?

Minimal, he decided.

Geneva Settle would die.

Now, he only needed an opportunity. Boyd had said she’d moved out of her apartment in West Harlem and was staying someplace else. The only connection Ashberry had was her school.

He rose, left his office and took the ornate elevator downstairs. Then walked to Broadway and found a phone kiosk. (“Always pay phones, never private landlines. And never, ever mobile phones.” Thank you, Thompson.)

He got a number from Directory Assistance and placed the call.

“Langston Hughes High,” the woman answered.

He glanced at the side of a nearby retail-store delivery truck and said to the receptionist, “This is Detective Steve Macy with the police department. I need to speak to an administrator.”

A moment later he was put through to an assistant principal.

“How can I help you?” the harried man asked. Ashberry could hear a dozen voices in the background. (The businessman himself had detested every minute he’d spent in school.)

He identified himself again and added, “I’m following up on an incident that involved one of your students. Geneva Settle?”

“Oh, she was that witness, right?”

“Yep. I need to get some papers to her this afternoon. The district attorney’s going to be indicting some of the people involved in the case and we need her signature on a statement. Can I speak to her?”

“Sure. Hold on.” A pause as he asked someone else in the room about the girl’s schedule. Ashberry heard something about her being absent. The administrator came back on. “She’s not in school today. She’ll be back Monday.”

“Oh, is she at home?”

“Wait, hold on a minute…”

Another voice was speaking to the principal, offering a suggestion.

Please, Ashberry thought…

The man came back on the line. “One of her teachers thinks she’s at Columbia this afternoon, working on some project.”

“The university?”

“Yeah. Try a Professor Mathers. I don’t have his first name, sorry.”

The administrator sounded preoccupied, but to make sure the man didn’t call the police just to check on him, Ashberry said in a dismissing way, “You know, I’ll just call the officers who’re guarding her. Thanks.”

“Yeah, so long.”

Ashberry hung up and paused, looking over the busy street. He’d only wanted her address but this might work out better – even though the principal didn’t sound surprised when Ashberry mentioned the guards, which meant that somebody might still be protecting her. He’d have to take that fact into account. He called the main Columbia switchboard and learned that Professor Mathers’s office hours today were from one to six.

How long would Geneva be there? Ashberry wondered. He hoped it would be for most of the day; he had a lot to do.

At four-thirty that afternoon, William Ashberry was cruising in his BMW M5 through Harlem, looking around him. He didn’t think of the place in racial or cultural terms. He saw it as an opportunity. For him a man’s worth was determined by his ability to pay his debts on time – specifically, and from a self-interested point of view – a man’s ability to cough up the rent or mortgage on one of the redevelopment projects that Sanford Bank had going on in Harlem. If a borrower was black or Hispanic or white or Asian, if he was a drug dealer or an ad agency executive…didn’t matter. As long as he wrote that monthly check.

Now, on 125th Street, he passed one of the very buildings his bank was renovating. The graffiti had been scrubbed off, the interior gutted, building materials stacked on the ground floor. The old tenants had been given incentives to relocate. Some reluctant residents had been “urged” to and had taken the hint. Several new renters had already signed expensive leases, even though the construction wouldn’t be completed for six months.

He turned onto a crowded, commercial street, looking at the vendors. Not what he needed. The banker continued on his search – the final task in an afternoon that had been hectic, to say the least. After leaving his office at the Sanford Foundation he’d sped to his weekend house in New Jersey. There he’d unlocked the gun cabinet and removed his double-barreled shotgun. At the workbench in the garage he’d sawed the barrels off, making the gun only about eighteen inches long – a surprisingly hard job, which had cost him a half dozen electric-saw blades. Tossing the discarded barrels into the pond behind the house, the banker had paused, looking around him, reflecting that this deck was the place where his oldest daughter would be getting married next year after she graduated from Vassar.

He’d remained there for a long moment, gazing at the sun breaking on the cold, blue water. Then he’d loaded the shortened gun and placed it and a dozen shells in a cardboard carton, covered them with some old books, newspapers and magazines. He wouldn’t need any props better than these; the professor and Geneva weren’t going to survive long enough to even look inside the box.

Dressed in a mismatched sports coat and suit, hair slicked back, with drugstore reading glasses – the best disguise he could come up with – Ashberry had then sped across the George Washington Bridge and into Harlem, where he now was, searching for the last prop for the drama.

Ah, there…

The banker parked and got out of the car. He walked up to the Nation of Islam street vendor and bought a kufi, an Islamic skullcap, drawing not the least blink of surprise from the man. Ashberry, who took the hat in his gloved hand (thanks again, Thompson), then returned to the car. When no one was looking he bent down and rubbed the hat on the ground beneath a telephone kiosk, where he guessed many people had stood during the past day or so. The hat would pick up some dirt and other evidence – ideally a hair or two – which would give the police even more false leads on the terrorist connection. He rubbed the inside of the hat on the mouthpiece of the phone to pick up saliva and sweat for DNA samples. Slipping the hat into the box with the gun and magazines and books, he climbed back into the car and drove to Morningside Heights and onto the Columbia campus.

He now found the old faculty building that housed Mathers’s office. The businessman spotted a police car parked in front, an officer sitting in the front seat, looking vigilantly over the street. So she did have a guard.

Well, he could handle it. He’d survived tougher situations than this – on the streets of South Philly and in boardrooms down on Wall Street. Surprise was the best advantage – you could beat overwhelming odds if you did the unexpected.

Continuing along the street, he made a U-turn and parked behind the building, his car well out of sight and aimed toward the highway for a fast escape. He climbed out and looked around. Yes, it could work, he could approach the office from the side, then slip through the front door when the cop was looking elsewhere.

As for getting away…there was a back door to the building. Two ground-level windows too. If the cop ran for the building the minute he heard the shots, Ashberry could shoot him from one of the front windows. In any case he should have enough time to drop the kufi as evidence and get to his car before any other police arrived.

He found a pay phone. He called the school’s main switchboard.

“ Columbia University,” a voice replied.

“Professor Mathers, please.”

“One moment.”

A black-inflected voice answered, “Hello?”

“Professor Mathers?”

“That’s right.”

In the persona of Steve Macy again, Ashberry explained that he was an author from Philadelphia, doing research at the Lehman Library – the Columbia facility devoted to social science and journalism (the Sanford Foundation had given a lot of money to libraries and schools like this one. Ashberry had attended benefits there; he could describe it if he had to). He then said that one of the librarians had heard Mathers had been looking into nineteenth-century New York history, particularly the Reconstruction era. Was that right?

The professor gave a surprised laugh. “I am, as a matter of fact. It’s not for me, actually. I’m helping out a high school student. She’s with me right now.”

Thank God. The girl was still there. I can get it all over with now, get on with my life.

Ashberry said that he’d brought quite a lot of material up from Philly. Would he and this student be interested in taking a look?

The professor said they definitely would, thanked him then asked what would be a convenient time to come by.

When he was seventeen Billy Ashberry had held a box cutter against the thigh of an elderly shopkeeper and reminded him that the man’s protection payments were past due. The razor was going to cut one inch for every day the payment was late unless he paid up instantly. His voice had been as calm then as it was now, saying to Mathers, “I’m leaving tonight but I could drop by now. You can make copies if you want. You have a Xerox machine?”

“I do, yes.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

They hung up. Ashberry reached into the box and clicked the safety button on the shotgun to the off position. Then he hefted the carton and started toward the building, through a swirl of autumn leaves spun in tiny cyclones by the cold breeze.

Chapter Forty

“Professor?”

“You’re Steve Macy?” The dowdy professor, sporting a bow tie and tweed jacket, was sitting behind piles of papers covering his desk.

He smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m Richard Mathers. This is Geneva Settle.”

A short teenage girl, her skin as dark as the professor’s, glanced at him and nodded. Then she looked eagerly at the box he carted. She was so young. Could he really kill her?

Then an image of his daughter’s wedding on the dock of his summer house flashed through his mind, followed by a series of fast thoughts: the Mercedes AMG his wife wanted, his membership at the Augusta golf course, the dinner plans he had this evening at L’Etoile, to which The New York Times had just given three stars.

Those images answered his question.

Ashberry set the box on the floor. No cops inside, he noticed with relief. He shook Mathers’s hand. And thought: Fuck, they can lift fingerprints from flesh. After the shootings he’d have to take the time to wipe off the man’s palms. (He remembered what Thompson Boyd had told him: When it came to death, you did everything by the book, or you walked away from the job.)

Ashberry smiled at the girl. Didn’t shake her hand. He looked around the office, judging angles.

“Sorry for the mess,” Mathers said.

“Mine isn’t any better,” he said with a faint laugh. The room was filled with books, magazines and stacks of photocopies. On the wall were a number of diplomas. Mathers was, it turned out, not a history but a law professor. And a well-known one, apparently. Ashberry was looking at a photo of the professor with Bill Clinton and another with former mayor Giuliani.

As he saw these photos, the remorse raised its head again but it was really nothing more than a faint blip on the screen by now. Ashberry was comfortable with the fact that he was in the room with two dead people.

They chatted for a few minutes, with Ashberry talking in vague terms about schools and libraries in Philadelphia, avoiding any direct comments about what he was looking into. He stayed on the offensive, asking the professor, “What exactly’re you researching?”

Mathers deferred to Geneva, who explained that they were trying to find out about her ancestor, Charles Singleton, a former slave. “It was pretty weird,” she said. “The police thought that there was this connection between him and some crimes, ones that just happened. That turned out to be pretty wack, I mean, it was wrong. But we’re all curious about what happened to him. Nobody seems to know.”

“Let’s take a look at what you’ve got,” Mathers said, clearing a spot on a low table in front of his desk. “I’ll get another chair.”

This is it, Ashberry thought. His heart began pounding fast. He then recalled the razor knife slipping into the shopkeeper’s flesh, cutting two inches for the two days of missed juice, Ashberry hardly hearing the man’s screams.

Recalled all the years of backbreaking work to get to where he was today.

Recalled Thompson Boyd’s dead eyes.

He was instantly calm.

As soon as Mathers stepped into the hallway, the banker glanced out the window. The policeman was still in the car, a good fifty feet away, and the building was so solid he might not even hear the gunshots. With the desk between himself and Geneva, he bent down, shuffling through the papers. He gripped the shotgun.

“Did you find any pictures?” Geneva asked. “I’d really like to find more about what the neighborhood looked like back then.”

“I have a few, I think.”

Mathers was returning. “Coffee?” he called from the hallway.

“No, thanks.”

Ashberry turned to the door.

Now!

He started to rise, pulling the gun from the box, keeping it below Geneva’s eye level.

Aiming at the doorway, finger around the trigger.

But something was wrong. Mathers wasn’t appearing.

It was then that Ashberry felt something metallic touch his ear.

“William Ashberry, you’re under arrest. I have a weapon.” It was the girl’s voice, though a very different sound, an adult voice. “Set that breakdown on the desk. Slow.”

Ashberry froze. “But -”

“The shotgun. Set it down.” The girl nudged his head with the pistol. “I’m a police officer. And I will use my firearm.”

Oh, Lord, no…It was all a trap!

“Listen up, now, you do what she’s telling you.” This was the professor – though, of course, it wasn’t Mathers at all. He was a stand-in too, a cop who was pretending to be the professor. He glanced sideways. The man had come back into the office through a side door. From his neck dangled an FBI identification card. He too held a pistol. How the hell had they gotten onto him? Ashberry wondered in disgust.

“An’ don’ move that muzzle so much’s a skinny little millimeter. We all together on that?”

“I’m not going to tell you again,” the girl said in a calm voice. “Do it now.”

Still he didn’t move.

Ashberry thought of his grandfather, the mobster, he thought of the screaming shopkeeper, he thought of his daughter’s wedding.

What would Thompson Boyd do?

Play it by the book and give up.

No fucking way. Ashberry dropped into a crouch and spun around, lightning fast, lifting the gun.

Somebody shouted, “Don’t!”

The last word he ever heard.

Chapter Forty-One

“Quite a view,” Thom said.

Lincoln Rhyme glanced out the window at the Hudson River, the rock cliffs of the Palisades on the opposite shore and the distant hills of New Jersey. Maybe Pennsylvania too. He turned away immediately, the expression on his face explaining that panoramic views, like people’s pointing them out, bored him senseless.

They were in the Sanford Foundation office of the late William Ashberry atop the Hiram Sanford Mansion on West Eighty-second Street. Wall Street was still digesting the news of the man’s death and his involvement in a series of crimes over the past few days. Not that the financial community had ground to a halt; compared with, say, the betrayals visited on shareholders and employees by executives of Enron and Global Crossing, the death of a crooked executive of a profitable company didn’t make compelling news.

Amelia Sachs had already searched the office and removed evidence linking Ashberry to Boyd and taped off certain parts of the room. This meeting was in a cleared area, which happened to feature stained-glass windows and rosewood paneling.

Sitting beside Rhyme and Thom were Geneva Settle and attorney Wesley Goades. Rhyme was amused that there’d been a few moments when he’d actually suspected Goades of complicity in the case – owing to his suddenly materializing in Rhyme’s apartment, looking for Geneva, and the Fourteenth Amendment aspect of the intrigue; the lawyer would’ve had a strong motive to make certain that nothing jeopardized an important weapon for civil libertarians. Rhyme had also wondered if the man’s loyalty to his former insurance company employers had led him to betray Geneva.

But Rhyme hadn’t shared his suspicion of the lawyer and thus no apologies were in order. After Rhyme and Sachs had discovered that the case had taken an unexpected turn, the criminalist had suggested that Goades be retained for what was coming next. Geneva Settle, of course, was all in favor of hiring him.

Across the marble coffee table from them were Gregory Hanson, the president of Sanford Bank and Trust, his assistant, Stella Turner, and the senior partner at Sanford ’s law firm, a trim mid-forties attorney named Anthony Cole. They exuded a collective unease, which, Rhyme assumed, would’ve arisen late yesterday when he’d called Hanson to propose a meeting to discuss the “Ashberry matter.”

Hanson had agreed but added both quickly and wearily that he was as shocked as anyone about the man’s death in the shootout at Columbia University several days before. He knew nothing about it – or about any jewelry store robbery or terrorist attack – except what he’d read in the news. What exactly did Rhyme and the police want?

Rhyme had offered standard cop-ese: “Just the answers to a few routine questions.”

Now, pleasantries disposed of, Hanson asked, “Could you tell us what this is about?”

Rhyme got right to the point: He explained that William Ashberry had hired Thompson Boyd, a professional killer, to murder Geneva Settle.

Three horrified glances at the slim young girl in front of them. She looked back at each of them calmly.

Continuing, the criminalist added that Ashberry felt it was vital that nobody know the reason he wanted her dead so he and Boyd had set up several fake motives for the girl’s death. Originally the kill was supposed to look like a rape. Rhyme, though, had seen through that immediately, and as they continued to search for the killer he and the team had found what appeared to be the real reason for the murder: that Geneva could identify a terrorist planning an attack.

“But there were some problems with that: The bomber’s death should’ve ended any need to kill Geneva. But it didn’t. Boyd’s partner tried again. What was going on? We tracked down the man who sold the bomb to Boyd, an arsonist in New Jersey. The FBI arrested him. We linked some bills in his possession to Boyd’s safe house. That made him an accomplice to murder and he copped a plea. He told us that he put Ashberry and Boyd together and -”

“This terrorist thing, though,” the bank’s lawyer said skeptically, with a sour laugh. “Bill Ashberry and terrorists? It -”

“Getting there,” Rhyme said, equally sour. Maybe more so. He continued his explanation: The bomb maker’s statement wasn’t enough for a warrant to arrest Ashberry. So Rhyme and Sellitto decided they needed to flush him out. They placed an officer at Geneva’s high school, a man pretending to be an assistant principal. Anyone calling to ask about Geneva would be told that she was at Columbia with a professor in the law school. The real professor agreed to let them use not only his name but his office as well. Fred Dellray and Jonette Monroe, the undercover gangsta girl from Geneva’s high school, were more than happy to play the roles of the professor and student. They’d done a fast but thorough job setting up the sting, even having some fake Photoshop pictures made up of Dellray with Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, to make sure Ashberry didn’t tip to the scam and bolt.

Rhyme now explained these events to Hanson and Cole, adding the details about the attempted murder in Mathers’s office.

He shook his head. “I should’ve guessed the perp had some connections to a bank. He’d been able to withdraw large amounts of cash and doctor the reporting statements. But” – Rhyme nodded to the lawyer – “what the hell was he up to? I understand that Episcopalians aren’t really a breeding ground for fundamentalist terrorism.”

No one smiled. Rhyme thought, bankers, lawyers – no sense of humor. He continued, “So I went back to the evidence and noticed something that bothered me: There was no radio transmitter to detonate the bomb. It should’ve been in the wreckage of the van, but it wasn’t.

“Why not? One conclusion was that Boyd and his partner had planted the bomb and kept the transmitter themselves to kill the Arab deliveryman as a diversion to keep us from finding the real motive for killing Geneva.”

“Okay,” Hanson said. “The real motive. What was it?”

“Had to do some thinking about that. I thought at first maybe Geneva had seen some tenants being evicted illegally when she was scrubbing graffiti off old buildings for a developer. But I looked into where that’d happened and found that Sanford Bank wasn’t involved in those buildings. So, where did that leave us? I could only come back to what we’d originally thought…”

He explained about the old Coloreds’ Weekly Illustrated that Boyd had stolen. “I’d forgotten that somebody had been tracking down the magazine before Geneva supposedly saw the van and terrorist. I think what happened was that Ashberry stumbled on that article when the Sanford Foundation renovated its archives last month. And he did some more research and found something real troubling, something that could ruin his life. He got rid of the foundation’s copy and decided he had to destroy all the copies of the magazine. Over the past few weeks he found most of them – but there was one left in the area: The librarian at the African-American museum in Midtown was getting their copy from storage and must’ve told Ashberry that, coincidentally, there was a girl who was interested in the same issue. Ashberry knew he had to destroy the article and kill Geneva, along with the librarian, because he could connect them.”

“But I still don’t understand why,” Cole, the lawyer, said. His sourness had blossomed into full-fledged irritation.

Rhyme explained the final piece of the puzzle: He related the story of Charles Singleton, the farm he’d been given by his master and the Freedmen’s Trust robbery – and the fact that the former slave had a secret. “That was the answer to why Charles was set up in 1868. And it’s the answer to why Ashberry had to kill Geneva.”

“Secret?” Stella, the assistant, asked.

“Oh, yes. I finally figured out what it was. I remembered something that Geneva ’s father had told me. He said that Charles taught at an African free school near his home and that he sold cider to workers building boats up the road.” Rhyme shook his head. “I made a careless assumption. We heard that his farm was in New York state…which it was. Except that it wasn’t upstate, like we were thinking.”

“No? Where was it?” Hanson asked.

“Easy to figure out,” he continued, “if you keep in mind there were working farms here in the city until the late eighteen hundreds.”

“You mean his farm was in Manhattan?” Stella asked.

“Not only,” Rhyme said, allowing himself the colloquialism. “It was right underneath this building.”

Chapter Forty-Two

“We found a drawing of Gallows Heights in the 1800s that shows three or four big, tree-filled estates. One of them covered this and the surrounding blocks. Across the road from it was an African free school. Could that’ve been his school? And on the Hudson River ” – Rhyme glanced out the window – “right about there, at Eighty-first Street, was a dry dock and shipyard. Could the workers there have been the ones Charles sold cider to?

“But was the estate his? There was one simple way to find out. Thom checked the Manhattan recorder’s office and found the record of a deed from Charles’s master to Charles. Yep, it was his. Then everything else fell into place. All the references we found to meetings in Gallows Heights – with politicians and civil rights leaders? It was Charles’s house they were meeting in. That was his secret – that he owned fifteen acres of prime land in Manhattan.”

“But why was it a secret?” Hanson asked.

“Oh, he didn’t dare tell anyone he was the owner. He wanted to, of course. That’s what he was so tormented about: He was proud that he owned a big farm in the city. He believed he could be a model for other former slaves. Show them that they could be treated as whole men, respected. That they could own land and work it, be members of the community. But he’d seen draft riots, the lynchings of blacks, the arson. So he and his wife pretended to be caretakers. He was afraid that somebody would find out that a former slave owned a large plot of choice property and destroy it. Or, more likely, steal it from him.”

“Which,” Geneva said, “is exactly what happened.”

Rhyme continued, “When Charles was convicted all his property was confiscated – including the farm – and sold… Now, that’s a nice theory: setting up someone with false charges to steal his property. But was there any proof? A tall order a hundred and forty years later – talk about cold cases…Well, there was some evidence. The Exeter Strongbow safes – the type that Charles allegedly broke into at the Freedmen’s Trust – they were made in England so I called a friend at Scotland Yard. He talked to a forensic locksmith, who said it’d be impossible to break into a nineteenth-century Exeter safe with only a hammer and chisel, which is what they found at the scene. Even steam-powered drills of that era would take three or four hours – and the article about the theft said that Charles was inside the trust for only twenty minutes.

“Next conclusion: Somebody else robbed the place, planted some of Charles’s tools at the scene and then bribed a witness to lie about him. I think that the actual thief was a man we found buried in the basement of the Potters’ Field tavern.” He explained about the Winskinskie ring and the man who’d worn it – that he was an officer in the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine.

“He was one of Boss Tweed’s cronies. And another one was William Simms, the detective who arrested Charles. Simms was later indicted for graft and planting false evidence on suspects. Simms, the Winskinskie man, and the judge and prosecutor engineered Charles’s conviction. And they kept the money from the trust that wasn’t recovered.

“So, we’ve established Charles owned a huge estate in Gallows Heights and he was set up so somebody could steal it.” His eyebrow rose. “The next logical question? The big one?”

No takers.

“Obviously: Who the hell was the perp?” Rhyme snapped. “Who robbed Charles? Well, given that the motive was to steal his farm, all I had to do was find out who took title to the land.”

“Who was it?” Hanson asked, troubled but seemingly caught up in the historical drama.

The assistant smoothed her skirt and suggested, “Boss Tweed?”

“No. It was a colleague of his. A man who was seen regularly at the Potters’ Field tavern, along with some of the other notorious figures back then – Jim Fisk, Jay Gould and Detective Simms.” A glance at each of the people across the table. “His name was Hiram Sanford.”

The woman blinked. After a moment she said, “The founder of our bank.”

“The one and only.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Cole, the attorney. “How could he do that? He was one of the pillars of New York society.”

“Just like William Ashberry?” the criminalist asked sarcastically. “The business world wasn’t really any different then than it is now. Lots of financial speculation – one of Charles’s letters quoted the New York Tribune referring to the ‘bursting bubbles’ on Wall Street. Railroads were the Internet companies of the 1800s. Their stocks were overvalued and crashed. Sanford probably lost his fortune when that happened and Tweed agreed to bail him out. But, being Tweed, he naturally wanted to use somebody else’s money to do it. So the two of them set up Charles, and Sanford bought the orchard at a rigged auction for a fraction of its value. He tore down Charles’s house and built his mansion on it, where we’re sitting right now.” A nod out the window toward the blocks nearby. “And then he and his heirs developed the land or sold it off little by little.”

“Didn’t Charles claim he was innocent, tell them what happened?” Hanson asked.

Rhyme scoffed, “A former slave against the anti-black Tammany Hall Democratic machine? How successful would that have been? Besides, he’d killed the man in the tavern.”

“So he was a murderer,” the attorney, Cole, pointed out quickly.

“Of course not,” Rhyme snapped. “He needed the Winskinskie man alive – to prove his innocence. The death was self-defense. But Charles had no choice but to hide the body and cover up the shooting. If they’d found out, he’d be hanged.”

Hanson shook his head. “Only there’s one thing that doesn’t make any sense: Why would what Hiram Sanford did way back then affect Bill Ashberry? Granted it’s bad PR – a bank founder stealing a former slave’s property? That’d be an ugly ten minutes on the nightly news. But frankly there are spin doctors who can handle that sort of thing. It’s not worth killing somebody for.”

“Ah.” Rhyme nodded. “Very good question…We’ve done a little research. Ashberry was in charge of your real estate division, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And if it were to go under he’d lose his job and most of his fortune?”

“I suppose so. But why would it go under? It’s our most profitable unit.”

Rhyme looked at Wesley Goades. “You’re up.”

The lawyer glanced briefly at the people across the table, then down again. The man simply could not hold eye contact. Nor was he given to Rhyme’s pointed explanations – and occasional digressions. He said simply, “We’re here to inform you that Ms. Settle intends to file a lawsuit against your bank seeking restitution for her loss.”

Hanson frowned and looked at Cole, who gave them a sympathetic look. “On the facts that you’ve given me, making a tortious claim against the bank for infliction of emotional distress probably wouldn’t get very far. See, the problem is that Mr. Ashberry was acting on his own, not as a bank officer. We’re not responsible for his actions.” A glance toward Goades, which may or may not have been condescending. “As your fine counsel here will tell you.”

Hanson added quickly to Geneva, “But, we’re very sympathetic to what you went through.” Stella Turner nodded. They seemed to mean this sincerely. “We’ll make it up to you.” He offered a smile. “I think you’ll find we can be pretty generous.”

His lawyer added what he had to: “Within reason.”

Rhyme regarded the bank president closely. Gregory Hanson seemed nice enough. Boyishly fifties, an easy smile. Probably one of those natural-born businessmen – the sort who was a decent boss and family man, did his job competently, worked long hours for the shareholders, flew coach on the company dime, remembered his employees’ birthdays.

The criminalist almost felt bad about what was coming next.

Wesley Goades, however, exhibited no remorse whatsoever as he said, “Mr. Hanson, the loss we’re talking about isn’t your corporate officer’s attempted murder of Ms. Settle – which is how we phrase the act – not ‘emotional distress.’ No, her suit is on behalf of Charles Singleton’s heirs, to recover the property stolen by Hiram Sanford, as well as monetary damages -”

“Wait,” the president whispered, giving a faint laugh.

“- damages equal to the rents and profits that your bank has made from that property from the date the court transferred title.” He consulted a piece of paper. “That’d be August 4, 1868. The money’ll be placed in a trust for the benefit of all of Mr. Singleton’s descendants, with distribution to be supervised by the court. We don’t have the actual figure yet.” Finally Goades looked up and held Hanson’s eye. “But we’re ballparking it conservatively at around nine hundred and seventy million dollars.”

Chapter Forty-Three

“That’s what William Ashberry was willing to kill for,” Rhyme explained. “To keep the theft of Charles’s property a secret. If anybody found out and his heirs made a claim, it would be the end of the real estate division and might even drive the entire Sanford Bank into bankruptcy.”

“Oh, well, now, this’s absurd,” the lawyer across the table from them blustered. The two legal opponents were equally tall and skinny, though Cole had a better tan. Rhyme suspected that Wesley Goades didn’t get out on tennis courts or golf courses very often. “Look around you. The blocks’re developed! Every square inch is built on.”

“We have no claim to the construction,” Goades said, as if this were clear. “We only want title to the land, and the rents that’ve been paid with respect to it.”

“For a hundred and forty years?”

“It’s not our problem that that’s when Sanford robbed Charles.”

“But most of the land’s been sold off,” Hanson said. “The bank only owns the two apartment buildings on this block and this mansion.”

“Well, naturally we’ll be instituting an accounting action to trace the proceeds of the property your bank illegally sold.”

“But we’ve been disposing of parcels for over a hundred years.”

Goades spoke to the tabletop. “I’ll say again: your problem, not ours.”

“No,” Cole snapped. “Forget it.”

“Ms. Settle is actually being quite restrained in her damage claim. There’s a good argument to be made for the fact that without her ancestor’s property, your bank would have gone under altogether in the eighteen sixties and that she’s entitled to all of your worldwide earnings. But we’re not seeking that. She doesn’t want the present shareholders of the bank to suffer too much.”

“Damn generous,” the lawyer muttered.

“It was her decision. I was in favor of closing you down.”

Cole leaned forward. “Listen, why don’t you take a reality pill here? You have no case. For one thing, the statute of limitations has run. You’ll be kicked out of court on motion.”

“Have you ever noticed,” Rhyme asked, unable to resist, “how people always lead with their weakest argument?…Sorry, forgive the footnote.”

“As for the statute,” Goades said, “we can make a solid argument that it’s been tolled and we’re entitled to bring the suit under principles of equity.”

The lawyer had explained to Rhyme that in some cases the time limit on bringing a lawsuit could be “tolled” – extended – if the defendant covers up a crime so that the victims don’t know it occurred, or when they aren’t able to sue, like when the courts and prosecutors were acting in collusion with the wrongdoer, which had happened in the Singleton case. Goades reiterated this now.

“But whatever Hiram Sanford did,” the other lawyer pointed out, “it had nothing to do with my client – the present bank.”

“We’ve traced ownership of the bank all the way back to the original Hiram Sanford Bank and Trust Limited, which was the entity that took title to the Singleton farm. Sanford used the bank as a cover. Unfortunately…for you, that is.” Goades said this as cheerfully as an unsmiling man could.

Cole wasn’t giving up. “Well, what proof do you have that the property would’ve been passed down through the family? This Charles Singleton could’ve sold it for five hundred dollars in 1870 and squandered the money away.”

“We have evidence that he intended to keep the farm in his family.” Rhyme turned to Geneva. “What did Charles say?”

The girl didn’t need to look at any notes. “In a letter to his wife he told her he never wanted to sell the farm. He said, ‘I wish the land to pass intact to our son and his issue; professions and trades ebb and flow, the financial markets are fickle, but the earth is God’s great constant – and our farm will ultimately bring to our family respectability in the eyes of those who do not respect us now. It will be our children’s salvation, and that of the generations that will follow.’”

Enjoying his role as cheerleader, Rhyme said, “Just think of how a jury’ll react to that. Not a dry eye.”

Cole leaned forward angrily toward Goades. “Oh, I know what’s going on here. You’re making it sound like she’s a victim. But this’s just blackmail. Like all the rest of the slavery reparations bullshit, right? I’m sorry Charles Singleton was a slave. I’m sorry he or his father, or whoever, was brought here against his will.” Cole waved his arm, as if shooing away a bee, and glanced at Geneva. “Well, young lady, that was a long, long time ago. My great-grandfather died of black lung. You don’t see me suing West Virginia Coal and Shale, looking for some easy money. You people have to get over it. Just get on with your lives. If you spent as much time – ”

“Hold up,” Hanson snapped. Both he and his assistant glared at the lawyer.

Cole licked his lips and then sat back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I said ‘you people’ but I didn’t mean…” He was looking at Wesley Goades.

But it was Geneva who spoke. “Mr. Cole, I feel the same way. Like, I really believe in what Frederick Douglass said. ‘People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.’ I don’t want any easy money.”

The lawyer eyed her uncertainly. He looked down after a moment. Geneva did not. She continued, “You know, I’ve been talking to my father about Charles. I found out some things about him. Like, his grandfather was kidnapped by slavers and taken away from his family in Yorubaland and sent to Virginia. Charles’s father died when he was forty-two because his master thought it’d be cheaper to buy a new, younger slave than to treat him for pneumonia. I found out that Charles’s mother was sold to a plantation in Georgia when Charles was twelve and he never saw her again. But, you know what?” she asked calmly. “I’m not asking for a penny because of those things. No. It’s real simple. Something Charles loved was taken away from him. And I’ll do whatever I have to to make sure the thief pays for that.”

Cole murmured another apology but his legal genes wouldn’t let him abdicate his client’s cause. He glanced at Hanson then continued, “I appreciate what you’re saying and we’ll offer a settlement based on Mr. Ashberry’s actions. But as for the claim to the property? We can’t go there. We don’t even know that you have legal standing to bring the suit. What proof do you have that you’re really Charles Singleton’s descendant?”

Lincoln Rhyme eased his finger across the touchpad and steered his chair imposingly close to the table. “Isn’t it about time somebody here asked why I tagged along?”

Silence.

“I don’t get out very much, as you can imagine. So what do you think brought me all these long blocks west?”

“ Lincoln,” chided Thom.

“All right, all right, I’ll get to the point. Exhibit A.”

“What exhibit?” Cole asked.

“I’m being facetious. The letter.” He glanced at Geneva. She opened her own backpack and took out a folder. She slipped a photocopy onto the desk.

The Sanford side of the table looked it over.

“One of Singleton’s letters?” Hanson asked.

“Nice handwriting,” Rhyme observed. “That was important back then. Not like nowadays, all this typing and careless jotting…All right, sorry – no more digressions. Here’s the point: I had a colleague, fellow named Parker Kincaid, down in D.C., compare that handwriting to all the existing samples of Charles Singleton’s exemplars, including legal documents in archives down in Virginia. Parker’s former FBI – he’s the handwriting expert the experts go to when they have a questioned document. He’s executed an affidavit stating that this’s identical to the known samples of Singleton’s handwriting.”

“Okay,” Cole conceded, “it’s his letter. So?”

“Geneva,” Rhyme said, “what does Charles say?”

She nodded at the letter and recited, again from memory, “‘And yet the source of my tears – the stains you see on this paper, my darling, – are not from pain but from regret for the misery I have visited upon us.’”

“The original letter contains several stains,” Rhyme explained. “We analyzed them and found lysozyme, lipocalin and lactoferrin – proteins, if you’re interested – and assorted enzymes, lipids and metabolites. Those, and water, of course, make up human tears… By the way, did you know that the composition of tears differs significantly depending on whether they were shed in pain or because of emotion? These tears” – a nod toward the document – “were shed in emotion. I can prove that. I suspect the jury will find that fact moving too.”

Cole sighed. “You’ve run a DNA test on the stain and it matches Ms. Settle’s DNA.”

Rhyme shrugged and muttered the byword for today: “Obviously.”

Hanson looked at Cole, whose eyes slipped back and forth between the letter and his notes. The president said to Geneva, “A million dollars. I’ll write you a check right now for a million dollars, if you and your guardian sign a liability waiver.”

Goades said coolly, “Ms. Settle insists on seeking restitution in the amount of the actual damages – monies that all of Charles Singleton’s heirs will share in, not just herself.” He leveled another gaze at the bank president. “I’m sure you weren’t suggesting that your payment would be for her alone, an incentive, maybe, to neglect to inform her relatives about what happened.”

“No, no, of course not,” Hanson said quickly. “Let me talk to our board. We’ll come up with a settlement figure.”

Goades gathered up the papers and stuffed them into his knapsack. “I’m filing the complaint in two weeks. If you want to discuss voluntarily creating a trust fund for the claimants, you can call me here.” He slid a card across the desk.

When they were at the door the bank’s attorney, Cole, said, “ Geneva, wait, please. Look, I’m sorry about what I said before. Truly. It was…inappropriate. I honestly feel bad for what happened to you and to your ancestor. And I do have your interest in mind here. Just remember that a settlement would be far and away the best thing for you and your relatives. Let your lawyer tell you how tough a trial like this would be, how long it could take, how expensive.” He smiled. “Trust me. We are on your side here.”

Geneva looked him over. Her reply was: “The battles’re the same as they’ve always been. It’s just harder to recognize the enemy.” She turned and continued out the door.

The attorney clearly had no idea what she meant.

Which, Rhyme supposed, more or less proved her point.

Chapter Forty-Four

Early Wednesday, the autumn air cold and clear as fresh ice.

Geneva had just visited her father at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and was on her way to Langston Hughes High. She’d finished the paper on Home to Harlem. It turned out not to be such a bad book (though she’d still rather have written about Octavia Butler; damn, that woman could write!) and she was pretty pleased with her report.

What was especially phat, though, was that Geneva’d written it on a word processor, one of the Toshibas in Mr. Rhyme’s lab, which Thom had showed her how to use. At school the few computers that worked were so overbooked that you couldn’t get more than fifteen minutes of time on one, let alone use it to write a whole paper. And to find facts or research all she had to do was “minimize” WordPerfect and call up the Internet. A miracle. What would’ve otherwise taken her two days to write, she finished in mere hours.

Crossing the street, she aimed for the shortcut through the school yard of PS 288 elementary school, which took a few minutes off the trip from the Eighth Avenue train station to Langston Hughes. The chain-link fence around the school yard cast a gridded shadow on the bleached-gray asphalt. The slim girl slipped easily through the gap in the gate, which had long ago been wedged open wide enough for a teenage boy and a basketball to pass through. The hour was early, the yard deserted.

She was ten feet across the grounds when she heard a voice calling from the other side of the fence.

“Girlfriend, yo!”

She stopped.

Lakeesha stood on the sidewalk, decked out in tight green stretch pants, a long orange blouse, taut over her boobs, book bag dangling, bling and braids glistening in the sun. Her face had the same somber expression as when Geneva ’d seen her last week when that wack bitch Frazier tried to kill her and her father. “Hey, girl, where’ve you been?”

Keesh looked doubtfully at the gap in the chain link; she’d never fit. “C’mon here.”

“Meet me at school.”

“Naw. Wanna talk just us.”

Geneva debated. Her friend’s face told her this was important. She slipped out through the gate and walked up to the big girl. They fell into a slow walk, side by side.

“Where’ve you been, Keesh?” Geneva frowned. “You cut class?”

“Ain’t feelin’ good.”

“Monthlies?”

“Naw, not that. My moms sent a note.” Lakeesha looked around. “Who that old dude you with th’other day?”

She opened her mouth to lie and instead said, “My father.”

“No!”

“Word,” Geneva said.

“He be livin’ in Chicago, or somethin’, you tellin’ me.”

“My moms lied. He was in the system. He got released a couple months ago, came to find me.”

“Where he at now?”

“In the hospital. He got hurt.”

“He down?”

“Yeah. He’ll be okay.”

“And him and you? You phat?”

“Maybe. Hardly know him.”

“Damn, him showin’ up – musta been freaky.”

“You got that right, girl.”

Finally the big girl slowed. Then stopped. Geneva looked at her friend’s evasive eyes and watched her hand disappearing into her purse, gripping something inside.

A hesitation.

“What?” Geneva asked.

“Here,” the girl whispered fast, lifting her hand and thrusting it forward. In her fingers, which ended in black-and-white-checkered acrylic nails, was a silver necklace, a heart on the end of a chain.

“That’s -” Geneva began

“What you give me last month, fo’ my birthday.”

“You’re giving it back?”

“I can’t keep it, Gen. You be needin’ benjamins anyway. You can hock it.”

“Don’t be wack, girl. Not like it came from Tiffany’s.”

Tears were welling in the big girl’s eyes, the prettiest part of her face. Her hand lowered. “I be movin’ next week.”

“Moving? Where?”

“BK.”

“Brooklyn? Your whole family? The twins?”

“They ain’ goin’. None of the family be goin’.” The girl’s eyes swept the sidewalk.

“What’s this all about, Keesh?”

“I’ma tell you somethin’ that happen.”

“I’m not in the mood for drama, girl,” Geneva snapped. “What’re you talking about?”

“Kevin,” Lakeesha continued in a soft voice.

“Kevin Cheaney?”

Keesh nodded. “I’m sorry, girl. Me and him, we in love. He got this place he moving to. I’ma go with him.”

Geneva, silent for a moment. Then: “Was he the one you were talking to when I called last week?”

She nodded. “Listen, I didn’t want it to happen but it jus’ did. You gotta understand. We got this thing, him and me. It ain’t like nothin’ I never felt. I know you wanta be with him. You talkin’ ’bout him all the time, lookin’ him over ever’ day. You so happy that time he walk you home. I know all that and still I done move in on you. Oh, girl, I been worried steady, thinkin’ ’bout tellin’ you.”

Geneva felt a chill in her soul, but it had nothing to do with her crush on Kevin, which had vanished the instant he showed his true self in math class. She asked, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

Wasn’t feeling good…

Keesh lowered her head and stared at the dangling necklace.

Geneva closed her eyes for a moment. Then she asked, “How far down?”

“Two months.”

“Hook yourself up with a doctor. We’ll go to the clinic, you and me. I’ll -”

Her friend frowned. “Why I do that? It ain’t like I laid no baby on him. He say he use protection if I say so but he really want to have a baby with me. He say it be like part of both of us.”

“It was a line, Keesh. He’s working you.”

Her friend glared. “Oh, that cold.”

“No, that’s word, girl. He’s been fronting. He’s working some angle.” Geneva wondered what he wanted from her. It wouldn’t be grades, not in Keesha’s case. Probably money. Everybody in school knew she worked hard at her two jobs and saved what she earned. Her parents had income too. Her moms’d worked for the Postal Service for years and her father had a job at CBS and another one nights at the Sheraton Hotel. Her brother worked, as well. Kevin’d have an eye on the whole family’s benjamins.

“You loan him any money?” Geneva asked.

Her friend looked down. Said nothing. Meaning yes.

“We had a deal, you and me. We were going to graduate, go to college.”

Lakeesha wiped tears from her round face with her round hand. “Oh, Gen, you a trip. What planet you be livin’ on? We talk, you and me, ’bout college and fancy jobs but fo’ me, it just talk. You write yo’ papers like they nothin’ and take yo’ tests and you be number one at ever’thing. You know I ain’t like that.”

“You were going to be the successful one, with your business. Remember, girl? I’ll be a poor professor somewhere, eating tuna out of a can and having Cheerios for dinner. You’re the one going to kick ass. What about your store? Your TV show? Your club?”

Keesh shook her head, her braids dangling. “Shit, girl, that just claimin’. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Best I can hope for is what I doin’ now – servin’ up salads and burgers at T.G.I. Friday’s. Or doing braids and extensions till they go outa style. Which you ask me’ll be all of six months.”

Geneva gave a weak smile. “We always said ’fros’d be coming back in.”

Keesha laughed. “Word. All you need fo’ them is a pick and spray; ain’t no need fo’ no fresh artist like me.” She twined her own blonde extensions around her finger then lowered her hands, her smile fading. “By myself, I’ll end up a played-out old bag. Only way I’ma get over is with a man.”

“Now who’s talking trash ’bout herself, girl? Kevin’s been feeding you crap. You never used to talk this way.”

“He take care of me. He be lookin’ steady for work. An’ he promise he help me take care of the baby. He different. He not like them other boys he hang with.”

“Yes, he is. You can’t give up, Keesh. Don’t do it! Stay in school at least. You really want a baby, fine, but stay in school. You can – ”

“You ain’t my moms, girl,” Keesh snapped. “I know what I’m about.” Anger flashed in the girl’s eyes – all the more heartbreaking because it was the very same fury that had filled the girl’s round face when she stepped up to protect Geneva from the Delano or St. Nicholas project girls moving on her in the street.

Get her down, cut her, cut the bitch…

Then Keesh added softly, “What it is, girl, he sayin’ I can’t hang with you no more.”

“You can’t -”

“Kevin say you treat him bad at school.”

“Treated him bad?” A cold laugh. “He wanted me to help him cheat. I said no.”

“I told him it was fucked up, what he was sayin’, me and you being so tight and ever’thing. But he wouldn’t listen. He say I can’t see you none.”

“So you’re choosing him,” Geneva said.

“I ain’t got no choice.” The big girl looked down. “I can’t take no present from you. Here.” She thrust the necklace into Geneva ’s hand and released it fast, as if she were letting go of a hot pan. It fell to the filthy sidewalk.

“Don’t do it, Keesh. Please!”

Geneva reached for the girl but her fingers closed on nothing but cool air.

Chapter Forty-Five

Ten days after the meeting with Sanford Bank President Gregory Hanson and his lawyer, Lincoln Rhyme was having a phone conversation with Ron Pulaski, the young rookie, who was on medical leave but expected to return to duty in a month or so. His memory was coming back and he was helping them shore up the case against Thompson Boyd.

“So you going to a Halloween party?” Pulaski asked. Then paused and added a quick “Or whatever.” The last two words probably were meant to counteract any faux pas created by suggesting that a quadriplegic might attend parties.

But Rhyme put him at ease by saying, “I am, as a matter of fact. I’m going as Glenn Cunningham.”

Sachs stifled a laugh.

“Really?” the rookie asked. “Uhm, who’s that exactly?”

“Why don’t you look it up, Patrolman.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

Rhyme disconnected and looked over the main evidence board, on the top of which was taped the twelfth card in the tarot deck, The Hanged Man.

He was gazing at the card when the doorbell rang.

Lon Sellitto, probably. He was due soon from a therapy session. He’d stopped rubbing the phantom bloodstain and practicing his Billy the Kid quick draw – which nobody’d yet explained to Rhyme. He’d tried to ask Sachs about it but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say much. Which was fine. Sometimes, Lincoln Rhyme firmly believed, you just didn’t need to know all the details.

But his visitor at the moment, it turned out, wasn’t the rumpled detective.

Rhyme glanced into the doorway and saw Geneva Settle standing there, listing against her book bag. “Welcome,” he said.

Sachs too said hello, pulling off the safety glasses she’d been wearing as she filled out chain-of-custody cards for blood samples she’d collected at a homicide crime scene that morning.

Wesley Goades had all the paperwork ready to file in the lawsuit against Sanford Bank and reported to Geneva that she could expect a realistic offer from Hanson by Monday. If not, the legal cruise missile had warned his opponents that he would file suit the next day. A press conference would accompany the event (Goades’s opinion was that the bad publicity would last considerably longer than an “ugly ten minutes”).

Rhyme looked the girl over. Unseasonably warm weather made gangsta sweats and stocking caps impractical so she was in blue jeans and a sleeve-less T-shirt with Guess! in glittery letters across the chest. She’d gained a little weight, her hair was longer. She even had some makeup on (Rhyme had wondered what was in the bag that Thom had mysteriously slipped her the other day). The girl looked good.

Geneva’s life had achieved a certain stability. Jax Jackson had been released from the hospital and was undergoing physical therapy. Thanks to some prodding by Sellitto, the man had been officially transferred to the care and feeding of the New York City parole authorities. Geneva was living in his minuscule apartment in Harlem, an arrangement that was not as dire as she’d anticipated (the girl had confessed this not to Rhyme or Roland Bell but to Thom – who’d become a mother hen to the girl and invited her to the town house regularly, to give her cooking lessons, watch TV and argue books and politics, none of which Rhyme had any interest in). As soon as they could afford a bigger place, she and her father were going to have Aunt Lilly move in with them.

The girl had given up her job slinging McHash and was now employed after school by Wesley Goades as a legal researcher and gofer. She was also helping him set up the Charles Singleton Trust, which would disburse the settlement money to the freedman’s heirs. Geneva’s interest in fleeing the city at the earliest opportunity for a life in London or Rome hadn’t flagged, but the cases that Rhyme overheard her passionately talking about all seemed to involve Harlem residents who’d been discriminated against because they were black, Latino, Islamic, women or poor.

Geneva was also engaged in some project she referred to as “saving her girlfriend,” which she didn’t go into with him either; her advisor for this particular endeavor seemed to be Amelia Sachs.

“I wanted to show you something.” The girl held up a piece of yellowing paper containing several paragraphs of handwriting that Rhyme immediately recognized as Charles Singleton’s.

“Another letter?” Sachs asked.

Geneva nodded. She was handling the paper very carefully.

“Aunt Lilly heard from that relative of ours in Madison. He sent us a few things he found in his basement. A bookmark of Charles’s, a pair of his glasses. And a dozen letters. This is the one I wanted to show you.” With beaming eyes, Geneva added, “It was written in 1875, after he got out of prison.”

“Let’s see it,” Rhyme said.

Sachs mounted it on the scanner and a moment later the image appeared on several computer monitors around the lab. Sachs stepped next to Rhyme, put her arm around his shoulder. They looked at the screen.

My most darling Violet:

I trust you have been enjoying your sister’s company, and that Joshua and Elizabeth are pleased to spend time with their cousins. That Frederick – who was only nine when I saw him last, – is as tall as his father is a fact I find hard to grasp.

All is well at our cottage, I am pleased to report. James and I cut ice on the shore of the river all morning and stocked the ice-house, then covered the blocks in saw-dust. We then traveled some two miles north through substantial snow to view the orchard that is offered for sale. The price is dear but I believe the seller will respond favorably to my counter-offer. He was clearly in doubt about selling to a Negro but when I revealed that I could pay him in greenbacks and would not need to offer a note, his concerns appeared to vanish.

Hard cash is a great equalizer.

Were you not as moved as I to read that yesterday our country enacted a Civil Rights Act? Did you see the particulars? The law guarantees to everyone of any color equal enjoyment of all inns, public conveyances, theaters and the like. What a momentous day for our Cause! This is the very legislation about which I corresponded with Charles Sumner and Benjamin Butler at length last year, and I believe that some of my ideas made their way into this important document.

As you can well imagine, this news gave me cause for reflection, thinking back to those terrible events of seven years past, being robbed of our orchard in Gallows Heights and jailed in pitiful conditions.

And yet now, reflecting upon this news from Washington, D.C., as I sit before the fire in our cottage, I feel that those terrible events are from a different world entirely. In much the same way as those hours of bloody combat in the War or the hard years of forced servitude in Virginia are forever present but – somehow, – as removed as the muddled images from an ill-remembered nightmare.

Perhaps within our hearts is a single repository for both despair and hope, and filling that space with one drives out all but the most shadowy memory of the other. And tonight I am filled only with hope.

You will recall that, for years I vowed that I would do whatever I might to cast off the stigma of being regarded as a three-fifths man. When I consider the looks I still receive, because of my color, and the actions of others toward me and our people, I think I am not yet regarded as completely whole. But I would venture to say that we have progressed to the point where I am viewed as a nine-tenths man (James laughed heartily when I told him this over supper tonight), and I continue to have faith that we will come to be seen as whole within our lifetimes, or in Joshua’s and Elizabeth’s, at least.

Now, my dearest, I must say goodnight to you and prepare a lesson for my students tomorrow.

Sweet dreams to you and our children, my darling. I live for your return.

Your faithful Charles

Croton on the Hudson,

March 2, 1875

Rhyme said, “It sounds like Douglass and the others forgave him for the robbery. Or decided to believe that he didn’t do it.”

Sachs asked, “What was that law he was talking about?”

“The Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Geneva said. “It prohibited racial discrimination by hotels, restaurants, trains, theaters – any public place.” The girl shook her head. “It didn’t last, though. The Supreme Court struck it down in the 1880s as unconstitutional. There wasn’t a single piece of federal civil rights legislation enacted after that for over fifty years.”

Sachs mused, “I wonder if Charles lived long enough to hear it was struck down. He wouldn’t’ve liked that.”

Shrugging, Geneva replied, “I don’t think it would’ve mattered. He’d think of it as just a temporary setback.”

“The hope pushing out the pain,” Rhyme said.

“That’s word,” Geneva said. Then she looked at her battered Swatch. “I’ve got to get back to work. That Wesley Goades…I’ve gotta say, the man is wack. He never smiles, never looks at you… And, come on, you can trim a beard sometimes, you know.”

Lying in bed that night, the room dark, Rhyme and Sachs were watching the moon, a crescent so thin that, by rights, it should have been cold white but through some malady of atmosphere was as golden as the sun.

Sometimes, at moments like this, they talked, sometimes not. Tonight they were silent.

There was a slight movement on the ledge outside the window – from the peregrine falcons that nested there. A male and female and two fledglings. Occasionally a visitor to Rhyme’s would look at the nest and ask if they had names.

“We have a deal,” he’d mutter. “They don’t name me. I don’t name them. It works.”

A falcon’s head rose and looked sideways, cutting through their view of the moon. The bird’s movement and profile suggested, for some reason, wisdom. Danger, too – adult peregrines have no natural predators and attack their prey from above at speeds up to 170 miles an hour. But now the bird hunkered down benignly and went still. The creatures were diurnal and slept at night.

“Thinking?” Sachs asked.

“Let’s go hear some music tomorrow. There’s a matinee, or whatever you call an afternoon concert, at Lincoln Center.”

“Who’s playing?”

“The Beatles, I think. Or Elton John and Maria Callas doing duets. I don’t care. I really just want to embarrass people by wheeling toward them… My point is that it doesn’t matter who’s playing. I want to get out. That doesn’t happen very often, you know.”

“I know.” Sachs leaned up and kissed him. “Sure, let’s.”

He twisted his head and touched his lips to her hair. She settled down against him. Rhyme closed his fingers around her hand and squeezed hard.

She squeezed back.

“You know what we could do?” Sachs asked, a hint of conspiracy in her voice. “Let’s sneak in some wine and lunch. Pâté and cheese. French bread.”

“You can buy food there. I remember that. But the scotch is terrible. And it costs a fortune. What we could do is -”

“Rhyme!” Sachs sat straight up in bed, gasping.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What did you just do?”

“I’m agreeing that we smuggle some food into -”

“Don’t play around.” Sachs was fumbling for the light, clicked it on. In her black silk boxers and gray T-shirt, hair askew and eyes wide, she looked like a college girl who’d just remembered she had an exam at eight tomorrow morning.

Rhyme squinted as he looked at the light. “That’s awfully bright. Is it necessary?”

She was staring down at the bed.

“Your…your hand. You moved it!”

“I guess I did.”

“Your right hand! You’ve never had any movement in your right hand.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been putting off the test, but you’ve known all along you could do that?”

“I didn’t know I could. Until now. I wasn’t going to try – I was afraid it wouldn’t work. So I was going to give up all the exercise, just stop worrying about it.” He shrugged. “But I changed my mind. I wanted to give it a shot. But just us, no machines or doctors around.”

Not by myself, he added, though silently.

“And you didn’t tell me!” She slapped him on the arm.

“I didn’t feel that.”

They laughed.

“It’s amazing, Rhyme,” she whispered and hugged him hard. “You did it. You really did it.”

“I’ll try it again.” Rhyme looked at Sachs, then at his hand.

He paused a moment, then sent a burst of energy from his mind streaking through the nerves to his right hand. Each finger twitched a little. And then, as ungainly as a newborn colt, his hand swiveled across a two-inch Grand Canyon of blanket and seated itself firmly against Sachs’s wrist. He closed his thumb and index finger around it.

Tears in her eyes, she laughed with delight.

“How ’bout that,” he said.

“So you’ll keep up with the exercises?”

He nodded.

“We’ll set up the test with Dr. Sherman?” she asked.

“I suppose we could. Unless something else comes up. Been a busy time lately.”

“We’ll set up the test,” she said firmly.

She shut the light out and lay close to him. Which he could sense, though not feel.

In silence, Rhyme stared at the ceiling. Just as Sachs’s breathing stilled, he frowned, aware of an odd sensation trickling through his chest, where there ought to be none. At first he thought it was phantom. Then, alarmed, he wondered if it was perhaps the start of an attack of dysreflexia, or worse. But he realized that, no, this was something else entirely, something not rooted in nerve or muscle or organ. A scientist always, he analyzed the sensation empirically and noted that it was similar to what he’d felt watching Geneva Settle face down the bank’s attorney. Similar too to when he was reading about Charles Singleton’s mission to find justice at the Potters’ Field tavern that terrible night in July so many years ago, or about his passion for civil rights.

Then, suddenly, Rhyme understood what he was feeling: It was simple pride. Just like he’d been proud of Geneva and of her ancestor, he was proud of his own accomplishment. By tackling his exercises and then tonight testing himself, Lincoln Rhyme had confronted the terrifying, the impossible. Whether he’d regained any movement or not was irrelevant; the sensation came from what he had undeniably achieved: wholeness, the same wholeness that Charles had written of. He realized that nothing else – not politicians or fellow citizens or your haywire body – could make you a three-fifths man; it was solely your decision to view yourself as a complete or partial person and to live your life accordingly.

All things considered, he supposed, this understanding was as inconsequential as the slight movement he’d regained in his hand. But that didn’t matter. He thought of his profession: How a tiny flake of paint leads to a car that leads to a parking lot where a faint footprint leads to a doorway that reveals a fiber from a discarded coat with a fingerprint on the sleeve button – the one surface that the perp forgot to wipe clean.

The next day a tactical team knocks on his door.

And justice is served, a victim saved, a family reunited. All thanks to a minuscule bit of paint.

Small victories – that’s what Dr. Sherman had said. Small victories…Sometimes they’re all you can hope for, Lincoln Rhyme reflected, as he felt sleep closing in.

But sometimes they’re all you need.