The Coffin Dancer

Rhyme warned ambiguously.
    “Oh, please,” she muttered dismissingly. “Don’t what?”
    Sachs watched Percey’s eyes narrow. “What’re you saying?” Percey began. “That somebody’s dead because of . . . technical failure?”
    Sachs realized that Rhyme had been expecting her to say something else. He was caught off guard. After a moment he said, “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. If I’d been able to pick up the phone—”
    She cut him off. “And, what? That gives you the right to have a goddamn tantrum? To renege on your promises?” She tossed back her liquor and gave an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake . . . Do you have any idea what I do for a living?”
    To her astonishment Sachs saw that Rhyme was calm now. He started to speak but Percey cut him off. “Think about this.” Her drawl was back. “I sit in a little aluminum tube going four hundred knots an hour, six miles above the ground. It’s sixty below zero outside and the winds are a hundred miles an hour. I’m not even talking about lightning, wind shear, and ice. Jesus Christ, I’m only alive because of machines.” Another laugh. “How’s that different from you?”
    “You don’t understand,” he said snippily.
    “You’re not answering my question. How?” she demanded, unrelenting. “How’s it different?”
    “You can walk around, you can pick up the phone—”
    “I can walk around? I’m at fifty thousand feet. I open that door and my blood boils in seconds.”
    For the first time since she’d known him, Sachs thought, Rhyme’s met his match. He’s speechless.
    Percey continued, “I’m sorry, Detective, but Idon’t see a lick of difference between us. We’re products of twentieth-century science. Goddamn it, if I had wings I’d be flying on my own. But I don’t and never will. To do what we have to do, both of us . . . we rely.”
    “Okay . . . ” He grinned devilishly.
    Come on, Rhyme, Sachs thought. Let her have it! How badly Sachs wanted him to win, to boot this woman off to Long Island, have done with her forever.
    The criminalist said, “But if I screw up, people die.”
    “Oh? And what happens if my deicer fails? What happens if my yaw damper goes? What if a pigeon flies into my pitot tube on an ILS approach? I . . . am . . . dead. Flameouts, hydraulic failures, mechanics who forget to replace bum circuit breakers . . . Redundant systems fail. In your case they might get a chance to recover from their gunshots. But my aircraft hits the ground at three hundred miles an hour, there ain’t nothing left.”
    Rhyme seemed completely sober now. His eyes were swiveling around the room as if looking for an infallible bit of evidence to refute Percey’s argument.
    “Now,” Percey said evenly, “I understand Amelia here has some evidence she found back at the safe house. My suggestion is you start looking at it and stop this asshole once and for all. Because I am on my way to Mamaroneck right now to finish repairing my aircraft and then I’m flying that job tonight. Now, I’ll ask you point-blank: You going to let me go to the airport, like you agreed? Or do I have to call my lawyer?”
    He was still speechless.
    A moment passed.
    Sachs jumped when Rhyme called in his booming baritone, “Thom! Thom! Get in here.”
    The aide peered around the doorway suspiciously.
    “I’ve made a mess here. Look, I knocked my glass over. And my hair’s mussed. Would you mind straightening up a little? Please?”
    “Are you fooling with us, Lincoln?” he asked dubiously.
    “And Mel Cooper? Could you call him, Lon? He must have taken me seriously. I was kidding. He’s such a goddamn scientist. No sense of humor. We’ll need him back here.”
    Amelia Sachs wanted to flee. To bolt out of here, get into her car, and tear up the roads in New Jersey or Nassau County at 120 miles an hour. She couldn’t stand to be in the same room with this woman a moment longer.
    “All right, Percey,” Rhyme said, “take Detective Bell with you and we’ll make sure plenty of Bo’s troopers are with you too. Get up to your airport. Do what you have to do.”
    “Thank you, Lincoln.” She nodded, and offered a smile.
    Just enough of one to make Amelia Sachs wonder if part of Percey Clay’s speech wasn’t meant for Sachs’s benefit too, to make clear who the undisputed winner in this contest was. Well, some sports Sachs believed she was doomed to lose. Champion shooter, decorated cop, a