The Coffin Dancer

deep voice. Mondale wasn’t Mondale and he was speaking according to a prewritten script.
    “Mondale,” Dellray said, sounding lily white, to a Connecticut manor born. “Agent Wilson here, we’re at Lincoln’s now.” (Not “Rhyme”; the Dancer knew him as “Lincoln.”)
    “How’s the airport?”
    “Still secure.”
    “Good. Listen, got a question. We’ve got a CI working for us, Joe D’Oforio.”
    “He was the one—”
    “Right.”
    “—turned. You’re working with him?”
    “Yeah,” said Wilson, aka Fred Dellray. “Bit of a mutt, but he’s cooperating. We’re going to run him down to his hidey-hole and back here.”
    “Where’s ‘here’? You mean, back to Lincoln’s?”
    “Right. He wants his stuff.”
    “Fuck you doing that for?”
    “He cut a deal. He dimes this killer and Lincoln agreed he could have some stuff from his place. This old subway station . . . Anyway, we’re not doing a convoy. Just one car. Reason I called, we need a good driver. You worked with somebody you liked, right?”
    “Driver?”
    “On the Gambino thing?”
    “Oh, yeah . . . Lemme think.”
    They stretched it out. Rhyme was, as always, impressed with Dellray’s performance. Whoever he wanted to be, he was.
    The phony agent Mondale—who deserved a best-supporting award himself—said, “I remember. Tony Glidden. No, Tommy. The blond guy, right?”
    “That’s him. I want to use him. He around?”
    “Naw. He’s in Phillie. That carjacking sting.”
    “Phillie. Too bad. We’re going in about twenty minutes. Can’t wait any longer than that. Well, I’ll just do it myself then. But that Tommy. He—”
    “Fucker could drive a car! He could lose a tail in two blocks. Man was amazing.”
    “Sure could use him now. Listen, thanks, Mondale.”
    “Later.”
    Rhyme winked, a quad’s equivalent of applause. Dellray hung up, exhaled long and slow. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”
    Sellitto uttered an optimistic “The third time we’re baiting him. This should be it.”
    Lincoln Rhyme didn’t believe that was a rule of law enforcement, but he said, “Let’s hope.”

    Sitting in a stolen car not far from Jodie’s subway station, Stephen Kall watched a government-issue sedan pull up.
    Jodie and two uniformed cops climbed out, scanning the rooftops. Jodie ran inside and, five minutes later, escaped back to the car with two bundles under his arm.
    Stephen could see no backup, no tail cars. What he’d heard on the tap was accurate. They pulled into traffic and he started after them, thinking there was no place in the world like Manhattan for following and not being seen. He couldn’t be doing this in Iowa or Virginia.
    The unmarked car drove fast, but Stephen was a good driver too and he stayed with it as they made their way uptown. The sedan slowed when they got to Central Park West and drove past a town house in the Seventies. There were two men in front of it, wearing street clothes, but they were obviously cops. A signal—probably “All clear”—passed between them and the driver of the unmarked sedan.
    So that’s it. That’s Lincoln the Worm’s house.
    The car continued north. Stephen did too for a little ways, then parked suddenly and climbed out, hurrying into the trees with the guitar case. He knew there’d be some surveillance around the apartment and he moved quietly.
    Like a deer, Soldier.
    Yes, sir.
    He vanished into a stand of brush and crawled back toward the town house, finding a good nest on a stony ledge under a budding lilac tree. He opened the case. The car containing Jodie, now going south, screeched up to the town house. Standard evasive practice, Stephen recognized—it had made anabrupt U-turn in heavy traffic and sped back here.
    He was watching the two cops climb out of the sedan, look around, and escort a very scared Jodie along the sidewalk.
    Stephen flipped the covers off the telescope and took careful aim on the traitor’s back.
    Suddenly a black car drove past and Jodie spooked. His eyes went wide and he pulled away from the cops, running into the alley beside the town house.
    His escorts spun around, hands on their weapons, staring at the car that had startled him. They looked at the quartet of Latino girls inside and realized it was just a false alarm. The cops laughed. One of them called to Jodie.
    But Stephen wasn’t interested in the little man right now. He couldn’t get both the Worm and Jodie, and Lincoln was the one he had to kill now. He could