The Coffin Dancer

going.”
    “He said he’d pay me to get him out of there and I led him through this tunnel to the subway. How’d you find me, man?” He looked at Dellray.
    “’Cause you were skipping ’long the street hawking your be-bops to everybody you came across. I even knew your name. Jee-sus, you are a mutt. I oughta squeeze your neck till you’re blue.”
    “You can’t hurt me,” he said, struggling to be defiant. “I have rights.”
    “Who hired him?” Sellitto asked Jodie. “He mention the name Hansen?”
    “He didn’t say.” Jodie’s voice quavered. “Look, I only agreed to help him ’cause I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t. I wasn’t going to do it.” He turned to Dellray. “He wanted me to get you to help. But soon as he left I wanted you to leave. I was going to the police and telling them. I was. He’s a scary guy. I’m afraid of him!”
    “Fred?” Rhyme asked.
    “Yeah, yeah,” the agent conceded, “he did have a change of tune. Wanted me gone. Didn’t say anything about going to the police, though.”
    “Where’s he going? What were you supposed to do?”
    “I was supposed to go through the trash bins infront of that town house and watch the cars. He told me to look for a man and a woman getting into a car and leaving. I was supposed to tell him what kind of car. I was going to call on that phone there. Then he was going to follow.”
    “You were right, Lincoln,” Sellitto said. “About keeping them in the safe house. He’s going for a transport hit.”
    Jodie continued, “I was going to come to you—”
    “Man, you’re useless when you lie. Don’t you have any dignity?”
    “Look, I was going to,” he said, calmer now. He smiled. “I figured there was a reward.”
    Rhyme glanced at the greedy eyes and tended to believe him. He looked at Sellitto, who nodded in agreement.
    “You cooperate now,” Sellitto grumbled, “and we might just keep your ass out of jail. I don’t know about money. Maybe.”
    “I’ve never hurt anybody. I wouldn’t. I—”
    “Cool that tongue,” Dellray said. “We all together on that?”
    Jodie rolled his eyes.
    “Together?” the agent whispered maliciously.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
    Sellitto said, “We’ve got to move fast here. When were you supposed to be at the town house?”
    “At twelve-thirty.”
    They had fifty minutes left.
    “What kind of car’s he driving?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s he look like?”
    “In his early, mid-thirties, I guess. Not tall. But he was strong. Man, he had muscles. Crew-cut black hair. Round face. Look, I’ll do one of those drawings . . . The police sketch thing.”
    “Did he give you a name? Anything? Where he’s from?”
    “I don’t know. He has kind of a southern accent. Oh, and one thing—he said he wears gloves all the time because he’s got a record.”
    Rhyme asked, “Where and for what?”
    “I don’t know where. But it’s for manslaughter. He said he killed this guy in his town. When he was a teenager.”
    “What else?” Dellray barked.
    “Look,” Jodie said, crossing his arms and looking up at the agent, “I’ve done some bad shit but I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. This guy kidnaps me and he’s got all these guns and is one crazy fucked-up guy and I was scared to death. I think you woulda done the same thing I did. So I’m not putting up with this crap anymore. You want to arrest me, do it and, like, take me to detention. But I’m not gonna say anything else. Okay?”
    Dellray’s gangly face suddenly broke into a grin. “Well, the rock cracks.”
    Amelia Sachs appeared in the doorway and she walked in, glancing at Jodie.
    “Tell them!” he said. “I didn’t hurt you. Tell ’em.”
    She looked at him the way you’d look at a wad of used chewing gum. “He was going to brain me with a Louisville Slugger.”
    “Not so, not so!”
    “You okay, Sachs?”
    “Another bruise is all. On my back. Bookends.”
    Sellitto, Sachs, and Dellray huddled with Rhyme, who told Sachs what Jodie’d reported.
    The detective asked Rhyme in a whisper, “We believe him?”
    “Little skel,” Dellray muttered. “But I gotta say I think he’s telling the God-ugly truth.”
    Sachs nodded too. “I guess. But I think we have to keep him on a tight leash, whatever we do.”
    Sellitto agreed. “Oh, we’ll keep him close.”
    Rhyme reluctantly agreed too. It seemed impossible to get ahead of the Dancer without this man’s help. He’d been adamant about