The Kill Room

gloves, flicked the lock, slipped the pipe away.
    “Hellooooo? Helloooo?” Swann called.
    Nothing. They were alone.
    Gripping the driver by the collar again, he pulled the man along the recently waxed floor, then deposited him in a den, out of view of the windows .
    Swann looked down at the gasping man, wincing from the pain.
    The beef tenderloin, the psoas major muscle tucked against the short loin and sirloin, lives up to its name—you need only a fork to cut it when prepared right. But the elongated trapezoid of meat, known for Wellington and tournedos , starts in a much less agreeable state and takes some prep time. Most of this is knife work. You have to remove any tougher side muscle, of course, but most challenging is the silverskin, a thin layer of connective tissue that encases much of the cut.
    The trick is to remove the membrane completely but leave as much flesh intact as you can. Doing this involves moving the knife in a sawing motion, while keeping the blade at a precise angle. You need to practice a great deal to get this right.
    Jacob Swann was thinking of the technique now as he withdrew the Kai Shun from its waxed wooden sheath and crouched down.

CHAPTER 16
    E N ROUTE TO THE HOUSE of Robert Moreno’s limo driver, Amelia Sachs enjoyed being out from under the Overseer’s thumb.
    Okay, she thought, not fair.
    Nance Laurel was seemingly a good prosecutor. From what Dellray said, from the woman’s preparation for the case.
    But that doesn’t mean I have to like her.
    Find out what church Moreno went to, Amelia, and how much he donated to good causes and how many old ladies he helped across the street.
    If you would…
    I don’t think so.
    Sachs was at least moving. And moving fast. She was driving her maroon 1970 Ford Torino Cobra, heir to the Fairlane. The car delivered 405 sleek horsepower and boasted 447 foot-pounds of torque. Sachs had the optional four-speed transmission, of course. The Hurst shifter was hard and temperamental but for Sachs this was the only way to run through the gears—for her a more sensuous part of the car than the engine. The only incongruous aspect of the vehicle—aside from its anachronistic appearance on the streets of modern-day New York—was the Chevrolet Camaro SS horn button, a memorial from her first and favorite muscle car, which had been the victim of a run-in with a perp a few years ago.
    She now piloted the Cobra over the 59th Street Bridge—the Queensboro. Her father had told her that Paul Simon had written a song about the bridge. She’d meant to look it up on iTunes after he’d told her that. Meant to look it up after he died. Meant to look it up every year or so since.
    She never had.
    A pop song about a bridge. Interesting. Sachs reminded herself to look it up.
    Eastbound traffic was good. The speed nudged a bit higher and she slammed down the clutch and popped the Cobra’s gearbox into third.
    Pain. And she winced.
    Goddamn it. Her knee again. If it wasn’t the knee it was the hip.
    Goddamn.
    The arthritis had plagued her all her adult life. Not rheumatoid—that insidious immune system disorder that works its evil in all your joints. Hers was the more common osteo, whose genesis might have been genes or the consequences of a motorcycle race at age twenty-two—or, more precisely, a spectacular landing after the Benelli decided to launch itself off the dirt track only a quarter mile from the finish line. But whatever the cause, oh, how the condition tortured her. She’d learned that aspirin and ibuprofen worked some. She’d learned that chondroitin and glucosamine didn’t—at least not for her. Sorry, shark bone lovers. She’d had hyaluronan injections, but they’d sidelined her for several days from inflammation and pain. And, of course, rooster combs could only be a temporary fix. She learned to swallow pills dry and never touch anything that had a Refill Only 3 Times label on it.
    But the most important thing she’d learned was to smile and pretend the pain wasn’t there and that her joints were those of a healthy twenty-year-old.
    When you move they can’t getcha…
    And yet this pain, the joints breaking down, meant she couldn’t move nearly as fast as she had. Her metaphor: an emergency brake cable, slack from rusting, that wouldn’t quite disengage the shoe.
    Dragging, dragging…
    And the worst of all: the specter that she’d be sidelined because of the condition. She wondered again: Had Captain Bill Myers’s eyes been