The Kill Room

wooden signs giving delivery directions and warnings. Use Chocks for Your WAGON! The walls, brick and stone, were unpainted, unwashed, shabby. Uneven, improvised doors, loading docks, pipes that led nowhere and wires that you didn’t dare touch.
    And the air stank.
    On hot days like this the kitchen helper hated taking the trash down to the Dumpster, shared with a couple of other restaurants, because the sushi place next door had dumped their garbage last night. No need to guess what this afternoon’s atmosphere was like.
    Fish.
    Still, one thing he liked about the alley: the building above Java Hut. It had apparently been the home of somebody famous. The waiter Sanchez had told him it was some American writer. Mark Twin, he thought. The helper could read English okay and had told Sanchez he was going to find something that this Twin had written but he never got around to it.
    He now made the drop, holding his breath, of course, and then turned back toward his deli. He noticed a car parked in the alley here, close to Java Hut, in fact. A reddish Ford Torino Cobra.
    Sweet.
    But gonna get towed.
    The kitchen helper realized he was holding his breath still. He exhaled and then inhaled, wrinkling his nose. The smell actually stung.
    Old fish. Warm fish.
    He wondered if he was going to puke. But he headed to the car to check it out. He liked cars. His brother-in-law had been arrested for stealing a very nice BMW M3, one of the new ones. That took some doing. Anybody could steal an Accord. But only a man with balls could boost an M3. Not necessarily brains, however. Ramon was arrested exactly two hours and twenty minutes later. But you had to give him credit.
    Oh, hey, check it out! This one had an NYPD placard on the dash. What kinda cop’d drive a car like this? Maybe—
    At that moment a ball of flame and smoke erupted from the back door of Java Hut and the helper found himself flying backward. He tumbled into a stack of cardboard cartons outside the back of the Hair Cuttery. The helper rolled off the boxes and lay stunned on the oily, wet cobbles.
    Jesus…
    Smoke and fire flowed from the coffee shop.
    The helper unholstered his mobile and forcibly pinched tears away.
    He squinted to make out the keypad. But then he realized what would happen if he called, even anonymously.
    Sir, what’s your name, address, phone number and by the way do you have a driver’s license or passport?
    Or maybe a birth certificate? A green card?
    Sir, we have your mobile number here…
    He put the phone away.
    Didn’t matter anyway, he decided. Other people would have called by now. Besides, the explosion was so strong, there was no doubt there’d be no survivors inside and Mr. Mark Twin’s town house would be a pile of smoldering rubble in a matter of minutes.

CHAPTER 31
    T HE VAN DROVE ALONG BAY STREET , then through downtown Nassau, past wood-clad stores and residences painted soft pink, yellow and green, the shades of the mint candy disks Lincoln Rhyme remembered from the Christmases of his youth.
    The city was mostly flat; what dominated the skyline were the ocean liners, docked or easing through the water to their left. Rhyme had never seen one up close. They were massive, soaring hundreds of feet into the air. Downtown was clean and ordered, much more so than the areas around the airport. Unlike in New York City, trees were everywhere, blossoming heavily, roots buckling sidewalks and streets. This area was a mix of serious business—lawyers and accountants and insurance agents—and stores that sold any object whatsoever that might conceivably separate cruise ship tourists from their money.
    Pirate gear was a popular way to do this. Every other child on the sidewalk carried a plastic saber and wore a black skull-and-crossbones hat.
    They drove past some houses of government. Parliament Square, Rhyme noted. In front was a statue of seated and sceptered Queen Victoria, gazing off into the distance as if her mind was on more important, or perhaps more troublesome, colonies.
    The accessible van fit right in here; much of the transportation was via similar vehicles and mini buses, different only in the absence of a motorized ramp. As earlier, the pace of traffic here was leisurely, irritating. Rhyme decided that this was not lazy driving. There were simply too many wheels on too few streets and roads.
    Scooters too. They were everywhere.
    “Is this the best route?” he muttered.
    “Yes,” his aide replied, turning right onto