The Kill Room

indicated, feeling the pain in her left hip; the knee alone wasn’t torment enough apparently. She dug into her back pocket—felt past the switchblade and pulled out a blister pack of Advil. Ripped it open with her teeth, swallowed the pills fast and littered the wrapper away.
    She closed in on her target as quickly as she could.
    Szarnek: “He’s stopped. Maybe for a light.”
    Dodging through pedestrian traffic the same way she’d woven through vehicular moments ago, Sachs got closer to the intersection where a red light stopped southbound traffic and pedestrians.
    “Still there,” Szarnek said. There was no rock music pumping into his office at the moment.
    She could see, about forty feet away, the red light yield to green. Those waiting at the curb surged across the street.
    “He’s moving.” One block later, Szarnek said unemotionally, “He’s disconnected.”
    Shit.
    Sachs sped up to see if she could spot anybody holstering a phone. No one. And she couldn’t help but think that maybe the most recent call was the last he’d make with the tainted phone. Their sniper was, after all, a pro. He must know there was some liability in mobiles. Maybe he’d even spotted her and was about to send his cell into the same sewer system graveyard she just had.
    At Dey Street the light changed to red. She had to stop. Surrounded by a crowd of perhaps twenty people—businessmen and -women, construction workers, students, tourists. Quite the ethnic mix, of course, Anglo, Asian, Latino, black and all combinations.
    “Amelia?” Rodney Szarnek was on the line.
    “Go ahead,” she said.
    “He’s getting an incoming call. Should be ringing now.”
    Just as the phone in the pocket of the man inches to Sachs’s right began to buzz.
    They were literally shoulder-to-shoulder.
    He fit the rough description of the man in the South Cove Inn, according to Corporal Mychal Poitier, the Bahamian cop: white male, athletic figure, compact. He wore slacks, shirt and a windbreaker. A baseball cap too. She couldn’t tell if he had brown hair; it seemed more dark blond, but a witness could easily have described that as brown. The cut was short, like their sniper’s. His laced shoes were polished to a shine.
    Military.
    She said cheerfully into her phone, “Sure. That’s interesting.”
    Szarnek asked, “You’re next to him?”
    “That’s exactly right.” Don’t overdo the playacting, she told herself.
    The light changed and she let him step away first.
    Sachs wondered if there was anything she could do to get the man’s identity. She and Rhyme had worked a case a few years ago in which they’d sought the help of a young woman illusionist and sleight-of-hand artist, whose skills included pickpocketing—for theatrical entertainment only, she’d laughingly assured them—Sachs could have used her now. Was there any way she herself might slip her fingers into the man’s jacket pocket to boost a wallet or receipt?
    Impossible, she decided. Even if she’d had this skill, the man seemed far too vigilant, looking around frequently.
    They crossed the street and continued down Broadway, leaving Liberty behind. Then the sniper turned right suddenly and cut through Zuccotti Park, presently unoccupied, just as Szarnek said, “He’s heading west through Zuccotti.”
    “You’re right about that.” Keeping up the act even though her target probably couldn’t hear her.
    She followed him diagonally through the park. On the west end he headed south on Trinity.
    Szarnek asked, “How’re you going to handle it, Amelia? Want me to call in backup?”
    She debated. They couldn’t collar him; there wasn’t enough evidence for that. “I’ll stay with him as long as I can, try to get a picture,” she said, risking speaking for real to Szarnek; the sniper was well out of hearing range now. “If I’m lucky he’s going to his car and I’ll pick up the tag. If not, maybe I’ll be taking a subway ride to Far Rockaway. I’ll call you back.”
    Pretending to continue the call, Sachs sped up and walked past the sniper, then paused at the next red light. She turned, as if lost in her conversation, aiming the lens of her phone toward him, and pressed the shutter a half dozen times. When the light changed, she let the sniper cross the street before her. He was lost in his own conversation and didn’t seem to notice Sachs.
    She resumed the tail and called Szarnek back. The tech cop said, “Okay, he’s disconnected now.”
    Sachs