The Twelfth Card

must’ve figured that, even though Jax might’ve been talking about something the girl had done, the Graffiti King of blood could also mean that Ralph himself was being too fucking nosy. “Gimme a hour or two.” He gave Jax his phone number. The little pharaoh pushed off from the chain link, retrieved his bottle of malt liquor from the grass and started down the street.
    *   *   *
    Roland Bell eased his unmarked Crown Vic through central Harlem, a mix of residential and commercial buldings. The chains—Pathmark, Duane Reade, Popeyes, McDonald’s—existed side by side with the mom-and-pop outfits where you could cash checks, pay your bills and buy human-hair wigs and extensions or African arts or liquor or furniture. Many of the older buildings were run down and more than a few were boarded up or sealed with metal shutters covered with graffiti. Off the busier streets, ruined appliances awaited scavengers, trash was banked against buildings and gutters, and both weeds and impromptu gardens filled vacant lots. Graffitied billboards advertised acts at the Apollo and some other big uptown venues, while hundreds of handbills covered walls and plywood, hawking the acts of little-known MCs, DJs and comedians. Young men hung tight in clusters and some watched thesquad car behind Bell’s with a mix of caution and disdain and, occasionally, raw contempt.
    But as Bell, Geneva and Pulaski continued west, the ambiance changed. The deserted buildings were being torn down or renovated; posters in front of the job sites showed what sort of idyllic town houses would soon replace the old ones. Geneva’s block, not far from steep, rocky Morningside Park and Columbia University, was beautiful and tree-lined, with clean sidewalks. The rows of old buildings were in good repair. The cars may have sported Clubs on the steering wheels but the vehicles the steel bars protected included Lexuses and Beemers.
    Geneva pointed out a spotless four-story brownstone, decorated with carved facades, the ironwork glistening black in the late-morning sun. “That’s my place.”
    Bell pulled his car two doors past it, double-parked.
    “Uhm, Detective,” Ron Pulaski said, “I think she meant the one back there.”
    “I know,” he said. “One thing I’m partial to is not advertising where the people we’re looking after live.”
    The rookie nodded, as if memorizing this fact. So young, Bell thought. So much to learn.
    “We’ll be inside for a few minutes. Keep an eye out.”
    “Yes, sir. What for exactly?”
    The detective hardly had time to educate the man in the finer points of bodyguard detail; his presence alone would be enough of a deterrent for this brief errand. “Bad guys,” he said.
    The squad car that had accompanied them here pulled to a stop where Bell pointed, in front of the Crown Vic. The officer inside would speed back toRhyme’s with the letters he wanted. Another car arrived a moment later, an unmarked Chevy. It contained two officers from Bell’s SWAT witness protection team, who would remain in and around the town house. After learning that the unsub would target bystanders simply as a diversion, Bell had ordered some reinforcements. The team officers he’d picked for this assignment were Luis Martinez, a quiet, solid detective, and Barbe Lynch, a sharp, young plainclothes officer, who was new to protection detail but gifted with an intuitive radar for sensing threats.
    The Carolinian now lifted his lean frame out of the car and looked around, buttoning his sports coat to hide the two pistols he wore on his hips. Bell had been a good small-town cop and he was a good big-city investigator but was truly in his element when it came to protecting witnesses. It was a talent, like the way he could sniff out game in the fields where he’d hunted growing up. Instinct. What he sensed was more than the obvious—like spotting flashes off telescopic sights or hearing the click of pistol receivers or noticing somebody checking out your witness in the reflection of a storefront window. He could tell when a man was walking with a purpose when by all logic he had none. Or when an apparently innocent bad parking job had placed a car in the perfect position to let a killer escape without having to saw the wheel back and forth. He’d see a configuration of building and street and window and think: Now, that’s where a man would hide to do some harm.
    But at the moment he noted no threat and ushered Geneva Settle out of