The Twelfth Card

during the job, leaving evidence or living witnesses. Emotion—love, anger, fear—makes you sloppy. You had to be cool, distant.
    Numb . . .
    Thompson gripped his pistol, hidden in his raincoat pocket, as he watched several squad cars speed up Sixth Avenue. The vehicles skidded around the corner and turned east on Canal. They were pulling out all the stops looking for him. Not surprising, Thompson knew. New York’s finest would frown on a perp electrocuting one of their own (though in Thompson’s opinion it was the cop’s own fault for being careless).
    Then a faint tone of concern sounded in his brain as he watched another squad car skid to a stop three blocks away. Officers got out and began interviewing people on the street. Then another rolled to a stop only two hundred feet from where he now stood. And they were moving this way. His car was parked near Hudson, about five minutes away. He had to get to it now. But still the stoplight remained red.
    More sirens filled the air.
    This was becoming a problem.
    Thompson looked at the crowd around him, most of them peering east, intent on the police cars and the officers. He needed some distraction, some cover to get across the street. Just something . . . didn’t have to be flamboyant. Just enough to deflect people’s attention for a time. A fire in a trash bin, a car alarm, the sound of breaking glass . . . Any other ideas? Glancing south, to his left, Thompson noticed a large commuter bus headed up Sixth Avenue. It was approaching the intersection where the cluster of pedestrians stood. Set fire to the trash bin, or this? Thompson Boyd decided. He eased closer to the curb, behind an Asian girl, slim, in her twenties. All it took was an easy push in her lower back to send her into the bus’s path. Twisting in panic, gasping, she slid off the curb.
    “She fell!” Thompson cried in a drawl-free shout. “Get her!”
    Her wail was cut off as the right sideview mirror of the bus struck her shoulder and head and flung her body, tumbling, along the sidewalk. Blood spattered the window and those standing nearby. The brakes screamed. So did several of the women in the crowd.
    The bus skidded to a stop in the middle of Canal, blocking traffic, where it would have to remain until the accident investigation. A fire in a trash basket, a breaking bottle, a car alarm—they might’ve worked. But he’d decided that killing the girl was more efficient.
    Traffic was instantly frozen, including two approaching police cars on Sixth Avenue.
    He crossed the street slowly, leaving the gatheringcrowd of horrified passersby, who were crying, or shouting, or just staring in shock at the limp, bloody body, crumpled against a chain-link fence. Her unseeing eyes stared blankly skyward. Apparently nobody thought the tragedy was anything more than a terrible accident.
    People running toward her, people calling 911 on mobile phones . . . chaos. Thompson now calmly crossed the street, weaving through the stopped traffic. He’d already forgotten the Asian girl and was considering more important matters: He’d lost one safe house. But at least he’d escaped with his weapons, the things he’d bought at the hardware store and his instruction book. There were no clues at the apartment to lead to him or the man who’d hired him; not even the woman in white could find any connection. No, this wasn’t a serious problem.
    He paused at a pay phone, called voice mail and received some good news. Geneva Settle, he learned, was attending Langston Hughes High School in Harlem. She was also, he found out, being guarded by police, which was no surprise, of course. Thompson would find out more details soon—presumably where she lived or even, with some luck, the fact that an opportunity had presented itself, and the girl had already been shot to death, the job finished.
    Thompson Boyd then continued on to his car—a three-year-old Buick, in a boring shade of blue, a medium car, an average car, for Average Joe. He pulled into traffic and circled far around the bus accident congestion. He made his way toward the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, his thoughts occupied about what he’d learned in the book he’d beenstudying for the past hour, the one bristling with Post-it tabs, thinking about how he’d put his new skills to use.
    *   *   *
    “I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say.”
    Miserable, Lon Sellitto was looking up at the captain who’d come directly here from Police