The door swung open again and another man walked inside. He was in his sixties but as lean and tall as that young actor Marion and Paul had seen in a couple of films--Jimmy Stewart. Paul frowned. He knew the face from articles in the Times and the Herald Tribune. "Senator?"
The man responded, but to Gordon: "You said he was smart. I didn't know he was well informed." As if he wasn't happy about being recognized. The senator looked Paul up and down, sat, and lit a stubby cigar.
A moment later yet another man entered, about the same age as the senator, wearing a white linen suit that was savagely wrinkled. The body it encased was large and soft. He carried a walking stick. He glanced once at Paul, and then, without a word to anyone, he retreated to the corner. He too looked familiar but Paul couldn't place him.
"Now," Gordon continued. "Here's the situation, Paul. We know you've worked for Luciano, we know you've worked for Lansky, a couple of the others. And we know what you do for them."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"You're a button man, Paul," Manielli said brightly, as if he'd been looking forward to saying it.
Gordon said, "Last March Jimmy Coughlin saw you . . . " He frowned. "What do you people say? You don't say 'kill.'"
Paul, thinking: Some of us people say "chill off." Paul himself used "touch off." It was the phrase that Sergeant Alvin York used to describe killing enemy soldiers during the war. It made Paul feel less like a punk to use the term that a war hero did. But, of course, Paul Schumann didn't share any of this at the moment.
Gordon continued. "Jimmy saw you kill Arch Dimici on March thirteenth in a warehouse on the Hudson."
Paul had staked out the place for four hours before Dimici showed up. He'd been positive the man was alone. Jimmy must've been sleeping one off behind some crates when Paul arrived.
"Now, from what they tell me, Jimmy isn't the most reliable witness. But we've got some hard evidence. A few revenue boys picked him up for selling hooch and he made a deal to rat on you. Seems he'd picked up a shell casing at the scene and was keeping it for insurance. No prints're on it--you're too smart for that. But Hoover's people ran a test on your Colt. The scratches from the extractor're the same."
Hoover? The FBI was involved? And they'd already tested the gun. He'd pitched it out of Malone's window less than an hour ago.
Paul rocked his upper and lower teeth against each other. He was furious with himself. He'd searched for a half hour to find that damn casing at the Dimici job and had finally concluded it'd fallen through the cracks in the floor into the Hudson.
"So we made inquiries and heard you were being paid five hundred dollars to . . . " Gordon hesitated.
Touch off.
" . . . eliminate Malone tonight."
"Like hell I was," Paul said, laughing. "You got yourself some bum wire. I just went to visit him. Where is he, by the way?"
Gordon paused. "Mr. Malone will no longer be a threat to the constabulary or the citizens of New York City."
"Sounds like somebody owes you five C-notes."
Bull Gordon didn't laugh. "You're in Dutch, Paul, and you can't beat the rap. So here's what we're offering. Like they say in those used-Studebaker ads: this's a one-time-only offer. Take it or leave it. We don't negotiate."
The senator finally spoke. "Tom Dewey wants you as bad as he wants the rest of the scum on his list."
The special prosecutor was on a divine mission to clean up organized crime in New York. Crime boss Lucky Luciano, the Italian Five Families in the city and the Jewish syndicate of Meyer Lansky were his main targets. Dewey was dogged and smart and he was winning conviction after conviction.
"But he's agreed to give us first dibs on you."
"Forget it. I'm not a stool pigeon."
Gordon said, "We're not asking you to be one. That's not what this is about."
"Then what do you want me to do?"
A pause for a moment. The senator nodded toward Gordon, who said, "You're a button man, Paul. What do you think? We want you to kill somebody."
JEFFERY DEAVER is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two suspense novels, and the originator of the acclaimed detective hero Lincoln Rhyme, featured in the bestsellers The Cold Moon, The Twelfth Card, The Vanished Man, The Stone Monkey, The Empty Chair, The Coffin Dancer, and The Bone Collector. His new thriller, The Sleeping Doll, is available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster. As William Jefferies, he is the author of Shallow Graves, Bloody River Blues, and Hell's Kitchen. His short fiction is anthologized in two acclaimed collections from Pocket Books: Twisted and More Twisted. He is a five-time Edgar Award nominee, an Anthony Award nominee, a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year for Garden of Beasts and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. His novel The Bone Collector became a Universal Pictures feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. A former attorney, Deaver has been hailed as "the best psychological thriller writer around" (The Times, London).
Visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.
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ALSO BY JEFFERY DEAVER
Carte Blanche
Edge
The Burning Wire*
Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor) The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet and The Chopin Manuscript) (Contributor) Roadside Crosses**
The Bodies Left Behind
The Broken Window*
The Sleeping Doll**
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two The Cold Moon*/**
The Twelfth Card*
Garden of Beasts
Twisted: Collected Stories The Vanished Man*
The Stone Monkey*
The Blue Nowhere
The Empty Chair*
Speaking in Tongues
The Devil's Teardrop
The Coffin Dancer*
The Bone Collector*
A Maiden's Grave
Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star Manhattan Is My Beat
Hell's Kitchen
Bloody River Blues
Shallow Graves
A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor) A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Introduction) *Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs
**Featuring Kathryn Dance
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Copyright (c) 1998 by Jeffery Deaver
Originally published in hardcover in 1998
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-9989-1
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Jeffery Deaver, The Coffin Dancer
(Series: Lincoln Rhyme # 2)
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