She felt his eyes on her as she slammed through the four-speed shifter, then hard dropped into second, turned and casually steered into the skid. The wheels responded handily.
Spencer was nodding. “You can see. I’m not exactly built like a jockey. My biggest problem was fitting into the cage. Wanted to have the steering column shortened but couldn’t get a ruling on that one.” He patted the dash. “I drove one of these in a couple races.”
“A Torino?”
“That’s right. A Talladega.”
Sachs exhaled a fast laugh. “No.”
“Uhm.”
There was no more famous stock car in the early days of racing than the redesigned 1969 Torino Cobra, which was renamed the Talladega, after the famed racetrack. The car dominated NASCAR in ’69 and ’70.
“You race anymore?”
“Nup. Don’t even own a car now. Sold my SUV when I moved into the city. Four parking tickets in one day. I go to Avis or Hertz if I need wheels.”
His tone was wistful. He would miss driving. She could understand. The power of the pistons, the whine, the speed, the sense of a vehicle always on the edge, always a half second away from flying out of control. The consuming feel of that car that you were a part of and was part of you... It was wholly addictive.
She said, “Maybe, it works out, you can take it for a spin.”
His eyes shone. “I may think about that.”
She swerved around a texting yellow cab driver who veered into her lane, saw in the corner of her eye that Spencer’s left leg extended just a bit, while his right arm moved back, subconsciously mimicking her fierce clutching and the downshift.
In ten minutes they were at Rhyme’s town house.
Spencer said, “You’re going to want to check that alibi.”
Sachs slipped the shifter into first gear, killed the engine and set the brake. She tapped her phone. “I already did.” She’d texted Lon Sellitto about the man and asked him to call security at Whittaker Tower.
“That was fast.”
“We don’t have much time. I needed to know whether to trust you or bust you. I’ll be five minutes.” She stepped out then turned back to the huge man. She bent down into the open window. “I’m going to have to ask a favor.”
“Anything I find out about a threat, even if it leads somewhere in the company, I’ll let you know ASAP.”
“Okay, I meant to say, I’m going to ask you two favors. One is what you just said. The other is not mentioning to anybody that the evidence I just collected ended up here.”
“Which is where?” He was looking at Rhyme’s stately town house.
“My husband and I live here,” she said. “Lincoln Rhyme. He’s a criminalist. Former NYPD.”
“Wait. Lincoln Rhyme’s your husband?”
She nodded.
“Damn.” He appeared both impressed and mystified. Then he gave a smile. “What evidence? I don’t know anything about any evidence.” He shrugged and she wondered if the massive shoulders had ever torn a garment seam with a gesture like that. “I tend to get amnesia. I was going to see a doctor for it but I kept forgetting to make the appointment.” Delivered deadpan.
She dug black nitrile gloves from her pocket and pulled them on. “Aren’t you curious why I asked?”
“You’re running a renegade operation you don’t want the brass to know about. Maybe you’re worried about corruption, maybe politics, maybe you shook a stick at the wrong person. Been there, done that.” Lyle Spencer — the man who, she’d calculated, had had four hours’ sleep last night — yawned and, to the extent he could, stretched back, crossed his arms across that massive chest and closed his eyes.
33
“Here are the tax consequences,” said the man who looked like he would know everything there was to know about tax consequences.
He had the pale complexion of somebody who spent his days in offices in front of computers and calculators. Gray suit, white shirt, trim hair. In his forties. His glasses, Averell Whittaker decided, should not be called glasses at all but spectacles.
The two men were in Whittaker’s home office, high atop the tower that bore his family name. The structure was on opulent Park Avenue.
The accountant had his hand on the thick document as if it were a bomb with a spring trigger and were he to let go the results would be disastrous.
Which they would be indeed.
Whittaker said, “Thank you, John. I’ll review it.”
This he wouldn’t do. He knew exactly what was going to happen, and he knew exactly what the consequences, tax and otherwise, would be. It was John’s job — along with his team of a dozen other people — to look out for Whittaker and his companies. And to stop him from doing something stupid.
But stupid in one man’s eye is noble in another’s.
Whittaker said, “Langston, Holmes says the papers’ll be ready next week.”
A pause. “All right.”
The two words were spoken as if Whittaker had just told him he was about to rappel down a thousand-foot cliff.
At night, in a rainstorm.
After the accountant was gone, Whittaker picked up his cane, which was ebony and topped with a brass sculpture of a woman’s head. He’d selected this one, rather than the lighter and rubber-tipped version recommended by the doctor, because the woman bore a passing resemblance to Mary.
He rose and limped his way to the window. He caught a glimpse of himself in the antique mirror decorating one wall. His face was gray, the unhealthy visage mocked by the perfect, thick, white hair, the imperial nose, the wizard brows and, beneath them, piercing black stones of eyes.
Then he stared out the window at a vista that included perhaps three hundred thousand people.
And where are you?
He returned to his computer and, not sitting, logged in to his email.
His heart sank yet again. Not that he truly expected a reply.
But he’d hoped. Oh, had he hoped.
Where?...
Kitt:
Please, hear me out, son. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve treated you badly. I didn’t listen to you. And I will be honest. I can’t plead ignorance. I understood at the time what I was doing and that my actions were transgressions. They were sins. I can’t plead ignorance. But I’m wiping the slate clean. I’m dissolving everything. Not much time to make amends but that’s what I fervently desire...
The missive went on and on.
It also went unanswered.
He recalled the last conversation they’d had: in the bar at Donelli’s, a posh place, filled with posh people — most of them media kings and queens and princes and celebs.
Whittaker was there often and to him it was simply a watering hole.
Given his son’s feeling about his father’s profession, it was also the absolutely wrong place to meet with Kitt. And, making matters worse, the boy had shown up in jeans and flannel. Even the help was dressed better.
I should have picked a different place, he’d thought.
The conversation had struggled and stalled, like the muddy Range Rover during that photo safari the family had taken years ago.
Idealist Kitt, activist Kitt, ever perplexed why his father refused to abandon the Whittaker Media Group brand of “journalism,” the quotation marks supplied by his son’s thin fingers.
Whittaker had, for an instant, nearly said that the company is what put him through a good school and bestowed upon him an ample trust fund.
Thank God he’d held his peace. Though apparently whatever had transpired during that uneasy meal was enough to create a deep, perhaps irreparable, rift.