The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(68)

Thinking of his home city, Vladimir Rostov decided that this neighborhood of New York was much like the Barrikadnaya area northwest of Moscow; it differed only in that here the homes were single-family row houses. In Moscow—ach, in every Russian city—people lived in apartment buildings, towering, stolid and forever gloomy, the color of Stalin’s uniform.

Rostov had parked his Toyota up the street and was standing by a tree—the dark trunk, obscuring, he hoped, his dark jacket—and studying the modest home of Vimal Lahori and his family.

Rostov was proud of his detective work. Kirtan had come through—the boy with the crushed larynx and, it turned out, a broken wrist from the stairway tumble, so sorry, kuritsa. After the fall, Rostov had dragged the choking boy into the corner of the basement, behind an oil tank, pungent with the eye-stinging fumes from spilled fuel for the furnace. The ancient heater muttered softly, as flames roiled inside, and the two men—one on the floor, one crouching over him—were bathed in heat.

The boy couldn’t talk, of course, which made the process of extracting information a bit more complicated. But the silver lining was that he also wouldn’t be able to scream in pain and that had been the more important factor at the moment.

Rostov had pushed the blade from the utility knife, and tears began streaming in earnest from Kirtan’s eyes, leaving glossy tracks on his matte-olive skin. He’d shaken his head no, no, no. He’d mouthed something else as well, perhaps explaining—trying to explain—to Rostov that he had little to give him. Rostov had then noticed the boy wore a pinkie ring, gold with a diamond in it. It was one of those showy, pointless pieces. Diamonds only come alive when light bombards them from all sides and enters the facets on the girdle, the pavilion and crown. In a pinkie ring, made for uncultured businessmen, the diamond is cut very shallow and surrounded by metal, with no opportunity to breathe. Pinkie rings invariably contain inferior stones.

A waste of a noble diamond.

Rostov had smiled and turned his attention to the boy’s finger once more, caressing it. Kirtan tried to pull away. Useless. More caressing with the razor.

“No, no, baby kuritsa, don’t bother, no.”

It had taken only two brief cuts on the left-hand finger pads for the kid to jot down Vimal Lahori’s name and address with his right. A bit more information and Kirtan’s lunch hour—and his life—had come to a quick end.

Now it was time to get to work.

Still pressed against the tree, Rostov waited until the pedestrians, the dog and the bicyclist were gone and he made certain no one else was around. He started toward the Lahori house.

This neighborhood differed from Barrikadnaya in another regard: There was more landscaping here. Rostov took advantage of the cover offered by hedges and trees to get close to the house and not be seen by neighbors.

He noted lights on in the house and, through the lace curtains covering most of the windows, it was clear that there were inhabitants inside. Kirtan had told him that Vimal lived with his parents and a brother. The father was on disability, the mother was a nurse who worked irregular hours and the brother was a college freshman. Any or all of them could be at home.

Rostov would kill them all, of course, but to do so he would have to plan carefully. Those inside could be in different rooms and that meant a risk that somebody would hear the intrusion, dial 911 and drop the phone behind a couch. In a city like New York, the cops would arrive in minutes. He’d have to do some surveillance, wait till they were together, move in fast, brandishing the gun. Tie or tape them. Then the knife. It would have to be the knife. The houses were so close a gunshot could be heard by dozens of people.

In a crouch, taking cover behind evergreen bushes, he skirted the house, which was pale green, in need of paint. At a window toward the back, where he could see shadows in motion, he rose to full height. This allowed him to peek inside, the kitchen. A woman of about forty-five stood at the stove. She was obviously Indian. Pretty enough but not appealing to Rostov, with her gray-brown skin and short, wavy black hair, shiny like the plastic do on a doll. He could see her face was troubled. As she absently stirred a pan, she cocked her head and Rostov believed that she was listening to something that upset her: voices. He listened carefully and he could hear them too. Male voices engaged in an argument, it sounded like, though Rostov could not hear the words. They were quite muted. He heard pounding like soft hammer blows at a distance.

A moment later she turned and a man in his fifties, gray and paunchy, appeared from what seemed to be basement stairs. He was agitated. Rostov ducked but kept his ear cocked toward the window.

The woman avoided his eyes and said, “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“It’s for his own good. He’s full of stupid ideas. Stupid! You were too indulgent when he was young.”

This was probably true, Rostov thought.

Women.

Good for one thing. Well, that and cooking.

He now heard the muted sound of a power tool somewhere in the house. It sounded like a grinder, electric sander. Somebody was doing some construction.

Another voice asked something. Younger, male. Rostov couldn’t detect the words.

The man who’d come from the basement, surely Vimal’s father, barked, “Sunny, you will go to your room. Don’t worry about this. It’s not your business.”

A response, indiscernible.

“He’s in his studio working on a sculpture. He’s fine. Go. Now!”