Porfirio’s son was not in the SUV, which he otherwise would have been, because the child came down with a minor case of food poisoning the day before and remained at home with his mother.

• Erasmo Saleno, a senior interior official in the Mexican federal government, was arrested after a tip led police to his summer home, where they found a stash of weapons and cocaine (curiously reporters had been alerted too, including a photographer connected with the Los Angeles Times).

All in a day’s news.

A month later Hale’s real estate project broke ground and he received from his fellow investors in Mexico a bonus of $500,000 U.S. in cash.

He was pleased with the money. He was more pleased, though, with the connections he’d made through the Mexican businessman. It wasn’t long before the man put him in touch with someone in America who needed similar services.

Now, several times a year, between his business projects, he would take on an assignment like this. Usually it was murder, though he’d also engaged in financial scams, insurance fraud and elaborate thefts. Hale would work for anyone, whatever the motive, which was irrelevant to him. He had no interest in why somebody wanted a crime committed. Twice he’d murdered abusive husbands. He killed a child molester one week before he’d murdered a businesswoman who was a major contributor to the United Way.

Good and bad were words whose definitions were different for Charles Vespasian Hale. Good was mental stimulation. Bad was boredom. Good was an elegant plan well executed. Bad was either a sloppy plan or one carelessly carried out.

But his current plot—certainly his most elaborate and far-reaching—was humming along perfectly.

God created the complex mechanism of the universe, then wound it up and started it running. . . .

Hale got off the subway and climbed to the street, his nose stinging from the cold, his eyes watering, and started along the sidewalk. He was about to push the button that would set the hands of his real chronograph in motion.

Lon Sellitto’s phone rang and he took the call. Frowning, he had a brief conversation. “I’ll look into it.”

Rhyme glanced up expectantly.

“That was Haumann. He just got a call from the manager of a delivery service on the same floor as the company that the Watchmaker broke into in Midtown. He said a customer just called. A package they were supposed to deliver yesterday never showed up. Looks like somebody broke in and stole it around the time that we were sweeping the offices looking for the perp. The manager asked if we knew anything about it.”

Rhyme’s eyes slipped to the photographs that Sachs had taken of the hallway. Bless her, she’d taken pictures of the entire floor. Below the name of the delivery service were the words High Security—Valuable Deliveries Guaranteed. Licensed and Bonded.

Rhyme heard the white noise of people talking around him. But he didn’t hear the words themselves. He stared at the photograph and then at the other evidence.