The older detective muttered, “This guy is too fucking connected.”

“And he knows your number too now,” she pointed out. “Watch your back.”

He gave a gruff laugh. “That’s a cliché Linc definitely wouldn’t approve of.”

His words made her miss Rhyme all the more.

“I’ll let you know what I find,” she said.

A few minutes later Sachs was speaking with Lydia Foster, explaining the purpose for the call.

“Ah, Mr. Moreno. Yes, I was very sad to hear that. I interpreted for him three times over the last year.”

“Each time in New York?”

“That’s right. The people he met with spoke pretty good English but he wanted to speak through me in their native languages. He thought he could get a better feel for them. I was supposed to tell him what I thought their attitudes were, in addition to the words.”

“I talked to the driver who took you two around the city on May first. He said you had some general conversations with Mr. Moreno too.”

“That’s right. He was very social.”

Sachs found her heart pounding a bit faster. The woman could be a well of information.

“You and he met how many people on the latest trip?”

“Four, I think. Some nonprofit organizations, run by Russians and some people out of Dubai, and at the Brazilian consulate. He also met somebody by himself. That man he was meeting spoke English and Spanish. He didn’t need me so I waited at Starbucks downstairs in the office building.”

Or maybe he didn’t want you to hear the substance of that meeting.

“I’d like to come over and talk to you.”

“Yes, anything I can do to help. I’m home for the day. I’ll find all my transcripts for the job and organize them.”

“You keep copies of everything?”

“Every word. You’d be surprised how many times clients lose what I send them or don’t back them up.”

Even better.

Just then her phone hummed with an incoming text, marked urgent. “Hold on a second, please,” she told Lydia Foster. And read the message.

Bruns’s phone in use. Voiceprint checks—it’s him. Tracking in real time. He’s in Manhattan at moment. Call Rodney Szarnek.

—Ron

She said, “Ms. Foster, I’ve got to follow up on something but I’ll be there soon.”

Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

RHYME HAD JUST FINISHED HIS KALIK BEER at Hurricane’s restaurant when he heard a voice behind him.

“Hello.”

Mychal Poitier.

The corporal’s blue shirt was Rorschached with sweat and his dark slacks, with the regal red stripe, sandy and dotted with mud. He carried a backpack. He waved to the server and she smiled, surprised when he took a seat with the disabled man from America. She put in an order without asking him what he wanted and brought him a coconut soft drink.