The Deliveryman: A Lincoln Rhyme Short Story

The handsome man, compact and strong, sat by the window and looked out over the dark street, sipping coffee (Cubano — he was happy to embrace the food and culture from what he believed to be an overly self-important island, if not the people themselves). The brew, sticky and sweet, tickling the intersection of upper and lower jaw, normally brought him comfort. Now it did nothing.

His buy money was gone. And his deliveryman had not delivered. He waited at the agreed meeting place, no show. He’d called the man’s burner five times — the maximum he allowed — and when there was no answer, he threw his Nokia out and left the restaurant fast. Just because you didn’t buy a phone with a credit card didn’t mean it was untraceable. At forty-five, Morales was not as tech savvy as some in his crew — or even his ten-year-old twins — but he was well aware of pings and cellular towers.

“Miguel Ángel?” His wife of eighteen years stepped into the doorway of his study.

The room, dark and quiet, was Morales’s and his only. He ran his crew from a social club a block north. This was his private place. And although she was helpful in running his crew and a powerful, and dangerous, woman in her own right, she waited until he gestured her in. Which he now did.

Connie was more Anglo than he, by blood, and had a light complexion and brown hair (his was jet black, though some of the shade came from a bottle). She had a voluptuous figure, which never failed to appeal even after all these years of marriage. Now, though, he merely took in her concerned face and turned back to the window.

“Still nothing?” she asked.

She knew of the problem.

“No word.” A nod, indicating the whole of the New York City area. “It’s out there somewhere. But it might as well be on Mars.”

“You need something?”

He shook his head. She returned to the kitchen. She was baking — a process that was a mystery to Miguel Ángel Morales. He’d never cooked a single thing in his life. Oh, he appreciated the processes involved: chemistry and heat. But he employed them in a slightly different way: an acid attack on a rival last year and burning to death an interloper from the Bronx (he could still summon the unpleasant scent of burnt skin and hair).

This morning his wife was baking coffee cakes. The smells were orange and cinnamon.

Morales sipped coffee, then set down the tiny cup, painted with pictures of blank-faced birds. Chickens, he supposed. They were yellow, their beaks blood red.

He was regarding the street before him — brownstones similar to his, women going to stores, returning from stores, boys playing soccer, even though this was a school day.

His phone hummed. Today’s burner, good for another ten or twelve hours.

The caller was Morales’s main lieutenant.

“Yes?” Please let there be good news.

Four hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars…

“I just found out why our deliveryman didn’t show. He’s dead. Got knifed in Midtown.”

“What? Who did it?”

“No idea. Never heard Rinaldo was at risk.”

“I didn’t either. Wouldn’t have used him if he had been.”

Echi Rinaldo worked freelance for a lot of crews. He had no territory of his own and no allegiance, except to ply his trade of getting “difficult shipments” (the term the wiry man used with some humor) into the hands of purchasers or borrowers. He never cheated anyone and kept his mouth shut.

“We know,” the man continued, “that he hid the delivery without any problem.”

“You think this man, this killer, followed him and tortured him to find out where it was?”

“Unlikely. From what I’ve heard it was a street fight. He died in a few minutes. And more or less in public. You want me to find who did it and—”

“I’m not interested, at this point,” Morales said calmly, “in that. Finding the delivery: That’s our only mission.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “The seller has the money.”

“That’s not an issue either.” The seller would not take Morales’s money and steal back the delivery. Morales knew the man’s operation well. That double-dipping would serve little purpose. Besides, the relationship between them was a partnership, and it was far too early in the game for one partner to screw the other. “What else do you know?”

“We’re monitoring scanners. Nobody has much info. Wasn’t a hijacking and there were no contracts out on anybody fitting his description.”

“Use who you need to — but only our men, or people deep in our pocket — and find out what you can, retrace Rinaldo’s steps, get surveillance in place on anyone who knows anything. Police too if you need to.”

“Yessir. Oh, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Rinaldo wasn’t alone when it happened. He had his son with him.”

Ah, yes. That’s right. Morales recalled this. It was decided that he’d take the boy with him on his rounds yesterday to give an air of innocence if he were stopped for a traffic violation. He’d never met the boy but believed him to be about eight or nine.

“What did he see?”

“Nothing, from what we’re picking up on the chatter. But who knows?”