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behind the driver’s head in the inch-thick sheet of Plexiglas dividing the cab.
    Drummond ducked beneath the window line. If PlayStation games represented reality with any accuracy, Charlie knew the car’s chassis offered little protection against a full-metal-jacketed round traveling atnear the speed of sound, and the seat essentially provided no additional defense. Nevertheless he dropped all the way to the floor and lay there, petrified.
    “Just go anywhere,” he managed to call to the driver.
    Ibrahim Wallid was the driver’s name, according to the ID rubber banded to his sun visor. He tried to reply, but no sound would come. He gripped the wheel and stomped on the accelerator, bringing the engine to a throaty roar.
    But the taxi was still in park.
    Drummond’s headrest burst into particles of foam. Again a bullet bashed into the Plexiglas behind Wallid.
    Trembling, the driver flailed at the gearshift arm. He clipped it with his wrist, snapping it into drive. With the accelerator already flush against the floor, the cab lurched forward like a dragster, laying half-block-long stripes of rubber. Another bullet sparked the top of a parking meter behind them.
    Wallid ratcheted the wheel, turning the taxi at almost a right angle onto a clear Carroll Street block. Centrifugal force hurled Drummond into Charlie’s spine. While explosive, the pain was a minor consideration because they were safely away.
    Climbing back onto his seat, Charlie asked—shock had thrown off his governor so that it came out as a scream—“Who the hell were they?”
    Drummond brushed bits of glass and foam from his hair. “Who?”
    “The guys who tried to murder us a minute ago!”
    “Oh, right, right, right.” Some of the light returned to Drummond’s eyes. “Tell me something? What’s today’s date?”
    “The twenty-sixth.”
    “Of?”
    “December.”
    “The last time I recall checking the calendar, the leaves had just begun to fall.”
    “So about two, three months.” Charlie hoped this was leading somewhere.
    Drummond waved at the shattered rear window. “This probably has to do with work.” As if drained by the thinking, he sagged into a reclining position.
    Charlie needed more. “I never thought of the appliance business as quite so deadly.”
    Drummond nodded vaguely.
    “How about the way you knew how to handle yourself back there?” Charlie asked. “I’m guessing you didn’t pick that up at the repair and maintenance refreshers?”
    With a shrug, Drummond leaned against his window, content to use it as a pillow despite the cold and the rattling of the glass. His eyelids appeared to grow heavy.
    “At least tell me how you knew that the first guy had a gun?” Charlie said.
    Drummond sat up an inch or two. “Yes, the key was …” He stopped. He’d fumbled the thought. He recovered it: “The fellow lured you down the block with the thing they knew would most entice you, a monitor scheme.”
    “You mean a monetary scheme?”
    “As I recall, the Monitor was a ship.”
    “I know. What does it have to do with anything?”
    “The Monitor battled the Merrimac.”
    “Civil War, I know, I know. Was there a particular scheme the Monitor used?”
    “The Merrimack is a hundred-ten-mile-long river that begins at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers.”
    “You’re losing me.” Charlie suspected Drummond himself was lost.
    “Franklin, New Hampshire,” Drummond said, as if that settled it.

13
    The precinct house was quiet. “It’s so cold out there tonight, the pickpockets are keeping their hands in their own pockets,” explained the duty officer as he led Charlie and Drummond down an empty, characterless corridor of mostly dark offices. The place had the same coarse, sour smell as all the municipal buildings Charlie had been to. He wondered whether the odor of all the humanity massed into these places was too strong for any cleaning compound, or whether all the places simply used the same