Resolved kac-15 Page 9

  The head of the FBI's terrorism task force, a rock-jawed, graying man named Earl Brannock, now took the podium to sum up. The Unsub was a white American, middle-aged, unemployed or a night-shift worker, probably unmarried. He may have spent time in mental institutions, but was probably quite intelligent, maybe college-educated. He had a high level of technical skill and may have trained in the armed services. The bombings were random and seemed to express nothing more than a general rage at the people and places of Manhattan. He may have had some contact with the criminal justice system. All these leads were being checked out. He wanted the detectives to keep alert, to report any suspicions no matter how far out. We're going to catch this guy.

  After that, the chief of detectives made a brief statement: thank you, thank you, all work together, total commitment by NYPD, spirit of cooperation, know you have a lot to do, but details will be drawn from all detective squads in the city, notifications already on their way. We're going to catch this guy.

  The meeting broke up. On his way out, waiting for the elevator, Raney fell in with Roy Arnolf, a detective he'd worked with in the old days at the Five in lower Manhattan. He remembered that Arnolf had been with the joint FBI-NYPD Antiterrorism Task Force for a couple of years.

  "So, Roy, we gonna catch this guy?" he asked.

  Arnolf snorted. "Yeah, if someone drops a dime on him or we get real lucky. He tries to rob a bodega with a bomb in his pocket."

  "That's it?"

  "Hey, how else? The explosives are untraceable. Like he said, you can make RDX from common chemicals or smuggle it in. What're we gonna do, inventory every shell and mine in every military in the world? He's making the detonators from scratch, just like the Unabomber used to do, and he never would've been nailed if he hadn't sent in that letter to the papers and if his brother hadn't recognized his particular brand of looney tunes. George Metesky, the Mad Bomber- he wrote letters, and he had a hard-on for Con Ed, so they caught him through employee records. The original Arabs on the World Trade Center were a bunch of amateurs. We traced them through the truck they used. So it's the usual thing, we get him with snitches or some bonehead mistake. Anyway, all this," he gestured broadly at the milling detectives, "is for popular consumption, so the bosses can say we've got two hundred of our best men on it."

  "So basically you're saying an arrest is expected soon."

  This raised a sour laugh from Arnolf. The elevator came and they got in and talked about other things for the ride down.

  ***

  Felix liked the work. He especially liked having a place of his own and spending money and no fixed hours. It was practically the best deal he had ever had since he left his mother's house. The apartment Rashid had found for him was on Thirty-Sixth and Tenth, a fourth-floor walk-up in what started out as a Hell's Kitchen tenement, but was now a Clinton studio, mod. kit. strt. vw. He had plenty of new clothes, in a variety of styles- work clothes, business dress, tourist getups. He fancied himself now a master of disguise. He had a blond wig and a false beard, and a number of distinctive hats. Fooling the schmucks of the world had always been one of his prime delights, and now he was being paid to do it, and blow some of them up in the bargain. It was a boy's dream come true. Why Rashid was employing him in this way he never asked, nor did he care. He thought it had something to do with religion, that Arab shit, although Rashid did not seem to pray or perform any rituals, like the Muslims in the joint did. But who knew what the miserable little fuck got up to? Felix himself had no use for religion, which he conceived as mere lists of things you couldn't do. His mother had been religious in a way, a devout Satanist, but there they had lists of things that no one else was allowed to do, which you had to do, which sucked, too, as far as Felix was concerned. He had never found an object of worship more worthy than himself.

  Rashid was a pain in the ass and would get his when Felix was good and ready, but he had to admit that the bastard knew what he was doing. He had provided Felix with a phony job, at Haskell's, a heating and cooling contractor where the two Spanish guys worked, which was some kind of front operation. So Felix had pay stubs, and a fake SSN, with which he got his gas, power, and phone turned on. Also, Rashid let him make his own decisions about where and when to bomb, only specifying general targets- a bus, a train. This was to cover the actual revenge targets, Horowitz and some Arab guy who needed to be clipped for some Arab reason. Felix didn't much care, and he'd applied the method of settling some scores of his own. It was no problem following a particular guy until he boarded a bus or a train, and leaving a package under a nearby seat.

  One thing Rashid had taught him that was useful: always use unidentifiable components. He'd found the stout cardboard box behind a liquor store, a long thin one that had held expensive scotch. The stolen bomb slipped neatly into it, and he'd wrapped it with brown paper from grocery bags and strapping tape. There was a tiny hole in one side, through which one could stick a stiff wire and flick the arming switch. He checked his new watch- almost 2:30. He left the apartment with the thing in an athletic bag. He was dressed in green coveralls, a green ball cap with a company logo stitched to it, and work boots- a dumbass on the way to or from some night shift. His car was around the block, a dark blue Crown Vic six years old, but in good shape. Another Rashid purchase, anonymous and efficient. He turned it on and checked the taillights and brakelights. He definitely did not want to give a bored cop some excuse to stop him, even though he was white.

  He took the tunnel to Queens, nearly deserted at this hour, and drove at a little under the posted speed limit, making a full stop at every stop sign, to an address in Rego Park, a two-story brick bungalow with a fig tree in the front yard and a statue of the Virgin glowing under the sodium lights. He went through the chain-link gate, propped his package up against the door, armed it, and left. The guy would come out in the morning to get his paper and good night, Irene. Felix wished that he could be there to see it, to see the expression on the cop's face before it melted off his skull, but he figured you couldn't have everything.

  6

  Lieutenant Jim Raney picked up the call on his police radio on his way to work the next morning. They gave the address and said there was one man dead. Raney felt his stomach knot; he knew the address well and could figure out who the dead person was. With siren and lights he made it to Sixty-Sixth Avenue in Rego Park, Queens, in eight minutes, and found fire trucks, an EMS vehicle, blue-and-whites blocking either end of the street, and a couple of unmarked police vehicles. The firefighters were finishing up, coiling their hoses, watched by knots of people from the neighborhood, staring from behind hastily stretched tape lines. There was smoke in the heavy air, a stench of burnt wood and asphalt shingle. Raney parked, clipped his shield to his jacket, and walked toward the house, crunching on broken glass. He noticed that nearly every window on the block had been blown out, giving the rows of modest brick homes the blank-eyed look of tragic masks.

  The target house had lost its faзade and almost the entire front room. A scorched upright piano sagged over a dark void, from which thin smoke emerged. Most of the ground floor had collapsed into the basement. Raney saw a carpet he recognized, impaled on floorboards. The statue of the Virgin that had stood in the little front yard was lying in scorched pieces. Also in the front yard: a paramedic picking red globs up with tongs and placing them carefully in a yellow rubber body bag. Raney's gorge heaved and he had to look away and take deep breaths.

  "Pretty bad, huh?" said a voice behind him. It was Rafael Beale. Of course! Raney now realized, with something of a shock, that the crime had taken place in his own bailiwick.

  "Hell of a blast. Lucky there's only one vic, but he's really dead. There isn't a piece of him wouldn't go through a one-inch hole. Guy's name was…" He looked at his notebook.

  But Raney had the name: "Pete Balducci."

  "Yeah," said Beale, surprised. "How did you know?"

  "He was my first partner, right after I got my detective shield. In the Five, downtown in the
city. He retired like twelve years ago. Christ, I've been in that house a thousand times. Shit!"

  Randy kicked at a piece of debris.

  "Sorry about that, Loo. And the remarks, I didn't know-"

  "That's okay, Beale. We have anything so far?"

  "Not much. I talked to the arson guy from the FD. He's scrambling around down there in the scene. The special unit from the bomber task force is on route."

  "They think it's the guy?"

  "Well, it's early yet, but the FD says it was definitely a big, high-explosive-type bomb, like the six we got over in the city. Anything new on all that the other day? At One PP?"

  "We're looking for a white guy, forties, muscular. He might have a hard-on for the criminal justice system, the feds think, but really, bottom line, who the fuck knows? Anything come back on the canvass yet?"

  "Nobody saw shit," replied Beale, "which figures, a neighborhood like this goes to bed early. It looks like the perp came by at night, left the thing by the front door. A motion detector on it…"

  Raney cut him off. "Yeah, well, we might as well get back to the house. This case is going over to the task force."

  Beale said something else, but Raney didn't hear him. The word "random" was buzzing in his mind, a word that Special Agent Bannock had used often in his presentation. Terror was random by definition: that's what made it terrifying. The universal goal of any terrorist was that no one in the target population be able to predict who might be the next victim. The task force had analyzed the connections among the victims and came up blank. Raney had seen the charts. So it had to be random that Felix Tighe's ex-wife, and a witness who had testified against him, and the cop who had arrested him had all been killed. Just a coincidence…

  "Loo, are you okay?"

  Raney snapped out of his reverie. "What?"

  "I been talking at you for five minutes and you were someplace else."

  "Sorry, Beale, I was just thinking about Pete. I need to call some people, get with the family and all. He's got two daughters, grandchildren."

  His eyes drifted over the scene: the crime scene technicians, the firemen, the medics, all picking at the ruin. It seemed mindless and far too weak a response, as measured against the enormity of what had happened. September 11 again, in miniature. At some level he understood that this is what you did because it was all you could do- put things in little labeled bags, a pathetic attempt to reorder chaos. He saw an unmarked van pull up at the head of the street. Three men and a woman emerged, and Raney felt relief, tinged a little with shame.

  He said, "Meanwhile, there's the task force guys. Let's turn this over and get out of here."

  ***

  Marlene is selling a dog to an airport security man from New England. Selling dogs is not something she likes to do particularly, but it's necessary and she's good at it. She briefly reflects on how much of her life has been consumed (often she uses the word "ruined" to herself) by tasks where these three things are true. Also, Billy Ireland is impossible at sales. His chief sales tactic is "take it or leave it, asshole"; often they leave it. He regards any criticism of his trainees- real, implied, or imagined- as a personal affront. So Marlene does the selling. It's not hard, since there is something of a seller's market in this kind of dog nowadays.

  The customer is a big, middle-aged white man with a wary look, and the dog is a medium-sized brown dog, with a black muzzle, floppy ears, and an eager expression. Marlene has noticed this before: the dogs know they are being talked about.

  "Well, I don't know," says the man. "I was expecting a purebred, you know. Five thousand dollars… that seems steep for a dog that… well, it looks like a mutt."

  "That's because she is a mutt, Mr. Willowes," says Marlene. "She's also a talented bomb sniffer, trained right here. She has a good disposition, she's only three years old, and she's a good worker. Aren't you, Violet?"

  Violet agrees with this assessment by wagging her tail. Marlene goes to a wooden filing cabinet and takes from it a waxy red cylinder. "This is commercial dynamite," she says, "but she'll find all the conventional military and industrial explosives. I'll give you a demo." She takes a tissue from a box on her desk and wipes the dynamite stick, as if polishing it for the Terrorists' Ball. Then she hands the tissue to Willowes. "There's a flagstone path outside and a drystone wall on the other side of the yard. Go hide this, and give me a yell."

  Bemused, the man does so. Marlene clips Violet to a short lead and, when she hears the man's shout, walks the dog outside into the warm afternoon. Bark. Whine. Scratch. Violet finds the bait under a stone. The man is impressed and wonders why the dog is not given a reward for finding. Marlene explains that the finding is its own reward; a little praise is enough. "They're better people than we are, you know," says Marlene sadly.

  The phone in the house rings. Marlene tells Violet to lie down, excuses herself, and trots into the house. Mr. Willowes is making calculations, figuring out how many Violets he will need, how many handlers, to keep his airport safe, and whether he would be better off with expensive sniffing machines and min-wage staff to work them, when he hears a great shout from inside the house. A shout of dismay, he thinks. More shouting. A few minutes later Marlene emerges, dabbing at her face with a tissue, perhaps the same one.

  "Something wrong?" he inquires politely.

  "A friend of mine was killed this morning," she explained. "In the city. Another bomb."

  They go back into the house, where Marlene sells him four bomb dogs: Violet, Peaches, Trampette, and Lola.

  ***

  During the noon recess of the fourteenth day of People v. Gerber amp; Nixon, Karp invited Terrell Collins into his office to discuss the trial. The prosecution had concluded its case in chief that morning. Karp had the transcripts strewn in piles on his desk. Collins threw his lanky frame into a chair and puffed out air.

  "What do you think?" he asked, indicating the transcripts.

  "What do you think," countered Karp. "You're in the courtroom. I can only derive so much from reading transcripts. How did your case play with the jury?"

  "They were polite. They listened. No one dozed off."

  "That's not what I mean," said Karp.

  "Yeah, I know. I guess… look, the whole point of our case is do you believe our witnesses or do you believe the two cops. Just now, with Nine Eleven and the dead heroes in the background, people in this city are inclined to believe the cops. It doesn't matter how many civilian witnesses I drag in there, and it doesn't matter if they all confirm one another and contradict what the cops say. Klopper stands up on cross and asks each of them if the DA went over their testimony with them, which they say yes to, of course, and he has a way of implying, without actually coming out and saying so, that we made it all up. I've called him on it when he actually claimed we made it all up and the judge backed me, but you know how that goes. The seed is planted." He sighed. "Frankly, I think we're gonna get creamed."

  "Yeah, and as long as that's your attitude, you will get creamed," Karp snapped. "What the fuck, Terrell- don't say shit like that in the middle of a trial!"

  Bridling, Collins replied, "Hey, you think you can do better, boss, be my guest!"

  Karp felt the blood flowing into his cheeks and made a conscious effort to calm himself. In fact, he did think he could do better, although Collins was a perfectly competent, even a brilliant young lawyer. He had not, however, won over one hundred straight homicide cases like Karp had. He had not met Hank Klopper on two separate occasions and ground him into the courtroom floor. That made a difference.

  "All right, Terry," he said soothingly, "let's not get in each other's face. This is still winnable. It's civil service, you're not going to be fired. Cheer up!" He moved his face into an expression of confidence and bonhomie. The glower on Collins's face broke into a thin smile.

  "Let's talk about the defense case," said Karp. "Today is what?"

  "He's leading with a Marlo Burns, a homeboy who's got a different story on the shooting. I think
I can bring out that Mr. Burns has a thing against Nigerians. Then Hugo Selwyn, guy's a defense-hack forensic expert. I presume he's going to cast doubt on the trajectory data we presented, the fact that the victim took four rounds while he was lying flat on the ground. It argues against pure self-defense."

  "Good. Exploit the hack aspects. Challenge his credentials. You up for that?"

  "Yeah. I know the guy's whole life story. He was fired from a crime lab in Jersey for incompetence. Since then he's been a defense witness in cop shootings all around the country. Aside from that, all they have is the defendants."

  "You think he'll call them? Hank never calls defendants."

  "Ordinarily, yes, but this is a special case. My sense is that these guys don't just want acquittal, they want total exoneration. They may be pushing him to call them."

  "What're they like?"

  "Nixon's the brains, Gerber's the brawn. Not that either of them is a rocket scientist. I'm guessing that after it went down, Nixon came up with the story and got the partner to go along."