by Robert Pobi
Lucas looked over at her. “Why do you think it’s bad news?”
“Because that’s the only kind you ever have.”
He thought about protesting, but she wasn’t wrong. “I’m tired. My back feels like it’s made out of bottle caps strung together with butcher’s twine. And all I’ve eaten in the past twenty-four hours is a hot dog, eleven cups of coffee, and some olives I stole from a rat.” He stepped out of the SUV onto the wet morning pavement. “I’m going to go inside now.”
He tried to smile, but his face wasn’t working, and what came out was a grimace that he hid by closing the door and waving her off.
When he walked in the front door, Lucas was again hit by how without Erin and the kids, the place had a different rhythm, a different smell, and a different feel.
He dropped his keys into the vide poche on the big deco console by the hall tree and kicked off his left sneaker, then carefully extracted his prosthetic foot from the right.
After grabbing a club soda from the fridge, he picked up the bureau laptop he had left on the island and climbed the stairs.
He put the can of soda down as he stripped off the day-old clothes, and getting the sweater over his prosthetic was so difficult that he considered cutting it off with scissors. When he was finally naked, he dumped his clothes in the hamper, finished half the can of seltzer, then took off his arm. He saw his reflection through the steamed-up mirror and once again reminded himself that he’d have to do something about that hair—he had forgotten all about it. How the hell was anyone supposed to take him seriously looking like this? He thought about walking over to CVS for some dye, but he’d just screw it up. Fuck it. Tomorrow. Or the next day.
He put the last half of the soda away and stepped into the shower.
As always, it took longer for the scar tissue to heat up, and he hurt in a million places. His entire skeleton was out of whack—no surprise after twenty-five hours on his feet. Welcome to the new and improved Dr. Lucas Page, lucky to still be alive and held together by the finest technology that money could buy—and powered by a stubbornness that money couldn’t.
He let the scalding water beat his frame for ten minutes before toweling off and lumbering into the bedroom. He put his arm down on the bed beside him, kept his leg on, and climbed into the Irish linen naked.
He fell asleep almost instantly.
30
Good morning, this is Jolene Quan of WABC, and I am here at Tomkins Square Park.
The park was the scene of a rally this morning in support of the Machine Bomber, a name that has become synonymous with backlash against technological civilization.
After organizing and advertising the demonstration on Twitter, nearly two hundred people showed up to either protest in support of the bomber or demonstrate against the system that he has claimed he wants to destroy. No matter what you choose to call it, the scene was anything but peaceful.
The demonstrators started a bonfire where they burned their cell phones. Apparently all was going well until phones that had been thrown into the fire began exploding. One woman was hit in the neck by what was apparently flying debris and bled to death before paramedics could arrive. Several people reportedly lost eyes and one man had his teeth knocked out. Many more received superficial cuts and puncture wounds.
Authorities are saying that the woman who bled to death would probably have survived had anyone on site had a cell phone with which to dial 911; unfortunately everyone present had thrown their cell phones into the fire. It is unclear if the police will press any charges even though bonfires are against city bylaws. Authorities are reminding people not to burn their cell phones—or anything that may have a battery inside it—because they often can, as you have seen here, become lethal.
And now, Suzie, back to you …
31
The Upper East Side
Whitaker picked Lucas up just before ten. With only a handful of hours of shut-eye under her belt, she looked refreshed and ready to attack the day. He, on the other hand, felt like a piece of Ikea furniture someone had slapped together without bothering to consult the instructions. She was kind enough to bring coffee, but it took a stop at a bodega for another before he felt like he might be able to stand up for five minutes in a row. They had been right about that one—getting old was most certainly not for the weak.
Whitaker eyed him in her periphery, doing a bad job of hiding a smile.
“What?” he said.
“Look at you, being all quiet with your new punk-rock hair, all while wearing a suit.”
“What’s wrong with my suit?”
“You look like a Reservoir Dog.” She arched an eyebrow. “Haven’t you heard of color?”
“I’m white—this is how we dress. We’re grim motherfuckers.”
Whitaker broke into her ten-gallon smile. “Not with Evil Sting’s hair, you’re not.”
He had forgotten about the hair—again. “If you’d prefer hanging out with someone who dresses like Nudie Cohn, you can always chill with Chawla.”
* * *
By the time they parked in the garage and hit the elevators, Lucas could feel the zeros and ones firing through the void. But he was still another coffee away from prime operating condition, and the elevator ride up to their floor was as silent as the commute.
As always, the room was alive with electric current as a million little decisions were being made that would shape the way the investigation unfolded. The ubiquitous monitors were dialed to network feeds, and the rictus-upholstered faces delivering the news looked like puppets with too many teeth. All of them were focused on the explosions of the past two days, and now that they had a name for their guy, they were in full entertainment mode, accompanied by graphics, guests, and former officials.
One monitor was displaying a scene somewhere in Brooklyn, where a bunch of bearded thirty-year-olds dressed like teenagers took turns talking to the anchor, their dialogue delivered across the bottom of the screen on a chyron. They were having a meeting about the Machine Bomber’s message. They were thinking about dropping out.
Of what? the anchor asked.
The whole thing, man. Like, all of it. Society. The grid. All of it. Going back to basics. Ignoring the Big Machine.
And to prove it, they had a Facebook group set up. Along with an Instagram account and a web page.
Lucas briefly wondered if earlier generations had looked upon their young people with as much horror. Then he remembered the reaction to the Beatles, then the Sex Pistols, and finally Marilyn Manson and wondered if he was merely getting old. Or if society really was heading into the shitter.
When they got to Kehoe’s office, he was on the phone. He waved them in, cut his conversation short with a curt Okay, then scribbled some notes on a yellow legal pad with a fountain pen the size of a wrench.
“Page, Whitaker,” he said as he capped the pen and placed it on the desktop. He buzzed his assistant, asked for two coffees and a tea, requested that Chawla and Hoffner join them, then hung up.
“Rested?” he asked neither of them in particular; his focus was elsewhere.
Kehoe leaned back in his chair as Otto Hoffner came in, wearing an ill-fitting suit that looked like the seams might blow out if he took a deep breath. The three FBI mugs he carried resembled toys. He placed the tea down on Kehoe’s desk, then handed the two coffees to Whitaker and Lucas. They nodded a thanks as Chawla came in—an FBI mug in one hand, a tablet in the other. He took a seat on the window ledge.
Kehoe opened his arms. “Special Agent Chawla, what can we give Dr. Page here?”
Chawla took to his role as SAIC and tapped into his notes even though he had delivered this exact information an hour ago during the morning brief that Lucas had missed. “We’ve hit a wall with the airborne accelerant used in the Guggenheim bombing. We collected samples from the manufacturer and they don’t match the foil that was delivered, so the supply chain was infiltrated some time after it left their facilities in Matawan, New Jersey, and bef
ore it was installed in the snowmakers. We just don’t know where.”
Chawla scrolled through his notes, tapping the bullet points. “We’ve interviewed everyone in the supply chain, from the shipper that delivered the foil to the rental company that provided the snowmakers, to their driver who delivered the foil and the snowmakers to the Guggenheim, and we’ve come up with nothing. The snow machines themselves are three years old and are kept in a rented storage locker in Queens. Our forensics guys went over the space and we didn’t find anything.
“We’ve interviewed everyone in the catering company that’s still alive. Everyone involved with the company that provided security. All living Guggenheim personnel. We’re examining bank accounts and email records to see if there were any payouts, and so far we’ve found nothing. That foil appears to have been conjured up by a magician.”
Lucas held up his hand. “But it’s not magic—it’s sleight of hand. We just can’t find the point our bombers infiltrated the supply chain.”
Chawla looked over at him. “We will.”
Lucas wasn’t so sure. Not if they were now forty hours into the investigation and still had no idea how any of this had managed to take place. “What about Hudson Street last night?”
“That one we have figured out.” Chawla tapped the screen. “Three of the tanks were filled with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel.”
Lucas eyed Chawla over the rim of his FBI mug. A diesel fuel/ammonium nitrate slurry was your basic terrorist/right-wing farm boy mix—the most famous use of it on American soil being when Timothy McVeigh killed 168 innocent people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995—the second deadliest terrorist attack on American citizens other than 9/11.
It could be extremely effective, but it lacked the panache that the Guggenheim device had—as if it were made by someone else. But it played into the Luddite narrative in that it was uncomplicated.
Chawla went on. “All three tanks were filled yesterday. They have 80,000 gallons of diesel fuel on site divided between thirty-three 3,000-gallon tanks—on three separate floors. But diesel fuel only has a shelf life of six months to a year, so they swap it out twice a year. They keep three of the tanks empty to facilitate the swap-out. Everything was scheduled months ago. We checked the fuel company and neither the driver nor the truck came back after the delivery; they reported both missing yesterday afternoon. Going by the surveillance tapes at Hudson, a man in coveralls showed up, connected the appropriate hoses, did the swap, and left. We got zero usable imagery other than that the driver was a male between twenty and fifty who weighs in at somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred pounds. Probably Caucasian, possibly Latino or Middle Eastern. The driver that disappeared was six-four, two-sixty, and black—so he was hijacked after he left his facility and we assume he was murdered. We have teams backtracking his route, looking for surveillance footage or anything else that might give us some answers.
“As for the explosion itself, the blast pattern and surveillance footage suggest that it originated in the sub-basement, at the corner of Hudson and Thomas. The forensics explosives department believe that the trigger was identical to the one found at the location on Eighth Avenue last night. The forensic explosives people ran the taggants from the C-4 trigger used on Hudson and they were a perfect match for the C-4 used in the bomb on Eighth, so we know that it was the same builder. We’ve traced the taggants to a Swedish manufacturer—ENF—it was supposed to have been sold to a construction company in Brazil.” Chawla stood up. “All the evidence points to someone who is unhappy with, or has a grudge against, the industrial technological system, as the letter pointed out. It’s our man—the Machine Bomber.”
Lucas decided to put it out there. “Why didn’t he blow the hub on Eighth?”
Chawla shrugged. “He made a mistake.”
“He managed to infiltrate the supply chain for the foil confetti, modify the snowmakers, bypass security at the Guggenheim, then disappear a truck along with its driver after setting up a bomb in the basement of the Hudson Street internet hub. This guy isn’t making mistakes.” Lucas didn’t like equating what was happening with one perpetrator, but even if there was a team on this, there would be one figure playing leader—there always was.
“So how do you explain the unexploded bomb in the basement on Eighth?”
Lucas had been turning that question over in his mind since last night, and there was only one answer. “He wasn’t interested in blowing up Eighth.”
Chawla tapped the screen on the tablet again. “That’s not what the letter said.”
“Oh.” Lucas rolled his eye. “Then it must be the truth.” There was forced calm in his voice when he said, “The undetonated bomb on Eighth is amateur hour all around. There was no mixture in the tank and the bomb was never triggered. Which means that either the internet hub on Hudson had to be detonated as part of their plan, or the hub on Eighth needed to be left intact as part of their plan.” Lucas pointed at Chawla’s notes. “They went through a lot of trouble for Hudson. They went through absolutely none for Eighth. They didn’t have any intention of blowing it up.”
Kehoe was in thinking mode, but he leaned forward, took a sip of his tea, and asked, “What do you think the motive is?”
“It’s not about a revolution.” He pointed back at Chawla’s notes. “That real estate on Hudson clocks in at how many hundreds of millions of dollars?”
“Not including business interruption, it was insured for $4.5 billion.”
Lucas opened his hands in a How-can-it-be-anything-else? gesture. “It’s about money. It has to be.”
Kehoe crossed his arms. “How?”
Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Kehoe pointed at the door. “Then shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”
32
The Upper East Side—Fifth Avenue
Eddie Roberts had been a doorman at the McDougall Arms for thirteen years, and it was a job he enjoyed. The tenants were polite most of the time (with the exception of Mr. Green, who was never nice—all of the time). He never had to wait for his paycheck, and every Christmas he got enough in tips to buy the wife something nice, get the kids whatever television had convinced them they couldn’t live without, and pay off a chunk of his mortgage. Not bad work considering that the scope of his day involved opening and closing the front door; occasionally helping one of the tenants out of a cab—either because they were drunk or because they had just come back from hip surgery (both were regular occurrences with the tenant demographic); bringing packages in from the trunks of rented Town Cars; and every now and then holding an umbrella while someone got into a car. Like everything in life, there were hiccups in this routine that occasionally had him scrambling, but for the most part he figured that he would ride this job out to retirement.
Fall was behind schedule this year, and the park across the street was a hundred shades of beautiful since the leaves had yet to fall. Which meant there would be tourists all up and down Fifth today. But Eddie was a glass-half-full kind of guy, and he was just grateful that the weather was nice. Especially with all the shit on the news. It was so bad that his wife hated him coming in to work in the city—if you listened to the idiots on CNN or FOX, they could convince you that the world was ending. Which Eddie knew was horseshit. This was New York. People got killed all the time. But people were born all the time, too. As his old man said, it all worked out in the wash.
He was outside enjoying the day, watching the traffic, and waiting to open a door—of either the vehicular or building variety. Halloween was on the way and a few kids walked by, all dressed up as characters he didn’t recognize. His own children were now too old to go out trick-or-treating, but back in the day, they had gone through the classics—ghosts and witches and Mexicans and hoboes. One of his boys had been a Ghostbuster three years running. And one of his daughters had always been a princess. But these days everyone was a superhero of some sort. Or that Harry Potter kid. No one had any ima
gination anymore.
He was about to go inside when there was an explosion somewhere overhead—it couldn’t be anything else. Eddie jumped—literally—before looking up.
Eddie had time to begin a single word that began with the letter F before the corner of the building drove him two feet into the sidewalk.
33
Fifth Avenue
The apartment had all the correct appointments of wealth: superb examples of period furniture; artwork that cost more than many lifelong incomes; a walk-in closet that rivaled any shop on Rodeo Drive; a bar stocked with thousand-dollar bottles of booze. It was nose-thumbing of the finest order and would look equally at home on the cover of either Architectural Digest or What the Fuck Just Happened Here? Monthly.
The apartment was owned by a Mr. Jonathan Makepeace—hedge fund manager, philanthropist, art collector, cigar aficionado, and deconstructed human being. What was left of him had been collected in Tupperware bins and carted down to the morgue for an autopsy. But it was no big secret what had killed him—the same explosive device that had blown the corner of the apartment out into the street, punching the doorman into the sidewalk, destroying nine cars, and ruining the false sense of security the other tenants used to rely on.
Lucas stood at the edge of the living room carpet—a massive expanse of hand-knotted silk—staring at a crime scene that reminded him of things he had worked very hard to forget. Makepeace had been at his desk overlooking Central Park when the device detonated. Calvin-Wade Curtis’s people were invested in the idea that the bomb had been in his humidor, which was as close to a smoking kills commercial as you could get.
Makepeace’s upper torso had taken the brunt of the explosion, but that was not to say the rest of him had survived intact—his legs had been found in eleven different pieces. His hips and some of his internal organs were discovered halfway across the room. One of his fingers had been stuck to a curtain.