by Robert Pobi
Raymond Fields was watching the evening news with his wife, Brenda. And judging by the panicked faces, you’d think that nothing else was happening in the world other than that Mr. Machine Asshole blowing shit up. Why were people so freaked out about this guy? Fields had served his country in Vietnam and had seen the real damage that human beings did to one another. Don’t get him wrong—he had sympathy for the people whose lives this asshole touched—but dying at a gala with all your rich friends was a fuckuvalot better than bleeding out in a fucking field while little chinko bastards in black pajamas stripped off your wristwatch before sticking a rusty knife slowly up your ass.
No, if you asked Ray, America had gone fucking soft. All you had to do was look at the way kids dressed today. Back in his youth, when the protests against the war had started, the old people said they couldn’t tell the girls from the boys. Which Ray knew was bullshit. Sure, they had long hair, but they were real men. These days, guys wore gauchos—fucking gauchos! Men carried around emotional support animals and they worried about hurting other people’s feelings—their fucking feelings! Jee-zus, what had happened to the country?
Ray got up from the sofa and went to the fridge. As he opened the door, he asked Brenda if she wanted another PBR. She said nope, so he just grabbed two—that way he wouldn’t have to get up in another five minutes.
He closed the fridge and walked back into the living room with two cold ones. He popped the top.
But he never got to take a sip because the house next door blew up, taking out the propane tank at Ray’s side door, which blew him and Brenda and the whole fucking place to smithereens.
56
26 Federal Plaza
Kehoe stood transfixed, his feet held to the floor via a magnetic phenomenon that refused to release him. He stared at the news teams feeding on tragedy, looking grave and concerned as they filled time between the commercials that sold blood thinners and reverse mortgages. But even in his paralysis, he was plugged into the central nervous system of the crime-solving organism he directed, and he could feel different parts of the beast coming to life
The talking heads were in fine form. Three days of this had been enough time for them to pull out their thesaurus apps and memorize different terms for bomb, explosion, fire, and victim—in that general order of importance.
But they were ahead of the bureau right now, and had dispatched the makeup-and-rictus-grin squads to the latest explosions, all four of which had occurred less than fifteen minutes ago, and all within what appeared to be thirty seconds of one another. The police were already on site at all four locations, but the bureau’s people were still at least five miles out on two of the locations and ten from the third and fourth.
A journalist from CNN—an Asian woman who looked to be about fifteen years old sporting the worst pair of glasses Kehoe had seen in a while—was in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. It was a beautiful tree-lined street displaying some of the nicest turn-of-the-century real estate to be found in all five boroughs. The journalist—one Emily Chow, according to the chyron—stared seriously into the camera, index and middle finger pressed to her ear to accentuate that she was speaking live to the studio. She was nodding and shaking her head and pursing her lips and doing her best Lon Chaney as she answered all manner of idiotic questions from the anchor back in the studio—a man so poorly up to speed on this particular topic that it sounded like he was trying out for SNL. But Chow held her ground, didn’t break out laughing, and never lost the appropriate gravitas or her good manners.
One of the nicer homes on the street—this one a big stucco-and-wood pseudo-Tudor—stood behind her. It looked like the kind of place that sold cuckoo clocks or cheese, and it reminded Kehoe of Solvang, California, where he had spent summers as a kid. Half of it was gone, spread out all over the street, and partially into the next if Emily was to be believed. The half that was left was on fire, and two dozen turnout-coat-clad firemen were attacking the blaze with hoses, foam, and determination.
Authorities had yet to release the names of the victims, but Chow had been informed that three people had died in the house—a couple in their sixties and their son, who was twenty-four. Chow was certain that since there were no natural gas lines on the street, this explosion was in some as-yet-unknown way connected with the Machine Bomber, an invisible enemy that the FBI had been unable to stop.
Kehoe’s single rule of not giving in to open displays of emotion at work cracked at that last little bit of stupidity and he threw his mug of tea at the wall. The mug did not survive.
One of the other giant monitors was tuned to Fox News. They were splitting the screen between the studio and Hoboken, New Jersey. Technically, Jersey was outside of Kehoe’s purview, but that did little to alleviate the mixture of anger and embarrassment he felt. Tonight it looked like the anchor was having a harder time than usual understanding things as he spoke to one of their men in the field—a pudgy guy in an ill-fitting imitation Brooks Brothers blazer that had one too many buttons. Mr. Too-cheap-for-a-decent-sports-coat was standing in front of a mound of burning rubble that the chyron said was a multifamily rental property that had exploded mere moments ago. The chyron was moving slower than the one on CNN or MSNBC, presumably due to the older viewer demographic, but they made up for this by using all the right language—notably inferno, terrorist, and immigrant.
Authorities had yet to identify the victim, but it appeared that he was a man in his mid-twenties.
Like the scene in Forest Hills, firemen were pumping half a dozen large jets of water into the conflagration. Police cars and ambulances were on scene. What was missing was an FBI presence, and Kehoe was grateful that he had no more mugs to throw.
The anchor was repeating the same question using different words, as if that would sell the idea he was pushing. He wanted the field man to confirm that yes, indeed, this was the work of the Machine Bomber, the man responsible for blowing up the Guggenheim; the internet hub; Dr. Timo Saarinen’s wife and housekeeper; Jonathan Makepeace; Seth Hockney, his lawyer, Samir Chawla, and the bureau’s lawyer. Apparently the network’s people had not figured out that the explosion Kehoe had sent Page and Whitaker on was also connected to their guy—which was at least something. But the anchor kept hammering the point, slipping the word Muslim in here, and the word Mexican in there. All couched by the term unconfirmed to avoid any legal jeopardy.
A local affiliate—this one WABC—was broadcasting from Brooklyn. The anchor was an overweight middle-aged man who looked like he smelled of last night’s booze. He had a complexion that appeared to be built out of toxins, and his eyes were red and set in deep sockets. He was morosely reporting on another bombing, this one an apartment in a thirty-unit low-rise. As with the others, smoke billowed from what used to be a dwelling. The curtains hanging out the blown-out windows were still on fire. No one knew how many people had been injured or killed. The anchor looked like all he wanted was a drink.
MSNBC was on another screen, this one at the far end of the war room. A man—or was that a woman?—with a baseball cap and a script grimaced into the camera. Kehoe settled on they and quickly read the subtitles that were up. They were in Castleton Corners, Staten Island, where an explosion had leveled a small single-family home. Apparently the only person home at the time was a renter who lived in the basement—a twenty-four-year-old man—but there was no doubt that he was now dead. This time not only was the entire building gone, but it had taken the house beside it out as well, killing the older couple who lived there. They kept turning back over their shoulder and nodding at the firemen, who were hard at work trying to put out the flames licking into the sky. And like the other reporters, they wondered when—if ever—the FBI was going to catch the person or persons responsible. Then they went to interview one of the firemen on site.
Kehoe knew that he had spent no more than a single minute absorbing the chattering morons on TV, but the exercise had driven his oil pressure up and he felt the hoses starting to vibrate. He
turned to Lawrence Braithwaite, one of his agents, and snapped his fingers.
Braithwaite, a small black man who pushed the dress code boundaries with his shoes and hair, looked up. “Yes, sir?”
“Get Whitaker and Page on the phone and tell them to get back here.”
Braithwaite gave him a thumbs-up and asked, “What’s the reason I give them?”
And that was when Kehoe’s clamps finally let go. “Because someone is still blowing people up in my fucking city.”
57
Palisades Parkway
Whitaker was uncharacteristically quiet after she hung up with Braithwaite, which allowed Lucas a little time to focus on all the numbers dancing on the head of the pin. There were so many digits at play at this point that one miscalculation could send the whole thing spinning off into deep space, where it would implode. So he concentrated on keeping the equations simple. Some of the figures were missing; some were in the wrong place; some were even the wrong value. But it was building itself.
It was dark now, and if he had been back in his old life, he’d wonder where the day had gone. But when he worked for the bureau, time became a contorted commodity that had a way of bending in half. Or unfolding so that an hour felt like a month in a closet. Not that he didn’t get lost in his own head when he was unpacking the mysteries of the universe, but somehow the real-world consequences of hunting down killers opened up tiny wormholes that his wristwatch couldn’t compensate for. He wondered if there was a physiological explanation for it—he’d have to ask Erin. Or at least Google it. That morning felt like weeks ago. Which made no sense at all, since he still smelled burnt plastic and smoked Chawla at the back of his throat. Or was that from his time on the chair out in the scorched field?
Whitaker interrupted his silence as a garbage truck pulled out from behind them, passing in the left-hand lane—an unusual occurrence, since Whitaker had the heaviest foot Lucas had ever seen outside of a Coors Light commercial. “What’s going on?”
The picture was incomplete at best, completely wrong at worst. “William Hockney is the linchpin. I don’t know if he’s responsible for all this, but he’s the number holding the whole equation together. Without him, there is no equation.”
“So Medusa and the bombings in Queens, Staten Island, Hoboken, and Brooklyn straight-line back to Hockney?”
“Nothing in this straight-lines anywhere. But this is somehow tied to him.”
“What about Frosst?” She pulled into the slow lane and opened her window. The warm wind pressurized the Navigator with a big breath.
Lucas thought about him for a second and something was off. “Maybe.”
Whitaker indexed, then pulled out behind the dump truck to pass an ancient Volkswagen Jetta with a Jay Peak sticker on the trunk. The Volks was piloted by a hippie more immersed in whatever was transpiring on his cell phone than in the traffic around him. Lucas wondered what the guy’s life expectancy would look like on the appropriate actuary table. “If I wanted to plant a bomb, Frosst is the guy I’d use.”
Traffic heading back into the city was sparse, but lights from the northbound lanes blinked through the trees. With the way things were going, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire city decided to empty out. Another few days of this and people would be building big boats and collecting pairs of animals in the park. Sure, the citizenry were resilient in ways that no other populace on the planet could even hope to approximate, but even New Yorkers would take only so much before they said fuck it.
“So what’s next?”
Lucas answered with the body language of the lazy, which was not lost on him—he shrugged. “I talk to William Hockney.”
“About?”
“About why someone is intent on squeezing his nuts in a vise.”
They spent a few moments in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts, that Whitaker eventually ended by saying, “Tell me about your book, about Ricky Schroder’s cat—that’s the one where the cat is both dead and alive, right?”
Lucas had always been amazed at how people missed the point of Schrödinger’s thought experiment. “Think about it for a second—a cat cannot be both dead and alive. A cat is dead. Or it is alive. If you can’t figure out which, it’s because you’re missing information. It’s not very complicated.”
Lucas looked over and Whitaker wasn’t listening anymore. Her attention was on the rearview mirror.
“What?” he asked.
“There’s a Range Rover on our ass; it’s been there since the I-87 off-ramp. Two guys in suits.”
Lucas resisted the temptation to turn around, and before he could ask if she was certain that it wasn’t a coincidence, she answered, “They were waiting for us on the shoulder.” She kept her eyes on the rearview mirror as she passed the Jetta.
“What do we do?” Lucas asked.
The interior lit up as the Rover lurched forward, almost touching their bumper.
She pulled out her pistol. “Try pointing with your finger and going pow, pow, pow.”
58
26 Federal Plaza
Kehoe came out of his private bathroom to find Otto Hoffner standing in front of his desk. He held a single sheet of paper in his hand and there was no missing the import in his body language.
Kehoe didn’t waste time asking why he was here. He just opened his hands in a give-it-to-me gesture.
Hoffner took a step toward him, the paper extended in an arm that looked like it had been transplanted from Conan the barbarian.
Kehoe took the printout, but Hoffner went into information delivery mode without being prompted. “We’re on site at those four residential explosions and we have a pretty good line on who died—we’ll know more once the bodies make it to the ME. But I think we can rule out coincidence. The man blown up in Forest Hills was Steve Whiteman. He was the driver for the event organizer at the Guggenheim—he delivered both the snowmakers and the foil bags. The man killed in the apartment in Hoboken is Tony Iannantuono. Iannantuono was an intern at Stogner, Pruitt, and Gibson—the law firm that employed the Hockney lawyer blown up in our interview room with Special Agent Chawla. The guy killed in Castleton Corners was Barnabas O’Hare. O’Hare was a mechanic with the company that maintained the generators at the internet hub on Hudson Street. The guy blown up in Brooklyn is Enrique Cristobel. Cristobel was—”
“The UPS driver who was at Makepeace’s apartment on Fifth Avenue along with Benjamin Frosst the morning that Makepeace was killed.”
Hoffner nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What about the victim upstate that Whitaker and Page went to check out. What was his name?”
“Rich, sir. Donnie Rich.”
“Does he factor into this?”
Hoffner shrugged—a nearly imperceptible movement that his trapezius muscles barely allowed for. “We don’t know, sir. Page might have something to offer.”
“And we interviewed all of these people?”
Hoffner would have nodded if his neck had been flexible enough. “All but Rich, sir. And they all checked out. All had been on the job at least eighteen months. No records, no reason to suspect they were involved at all. We did cell phone and internet checks. We looked into family members and known friends. Social media accounts and bank records. They were all clean.”
No, they weren’t. “Let me know as soon as Page walks in.”
59
Palisades Parkway
Whitaker pushed the big V8 into the task and they looped around a line of cars. “And you still refuse to carry a gun.” It was a fatalistic observation. “I hope this isn’t one of those I-told-you-so moments.”
Lucas focused on the side mirror.
The Rover had pulled out and was closing the gap. There was no way it wasn’t following them.
Whitaker glanced into the rearview mirror. “We can’t outrun them in this beast.” The road opened up and was empty of vehicles except for the garbage truck that had passed them earlier. It was a hundred yards up, hogging up the right-
hand lane.
Whitaker was picking up speed and about to overtake the garbage truck, when it braked and swerved, fishtailing. And slowly began to drift.
“Fuck.” There was nothing but resignation in her voice.
Tires squealed as its profile took up the entire road in slow motion.
The right side of the garbage truck filled the windshield with a wall of metal.
Whitaker pounded down on the brakes. The truck slid sideways, blocking both lanes.
She swerved and hit the gas, trying to pull them around the back bumper. But the rig’s tail dug into the cement wall bordering the shoulder, blocking their path and throwing out a fan of sparks that bounced off the road.
The truck was completely sideways, and the wheels facing them lifted off the pavement and it looked like it was going to roll.
Lucas reached out and braced himself against the dashboard.
Headlights from the Rover filled the cabin.
The garbage truck teetered for too long, then dropped back to earth, bouncing and coming to a stop.
Whitaker pounded both feet into the brake pedal, and they skidded.
“Hold on!” Whitaker barked as the Rover rammed them in the back right corner, spinning them around in a full rotation.
Before they stopped moving, Whitaker was out of the car.
She had her pistol out.
Lucas turned and the two men were out of the Rover. They both had small carbines.
He ducked and spun back, facing the garbage truck. Frosst was climbing out. He also held a small rifle.
From somewhere to his left, Whitaker screamed, “Drop your weapons!”
Lucas pointed at Frosst and yelled at her, “On your six!”
Whitaker was facing the other way and she opened up with her semiautomatic pistol, squeezing off two three-round bursts.
Lucas wanted to turn. Wanted to see what had happened behind them. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Frosst ahead.