Keeper

by Greg Rucka

  I keyed my transmitter, and as I did it I knew that the bomb wasn’t radio-controlled, couldn’t be with all the radio traffic in the hotel, or else it would’ve gone off as soon as Werthin arrived. Wasn’t motion-sensitive, or else it would’ve gone off as she brought it through the crowd. Must be a timer, must be a timer or a switch. I swung my left foot around and behind Werthin’s legs, jerking the book toward me with my right.

  She’s pregnant, I remembered.

  Then I hit her in the middle of the sternum with the palm of my left hand, sending her back over my leg, into the crowd of people still milling there, looking shocked. She released the book when she fell.

  And I said, “Bomb.”

  The adrenaline made it come out far louder than I would’ve liked.

  People began backing away, and then someone screamed, and almost en masse, they turned and ran for the door.

  “Dale, get over here,” I yelled, and he was already halfway to me, climbing over the seats as I turned and pulled Felice back onto the platform, away from the people, out of the crowd. Most of the people were packed into the far side of the room already, pushing for the exit, and I heard Rubin try to transmit and then give up as he was washed out by the panic.

  “Evac,” I said. I said it three times, and tried to make it clear.

  “En route, ” Natalie said.

  Dr. Romero’s eyes were wide and on mine and then she looked at my right hand and took a quick step back, her left shoe knocking the wicker basket over. A stuffed bear fell out onto the floor. The bear had a yellow hat and a blue jacket, and something was pinned to its coat.

  I’m holding a bomb, I realized.

  Bridgett shouted, “What do I do?”

  “Hold her,” I said, indicating Werthin with my head. Dale had made the platform and had already drawn his weapon, scanning for a secondary threat. I looked, too, and saw Veronica Selby still seated in her wheelchair, eyes on us. She was bone-white.

  That was it. The crowd was still pushing out the door with one mind.

  Bridgett went down and grabbed Werthin, who was trying to slide away on her rump. Dale went down to help her.

  “You can’t do this, you pushed me, you bastard,” Werthin kept screaming.

  “Natalie, where the fuck are you?” I asked.

  “En route, goddamnit,” she said.

  “All units, repeat, we are evacuating, we are evacuating,” I said. “Get Pogo the hell out of here, now.”

  I saw Natalie push through the doorway, running to us, followed by Rubin and Lozano. As soon as Dale saw them, he went to the side door. He opened it with a sharp push, stepping back, then looked down the corridor, his gun leading.

  Bridgett was telling Werthin that she had the option to stop moving voluntarily or to become permanently disabled.

  “Rubin, get Selby out of here,” I shouted to him, and he veered off from heading to us and went to her wheelchair. Lozano made straight for Werthin. He reached her as Natalie finally made the platform, grabbing Felice with both arms.

  “Do exactly what I tell you,” Natalie said to the doctor.

  “But Veronica—”

  “Rubin’s handling it,” I said. “Get out of here. Now!”

  She started to say something more but Natalie lifted her off the platform and then ran her to where Dale stood by the exit. Rubin had Selby almost to the door, and they were practically bowled over by three more men coming in, one marshal, Fowler, and an NYPD uniform. The uniform took over on Selby’s wheelchair and Rubin headed back toward me.

  “No,” I yelled at him. “Not me. Go with Pogo, damnit.”

  He stopped, looked at me, then turned and followed in the direction Natalie and Dale had gone.

  Lozano was cuffing Werthin, who screamed that he was trying to kill her baby.

  “You’re under arrest,” he said, pulling her to her feet.

  “What kind is it?” I asked her, showing her the book.

  “Rot in hell, you bastard, you tried to—”

  “What kind of bomb is it?” I asked her again.

  Her mouth stayed open but she issued no sound, and all that was in her eyes before turned to panic. She tried to run for the door, but Lozano had a good grip, and the marshal helped him hold her. She said, “Oh my God, oh my God, that’s why I wasn’t supposed to open it, oh sweet Jesus—”

  “Who gave this to you?”

  “It’s—oh God, I swear I didn’t know,” she said, turning her head from me to Bridgett to Fowler to the marshal, trying to convince all of us at once. “He gave it to me, I swear—”

  “Who?” Bridgett asked her.

  “Mr. Rich, he gave it to me, he told me to have the butcher sign it, oh my God.”

  “Get her out of here,” Fowler said, pulling his radio. He keyed it and said, “All units, search the immediate area for Sean Rich. Consider him armed and extremely dangerous. He’s wanted for questioning.”

  The marshal helped Lozano remove Werthin from the room. At this point it wasn’t truly necessary; she had become almost docile.

  “I didn’t know, oh God, I swear I didn’t know. . . .” she kept saying.

  “The bomb squad should be here any moment,” Fowler said to me. He said it very gently, as if he was talking to a child.

  “Oh, good,” I said.

  “You want to put the book down now, Atticus?” he said.

  I looked at the book in my right hand, watched a drop of sweat from my forehead hit the cover, heard it splat on the glossy surface. “Yeah, I’d like that, Scott,” I said.

  “Go ahead, then,” he said.

  I looked at the book. I looked at him. I looked at Bridgett. “Maybe you guys should leave the room,” I said.

  “Not without you,” Bridgett said.

  “See,” I said. “I don’t know what the mechanism is, and if it’s a timer, it could go off any moment. So better that there’s just me here, you see?”

  “And you’ll do what, exactly?”

  “I’m going to put the book down,” I said. “Then I’m going to lay the podium over the book, to tamp the blast. Then I’m going to run away. Very fast.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Fowler said softly.

  “See you in a minute,” I said.

  Scott started to back out of the room. Bridgett didn’t move.

  “Go,” I said.

  She didn’t move.

  “Bridgett, please. Go away.”

  She held my eyes for a moment, then took three or four steps back. Then she stopped.

  “Dinner’s at eight, stud,” she said.

  Then she turned and ran with Fowler to the exit.

  When they were out the door, I stepped back onto the platform. I figured the bomb was plastique, and it didn’t feel more than six or seven pounds. More than enough to make finding all my pieces a true challenge were it to go off. At the center of the platform I knelt down, setting the book beside where the teddy bear had fallen from the basket.

  The note pinned to the bear’s coat read, “Please look after this bear.”

  It took some effort to get my fingers off the book. I held my breath when I let go, as if that would have made a damn bit of difference.

  The book didn’t do anything.

  I stood, grabbed the podium, and pulled it toward the center of the platform. Romero’s speech fluttered off the stand, and her cup of water fell over. My hands were sweating, and my grip slipped when the cup hit the ground, the noise scaring the hell out of me. I caught the podium before it fell, then lowered it over the book. It wouldn’t do much, but it was something.

  I scooped up the bear on the way out.

  I ran like hell.

  The second floor had been evacuated, and I jumped the rope that had been strung over the end of the escalator and went down it faster than my hurt ankle would have liked, and still too slow for my taste. The metal detector shrieked at me when I ran through it, but I didn’t stop, sprinting through the empty lobby and out onto Fifty-third Street, where the e
vacuees had gathered.

  Evacuating an entire hotel into a Manhattan street on a summer’s evening is truly a sight to behold. People were everywhere, most with dazed looks, some pissed at having their lives disrupted, some enjoying the confusion. I wondered how many of them knew exactly what was going on.

  I moved off to the other side of the street, then keyed my radio. “Natalie?” I said. “Come in.”

  She came in faint, cut with static. “Atticus? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. How’s Pogo?”

  “We’ve almost gotten her home.”

  “Confirmed. I’ll be in touch,” I said. Then I looked around, trying to find a face I recognized. There wasn’t one. After a few minutes of looking, I saw a man in a Sentinel uniform and cornered him, asking to use his radio. He relinquished it reluctantly. I guess he didn’t trust my teddy bear.

  “This is Kodiak. Somebody come in,” I said.

  Trent came on. “Atticus? Where are you?”

  “North side of the building.”

  “Come around to the west.”

  I told him I would and handed the radio back to the guard. He checked it carefully, making certain I hadn’t hurt it.

  The bomb squad was entering the building as I came around the comer onto Seventh Avenue. The fire department had already arrived, and was cordoning off the street. I worked through the crowd and found Trent in a cluster of people, with Selby, Madeline, and Bridgett.

  “You’re all right?” Selby asked 'when she saw me. “You’re fine?”

  I nodded. Selby touched my hand, and said, “And Felice, she’s all right, too?”

  “She’s safe,” I said.

  Bridgett put her hand on my arm and brought her mouth to my free ear, saying, “NYPD found Rich.”

  “Where?”

  “He was parked in the garage. When the evacuation started, he couldn’t get out of the lot. Fowler and the rest took him and Werthin to Midtown North.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “I’m just waiting for you, stud.”

  In her Porsche, I examined the teddy bear carefully. It was the real thing, not stuffed with anything more dangerous than wadding.

  “Cute,” Bridgett said.

  “I’ll get you one.”

  “I’d die first.”

  I set the bear on the floor, then shut off my radio and began removing my wires.

  “Did Fowler get an ID on the fellow we ran into yesterday?” she asked.

  “His name is Paul Grant,” I said. “No record. That’s about all he got.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment, then reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers, folded in half. She handed them to me, saying, “This is what I got at the clinic. All the inactive files of the last year. I haven’t had a chance to sort them yet.”

  I looked them over. It looked to be over one hundred names, and they were listed alphabetically. There was no Grant.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Stab in the dark,” Bridgett said. “You okay?”

  “I’m waiting for my heart to start beating normally,” I said.

  “Patience.”

  One of the marshals who had worked the conference was at the Midtown North front desk, talking to a cop, when we arrived, and he escorted us to the room that had been commandeered for the combined agencies. Lozano was the only person inside I recognized.

  “Hey, it’s the hero,” he said when he saw me. “Let me buy you a cup of caffeine. Have a seat.”

  Bridgett and I sat down and Lozano poured two cups of coffee from the urn on the stand in the comer, asking, “Either of you want it doctored?”

  We both said no.

  He brought us our coffee and sat down at the table, watching as we sipped.

  “God almighty,” Bridgett said, and set down her cup. “This is obscene.”

  Lozano chuckled and lit a cigarette. “They’re making me sit it out,” he said. “Not my precinct.”

  “Rich’s in interrogation?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Captain Hamer and Fowler are running at him right now.”

  “Was it a bomb?” I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Be a bit anticlimactic if it wasn’t, huh? Yeah, it was a bomb. They disarmed it about fifteen minutes ago, said it was a real simple device. They’re running it over to forensics now, doing a rush job. We’ll see what they get off it.”

  “I want to know how she got it into the conference,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know how it got past the detectors, all that,” Lozano said. “But Werthin gave a full statement. Says she was protesting outside, and Rich showed up about noon. She saw him asking if anyone had seen Crowell. She says he left shortly after that, but came back around three. Rich called her over—he knew her from the paint incident, he was the one who told her to do it, she says—handed her the book, and said that Mr. Crowell wanted her to take it in and get it autographed by Romero. Says that Rich told her it would be a perfect reminder of exactly what a mockery Common Ground is, or words to that effect.”

  “And whatever you do, don’t open it?” I said.

  “Yeah. She didn’t think it was odd, figured there was something inside, maybe some fish guts, she says. He told her to hide it in her dress, since she was pregnant and all.”

  “Christ, is that woman stupid,” Bridgett said.

  “She’s committed,” Lozano said. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “In this case, Detective, it is.”

  He shrugged, put his cigarette out in his coffee, then stood. “I’ll tell the captain you’re here.” He left without looking at Bridgett.

  I loosened my tie, then got up and threw the rest of my coffee into the trash can.

  “How’s the pulse?” Bridgett asked.

  “Better,” I said. There was a phone in the room, and I used it to call the safe apartment. Rubin answered, and I asked him how things looked.

  “We’re fine here,” he said. “Nobody followed us, and we’ve locked down. Felice is a bit shaky, but that’s it.”

  “Good work,” I said.

  “Yeah? You’re fucking nuts, you asshole,” Rubin said, and there was true anger in his voice. “What were you going to do? Disarm it yourself?”

  “I had to make sure it didn’t go off while anybody else was there.”

  “I kept imagining what I’d tell your parents. ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kodiak, I’m sorry but your little boy Atticus got himself blown up.’ That would have been quite a phone call,” he said, still mad.

  “Not one you need to make.”

  “For now. So, what’s next?”

  “I’m at Midtown North. They found Rich at the scene, and he’s in interrogation. I’m going to stick here for a bit, see what’s what.”

  Rubin said that sounded fine to him, and then I asked to talk to Natalie. I double-checked that Felice was all right, then told her I’d try to come back sometime that evening.

  “Romero’s writing the check,” Natalie said.

  “Guess that means we’re out of a job,” I said.

  “Day after tomorrow, she says. Wants us until the funeral, I think.”

  “It’s her choice.”

  “And the client is almost always right,” Natalie said. “We did it. Got her in and out in one piece.”

  “I owe you a drink,” I said. “You did good work today.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “We’ve got an all-points out for Crowell and Barry,” Fowler told me. “He won’t tell us where they are, says he doesn’t know.”

  He gestured to the one-way mirror, and I looked in on Rich in the interrogation room. He was seated at the desk, a paper cup in front of him. He was wearing jeans, no holes, and a red button-up shirt. He had cowboy boots on, too, crocodile skin. He didn’t look worried.

  “Has he lawyered up?” Bridgett asked.

  “Not yet,” Fowler said.

  “You serious?”


  He nodded, eyes on Rich. “I don’t understand it, either. He knows his Miranda, says he doesn’t want a lawyer. Not even when Harner showed him a copy of the CSU prelim on the bomb. His prints were all over it.”

  “Tell me about the device,” I said.

  “Six pounds of Semtex tied to a variation of a mousetrap switch,” Fowler said. “Spaced the wires so the mass of the metal was diffused. The detector didn’t pick it up.”

  “It would’ve if Carter hadn’t lowered the setting,” I said.

  Scott shrugged. “Thing is, Semtex is a professional’s explosive, like plastique. I mean, it’s not that hard to get, relatively speaking. The IRA bought tons of it off the Czechs a few years back, then brought it into the country.”

  “In the spirit of capitalism,” Bridgett said.

  “Give the lady a cigar,” Fowler said. “They sold it to anyone who had the cash. It’s been popping up everywhere.”

  “Where’d he get it?” I asked.

  “Won’t say. Won’t say if there’s any more of it, either.”

  “Can we talk to him?”

  Fowler looked back through the mirror, then nodded. “Hand over your weapons, first,” he said.

  We gave him our guns and he let us into the room. When Rich saw me, he grinned. “Hey, boy,” he said. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  “Blessed,” I said.

  “Well, God works in mysterious ways,” Rich said, and laughed.

  I pulled a chair and sat down. Bridgett leaned against the wall.

  “You’re a pretty one,” Rich told her. “Come sit on my lap.”

  She snorted and pulled a quarter from her pocket. “Here’s twenty-five cents; buy yourself a new line.” She tossed the coin over to him and Rich batted it out of the air, knocking it to the floor with a jingle.

  “Cunt,” he said.

  “My, you’re a regular Oscar Wilde,” Bridgett said. “That was a shitty piece of work.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your bomb,” she said. “It stank.”

  “Now, why do you go and say a thing like that, hon? There’s no need to be mean.”

  “Just stating a fact, Sean,” Bridgett said. “That was shoddy work. I mean, it didn’t even go off, and your prints were all over it.”