by Ed McBain
Their jobs, actually, were not too difficult—but they were time-consuming. Each of them carried a large suitcase, and each of the suitcases carried a total of twelve bombs. Six of the bombs were explosive; six were incendiary. Pop had made all of the bombs, and he was rather proud of his handiwork. It had been a long time since he’d practiced his craft, and he was pleased to note that he hadn’t lost his touch. His bombs were really quite simple and could be expected to wreak quite a bit of havoc. Naturally, neither he nor Chuck wanted to be anywhere around when the bombs went off, and so each of the bombs carried a time fuse. The explosive bombs made use of simple alarm clocks and batteries and a system of wiring set to detonate several sticks of dynamite. The incendiary bombs were slightly more complicated and for those Pop had to rig a chemical time fuse.
The deaf man had specified that he wanted the explosions and the fires to start sometime between 4 and 4:30P.M . He wanted both explosionsand fires to be violent, and he wanted Pop to make sure the fires would not be extinguished before 5:45P.M . Pop had set each of the exploding machines for 4:15. The incendiary bombs were another thing again; a chemical time fuse could not be set with the same accuracy as an alarm clock unless a great deal of experimentation were done beforehand.
Pop had done a great deal of experimentation.
He knew that concentrated sulfuric acid when dropped into a mixture of potassium chlorate and powdered sugar would immediately start a raging fire. For the purposes of his time fuse, he needed something which would keep the sulfuric acid away from the mixture until such time as the fire was desired. This was no small task. He began experimenting with cork. And he discovered through a series of long tests, that cork would char when exposed to the acid, and that it would take four hours for the acid to eat through .025 inches of cork or, in other words, a slice of cork which was one fortieth of an inch thick.
Pop prepared his bombs.
He filled a shoe box with oil-soaked rags. Into the center of the box, he set a small cardboard container filled with a mixture of potassium chlorate and powdered sugar, sealed so that the mixture would not spill out. Into the top surface of the small container, he cut a hole which would accommodate the neck of a small bottle. The bottle would be filled with a 70 per cent solution of sulfuric acid, sealed with a cork cap which was one fortieth of an inch thick, and then stuck into the hole in the top of the container at twelve noon, when the men left to do their work. In approximately four hours’ time, the acid would have eaten through the cork and begun to drip onto the mixture in the container. A violent fire would ensue, aided and assisted by the oil-soaked rags. In other words, the fires would begin at approximately four o’clock—approximatelybecause it was difficult to cut a slice of cork exactly one fortieth of an inch thick and a variation in millimeters would, because the rate of char remained constant, start the conflagration either slightly earlier or slightly later. In any case, Pop estimated, the fires would start atabout four o’clock, give or take a few minutes either way, and the deaf man seemed more than pleased with the estimate.
At twelve noon, Chuck and Pop stuck the bottles of sulfuric acid into the holes cut in the cardboard containers, the thin slices of cork being the only thing between the acid and the mixture. Then they sealed the shoe boxes, packed their suitcases, and trotted off to disrupt a city.
BY ONE-THIRTY,when the ball game started, Chuck had set three incendiary bombs and one exploding bomb in the baseball stadium near the River Harb. He had set two of the incendiaries in the grandstand, and the third in the bleachers. The explosive had been left just inside the main entrance arch, in a trash basket there. The deaf man had figured that the game would break sometime around four-thirty. The bomb was set for four-fifteen, and he hoped its explosion would cause a bit of confusion among the departing spectators—especially since there would be three fires in the stadium by that time. To insure that the fires would still be roaring by the time the bomb exploded, he had instructed Chuck to cut the hoses of every fire extinguisher he saw anywhere in the stadium, and Chuck had done that and was now anxious to get away before anyone spotted him.
There were eight bombs left in Chuck’s valise. He consulted his two remaining maps, each marked with his name in the right-hand corner, and began moving quickly toward his remaining destinations. The first of these was a motion picture theater on The Stem. He paid for a ticket at the box office, climbed instantly to the balcony, and consulted his map again. Two X’s on the map indicated where he was to place the explosives, directly over the balcony’s supporting columns and close to the projection booth where there was the attendant possibility of the explosion causing a fire and a stench when it hit the film. The main purpose of the blasts, of course, was to knock down the balcony, but the deaf man was not a person to turn aside residuals. In the corridor outside the balcony, Chuck glanced around hastily, and then slashed the hoses on the extinguishers. Rapidly, he left the theater. A glance at his watch told him it was two-fifteen. He would damn well have to hurry if he wanted to catch that four-oh-five boat.
He was now in possession of six remaining bombs.
The deaf man wanted three of them to be placed in Union Station: an incendiary in the baggage room, an explosive on the track of the incoming Chicago Express (due at four-ten), and another explosive on the counter of the circular information booth.
The remaining three bombs could be placed by Chuck at his discretion—provided, of course, they were all deposited at different locations on the south side of the precinct. The deaf man had suggested leaving an incendiary in a subway car, and an explosive in the open-air market on Chament Avenue, but the final decisions were being left to Chuck, dependent on time and circumstance.
“Suppose I put them where there aren’t any people?” Chuck had asked.
“That would be foolish,” the deaf man said.
“I mean, look, this is supposed to be a bank heist.”
“Yes?”
“So why do we have to put these things where—where a lot of people’ll get hurt?”
“Where would you like to put them? In an empty lot?”
“Well, no, but—”
“I’ve never heard of confusion in a vacuum,” the deaf man had replied.
“Still—dammit, suppose we get caught? You’re fooling around with—withmurder here, do you realize that? Murder!”
“So?”
“So look, I know there are guys who’d slit their own grandmother’s throat for a nickel, but—”
“I’m not one of them,” the deaf man had answered coldly. “There happens to be two and a half million dollars at stake here.” He had paused. “Do you want out, Chuck?”
Chuck had not wanted out. Now, as he headed for Union Station, the suitcase was noticeably and happily lighter. He was itching to get the job over and done with. He didn’t want to be anywhere south of the Mercantile Trust Company after four o’clock. If everything went according to the deaf man’s plan, that part of the precinct would be an absolute madhouse along about then, and Chuck wanted no part of chaos.
THE OIL REFINERYwas set on the River Dix, at the southern tip of the island of Isola. Pop walked up to the main gate and reached into his pocket for the identification badge the deaf man had given him. He flashed the badge casually at the guard, and the guard nodded, and Pop walked through the gate, stopped once to consult the X’s on his map, and then walked directly to the tool shed behind the administration building. The tool shed, besides being stocked with the usual number of saws and hammers and screwdrivers, contained a few dozen cans of paint, turpentine, and varnish. Pop opened the door of the shed and put one of his explosive bombs in a cardboard carton of trash just inside the door. Then he closed the door and began walking toward the paymaster’s shack near the first of the huge oil tanks.
By one-forty-five he had set four bombs in the refinery. He walked through the main gate, waved goodbye to the guard, hailed a cab and headed for a plant some thirty blocks distant, a plant which faced south toward th
e River Dix, its chimneys belching smoke to the city’s sky twenty-four hours a day.
The sign across the top of that plant readEASTERN ELECTRIC . It produced electric power for 70 per cent of the homes and businesses on the south side of the 87th Precinct.
AT 3:00P.M .,they closed the doors of the old Mercantile Trust for the last time.
Mr. Wesley Gannley, manager of the bank, watched with some sadness as his employees left for the new bank in the completed shopping center. Then he went back into the vault where the guards were carrying the bank’s stock—two million, three hundred fifty-three thousand, four hundred twenty dollars and seventy-four cents in American currency—to the waiting armored truck outside.
Mr. Gannley thought it was nice that so much money was being taken to the new bank. Usually, his bank had some eight hundred thousand dollars on hand, an amount which was swelled every Friday, payroll day, to perhaps a million and a quarter. There were a great many firms, however, which paid their employees every two weeks, and still others which had monthly bonus programs. In any case, April 30 was the end of the month, and tomorrow was a Friday, May 1, and so the bank was holding, besides its usual deposits and money on hand, an unusually large amount of payroll money, and this pleased Mr. Gannley immensely. It seemed fitting that a spanking-new bank should open shop with a great deal of cold cash.
He stepped out onto the sidewalk as the bank guards transferred that cold cash to the truck. From the grimestained window of his loft upstairs, Dave Raskin watched the transaction with mild interest, and then took a huge puff on his soggy cigar and turned back to studying the front of Margarita’s smock.
By 3:30P.M ., the $2,353,420.74 was safe and snug in the new vault of the new bank in the new shopping center. Mr. Gannley’s employees were busily making themselves at home in their new quarters, and all seemed right with the world.
At 4:00P.M ., the deaf man began making his phone calls.
HE MADE THE CALLSfrom the telephone in the ice-cream store behind the new bank. Rafe was waiting in the drugstore across the street from the bank, watching the bank’s front door. He would report back to the deaf man as soon as everyone had left the bank. In the meantime, the deaf man had his own work to do.
The typewritten list beside the telephone had one hundred names on it. The names were those of stores, offices, movie theaters, shops, restaurants, utilities, and even private citizens on the south side of the 87th Precinct. The deaf man hoped to get through at least fifty of those names before five o’clock, figuring on the basis of a minute per call, and allowing for a percentage of no-answers. Hopefully,all of the persons called would in turn call the police. More realistically, perhaps half of the fifty would. Pessimistically, perhaps ten would report the calls. And, figuring a rock-bottom return of 10 per cent, at least five would contact the police.
Even five was a good return for an hour’s work if it compounded the confusion and made the ride to the ferry simpler.
Of the hundred names on the list, four were really in trouble. They were really in trouble because Chuck and Pop had deposited either incendiary or explosive bombs in their places of business. These four establishments wouldcertainly call the police, if not immediately upon receipt of the deaf man’s call, thenpositively after the bombs went off. The point of the deaf man’s calls was to provide the police with a list of clues, only four of which were valid. The trouble was, the police would not know which of the clues were valid and which were not. And once reports of mayhem began filtering in, they could not in good conscience afford to ignoreany tip.
The deaf man pulled the phone to him and dialed the first number on his list.
A woman answered the phone. “The Culver Theater,” she said. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” the deaf man said pleasantly.
“There is a bomb in a shoe box somewhere in the orchestra of your theater,” and he hung up.
At 4:05P.M ., Chuck and Pop boarded the ferry to Majesta and spent the next ten minutes whispering together like school boys about the conspiracy they had just committed.
At 4:15P.M ., the first of the bombs exploded.
“EIGHTY-SEVENTH SQUAD,Detective Hernandez. What? What did you say?” He began scribbling on his pad. “Yes, sir. And the address, sir? When did you get this call, sir? Yes, sir, thank you. Yes, sir, right away, thank you.”
Hernandez slammed the phone back onto its cradle.
“Pete!” he yelled, and Byrnes came out of his office immediately. “Another one! What do we do?”
“A bomb?”
“Yes.”
“A real one, or just a threat?”
“A threat. But, Pete, that last movie theater…”
“Yes, yes.”
“That was just a threat, too. But, dammit, two bombs really went off in the balcony. What do we do?”
“Call the Bomb Squad.”
“I did on the last three calls we got.”
“Call them again! And contact Murchison. Tell him we want any more of these bomb threats to be transferred directly to the Bomb Squad. Tell him—”
“Pete, if we get many more of these, the Bomb Squad’ll be hamstrung. They’ll dump the squeals right back into our laps, anyway.”
“Maybe we won’t get any more. Maybe—”
The telephone rang. Hernandez picked it up instantly.
“Eighty-seventh Squad, Hernandez. Who? Where? Holy Je—Whatdid you say? Have you—yes, sir, I see. Have you—yes, sir, try to calm down, will you, sir? Have you called the fire department? All right, sir, we’ll get on it right away.”
He hung up. Byrnes was waiting.
“The ball park, Pete. Fires have broken out in the grandstands and bleachers. Hoses on all the extinguishers have been cut. People are running for the exits. Pete, there’s gonna be a goddam riot, I can smell it.”
And at that moment, just inside the entrance arch, as people rushed in panic from the fires raging through the stadium, a bomb exploded.
THE PEOPLE ONthe south side of the precinct did not know what the hell was happening. Their first guess was that the Russians were coming, and that these wholesale explosions and fires were simply acts of sabotage preceding an invasion. Some of the more exotic-minded citizens speculated upon an invasion from Mars, some said it was all that strontium 90 in the air which was causing spontaneous combustion, some said it was all just coincidence, but everyone was frightened and everyone was on the edge of panic.
Not one of them realized that percentages were being manipulated or that a city’s preventive forces, accustomed to dealing with the long run, were being pushed into dealing with the short run.
There were 186 patrolmen, 22 sergeants and 16 detectives attached to the 87th Precinct. A third of this force was off duty when the first of the bombs went off. In ten minutes’ time, every cop who could be reached by telephone was called and ordered to report to the precinct at once. In addition, calls were made to the adjoining 88th and 89th Precincts which commanded a total of 370 patrolmen, 54 sergeants and 42 detectives and the strength of this force was added to that of the 87th’s until a stream of men was pulled from every corner of the three precincts and rushed to the disaster-stricken south side. The ball park was causing the most trouble at the moment, because some forty thousand fans had erupted into a full-scale panic-ridden riot, and the attendant emergency police trucks, and the fire engines, and the patrol cars, and the mounted policemen, and the reporters and the sightseeing spectators made control a near-impossibility.
At the same time, a Bomb Squad which was used to handling a fistful of bomb threats daily was suddenly swamped with bomb reports from forty different areas in the 87th Precinct. Every available man was called into action and rushed to the various trouble spots, but there simply weren’t enough men to go around and they simply didn’t know which trouble spots were going to erupt or when. To their credit, they did catch one incendiary in an office building before it burst into flame, but at the same time a bomb exploded on the fourteent
h floor of that same building, an unfortunate circumstance since the bomb had been set in the laboratory of a chemical research company, and the attendant fire swept through three floors of the building even before the fire alarm was pulled.
The Fire Department had its own headaches. The first unit called into action was Engine 31 and Ladder 46, a unit in the heart of the south side, a unit which reportedly handled more damn fires daily than any other unit in the entire city. They connected to a hydrant on Chament Avenue and South Fourth in an attempt to control the blaze that was sweeping through the open-air market on Chament Avenue. Within a few minutes, the fire had leaped across Chament Avenue and was threatening a line of warehouses along the river. Acting Lieutenant Carl Junius in charge of the engine had a brief consultation with Lieutenant Bob Fancher of Ladder 46, and they radioed to Acting Deputy Chief George D’Oraglio who immediately ordered an alarm transmitted with orders to the responding units to expect counterorders at a moment’s notice since he had already received word of a fire in a motion picture theater not twenty blocks from the market. Engine 81 and Ladder 33 arrived in a matter of minutes and were promptly redispatched to the motion picture theater, but by this time the hook and ladder company handling the ball park fire had called in for assistance, and Chief D’Oraglio suddenly realized he had his hands full and that he would need every available engine and hook and ladder company in the city to control was was shaping up as a major disaster.
The police emergency trucks with two-way radio numbered fifteen, and the emergency station wagons with two-way radio numbered ten, and all twenty-five of these were dispatched to the scenes of the fires and explosions which were disrupting traffic everywhere on the south side and which were causing all nine of the traffic precincts to throw extra men and equipment into the stricken area.