A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

  “Have you got employee records from back then?”

  “You think we might have made a note in somebody’s file: ‘Good worker, but plants bombs?’” He waited for my laugh and then said, “We keep good records, but only for seven years.”

  I showed him the list of parolees. “Any names look familiar?”

  He took ten minutes to examine the pages before shaking his head. “None of these were ours.”

  “Do you remember anything unusual about any of your men from back then, like someone who acted strange, or was mad about something?”

  “Mister, I remember something unusual about most of the men who worked for me, then and since. Crystal Waters was a long, dirty job. There was mud everywhere because everything was tore up. Contractors were trying to get all the homes done at once, so there was lots of push to get things done on schedule. Job like that, at any one time, half our guys would have been pissed off at something. But mad enough to plant bombs? Not likely.”

  On my way out, I asked him to keep what we’d talked about quiet, because a lot of it was speculation. He said he would, and I believed him. But as I closed his door, I realized I wouldn’t have minded if he used a megaphone to shout the story up and down Western Avenue. It would chase the people out of Gateville, out of harm’s way.

  It was noon; four hours until the Bohemian was to call the Feds. I stopped at Kentucky Fried, skipped the fried, had the grilled, fooled no one. I ate at a counter by the window and watched the cars buzzing by. Reds and blues, greens and yellows. Cars of all colors, like the spools of wire at A-1 Electric. Like the snakes writhing in the firelight in the dream I’d been having.

  I understood.

  I left the food. I got in the Jeep and hurried back down Western, bits of Kentucky poultry stuck like grit to the dry roof of my mouth.

  “Change your mind about buying a motor?” Ziloski smiled from behind the desk at A-1 Electric, setting down his magazine.

  “Have you ever wired outdoor lampposts?”

  “Only a couple thousand,” he said.

  “Is there much to it?”

  “Like wiring a lightbulb.” He blew the dust off a pad of paper, stood up, and came to the counter. “Wiring anything is simple: one wire in, one wire out.” He drew a circle on the sheet of paper. “That loop is called a circuit. A lightbulb, a lamppost, don’t matter which, interrupts the circuit—fits itself into the circle.” He drew a lightbulb on the line that made the circle. “There’s your lamppost.”

  “You just need two wires to hook up a lamppost?”

  “Basically.”

  “Could you need more?”

  “Sure, if you were using the lamppost electrical box as a kind of connecting point for other circuits.”

  I told him I had to go to the car to make a call. Stanley wasn’t in; one of the guards said he’d gone home early. But the Bohemian was in his office.

  “I want the ground under the lamppost dug up right away. Can you arrange that?”

  He didn’t ask me for a reason. The tone of my voice must have been enough. He put me on hold for the five longest minutes of my life, then came back on. “It’ll be done within the hour, Vlodek.”

  I told him I’d call him later and hung up. I went back inside A-1 Electric and gave Ziloski a hundred dollars to follow me out to Gateville.

  A security guard stood talking with the same two workmen who had been there the day of the blast. Next to them, a fresh hole had been dug at the base of the lamppost. As Ziloski and I walked up, I paid particular attention to the second workman, the one who’d said nothing the first time. The Bohemian’s man. He avoided my eyes.

  I looked down into the hole. The multicolored wires that had lain spilled at the bottom, like snakes of all colors, were now bundled and wrapped neatly with tape.

  “Is Stanley here?” I asked the guard.

  “Still home.”

  “His wife?”

  The guard nodded, then pointed at the hole. “How long will you need this open?”

  “Not long,” Ziloski said.

  I’d told him to just look, and tell me what he found when we were alone. Now, he knelt in front of the lamppost and, from a small tan canvas tool bag, pulled out a screwdriver and removed the access plate from the base. He used a penlight to peer inside the base cavity. After a few seconds, he reattached the plate and stepped down into the shallow hole.

  I asked the guard if he’d been on duty the day the lamppost got blown over. He nodded.

  “Did the blast knock out any other electrical fixtures in the development?”

  The guard shook his head. “Just this light.”

  I thought back to what Ziloski had told me about wiring. If the lamppost had been used to route wires to other fixtures, then those would have been knocked out as well. But that had not happened. Just the one lamppost had gone out; only this one lamppost had been wired with something special.

  The guard and I made small talk for several minutes as Ziloski picked at the dirt around the wiring going into the base of the lamppost. He separated two loose strands of wire that were capped with little red plastic cones, then looked up. “Who reconnected the wiring?” he asked the guard.

  “The same electrician who does all the outside stuff for Crystal Waters.”

  Ziloski nodded and climbed out of the hole. “Best get back to the shop,” he said to me.

  “You can fill in the hole,” I told the tall workman.

  “You sure?” He grinned. “Someone else might want a peek tomorrow or the next day.”

  I smiled back. “Be no big deal to dig it up again, right?”

  His grin widened. “No problem at all.”

  I walked Ziloski back to his truck.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Just tell me what you saw.”

  “There’s singe marks on the underground conduit pipe where the wires come out, like there was a fire recently. Whoever reconnected the wiring did a professional job, good splices, everything taped. The connections are all shielded, and on the wires they didn’t reattach, the ends are all tightly capped and taped.”

  “Everything’s normal?”

  “Whoa, I didn’t say that. Those wires they didn’t reattach bother me. There’s at least one extra pair of wires running close to that lamppost that don’t belong there. Jobs like Crystal Waters are bid, and usually go to the lowest bidder. Laying in extra wires jacks up the cost, and I just can’t see why those wires are needed.”

  “There used to be a school bus shelter there. Maybe they were for that?”

  “Those extra wires are too thin, more like doorbell wire, not thick enough to carry juice to lighting. Like I said, the ends were singed, like they were burned off. They were the ones capped recently, so, for sure, now they’re doing nothing. Makes no sense, why those thin wires were put there in the first place.”

  I called the Bohemian from the Jeep and told him what was in the ground.

  Fifteen

  The Bohemian called back in two hours. By then, I was back at the turret, sitting on the bench by the Willahock, staring at the sky to the west, tensed for the first flash of yellow from the mother of all explosions.

  There were no Vlodeks this time. “We’re set to meet at five thirty.”

  “That’s the soonest?”

  He swore. “That’s two hours from now. I’ve been on the phone since you called, conference calling with Chief Morris and some guy named Till at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. A.T.F. is not pleased.”

  “Are you evacuating?”

  “I recommended that to Bob Ballsard.”

  “What did he say?” I remembered Ballsard. He was the chairman of the homeowners association. I’d met him at the Crystal Waters Fourth of July party the previous summer, the annual event the association held to let the Members think they knew the names of their neighbors. Ballsard was a nervous, rabbity little man, a partner in his father’s law
firm. He had a deep tan and had worn Topsider shoes, no socks, and a yachtsman’s cap festooned with a battery-powered flashing American flag. And he had big, Teddy Roosevelt teeth. As he made party talk with Amanda, I became transfixed by those big teeth. They seemed too square to be natural, and I wondered if he’d had them specially made for clamping onto halyards or lanyards or whatever sailors call those ropes that make sails go up and down.

  “Bob was noncommittal,” the Bohemian said. “He’ll be at the meeting this afternoon.”

  “He’s got no choice. He’s got to clear the place out.”

  “See you at five thirty,” the Bohemian said, and hung up.

  I didn’t want to kill another hour watching for the sky to blow up, so I headed to the health center, did laps, then took a long shower. None of it helped. Getting on the expressway I was just as twitchy as I’d been earlier.

  On the Eisenhower, the slow-motion horror of the day continued to unfold. An avocado-colored refrigerator had fallen off a truck onto the middle lane, backing up traffic for two miles. The world was full of threats. I got to the Bohemian’s office fifteen minutes late.

  Griselda Buffy was not pleased with my tardiness. “Everyone’s been waiting,” she said through the dark maroon paint that made her mouth look like a wound. She led me to a different conference room.

  This one was much larger, with blue striped wallpaper and a silver coffee service shining on a sideboard. It was a room for the reading of big money wills.

  Several men sat on dark blue leather chairs, around the long mahogany table.

  “Vlodek,” the Bohemian said from a chair on the left side of the table. He didn’t bother to force a smile.

  Stanley Novak sat two places to his left, a vacant chair in between them. Stanley’s face looked dry and immobile. I had the fleeting thought that he might be in shock.

  The man to the Bohemian’s right, sitting at the head of the table, looked up from copies of the extortion notes spread out before him and nodded. He was in his late fifties, had wiry gray hair cut short, and wore a brown suit. He looked me up and down like he was measuring me for a uniform.

  “Vlodek, this is Agent Till of A.T.F.,” the Bohemian said.

  Agent Till stood up to shake hands. He was shorter than he seemed sitting down, no more than five-seven or -eight, and stocky. He looked like he could wrestle crocodiles. And win.

  “And the chief, of course,” the Bohemian finished.

  Chief Morris of the Maple Hills police, red faced, wearing a tan sports jacket and the kind of blue tie they give to tollbooth attendants, sat across the table from the Bohemian. He was also in his late fifties. He nodded but didn’t bother to get up. I’d met the chief when I’d gone to Village Hall to purchase an auto license. He must have heard the counter clerk repeat my address, because he came bounding out of his office to introduce himself. I thought it odd, the chief of police introducing himself to a car license applicant, and realized, reluctantly, that it had everything to do with Crystal Waters and not the subtle sophistication of my voice.

  “As soon as Bob Ballsard arrives, we’ll begin,” the Bohemian said. Agent Till sat down and went back to examining the photocopies of the two notes. I took a chair on the chief’s side of the table.

  No one spoke. It was like we had arrived early for a wake and were waiting for someone to finish powdering the guest of honor and wheel him in.

  Bob Ballsard, chairman of the Board of Members of Crystal Waters, and future inheritor of great wealth, breezed in at five o’clock. He wore summer-weight gray slacks, a navy blazer like mine but undoubtedly acquired at five times the cost and most certainly without any trace of ketchup on its sleeve, and a white shirt with a green tie that had little sailboats on it. He caught me leaning to take a discreet look at his shoes. He was wearing polished penny loafers, not Topsiders, and I was relieved to see he had on socks. He acknowledged me with a frown and a narrowing of his eyes. To the others, he offered a perfunctory apology that meant nothing of the sort, ignored the chair between the Bohemian and Stanley, and went down to sit at the foot of the long table.

  Agent Till unstrapped his wristwatch and placed it in the center of the table in front of him. “Mr. Chernek has advised me of a developing situation at Crystal Waters.” His voice was raspy and had the hard edge of Chicago’s south side. “Before I proceed, I must tell you that for now, my role in this matter is strictly advisory. This matter is still under the jurisdiction of Chief Morris.”

  Everyone looked at Chief Morris. Morris looked at the A.T.F. agent and cleared his throat. “That’s mostly a formality, though. A.T.F. will assume control of this case?”

  “If the situation later warrants.” Till turned to the Bohemian. “Let’s start with a summary of where we are now, so we’re all singing out of the same hymnal.”

  The Bohemian began with the letter that came in 1970, prior to the guardhouse explosion, and the subsequent letter and ten-thousand-dollar payment. He then moved to the two recent letters, the bombings of the Farraday house and the lamppost, and the five hundred thousand in cash left in the Dumpster. He ended with my discovery, the previous afternoon, of the extra wiring underneath the lamppost. He did it all in ten sentences.

  Till looked at me. “And from this you’ve concluded … ?”

  “The bombs in Crystal Waters are wired to one or more remote locations. The bomber triggered the Farraday house and the lamppost from someplace else.” I paused and then said it: “The bombs are all wired together. He can flip the remaining switches at one time, to send all of Crystal Waters up in one huge fireball.”

  “Jesus,” Chief Morris said next to me, but everyone else was silent. The Bohemian, Ballsard, and Stanley had known since I called the Bohemian that morning. Stanley grabbed for his handkerchief anyway. The Bohemian and Ballsard sat like granite.

  Till turned to the Bohemian. “To date, there have been just the two payments made?”

  “Correct,” the Bohemian said. “Ten thousand, back in 1970, and then five hundred thousand last Sunday night.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to inform us before last Sunday night so we could monitor the drop site?”

  “We were hoping that, if we paid him, he would go away like the last time.” The Bohemian’s face was expressionless.

  Till turned to scan the faces of everyone else at the table. To the Bohemian, he said, “Your man came back. He will come back again. The only way to stop him is to catch him. That’s why it’s a damned pity nobody was watching that drop site.”

  I cleared my throat. “I was.”

  The room went quiet again, but this time it was as if the air had been suddenly sucked out of it. The Bohemian and Stanley looked away, but the eyes of the others were hot on my skin.

  Till looked at me. “You were there?” he asked in a slow, deliberate voice.

  “In a garage across the alley.”

  “Jesus, Elstrom—” Ballsard muttered.

  Till cut him off. “Let him continue.”

  I took them through the kids passing the basketball, Stanley putting the bag of money in the Dumpster, the arguing midnight lovers, the garbage truck arriving at dawn, and my futile search for the money. To me, my voice sounded normal enough, but I felt like I was wearing a clown suit and a red rubber nose.

  “No chance the garbage men hauled it off?” Till asked.

  “More and more, I’m thinking that could have happened. I think they tossed the top bag from the Dumpster into the truck before I got to them.”

  Till studied me for a minute and then said, “How long were you asleep?” The contempt in his words cut like a razor through a rotted peach.

  “I took every precaution. I sat tilted—”

  Till shook his head abruptly. “You fell asleep.” Dismissing me, his eyes turned to the Bohemian, then to Ballsard, Stanley, and back to the Bohemian. “You’ve all been cute, keeping this to yourselves. What you’ve done with your five hundred thousand is give your bomber a taste for easy money. N
ext time he’ll want a million plus, guaranteed.”

  Ballsard made a noise like something was stuck in his throat. “We can’t come up with that.”

  Till ignored Ballsard; he wasn’t done with me. “What exactly was your role supposed to be in this?”

  “I was hired to examine the notes.”

  “You’re a document examiner?”

  “I provide that service. I brought the notes to a well-regarded document specialist.”

  “He’s not much of anything, according to the Tribune.” Chief Morris jerked his thumb at me as leaned across the table toward Stanley. “You brought in this jamoke without bothering to contact us?” It was theater, and everybody knew it. Morris didn’t want to touch the Gateville explosions; he wanted to ride in parades and pose for the Assembler next to new squad cars. But Morris was right. I was too obviously a mistake.

  The Bohemian spoke up, to cover both Stanley and Ballsard. “For the record, Chief, it was I who insisted on pursuing the investigation privately.”

  “Let’s move on.” Agent Till held up a copy of the contractor list. “We do have a lead. An electrician, no?”

  “Likely as not,” I said. “Anybody else stringing wires in an electrician’s trench would have been noticed by the electricians. And stopped.”

  Till set the list back on the table. “There were five electrical outfits working at Crystal Waters, all of which are still in business. How many have you interviewed, Elstrom?”

  I’d told him about hiring Ziloski to look at the lamppost. Stanley said he hadn’t gotten around to his four.

  “The chief and I will get to them,” Till said. He looked down the long table at Bob Ballsard. “There’s one more thing. You’ve got to evacuate.”

  Ballsard’s face flushed red, like it was the first time the idea had been raised.

  “Get everybody out of Crystal Waters,” Till prompted, his eyes fixed on Ballsard.

  Ballsard sputtered. “I don’t see—”

  “Got a wife, Mr. Ballsard? Kids?”