by John Lutz
“What kind of objects?” Pearl asked.
“I suspect desserts, snacks, wrapped candies. She uses a walker now and doesn’t like it.”
“So she wants to use her walker and a grabber on a pole?”
“No, no. Just the pole contraption, like a lot of the other patients have here.”
“Tenants.”
“And maybe a new wheelchair.”
“Good God! Are they going to joust?”
“She’s your mother and my grandmother. Don’t make a joke of it.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“The longest pole they make, she said.”
“Sure. But with her walker she’s standing up.”
“It’s getting to things,” Jody said. “Her walker isn’t fast enough. Some of the other women are always ahead of her. She gets the last or the smallest or what’s broken.”
“She has tennis balls on her walker,” Pearl said. “If she puts oil on them she’ll have the fastest walker. Oil on the tennis wheels, and those walkers will blow your hat off.”
Jody giggled.
“What’s that I hear?” Pearl asked. “You’re an attorney. You’re supposed to be serious.”
“Oil your tennis balls,” Jody said, through her giggling. Pearl started to giggle. She couldn’t help herself. More giggling. Quinn looked at her as if she were insane. But then, that could happen, talking to Jody.
“For God’s sake,” Quinn said. “You’re a cop.”
Pearl looked over at Quinn and opened her mouth to explain.
That was when they heard the three loud explosions.
Quinn put his hand on Pearl’s shoulder, while she told Jody she had to go.
“Business?” Jody asked.
“Business.”
“Be careful, Mom.”
“I’m a cop.”
Quinn and Pearl ran toward the source of the explosions.
45
When they got to the end of the block, a crowd was beginning to build. Three police cars had arrived, two of which were parked to block traffic and turn it around to detour. A potbellied, uniformed cop was wandering around, waving his arms and shouting for pedestrians to get back. Two others were knee-deep in debris, trying to find people and dig them out. Several civilians had ignored the uniforms and entered the field of wreckage. A ten-story building housing a dry cleaners and apartments had collapsed on a five-story office building. Broken bricks, bent iron rebar, twisted steel, chunks of concrete and marble, stretched before them for blocks. A cloud of dirt and drywall rolled over the scene, the breeze snatching it away from where Quinn and Pearl stood. They could hear a man screaming nearby, beneath the debris.
Sirens yowled, horns blared, voices screamed and pleaded for help. Quinn heard a child’s voice somewhere in the grit that was airborne and distorting the source and direction of sound. It was also blocking his nose and leaving a horrible taste on his tongue.
He was close to the child who had screamed and, along with others, began to dig through and throw debris.
Five feet away, Pearl was working to free a woman who was trapped beneath what looked like a large fallen beam.
Quinn and the others concentrated on the child, who was almost completely buried.
Five minutes later several others joined their efforts. Quinn was surprised to see that one of the rescuers was Pearl. Her expression told him that the woman she’d been trying to save had died. Pearl found space next to Quinn and began gripping whatever wreckage she could reach and tossing it away. She was gasping for breath and he could hear her sobbing.
Someone yelled, a joyous whoop, and across the jagged and blackened pile of rubble two men were carefully removing the child they’d been working to free. No more than three or four years old, the child appeared to be in shock, but definitely alive and still protesting with healthy lungs.
More noise, more calls for help, more people trapped in the rubble. Quinn and Pearl continued to work near where a woman stood sobbing and pleading for help to free her husband, who was trapped beneath bricks and shattered glass. When the woman wasn’t screaming, he could be heard from where he was virtually buried.
A particularly large chunk of concrete was eased aside by several bloody hands, and the man who’d been screaming but now was quiet was carefully removed from beneath the debris. He was white with shock, and his right leg was missing. The sobbing woman who’d directed searchers to him rushed toward him but was restrained by several men and a teenage girl.
Quinn took off his belt and fashioned a tourniquet to stanch the injured man’s bleeding.
Movement and noise around him, more voices. Quinn was nudged aside, not all that gently. The belt was removed and replaced by something else. Something more effective. Then hands wearing huge gloves worked their way beneath the injured man and lifted him. More huge gloves, helping to locate and remove the injured, the people in shock. Playing out hoses. Wearing black T-shirts with white lettering—FDNY.
The Fire Department had arrived.
Sirens of every kind of emergency vehicle were still yowling. Uniforms at both ends of the blocked street were letting them pass in and out with alacrity. No one wanted to come in here unless compelled by compassion or occupation.
A woman obviously in shock, wearing a tattered pants suit, stumbled over to Pearl and collapsed. Pearl held her, helped her to walk, urged her to keep breathing, and led her toward where at least three ambulances were parked, their light strips putting on a colorful but muted display in the thick dust.
Exhausted, Quinn trudged on. He’d taken only a dozen steps when a hand like a claw closed on his arm and squeezed hard.
“Take him, please!” a woman’s voice pleaded alongside Quinn.
He turned and saw a woman holding an infant less than a year old. She was obviously about to pass out and drop the child.
She thrust the infant at Quinn. Said, “My other daughter’s in there.”
He could think of nothing to say, nothing to do but accept the child. The woman turned around and made her way back toward the center of hell. Quinn thought for a few seconds that he’d go after her, help her. But there was the child in his arms.
He gripped the silent, staring boy and walked toward the ambulances. As he strode in shuffling, zombie-like strides, he felt a glimmer of hope that the damage was less than it might be. There seemed to be some control of it now, since more police and the fire department had arrived.
When he reached the ambulances he turned the boy over to white-uniformed paramedics. As the back of the nearest ambulance opened, he saw the woman Pearl had been helping, sitting with others in the ambulance who were sobbing or simply sitting and staring.
He glanced around, walking along the line of parked ambulances, looking for Pearl. Finally he saw her sitting on the back of one of the vehicles with an open back door. It struck Quinn that she was staring with the same dazed expression as the woman who’d just handed him her baby.
When she saw Quinn she smiled, and he felt immensely better. He walked to her and stood next to her.
“The woman find her other daughter?” he asked.
“I think so. Yes.” She seemed to have no idea what he was talking about. He realized she thought he meant the first infant they’d help rescue.
“I meant the second baby,” he said.
“There was a second one?”
He smiled again.
Two in one day, she thought. Not such a tough guy. She drew a deep breath and stood up. “Wanna go back for more?”
“Like you do,” he said.
They walked back toward the fallen buildings. The volunteers, cops, and firefighters were swarming over the debris now, searching for survivors or more of the dead. At least half a dozen dogs and their handlers were roaming the wreckage.
“Let’s pace ourselves this time,” Quinn said, seeing that there were signs of order and progress. “It’s almost twilight.”
Pearl was so tired she simply grunted her agreement.
Quinn knew that even if he tried he couldn’t stop her. Not anymore than she could stop him.
“The Gremlin, you think?” she asked.
“Probably. The little bastard might very well be part of the crowd, standing at the edges, watching and enjoying. And learning.”
“Infuriating,” Pearl said.
Quinn was silent for a few seconds, then stopped and stood still.
Pearl looked up at him.
Quinn said, “I smell gas.”
46
Quinn and Pearl stood still, working the calculus of death. If the buildings had been brought down with bombs, there might still be a few of them around, timed to kill rescuers as well as trapped victims.
Quinn clutched Pearl’s arm and turned her around. They passed a few rescuers going the other direction, toward the collapsed building.
One of them was a cop, covered with grit and what looked like dried blood.
Quinn blocked him, standing squarely in front of him and clutching both his shoulders. “Gas!” He shook the man. “We’ve gotta turn these people around!”
He simply stared at Quinn.
Seeing that the man was in deep shock, Quinn tried to turn him around, but he pulled away and resumed his shuffling walk toward the two buildings that had been reduced to ruins. Half pulling Pearl with him, Quinn started walking faster toward the NYPD sawhorses and yellow tape, and the seemingly impossible geometry of dozens of hastily parked vehicles.
“Gas!” Quinn shouted again, waving his free arm. “The gas lines are broken! We gotta get outta here!”
A few people heard him, then stood still and listened to see what he was yelling about.
When they finally figured it out, they began walking away from the collapsed buildings.
The smell of the gas was stronger now. And constant. More and more people left the scene of the bombing. Some began to jog. Any second another, even worse, explosion might occur.
Almost everyone, rubber-necker or rescuer, was moving away. Several NYPD cops were yelling as Quinn had, and waving their arms, trying to hurry people along. This wasn’t simply someone who’d left the stove on without the pilot light. Cars within the crazy mosaic of parked vehicles tried to cut in on each other, fighting for distance. Metal screeched. Fenders crunched. A uniform was trying without success to recover some order in what had become a panic. He was knocked down by what looked like a football player dressed like a banker, then got up and ran after the man. One engine after another was starting up. People shouted. Starters ground. Horns honked.
“Every time an engine starts, there’s a spark,” Quinn told Pearl.
“Thanks for that information,” she said.
The word spread quickly, and the word was gas. Everyone outside a vehicle was running now, picking up speed. Within seconds traffic jammed up and cars were being abandoned. Pearl stopped fighting Quinn and ran alongside him.
The screaming began.
Close behind them, the morning burst into flames.
Blocks away and upwind, the Gremlin sat at a rooftop restaurant window table and watched what was happening. He had a throwaway cell phone and was describing the scene to Minnie Miner, who sounded genuinely aghast.
The Gremlin knew he’d been on the phone long enough for GPS to pose a threat. He said good-bye to Minnie.
She said, “No, please! Tell me why you did this! Why in God’s name did you do this? Please!”
He turned off the phone, then under cover of the tablecloth, used his butter knife to pry it apart. The cheap plastic case snapped open easily. With powerful hands, he broke the pieces into smaller pieces. He put the broken phone in his sport-coat pocket. When he got a chance he would fold a newspaper around the phone and drop it into a trash receptacle. Why not today’s paper? He’d used the tablecloth so his fingerprints weren’t on flat surfaces of the broken phone. All the dishes and flatware he’d used had already been picked up and transported from his table to the kitchen. He wasn’t leaving any accidental clues.
Diners without window seats were drifting across the restaurant now to stand at the wide windows and gawk at the dark smoke rising from the city. He hoped Minnie’s minions would get a lot of good video out of this. Maybe they’d use that asinine artist’s rendering of him to show along with the video. It was an unflattering likeness, but that was the one thing he liked about it. It didn’t resemble him at all.
He cautioned himself. Overconfidence could lead to minor missteps while he was focusing on avoiding major mistakes.
Though everything had gone as planned, he still had the broken cell phone in his pocket. For all the talking or listening it could do, it might as well have been a stupid drawing of a cell phone. But it could become evidence. It might be a good idea to buy yesterday’s newspaper and turn the phone to trash as soon as possible. There were probably thousands of discarded copies of the Times on streets and in trash receptacles around the city, waiting to be picked up. In a few days they would be unfindable in a landfill.
And in a few days he should be able to view up close the wreckage his bombs had created.
There should be enough of the buildings left standing that they would provide almost an X-ray view. People’s homes, people’s lives, how people lived, how they died, all would be naked for observation and calculation. The guts of the bombed buildings, their lines of water, gas, electricity, would be visible. Secrets would be exposed.
How things worked.
This was very much like reverse engineering. Everything was a learning experience.
He decided to skip a second espresso and let someone else watch the city deal with its wounds.
That was what someone who cared might do.
Later he stopped at a park. There seemed to be no one else around, so he stood for a while and tossed the pieces of the shattered cell phone one by one into a lake, pretending he was feeding the ducks. Though there were no ducks.
Next time, he told himself, bring some bread crumbs.
Or some ducks, if any of them are dumb enough to eat plastic.
He laughed at his own humor.
There was, if one looked in the right places, some amusement in life.
47
Quinn looked up from what he was reading at his desk and saw Renz stomping into the offices of Q&A with a folded morning Times tucked under his arm. He drew the paper out as if removing a sword from its scabbard and slammed it down on Quinn’s desk.
“See a fly?” Quinn asked.
“I see a goddamned hurricane!” Renz said. “It looks like a gigantic Minnie Miner.”
Quinn leaned back in his swivel chair. “She hasn’t blown up any buildings.”
“She’s about to blow up One Police Plaza—with me in it.”
“You’re making a strategic mistake, Harley.”
“Which is?”
“Instead if concentrating on apprehending the Gremlin, you’re concentrating on covering your ass.”
Renz propped his fists on his hips and walked in a tight circle. “I oughta fire you.”
“You don’t really want to. Besides, I have a contract.”
“Then fulfill it.”
“Okay.” Quinn adjusted his tie knot and shrugged into his suit coat. Best to look like a detective, if that was your game. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“To look at some collapsed buildings.”
“They’re still digging out the dead and wounded over there,” Renz said.
“Maybe somebody will dig out a clue.”
“Already we’ve got twenty-seven dead and sixty injured. What a hellish mess.”
“Like a war zone,” Quinn said.
“I’m thinking more of the political side.”
Quinn held his silence. Renz apparently didn’t know that when you had dead and wounded, there was only one side.
As soon as they stepped outside, the heat hit them. They took Quinn’s old Lincoln, with the air conditioner on high, and Quinn drove toward the disaster area
.
For a while it seemed they were in normal New York traffic. Then, three blocks away, they began to see police barricades and detours and No Parking signs. They parked the car and went ahead on foot.
The two uniforms handling traffic and trespass problems recognized both the commissioner and Quinn, letting Quinn duck under one of the NYPD sawhorses and holding the yellow crime scene tape up so the corpulent Renz could get under it.
When they reached the corner they looked at the blocks of damage. The desolation caused by the original bombs was more than bad enough, but the gas explosions spread fire and more gas explosions, and damage that encompassed what seemed like the entire neighborhood.
Three bulldozers were roaring and snorting, working among the debris with cautious, elephantine delicacy, and Quinn could hear another close by. Workers with picks and shovels were making their way toward rescue or removal of dead bodies. That only twenty-seven had died was, in Quinn’s mind, a surprisingly small number, considering the field of destruction they found themselves in. Certainly that number would grow.
“I know it’s early on,” he said to Renz, “but has anybody come forward as a witness?”
“Only to be on TV or in the papers. Your people learn anything that might be helpful?”
“Might. Yeah. But it’s a meager might.”
Renz said, “Maybe security cameras caught something.”
“If they didn’t cook in this weather,” Quinn said. “I’ve got Sal and Harold looking into that.”
“So you haven’t just been sitting on your ass.”
“Nope. Did I mention, I’ve got a contract?”
“Now I’d like for you to have a clue.”
After a depressing twenty minutes, during which everyone other than Renz moved wreckage to reveal more wreckage, one of the uniforms came over and told Quinn and Renz that the Gremlin had phoned in to the Minnie Miner show and claimed credit for the destruction of the buildings, as well as for the deaths. The call was, of course, brief and impossible to trace, but the voice tracks appeared to be the same. The Gremlin’s, in both instances.