The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx

by Arthur Nersesian

  Paul now believed that the only thing keeping him alive was some kind of extraordinary drive to see his younger brother banished completely from public life.

  One morning, about six months after Millie’s death, he spotted something on page thirty-six of his morning paper. It was a small, grainy black-and-white photo of a group of diplomats leaving a meeting at the White House. While staring at one of the figures in the photograph, just three-quarters of the man’s face, he was surprised he had even noticed him. It was his old friend Vladimir Ustinov, who had taught him to build bombs over fifty years earlier in Mexico. The caption read, Attaché to the Russian Embassy.

  “And I thought you were dead!” he muttered aloud. I still have his pocket watch somewhere.

  When Paul returned home, he located a picture of Millie and then one of Lucretia—it was the first time he had looked at his wife’s image in several years. He pondered a casual conversation he’d had over half a century ago with Vladimir that could possibly become a genuine plan.

  The more he thought about how to inflict maximum harm with the 103 cylinders of pitchblende, the further away the idea got from him. What was initially intended as an extreme act of civil disobedience evolved into a question: Do I actually have the power to make Manhattan uninhabitable, and is this the best way to achieve my goals? The crimes his brother had inflicted upon him—a career lost, a birthright stolen, loved ones who had died or shunned him—gradually eclipsed his concerns for the people of New York.

  Like a nervous tic, his hesitation kept twitching through him over the next couple of days and nights. He began regarding it with a kind of intellectual curiosity, the very notion that he could create something significant by wiring together a couple of throwaway objects—an abandoned X-ray machine and a simple triggering mechanism. He almost believed that merely thinking about the process would purge him of the desire to follow through with it. But the temptation and allure of retribution stayed with him and eventually prevailed.

  Within a few days he became giddy and restless from the notion that he alone—a poor elderly man, a dismal failure, forgotten by others and nearing the end of his life—could rig together a device that had the potential to bring down the greatest city of the greatest country in the world. By the time Paul finally decided to go through with the project, it had morphed into an intensely personal mission: While he felt that he had perversely squandered his own talents—being born of privilege only served to accentuate the catastrophe of his adult life—this act of political violence might very well be the closest to greatness he would ever come. Paul’s thirst for importance in his twilight years rekindled a sense of power that he hadn’t felt since his youth, when he still had a bright future before him, a reason to live.

  Paul selected his dirtiest, baggiest clothes, then gathered as much money as he could find in the apartment, grabbed a threadbare fedora, and slipped Vladimir’s old watch into his pocket. He got on a 1:30 train and slept most of the way down to Washington, D.C.

  As he shuffled through Union Station, somebody offered him a dime. He thanked the man and went to a nearby liquor store to buy a pack of Salems and five small bottles of cheap Scotch. Once he had located the address of the Russian embassy in the phone book, he headed over in a cab. Paul spent the morning scouting out every doorway within a one-block radius where he could keep an eye on the large gray building. In one entrance, he unscrewed the first bottle of liquor and gulped it down, then sat back and soon passed out. It was dark when somebody shook him awake and told him to move it. He stumbled a few blocks and fell asleep in another vestibule.

  The next morning, he grabbed a sandwich and smoked some cigarettes, trying not to cough. Again he slept in one of the nearby doorways. Later that afternoon he opened his second bottle of liquor. In yet another spot near the embassy, he drank himself into a slow stupor. The only conscious act he maintained was vigilantly monitoring the embassy door, watching a slow stream of people young and old as they came and went. He was awoken again a little later, this time by a cop who asked for ID. When he grunted that he didn’t have any, the cop cracked his long wooden club on the pavement and told Paul to get moving. He staggered away and soon met up with a small group of winos who bummed cigarettes off of him and gave him directions to the local soup kitchen. He returned the next day, this time a block and a half from the embassy; once again, he proceeded to get plastered.

  This went on for the next seven long days, until a random selection of locals came to recognize him. The merciful ones offered him handouts—cash, food, clothes—but most acted disgusted or made nasty comments as they passed. Even some of the local beat cops started getting familiar with the harmless old bum who had inexplicably made the relatively nice area of Embassy Row his own. Every now and then, Paul would beg from passersby. Sometimes he’d catch cars stopped at a light and jump out to wipe down their windshields with balled-up newspapers. Most drivers honked or flipped on their windshield wipers, but some tossed him coins. Despite repeated threats from cops, it simply wasn’t worth the paperwork to arrest him.

  All the while, Paul kept his eye on the old embassy building, and though he couldn’t keep track of every car, he soon identified the one he was looking for.

  On the ninth day of living like a bag man in this posh D.C. neighborhood, he decided it was time to make his move. He had his target, a 1963 Mercedes Benz that exited the embassy most nights between 8 and 9 p.m. On a small piece of paper in tiny script, Paul wrote:

  No one has seen me. 50 years ago you asked if I was ready to tip the country to revolution. I now am, and I have radioactive cylinders, but no explosives or detonators, which I need if you are still offering help. You can find me in the area.

  Pablo (your old sapper buddy from the Mexican Revolution. Viva la Revolucion)

  He clamped the small note in the front plate of Vladimir’s old pocket watch. Then he waited until 8, 8:15, 8:30, 9, 9:30. The dark blue sedan finally exited the compound and stopped in front of him at the corner light. Paul moved forward and quickly started wiping down the windshield. When he held out his hand, the driver simply stared straight ahead. Paul stepped back and walked around the corner. When the light changed, the car turned tightly left as it had every night, whereupon Paul dove onto the hood and rolled off to the pavement.

  “Blyat!” The driver cried out a foreign expletive, screeching to halt and jumping out of the car. “What the fuck?”

  Paul leapt to his feet, pushed past the driver, and leaned into his open door. Two older men were sitting in the backseat, speaking in Russian.

  “Vladimir?” Paul asked.

  “Da,” said one aged voice in the darkness.

  Just before the driver could grab him, Paul tossed Vladimir the old pocket watch with the note tucked inside. Paul was shoved out to the ground.

  “What the fuck’s your problem?” the driver/bodyguard shouted, then got back inside the Benz and sped off.

  Paul slowly picked himself up and limped away.

  The next day, instead of buying more liquor, Paul poured cups of hot tea into one of the empty Scotch bottles and sipped it patiently. The one thing he feared most was the cold weather—that alone would force him to leave.

  Hope was nearly extinguished by the week’s end, but since all that remained was death, Paul lingered in the area. Over the weekend, he broke down and rented a room in a boarding house. Each afternoon he’d walk back to the Russian embassy.

  On a chilly afternoon during his twelfth day in Washington, D.C., while resting on a nearby park bench, Paul awoke to the sound of footsteps; a large man with sunglasses and an upturned jacket collar marched right at him in such a menacing way that Paul was sure he was going to get hit. Instead, the man dropped a tightly coiled dollar bill on the ground before Paul without even looking at him. Paul put his foot over the dollar and quickly snatched it.

  It wasn’t until later, while in the bright light of his little room, that he noticed the phone number. Along the margins of the bill, in
a faint pencil, he read:

  Don’t mention any names, only that you want the merchandise, and negotiate for it. Don’t contact me again!

  Paul walked cautiously toward Connecticut Avenue, making sure that he wasn’t being followed. After ten minutes he was able to hail a taxi cab to take him to Union Station. He waited forty-five minutes for the next train, arriving back to New York around 3 in the morning. He took the subway downtown to Millie’s old apartment. For the first time in a long while, he wanted to live. He knew he had to complete this last, greatest task before he could become part of the past.

  Early the next day, he called the number scribbled on the edge of the crinkled dollar.

  “Yeah,” said a young male voice.

  “I was told you had explosives and a detonator,” Paul said bluntly.

  The voice laughed. “Let me save us both some time, Mr. G-man. The only merchandise of that sort I have is around 150 micro-spring release switches, but we don’t know what the hell to do with them.”

  “What are they?” Paul was bewildered.

  “A thousand bucks a pop is what.”

  “Are they detonator caps?”

  “Nothing on them is explosive. Hell, I don’t even think they’re illegal.”

  “They work on a timer?”

  “Nope, they’re an Italian make that are triggered by a tiny radiation detector.”

  “I don’t understand. How can a radiation detector trigger a release spring?”

  “Beats me. I think they were produced to fit into something else, but for the life of us we don’t know what.”

  “Can I see one?”

  “Sure, for a thousand bucks.”

  “How about two hundred?”

  “Eight. And that’s the bottom-barrel price.”

  “Look, I just want to see if I can use it. If I can, I’ll buy more.”

  “Eight hundred for one detonator. One hundred and fifty of them for ten grand. It’s a wonderful deal.”

  “How about eight hundred for one, and one hundred and two additional detonators for five thousand,” Paul countered.

  “A thousand for one and six thousand dollars for the rest.”

  “Okay,” Paul replied with nothing else to lose. The youthful voice told him to put a thousand dollars in small bills in a white paper bag and drop it in the public garbage can on the southeast corner of Washington Square Park at 8 p.m. the following night, then continue east along 4th Street to a pay phone on Broadway, where he would be told where to find the detonator.

  “How can you guarantee you won’t steal my money?”

  “Just do it or don’t.” The phone line went dead.

  Paul withdrew the money from his meager savings account, turned it into ten- and twenty-dollar bills, and stuffed it in a white bag. Then he went down to Greenwich Village and passed some time perusing books at the 8th Street Bookshop. At 7:45, he walked down to the park to see if he could spot anyone around. Nobody looked conspicuous. At 8, he dropped the cash in the can and moved on to Broadway as instructed. In his excitement, he virtually ran the whole way, and when he got there the phone was ringing.

  “The detonator is in a white bag in the garbage can directly to your left.” Click. A small white bag was indeed sitting on top of the garbage. When he got home, he studied it carefully. The item was surprisingly small, about the size of a Zippo lighter. When activated, a tiny screened tip, which he assumed was the radiation detector, flipped a small switch. The guy on the phone was right, little metal tracks on the side suggested the component was made to clip into something bigger—but what? He doubted there was any way he could utilize this gizmo. Lacking an explosive, it couldn’t be used as a detonator.

  What he had was a lead-lined safe buried up in the Bronx which held 103 cylinders containing a low-level radioactive powder. Now he had this small radiation-triggered switch. How can I make this small device release the pitchblende powder in those cylinders? He needed some kind of explosive. Could he attach a piece of flint, perhaps from a cigarette lighter, to a fuse that would in turn detonate something?

  It wasn’t until he was sitting at the counter of the Broadway Chock Full o’ Nuts the next morning that it dawned on him: If I were to release one cylinder of the pitchblende, it might be radioactive enough to trigger a second detonator a block or so away.

  Trudging up the long splintery flights to Millie’s—now his—apartment down in the Battery, he thought, Maybe the spring in the detonator is strong enough to pull open the little panel of the cylinder. Leon had said he could open it with his finger. Slowly, other thoughts started coming together: Instead of a single centralized contamination bomb, one click might be able to start a chain reaction. If the pitchblende was all concentrated in one area, it would be relatively easy to quarantine that zone. But he couldn’t just leave them around; kids would grab them. They should be elevated above the street. Perhaps they could be positioned on the first-floor windows of key buildings. But wouldn’t people see the cylinders and notify the police? Also, how the hell could he get access to the windows?

  He pondered these questions as he exited the Delancey Street subway stop. While looking upward for possible places to install the cylinders, something caught his eye: an old pair of sneakers dangling from a traffic light. He walked down Orchard to Broome and saw it again—someone had thrown another pair of sneakers up around the pole of a traffic light. He turned left and headed to Essex, where he found a third pair of sneakers suspended from their laces.

  “Sneakers!” Paul shouted.

  One small fuck-up! Uli cursed himself, thinking that a single lapse of observation and deduction would cause his inevitable death. His head throbbed in the heat and he realized he just couldn’t get up again, much less walk. He started chuckling at the thought of waking and nearly drowning in a giant sewer, only to find himself here, staring up at a massive burning sun, cooking to death on some goddamn interstate in Nevada.

  Sensing the hot pavement trembling under him, he realized another car was coming. Somehow mustering a burst of energy, he rolled across the center of the two-lane highway. He heard a screeching, then he clearly envisioned this older balding man named Paul Moses. But only a young teenager jumped out of the car.

  “I almost hit you, dude!”

  “I know him!” Uli shouted to the kid. “I met Paul Moses somewhere.”

  “Dude, you look burnt to a crisp!”

  “I met him somewhere!”

  “You need help, man. Want me to take you to the hospital?”

  “I met him, but … I don’t know where.”

  “Come on, try to stand up.” The teenager hauled him into the front seat of his VW Bug, then gave him the remainder of his Coke, which Uli drank slowly. “Hold tight, I’ll have you back in the city in forty minutes.”

  As the dry wind blasted Uli’s face and “Take It to the Limit” by the Eagles blared on the radio, he tried to remember where and when he had seen this strange, bitter old man.

  49

  Paul had never climbed the steps up to the apartment so quickly. As soon as he got inside, he placed the switch in the toe of one of his large shoes. It was a snug fit—perfect housing for a small bomb. Several major questions loomed: First, could the radioactive cylinders, which were nearly a foot long, also fit in a sneaker? Could the detonator switch be rigged in the toe of a sneaker so that it would pull open the small spring-locked side panel? Was the pitchblende potent enough—and the radiation sensor delicate enough—to trigger another cylinder a block or so away?

  He simply had to build and test a prototype.

  Paul’s next move was to purchase a tiny screwdriver designed for fixing eyeglasses. He dismantled his thousand-dollar detonator and examined it with a magnifying glass. The radiation sensor was a fine tube filled with an inert gas. He had read that a particle of radiation can make a gas temporarily conduct electricity. This would ignite a pulse that in turn would unhook the switch that would hopefully pull the spring-coiled panel back.
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br />   The next day he caught the subway up to Leon’s old scrapyard in Morrisania that had been abandoned to the City of New York along with so many other buildings in the area. After being burgled by the neighborhood kids and set on fire and finally abandoned again, the yard was swarming with rats. Lugging an old winch, complete with chains, a heavy-duty shovel, a metal milk crate, and a hand truck, Paul was able to push through a jagged gap in the old hurricane fence. He slowly dug a hole at the edge of the property. When rats grew curious and came close, Paul would stomp the ground and they’d scamper off. After digging three feet, he struck something solid and knew it was the shell of concrete he had laid down years earlier. He used the end of his shovel as a pile driver to crack through to the small vault below. Soon he had chipped enough concrete away to run chains around it. Then, attaching them to the winch and the winch to one of the steel poles supporting the fence, he carefully cranked the safe out of the hole. Its broken door opened easily.

  Late that night, as rats scurried around the old yard, he remembered all the good times he’d had up in the Bronx when Bea was first born and he and Lucretia were deeply in love. He also remembered all the nights spent pitching back beers with Leon while watching the Brooklyn Dodgers. Around 4:30 in the morning, he loaded all 103 sealed cylinders of pitchblende into a blanket-lined metal milk crate. He abandoned the tools and shovel in the yard and wheeled the loaded hand truck over to the elevated 5 train, where he hauled it up the station’s steps, lifting with his waist, until, bathed in sweat, he had made it to the top. The train arrived forty-five minutes later. The lonely ride downtown took almost an hour. He got out at City Hall and paid some kid a buck to help him carry the hand truck up to street level. He then wheeled it over to his apartment on South Bond Street and spent the morning carrying ten cylinders at a time up the long flights of stairs.

  The following day, after recovering from this extraordinary effort, he went out and purchased a soldering iron. Carefully, he welded a tiny wire to the spring panel of the cylinder, so that when it clicked open the pitchblende would be exposed to the unsuspecting world. Paul then removed the laces from a large pair of ratty old Converse sneakers he had found in a trash can and was able to slip the cylinders inside and secure the detonator switch to one of the worn soles. When he was done, he laced the sneaker back up—it looked just like any other shoe. Using tweezers and a small knife, he cut along one side of the sneaker so that all the pitchblende would be able to spill out onto the ground.