by Cleo Coyle
“By God, Bootsie Girl, you never lost your figure, unlike we less fortunate ones.” Nate patted the wool vest jacketing his own impressive middle.
“You’ve gained more than a few pounds,” Madame conceded, still holding his hand. “You’ve also doubled up on the charismatic charm that bruised the hearts of so many young coeds.”
The tweedy professor was pushing seventy, but when he gazed at Madame, his dark eyes danced like a man in his lusty prime.
“Passing fancies,” Nate said with a wave of his wrinkled hand. “My heart was forever stomped by you, Bootsie Girl.”
My former motherin-law struck a coquettish pose and lifted her maxi-length lamb’s wool skirt just enough to display what I’d foolishly thought was a rare fashion faux pas—white, knee-length leather go-go boots with pointed toes and stacked heels.
From Nate’s excited reaction, however, I realized Madame was merely dressing to rekindle some provocative memories. (I also guessed it was Madame’s boots that had done some walking all over Nate Sumner’s heart.)
The pair returned to Madame’s quiet corner table arm in arm. I’d set a vase with a few blue roses on the table, and Nate eyed them suspiciously before slipping off his leather shoulder pack. As he pulled off his coat, he yanked a tall, brown paper bag out of one deep pocket and set it on the table.
“What’s this?” Madame pointed to the paper bag with disapproval. “Brought your own drink?”
“Oh, that’s just my favorite iced tea. I talk so much, I guzzle a dozen cans a day. Anyway, this one’s empty, and you know I’d never refuse a Village Blend espresso.”
That was my cue to enter the scene, bearing a tray with a doppio each for Madame and Nate—and a third for me.
“So, Blanche, what’s up?” Nate asked while I served. “We haven’t sat for coffee since we pressured the City Council to expand landmark zoning rules to the entire Village.”
“What a day,” Madame said. “The mayor was frothing at the mouth.”
“Flipping the bird to power is a blast, Bootsie. You should do it more often,” Nate said with a self-satisfied chuckle.
“Is that what you were doing in front of the Source Club last night?” I interjected. “Flipping the bird to power?”
“Oh, Nate,” Madame cooed. “Perhaps you know Clare Cosi, my manager?”
“Yes, I saw her just last night, though this is our first formal introduction . . .” Nate didn’t look happy to see me. I didn’t care—
“May I join you,” I said, sitting before Nate could object.
Nate sampled his espresso, drained the demitasse, and set it aside. “So, Ms. Cosi, you must have had an interesting dinner last night.”
“It’s what happened after dinner that concerns me.”
“Ah,” Nate said with a stubbornly proud smile. “My little protest.”
“Your mini riot, you mean.”
“Some of my followers are . . . enthusiastic. Things may have gotten out of hand.”
“Saul Alinsky tactics?” Madame asked, referring to the political anarchist’s notorious guidebook, Rules for Radicals (a sort of Robert’s Rules of disorder).
Nate laughed. “They were General Patton’s tactics, Bootsie. We outflanked the enemy.”
“What were you protesting, exactly?” I asked.
The good humor drained from Nate’s bearded face. “The digital age, Ms. Cosi. The insidious use of computers to control populations. The cancer of social media in all of its forms.”
“Goodness!” Madame blinked. “And I thought you were an advocacy group for solar power.”
Nate patted Madame’s hand. “I chose the name Solar Flare because of my original concern. Our rush to computerize our infrastructure, to digitize our libraries, records, and financial transactions, ignores a hidden danger—”
“A solar flare?” I assumed.
“Precisely, Ms. Cosi. A solar eruption could potentially destroy all computers and the data they contain, obliterating two thousand years of human endeavor in an instant, should we abandon our history of traditional print and paper. Why, a solar hiccup could disrupt power grids for months, even years.”
“A terrifying possibility,” I acknowledged. “But like an asteroid striking the earth, what are the chances of it actually happening?”
“A valid point, which is why, in order to become more relevant, our group’s emphasis has shifted to the immediate and insidious threat of cyberization.”
“Cyber-what?”
“I coined the term to illustrate our increasing dependence on high-tech gadgets. We are becoming cyborgs, fusions of man and machine.” Nate pulled a small, thin hardcover from his shoulder bag and handed it to me. “I outline it all in my book—and I’d like you to give it to Eric Thorner.”
“Cyberization and Control: The Totalitarianism of New Technology,” I read.
The dust jacket art depicted a photo of a young man draped in technology. Devices covered his eyes, nose, mouth, even his arms. Wires rose from each machine, leading to crosshatched puppet master’s sticks floating under the title.
“At present, the man/machine commingling is only psychological. Separate any one of the customers around us from their smartphones and you’ll see what I mean. Within a few hours, they exhibit many of the same withdrawal symptoms as an addict deprived of heroin.”
“Heroin?” I echoed, slipping the book into my apron pocket. The statement seemed ludicrously extreme to me—although a few months ago, Matt did climb the walls after he’d smashed his own smartphone in a tantrum and had to live without it for all of a half day.
“The results of studies are disturbing,” Nate continued. “The Internet is turning into the new opiate of the people—especially young people. Privacy is violated, civil rights trampled upon. If we’re not careful, the digital domain is going to control our bank accounts, our thoughts, every waking moment of our lives—”
“You don’t think you’re overstating it?”
“What the future holds is terrifying. The cyber-world gives people the illusion of anonymity and power, but neither of those things is true. It takes away our power. It sells out our privacy. And as these clever devices insinuate themselves, tempting us with easy lives and glib replies, I believe we’ll become like machines ourselves. Soulless and sociopathic, if not out-and-out automatons.”
I saw the somber change in the old man’s demeanor and took a shot in the dark. “It sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience.”
“Yes, I confess: it is personal, Ms. Cosi. Eric Thorner, the man you dined with last night, is responsible for the death of my niece.”
Forty-one
THE statement shocked me. I assumed Nate was talking about Eric’s old girlfriend, the young actress Bianca Hyde. Before I could ask, however, Madame set me straight.
“You’re speaking about Eva, your brother’s child? I remember when she was born, but that must have been—”
“Eva would have been seventeen last month. She died almost two years ago.”
“I’m so sorry, Nate,” Madame said. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know because my brother’s company transferred him. He placed Eva in an exclusive private school. Eva was the new girl, and the students there were cruelly cliquish. By the end of her first semester the cyber-bullying began.”
Nate told us how one of Eva’s female tormentors secretly took a candid photo of Eva half dressed in the locker room after gym class.
“The bully used Eric’s popular Pigeon Droppings app to place Eva in the game without her consent, and then spent an entire weekend circulating screen grabs among her friends. By Monday, one of the little sadists posted printouts all over the school. When Eva saw the pictures of her half-naked body covered in cyber-crap, she ran home and locked herself in the bathroom.”
Nate paused. When he spoke again his voice was shaking. “By the time the school alerted my brother, it was too late. Vince found his daughter hanging dead in the shower.”
I heard the air leave Madame’s lungs in a rush, and her violet eyes welled. I felt tears welling, too, but I had to point out the obvious.
“I’m so sorry, Nate . . . what happened was awful, criminal, but the bullying was the issue. Eric Thorner only created the game, not the abuse.”
“The game became a tool for abuse, Ms. Cosi. As a society, we regulate tobacco companies, gun manufacturers, and distillers of alcohol because we know their products have the potential to do harm or be abused.”
“I see your logic, but how do you propose apps be regulated? The online shops that carry them do so already, don’t they?”
“Yes, but more must be done. Solar Flare has been effective in the past. We were instrumental in the banning of those vile Pigeon Droppings Tshirts. We made sure Thorner took a financial hit for those!”
“I’m sorry to tell you that Eric doesn’t see what you’re trying to accomplish. He believes you simply want his business to pay for your advocacy.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Nate replied. “Tobacco companies fund lung cancer research. Gun manufacturers are the leading promoters of firearms education, and alcohol manufacturers support substance abuse programs. Why shouldn’t tech companies like Eric’s fund Solar Flare, so we can effect much-needed change from within? We’re committed to our public protests against him until he pays up.”
I nodded like a good student—even though it seemed to me that Nate Sumner was treading a fine line between activism and extortion. But now was not the time for debate. Now was the time for me to find out what Nate knew about Charley’s husband.
With care, I shifted topics and told Nate about my encounters with the man in the red Solar Flare cap.
“I need to know. Is he a member of your group?”
“Yes, Joseph Polaski is a member of Solar Flare,” Nate said, “but I don’t know where you can find him, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I will also add that Joe is another victim of the digital domain.”
Nate then told me all about Joe and his ex-wife, Charlene Polaski. The two were once cops; they’d met on the job. He was the veteran, she the rookie. Things were fine between them until Joe’s retirement. He started drinking, and they began to drift apart. The marriage ended when Joe discovered Charley was seeing a lover she’d met on a website that facilitated extramarital affairs.
“Joe reacted badly. He slapped Charley, and she got a restraining order against him. Joe joined Solar Flare shortly after.”
“Is he a volunteer, or is he paid?”
“Solar Flare has no paid staff, Ms. Cosi. I run the organization with a few dedicated interns and many volunteers. Joe is a responsible member of the community. He prepares food at a Bowery homeless shelter, collects clothing for the local Salvation Army, and performs maintenance work for the Friends of the High Line Committee.”
“Does he build firebombs in his spare time, too?”
“Joe had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of his ex-wife. He still loved Charley, and they’d recently reconciled—well, after a fashion. When Charley became a licensed private investigator, she asked Joe to help with her first major undercover investigation.”
Now I understood. Eric’s butler, Anton, said that Charley was not what she seemed, and that she had personal reasons for taking a job at THORN, Inc. After what Nate just revealed, I easily guessed the rest.
“Charley was investigating Bianca Hyde’s death, wasn’t she?”
“She was.” Nate nodded. “From what Joe told me, the girl’s family hired her. They blamed Eric Thorner for what happened to their daughter, and wanted Charley to find proof that Thorner was responsible for her death. Charley knew Joe was a member of Solar Flare so she asked him to feed her information about Thorner’s company. But from what Joe told me the last time we spoke, it was Charley who was feeding him information toward the end—and lots of it.”
I leaned forward. “What kind of information?”
“You’ll have to ask Joe.”
“But you don’t know where he is?”
Nate shrugged. “Sorry.”
I was about to suggest refills when I spied a trio of men in dark suits approaching our table. Alarmed, I slid my chair back and bumped into another man hovering behind me. More suits flowed out of the crowd, to surround our table. NYPD officers in uniform and several detectives followed. To my horror, one of them was Lieutenant Dennis DeFasio of the Bomb Squad.
The original trio displayed their FBI credentials.
“Nathan Sumner,” the one in the middle said. “You are under arrest for detonating an explosive device for terrorist purposes, and for the murder of Charlene Polaski.”
“No!” Madame cried, leaping to her feet to block the agents. “You’re making a terrible mistake. This man is innocent!”
One agent deftly pulled Madame aside while the other two cuffed Nate. The old professor seemed as stunned as the rest of us. He didn’t resist in the least, which made the regiment of FBI agents and NYPD officers there to arrest him look like ridiculous overkill.
One agent lifted Nate out of his chair; a second grabbed his shoulder bag.
On his feet, Nate quickly recovered some of his old spirit.
“Pass my book to your friend, Ms. Cosi,” the old professor told me quickly. “It has good information.”
The authorities who filled my coffeehouse pulled back, taking their prisoner with them. Moving toward the door, Nate cried out one last chant—
“Roses white and red are best!”
His words barely registered as my focus fixed on Lieutenant DeFasio, bringing up the rear. I rushed forward, grabbing his arm before he got out the door.
“What are you doing, Lieutenant?”
“The FBI has made an arrest,” DeFasio replied, tone stiffer than his military crew cut. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me into a corner.
“Nate is no killer,” I hissed. “He’s an opinionated old man, that’s all—”
“An old man with a past that fits the crime.”
“What past?”
“We also have physical evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“I can’t tell you, not officially . . .” He lowered his voice and held my eyes. “I can only discuss the case with Federal agents.”
Quinn, I thought. DeFasio is telling me to talk to Mike.
The lieutenant hurried out to join the others—and I joined my own stunned customers, staring like zombies at the departing police vehicles. I noticed Tuck at the espresso bar, comforting a distraught Madame, and I wanted to do the same. For the moment, however, I couldn’t move that far. I simply sank back down at the table where they’d arrested Nate. In the process, I bumped his paper bag. It tumbled to the floor and an empty can rolled out—
Brooklyn’s Best Iced Tea.
I stared at the can.
Where have I seen that before?
At the Bomb Squad headquarters, I realized. Cases of the very same iced tea were stacked outside the kitchen where DeFasio claimed his people were re-creating the bomb!
Not just a bomb. A firebomb, using liquid accelerants, according to Sergeant Emmanuel Franco.
Oh my God. Whoever built that bomb used a can just like this one—Nate’s favorite brand. I just knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
Madame approached me, grasped my arms. “We have to help Nathan,” she said, drying her eyes. “He’s a good man and a gentle one. He abhors violence. You know he’s innocent, don’t you?”
“I do, Madame.”
“Then you’ll help him? You’ll find a way to clear him of these terrible false charges?”
“Yes, I promise—because I know exactly how he was framed.”
Forty-two
“THEY have Nate’s fingerprints,” Mike confirmed when I saw him that weekend. “They pulled the prints off recovered bomb fragments and singled him out as the person of interest very quickly.”
It had been less than a week since we’d last se
en each other, but after Nate’s arrest, it felt more like a month, so I didn’t object when Mike asked if we could go straight back to his DC apartment.
Alone at last, Mike wanted to make love, but I was anxious to hear what he knew. “Talk,” I demanded, and he did. Unfortunately, I didn’t much like what he had to say . . .
“Enlighten me please, Mike. If the NYPD and FBI had Nate’s fingerprints so quickly, then why did they wait a week to arrest him?”
“Their theory is that Nate had an accomplice so they put surveillance on him. But after last night’s protest at the Source Club, they decided to take him into custody, try to break him in an interview.”
“This is so wrong! Nate didn’t set a car bomb to kill Eric Thorner or anyone else!”
“Getting emotional won’t help your friend.”
“I know. It’s just so frustrating.”
“Then what’s your theory, Detective?”
“Someone framed Nate—obviously.”
“How?”
“The killer must have watched Nate finish a can of Brooklyn’s Best Iced Tea and discard it, then recovered the can from the garbage pail. The killer then built the bomb using that can, knowing it would be linked back to Nate, who appeared to have strong motives to want to hurt Eric Thorner.”
Mike nodded. “I agree—and between you and me—DeFasio does, too.”
“What did he tell you?”
“They went back six months but found no records of the professor purchasing accelerants. They found nothing on his computer or cell phone that indicated he’d been planning a car bombing. They found no traces of bomb-building material where he lives or works or in the Solar Flare offices.”
“So why arrest him?”
“Because the agents and detectives running the investigation have enough of a case to pacify the politicians, public, and press who put the pressure on for an arrest.”