A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (26 page)

But then Kahn realized that his own breathing had slowed to a uniform pace, almost like meditating. All the training and experience would undergird every move he made from here, but it was composure and concentration that had the best chance to protect him.

Kahn peered through his visor, homing in on the leg. On the edge of the seam, he saw something. He set the x-ray equipment aside and leaned closer as he ran a finger with great care over the seam. Kahn realized he still had on his reading glasses. He’d been staring at his phone as an SOD detective helped him suit up, and he’d never removed them.

The glasses allowed him to see what he otherwise would have missed. It was there clear as day, a serial number stamped into the notch of the seam.

Kahn remembered Diaz’s observation that Albert Horn’s normal prosthesis had a serial number while none was ever found on the remnants of the one that carried the bomb. No serial number found among the remnants of the prosthesis that killed Gavin Littel either. The bomb maker had overlooked these infinitesimal details.

The discovery now of this serial number gave Kahn the confidence to extract his Leatherman from a pocket of the Kevlar suit. They could summon the robot and tie up much of lower Manhattan for another four hours, but—again thinking of Diaz—Kahn liked his chances to deal with this properly here and now. He flicked open the knife and got down on his knees over the prosthesis. Then he inserted the tip of the knife into the seam and gently pried the two sections apart.

DIAZ HAD HIGGINS WITH HIM
in the response truck this time, with Higgins driving and Salinowsky squeezed in between them looking dazed and glum. Higgins always smelled vaguely of curry, and now it combined none too well with the reek coming off of the homeless man. They were in a convoy heading for Allen Street—two cruisers in the lead, followed by the truck Higgins drove and a bomb disposal truck. Also mixed in were a couple of unmarked Suburbans and another response truck with Cam Fowler and his EDC.

St. Euphrosyne, according to the radio, had already been evacuated.

“Tell me again,” Diaz told Salinowsky. He had him in handcuffs as a precaution. “The bomb is in the pantry closet?”

“The cabinet.” Salinowsky nodded. “I didn’t say it was a bomb.”

“Excuse me. The other leg, which may contain a bomb.”

“You said that, not me.”

“But you did switch legs this morning.”

Salinowsky nodded. “I rotate them every couple of days. Keeps the blisters down.”

Diaz took a notepad from atop the dashboard and opened to a blank page. He handed it to Salinowsky with a pen. “Draw the layout of the kitchen. Mark exactly where the leg is.”

“It’s hard to write with the cuffs on.”

“Do the best you can.”

With the motion of the truck and the frequent potholes, all of the lines got laid down wavy. Given Salinowsky’s condition, it may have turned out that way in any event, Diaz thought. But he was never planning to assign style points.

They pulled up with sirens blaring, fire trucks already on scene. A familiar face approached as they got out, causing Higgins to break into a broad smile. “Great to see you on your feet, Lieutenant.”

“Me, too,” Diaz agreed.

Capobianco shook his head. “Thanks for easing me back into it, fellas.”

“Never a dull moment in this game,” Diaz said, contradicting everything he’d believed until last week.

“Don’t I know it,” Capobianco said. “Let’s get to work. Best approach is around the side door.”

Higgins jumped back into the truck and Diaz walked around the corner with Capobianco, gently tugging along Salinowsky, whose leg Kahn had managed to piece back together. It wasn’t a good idea for Kahn to go out twice in one day after the stress of the bomb suit, so he’d returned to the station house.

“Nice not to have a crater on this one,” Diaz said.

“Yeah.” Capobianco strode along. “Well, it’s early yet.”

They moved a couple of blue sawhorses aside so Higgins could back the truck right up to the sidewalk. Fowler was patrolling along the side of the building with the Labrador. Cai Yong shadowed them, acting as sweeper.

The man who Salinowsky called Father Igor met Capobianco and Diaz out front, and he confirmed the location of the possible bomb. Father Igor stepped aside with Salinowsky, and the cops opened the truck doors and extended the ramp toward the shelter door.

Diaz and Capobianco watched the screen as Higgins worked the controls to the HD1. It took fifteen minutes to guide the robot in front of the stainless steel cabinet in the pantry, another half hour to carefully empty the contents before they finally saw the prosthetic leg.

When the robot had the leg on the ground, they called it back and rigged it with an x-ray panel. Then Higgins sent it back to shoot the pictures.

“Son of a bitch,” Capobianco said a few minutes later, when they had the image up on a laptop computer. They saw wires and a blasting cap and electronic parts. The presumed C4 looked like a solid, misshapen log.

Deciding to execute the RSP on site, they rigged the robot with a PAN and Higgins tried to get it into position with the remote control panel, but for that purpose even their smallest machine proved too bulky for the tight quarters of the pantry.

Higgins looked pie-eyed from staring at the remote screen for so long. “We could just smack it around with the robot and get it to detonate,” he suggested.

“What?” said Capobianco. “And blow up half the shelter? Besides, it’s a new robot. Take forever to requisition another one.”

“I think I can get it from the doorway with the water cannon,” Diaz offered.

Capobianco thought about it, nodded, and watched as Higgins helped him suit up.

A few minutes later, beyond the noise of the air pump in his helmet, Diaz sensed the eerie quiet of the abandoned shelter, the bomb just lying there like a coiled snake.

“Manny Diaz,” the voiceover in his head declared, “alone with danger.”

He positioned himself as far away from the bomb as he could while still taking clean aim.

The beauty of C4 was its stability. Separated from the blasting cap circuit, it would be no more dangerous than a ball of putty. Picturing the x-ray in his mind, he set up the PAN and drew a bead on the spot that he knew would give him the best chance to defeat the device without causing a detonation. Then he took cover and fired.

TICK, TICK, TICK

12.

DAY SIX—Dark

O’SHEA STARED INTO HIS
untouched salad. Outside, in the early evening light, stray trash tripped down the sidewalks of the East Village. He was sitting across from Lewis Salinowsky at Veselka on Second Avenue. Ukrainian soul food, aroma of pig fat and vinegar. He’d watched Salinowsky consume a cup of borscht, six meatballs, several large pierogi, a stuffed cabbage, and a heap of fatty kielbasa without uttering a word. Now the man was poised to dive into some kind of apple turnover buried in whipped cream. He had his fork in the air when O’Shea pulled the plate away from him.

“What the hell.”

“Talk first. Then dessert. The taxpayer has to get his money’s worth.” O’Shea winked.

Salinowsky set down his fork. “Give me the cherry.”

O’Shea let him snatch it. He removed the dessert plate to a neighboring table and watched Salinowsky relish the unnaturally red fruit, chewing deliberately. Ten seconds later, a busboy cleared the plate, and a couple sat down. O’Shea looked contrite. “We’ll get you another. Start talking.”

The meal had sobered up Salinowsky. He was still gaunt and pale, and he didn’t smell too hot, but his eyes no longer looked like those of a waste product.

“Got nothing to tell besides what I told that Spanish cop.”

“Who? Diaz?”

Salinowsky shrugged. “I guess.”

“The guy who saved your life, we’re talking about. Just another spic to you.”

“Naw, I’m not that way.”

“What way are you?”

Salinowsky looked into his hands.

“You’re a brilliant conversationalist, you know that, Lewis?”

“I don’t get much practice lately.”

“Tell me about this nurse, Sallye Ritchie.”

He looked into his hands again. “That her name? I never knew the first name.”

“This her?” O’Shea showed him a picture.

Salinowsky pursed his lips. “Yeah, I suppose it is. I’d know for sure if you showed me her ass.”

“I don’t have any photos of that. What’d she do for you?”

“Man, I was in pain and half high on morphine. Far as I remember, she gave me a few rides is all.” His mind was working. Several thoughts seemed to play across his gaunt face. “Probably more fun for her than it was for me, but she marched around like it qualified her for sainthood. I remember that part.”

“You think she has the potential to be violent?”

“How the hell would I know? I saw her when she came in the room. That was it.”

“Did she mention anyone else in her life—father, brother, boyfriend?”

“Not that I recall.”

“What a help.”

“She wasn’t there to shoot the breeze. Why don’t you ask the other nurses?”

“We’re working on that. Did you know these other GIs, Littel and Horn?”

“Were they in my unit?”

“No.”

“So why should I know them?”

“She ever reach out to you after you left the hospital?”

“Not at all,” he answered quickly.

“You to her?”

He hesitated. “I sent her a letter in Germany once, okay? Never heard back. After that it didn’t even cross my mind again.”

“Did the letter have a return address?”

“I guess so. Sent if from the post office where I keep my box.”

Idiot,
O’Shea thought. “That’s how they tracked you. Must be. Did you know that your situation wasn’t unique?”

“Not until you told me.”

“And the bomb? Any idea who planted it?”

“If I did I would’ve shared by now. Had to be one of the guys who slept in the shelter last night or one of the guys who works there. Maybe they even did it after I left, for all I know. Wouldn’t let me into the cabinet last night.”

“You said the leg you put on this morning came from the cabinet. That means the leg you got out of the cabinet was not the bomb.”

O’Shea knew the logic of his own statement was impeccable. The bomb hadn’t been placed in the cabinet by the perp. It was the other one—Salinowsky having inadvertently switched. But the vagrant seemed to have trouble following. “Whatever,” he said.

“Were there any new visitors to the shelter that you saw?”

“There are always new visitors. You’d have to ask Father Igor who was who. I wasn’t in condition to observe much.”

“After stopping at your dealer?”

Salinowsky smiled. “Man I was high as an effing kite last night, wouldn’t have recognized my own grandmother.”

“And this morning?”

“I don’t have a good life like you, Detective. I do everything I can to dull the feeling.”

O’Shea waved over the waitress. “Another piece of that apple thing for my friend. And a check.”

She dropped the items in another minute. O’Shea put two twenties on the table and tore the receipt off the bottom of the check. He handed Salinowsky his business card.

“Anything comes to you, don’t hesitate. I wrote down Diaz’s number on the back, if you’d prefer to talk to him. The guy who’s doing these bombings is still out there. You may save a life.”

Salinowsky nodded and lifted his fork off the table, ready to dig in again. But O’Shea coveted the cherry. Before Salinowsky could react, he plucked it from the whipped cream and popped it into his mouth. It tasted more of sugar than fruit, but it hit the spot. He was still chewing when he pushed back his chair, nodded to the waitress, and left the drug addict to the remainder of his dessert.

He may not see this guy alive again, but the NYPD would. They had a tail on him.

SALINOWSKY LINGERED OVER THE APPLE
strudel. His stomach felt like a brick but he was determined not to leave any for the dish washer.

When he thought back over events of the past few hours, he decided that the whole day had been a gift. He hadn’t once hit the junk and he felt better than he had in weeks. Not that he expected his body to quit cold turkey, but the whole incident had instilled a strange kind of hope. Maybe, he thought, he’d even go back to his sister’s house. But then he remembered that some monster was trying to kill him—to blow him up of all things. He recalled hearing some of the guys in the shelter talking about those two explosions last week, seeing some headlines on the street. He had no way of connecting that to himself until the cops had mentioned the nurse, Sallye Ritchie.

Limping back to the shelter, he tried but couldn’t even picture her face. The photo that the cop had showed him brought recognition, but he couldn’t conjure her in his mind now. He could still see her hands, though, translucent skin and bony fingers. The tendons worked up and down as she caressed him. He wondered whether he’d ever have another woman again.

Salinowsky got to the shelter just before doors closed. They had a free bed for him and he couldn’t help noticing that the staff looked at him with a higher degree of compassion than before. But he was tired of being a pathetic creature. He would get his life together now, he told himself as he undressed.

That night, alert for danger, Lewis Salinowsky slept with his artificial leg cradled in his arms.

TICK, TICK
 

13.

DAY SEVEN—Light

WHEN DIAZ GOT TO THE
station house he found Kahn and O’Shea meeting in Capobianco’s office. The lieutenant waved him in and instructed him to close the door. There was no chair for him so he leaned against a filing cabinet, suddenly feeling very much like the junior man again.

O’Shea began speaking. “Why I thought we should meet in person, rather than giving the lieutenant a fill over the phone, is that my lieutenant didn’t want yesterday’s excitement to overwhelm the fact that we still haven’t solved this case.”