A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (28 page)

“I don’t even know where he is, never have.”

“That’s easy. He’s at St. Euphrosyne.”

“What’s that?”

“You really don’t know? It’s a church in downtown Manhattan. The loser lives sometimes in the shelter there.”

The curiosity. He saw it in her bruised black eyes. He’d chosen correctly. He said from a long distance, “I won’t kill him now, you know. It’s over between you and me.”

“Over?” Resistance flashed in her. “So you killed those others for nothing?”

“Not for nothing.” He stared into the middle space. “I had my reasons.”

“And now it doesn’t matter anymore? What a waste.” She flicked her wrist. “And what a cowardly thing to do, ambushing them from afar.”

“That’s not how it went down. You think it was easy, what I did? I looked right into their eyes, both of them, even if they didn’t know who I was. Like this.”

He seized her by the shoulders and locked their watery gaze. Then he kissed her. She opened her mouth to receive his tongue. He thought about biting her but didn’t. There was already salty blood in his mouth. Her blood. He ran it over his teeth.

There was a better way for this to end, he thought. He couldn’t leave witnesses behind.

When he let go of her she said, “You still want me.”

“Yes,” he pretended to admit, though he almost choked on the word. She was done for, but he needed her still. “Clean yourself up. I’m going out for the rest of the day. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Can I trust you here alone?”

“You think I’d steal from you, asshole?”

“Not what I meant. Stay out of the locked room. You might get hurt.”

“Where are you off to?”

Her face asked the rest of the question. It asked whether he was going this very moment to kill her precious Lewis. She’d try to stop him, if she could. He just knew it. He had a card that the shelter workers had given him the other night. As he put his coat back on, he pretended to drop that card by mistake and not notice. It fluttered to the floor behind him as he hit the door. Bait.

She had to see but she said nothing. That’s how he knew the trap was set.

DIAZ AND O’SHEA TRIED CALLING
Sallye Ritchie’s cell phone number, which the head nurse had provided with some reluctance, but they couldn’t get an answer.

“We could hightail it back to New York,” Diaz said, “be there by three.”

“But we have nothing to go on. How far’s her house from here?”

“Not far.”

“I’ll call Burbette while you drive.”

They climbed in and O’Shea soon reached the Fed. It wasn’t a long conversation. He turned to Diaz.

“Says it would take days to get a trace on that phone, even if we had the warrant in hand, which of course we don’t.”

“We still got the warrant for the house. We may as well search that.”

“Boffo, Diaz. But I’m getting a bad feeling.”

They pulled up a few minutes later. Everything looked as Diaz had left it, except that Ritchie’s car was gone and a state trooper greeted them. He was young but he had the paperwork. He helped them pry the door open with a crowbar and removed his hat when he entered.

“Don’t mess it up too bad,” he said.

O’Shea looked at him. “What are we, the friggin’ mafia?”

The kid was smart enough not to answer. He stood in the corner of each room as they went through.

“This place is spotless,” O’Shea said, digging through drawers.

They found no personal phone book and few personal records, but Diaz did come upon an old photo album in the back of a closet.

“Bag it?” O’Shea asked.

“Sure,” said Diaz. “We can look through it in the car.”

“You remove anything,” the trooper said, “you got to fill out an evidence form.” He was showing off, not worth arguing with.

“Roger that,” O’Shea said. “Diaz, mind filling out the form while I take a last look around?”

Diaz appreciated hearing these orders as suggestions, rather than how Kahn would’ve put them. O’Shea was first grade, making him senior, but Diaz didn’t report to him, so the relationship felt different.

When he was finished with the paperwork, he climbed into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic to wait for O’Shea and began flipping through the photos. It was a white album with padded covers and gold trim. Pretty old-looking and smelled sour—cellophane. Some of the photos seeming like they went back to the Seventies. They showed Sallye as a small child, as a teenager, as an enlisted woman in uniform, frolicking on the beach in a one-piece bathing suit, posed on some steps in what looked like a prom dress. Could this be her whole life in a twenty-page album? If so, did this boyfriend, Warren, rate a picture?

“Manuel Diaz,” said the voice in Diaz’s head, “not wasting a moment, from afar seeks a mind meld with his primary suspect.”

You in there, Warren? Oh, Warren? Come out, come out, wherever you are.

He was so absorbed that he didn’t see O’Shea cross the driveway until the door opened. It startled him and he snapped shut the album. “Find anything else inside?”

“Nah,” O’Shea said. “I was just taking a dump. You?”

“I used the trunk.”

“Ha ha. I meant, did you find anything?”

A thought crossed Diaz’s mind. “You know, that MP of mine’s been fast with some stuff, but it’s taking him awhile to get together the list of people with access to C4. I asked him twice already. Maybe, now that we got a partial name, I should call and nudge him.”

O’Shea looked at his watch. “Gotta be—what—pretty late German time. He’s still working?”

“It ain’t a clock-punch situation, Brian. It’s the fucking army. If he’s awake, he’ll answer.”

“They let you sleep in the army these days?”

“Just when no one’s shooting at you.”

It took eight rings but Nunez did pick up. “I’m kind of, um, in the middle of something.” He sounded more than a little groggy.

“We got a hot situation here,” Diaz said, undeterred. “Whatever happened to that list of the C4 people?”

“C4 people?”

“The people with access to high explosives?”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I’m working on that. Got a partial list.”

“We’ll take it.”

“Can it wait for the morning?”

“Negative.”

The MP hesitated. “You ain’t the boss of me.”

“Cut it out, Nunez. Can you get to it?”

“Okay. I’m off base but I can go back.”

“Terrific. If you find anyone with the first name of Warren on that list and he’s our man, you’ll get a key to the city.”

“For real? New York City?”

LEWIS SALINOWSKY’S MORNING FIX WAS
wearing off already. Cheap stuff, cut thin. He sat on the bench in Columbus Park. Cardboard sign. Coffee cup with jangling change. Heavy eyelids. Same as it ever was.

Get the name of that nun again,
he thought. The methadone. Couldn’t hurt. He tried to picture it, saw in his mind a window like at the check cashing store, pills in crushable paper cups pushed across the counter to him.
Thank you, sister.

When his eyes regained focus, someone stood three feet in front of him. Red canvas sneakers on uneven pavement, traction sand dusting the toes. He ran his eyes up the tight jeans to a patent-leather belt, square buckle, wide-wale turtleneck clinging to tiny breasts. She was petite all around. Her coat hung open. Narrow neck. The face, while swollen, was small-boned. It looked like someone had taken a mallet to her nose, but she smiled.

“Lewis?”

Just hearing his name from the mouth of a woman… “Who wants to know?” His lower lip trembled. Was he hallucinating?

“That
is
you, I’m sure. I’ve thought a lot about you all these years.”

He grabbed the sign and folded it closed across his lap. This was too much for twenty-four hours. “How did you find me?”

“The shelter. They gave me five spots where they thought you might be. This was the second.”

“So you’re real?”

“Of course I’m real.”

“You’ve changed.”

“We both have. Would you come with me?”

“Where?”

She bit her lip. “I have a safe place. Just for the night. We need to talk.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. Look at me.”

“We’ll clean you up. Just like old times. Get you out of harm’s way.”

He considered those old times, almost forgotten memories now reawakened. Something was coming alive in his pants, a part of him that he thought might never rise again.

She saw, too. She squirmed in her coat. “Oh, Lewis.”

“Not you. Let me clean up myself. I’ll meet you. Where?” He held out his Sharpie. What an instrument. The giver of life.

“If that’s how it has to be.” She wrote the address on the back of his cardboard. Crisp and clear, but not taking up too much space. She tore it off. “Don’t talk to any strangers before then and keep an eye on your leg. Can you get there in an hour? You’ll need the Five Train.”

Salinowsky nodded. She was a vision. It all flooded back to him at once, that hospital bed with the smooth brushed aluminum rails, exactly what he’d done with the pillow to protect his injured leg while she guided him behind her, how his good knee had given way and he’d nearly tumbled to the floor in ecstasy. All of it. He’d lied to O’Shea. He remembered every glorious second.

And here she was again, offering her protection, maybe her bed.

It was too good to be true. He’d bring the rest of his bundle of heroine, in case he couldn’t face what she offered him, in case it was too much, in case he needed to escape again.

DIAZ AND O’SHEA WERE HALFWAY
home when Nunez called back, sounding a good deal more alert.

“Sorry about that, Diaz. You caught me off guard.”

“Pants down?”

“I wish. Just sleeping off a drunk. But enough with the small talk. The list I got is partial, remember, but it’s fairly long. And on that whole thing there’s only two guys first name of Warren. One I know to be KIA about thirty-six months ago. Other is last name of Manis.”

He spelled it and Diaz wrote it down. “You got anything on him?”

“Not much off hand. He was combat engineers until about six years ago. Must’ve been an honorable discharge. It looks like he kept his clearance for another couple of years.”

“You don’t get to keep your clearance when you’re discharged.”

“Probably hung around to work with an outside contractor. That’d explain it.”

Diaz reflected. “And that would make it a lot easier to sneak stuff off the base, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, no shit, Diaz. You gonna catch this bastard already?”

“Sure gonna try, Captain.” He gave O’Shea the thumbs-up as he disengaged. “One guy so far. Name’s Warren Manis.”

O’Shea took out his phone and dialed the AES office. Diaz listened as he read the name to one of his associates, waited and waited with eyes darting along the road ahead. He groaned as he hung up.

“What the hell is it?” Diaz said.

“Whole lot of nothing. There’s nothing obvious coming up. No priors or anything like that. He’s not in the phone book. The shoe leather brigade will have to dig a whole lot deeper.”

O’Shea steered the Crown Vic aggressively around the curve of the ramp connecting I-84 to I-95. He reached over and flicked on the flashers, floored the accelerator, and entered the left lane doing ninety-five miles per hour. He didn’t slow down.

“What’s the rush?” Diaz asked. “We don’t know our next move yet.”

“If this guy’s findable, my boys will find him,” O’Shea said. “And when they do, we’ll wanna be in the neighborhood to claim our bite of the apple.”

Diaz leaned back against the headrest. “I guess I was wrong about you.”

“How so?”

“You seem so easygoing. I didn’t figure you for a guy who cared about medals.”

“Easygoing and stupid are two different traits, Manny. I might not be keeping score, but others are.”

Diaz looked out at the median rushing by. The ground appeared to be frozen solid. “I’d like a piece of this prick myself when we do find him,” he said.

“After all your hard work, that goes without saying.” O’Shea chuckled, twisted in his seat. “I gotta hand it to you, Diaz. You were a terrier on this case. You showed good instincts. I bet Fisco would take you any time if you ever wanna cross town.” He shook his head, looking inward. “Took me too long to see this thing as you did. Maybe Fisco shouldn’t stop there. Maybe he should give you my job.”

“I don’t want it, Brian. And you didn’t do so bad. No one could’ve known.”

“You did.” O’Shea laughed again. A hearty devil-may-care laugh. Nothing seemed to bother him.

Looking over at his big red face and blond eyebrows, Diaz couldn’t help smiling, too. Where, he wondered, did a man get a personality like that? If you could buy it off the shelf, Diaz would readily go into the store and empty his wallet tomorrow.

FROM THE ROOF OF A
low-slung industrial building across the street from his place, Manis had watched Sallye leave. She’d have no reason to suspect that he’d double back—he’d never done so before, ever—but this was a day of firsts and there were more to come.

For all her prior haughtiness, Sallye fell prey to her desires as easily as he ever had. He saw how Lewis’s name worked on her, and he knew what she would do, given the opportunity.

She’d left without her overnight bag, which meant she’d be back, didn’t plan to flee or call the cops just yet. Thinking he’d be gone for the night, she’d take her time planning how to save Salinowsky while pleasing herself—the pleasing part never too low on her agenda.

If she was coming straight back, Manis figured he had at least an hour. He descended the stairs and crossed back to his apartment.

He looked around. The bitch had made an effort to clean up, covering the couch in a cotton sheet. There was evidence that she’d showered, too, before changing. The only blood was on an icepack that she’d carelessly discarded in the sink. Something compelled him to wash it off and return it to the freezer.

Then he went into the bathroom and used a pair of large scissors to cut his beard close. He shaved twice with a razor, clean for the first time in a decade. He looked ten years younger at least.