A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (6 page)

“It
was.”
He chuckled. Then he looked down at the bottleneck. “Maybe it’ll help me sleep.”

She sat up. “I saw on the news about that thing in Times Square. Were you part of that?”

“Yep.”

“What did you see?”

“I can’t really talk about it. What did the news say?”

“Some guy blew himself up.”

“They got that right. So what do you think I saw?”

“A body? In pieces?”

He pebbled his chin and nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Is it freaky? Did it disturb you?”

“Not as much as seeing buddies of mine get blown up.”

She shuddered. “How can you even look at any of that?”

He pictured Albert Horn lying on his back on the bloody blackened sidewalk. “You look but you don’t look. In a way, you deconstruct it.”

“What does that mean?” She drew her feet to the couch and hugged her knees.

“You have to see the individual parts sometimes and ignore that it was once a person. There’s nothing you can do to help him except try to catch the bad guys.”

“But it was a suicide bomber, they said. He was a bad guy himself.”

“Maybe. But even so, suicide bombers rarely act alone. Can we talk about something else? How about
your
work?”

“What? Selling insurance? That’s just a job. It’s not worth re-living.”

“Somebody has to do it.”

“But we don’t have to talk about it.”

Diaz washed out his food container and threw it into the recycle. He sat at the table to finish his beer, couldn’t get the image of Albert Horn out of his mind, all of a sudden.

Jennifer lay down on her back on the couch, facing him. “Did I make you mad?”

“Nah. Just thinking.”

“Can I change the subject?”

“All right.”

“So I’ve been wondering what you meant about the rules. When I came you said it was best to have things a certain way, so we both knew where we stood, respected each other in the apartment. The thing is, my circumstances have changed now, you know?”

“How so?”

“I told you. No more boyfriend.”

He gave her a long look. She was lying modestly, had her legs closed. She draped one arm up over her head and flopped her wrist across the armrest behind her. Her body language was insouciant, but her eyes told a different story. She studied his face like she wanted to know an answer before she asked the question.

“I’m kinda tired,” Diaz said, pushing unwelcome images of that afternoon from his mind. “Why don’t you just spit it out. You planning to move?”

“Nothing like that. I like it here. I’m just wondering—we originally said no visitors—but now that I’m single again, would it be okay if I brought a guy up now and then? I’d feel safer here and I promise to be very respectful.”

Diaz picked at the label on the Budweiser. “Respectful of what?”

“Of—I don’t know—your rights.”

“Hey, it’s a free country. But this is my place originally. I don’t want to be around, you know—”

“What?” She sat up in one motion, crossed her legs, grabbed a throw pillow, and covered her lap.

Diaz flushed. “I don’t want to hear any noise, okay?”

“Noise?”

“You know...when you’re in there.”

“Sex. You’re talking about sex. It’s okay to say it.” A twist formed in one corner of her mouth. “You think I’m a screamer?”

In his mind’s eye, Diaz pictured the vibrator in the bathroom drawer. “I don’t think anything.”

He felt hotter than ever as she broke into a teasing smile. “You’re not embarrassed, are you—embarrassed to think about the things women do?”

“Of course not!” But he did feel something—something uncomfortable. “Just keep the noise down and it’ll be fine, okay?” He finished his beer in one gulp and set the bottle back on the table too hard.

Jennifer froze at the sound.

Diaz sensed her gaze on him, but he wouldn’t meet it. He felt the redness washing across his face and neck, like a rush of steam rising from a deep dark shaft. If he wasn’t careful, he’d fall toward that place.

He touched the back of his neck and felt clammy sweat there. The apartment was a furnace and the pipes were knocking. Without another word he put on some shoes and a coat, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door closed behind him.

NORTH OF 181ST STREET, A
pedestrian bridge connected Riverside Drive to a walking path known as the Hudson River Greenway. Diaz crossed at a brisk clip and headed south, this portion of the path running close to the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Near the George Washington Bridge, the path meandered through some trees—leafless in the winter cold—and passed through a tunnel under the southbound lanes.

He felt restless. Pent-up energy shot through his legs like an electrical charge and with his hands in his coat pockets a shudder pulled his shoulders toward his ears. It may have appeared to a passer-by as a response to the cold, but Diaz didn’t feel cold. He felt like a man on fire.

Twenty feet above him, traffic roared over the road. He went through the concrete underpass and proceeded along the river past the tennis courts, which were dark. The rain had stopped but the air remained damp, bone-biting. There weren’t many people about, only the occasional jogger or brave cyclist. In front of him, Diaz could see his breath in clouds like exhaust from a smokestack.

Why had he responded that way to Jennifer? Resistance to change? But if he didn’t want her bringing other men back, he could’ve put the kibosh on it right there and then. It was his apartment, the one place where he had complete latitude, but he caved in and ran like a coward as soon as she challenged him. Did he have feelings for her? He didn’t think so, but he’d never considered that before. She was stunning, but that wasn’t the same as an emotional attraction.

No, he decided, it wasn’t that. What had angered him was the lack of control. Up in the apartment, he didn’t want to lash out in response, ruin a good thing. That’s why he had to get out of there. That and only that.

Where the path crept close to the parkway, Diaz paused and turned to look at the giant bridge, the George Washington, its suspension cables lit up like a string of beads, the tops of trucks gliding along the roadbed in a straight line like hockey pucks on ice. It would take a lot to blow that bridge, he thought. Still, it was only a matter of time before someone tried.

His mind jumped to the package near the steps of St. Pat’s. To succeed as a bomb technician, he’d learned many years ago, it wasn’t enough to concentrate on the mechanics of an IED. If that was all he’d done back in the armed forces, he’d have ended up in no better shape than this guy Albert Horn. Maybe worse, if there was such a thing. No, the key was to get inside the head of the bomb maker. If you could think like him, you could anticipate how he might operate.

Maybe, Diaz thought, he had to approach Kahn the same way. Because he felt that the space between him and Kahn had become a minefield, and maybe he wasn’t doing such a good job of watching his step anymore. Like that thing with looking up “procedure” in the dictionary. He was trying to win an argument, but that was like trying to win an argument with a drill instructor. The drill instructor didn’t want to hear anything but “Yes, sir, yes”—no matter whether they’d gone off for a Sunday stroll or Armageddon had erupted outside the chain-link fence.

Still, that damned package near the steps...Diaz knew for sure it was nothing the second he’d wrapped his mind around it. Just knew it.

Altoids!
He scoffed.
Oranges!
The damn thing couldn’t have been more harmless. He barely felt threatened when he stooped over it, therefore experienced little relief when he cut into it and saw the contents.

Out on the greenway, Diaz took a deep breath of cold air. Suddenly he felt too calm—like he could fall asleep right there on the path, his eyelids and feet heavy with the stress of the day. He forced himself to walk forward, still heading south, away from the apartment. Soon the path came tight along the parkway again. Diaz felt the whoosh of each car roaring by, the vacuum tugging at him. It raised a familiar sensation in his chest, a sensation that he may or may not like, but to which long ago he’d become accustomed.

Without thinking further, Diaz lifted his left leg and scrambled over the jersey wall. There were only a couple of feet between the curved concrete of the wall and the solid white line of the shoulder. He hewed to the wet, narrow space, absorbed the rush of air from passing cars time and again, ignored their occasional horns.

This was crazy, he knew.
But the feeling!
It made him high—as high as any drug—and as he walked abreast of danger, all of his worries melted in the intensity.

IN FRONT OF A BUILDING
in the financial district, the stalker spotted Gavin Littel at last. The time had gotten past nine o’clock. The stalker knew the time as well as anyone, having checked his watch every fifteen minutes for more than two hours. He’d come to the corner of Wall and Hanover Streets at seven o’clock because Littel worked late most nights, no point in freezing one’s ass off any longer than necessary. Already the stalker’s fingers were stiff and achy, his raincoat wet through. A few degrees colder and it could snow.

Gavin Littel walked out the grand front entrance of his office building and up the sidewalk. The stalker followed thirty paces behind. If he lost his target he’d just come back tomorrow and start again. He was eager to get on with things, but aborting the mission would be better than getting too close here and running the risk of raising suspicions. Littel worked as some kind of vice president in the bowels of Powers Bank. That much the stalker knew, but he didn’t know precisely what the man did up in that tower all day. The means of employment didn’t figure much into his calculations. He only guessed that Littel worked a job befitting his name. He wasn’t an investment banker or a big-money trader. He didn’t have the look. Button cuffs wouldn’t cut it in that crowd and the tie didn’t seem lush enough and the suit just didn’t hang the same way as the ones on the guys who rushed in and out of limos all day long.

When Littel went down into the subway, the stalker had to close the gap. Fortunately, there were plenty of people down there, even past rush hour. The stalker hid in the crowd on the Number 3 subway platform and in a few minutes they were on the train heading in the direction of New Lots Avenue.

Littel paid the stalker no mind, stood there leaning against the pole in his raincoat and working the toggle on his Samsung with his good hand. The stalker grabbed the last seat and faded into it, unnoticed. Just another drone. But when Littel exited the station at Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, things got trickier. Many of the people getting out were Hasidic Jewish men dressed in black with black hats and side curls. Most of the rest were African-Americans. The Hasids mostly headed west. Littel and the stalker headed east, two of only a few white guys in a stream of darker faces.

The stalker hung back again and had to allow Littel to turn off of Eastern Parkway onto Utica before wading after him into the larger crowd by the commercial strip. He spotted him again a quarter-block down, a man of medium height with a head of thick light brown hair cut conservatively. Littel’s walk was measured and strong, even athletic, and you would only perceive a slightly unnatural swing in the shoulders if you were looking for it.

The stalker was in fact looking for it. That hitch affirmed that he had the right man.

Littel went into a pub near the corner of Utica and Prospect Place. Through the window, the stalker watched him hang his raincoat on a peg and take one of two open seats at the bar. The rest of the place appeared to be three-quarters full, which was perfect, so the stalker went inside and slid into the banquette by a table for two. Speaking in a pronounced New York accent, Littel ordered tap beer and some food. In more neutral inflections, the stalker did the same, but would nurse his beer, only taking enough sips to keep up appearances. Littel watched the Knicks game on the television over the bar and chatted occasionally with the bartender. The stalker ate a cheeseburger and fries while he watched Littel’s back.

After a while, Littel shed his suit jacket. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, but without the jacket the stalker got a better look at Littel’s prosthetic right hand. He watched carefully now as Littel employed it almost like a real hand, holding a fork with it, even using it to lift his beer. The fingers moved individually and with great precision, all things considered. This confirmed that Littel still used a myoelectric externally powered prosthesis. It would have a six-volt battery inside and electronics that read muscle signals like a miniature nodule of artificial nerves. When Littel lifted his arm to wave for a third beer, his sleeve rode down, exposing more of the prosthetic arm, and the stalker let out a sigh of relief.

Given the expense and rarity, myoelectric prostheses were no picnic to steal. It had taken the stalker several months to find enough parts to replicate one just like Littel’s, and it was a relief that his target hadn’t changed equipment in the meantime. The stalker studied the artificial arm from across the room. It was a showy variety, styled more to stand out than to blend in—more cyborg than imitation flesh. Indeed the outer casing consisted of discernible parts rather than unified artificial skin.

The stalker smiled to himself. This construction played in his favor when replicating the prosthesis, as a casing with seams would reveal less tampering. In a short while, just to be sure, the stalker planned to get an even better look at it.

AROUND 11:15, THE KNICKS CONCLUDED
their defeat at the hands of the Jazz and Littel finally got up to go. He’d drunk quite heavily and now appeared unsteady on his feet. He struggled to crawl back inside his jacket and raincoat, declining help from the bartender.

The stalker, whose name was Warren Manis, appeared to look on impassively, but inside he felt delighted. A drunk target made his job much easier. He paid the waitress in cash and followed Littel from the pub.