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That was another thing that interested him. The scale of Rashid's operation meant he had to have a ton of money from somewhere. He was keeping all these guys in couscous or whatever, he seemed to have bought a whole business to use as a base, and another one as a source of septic tanker trucks. He bought houses and cars and fake IDs without strain. Obviously money was the key, because without it, you'd have to steal vehicles and rent, and that was what would get you caught. It could not be in cash, as he had previously thought. There had to be accounts, wire transfers in and out. He would have to find a way of getting his hands on some of that money.

Rashid was asking for questions; there were surprisingly few, considering the complexity of the plan. Felix wondered whether all these guys had worked together before. He raised his hand. Rashid acknowledged him with an imperious gesture.

“Yeah, Rashid, I noticed you didn't give me an assignment. I'm not on this thing?”

“No, Felix, I want you to continue what you have been doing,” said Rashid, “also, if you would stay after the others have left, I have some special instructions.”

It took an hour or so for the place to empty, the men departing alone or in twos at intervals, so as not to draw attention. They spoke to one another in Arabic as they awaited their turns to leave, and ignored Felix. Finally, when only Rashid and the two fake Spaniards remained, Rashid turned to Felix and said, “The chief wants this Karp business taken care of, and also the information from the girl. I was under the impression that this was nearly in your hands.”

Again Felix felt that odd repugnance associated with the thought of approaching Lucy Karp. “Hey, she clams up. She doesn't want to talk about your guy. I misjudged the situation. I don't think the soft shit is going to work with her. Sorry. I think we need to pick her up and work her over.” His words hardly sounded convincing to his own ears, and it was all he could do to keep the humble, remorseful expression on his face.

What the terrorist said next was therefore something of a relief. “It does not matter. There is no need to deal with the girl directly. She has a brother, two brothers, and one of them is blind. They are often out of their house. The blind one plays music on the street.” Then something in Arabic to the other two, who responded with laughter. “It should not be hard to pick one or both of them up. Then the sister will of course provide us with any information we want.”

“You want me to pick up the kid?”

“No, someone else will take care of that. I want you to deliver another device. The wife must be eliminated first. She has a truck.”

Felix smiled and thought about the bomb he had already made for Marlene Ciampi, killer of his brother. Oh, good, that saves me a bomb. He began to consider who would get it.

“What about Karp?” he asked.

“He'll be taken care of in due time. We have a plan for everything, as you saw just now. First you will make this one delivery and then we will see.”

“Yeah, but it'd be good if I was a little more into the planning end, so I could get an idea of how everything fits together. I mean, why are we still planting these little bombs when you've got this big blast coming?”

Rashid responded with an icy glare, and, “You know, Felix, you are still on what we can call probation because of your recent betrayal. You will therefore be told only what you need to know. Don't get above yourself is my advice.”

Felix made himself grin engagingly and nod. “Sure, whatever you say, Rashid.”

“Excellent. I will give you the device shortly. And now, if you will excuse us…”

It was a dismissal. Felix left the room and as he did so, a notional lightbulb lit above his head as he realized how he was going to get the money out of Rashid. A smile bloomed on his face.

And on Rashid's. He turned to his two companions. “Well? What do you think. Is he hooked?”

They nodded and smiled and agreed that he truly was.

T
HERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE AIR CONDITIONING
in Part 34. The temperature outside the grimy windows was moving toward eighty, and inside the packed courtroom the ambiance was approaching that of the midsummer subway at rush hour. They brought in two large fans at Judge Higbee's order, so that it was like standing in front of the kitchen exhaust of a deli, without the greasy smell.

Karp didn't mind the heat particularly, although he noticed that Roland Hrcany was a little more red-faced than usual. He actually felt sorriest for the jury, who were fanning themselves with their instructional pamphlets: “Your Jury Duty, An American Privilege.” The defendants didn't seem to be sweating at all. Perhaps they had rolled in Arrid.

But on the stand, Hugo Selwyn also seemed to be feeling the heat. He had a big bandanna out and often mopped his face with it, establishing a certain
Inherit the Wind
tone. The ballistics expert was a big man, in his mid-sixties, with a thick mop of silvery curls, like a cartoon senator, a bolo tie, and a powder blue three-piece suit. With his solid jaw and canny blue gaze, he looked like central casting had sent him over to play an expert witness. Karp imagined he garnered a good deal of his custom off his looks, that and his willingness to provide an expert opinion favorable to the defense, whatever the ascertainable facts might be. Selwyn had been on the stand once already, before the bomb had knocked both Collins and Klopper out, during which time the defense had been at pains to establish the man as a legitimate ballistics expert, and, according to the transcript Karp had carefully read, Collins had done a good job painting him in whore's colors.

Roland had a big easel set up next to the witness stand, upon which a gigantic color diagram of the crime scene, generated by a computer, Karp imagined, with the positions of Gerber, Nixon, and the victim, Onabajo, marked out according to the defense's theory of the case. The trajectory and final fate of the seven bullets also appeared, each bullet's path marked with a different color. Karp thought it was an effective chart, if largely fictional, and thought it was clever to use a computer diagram instead of a photograph, which was what Collins had used when he presented the state's version. There was a lot of blood in the photograph, a lot more than you saw even in slasher movies. That was one of the big shocks of real-life crime, just how much blood got spilled in a fatal shooting. The defense did not wish to draw attention to the blood.

Roland was taking the old fraudster through the expert testimony with his usual skill. Seven bullets, and they each had names by now. On a smaller easel off to one side, but well within the jury's view, was a photographic blowup of all seven, lined up like little soldiers, and exhibiting various states of deformation. They were all Federal 115-grain jacketed hollow-point nine-millimeter bullets, two fired from Nixon's Smith & Wesson Model 915 and five from Gerber's Ruger P89, and those that had hit something solid had turned into little mushrooms. Roland asked his expert to explain how each bullet had ended up where the cops had found it. Bullet one (B-1), the jury learned, had exploded from Detective Nixon's pistol while it was pointed seventeen degrees below the horizontal, entering the body of the assailant…

“Objection,” said Karp. “Mr. Onabajo is not the assailant in this case. He is the victim. Mr. Gerber, the defendant, may be called the assailant if counsel so wishes.”

“Sustained,” said the judge. “Modify your question, counsel.”

The body of Mr. Onabajo, then; it had glanced off Mr. Onabajo's hip bone, exited Mr. Onabajo's body, ricocheted off a fire hydrant, and buried itself in the tire of a parked vehicle. Was the position of the muzzle of the pistol consistent with struggling over the weapon? Could Mr. Onabajo's hand have been on the weapon when it was fired?

Objection from Karp. Calls for conclusion outside the alleged expertise of the witness. Sustained. Roland objected to the use of the word “alleged.” Judge told Karp to watch it.

Karp sat down feeling fairly good about this first tapping of the foils. It was going to be an interesting trial, an enjoyable trial actually, if that wasn't the wrong word to use about any participation in this hideous disaster. Roland and he had been trained in the same school, were about equal in skill and knowledge, and were meeting as adversaries for the first time, the difference being that Roland really wanted to crush Karp, and Karp did not particularly care about Roland. He wanted to get Gerber and Nixon, though.

The rest of Selwyn's testimony went off without objection. Roland knew how to phrase questions well enough, and Karp was never a lawyer to load on purely tactical objections designed to break the flow of the witnesses' narratives. He'd take care of Mr. Selwyn on cross. The only thing preventing Karp from being as happy as he ever got in a professional setting was that nagging thought—he had missed something, and it had to do with the bullets in some way, and unless he thought of it pretty soon, it would be too late to insert into the trial.

 

At three that afternoon, Marlene prepares to leave her loft for the purposes of placing under surveillance the residence of Bruce Newton, the cousin—according to the New York State Department of Corrections—of the late Felix Tighe. Her boys, with whom she had been spending a rare maternal day, are not pleased.

“Can we come?” asks Zak.

“No, it's work. I'll be back in two hours. And Lucy will be home soon.”

“It's okay, Zak,” says the brother, “we need to see Bogart and get some more skag. We're almost out and I don't want to have to kick cold turkey again.”

“Yeah, right,” Zak agrees, “But we have to knock over a convenience store first to get paid. Or we could sell your body in the West Village.”

“Whatever,” says Giancarlo, smiling angelically at his mother.

“I hate both of you,” says Marlene. “It was a mistake to have you, and you're both going to foster care the minute I get back.” She marches toward the door and trips over her dog, who rises in her path for just that purpose. The boys laugh cruelly.

“Oh, all right!” she snarls.
“You
can come.”

Giancarlo says, “See, I told you, she loves the dog more than us.”

“You're darn tooting, I do,” says Marlene, “he's more useful and he's a lot cheaper to feed.” She strikes like a snake, grabs both of them and kisses them both wetly on the cheeks, as they squirm and howl their disgust.

“Honestly,” says Marlene in the descending elevator. “Did you ever hear such mouthing off? I was like the perfect mother all day. Jelly omelets and Canadian bacon for brekkie. A special trip to the video store for kung-fu movies. I mean, really! What would
you
do?”

Their flesh would feel the grip of my mighty fangs, snarls the dog.

“Oh, shut up!” says his mistress. “You only say that because you're not a mother.”

Marlene keeps her Ford 150 pickup in a lot on Grand. She has her key ring out and is just about to push the little button that switches off the alarm, when Gog the mastiff barks twice. She freezes and looks at the dog. Gog practically never barks, and when he does, it is only in particular situations, as when warning someone off an area he has been instructed to guard, but that bark is a different bark from the one he now utters. This one is higher-pitched, with a little whine at the end. Chill flashes over Marlene's body. She stares at her truck, then at her dog, then spins on her heel and dashes out of the parking lot, fumbling for her cell phone as she runs.

 

Lucy saw the flashing lights as she crossed Grand at Broadway, and without thinking, began trotting toward the scene, with the pounding starting in her chest. It never occurred to her that a police emergency might be happening on her corner without her family being in some serious way involved. The cordon had been thrown quite wide around the parking lot at Grand and Crosby, the reason for that explained by the characteristic shape of the bomb squad containment vessel truck. She shouldered through the dense crowd—all the neighboring buildings had been evacuated, obviously—and then worked around the police lines until she spotted her brothers and her mother. Her mother was talking to a man in a NYPD hardhat and a white Tyvek suit.

“Mom! What's going on?” Lucy asked.

Giancarlo answered. “The Manbomber tried to bomb Mom's truck.”

“You have to be kidding!”

“No lie,” said Zak. “Gog sniffed it before Mom got into the truck.”

“Mah-um!” cried Lucy.

Marlene broke away from her conversation with the detective and approached her daughter, who embraced her enthusiastically.

“We don't know it's the Manbomber yet, and what's with the hugs?” said Marlene. “Are you getting married?”

“No, Mom, it's my natural reaction when you're nearly blown to bits. It's allowed. Check out the Good Daughter's Handbook, page twenty-four.”

“Please, I've already been blown up once. It can't happen again. Ask Lieutenant Tancredi here.”

The cop, a heavyset man with a fat brush moustache, rolled an eye. “She's right. There's practically no one gets blown up by a bomb more than once.”

“I bet it was the Manbomber,” said Zak. “We're going to be famous.”

“Not if I can help it,” said Marlene, and to the cop, “Lieutenant, when can I have my truck back?”

“Couple of hours, maybe. CSU has to dust, and then they got to stand around hoping that a clue will turn up, the bastard dropped a matchbook with the name of a nightclub on it, and a phone number on the inside.”

“It was definitely the guy, though?”

A raised eyebrow. “You didn't hear it from me, but yeah. Hell, even your little kid knows it's him.” He grinned at Zak, then said to Marlene, ungrinning. “We're going to have to talk.”

“Well, you know where to find me. Let's go, kids, show's over.”

It was. The bomb truck rolled away, the blue-and-whites cranked up and moved out of barricade position, the technicians and detectives departed, as did the throng. Soon the only police presence that remained was clustered around Marlene's pickup truck, which was still marked off from the rest of the lot by yellow crime-scene tape.

The Karp family went back to their loft. Lucy had to spend a good deal of time being loved by her dog, Magog, who had been sleeping under her bed while she was gone. Marlene observed them rolling around on the floor with a professional eye. “They're not supposed to be one-man dogs like that, but Maggie sure is. How did you manage it?”

“She's a freak of nature like me,” said Lucy, kissing the huge black muzzle. “Aren't you?
Aren't you?
Yes, you are.”

Marlene did not call Lucy on the freak business, as she had reflexively in the past. They were past that, it seemed, and Lucy had, after the spontaneous embrace down on the street, slipped into the correct formality she had used with her mother since the grim events of the previous summer. Marlene studied the girl. She looked good; there was a glow coming off her as she laughed and played with the dog. She wondered if she had at long last become Dan Heeney's lover, and had opened her mouth to say something that would move them back into the intimacy they had once shared, but the words stuck in her throat. She went into the kitchen and poured out a glass of Barolo. She could have a glass of wine, she thought; she had almost been killed.

A buzz from the intercom: it was Lieutenant Tancredi from the Manbomber task force, and could he come up. The detective had shed his helmet and white suit, and was now in a short-sleeved blue shirt and tie and a wilted cotton jacket. He was accompanied by a younger cop named Fox. She installed them on stools in her kitchen, poured them iced tea, and another glass of wine for herself.

They did an interview. The central questions involved the other victims. Tancredi showed her a short stack of sheets they had made up, a little picture of a dead person, a name, a description. Marlene pointed to Pete Balducci's image. “I knew him. We were friends.”

“Pete Balducci,” said Tancredi. “Yeah, I knew him, too. A shame. No one else?”

“Some of the other people were involved in the criminal justice business and I knew them by rep or we had some casual contact. Klopper, Horowitz, this Daoud guy was the father of a girl I knew once.” This was not the time to bring up Felix Tighe and Raney's odd obsession. See the cousin first.

“Uh-huh, well, that's not unusual, then. Everyone seems to know a victim or someone who knew a victim. It hasn't added up to anything yet. So—anything at all, anyone you know who'd want to put a bomb in your car? Assuming it wasn't, that all of these aren't, totally random?”

“To kill me? Are you serious?”

The cop put on a mollifying smile. “Well, we have to ask.”

“Dozens. Scores.”

A frown. “No, I meant I
am
serious.”

“So am I. You don't know who I am?”

“No, who are you, ma'am?”

“I used to be a PI. I shot a few people, and messed up a larger number, mostly guys who wanted to beat up their women friends. I discouraged stalkers as a profession. On the other hand, I can't really think that any of them blew up half the city in order to disguise a hit on me. It's a little overelaborate, even for a stalker.”