A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (30 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” she said.

“Shh.” He laid a hand on her flat stomach. There was some blood on the blanket where she’d ground the broken glass into her skin.

“This isn’t funny, Warren.”

“It’s not meant to be. Be quiet and arch your back again, just as you did. Arch it and slowly rest it back down. Listen with care.”

Sallye did it.
Click.

“Hear that sound?”

She nodded, panic setting into her eyes.

“You’re lying atop a powerful bomb. Four pounds of very prejudiced C4, enough to obliterate everything in this room. A woman’s body is no match for it. As you treated me these past years, so I now treat you. Slow-drip torture, followed by an explosion.”

She looked around, her mind working.

“You’re wondering,” Manis said, “why it hasn’t gone off. It has a dead man’s switch, armed when you compressed it. That was the click.”

She lay stone-still now, frozen in fear. She wanted to live and so did he, but only one of them would have that wish fulfilled. He reached down and attached the wires, then gently coaxed them under the mattress.

“There. It’s done. The terrorists invented this method—clever guys. With a dead man’s switch there’s no backing out. Someone cuts the wire—boom. Lifting your weight up releases the spring. Boom.” He laughed, then remembered something. “Oh, and one more thing. There’s a battery decay, too. Six hours or so and it all goes kaboom no matter what you do.”

“What a shit you are.”

He gritted his teeth. “You’d think after all we’ve been through, that you’d learn to watch your mouth.”

“I hate you,” she said. “I’ve always hated you.”

He bristled. “But you never even knew me, Sallye.”

They were the last words he would ever speak to her.

LEWIS SALINOWSKY CHOSE TO STAND
on the Five Train, his arm draped across the overhead rail. He wore a new shirt that Father Igor had given him last Christmas and his cleanest pair of pants. He had no coat—didn’t own a coat that he could wear in the presence of the nurse. Way back when, she’d seen his most private excretions, his blood and his pus and what he’d left in the bedpan, but he could not subject her to the accumulated stench of the street. It would be a deal killer, and Salinowsky yearned not to kill this deal, his salvation.

On the way back from the park he’d stopped into a CVS and spent six precious dollars on Mennan Speed Stick and a new pair of tube socks, one of which he donned on his good foot and the other of which he’d pulled over the end of his prosthesis. At the shelter he begged admittance from the day watchman and dragged a disposable razor across his craggy face, nicking his chin. The water heater only ran in the morning, so he showered in cold water.

Once he’d dressed, he walked upstairs and through the baptistery to the main church, which was accessed through a cloister hidden from the street. He found the door open and went in, sitting in the third pew, facing the elaborately decorated altar. Father Igor never insisted that any of the homeless men attend services, and Salinowsky rarely had. He wasn’t much for prayer—until this moment had felt nearest to God when he had a needle in his arm. He bowed his head, but he didn’t know what to say, what to think.

He felt for his back pocket, which bulged with half a bundle of heroine and a single syringe. Aching for it, he rolled up his left sleeve and sought a vein on his scarred and mottled skin, then patted his clothing looking for a rubber band, but there was none. He hurriedly removed his belt and wrapped it around his arm. He was about to draw it taut when he stopped.

Salinowsky thought of his dinner with the cop last night, how sweet the strudel had tasted when he finally got hold of it, eating it in solitude.
Good things come to those who wait.
Hadn’t his grandfather imparted that wisdom to him? Lewis had waited a long time. He’d waited so long that he forgot what he’d been waiting for, but now he knew. He had lied to the cop when he said he only wrote one letter to Nurse Ritchie. He’d written many letters but he didn’t know whether any of them ever got through to her. Now he looked up to the carvings in the choir, the smooth foreheads and full cheeks of the saints, and he thought of Nurse Ritchie. Sallye. Smashed face and all, she was an angel come to him.

Then Lewis Salinowsky did something he never thought he’d do. All those times when he pictured himself at the methadone window had been preceded by a different image, a vision of his last high. Now he stood and wrapped his belt back around his waist. He removed the small bag of powder and the syringe from his pocket and walked to the font by the sacristy door and placed the items in the dry basin. As he left the church by a little-used back door, he rolled back down his sleeve, his hands shaking.

Outwardly he seemed weak, but inner strength had settled upon him. He had a goal now and he wouldn’t run from anything anymore. He saw with clarity that the man in the suit who’d been following him was gone, probably still waiting for him to emerge from the main shelter door. He considered whether to go back and confront his shadow, but instead he chose a crowded subway train and melded into and out of the chaos. A few more evasive maneuvers and for sure he’d lost the tail, whoever it was.

Minutes later he watched the lights on the board go black with each stop the train passed, until he arrived at Carroll Street Station. On the sidewalk he looked at the piece of cardboard upon which she’d written the address. He walked in the direction of the river until he found it, rang the buzzer and waited.

No one came but he heard a faint voice inside, calling. Her voice. The little angel voice. He tried the doorknob and found it open. He stepped inside.

THE APARTMENT HAD EXPOSED BRICK
, a kitchen counter to the left and a couch and shelves of books to the right. Near the middle, off center, a queen-size bed rested in an alcove, and on that bed lay Sallye Ritchie, naked. But something was wrong.

She stared straight up. As the door closed behind him, she said to the ceiling, “Warren?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Lewis.”

“Thank God. Come this way. Be careful.”

She was beautiful to him—it had been so long. But even in all the complexity of this strange life this was too strange. She called for help but as he approached her she started moaning for him to stop.

“Don’t touch the bed. There’s a bomb!”

She was hysterical. He would sit beside her, gently untie her, minister to her as she once had ministered to him.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Just stand there. Stand there and listen, Lewis.”

She explained about the bomb and how the bomb worked, that she couldn’t shift her weight on the bed, couldn’t get up.

“Get help,” she said. “Call the police.”

He shook his head. It was all too much. He suddenly wished he hadn’t thrown away his bundle.

The floor crunched underneath him.
What was that?

She said, “There’s a phone by the kitchen sink. Please. Call nine-one-one and get out. Save yourself.”

Save himself? Isn’t that what he’d been trying to do all along?

She was crying. “Please, Lewis. Please. You were always so kind, Lewis. So gentle. Be kind again.”

He picked up the telephone and looked at her lying there as he followed her instructions. She was pink in a lot of places, exposed, raw. It had been so long. He wished he could touch her.

But he needed a bundle most of all—the bundle he’d left in the church.

He stepped to the bed and reached out a hand toward her privates.

“Don’t,” she said.

It was all too strange. He needed a bundle, really needed it with every cell of his being. He crunched across the floor and left.

DIAZ, WORKING THE RADIO AS
Kahn drove, responded to the dispatch call as the setting sun lit the Brooklyn piers aglow. A 9-1-1 call from their very target. According to the dispatcher, there had been no one on the other end of the line. But the message rang clear to Diaz. It was all coming to a head.

Then his phone buzzed. Capobianco. “The guy from the Fifth lost the tail on Salinowsky.”

“No way.”

“Couldn’t follow a goddamn cripple. Now he could be anywhere—with Manis, near Manis, dead at the hands of Manis…”

“Any reports of an explosion?”

“Negative. But the night is young.”

Diaz watched as Kahn went apoplectic at the news. He’d never seen him this way. It might have amused him if the stakes weren’t now so high.

Ten minutes later, they pulled to a stop in front of a warehouse in Red Hook. First responders had already blocked off the corners, where fire engines idled, and a pair of blue-and-whites had parked in the middle of the street.

Kahn pulled the truck up alongside the curb. One of the uniformed cops approached as they got out. “You ain’t gonna believe what’s inside.”

He gave them a fill on the sidewalk but stopped at the door to the brick building. “I’m not going back in there.”

“That’d be advisable,” Kahn agreed.

They fetched limited body armor from the truck bay—vests and helmets. Diaz entered first, Kahn close behind him. Given the brief he’d just heard, even with the armor he felt as naked as the woman he saw across the room on the bed. “Hello. What makes you think there’s a bomb here?”

She told them. Sallye Ritchie. She couldn’t remember exactly how Manis had described the device, but her story was convincing. Then she added something about battery decay.

“Holy fuck,” Kahn mouthed silently.

“We’re going to withdraw from the room,” Diaz told Ritchie.

“Don’t leave me,” she said, her neck stiff, her eyes wide. She’d made no effort to look at them, afraid to lift her head.

“We have to get our equipment, ma’am. So we can disable the device. We’ll return in a minute, I swear.”

He was thinking hand entry, no body armor. If he showed up in the bomb suit, she’d panic and no amount of Kevlar would save him. Not from four pounds of C4 at close proximity.

The detectives stepped back outside. Kahn took one look at the uniformed cops and started yelling at them to get back, form a larger perimeter.

“Should we take our cars?” one of them asked.

Kahn told them to move the cruisers behind the fire trucks on the corner. He and Diaz did the same with the response truck.

Capobianco had now arrived in a Suburban. Burbette was there, too, and before anyone said three words, Andy Stoltz, the ATF guy, screeched up in a black Dodge.

He jumped out, a short man with black hair and a putrid tie. “What’s up?”

“There’s a bomb,” Burbette deadpanned.

“What are we doing about it?”

“This is New York. We’re letting the NYPD handle it.”

When Burbette escorted Stoltz away, Kahn turned to Capobianco. “This is bad, Lieutenant. Is there anyone in the warehouse?”

“They’re evacuating that as we speak. The whole block.”

“We can’t use the robot,” Diaz said. “It’s hand-entry RSP all the way.”

He and Kahn related what they’d observed.

Capobianco looked at Diaz. “Is the device at all visible?”

“Negative. We’ll set up the ScanX system using all the panels.”

“Any sign of a timer?”

“She mentioned a battery decay. Regardless, she won’t stay still forever.”

“All right.” Capobianco pursed his lips. “Who wants to go? Only one of you.”

“I’m volunteering,” Diaz said, “if the sergeant here can maintain the staging area.”

“Fine with me,” Kahn agreed almost too readily.

While they spoke, Higgins had pulled up in another of the Bomb Squad response trucks. He threw open the back doors, and Diaz shed his body armor and grabbed the x-ray panels.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, DIAZ
stood by Manis’s kitchen counter with the ScanX panels under his arms. “Don’t be alarmed,” he called across the room.

She didn’t reply. Stress could exhaust a person. He wondered whether she’d fallen asleep. If so, that would be very bad. She might wake up and reflexively lift her weight from the bed.

He approached at a measured pace, carrying the panels in front of him as lightly as he could. If the bomb detonated, they’d become shrapnel that would cut him to ribbons, but he consoled himself with the notion that he’d be dead before he felt a thing. His plan was to analyze whatever image he could get of the bomb and then formulate a disarming strategy from there. The disrupter out in the truck could render the device safe if he got a good look, but the disrupter was a remote tool that you could only use in a non-life-threatening situation. This would be hand-entry all the way.

A few steps later he was close enough to place the panels. As he leaned them against the side of the bed, Ritchie opened her eyes. The sight hit Diaz like a jolt.

“Don’t move,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Diaz became aware that he was already sweating profusely. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He opened them again, calmer now. Her face had been smashed and she was naked as a jaybird and presumably lying atop a bomb in an alcove with her arms and legs strapped down in the shape of an X. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a sadomasochistic set-up. Then again, in a manner of speaking, maybe it was. Regardless, for all that he’d seen at home and at war, Diaz didn’t think he’d ever witnessed anyone in so compromising a position. It was a hell of a price to pay for your sexual perversions.

“Who called the cops?”

“Lewis.”

“He still around?”

“I don’t think so, but he’s not my problem anymore.”

Diaz let some air out of his lungs. It sounded like the dropped tail didn’t matter. Salinowsky and Manis hadn’t crossed paths today. Sallye and the Bomb Squad would find themselves in this situation either way.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” he said, as much to himself as to the nurse. “I’m just assessing the situation. We’ll x-ray what’s under the mattress. Could be things aren’t as bad as you presume.”

“If you believe that, you guys don’t know Warren at all. He’s a freak, but a clever one. Especially when provoked.” She huffed ironically. “In fact, you get the best out of him when he’s provoked. Everyone saw what he did to those others and I saw the look in his eyes when he left here. He’s devious as hell. I’d watch my step if I were you.”