Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais

  No one knew better than John Michael Fowles what it took to make Modex Hybrid or how to find those things within the bomb community.

  John Michael Fowles had resources, and he had clues.

  Somebody had stolen his work, which meant someone was trying to horn in on his glory.

  John Michael Fowles was not going to tolerate that.

  He was going out there to get the sonofabitch.

  PART TWO

  • • •

  • • •

  I Luv L.A.

  John Michael Fowles got off the plane with twenty-six thousand dollars, three driver’s licenses, and four credit cards, two of which matched with names on the licenses. He also had the phone number of a twenty-eight-year-old flight attendant with dimples deep enough to swallow you and a tan warmer than a golden sunset. She lived in Manhattan Beach. Her name was Penny.

  Just being in Los Angeles made John smile.

  He loved the dry sunny weather, the palm trees, the good-looking babes in their skimpy clothes, the cool people, the slick cars, the hunger for wealth, the asshole movie stars, that the whole damned place was so big and flat and spread to hell, the La Brea Tar Pits, hot dog stands that looked like hot dogs, that big-ass Hollywood sign spread across that friggin’ mountain, earthquakes and firestorms, the funky clubs on the Sunset Strip, sushi, the caramel tans, Mexicans, the tour buses filled with people from Iowa, the glittering swimming pools, the ocean, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the G’s with their forties, and Disneyland.

  It was a great place for devastation.

  First thing he did was rent a convertible from Hertz, strip off his shirt, slip on his shades, and cruise up Sepulveda Boulevard, looking good. He was past his mad now, over his snit; now was the time for cold calculation and furious vengeance. Mr. Red had arrived.

  John dropped the shitkicker persona and went black. He loved white guys who acted black. M&Ms. Light on the outside, dark on the inside. Yo, G, ’sup? L. A. was the perfect place for this. Everyone was always pretending to be something they weren’t.

  John bought oversized clothes from a secondhand shop two blocks up from the beach in Venice, a new iBook, and the other things he needed, then took a room at a small motel called the Flamingo Arms. It smelled of foreigners. John shaved his head, draped himself with faux gold chains, then signed on to the Internet. This time he didn’t bother with cracking into the NLETS system. He searched for news stories on the Silver Lake bomb, finding three pieces. The first two articles contained pretty much the same thing: the LAPD Bomb Squad had rolled out to investigate a suspicious package, whereupon Officer Charles Riggio, thirty-four, a nine-year veteran of the squad, was killed when the package exploded. None of the news stories gave details of the device, though the detective leading the investigation, a woman named Carol Starkey, was quoted as attributing the bomb, “a crude, poorly made device,” to “an infantile personality.” John laughed when he read that. He knew that the ATF suspected him, and that, therefore, LAPD suspected him, also.

  John said, “The dumb bitch is trying to play me.”

  John was especially intrigued by the third story, a sidebar article on Starkey herself, who had once been a bomb tech until she had been caught in an explosion. The article said that Starkey had actually died, but had been revived at the scene. John was fascinated by that. There was a photograph of Starkey and some other cops at the scene, but the picture was small and the resolution was poor. John stared at Starkey, trying to see through the murk, and touched the screen.

  “Well.”

  In the final paragraph, Starkey vowed to find the person or persons responsible for Riggio’s death.

  John smiled at that one.

  “Not if I find the motherfucker first.”

  John dumped the news stories and went to his web site in Rochester for the list of phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other things he often needed but didn’t carry. He copied the phone number of a man he knew as Clarence Jester, who lived in Venice. Jester owned a small pawnshop as his primary occupation, but was an arsonist. Now in his late fifties, Jester had once served twelve years of federal time for starting fires and was an on-again, off-again psychiatric patient. His hobby was adopting dogs from the pound, dousing them with gasoline, and watching them burn. In the past, John had found him an excellent source of information about those in the bomb community.

  “Clarence. It’s LeRoy Abramowicz, my man. I’m in L.A.”

  “Yeah?”

  Clarence Jester spoke with the careful hesitancy of a paranoid, which he was.

  “Thought I might swing by and do a little business. That cool?”

  “I guess.”

  Anxious to get going, but hungry, John scarfed a Big Kahuna Burger on the way, ambling into Clarence Jester’s pawnshop a few minutes later.

  Jester was a small, nervous man, with badly thinning hair. He would not shake hands, explaining that he had a thing about germs.

  “Hey, Clarence. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Clarence, ready for him, closed the shop without a word.

  Outside, Clarence eyed him carefully.

  “You look different.”

  “I went black. Everybody’s doing it.”

  “Mm.”

  Business was always done outside, John knowing that Clarence would be more than happy to trade customers for prison time. Twice before, John had bought ammonium picrate from Jester. In addition to being an arsonist, Jester bought and sold explosives, extreme pornography, and the occasional automatic assault weapon. John knew that whoever duplicated his bomb would have to mix their own Modex Hybrid, which meant they would have had to acquire RDX.

  “Clarence, I’m looking for a little RDX. You help me with that?”

  “Ha.”

  “What’s the ‘ha’ mean, my man?”

  “You don’t sound black. You sound like a white man trying to talk nigger.”

  “Stay with the RDX, Clarence. Do me that courtesy.”

  “Nobody has RDX. I see some RDX once every couple of years, that’s it. I got some TNT and PETN, though. That PETN will blow your ass off.”

  Clarence brushed his fingers across his mouth as he said it, mumbling his words. He probably thought John was wired.

  “Gotta be RDX.”

  “I can’t help you with that.”

  “That’s you. There’s gotta be someone else. Hell, you’re not living in Buttcrack. This is L.A. You got everydamnthing out here.”

  A girl in a Day-Glo green bikini bladed past, her ears wrapped in headphones. She had a tattoo of a sun rising out of her pants and a yellow cocker spaniel on a leash. John noticed that Clarence watched the dog.

  “Just point the way, Clarence. I find what I’m looking for, I’ll kick back a finder’s fee to you. I won’t leave you cold.”

  The dog disappeared around a corner.

  “The RDX is ringing a bell.”

  “There you go.”

  “Don’t get excited just yet. When I say it’s hard to find, I mean it’s hard to find. Just a few years ago, there was a fellow up north who got busted for blowing up cars. He was using RDX. I can maybe put you in touch with him.”

  John began to feel jazzed. Connections lead to connections.

  “A customer of yours?”

  “He didn’t get the RDX from me, I’ll tell you that.”

  Clarence proceeded to tell him about a man named Dallas Tennant, who was now serving time. John stopped him when he got to the part about prison, irritated.

  “Hold on. What in hell good does it do me if he’s in the goddamn prison?”

  “You can talk to him on Claudius.”

  “In prison?”

  “Like that means shit. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I did when I was in prison. Listen, somehow this guy turned enough RDX to blow up three cars. If he can’t help you, maybe he can put you with someone who can.”

  His irritation lifted, and John began to feel jazzed again. This was the way he knew it had to be, all the way out
from New Orleans. He wondered if Detective Starkey was smart enough to backtrack the RDX. And if their paths would cross.

  “Do you know Mr. Tennant’s screen name?”

  “Got it back in my computer. You know how to get on Claudius?”

  “I know.”

  John clapped Jester on the back, just to see him flinch.

  “Thanks, Clarence.”

  “Don’t touch me. I don’t like that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, you heard the big rumor we got out here?”

  “No. What rumor?”

  “Mr. Red came to town. They’re saying he blew up some cop in Silver Lake.”

  His mood ruined, John clapped Clarence Jester on the back again.

  Atascadero

  When the last of the inmates had left the library, Dallas Tennant gathered the magazines and books from the tables, stacking them on his cart. The library wasn’t very big, only six tables, but the reading selection was current and varied. Several of the inmates at Atascadero were millionaires who had arranged for generous donations of books so that they would have something to read. The Atascadero library was the envy of the California State Prison system.

  Mr. Riley, the civilian employee who managed the library, turned out the light in his office. He was a retired high school history teacher.

  “Are you almost done here, Dallas?”

  “I just have to put these away, then dust the stacks. It won’t take long.”

  Mr. Riley hesitated in his door. He was never comfortable leaving the inmate employees unattended, though there was nothing in the rules against it.

  “Well, maybe I should stay.”

  Dallas smiled pleasantly. Earlier, Dalllas had overheard Mr. Riley say that his son and daughter-in-law were coming for dinner, so he knew that Riley was anxious to leave.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Riley. We got that box of new books today. I thought I would enter them into the computer tonight so I’d have more time to restack the shelves tomorrow. That might keep me here later than I thought.”

  “Well, as long as the door is closed by nine. You have to be at the infirmary by nine or they’ll come looking for you.”

  Inmates at Atascadero had enormous freedom, but there was still oversight. Dallas, for example, could work late at the library, but was required to stop by the infirmary for his nightly meds. If he didn’t report there by nine P.M., the nurse would notify the duty guard, who would set about finding him.

  “I know, sir. I will. Would you tell the guard that I’ll be in your office, please, just in case he walks by and sees me in there?”

  “I will. You have a good evening, Dallas.”

  “You, too, sir.”

  Not wanting to linger, Mr. Riley left, thanking Dallas for his good work just as he thanked him every evening.

  Dallas Tennant was a good boy. Always had been and still was, even in Atascadero. He was polite, well-mannered, and even-tempered. He was also a bright boy, way bright enough not only to mix chemicals and construct intricate devices, but also to manipulate others.

  As soon as Dallas arrived at Atascadero, he had arranged for a job in the kitchen, which not only gave him access to things like baking soda and match heads, but also gave him an unlimited supply of snack foods. He was then able to trade the snacks with inmates working in Janitorial Services for certain cleaning products, which, when combined with things pilfered from the kitchen, created dandy little explosives.

  His little accident and the loss of his thumb had ruined that, getting him banned from any area containing chemical supplies, but this library job was almost as good for a different kind of access.

  The ironic part of being banned from kitchen and cleaning duty was that Dallas did not create that particular explosive from supplies found within the prison. He had traded for that explosive with someone from the outside.

  Dallas still smiled, thinking about it, even with the loss of his thumb. Some things were worth a small sacrifice.

  Dallas cleared the remainder of the magazines and books, but didn’t take the time to put them in their proper places. He stepped out into the hall, making sure that Mr. Riley was gone, then checked the time. A guard would be along in about twenty minutes to see if Dallas was where he was supposed to be. Dallas went into Riley’s office, broke out the box of books that the guard would be expecting to see, then recovered the software diskette that he kept hidden behind Riley’s file cabinet. Though Atascadero was a modern facility and was linked to the California prison system via the Internet, no computer that prisoners could access was supposed to have Internet software installed; that was reserved for secure office machines and the computers belonging to the administrators.

  Dallas had acquired his own software, arranging for his attorney to pay his monthly service charges from his rental income.

  He loaded the software onto Riley’s hard drive, connected the modem to the phone line, and signed on. When he was finished for the evening, he would un-install, and Mr. Riley would be none the wiser.

  In moments, Dallas Tennant was home again.

  Claudius.

  It was the one place where Tennant felt comfortable, an anonymous world where he was not judged or ridiculed, but embraced as one of a like tribe. His only friends were there, other anonymous screen names with whom he shared posts in the public areas and often chatted in the secret chat room. His instant-messaging list showed several who were currently signed on: ACDRUSH, who loved to post intricate chemical formulas that were, Tennant believed, always wrong; MEYER2, who shared Tennant’s admiration for Mr. Red; RATBOY, who had written a fourteen-page treatise on how the Oklahoma City bomb could have generated forty percent more explosive force with a few small enhancements; and DEDTED, who believed that Theodore Kaczynski was not the Unabomber.

  Tennant posted under the name BOOMER.

  Careful to keep an eye out for the guard, he scanned a message board thread that he had created about Mr. Red’s appearance in Los Angeles. He was writing an addition when a messaging window appeared on his screen.

  WILL YOU ACCEPT A MESSAGE FROM NEO?

  Tennant did not know a “Neo,” but was curious. He clicked the button to accept, and the instant-messaging window opened.

  NEO: You don’t know me, but I know you.

  Tennant glanced toward the hall again, nervous because he knew that the guard was due soon, and his time on-line was short. He typed a response.

  BOOMER: Who are you?

  Neo’s response came back quickly.

  NEO: Someone who admires your use of RDX. I want to discuss it.

  Tennant, like all habitues of Claudius, was aware that law enforcement agents often trolled to entrap people into saying something incriminating. He was careful never to post anything incriminating outside of the secure chat area.

  BOOMER: Good night.

  NEO: Wait! You want to meet me, Dallas. I am giving you an opportunity tonight that others only dream about.

  Tennant felt a flush of fear at the use of his true name.

  BOOMER: How do you know my name?

  NEO: I know many things.

  BOOMER: You think highly of yourself.

  NEO: You think highly of me, Dallas. You have written many posts about me. Come to the chat room.

  Tennant hesitated. This changed things. If Neo had a key to the chat room, then someone had vouched for him. He was as safe as safe could be in this uncertain world.

  BOOMER: You have a key?

  NEO: I do. I am in the chat room now. Waiting.

  Tennant used his own key, and opened the chat room window. It was empty except for Neo.

  BOOMER: Who are you?

  NEO: I am Mr. Red. You have something that I want, Dallas. Information.

  Tennant stared at the name … incredulous … disbelieving … hopeful.

  Then he typed:

  BOOMER: What do you have to trade?

  9

  • • •

  As soon as Starkey walked thro
ugh her door that night, she regretted agreeing to let Pell come to her home. She scooped magazines and newspapers off the floor, policed up a Chinese food carton, and fretted that the air smelled. She tried to remember the last time that she had cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, but couldn’t. There was nothing in the house to drink except gin, tonic, and tap water. You could write your name in the dust on top of the television. She grabbed a fast shower, dressing in jeans and a black T-shirt, then made a half-hearted attempt to make her house presentable. The last guest that she’d had was Dick Leyton, almost a year ago. He’d stopped by to catch up with her, and stayed for a drink.

  You really should get a life, Starkey. Maybe they sell’m at the Best Buy.

  Whatever Kelso thought, Starkey had a good feeling about the investigation. Having her hands on the Miami bomb had been good for her; it was concrete and real and had led to her learning something new, something she would not have otherwise known, about the Silver Lake bomb. Maybe Kelso and the others couldn’t see it, but Starkey was a bomb tech; she believed that the pieces added up, and now she had another piece. She was anxious to see if Claudius would yield anything useful, and was encouraged by Hooker’s report from the postproduction facility. She also felt that there was more to be had from Dallas Tennant.

  Starkey set up the laptop on her dining room table, figuring that was the best place for them to work. She had plugged it in and turned it on when she heard Pell’s car turn into her drive.

  When she opened the door, he was carrying a pizza and a white bag.

  “It’s the dinner hour, so I thought I would bring something. I’ve got a pizza here and an antipasto. I hope you didn’t make something.”