Lone Wolf # 14: Philadelphia Blowup

by Barry, Mike

  It was laughter.

  But too late for any of that; too late to consider, too late to turn back. You went on course and you followed it through to its logical end because … because, well, there was no other way to do it and to still be a man. To turn back would be to raise the possibility that your cause had not been right in the first place. Absolute goals, absolute means.

  Wulff went out into the streets of Philadelphia to blow them all up.

  XXII

  Sometimes you got lucky. You could stumble around for years and years just trying to get a break, watching better men than you fall apart inside and outside because nothing would happen to them, and then when you had reached your own diminishing returns, when the miserable, wrenching taste of your failure was turning over in your gut, making everything you touched seem rotten, you could hit a door somewhere by accident which you had not even intended and blunder into the discovery of what had evaded you for so long. Serependity they called it: the theory that almost all human progress could be viewed in terms of accidents caused by those who were looking for something else. On the fifth day of the eight month of his involvement with Wulff, Williams suddenly got very lucky, and in a way which had never happened to him before. It happened deus ex machina, which is to say that his luck was not of his own causing, nor was he even involved in it.

  It came as a matter of fact over the radio of the Mercedes which Evers, tired of talking, had snapped on as they rolled the last twenty miles toward Philadelphia. There was an all-news station on the FM band, and after the sports segment which involved a rumor that the Eagles had been sold to a syndicate headed by Arab officials and Joe Kuharich was going to come back to coach, the station put on a bulletin from South Fifteenth Street that an explosion of indeterminate origin had caused an evacuation of two buildings and had still not been brought under control. Fire crews were at the scene. So was the reporter who hopefully would have further news shortly. Back to the main desk now. Williams said, “That’s the lone wolf man. I know that’s him.”

  Evers turned toward him and said, “I could argue with you but you’re probably right. We ought to head that way.”

  “I know his method,” Williams said. “This is the way he’s working now. That was what he was doing in Harlem just before they caught up with him. He had blown out a place next to the Apollo just on the suspicion they were doing trade in there.”

  “All right,” Evers said. “That connects with what I was saying. The only thing is whether or not we’ll find him anywhere near the scene. Is there any point in going there at all if he’s already gone?”

  “He won’t be gone,” Williams said. His foot was to the floor, the SEL was doing a tight seventy-three now in difficult traffic. His concentration was absolute, and yet within the compass of that and the absolute respect the car demanded, he found that he was quite able to talk. “He’ll be there. He’ll want to see it.”

  “Probably,” Evers said after a pause. “He probably would, come to think of it. That would be the only pleasure that he would get now.” He paused for a while and said then, “The poor bastard.”

  “Not by me,” Williams said. “My fund of pity has just about run out for good now. The aycee was right. Everyone was right, you see. This is intolerable; it can’t go on. You think that you can find South Fifteenth Street?”

  “I’ve been around here,” Evers said. “I can fake it. I can fake the city. You just keep on driving and I’ll tell you what to do.”

  So Williams kept on driving, turning up the all-news station loud so that he would not miss anything new that came through. Not that there was much. The reporter was inexperienced, and even though the desk kept on switching back to him at five minute intervals he reported little more than a competent dispatch man could have in one or two sentences. Firemen were on the scene. A crowd had gathered. Two buildings were on fire but the firemen were apparently bringing the blaze under control. Police were on the scene. A large crowd was on the scene. It was not yet known whether anyone had been injured in the blast or for that matter if there were any dead. Police were investigating. Firemen were in the premises and investigating. The crowd was quiet and orderly but angry. Everyone was angry. Everyone thought that the fire was a disgrace and probably caused by arson. This could not be deduced at the present time. The fire lieutenant on the scene would have no comment.

  “I bet he has a comment,” Evers said. “But they can’t put it on the air. Left at the end of this ramp.”

  “The son-of-a-bitch is on the scene,” Williams said. “I just feel it. He’s probably right there taking it all in. Listening to the commentary.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Evers said. “Don’t count on long-distance psychoanalysis. It was just a theory.”

  “No,” Williams said, “you’re right. When a man’s right, he’s right. I give you that credit. I don’t resist truth. He’s everything you say he is.”

  “You learn a little working with explosives,” Evers said. “Now just highball straight down about two-and-a-half miles and stay within the speed limit. I think we’d lose more time being pulled over and explaining to cops than we would just moving along at forty. It’s an amazing car, he said, “but if the newspapers ever learned that we had this kind of stuff in the garage we’d be in worse trouble than we are now.”

  The all-news reporter came on again. He sounded about twenty-four years old and scared, as if he had never been on a disaster before and at last the sense of it was getting through to him. He announced that he had someone to interview, a patrolman something-or-other. Patrolman something-or-other who did not sound happy said that there were apparently no victims from the explosion. There had been at the time of the incident only three people in the building, all of them old, and all of them had managed to get out on their own. Everyone else either worked or was in school or had been evicted. Patrolman-something attributed the explosion to devices of some sort, but he could be no more explicit than that. The bomb squad was on the way and might have further details. squad was on the way and might have further details.

  “Barn door,” Evers said. “barn doors and horses.”

  Patrolman something-or-other could venture no explanation as to what might have been the reason for the blast or as to whether it had been deliberately set. Yes, it might have been a revolutionary group, it might have been anyone, but it was hard to know exactly what a revolutionary group would hope to gain by blowing up a couple of buildings in this section of Philadelphia. “You mean a slum section,” the reporter asked.

  “No, I did not say that at all,” the patrolman said. “I would not even refer to it as a disadvantaged section.”

  There was an unhappy pause for a while and then patrolman-something said that he would have to excuse himself, he would have to return to the site. The reporter said certainly and thank you very much and then said that that was about the way it was on South Fifteenth Street at three o’clock p.m., and that of course he would remain on the scene for further bulletins should further bulletins break. However, since there was apparently no loss of life and since police did not think that it was a revolutionary group, he doubted that it would be necessary for him to go back on the air, although, of course, he would remain available for on-the-air duty should the situation change. He signed off uncomfortably, tentatively and there was a hanging dead space on the air. Then the desk man came on and said there definitely would be further bulletins from the site, to stay tuned, that every breaking news story was covered exactly as it broke and until conclusion, and that listeners should be aware that they would be kept closely informed as to all incidents on the site, including the possibility that the bomb had been set by active political revolutionaries demonstrating against injustice. Williams shook his head and turned off the radio. Up ahead they could see two patrol cars, flashers turning, at an intersection which would have to be South Fifteenth.

  “I don’t think that man is long for the slot,” Evers said.

  “He’s doing the b
est he can.”

  “He said it wasn’t revolutionaries,” Evers said, “and you just don’t do that kind of thing in the all-news business. You don’t turn off any possibility of a story until it’s impossible to run with it any more. How you going to hold an audience otherwise, ripping off the AP wire? I think we should walk from here. They’re going to have the site pretty well sealed off.”

  “Just walk in there?”

  “We can’t drive in,” Evers said, “be reasonable.”

  “We’d better take some heavy armament then.”

  “You really think we’re going to come up against him?” Evers said. “You’re sure of that?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. I think there’s a goddamned good possibility that we might, yes. I’d feel a hell of a lot better in a car, let me tell you that.”

  “You want to tell the police?”

  Williams let the car coast to a stop, double-parked, then shook his head and began to crawl front first into a small parking space just ahead. “No,” he said. “I think we should go into this alone. I may be wrong,” he said, “there’s a chance it isn’t him. We’ll look like goddamned fools. Shit, we’ll be likely to get busted on suspicion ourselves.”

  “All right,” Evers said. “I’m nothing if not accommodating. I’m just along for the ride and the walk. Anyway, it beats all hell out of disassembling dynamite caps. We can go in there with our guns; what else can we take?”

  Williams bumpered the car ahead, tracked it into reverse, let it roll back an inch, and then cut the engine. Thick fumes began to roll into the car carried by the wind and the now dead air-conditioner. He thought that he could see little particles of soot move, dazzling in the grey air outside. “Nothing,” he said. “Just ourselves.”

  “All right,” Evers said, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s go in and see what’s there.”

  “Wait,” Williams said.

  Evers paused, his hand hanging on the handle, looking at him intently. “You don’t have to go,” Williams said.

  “What’s that? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know how to put this. This doesn’t concern you. You’re not in it at all. You don’t have to put your life on the line going up against this guy. I do. But you don’t have to be involved. You stay here.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Evers said. “I’m not letting you go in there alone. We’re going together or not at all.”

  “I appreciate that,” Williams said, “but you don’t have to. It could be very bad, this thing. I see now just how dangerous he could be. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Evers hit him in the shoulder lightly and said, “Fuck off. I’m going in with you,” and went to the handle, then came back toward Williams and said, “of course I’m in it. We’re all in it. We’re all in it, don’t you see that, me just as you.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “He’s ours,” Evers said. “He comes from the PD. We created him. We made him possible, we created the circumstances that sent him on his way, we screwed him into this. In a way every man in the PD is responsible and has to do the same thing. We started him, we’ve got to remove him. Don’t you see that?”

  Williams said, “Maybe I do. Maybe I do then. That’s one way to look at it,” and hit Evers back just as lightly, and then they clambered out of the SEL into the stinking air to fight the good fight, to fight it all the way to the end, to see the wolf, to guard and cage him, and if this did not work—because a wild animal could not be caged—to deal with him in the only way that they could.

  Their identification worked fine at the hasty checkpoint which the Philadelphia cops had set up. They moved down the block through the haze and right to the center of the action. When Evers saw the bright orange helmets of the demolition squad pouring from their special truck, his face twitched with gladness.

  XXIII

  He had done the best that he could. He had moved right in to one of their nerve centers and had bombed it out with two cleverly flung grenades. No one could have asked any more of him than what he had done, and he should derive satisfation from it.

  But he could not. He simply could not. Why were they all still alive? Why after two dead hits on the buildings that were the absolute nerve center of the international drug trade, two hits which should have cleaned them out for good and for all … why were they spilling from the building still alive, still alive-o, with police on the scene to help them, no less, to escape. Didn’t the police understand what was going on, what Wulff had done? Didn’t the police realize which side of the law they were working for? It was so frustrating that Wulff could have gone off the deep end right then and there if he were not so careful and controlled; if he did not have such a clear sense of mission.

  He had come to Philadelphia, the bicentennial city to finish off the job, to strike a killing blow at the center of the great twitching nerve which came to surface here, and the stupid goddamned cops did not even know that he had been doing it all for them. From the start he had been working for these sons-of-bitches, and who appreciated it? Not only that, but they had called in the goddamned demolition squad to guard against further damage. Where did that come off? What did they think that they were doing?

  Wulff knew that he should get the hell away from the scene. There were other battles to fight, bitter, better battles to fight in the light and in the night. He should not stay around this dismal street to be frustrated at the stupidity of officials who did not know the good he had tried to do them. Also, it was quite dangerous to stay around. He knew that his features were recognizable, and there were assassins; all over there were assassins eager to kill him for the bounty. He should get back under cover, return to the hotel, check out his remaining grenades, plot further action. One swallow was not a summer, two bombs were not a campaign. He should return to fight another day. But he could not, somehow, bring himself to leave.

  Instead, he stood in an alley not more than a hundred yards from the point where the radio and television crews had come in with their trucks, and watched it all. No one watched him, they were busy enough attending to the wounded and conferring with one another and checking out the scene of impact where the outer surfaces of one of the buildings had burst open, scattering concrete like sawdust. Also the street was packed with residents who had every reason to want to see what the hell was going on, and the haze and stink were so thick at times that it was difficult to see exactly what was going on. Any one of them would have the same difficulty spotting him. So he was safe, he guessed, for a while, just standing quietly and taking it in.

  But he could not do it much longer. He knew that. He knew that he was pushing the rim of discovery; he ought to get the hell away. It was just that it was so goddamned frustrating after all he had been through to see this and to know that the bastards had gotten away again. Shit, they had to have been in that building. He had been sure that they would all be there. All of his enemies, all twenty or thirty of them, plotting to reorganize the international drug trade from the base of Philadelphia until he had come along and bombed them out. What a surprise for them! To die knowing that the lone wolf, implacable, had struck again. But they had gotten away. They were not there after all. It was goddamned frustrating, that was what it was. You knew you were up against a cunning and dangerous enemy, but until you saw that enemy operate it was hard to believe that he was so resourceful.

  It was pretty interesting all right, though. He had to admit that. What was going on was pretty interesting. What with the disaster trucks and the bomb squad and police all over the place, and fire equipment and newspaper reporters and a couple of people huddled around a mobile television unit being interviewed just a hundred yards away. They were no doubt describing their narrow escape from holocaust. What they didn’t tell the television crew, of course, was that they were major pushers and dealers who had wriggled away from final judgment. Television reporters were pretty stupid as a group and certainly they would not think to ask those questions on their o
wn. For that matter, the television crews themselves might have been in on the conspiracy. Everyone in the entertainment business was a drug freak of one sort or another and if television news wasn’t entertainment, what the hell was it?

  Wulff knew that he should get out of there. He still had four grenades jammed into his pockets. That was plenty for another strike; plenty to create a little chaos elsewhere. Waste not, want not. There were still the four grenades carefully hoarded for further action, and if he could place his fire carefully he should be able to hit four more residences. Two anyway, if he wanted to do a really thorough job. He was creating a risk situation by hanging around here, there was no question about it. Sooner or later someone might pick him up, come in to ask him some questions. What the hell could he say? He had nothing to say. He would have to start shooting, that was all. But that would lead to more complications than it was worth. You really did not kill law enforcement personnel or civilians. Unless they were crooked, of course. Most of them were.

  Wulff moved slowly from the alley. He looked like anyone else on the street. His face was a little streaked now, his jacket a little lumpy with the grenades. His pockets holding the pistols were a little distended as well, like a fat man’s stomach, but no one was going to look at him that closely. Of course, his face was familiar, and everyone in the world was gunning to get him. But there was a chance they wouldn’t look too closely. Who would really want to look at him when they had the disaster site itself to contemplate? He stood there on the sidewalk for a little while, his breathing irregular, his hands clenching and unclenching, looking at all of it. Two cops standing near the foot of the building were in deep conversation with a dishevelled man, another cop with a sergeant’s stripe was leaning against the wall of an adjoining building smoking, which was a hell of a thing to do with all of this stink around; dragging that stuff directly into your lungs. Still, what the hell, it was his funeral.