Chapter 33
I SOMEHOW MANAGED to complete the rest of my commute safely and arrived at the closest bombing scene, at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, around nine thirty a.m.
The area across from the Plaza Hotel and Central Park was usually packed with rich ladies who lunch and tourists looking for overpriced horse-and-buggy rides. Now an occupying force of assault rifle–strapping Emergency Service Unit storm troopers had cordoned off the corner, and instead of Chipoos peeking from Fendi clutches, bomb-sniffing Labradors were sweeping both sides of the street.
I noticed an aggravating CBS News camera aimed directly between my eyes as I came under the crime scene tape in front of the GM Building. I guess I couldn’t complain that the media had already gotten here, since, including ABC and NBC, they seemed to be the targets.
As if Tiffany’s and the network studios weren’t high-profile enough, the world-famous FAO Schwarz toy store sat on the other side of the outdoor space, as well as the funky transparent glass cube of the wild Fifth Avenue sunken Apple store.
I found the Bomb Squad’s second in command, Brian Dunning, chewing gum as he knelt on the intersection’s southeast corner in front of a blast-blackened streetlight. At the Grand Central scene, Cell had told me that the blond pock-faced tech was fresh from Iraq, where he’d been part of a very busy army EOD team. Since it seemed New York was currently at war as well, I was glad he was on our side.
The toppled garbage can beside him had a hole in its steel mesh the size of a grapefruit. What looked like tiny pieces of confetti were scattered on the sidewalk and street beside it. It reminded me of firecracker paper on the day after the Fourth of July. I scooped some of it up to get a better look.
“It’s cardboard,” Dunning said, standing. “From a coffee cup, is my guess. Which would blend in perfectly in a garbage can. You want an IED to appear totally innocuous.”
“Was it plastic explosive, like the last one?” I said.
Dunning smelled the piece of cardboard.
“Dynamite, I’d say off the top of my head. About a stick or so, I’d guess. Mobile phone trigger with a fuse-head electric blasting cap packed in a coffee cup all as neat as you please. This cop-killing freak’s got skills. I’ll give him that.”
Great, I thought. Our guy was using new materials. Or maybe not, I thought, letting out a breath. It could have been someone else catching the heat of the moment and getting in on the act.
More questions without any answers, I thought. What else was new?
I caught up to my boss, who was talking with a group of shaken-up Early Show staffers.
“No one seems to have seen a thing, Mike,” Miriam said as we walked toward the corner. “They have security out here on the Plaza, of course, but they don’t detour pedestrian traffic. Sanitation said they collected this morning at five. Our guy must have dropped the coffee cup sometime after that, probably as he was waiting for the light. This guy’s a ghost.”
I quickly went over the double copycat theory that Emily and I were working on.
“He’s not just copying Sam the Man,” I said. “In the forties, a disgruntled Con Ed employee named George Metesky planted bombs in movie theaters and public places. For sixteen years, he set off gunpowder-filled pipe bombs in the same places this guy has hit. The library, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central. It fits, boss.”
She stepped off the sidewalk into the street. We looked down Fifth Avenue at the Empire State Building for a few beats.
“So you’re saying this guy isn’t just some regular run-of-the-mill violent psycho?” she said.
I nodded.
“I think we have some kind of supercompetent and super-loony NYC crime buff out there giving nods to those he admires,” I said.
Chapter 34
FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY, I visited the other crime scenes at Rock Center and Times Square, where I learned absolutely nothing new. No one in Times Square had seen a man dropping a coffee cup, not even the Naked Cowboy.
The entire Major Case Squad was going blind reviewing security video footage from surrounding stores and buildings, but so far nothing had made itself evident. It was the same story for the red-balled forensics test on the letter from the Flushing double murder. There was a brief moment of hope when I learned that the VIN for the truck involved in the Grand Central bombing had been traced. But that hope had been dashed with authority when it turned out that it was a stolen rental truck.
Who steals a rental truck? A psycho, was the answer to that one. A very neat and tidy anal psycho. The worst kind of all. And to top it all off, I still couldn’t shake how I’d almost died on the BQE through my own sheer stupidity.
It was around ten that night when I got off the exit for Breezy Point. There was no music when I pulled up in front of the Bennett beach house. Definitely no margaritas waiting for me. In fact, all the lights in the house were off. I remembered Mary Catherine was at her night class at Columbia. Not good.
Somebody was on the porch. It was my son Brian, pacing back and forth, holding a baseball bat. It didn’t look like he was working on his swing.
“Don’t tell me something else happened,” I groaned. “Wasn’t today any better?”
“No one told you, Dad? Eddie and Ricky went out to get ice cream, and a bunch of a-holes threw some eggs at them from a passing car. Not only that, but when Jane rode the bike to the store, she came out and found this.”
He rolled the bike over and showed me the front tire sliced to ribbons.
“I’m going to kill this kid, Dad. I swear, I’m going to kill him.”
“And I’m going to absolve him when he does,” Seamus said, stepping onto the porch with a golf club.
I let out a breath. Home Insane Home.
“The worst thing,” Seamus said, “is that all the fookin’ Flahertys go to Sunday mass. Like it’s going to keep them out of Hell, which it isn’t, the little heathens. The host should burn holes in their tongues.”
“Enough about going on the warpath, you fighting Irishmen,” I said. “Brian, listen. I know you’re mad, but we need to be smart about this. You let this punk bait you, you’ll be the one who gets arrested.”
“Maybe we should do what Bridget said, then, Dad,” Brian said, dropping the mangled bike. “Maybe we should just clear out, because this vacay is starting to suck.”
I lifted up the bike and carried it off the porch and into the garage. I popped off the tire with a screwdriver and looked through the shelves for a patch kit.
“He’s right, you know,” Seamus said, coming in as I put rubber cement over the first gash.
“About what?” I said.
“This vacay is starting to suck. Big time,” Seamus said.
Chapter 35
LATER THAT NIGHT, I sat on the porch swing, having pulled guard duty. I had a plastic cup of cheap red wine in one hand and Brian’s Louisville Slugger in the other. Summer of Love, part two, this was not.
“Hark, who goes there?” I said as Mary Catherine came up the stairs, home from her art class. She was wearing tight jeans with a jazzy leopard-print tank and looked amazing.
“We’re arming ourselves? It’s that bad, huh?” Mary Catherine said as she shrugged off her laptop bag and sat her long legs down beside me.
I poured my nanny a glass of Malbec.
“Worse,” I said, handing it to her.
“Are they all asleep?”
“At least pretending to be,” I said. “All except the big one.”
“Brian?”
“No, Father Pain-in-the-Ass. He went out for a few jars, quote unquote, to soothe his troubled mind. Even the saints are hitting the suds tonight,” I said, clinking plastic cups.
“Are you any closer to catching the bomber guy?” she asked, kicking off her flats. “Because the people in my class are completely bonkers. Half of them didn’t even show up for tonight’s test. They told the professor they’re too afraid to ride the trains.”
“Smart kids,” I said. “You migh
t want to follow their example. If the color code thing were still in place, we’d be looking at orange, dark orange.”
“I’m a big girl, Mike. I know my way around the city now. I can take care of me own self.”
“I know that, but if something happens to you, who’s going to take care of me?” I said.
We swung back and forth for a while, talking and having more wine. She told me some funny stories about her summer vacations with her big family when she was a kid back in Tipperary. Even after the day I’d had, I was actually starting to relax.
I don’t remember who started kissing whom. For a while we held each other, just listening to the sound of the surf two blocks away. The waves were incredibly choppy and loud, making a relentless pounding noise. The first hurricane of the season was heading up the East Coast from Florida, I remembered I’d heard on the radio.
That’s when I remembered something else. The hurricane wasn’t the only thing coming up to New York.
Why had I told Emily Parker to come again? I thought as Mary Catherine undid the buttons on my shirt. Because she was a competent law enforcement expert? Even I knew that was bull. Emily was cute, and I liked her. But Mary Catherine was cute as well, and I liked her, too.
One thing led to another, and after a bit I found my hand under the back of Mary’s shirt. Mary suddenly pulled back and sat up.
“Talk about dark orange,” she said.
She was right. We both knew we were on the threshold of something either wonderful or terrible. Neither one of us knew what to do about it.
“What now?” Mary said.
“You tell me.”
“We’re so Irish, Michael.”
“Well, technically, I’m Irish-American,” I said, pulling her in again and kissing her sweet hot mouth.
“Eh-hem,” someone yelled.
I don’t know who jumped higher, me or Mary. There was a jangle of chains as we almost ripped the porch swing off its moorings.
Seamus came up the steps, a smile from ear to ear.
“And how was your class tonight, Mary Catherine? Your art class that is, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Oh, fine, Seamus. Look at the time. So much to do tomorrow. Good night,” Mary said, off like a shot into the house, absolutely abandoning me.
Seamus looked at my completely open shirt with disdain.
“Michael Sean Aloysius Bennett. What in the name of the good Lord do you think you’re doing? And don’t be telling me you’ve been catching some rays,” Seamus said.
“I’m… going to bed, Father,” I said, hitting the screen door at mach two. “It’s been a long day. G’night.”
Chapter 36
I WOKE UP EXTRA EARLY for work the next morning.
And not just to beat the traffic this time. A stealthy exit after last night’s questionable tonsil-hockey session with MC on the porch seemed just the thing.
In addition to probably breaking several employer sexual harassment laws, I didn’t know where to start in sorting through my conflicting feelings. I really had no idea at all what to say to Mary in the light of day. I definitely didn’t want to face another inquisition from Seamus.
Red wine always gets me into trouble. No, wait, that’s my big mouth.
As I tiptoed out of Dodge, holding my shoes, I noticed a strange bluish light coming from the girls’ room. I knew I should keep on going and leave the culprits to their own mischievous devices, but the cop in me couldn’t resist a righteous bust.
I retraced my toe tips back into their room. The light was coming from under a suspiciously lumpy blanket on the bed in the corner. There was a lot of suspicious excited whispering going on as well.
“What’s this?” I said, whipping away the blanket like a magician.
What I saw wasn’t a rabbit, though it was still quite cute.
“AHHHHH!” Chrissy and Shawna screamed in unison, lying on their bellies in front of a laptop computer.
“A computer?” I said, clapping a hand against my head in mock outrage. “You smuggled in a computer on our vacation? Don’t tell me that’s Phineas and Ferb on that screen. No electronic toys, remember? No video games. Sound familiar?”
“It was Ricky,” Shawna said, pointing toward the boys’ room frantically.
“It’s true. It’s Ricky’s. We’re just borrowing it,” Chrissy said.
“What’s going on?” Mary Catherine whispered suddenly there, yawning in the doorway.
Uh-oh. I knew I should have gotten out while I could. The girls weren’t the only ones who were busted.
“We’re sorry, Mary,” Chrissy said.
“Yes. We’re so sorry,” Shawna added quickly. “So sorry that Ricky brought a computer when he wasn’t supposed to.”
“We’ll deal with this later,” Mary said as she confiscated the computer and tucked the girls back in.
“You’re up early,” she said, glancing suspiciously at the shoes in my hand as we left the room. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make you coffee before you go.”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have time. Early briefing,” I said.
“It’s five-thirty,” Mary Catherine said, peering at me.
“Duty calls,” I said with a hopefully convincing smile and a wave as I headed toward the front door.
I stopped as I came out onto the porch. Even in the predawn murk, I could see it. Somebody had spray-painted the wall behind the porch swing.
GO HOME STUPID BASTERDS!
I stood there holding my hungover head in my hands. The sons of bitches had come onto my porch in the middle of the night? I guess my scare tactic over at the Flaherty compound hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. This was really getting nuts now.
“Seems like Flaherty gets his spelling lessons from Quentin Tarantino,” Seamus said in his bathrobe from the doorway.
I shook my head. Like it or not, I really did need to get to work. I couldn’t stay to sort through this latest outrage. I glanced at Seamus.
“Seamus, I’m swamped at work. Do you think you could take care of this for me before the kids see it?”
Seamus gave me a hard glare.
“Oh, don’t worry, Michael Sean Aloysius. I’ll be cleaning up all the latest shenanigans going on around here before the kids see them,” Seamus said.
I winced at his emphasis on the word. I guess I was getting a fresh, un-asked-for heaping of Catholic guilt to go this morning.
“And I’ll tell you another thing, jail time or no jail time, I’ll blast the first Flaherty I see back to Hell’s Kitchen and straight down to Hell, where they belong,” he called as I walked down the steps. “This old codger will make Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino seem like Santa Claus.”
“You already do,” I whispered as I hurried for the safety of my police car.
Chapter 37
INSTEAD OF HEADING into the city to my crowded, frantic squad room, I skirted Manhattan altogether and took the Triborough Bridge north to the New York State Thruway. An hour and a half later, I was upstate in Sullivan County near Monticello, sipping a rest-stop Dunkin’ Donuts java as I rolled past misty pine forests, lakes, and dairy farms.
The bucolic area was close to where Woodstock had taken place. It had also been home to the “Borscht Belt” vacation resorts, where Jewish comedians like Milton Berle and Don Rickles and Woody Allen had gotten their start.
Unfortunately, my visit had nothing to do with music and even less to do with laughter. This morning I was heading to Fallsburg, home of the Sullivan Correctional Facility.
My boss and I had decided it was time to have a chat with its most infamous resident, David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer. The Son of Sam himself.
There were several reasons why. One of the most compelling was that the Monday night double murder in Queens wasn’t the only recent Son of Sam copycat crime.
An hour after we put the Son of Sam lead over the inner department wire, a sharp Bronx detective had called the squad. He told us that on Sunday a teenage Hispa
nic girl in the Bronx had barely survived an odd stabbing in Co-op City. Her attacker had worn a crazy David Berkowitz–style wig and said some real out-there stuff to her as he slowly cut her up. It mimicked almost perfectly Berkowitz’s first crime, the random stabbing of a girl in Co-op City in 1975.
There was a long list of people with whom I’d rather spend my morning, but since Berkowitz seemed to have some connection to the recent string of murders, I thought it might be fruitful to have a sit-down. It was probably a long shot, but with seven people dead and no lead in sight, it was high time to get creative.
Sullivan Correctional was hidden discreetly behind a tall stand of pines, a few miles northeast of Fallsburg’s small-town main street. As soon as I spotted the sudden vista of steel wire and pale concrete buildings built terrace-like up a rolling hill, the coffee in my stomach began to percolate for a second time. Sullivan was a maximum-security prison that housed many of New York City’s most violent offenders. I knew because I had put a few of them there.
Under the stony eye of a tower guard, I was buzzed into the south complex administrative building, where I reluctantly relinquished my service weapon and signed in. I was escorted to the ground-floor office of Doug Gaffney, the prison manager, whom I’d spoken to the day before to set up the meeting.
Bald and stocky in a polo shirt and khakis, Gaffney reminded me of a middle-aged football coach more than a warden. Books about anger management and drug abuse lined the shelf behind his desk, along with a thick binder with the words “Life Skills” on the spine.
“Thanks for setting this up for me, Doug,” I said after we shook hands and sat down.
“This case you’re working on? We’re talking about the bombing thing?” Gaffney asked as his secretary closed the door.
“Yes, but that’s confidential, as is my visit,” I explained, sitting up in my folding chair. “The press is already dogging us on this. I’d hate to sell more papers for them than I have to. What should I expect from Berkowitz?”
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