by Leigh Barker
“If you say so,” Riley said.
“I do.” She pointed at the attached computer monitor. “And you see that?”
“Yup,” Elmore said. “It’s like a TV but smaller and no football.”
She gave him the look. “That, my dear Marshal Elmore—” She turned to Riley. “You know why his momma called him Elmore?”
“Elmore James, like the guitarist,” Elmore said, with a smile.
“What band’s he in?” Riley said. “Can’t say I’ve heard of him.”
“He was the king of slide guitar.” He might as well have said he was the cook on the Hoboken ferry. “So, what’s your mass spec telling you?” he said, giving up on the blues history.
“That, my underfed firefighter, is telling me your theory as to the cause of the bank fire is incorrect.”
“Don’t have a theory. They’re like assumptions and I don’t have them either.”
“Whatever.” She pointed at the graphical display. “That one is PETN.” She glanced at Riley. “Like nitroglycerin. And that’s RDX.”
“Just about the most powerful military-grade explosive,” Elmore said, his interest grabbed now.
“That’s styrene-butadiene.” She shrugged. “Anyway, what you have here is the residue from Semtex.”
Elmore was silent for a moment, then leaned closer to the monitor. “Not an ANFO, then?”
Lindsey shook her head. “You didn’t really think some idiot who blows up his ride home could mix up ammonia nitrate and fuel oil in the right proportion to do that damage?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.” She tapped the keyboard and another display appeared. “This is the ammonia nitrate residue. Poor grade and the ratio of fertilizer to fuel is all wrong.”
“Enough to act as an initiator for the Semtex?” Riley said.
Lindsey gave her a long smile. And looked her over. “No. Oh, the ANFO would’ve broken a few windows and scared the tweety-birds, but no way would it have triggered the Semtex.”
“It blew a crater in the asphalt, so it had some power.”
She changed the display on the monitor. “See that spike there?”
He leaned closer. Could see it. It was a spike.
“Looks like the idiots had a drum of meth in the truck. That made up the shortfall in the ammonia and fuel mix.” She shook her head. “This guy must’ve been sampling his product. But the real blast was pretty much all down to the Semtex.”
Elmore looked at the night sky through the high window. “No way a bank employee is going to get his hands on plastic explosive.”
“Who, then?” Riley said.
“That’s the question.” He turned back to Lindsey. “Did the techs id the Toyota?”
“Found the license plates, both of them. Owner’s going to be upset when then dump the remains of his truck on his driveway.”
“Stolen?” Riley said.
“Pretty stupid bomber if he uses his own truck,” Lindsey said, with another smile.
“They get an address?” Elmore said.
“I’m your secretary now, then?”
“Only if you sit on my knee and bring me coffee.”
“Physically impossible.”
“Okay, I’ll ask Bobby Vee.”
“He’ll be home with the kids by now,” Lindsey said. She scribbled on a Post-it and handed it to him. “Owner’s in the Bronx. Bit late for a social call though, isn’t it?”
“I’ll knock softly.”
Elmore smelt it the moment Emiliano Perez opened the apartment door. Smoke, old and acrid. He showed no sign of having smelt it, no point tipping his hand.
“You had a yard fire?” Riley asked.
“What she asking?” Perez said, jerking his thumb at her and glaring at Elmore.
“You seen your truck today?” Elmore said, ignoring the question.
Perez frowned and looked around. “It’s the middle of the night, man. Why’d I see my truck? You stupid or something?”
“Mostly something. When was the last time you saw it?”
“What you talking about, man?”
Elmore stepped up close to the man and towered over him. “It’s midnight, so I’m going to let your attitude slide. For now. I’m asking you politely when you saw your truck last.”
He eased back a little to give the man space to think.
“And I’m overlooking the fact that you stink of fuel and burnt building.”
Perez backed off a step. “I was cooking dinner. It got away.” He looked around quickly. Nowhere to run. “I seen my truck this afternoon when I took it into the shop. The engine’s shot.”
“Is now,” Elmore said.
“You ain’t showed me no ID nor nothing. How I know you’re not trying to get into my place and rip me off?”
Riley stifled a laugh. “Got stuff worth taking, have you, Emiliano?”
“Yeah, I got stuff.”
“Show me,” Elmore said.
“You got a warrant? I know my rights.”
“Can get one. Judge’s gonna be pissed for getting him out of bed though. Be bad for you when you’re in his dock.”
“I ain’t done nothin’, so why’d I be in court?”
“Let’s see.” Elmore touched his chin and thought about it. “Interfering with a federal investigation’ll get you a few years’ rest in the pokey.”
“I’m the victim here,” Perez said. “It’s my truck what got stole, right?”
“Who said it’d been stolen?” Elmore said, and saw his eyes widen.
“You did.” He could see that didn’t float. “Then why you here bothering a law-abidin’ citizen in the middle of the night?”
“Your truck’s been stolen,” Elmore said.
Perez looked from Elmore to Riley and back again. Confused. “That’s what I just said and you said it wasn’t.”
“That’s because you’re psychic.”
“No, I ain’t. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with my mind like no psycho stuff.”
“What’s the name of the shop?”
“What shop? What’s he talkin’ about?” He looked at Riley, who shrugged.
“The shop where your truck went because its engine is shot,” Elmore said.
Perez blinked hard; then his eyes narrowed. “I got the address in back. Wait here. I’ll get it.” He backed up through the door.
Elmore put his hand on Riley’s arm and steered her away from the door.
“Hey, stop pushing.”
He put his finger to his lips, drew his Glock 22 and stood back against the wall next to the door. And waited.
Perez knocked into a table in the hall as he sneaked back to the door, swore quietly and stopped. The feds had gone. He was confused and held his .38 out in front almost at arm’s length to get it nearer the target if one showed up. He stuck his head out of the doorway.
And Elmore put the muzzle of his gun against his temple. Perez froze and tried to look at him by moving only his eyes.
“I wasn’t plannin’ on shootin’ you nor nobody,” he said.
“Just taking your Saturday night special for a bit of a walk?” Elmore said, and took the pistol with his left hand.
“You could be anybody. Come in the night to rob me an’ kill me.”
“True, but we’d have done that already, wouldn’t we? Not stop to discuss the condition of your truck.”
“Could be you wanted to, y’know, put me off my guard.”
“Right,” Elmore said. “Put you off your guard.” He lowered his Glock and Perez sighed.
“Can we come in now for a chat?” Elmore said.
Perez nodded enough to shake his neck loose. “Yeah, sure, why not?” He stepped back into the apartment. “No hard feelin’ about the little, y’know, misunderstandin’, right?”
“Nope,” Elmore said, following him and waving Riley to stay put. “It’s a, y’know, misunderstanding.”
He glanced into the little kitchen as he passed. It was a mess, with every surface pi
led high with junk and dirty plates. It hadn’t been used for cooking since JFK was president.
The sitting room echoed the kitchen but had a variation on the crap scattered about. Less plates and more junk-food cartons. Perez stood by the tan leather sofa polished black by grime, and stepped from foot to foot like a junkie waiting for a fix.
“Want your gun back?” Elmore said, holding out the silver revolver.
Perez stopped shuffling and stared at him. “What? You wanna give me my gun back?”
Elmore shrugged. “Why not? It’s your gun, right? And you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Yeah, right.” He took the offered gun very slowly without shifting his eyes off Elmore.
“Now we’re friends ’n all,” Elmore said, “why don’t you tell me how it happened. Best to get it out now before it gets all festered and poisoned.”
“What out?”
Elmore put his hand on the little man’s shoulder and felt him jump like he’d touched a live outlet.
“There’s nobody here, just us. And we both know you gave your truck to somebody who used it to blow up a bank.” He squeezed his hand on Perez’s shoulder. “Then you went along for a look-see, right?”
Perez licked his lips. And looked down at his pistol.
“Hell of a fire though, wasn’t it?” Elmore said.
“Yeah, man, it was—” He stopped with his mouth open.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. Course you’re gonna watch the fire, stands to reason. Thing like that’s better than TV, right?”
Perez nodded before his brain caught up.
“Nothin’ to do with you, so why not?” Elmore said.
“Yeah, right. Why not.” Perez smiled and relaxed. Off the hook.
“So who you give the truck to?”
Perez blinked slowly.
“What they did with it isn’t on you, so you can relax.”
He relaxed. That was close.
“Friend, was it?” Elmore said, looking around at the crap everywhere.
“Tony. Tony Sandoval, he’s my brother-in-law. Was, prior to her running off with that crossing guard backend last year.” He saw Elmore watching him and the look in his soft blue eyes. A promise of pain. “Said he’d got a job. Real money. Needed some wheels.”
“You help him load up the barrels of fertilizer and kerosene in it?”
Elmore wondered if it was his wife or his sister who’d run off with the crossing guard, but not enough to bother asking. Crossing guard? Who runs off with a crossing guard? Perez was talking and he tuned back in.
“Yeah. That stuff is heavy, you know that?”
“I do. Stinks too, right? And the gas cans leaked.”
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“Smell it.” Elmore smiled at his new friend. “This Tony. Where does he hang out?”
“This time of night,” Perez said, looking around as if expecting to see Tony there. “He’ll be at Mason’s over on Atlantic. Got a girl there’s hot for him.”
“Let’s go say hi,” Elmore said.
Perez backed up until his calves pushed against the sofa. “You didn’t say nothin’ about me goin’ with. He’ll kill me he thinks I ratted him out.”
“Hey, nothing to worry about. You’ll be in the car.”
Elmore took out his handcuffs and Perez sat down on the sofa, in the junk.
“That has to be some kinda record,” Ortega said. “You wrap the case in what? Six hours last night?” He put the file he’d been reading onto a pile of other files on his desk. “You got a big S on your chest?”
“You trying to tell me something, Chief?” Elmore said. “Because if you are, I’d appreciate you just saying it.”
“What did you think when forensics told you about the Semtex?”
“I thought that the Semtex was the real bomb, and the truck was just to piss us off.”
“And now?”
Elmore sat on the corner of Ortega’s desk and ignored the pointed look. “You mean after Perez and the meth addict confessed to it?”
Ortega shrugged but said nothing.
“I think we got the guys who blew up a perfectly good Toyota pickup.”
“And the bank?”
“You asking me to speculate, Chief?”
“Break a life-long rule and go ahead and speculate.”
Elmore watched his boss for several seconds. “Okay, but don’t take notes.” He got off the desk and crossed to the window to look out onto the street stationary with rush-hour traffic. Then he turned back to face the room. “I’d say whoever blew up that bank had probably never set foot in it, let alone was an employee, disgruntled or otherwise.”
“Keep going.”
“I’d speculate that this was a practice, a dry run for something bigger. Much bigger.”
“How’d you get there?” Ortega leaned back in his big chair and folded his hands on a stomach that liked junk food.
“The facts mostly.” Elmore returned to sit on the desk. “The Semtex was military grade, hard to get and expensive. It was just placed against a wall, no shaped charge and not even at a key structural point. The only reason it did so much damage was the amount he used. He must have used a two-wheeler truck to get it into the bank. Ten pounds would’ve brought down the building.”
Ortega nodded slowly and his jowls moved in counter-time. “So you figure he’s a novice?”
“Don’t you? But he’s smart.”
“He doesn’t sound it.”
“Kept me chasing around all night after a couple of patsies.”
Ortega laughed deep and short. “He did. What was that about?”
Elmore leaned across the desk and flipped open the lid of a cardboard box that had once contained a stack of doughnuts. “You eat all those?”
“Helps me think.”
“Camila know about your thinking?”
“No, and if she finds out from you, you’ll be investigating firework parties on Staten Island.”
Elmore closed the lid. “Pickup truck wasn’t a diversion. The bomber really thought it would cover up the evidence of the real bomb.”
“Bit naïve.”
“Like I said, it was a practice. He won’t make that mistake next time.”
“Then you’d better catch his ass before there’s a next time.”
“You know that’s not going to happen. He’s got no priors, no MO, no record. A mystery man as far as our records go.”
“You sure of that? Maybe he’s playing a double bluff.”
“I considered that. If he could do it, he wouldn’t have wasted his time on some small-time bank. He’d have done what he’s planning right out of the gate.”
“And what you think he’s planning?”
Elmore stood up. “Now if I knew that, Chief, I’d be sitting in your chair.”
“They got bail this morning,” Riley said as Elmore returned to his desk.
“They were just saps. Detonated their truck and probably broke a few windows before the bomber blew up the whole building.” He picked up the first of a pile of buff files off his desk. “Still, we should probably go talk to them some more. They might remember something now they’ve had time to calm down.”
“You know a good medium?”
He looked up.
“Sandoval had a ninety-five Cadillac Fleetwood, brown. Can you believe that? Who in God’s name would drive such a thing?”
“And…?”
“He got in. It blew up.” She shrugged and returned to the papers she’d been reading.
“You don’t seem very affected by his demise?”
She looked up, a slightly puzzled expression on her face. “He blew things up. He got blown up. There’s a kind of karma in that, don’t you think?”
“For somebody so cute, you’ve got a heart of flint.”
She looked up quickly. “You think I’m cute?” She frowned. “I’m not sure that’s within agency guidelines. You finding a colleague cute.”
“Don’t beat it with a s
tick. That moment has passed.”
“Still, we had a moment.” She winked at him.
“You get Will’s number?” he said, shaking it before it settled into his memory and kept him awake nights.
She patted her jacket pocket. “He didn’t play hard to get.”
He watched her for a moment while he tried to decide if she was messing with him. He decided she was.
“You ask him out, bring him over to The Old Alamo.”
“Don’t tell me, it’s a Texan bar.”
“That’s why you’re an investigator, nothing gets past you.” He leaned over his desk and took his badge and gun out of the top drawer.
“You going somewhere nice?”
“I figured I’d let you drive me to see a Cadillac Fleetwood. Haven’t seen one since I was a kid.”
“They were driving LaSalles when you were a kid.” She pulled her badge and gun out of the drawer and followed him to the door.
“Now that was a Cadillac,” he said, and held the door open for her.
She sighed heavily, shook her head and waved him on. “Jesus, you think I’m your granny?”
Even in the morning traffic, it took just twenty minutes to get across Brooklyn to the police impound, where Sandoval’s car was smoldering and the crew was sitting on the fire truck’s steps, eating breakfast burritos.
A tall thin lieutenant unwound himself and came over to the car, looking like a biped giraffe. He dropped his arm on the car roof, leaned down and put his head in through the window.
Riley’s mental picture of the giraffe got real.
“Fire’s out,” he said, “but that’s why you’re just getting here.” He looked past Elmore, who was unconsciously pressing back into the seat, and nodded at Riley. “Hi, ma’am.”
She looked at Elmore. “Another Texan? What is it with you Texans? Don’t you like Texas?”
“Love Texas, ma’am,” the fireman said, “New York fires are more fun.”
“This is Art Crowther,” Elmore said. “He’s just leaving.”
Art extracted his head from the car and stood up so that his belt buckle was almost level with the SUV’s roof.
“Don’t waste brain space,” Elmore said, reaching for the handle. “He’s from Dallas.” He seemed to think that was all that needed saying.
“Least we don’t eat our firstborn,” Art said, stepping back to give the door space. “He ever invite you down to El Paso, ma’am, you run a mile. Hear?”
