Slaughter - Lutz John. Страница 33

Quinn, who had changed his mind, sprinkled the contents of a pink artificial sweetener package in his tea and twirled the ice cubes with his forefinger. “We don’t mean to irritate anyone by asking them to repeat what they’ve already probably said over and over. It’s just that sometimes, after a traumatic event, people don’t remember things until some time has passed.”

Madge said, “Tell him, Louie.”

Louie squirmed a bit, ill at ease. He had on buffed leather boots, a many-pocketed tan shirt, and faded Levi’s, and sure enough looked as if he should be on an archeological dig.

He said, “Not long before the crane fell—say, about twenty minutes—I was working a jackhammer and I looked up and saw this guy in a yellow hard hat, carrying a clipboard and taking notes or something. I got a good look at him when I let up on the jackhammer and he became more than a blur. Still, he was some distance away. I got curious and walked over there.”

“So you saw him close up,” Quinn said, as if just to keep the conversational ball rolling. They might have a genuine close-up eyewitness here.

“Yeah,” Louie said. “There wasn’t anything really memorable about him. He was short. Built about average. Little, nimble type, but strong. Like a good flyweight boxer. Even had a cauliflower ear. That’s what I remembered later, when I saw that drawing or something of him on TV.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Asked him if I could help him. He kind of tugged his hard hat down like he didn’t want it to blow off his head.”

“What did he say?”

“Kept kind of doing his job, making notes, checking off stuff, like he was on a schedule. Said, ‘Safety.’ Like it was the one word that should explain it all. So I figured he was an inspector from one of the city agencies. We get ’em all the time, checking for workplace danger, long-term issues, lead-based paint, asbestos . . . that kinda thing.”

“Did you talk about safety?” Fedderman asked.

“Naw. We didn’t gab. We both had things to do.”

“Then?”

“Then he left.”

“Say good-bye?”

“Nope. I guess neither of us thought we had that kinda relationship.”

“Did you see him get into a vehicle?”

“Nope, he just walked outta sight. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

“When did you think of it?”

“A few hours ago. I was watching news on TV, and up pops this picture of somebody that looked familiar. Then, during the commercial, I remembered. The safety guy! Then I read about him on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. I still couldn’t believe it, that I was just a few feet away from this guy, talked to him. So I read some more about him. The Gremlin. That just about scared the pastrami outta me.”

Louie clamped his lips together, looking as if he was in conflict. Quinn waited for him to say more, not asking him, not wanting to be the first to speak. Fedderman maintained the same silence. Sometimes people who are the first to speak say the damnedest things.

It was Madge who spoke first. “Tell him, Louie.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

Quinn said, “Everything’s something.”

“Tell him, Louie,” Madge said again.

Louie looked pained, but he spoke. “The big noise when the crane fell was when it slammed into the ground. But there was a small noise before that. A smaller explosion up high.”

“You sure? It could have been the crane hitting something on the way down.”

“It came before the crane hit,” Louie said. “Before it fell.” He clamped his lips closed again. Then parted them. “I was in bomb disposal in Afghanistan. I know explosives. I can know some things by the sound of the explosion, the extent and kind of damage that’s done. I’m pretty sure this was a shaped charge.”

“Which is?”

“A bomb—and it can be a small bomb—shaped a certain way so that it directs most of the force of the explosion in one direction. They’re used to take out tanks and other armored vehicles. I think one was used to separate the crane from the Taggart building.”

Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other. They seemed to be thinking the same thoughts.

“Would it take an expert to build and plant such a bomb?”

Louie squeezed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, then said, “An expert, yes. An artist, no.”

Quinn thought, here was a man who loved his previous occupation perhaps too much. “Could you build one?” he asked, smiling.

“Probably, but I might blow myself up. My expertise was in disassembling bombs so they wouldn’t detonate.”

“He might have gotten killed,” Madge said, patting Louie’s arm.

Fedderman said, “My guess is he knew what he was doing, or he wouldn’t be here.”

“Could an amateur have made and set this shaped charge?” Quinn asked.

“A gifted amateur,” Louie said. “Gifted and lucky. Like this Gremlin I keep hearing and reading about.”

“I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Quinn said. Fedderman shot him a glance. But Louie had jumped.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything about it at first,” he said. “It was Madge talked me into it.”

“You’re lucky to have Madge.”

“I am that,” Louie said, and gave Madge a hug.

When they were back out on the sidewalk, Fedderman said, “They’ve got a great marriage.”

Quinn kept quiet. He knew the problems of a cop marriage. He wondered if his and Pearl’s relationship would last, and if it had a better chance because they were both cops.

It took only a phone call for Quinn and Fedderman to ascertain that there hadn’t been any kind of safety inspection on anything owned by SBL Properties the day of the crane collapse. And the company’s hard hats were white and had a corporate logo on them.

“What now?” Fedderman asked, as they walked toward Quinn’s old but pristine Lincoln.

“We get that high-tech artist who made the so-called sketch to get with Little Louie, and maybe Helen, and improve on it.”

“The Gremlin isn’t getting better looking.”

“None of us is.”

“With him, there should be a portrait in his attic, where the subject gets uglier with every rotten thing he does. Know what I mean?”

Quinn said, “You’ve been seeing too much of Harold.”

36

Quinn phoned Renz and told him about the shaped-charge possibility. Renz thanked him, but told him the bomb squad had already been discussing the shaped-charge theory.

“Do they like it?” Quinn asked.

“They say it’s unlikely, except for a guy who disarmed bombs in the Navy. He said somebody with a little knowledge and a shit pot fulla luck might make such a bomb.”

“Why didn’t we learn this sooner?” Quinn asked.

“We just figured it out ourselves. But it’s only hypothetical. We’re still trying to decide how seriously we take it. Look at it piece by piece, and it doesn’t seem like much, so don’t go getting all excited. And for God’s sake, don’t talk about this to Minnie Miner.”

“Do I sound excited?” Quinn asked. “Or pissed off?”

“Do I sound gone?” Renz asked, and ended the connection.

Louie was still on sick leave, and still wearing the arm sling, when Helen and the NYPD sketch artist visited him in his and Madge’s apartment. They’d stopped for breakfast on the way, but that didn’t stop Madge from offering them coffee. Helen and the artist fell under the aromatic scent of freshly brewed coffee, though they managed to forgo the delicious but wildly caloric cinnamon-butter coffee cake.

The artist wasn’t Warfield this time, but an affable kid named Ignacio Perez, on loan from the FBI, who asked everyone to call him simply “the artist.” He set his laptop on the coffee table but off to the side. Then he ran some wires, turned on the fifty-two-inch screen on which Louie and Madge watched Justified and The Good Wife. He settled back on the sofa with a small mouse pad and a wireless mouse.