Tick Tock (10 page)

“Mike? You still there?”

“Barely,” I said.

She laughed.

“Well, I, for one, am glad your head’s still attached to your shoulders, Mike. I like the way it thinks. The way it looks isn’t half bad, either.”

What did she say? I thought, squinting at the phone.

“Ah, you’re just saying that to keep me from going into shock,” I said.

“That’s what friends are for,” Emily said. “Actually, they want to send someone from our team up to New York to
help you guys out, Mike. I was wondering if you thought it was a good idea if I volunteered?”

I thought about that. It went without saying that her expertise on the case would be invaluable. And it really would be awesome to see her. We had definitely made a connection, something special.

Then I suddenly remembered Mary Catherine, and how things were going on that front.

I must have still been loopy with shock, because the next thing I said surprised me.

“Come up. We need all the help we can get. We need the best people on this. Besides, it would be great to see you.”

“Really?” she said.

“Really,” I said, not knowing what the hell I was doing or saying. “Call me as soon as you get up here.”

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.

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.

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 might 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.”

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.