A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 (16 page)

A SHOT RANG OUT, WAKING HIM
.
Shot?
Or was it a bomb going off?

Something like that—something that threatened.

At least that was his first reaction.

By the time Salinowsky realized it had only been a box truck taking a pothole hard, he was sprawled on his stomach, his prosthetic leg on the concrete behind him. Now he remembered that he’d removed the leg for effect, had laid it across his lap—more productive than any cup or sign.

He scrambled back to the fence, still feeling jumpy, his insides as much a wreck as his outsides. He flinched at everything. Every shout from a stranger on the street he heard as advice to take cover, every stray whistle as danger flying through the air. His lip trembled. The loud noises just shredded him, went straight to his brain like reliving the explosion that had claimed his leg. Hands shaking, he looked into his cup. Just four bucks plus change there so far, and the sun had moved. It was warmer out but he felt a chill in the shade like something close to defeat. He needed angel wings and he needed them soon.

Salinowsky strapped on his leg and decided to move to a different street—maybe try Canal Street, just a block up. When he got there he settled onto his butt before a vacant building, this time putting a piece of folded cardboard under him for insulation before finishing off the fortified wine with two deep swigs. He’d only just removed his leg and laid it across his lap when a young woman slipped a ten-spot into his cup, looked a little embarrassed, and kept walking. Salinowsky said “thank you” to her calves. He was feeling too strung out to smile, but if this kept up for a few hours, he figured, he wouldn’t go to the methadone clinic today. His nerves were shot and he couldn’t remember his plan for turning around his life, but he knew where to score another bundle.

And that was something.

NEVER MIND THE MO OF T
he previous two attacks. Now that one isolated incident had become a pair, the public began seeing suspicious packages everywhere, most notably, as one might expect, in front of armed forces recruiting offices.

Kahn and Diaz did two RSPs on two packages in Queens, using the Wolverine once and the bomb suit another time, following procedure to the letter. One turned out to be a box of old CD’s. The other, three bags of dry plaster in an abandoned knapsack.
Dead weight.
Diaz wondered.
What the hell is someone doing carrying that on their back?

But never mind. They were in the response truck again with the robot stowed and heading back to the precinct house at half past eleven, Kahn writing up the incident reports on his lap.

The voice in Diaz’s head spoke to him. It said, “Our hero Manny Diaz on the move, villains and creeps quaking in their boots on the street at the mere sight of him. But Diaz is too focused on the big case to notice.”

He zoned back in and turned to Kahn. “Something don’t smell right about this,” he said.

Kahn kept his eyes on his report. “Yeah? How’s that?”

“The basics. Veterans blowing themselves up. I don’t buy it.”

Kahn looked through the windshield. “They have a much higher rate of suicide than the general population, which is understandable, going from all the stresses of combat back to the dullness of domestic life. Plus the economy sucks. Only thing that makes it worse for the vets is coming home to no job, no means for providing for their families.”

“But our two suspects had jobs.” Diaz paused. “You sound like you’re writing a brief for the prosecution. You’ve studied this?”

“I’ve been reading up at night, trying to figure these guys out.”

“A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. Ain’t that what you told me? Quote unquote: a danger to himself and others.”

Kahn set down his pen. “Okay, Diaz. What’s your theory?”

“I don’t have one yet—not a complete one. But I don’t see a sane veteran blowing himself up on the street.”

“Sane, no. Who says these guys are sane? They’re the exceptions in society, like all bombers. In this case, they’re probably suffering PTSD.”

“Guys I know with bad combat stress can barely wipe their asses. Friends of mine with that can’t get through the night, spend all their time just trying not to drive away their last family member, if they can even think that far ahead.”

Kahn gestured with his pen. “These two guys—both lived alone.”

“Horn had his sister and she seemed to care for him. He had his niece, something to live for.”

“Maybe he just snapped.”

Diaz twisted his mouth to one side. “Snapped and happened to have some C4 lying around? These guys with PTSD ain’t big planners. They’re just trying to get through the day. And you can’t hold down jobs like these two had with more than a mild case.”

“So they had a mild case.”

“I’m telling you, Sandy. You don’t commit an act of violence like this with a mild case. Maybe you punch someone out in a bar, but you don’t blow yourself up.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. These ain’t spur-of-the-moment explosions. Someone had to plan these things, like any bomb.”

“So maybe it isn’t combat stress. Maybe it’s political.”

“Nobody’s issuing any statements, though.”

“Their acts are their statements. The recruiting stations.”

Diaz shook his head. “Neither one went inside. Littel was across the street. Why would you do that? Can they be that stupid? It almost seems like spontaneous combustion.”

“Yeah,” Kahn agreed earnestly. “Their limbs blow up and their own human lives just happen to be in the way.” He scratched his chin. “Maybe they really don’t want to hurt anyone else. Like those Tibetan monks who set themselves on fire to make a point.”

“So what’s their point?”

Kahn counted on his fingers. “War is bad? Life sucks? The army didn’t treat them right? The Veterans Administration isn’t doing enough to help them?”

“But there’s no record of either of them holding a gripe. O’Shea says Littel’s ex-wife didn’t report anything that would lead you to believe the man would commit premeditated violence. She said the guy was pretty well adjusted. In fact, she was the one who had the affair that caused the marriage to bust up.”

“Maybe that made him bitter and he didn’t share.”

“Right,” Diaz said sarcastically. “The shy and retiring type who turns violent.”

“Don’t knock it. Fits the profile of a lot of bombers. Think Ted Kaczynski.”

“He’s sitting in his cabin writing manifestos, though. These guys are going to work every day, keeping their heads down. They didn’t leave behind any signs.”

“The work thing could be a cover, like I said before.”

Diaz continued to think aloud. “It could also explain why someone’s choosing them. They’re less likely to arouse suspicions. They’re blending in.”

“Still, even if they’re being chosen that doesn’t mean they also aren’t complicit. Osama chose KSM, who also chose himself.”

“Maybe it’s blackmail. Maybe they know something and they’ve been persuaded to take what they know to their graves.”

“What—like black ops?”

“It would explain why nobody’s creating propaganda around it.”

“Conspiracy.” Kahn shrugged. “That’s always one possibility. Or, more likely, Littel was just imitating Horn’s actions.”

“With C4? On such short notice?”

“I admit that line of thinking is thin. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t directly involved in their own destruction.”

“But it doesn’t mean they
are
involved—that’s all I’m saying—other than as victims. I know I got a bias, but if these guys just want to check out with a political statement, why not commit suicide and leave an angry note? O’Shea said Horn has the bronze star—a friggin’ war hero. Both of them, they’re American soldiers, and American soldiers are trained to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.”

Kahn closed his report folder. “There you go again with that army idealism. You heard about that American soldier—right?—the one who walked through the Afghan village and murdered more than a dozen women and children in cold blood?”

“That guy snapped.”

“Maybe these guys did, too. Snapped a long time ago, acquired the C4 or were persuaded to acquire it, and now they’re finally acting on it.”

Diaz bit his lip. Could he be that far from the truth on this one? Could preconceived notions about a soldier’s sense of honor be interfering with his judgment? He thought of last night, pulling the gun on Jennifer’s date. Hell, he could’ve killed the S.O.B while the jerk stood their buttoning his cuffs. He was on a hair trigger sometimes—couldn’t these other guys be, too? But not with an IED. An IED wasn’t even like a grenade—something that someone else made and that you could buy on the black market. These guys were hiding bombs in their false limbs—custom-made bombs.

“I’m not buying it,” Diaz said. “There’s something else going on here. I don’t know what.”

“I’m willing to listen, Manny, if you figure it out before the rest of us. I’m willing, but—” Kahn broke himself off.

Diaz watched the sergeant’s mind wander and come back inside the truck and settle again on the report in his lap. Self-editing. Why? Diaz couldn’t know for sure, but he suspected it had something to do with the reprimand. He’d given himself a reputation with that damn package by the steps of St. Pat’s. Now every minute Kahn expected him to run off the rails.

DESPITE THE BRIGHT SUN, MANIS
had his coat closed against the chill as he sat on a low wall of black polished granite in front of 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. A post office resided inside the Social Security building there, and Manis watched its patrons come and go. One of these patrons, he hoped, would be a homeless man named Lewis Salinowsky, subject of the third picture on Manis’s workshop wall and the only one left whose face he hadn’t yet crossed out with a big red X.

More than two years ago, Salinowsky, motivated by love or by some similar delusion, had penned a long letter to Sallye Ritchie, a nurse who now worked for the Veterans Administration in a hospital near Boston. Salinwosky hadn’t been aware of the nurse’s current location, so he’d addressed the note to her last known workplace, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. It had taken the letter nearly eight months to catch up to Sallye’s forwarding address, and five months ago she’d carried the note to Brooklyn in her purse with the sole purpose of using it to taunt Manis. That note had set Manis on his path of revenge, the post office box number written with a trembling hand in the return address field. And that note, he hoped, would now lead him to the man Sallye had always described as most virile of all her paramours.

Manis had been staking out the post office for the past two days, knowing that the federal government mailed most veterans’ benefits checks around the first of the month. He’d left Sallye asleep in his apartment, presuming she wouldn’t climb from bed until noon, when the post office would close for the day—Saturday.

It didn’t take long for his bet to pay off. At a few minutes past ten, a lanky man in grimy clothes limped toward the front door and Manis followed at a safe distance. He watched the man go to the proper mailbox, but apparently he found nothing inside except junk. Salinowsky couldn’t hide the disappointment on his face as he dumped his mail into the trash bin and wandered toward the door.

Unlike Horn, he had a pronounced limp. He pulled at an eyebrow and then fell into a trance before recovering himself, exiting the post office and heading up the street. He walked east and Manis followed—Worth Street to Leonard, up from there to a bench in Columbus Park with a cup and a sign.

Manis waited awhile until Salinowsky got comfortable. The park was quiet, despite the improved weather. In half an hour, the beggar had garnered no more than a few coins.

At eleven o’clock, Manis went up to him with a dollar in hand. “Nice day to be outside,” he said, stuffing the dollar into the cup.

“Unless you got no choice,” Salinowsky said. “Be cold tonight.”

“You have nowhere to go?”

“I didn’t say that.” For the first time, Salinowsky looked up. Nothing in his face suggested any suspicion that the man in front of him wished him dead. But his cheeks twitched as if demons ran through his skull. He was too busy battling threats from within to perceive any from outside.

Salinowsky had what appeared to be several days’ growth of blondish-gray beard, but his hair looked reasonably clean, Manis thought. His bloodshot dull blue eyes, however, betrayed premature age and unhealthiness.

Manis reached into his pocket and produced a five-dollar bill. This was no time to be stingy. “I wonder,” he said, “where does a man like you sleep most nights?” And when Salinowsky looked quizzical he added quickly, “I’m looking for a cousin of mine who lives on the street around here.”

Salinowsky squinted. “What’s his name?”

“I’d rather not say. I don’t want anyone tipping him off.” Manis waved the bill. “Do you stay someplace with other people who’re in your situation?”

“I do,” Salinowsky admitted. He cast his gaze down again, which gave Manis a chance to study the lower part of the artificial leg that poked out between his pants and his dirty brown shoes. He’d seen the leg before, surreptitiously photographed it on the street when he’d tracked Salinowsky once before to another begging spot before later losing him. At that time, the vagrant had it displayed across his lap while he slept. Salinowsky got more pictures than he’d ever need. It was the same prosthesis, he was sure. Now he only wanted the address to plan an overnight visit and place his device.

“Please,” Manis said, lying easily. “He’s a veteran and he’s fragile, my cousin. I want to bring him home.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to go home. My sister wants me to go home, but I won’t.”

Manis took a stab. “He sent a request to me from some city shelter.”

“That dump’s up on Stanton.” Salinowsky shook his head. “I won’t stay there. I stay in the church shelter most nights, St. Euph’s over on Allen Street.”

“Ah, no.” Now that he had a location, Manis sought quickly to bring the conversation to its conclusion. “I’m sure he won’t be there. He doesn’t believe in any church.”