The Patriots Club (20 page)

“Hurry up,” she said, yanking Thomas’s hand. “The club’s here.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re here! The club. The committee. Whatever she called them. We’ve got to hurry. Please, Tommy. You’ve got to follow me.”

Jenny shoved open the door and ran onto the sidewalk. A line of customers three deep waiting for a table snaked down the block. Jenny pushed through the crowd and rushed to the curb. “There’s supposed to be a car here for us,” she said, looking up and down the street.

Union Square West was off-limits to thru traffic. A lone Dodge Dart was parked against the far curb, near the park. Farther up the block, she noticed a Lincoln Town Car, mount of choice for every limousine service in the city. She checked over her shoulder. The men were filing out of the restaurant, spreading out on the sidewalk behind them.

“Where’s the car?” Bolden asked.

“I don’t know,” Jenny said, tugging at her hands.

Bolden looked behind them. “We can’t stand here. We’ve got to—”

Just then, the Dodge Dart parked across the street exploded.

33

Smoke billowed from the hood of the car. Tongues of flame curled from the engine block, the trunk, the passenger seat, lapping at the sky. The heat was tremendous. The line of customers waiting to get into the Coffee Shop had turned into an agitated throng. People stood, stunned and shaken. They held each other. They pointed. They ran. The daring approached the burning car.

“There’s someone inside,” a voice shouted.

“Get him out!” urged another. “Hurry!”

The wall of heat was intense enough to erase even the most heroic notions.

Bolden guided Jenny away from the car. His ears were ringing from the blast, his eyes watering from the bales of smoke. He checked the area near the car for any wounded bystanders, but could find no torn and bloodied shirts, no blackened faces. If it had been a car bomb, he would have been a pile of smoking rags and a pair of empty shoes. He glanced around him. Hidden somewhere among the milling crowd were the men whom Jenny had spotted in the restaurant. The explosion had given them a few seconds.

“It’s her,” she said, pointing. “It’s Bobby Stillman.”

A woman had emerged from the smoke, standing near the hood of the car, braving the fire. She was shouting, beckoning them to come. A tall, pale, pinched woman in her fifties.

Like a hydrogen bomb, all dark energy and fear, ready to go off.

The woman—Bobby Stillman—continued to motion for him to come. “Thomas,” she was saying. He could read her lips. “Hurry!”

But you have to know each other,
Guilfoyle had insisted.

It took him another second to fault Guilfoyle on that count, too. He had never seen her before in his life.

Jenny started across the street, but Bolden held her back. He didn’t want to go into a park, where he could be surrounded and overwhelmed. The crowd was his friend. Turmoil. Chaos. He had learned these things as a kid. He understood that it was Bobby Stillman who’d detonated this “smoke bomb,” and that it was a diversion to help him get away. And with that knowledge came the rest of it: that she had known about his kidnapping, and therefore knew Guilfoyle.

He looked at Bobby Stillman a moment longer, and made his decision.

“Come with me,” he said to Jenny.

“But . . .”

Tightening his grip on her hand, he began walking away, the walk turning to a jog.

They headed down the block to Fifteenth Street, dodging in and out of the masses converging on the burning car. The petitioners had abandoned their tables. The musicians clutched their horns to their chests as if they were cradling their children. Students poured out of the dormitory, rapt expressions testifying that real life beat books any day. Nearby, a siren began to wail.

Someone collided with Bolden. Jenny’s fingers slipped from his. He spun, relieved to find her at his back. “We’re almost out of here,” he said. “Just around the corner.”

Jenny pushed the hair out of her face and nodded.

When Bolden turned back, he was met by a pair of determined brown eyes. A man his own age with straight dark hair stood in front of him blocking his path. Something hard struck Bolden’s ribs. He glanced down and saw that it was a pistol. “Who the hell are you? What do you want with me?”

The man answered with a calm that belied his coiled tension. “Time to stop interfering.”

The pistol pushed harder into Bolden’s ribs and the muscles in the man’s jaw flexed.

“No!” shouted Bolden.

And then the man’s face slackened. His eyes wavered and rolled back into his head. All at once, he was collapsing at the knees. Another man caught him. He was tall, lean, mid-fifties, unshaven, a stubble of iron gray hair peeking out from a longshoreman’s cap. His right hand clutched a fat leather sap. His bloodshot eyes passed from Bolden to Jenny. “Go, sweetheart,” he said, in a rough voice. “Get out of here. Situation’s under control.”

Bolden skirted him and hurried down the sidewalk. “You know him?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Harry,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

“That’s good,” said Bolden. “We need friends.”

At the south end of the street, a police car turned in and accelerated toward them, siren wooping on and off. A second police car followed it. Bolden looked over his shoulder. The scene reminded him of a newsreel from a sixties protest, people scattering, air clouded with tear gas, an atmosphere of rage and incomprehension. The two men were gone—the grim, dark-haired assailant and Harry, the worn-out jarhead who’d knocked him unconscious—both of them swallowed by the unruly crowd. And the others? He knew they were there, looking for him. He told himself that they were closer than he expected. They had to move. To escape. But where?

Two police cars drove past. The crowd opened up to allow them a clear path.

“What is it, Thomas?” Jenny asked, bumping into him.

He rocked a step forward. “Noth—”

He heard the bullet strike Jenny. The impact was as distinct as a slap on the thigh. A red film sprayed from her shoulder. She lurched back a step, falling hard to the ground, striking her head on the concrete. Bolden dove to his left. A bullet ricocheted off the ground where he’d stood. He waited for the crack of a rifle, but none came. He looked around. The tide of pedestrians that had momentarily parted to allow the police cars to pass had engulfed them again. Rising to a knee, he searched the buildings opposite the square for some sign of where the shot had come from. He spotted movement in a third-floor window directly opposite him. A dark figure looming at an open window. A head cradled over a narrow object. Then it was gone.

Jenny was unconscious, her eyes closed, her breath coming in shallow gulps. A hole was cut in her camel-hair overcoat the size of a dime. Beneath it, he saw raw flesh.

Two policemen were rushing over. At the corner, a third police car had stopped. The doors flew open. Peaked caps rose and started toward them. Already a crowd was gathering, as one by one, passersby figured out that someone had been shot.

Bolden leaned over and kissed Jenny on the forehead. He looked at her for a last moment, then rose and disappeared into the crowd. She would be all right, he said to himself. She would live.

34

“Her name was Dance? You’re sure of that?” Franciscus asked, after the officer in charge had explained what had happened as best as he knew. There were at least twenty uniforms securing the area, and as many blue-and-whites parked up and down the street. A crime scene had been set up, yellow tape forming a perimeter that ran from the burnt-out car down the block to where Franciscus stood.

“Yeah. Jennifer Dance,” he replied, double-checking his notepad. “She’s on the way to NYU Emergency. Gunshot wound to the shoulder. Don’t know how bad it is.”

“She with anyone? A guy, maybe? Six feet. Dark hair. Solid.”

“We got a report of someone running from the scene, but no description.”

“She talking?”

“Not yet. All she said was that one second she was standing there, the next she went down. I’ve got two men heading over to the hospital to speak with her. We’re still interviewing witnesses. Why? You got something I should know about?”

“Maybe. Can I get back to you?”

Franciscus patted the uniform on the shoulder and headed up the street toward the car.

Wisps of smoke rose from the engine block like steam from the subway grate. The hood was blown up into the shape of an arc. Somehow, it was still attached. Flames had charred the chassis and melted the windshield. A few firefighters stood around the wreck, extinguishers in hand. Franciscus joined them, waving at his nose. “What in the name of Jehovah is that smell?”

“Sulfur.”

“Sulfur? What is it, a stink bomb?”

One of the firefighters was bent forward, inspecting the bowels of the engine. “Got it!” he shouted, emerging with a twisted piece of metal the size of a wine cork with frayed wires sprouting from it. “Blasting cap,” he said, handing the misshapen chunk to the detective.

Franciscus inspected the blasting cap, turning it this way and that. “Tell me this: Why didn’t the whole car explode?”

“No gas,” said the firefighter, whom Franciscus figured to be an arson specialist. “There was only a gallon or so in the tank. Looks like they spread a little in the trunk and on the interior, but just enough to make a wicked fire. Not enough to go ka-boom. The whole thing was a very controlled job. Look at the hood. The force of the blast was directed up. Vertically. There was enough of a charge to make a loud bang, but not enough to blow this baby apart. This wasn’t about killing anybody, it was about making a big friggin’ noise and a heck of a lot of smoke.” He stuck his head back under the hood and pointed to the charred crust lining the engine wall. “ ‘Willy Pete.’ White phosphorus. It’s what made the smoke. Same stuff we use in our smoke canisters. This ain’t a stink bomb. No sir. What we got here, Detective, is a giant smoke bomb.”

Franciscus bent his head over the radiator. The vehicle identification number had been sanded down. He’d bet the license plates were stolen, too. He walked around the car. A Dodge Dart. What a pile. “So, I take it that we’re not talking Osama bin Laden?”

“More like Mr. Wizard.”

Franciscus was leaving 1 PP, heading back uptown, when the radio had started going crazy with chatter. A car bomb in Union Square Park. A report of gunfire. One wounded. Possible fatalities. All available units to respond. It sounded like war had broken out. He threw the siren onto the dash, and in a few seconds, had the Crown Vic up to sixty. As he neared Twelfth Street, he caught a plume of black smoke curling into the air.

The day was turning out to be one big bouquet of roses.

After learning that the file on the Albany bombing was missing, he’d made a beeline for Central Booking to check on the status of the perp Bolden had brought in the night before. Busted teeth or no busted teeth, Franciscus intended on finding out from him why he’d wanted to assault Thomas Bolden, and why his buddies had such a hard-on for Bobby Stillman, a woman with a warrant for capital murder on her head who had dropped off the radar a quarter of a century earlier. To his surprise, the perp had given himself a name—Trey Parker—a social security number, and had, thereupon, been flushed out of the system. No arraignment. No bail.
Nada
. This, in flagrant contravention of New York State law calling for a mandatory one-year sentence for those convicted of illegally possessing a firearm. Worse, Franciscus couldn’t find a soul who knew anything about it. The paperwork concerning his release had disappeared with Mr. Parker himself.

It was at this point that Franciscus had decided to talk to Bolden personally, and give him a heads-up that Parker might be looking for him. There was something about Bolden that he liked. Maybe it was that tattoo: “Never Rat on Friends.” Anybody else working with a tight-ass firm on Wall Street would have had the artwork removed long ago.

A call to Bolden’s office had led to a conversation with Michael Schiff, HW’s CEO, who was quick to inform him that Solomon Weiss had been killed that morning. The man had gone on to rant for ten minutes about Bolden being the killer and a lot of stuff that Franciscus still couldn’t bring himself to believe.

A real bouquet of roses,
he thought as he walked into the Coffee Shop, looking for something to drink. The place had a juice bar over in one corner. A young Puerto Rican guy was sitting on a stool behind the counter, chewing on a section of sugarcane.

Franciscus took a seat on the sparkling ruby red barstool. “What do you have that’ll do an old fart some good?”

“You like wheatgrass?”

Franciscus made a face. He’d tried wheatgrass twice. The first and last times. You might as well eat lawn clippings. “Got some coffee?”

Franciscus tried to pay, but the man wouldn’t hear of it. In the end, he left a two-dollar tip on the counter.

“Excuse me, sir, but are you Detective Francioso?” A woman’s head protruded inside the front door, like a turtle peeping out of its shell.

“Close enough,” he said.

The woman stepped inside and looked around hesitantly. “I have a movie. One of the boys said you might like to see it.”

“A movie? What kind of movie?” Franciscus twirled his stool to get a better look at her. She was fifty with short, red hair, a kindly face, and a few extra pounds around the middle.

“I’m in town visiting my daughter. She’s a student at NYU. Journalism. We had a lovely day until this. We saw the Empire State Building—”

“Ma’am, you said you had a movie?”

“Oh, yes. I was outside in the park when everything happened. I was filming Sharon with some of her friends . . . musicians . . . they’re very good . . . when that poor young lady was shot.”

“You mean you filmed her being shot?”

She nodded. “I thought it was something the police might like to have. You might find something useful.”

Franciscus was on his feet in a heartbeat. “That’s very considerate of you. Do you think I might have a look?”

“Yes, of course.”

Franciscus guided the woman to a table in a quiet corner of the room. Helping him extend the two-inch-by-two-inch screen, she pressed the play button, then fiddled with a volume control. The picture appeared.

The images showed a young woman standing in the park listening to the horn quartet. The picture was steady. No zooming in and out. The lady knew how to make a home movie. The camera panned until the Coffee Shop was in view. The sky blue Dodge sat in the foreground. Her daughter walked into the frame, heading toward the restaurant. Next, he picked out Thomas Bolden and Jennifer Dance coming out of the restaurant and hurrying to the curb. Despite the line of customers waiting to get into the restaurant and the general lunch-hour to and fro, Franciscus was also able to spot three men emerging from the restaurant behind them and assuming a distinctly menacing stance.

At that point, a flame burst from the car’s hood, followed by a tremendous cloud of smoke. (The noise was terrifying, even coming from a button-sized speaker.) The picture shook chaotically. When it came back into focus, it was pointed at the ground. Then, the woman trained the lens on the car. The area nearby was a mob scene. A new figure appeared in the foreground, standing half in, half out of the billowing smoke. The camera circled the car and stopped on a woman waving her arms. He hit the pause button and stared at the face, then hit play again. The camera panned down the street. Bolden was speaking to a trim, blond-haired man. Their interaction was obscured by the constant passage of pedestrians in front of the camera.

A scream punctuated the soundtrack, and the camera whipped back and forth, finally zooming in on Thomas Bolden cradling Jennifer Dance on the sidewalk. The blond-haired guy was gone. The video ended.

“Lady, you’re a regular Robert Capa,” said Franciscus. “I can’t thank you enough for coming forward.”

“I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“I’m afraid we’ll need your tape. Tell you what . . . I’ll have a copy made for you. If you’d give me your address, we’ll ship it to you as soon as possible.”

Franciscus watched the woman leave, then polished off his coffee. He walked outside and stood in the spot where Jennifer Dance was shot, trying to figure out where exactly the bullet that hit her might have come from. He spotted an open window across the way. He called an officer over and instructed him to go into the building and check for signs of forced entry, shell casings, or any other evidence.

Watching the officer hustle across the square, Franciscus replayed the film in his mind, comparing one of the faces he had seen to that printed in a newspaper article some twenty-five years ago. The two were not entirely dissimilar. The hair was a different color, the face leaner now, sharper, perhaps altered by a surgeon’s knife. But the eyes were the same. That part you couldn’t change.

Franciscus’s impression was that the woman in the movie was Bobby Stillman.

Go figure.

Ole Matty Lopes was right. This case wasn’t cold anymore.