Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Harris said, " These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' "

John ran his finger along his tattered King James. " 'God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain…'"

The two men, along with William, said a perfunctory "Amen."

John sipped his lemonade and marked the passage. There were no priests in their church. Since God's terrible and just will touched every soul (every believing, nonsin-ning, white soul, that is) equally, there was no need for ordination. Laymen gave sermons and conducted services. John was a favorite speaker.

He looked at his watch and glanced at the other two, who nodded. He then made a long-distance phone call.

On the fourth ring, it was answered.

"Gabriel? How are things?… Good. So pleased to hear it. Brothers Harris and William and I are here together. Our thoughts are with you… We're ready to do what you asked."

John listened, nodding. His graying eyebrows lifted and his face flushed with excitement. "What's the number?"

He jotted down a phone number in New York.

He hung up the phone and turned to Harris. "He's had a brilliant thought. Since no one believes we exist he said he's decided to create a living testament to the will of God." He looked at the phone number and began to dial.

The room seemed smaller with his wife in it.

Healy's impression was that she'd grown. But maybe it was just that rooms are always smaller with your ex in them.

"How you doing?" Healy asked.

"Not bad. You?" Cheryl responded. "You've gained weight."

"I don't work out like I used to."

"You're not spending three nights a week at the gym?"

He didn't answer and she didn't comment further.

"Adam tells me you have a girlfriend."

"Not a girlfriend really."

"She's young, he says."

"You were the one-" Oops. Watch that.

"I'm not saying anything. I didn't expect you to be celibate."

"We're just friends."

"Friends." Cheryl was wearing a pink dress. She looked like she could be in a Betty Crocker commercial. Cheerful and efficient, smacking a sifter to dislodge bits of flour.

Healy thought she should look more, well, suicidal about the breakup.

They sat close together on the couch. Healy decided he'd have to get more furniture. He asked, "You want anything? A drink?"

"Nope."

He said, "I haven't gotten the divorce papers yet."

"I haven't had my lawyer serve them."

"I thought you were in a hurry," he said.

"I'm not sure I'm in a hurry."

"Oh."

The sunlight fell in a familiar pattern on the white rug. He remembered the day they bought it. They'd bought shag because it seemed ritzier even though it was cheaper than pile. He remembered the salesman. A young man with razor-cut black hair and eyebrows that formed a single band across his face. He and Cheryl had gone out to the food court in Paramus Mall afterward and made love when they got home. On the old carpet.

Today they talked for an hour.

Healy wasn't sure how the words were going. It seemed familiar terrain, though the tone was different this time. He didn't feel defensive. He wasn't desperate or confused. Maybe it was because he'd been seeing Rune, maybe because he felt that somehow the equilibrium of the house had shifted and it was now his home more than it wastheirs. Every so often they'd fall back into the roles of adversaries. Boy, that was familiar: Hey, that was you, not me… If you'd said anything, I could have… That wasn't my fault… Sure, say it all you want, you know it's not true…

The old arguments… I'd rather deal with a pipe bomb any day…

But neither of them had the urge to go for the throat. And once that harmless sparring was done they were just having a good time. Healy got some beers and they began to reminisce. Cheryl was talking about the time an old friend called up to say they couldn't make it for dinner because his wife just left him but could he come tomorrow, only without the casserole because he didn't know how to make one.

And Healy mentioned the time they came home and found the dog standing in the middle of the dining room table, peeing on the candlestick.

And they both laughed about the night they were staying at Cheryl's parents' house, and remember, on the billiard table in the rec room? "Like I could forget?…"

Then there was silence and it seemed that they had come to the point where a decision was supposed to be made. Healy didn't know what the choices were, though, and he was stalling. He left it to Cheryl but she wasn't much help, either. She sat with her hands together, looking out the window she'd cleaned a thousand times at the yard he'd mowed a hundred.

Healy finally said, "Honey, you know, I was thinking-"

The phone rang.

He wondered if it would be Rune and how to handle it.

It wasn't.

"Sam?" the ops coordinator from the squad asked. "We got a live one."

"Tell me."

"A call from those Sword of Jesus assholes. The device is in a bag on a houseboat in the Hudson-"

"Houseboat? Where?" His heart thudded.

"Around Christopher. Maybe Eleventh."

"That's my friend's," he whispered.

"What? That girl who was in here?"

"Yeah."

"Well, don't panic. We've got a clean frozen zone and the boat's empty. She's not there."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know but we searched the boat."

"What's the device?"

"Different this time. The portable got a look at it before he called us. Looks like it's a bit of C-3 or C-4 embedded with ball bearings. Not much charge. Only a few ounces."

"So, antipersonnel." Ball bearings or coins were added to explosive to cause the most damage to human flesh.

"Right."

"Can the robot get it?"

"Nope. It's on the deck. Too narrow."

Healy pictured Rune's boat. Knew it would have to be a hand entry.

"Hell, get a bomb blanket over it and let it detonate."

"Only one problem. Your girlfriend didn't realize it, I assume, but she's docked right next to a barge that's filled with five thousand cubic yards of propane. That bomb goes and takes out the barge-that'll ignite three square blocks of the West Side."

"Hell, tow it out there."

"I made a call and it'll take two hours to get a tug there and get the barge rigged to move. It's bolted to off-loading pumps on shore. You can't just move the damn thing."

"And how much time do we have till the device goes?"

"Forty-five minutes."

"I'll be right there."

"One thing, Sam. It's weird."

"What's that?"

"The Sword of Jesus… they didn't just call in a threat. They said, 'Get the Bomb Squad over to this houseboat in the Hudson at Christopher.' It's like that was the most important thing, getting somebody from the detail there."

"That's why it's antipersonnel, you think?"

"Yep. I think it's directed at us."

"Noted," Healy said. He hung up. Turned to Cheryl, who'd heard the conversation.

He wondered if she was going to give him one of her exasperated looks. The Here-he-goes-again look. The shield against his stubbornness and selfishness. But, no, Cheryl was standing up, letting her white patent-leather purse fall to the floor, then walking straight to him. She eased her arms around him. "Be careful." He was surprised at how tightly he found he was holding her.

Breathing hard, in the bomb suit.

Walking up the gangplank onto Rune's houseboat. Trying not to think about the last time he was here. About them lying in bed together. About the stuffed toy, Persephone, falling to the floor.

He saw the bag, peeked inside.

Okay. Problems.

It was one of the most sophisticated bombs he'd ever seen. There was an infrared proximity panel so that if a hand got close it would detonate. And it had a cluster shunt-twenty or thirty fine wires running from a shielded power source to the detonator. With a typical two-wire shunt, if you cut them simultaneously, you might be able to disarm. But it was impossible to cut this many shunt wires. The timer was digital, so there was no way to physically gum up the mechanism.

And to top it off, there was a mercury rocker switch in the middle of the shuts.

Great, a rocker switch in a bomb on a houseboat…

Healy gave these details to the ops coordinator, who along with Rubin and several other members of the squad huddled behind sandbags at the end of the pier. They'd made the decision to bring only a few officers here; if the propane barge went up, whoever was within two blocks would be killed, and they couldn't risk losing the majority of the squad.

"I could cut the rocker switch," he said, breathing heavily. It wasn't shunted. "But I can't get into the bag. The proximity plate'll set it off."

"How sensitive's the rocker?" Rubin asked through the radio.

"Pretty," he replied. "Looks like anything over three or four degrees'll close the switch."

"Could you freeze the mercury?"

"I can't get anything into the bag. The prox switch."

"Oh, right."

"I'll just have to move it out slowly."

Healy surveyed the scenario. He'd move the bomb to the gap in the houseboat railing where the gangplank was. That would be all right; the bag would stay relatively flat. But then he'd have to pick it up and carry it, by hand, down the gangplank and then to the TCV, which had been driven out onto the pier, ten feet from the houseboat.

That'll be the longest ten feet of my life.

He glanced at the timer. Seventeen minutes left.

"I need some oil."

"What kind?" Rubin asked.

"Any kind."

"Hold up…"

Fifteen minutes…

He was startled when Rubin appeared beside him with a can of 3-In-One oil.

Healy shook his head in thanks-Rubin wasn't wired into the radio any longer-and poured the oil on the painted deck of the houseboat, to minimize the friction when he moved the bag. He tossed the can aside and then reached out and gripped a corner of the canvas. Thought of Adam, thought of Cheryl, thought of Rune. He started to pull it toward him.

Rune watched Warren Hathaway walk down the path to the beach, where she was sunning on a large towel.

"I've just been on the phone with some investors. Here's what I've arranged. Not great but, considering you don't have a track record making films, I think you'll be happy."

The way it would work was this: Warren Hathaway would loan her the money to finish the editing and post-production work. It would be a straight loan at just eight percent interest. He'd said, "Prime is twelve but since you're a friend…"

She'd hugged him.

"I'd go lower but the IRS imputes income if the interest isn't market value."

Whatever…

Then, he explained, they'd do something called a joint venture, a phrase Rune had never heard before and that started her giggling. When she'd caught her breath he'd told her that he'd underwrite the cost of finding a distributor, then they'd split the profits. She'd get eighty percent, he'd get twenty. Was that okay with her?

"More than okay. Hey, this sounds like real business. Adult, grown-up business."

"I'll go let them know."

Then he'd gone into the house and left her on the wide beach, dozing, thinking about Sam Healy, then about her film, then dozing again, then trying not to think about Sam Healy. She heard the water crash and the gulls hover overhead, squawking. Rune fell asleep to that sound.

An hour later she woke up, with the first sting.

Rune looked at her arm.

Oh, brother…

I have dark hair and dark skin and I've got a half inch of sunscreen on me. There's no way I should have a third-degree burn.

But she felt the blisters forming on her back-a crawling, chill, damp sensation.

She slowly sat up, dizzy, and threw a blanket over her shoulders. She walked toward the house.

Maybe she could ask Warren to rub some Solarcaine on her, but she decided that one thing would lead to another… Not that he wasn't cute, not that she wouldn't love to make Sam Healy a little jealous. But with Warren's interest in her film she figured that no sex made the most sense. Keep it professional.

Her back pricked with an infuriating itching and she danced over the hot concrete of the patio into the house.

Warren was inside, looking into his gym bag.

"I hope you've got Solarcaine in there," she said. "Or Bactine. I'm lobster woman."

"I think I've got something to fix you right up."

She looked around. "Didn't you have two bags?"

"Yeah," he said matter-of-factly. "I left one at your houseboat."

"Oh, too bad."

"No, I did it on purpose." He rummaged, squinting into the bag.

"You did, why?"

"To keep the Bomb Squad busy."

And he took a red windbreaker from the bag, unwrapped it carefully and set a fist-sized wad of plastic explosive and detonator on the tacky driftwood table.