Deluge

6

DJ RIGGS STOOD UNDERNEATH the doorway overhang of Rhythm & Soul Music on 125th in Harlem. The streets were clear, except for the few fools trying to make a dash for who-the-hell-knew-where, most of them eventually being pelted to the nearest doorway by the rain.

DJ smiled. The rain from hell was a gift. They would expect him to make a dash for the subway station. DJ was too smart for that.

DJ was twenty-seven, a two-time loser, last time for dealing. Two undercovers had broken into his crib less than fifteen minutes ago. DJ had made it out the window and down to the street and looked back knowing that a third and final stretch upstate was only a hundred yards behind. The undercovers might have been faster than he was and in better shape, but DJ was highly motivated.

He ran until the rain and his failing breath told him running was no longer an option. Rhythm & Soul had been there, not yet opened. Might not even be open later on a day like this.

DJ didn't pray for the rain to continue. If there was a God out there, DJ was definitely not on his good side. He wasn't bad enough for help from the devil either, at least he didn't think so. Ride out the rain. Stay off the street, out of sight. They would give up.

DJ heard a cry and wasn't sure what it was at first. Then he connected the cry with what he saw shuffling along the curb. A toddler, dark skinned, in diapers, crying, arms stretching out for someone who wasn't there. DJ couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.

He looked around, didn't see anyone. Where had this kid come from? Must have wandered off from his mother in the chaos of rain. The toddler was now about twenty feet in front of him.

Someone would come, DJ was sure. The kid was just getting wet, he wasn't hurt or anything. It was DJ who could be hurt if he tried to help. What good would he do? What could he do without getting caught?

Just wait. The baby toddled along. Then the horror hit DJ. He realized that the toddler had stepped off the curb and been knocked down by the rushing water in the gutter. The child was now being dragged along by the current toward an open drain whose mouth was definitely wide enough to welcome the child.

It was DJ's turn to cry out. He didn't even think, just ran from the doorway, watching the baby inch toward the drain, toward the sewer, toward the rats, the filth, no-doubt-about-it death.

DJ ran, almost crying, until he reached the child, right in front of the open gushing drain. He held tight to the baby's arms in spite of his slipping grip. He pulled the baby to him onto the sidewalk, felt its heart beating against his chest. When he opened his eyes he could see the two undercover cops splashing their way toward him in the middle of the street.

Leonard Giles, head of the tech lab, drove his wheelchair to the computer and keyed up the photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. He had already run tests on the bits of wood and remnants of metal and plastic Stella had sent him.

"I think it was a bomb," Stella had said when she called. "More than one bomb."

"Someone wanted to blow up a bar?" Giles said.

"Looks that way," Stella said.

"Al Qaeda gone mad? Seeking unlikely targets to terrorize the nation?"

It wasn't funny and Stella didn't laugh. After a long silence Stella said, "Hawkes may be trapped in a sinkhole with the bomber."

"I'll take care of it," Giles had said soberly.

Now he sat in front of the large computer screen. He typed in instructions and a geometric form appeared, a circle of Os and Cs with six H3Cs around them.

TATP, triacetone triperoxide, the explosive used in the London subway bombings, found in the shoe of Richard Reid, favored by Hamas, was highly unstable. The bomb maker, Giles knew, was almost as likely to blow himself up making it as he was to finish and deliver it. At least two bomb makers in Ireland had been victims of their own TATP bombs and more than forty bomb makers in Gaza and the West Bank had lost their lives to the unstable explosive.

TATP can be made of common household items such as drain cleaner, hydrogen peroxide and acetone.

Giles downloaded and saved the information, then inserted a CD. The information on the CD had been sent as an attachment from London and had been received less than half an hour ago. On the screen appeared a photograph of a man, his shirt off, his hair tousled, his left eye blackened. His chest was a jungle of hair parted by rivulets of scars, some white, some red, some ridged. The man's left hand was missing. Under the photograph of the man was information on the kind of explosive that had caused the scars. Next to the screen showing the CD were photographs Hawkes had taken of Custus. On the screen, the bare-chested Custus now appeared next to the redheaded man with one arm.

Giles moved slowly through the photographs on the CD that had been sent from London. He had no trouble finding a match for the scars, actually several matches. Giles concluded that the man in the pit with Hawkes was a survivor of at least four different kinds of bomb, including nitroglycerin and TATP.

"Definitely," Lindsay said.

She and Danny were standing in the laboratory with the blood-soaked heads Lindsay had been testing. One head was currently in almost the same position in which they had found Alvin Havel.

Lindsay, dissatisfied with commercial artificial blood, had developed her own formula that she constantly changed as she searched for the perfect texture and color.

Danny examined the blood splatters, looked at the crime scene photographs she had handed him and said, "Right."

"Blow to the neck came when he was standing, head up," she said. "Blow to the eye came when his head was on the desk."

"When he was dead," said Danny.

"Dead at least ten minutes. Sid agrees. No blood splatter from the eye wound. He was already dead."

"And your explanation?"

"One of those kids killed Havel, then waited around before stabbing him in the eye and leaving."

"Why?" he asked.

"We've got one really angry kid here."

"Not necessarily," said Danny.

Lindsay looked at him and waited. He took his mini-tape recorder out of his pocket.

"Wayne O'Shea, the kids call him Brody," said Danny.

"He's the one who found the body."

Danny clicked on the recorder. It whirred to the number Danny had remembered, stopped and began.

Danny: And no one was in the room or outside it when you went in?

O'Shea: No one.

Danny: What did you-?

O'Shea: I saw Alvin. I saw…I'll never forget what I saw.

Danny: And you were in your classroom the entire period?

O'Shea: Yes. I went in to ask Alvin about lunch and we'd heard this noise through the wall. So…

Danny: Do you know if he was having any trouble with any of the students or other teachers or parents?

O'Shea: Everyone liked Alvin. He was smart, a good teacher, maybe a great teacher. He won the Wallen Award, the Dorwenski Award, the Student Favorite Award, all the awards. The students admired him.

Danny: And you?

O'Shea: He was my best friend here. I'll miss him. I'll be haunted by what someone did to him.

Danny: What was the last time you saw him before you found him dead?

O'Shea: He was coming out of the closet.

Danny: He was gay?

O'Shea: No, a real closet, at the back of his laboratory behind the white board. The board slides. He used it as his storeroom.

Danny pushed a button. The tape recorder stopped.

"You looked in the closet," Lindsay said.

"I looked in the closet."

Danny was smiling.

"Okay," Lindsay said. "What did you find?"

"Traces of blood."

The limping man stood outside the door and listened to the pacing footsteps and the occasional grumbled words inside the apartment. The hallway was dark and smelled of urine and rotting food.

He had entered the building through the lobby door, though it wasn't much of a lobby and it wasn't much of a door. He had stood outside, hooded against the rain, and looked up at the words HECHT ARMS cut into the gray stone over the door.

There were signs that someone at some time had dutifully replaced the broken lock on the lobby door. The wooden doorjamb was cracked, the broken lock loose in a door that just didn't give a damn any longer.

The lobby was just big enough to stand in and look at the eighteen mailboxes, some of which stood open, some of which were protected by small flimsy padlocks.

Some of the mailboxes bore names printed in black magic marker. Some had names scratched directly into the thin metal. Some bore no name at all.

He didn't need to find a name. He already knew the right apartment. He had been here before, once before. This visit would be very different.

There was an inner lobby door. No lock. He went in and walked down the first-floor hallway, weaving past a pile of newspapers in front of one door, a tricycle with a bent front wheel in front of another. Voices, vague, crying, someone shouting in anger, television sets droning relentlessly on, laughing, applauding.

The limping man paused in front of the door at the dark end of the hallway. He knocked. No answer, though he could hear muttering, pacing beyond the door. He knocked again, louder, much louder. The muttering stopped. The pacing stopped.

"Who is it? What the fuck do you want?" said a voice.

"Adam."

Silence beyond the door.

Then it opened a few inches.

"Adam?"

Timothy Byrold opened the door wider and looked at his visitor. Timothy, shirtless in a baggy pair of dirty white painter's overalls, needed a shave and a strong comb. He was big, taller than the limping man by three inches, heavier by twenty-five pounds. Timothy seemed to sense the man's disapproval and ran a hand through his thick hair. It did nothing except make the dirty hair stand up. He looked like a clown about to put on his makeup. The image did not strike the limping man as funny.

"What are you doing here?" asked Timothy.

"Can I come in?"

"It's not fit out there for man nor beast," said Timothy, stepping back.

The limping man stepped in and shut the door behind him.

The studio apartment looked very much as it had the other time he had been here, cot in a corner with the sheet untucked, a single sweat-stained pillow, a rough khaki blanket in a tangle, a sagging sofa that had once been orange but was now a sooty burnt bark color, a small wooden table with two chairs, a battered chest of drawers with a small color television on top of it. A refrigerator sat near the only window.

On the table was a bowl. In the bowl was a mound of what looked like soggy Cheerios. The cereal was being probed by a single, large black fly.

The room was as repulsive as the man.

"It's raining like shit out there," Timothy said. "Like shit. I'm stuck in here, in here. And the TV's broken. It's like being in a cell. You know what I mean?"

"Yes."

"I'm used to wandering, finding things, meeting people," said Timothy, rubbing his face.

"I know."

"Hell of a time for a visit," said Timothy. "Hell of a time."

Timothy picked up three magazines from the sofa and dropped them on the floor in a corner to give his guest a place to sit. Then he turned and tried to smile.

"I've got a couple of Cokes."

"No, thanks."

"So, have a seat."

"No, thanks."

"Then what, what?"

"You ever make a promise?"

"A promise. Yeah, sure. I must have. Everybody makes promises," said Timothy, noticing, sensing that something was odd about his visitor.

"Did you keep your promises?"

"Some, I guess. Don't remember."

Timothy sat on the sofa and looked up. Then he saw what was wrong. His visitor was wearing white, skin-tight gloves.

"I made a promise," the limping man said.

"Interesting," said Timothy. "Sure you don't want a Coke? Sure you don't want to start making sense or get the hell out of here?"

"Remember, I know what you are."

"And I know what you are," said Timothy. "So what? That's what you came to talk about? You need a shoulder to cry on? We've got a place for that, remember? Once a week, remember?"

"I remember."

The limping man moved toward the sofa. Timothy rose. He didn't like the blank look on his visitor's face.

"Get the hell out," Timothy said. "Or say something interesting that makes sense."

He took another step forward. Timothy stood, legs apart, hands ready. He was no stranger to violence. There were times when he welcomed it. He expected no problem in throwing out this intruder. He reached for the limping man's poncho.

The limping man ducked and in a crouch came up with a knife in his right hand. He stepped forward, flowing into the move and plunged the blade under Timothy's armpit, burying it to the hilt.

Timothy grunted, not sure of what had happened, thinking he had been punched, losing his breath. He reached for the limping man's hair, but the man knocked his hand away with an elbow and delivered a short, sudden chop to Timothy's neck.

Timothy went down with a moan, reaching out for something to grab, to hold him up. The pain under his arm had spread to his chest. He was sitting now, puzzled, dazed. He looked up at his visitor who kicked him in the chest. Timothy went to the floor on his back, panting, trying to catch his breath.

"You…you're…my only friend," Timothy whispered.

"Not anymore. Not ever."

Timothy felt the straps of his overalls being pulled down. Then he felt the overalls being pulled off.

"What?" he managed. "Why?"

"You know."

When the next wave of pain came, Timothy wanted to scream. His mouth was open, but nothing came out.

DJ Riggs sat, towel over his shoulders, cup of awful coffee in his hands. One of the narc cops who had caught him sat across from him. The other stood behind him.

DJ knew the drill. He knew the room. All these rooms and all these cops were the same. They had him. They could play back and forth, good cop, bad cop, we know what you did, do you know what's going to happen to you?, we don't need you to talk but it will go better for you if you do.

"You saved a baby," the cop across the table said. He was young, younger than DJ, Hispanic, long hair.

"That buy me a ticket out of here?" asked DJ.

"Not hardly," said the other narc behind him, a tall black man who looked like somebody on the Yankees DJ couldn't quite place. "But it inclines us to listen to anything you might have to tell us."

"Okay, I tell you I want a lawyer."

"We can't help you once your lawyer comes," said the Hispanic cop.

DJ looked at the wall. He could have been left alone and supplied all the dialogue.

"Yeah," he said. "And you want to help me."

"Hell of a thing you did saving that kid, coming out of that doorway so we could see you. Hell of a thing," said the Hispanic narc.

"We're inclined to be nice," said the black cop behind him.

"Okay," said DJ. "I've got something. Deal is, I give it to you and it's good shit, I walk."

"It would have to be damn good," said the first cop.

"It is," said DJ. "I want it on tape and I want to hear your voices on that tape and I want my lawyer to hear the deal."

"Deal is off the record," said the first cop. "You trust us or no deal. And there will be no deal anyway if you don't have some top quality information."

DJ looked at them and said, "I saved that baby's life."

"You did," agreed the black cop.

"Okay," said Riggs folding his arms. "Deal."

"Talk," said the black cop. "Make it good."

"Terrorist," said DJ.

Neither cop seemed moved by the information.

"I dealt him some detonators."

"You're a drug dealer," said the Hispanic cop.

"I'm an entrepreneur," said DJ.

"Go on," said the black cop.

"He came to me. Don't know how he knew I was the man to come to. White guy, maybe fifty, one of those British accents, you know. I asked him if he needed bombs too. Not that I had them."

"Of course not," said the Hispanic cop. "More coffee?"

"No. All he wanted was detonators. I happened to know where I could get a few. Hoisted from a construction site over in Jersey."

"This man in search of detonators, he have a name?" asked the black cop.

"Everybody's got a name," said DJ, "but no one gives a real one to me and I'm fine with it."

"That's all you have?" asked the Hispanic cop.

"He made a cell phone call. He didn't know I could hear him. Argued with somebody, said whoever he was talking to should calm down, that everything would be fine, that he'd meet him at Doohan's in the morning."

"And when did this conversation happen?" asked the black cop.

"Last night," said DJ. "Did I give you enough?"

"We'll check your tale, talk to an assistant DA," said the Hispanic cop. "You can identify this British guy?"

"Damn straight," said DJ. "Am I walking?"

"You saved a baby," said the black cop.

"You dealt detonators to a possible terrorist," said the Hispanic cop. "Homeland Security will want to talk to you."

"And the FBI," said the black cop.

"Hey, man, I saved the baby."

"That you did," said the Hispanic cop. "It's in the mix." He looked up over DJ's shoulder and nodded. The door opened behind DJ and then closed.

"I want a lawyer now," said DJ.

"It's still raining hard," said the Hispanic cop.

"Then he'll just have to slog his way over here. I'm through talking," said DJ.

The Hispanic cop got up and motioned for DJ to do the same.

"How's the baby doin'?" asked DJ.

"High and dry. His mother's a crackhead. She lost track of him when she was high and the kid wandered off. Name's Linda Johnson. Know her?"

"Yeah," said DJ, thinking there was an outside chance that he had saved the life of his own baby.