Deluge

7

IT NEVER RAINED like this in Poland.

Well, almost never.

Waclaw longed for a command of English. Instead his grasp of the language was more of a whimper. To be fair, Waclaw had been in the United States for less than two weeks and the lessons he had taken in Poland had proved to be almost useless.

He was on vacation from his job in Lodz. Actually, it was more of a pilgrimage than a vacation.

Waclaw wanted to see his son and daughter-in-law and their children before he died- if he indeed was going to die soon. He had a liver disease. There was a hospital in New York City where his son Alvin and his family lived, a hospital that specialized in liver disease. Waclaw had an appointment at the hospital, but now the time of that appointment had long passed.

The geography here eluded him. His son and his family lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, he was told, was part of the city. There were other parts of the city, five of them, called boroughs. One of these boroughs was the island he had heard of since he was a boy, the island where his son worked, Manhattan. It was all very confusing to an outsider, Waclaw thought.

Waclaw had an international driver's license. His task had been simple: he would drive the five blocks to the train station, park in the lot and wait for his son to come home from work. Then his son would drive them to the hospital.

Waclaw had not made it to the parking lot.

The rain had made driving so treacherous that Waclaw had driven off the road. He saw a brown patch of mud and water in front of him, lost control of the car and drove into what looked like a river or a lake. The engine stopped. The lights went out. The car surrendered to the rain, began drifting out into the river.

Then Waclaw could feel the car sliding slowly down farther into the water.

He tried to get out. The pressure of the water and the angle at which he sat made it impossible to open the door. His panic increased. But then the car had stopped moving, with the water level at the bottom of the window.

And so there he had sat for four hours, according to his waterproof watch, while the rain pounded on the roof of the car and he fruitlessly scanned the shore for possible signs of help.

Waclaw was hungry. He was tired. He needed a shave. He probably needed a new liver.

The rain continued to fall.

Then he had an idea. He slowly opened the window. Water and rain blew in. Waclaw, who was lean and taut, eased his way through the window and took off his shoes, which would weigh him down. He looked toward the shore. He didn't think he could swim that far- he could barely swim at all- but he could float on his back. So that was what he did. Better that than sitting around and waiting for help that might never come. He eased into the rushing river, floating into darkness and a rain that tried to pelt him under.

Arthur Alexson was hunched over, head into the wind and rain. He had cut a hole in a large piece of clear plastic he had found in an empty furniture box. It made a fine poncho, though it whipped around hard and with a snap when the wind caught it. He had tied a length of frayed cord around the makeshift poncho the way he had seen Sylvester Stallone do it in the first Rambo movie.

Arthur Alexson had a home, at least for now. The house he lived in was for sale. The people who owned it had moved somewhere. It was a nice house on a nice street with a basement window that didn't lock and which he entered after dark. He kept the finished basement clean and never went upstairs.

Arthur Alexson had left the house that morning, head and body bent over into the wind and rain in search of food. He had money, forty dollars, hard earned, asking for handouts right in front of the Fulton Street and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street subway station entrances. It took him fifteen days to accumulate that much money, but what else did he have to do? He had spent five of his forty dollars for the goods he now hugged under the makeshift plastic poncho.

As he walked carefully along the muddy bank of the creek, Arthur noticed a spot of white drifting past him, heading for the East River. Arthur stopped. No doubt. It was a man, and the son-of-a-bitch was alive.

"I'll get you," called Arthur, as the pale man floating on his back flowed closer.

The man called back something in Chinese or Russian or some such shit.

Arthur ran ahead of the man, heading in the direction in which the man was floating. Slipping in the muddy embankment, almost sliding into the water, worrying about snakes, which he hated, Arthur searched until he found a broken tree branch. It wasn't much and it wasn't all that long, but it was that or watch that poor bastard float away.

Arthur very reluctantly put his plastic bag of food down after quickly tying the top. Then he held out the branch and shouted into the rain, "Over here. Here. Here."

Waclaw heard the voice and began to paddle awkwardly toward it even though he didn't understand the words. The waterway had narrowed, and Waclaw thought that even with his poor swimming skills he might be able to make it to the source of the voice.

"Come on. Come on. You can do it," called Arthur.

Waclaw neared the shore and felt something against his chest. It scratched and cut. He grabbed it and Arthur Alexson pulled him in and then grabbed his outstretched arms to drag Waclaw onto the embankment.

When he was sure the man was safe and wouldn't slip back in, Arthur sat and panted. He looked over his shoulder. His bag of groceries was still there.

"That was close," he said.

Waclaw, too exhausted to move, thanked him in Polish.

"You're welcome," said Arthur, shaking his head and taking off his poncho. He covered the man with it and said, "What's your name?"

Waclaw took his wallet out of his pants, reached into it and pulled out a card. Arthur looked at it.

"This is my father. His name is Waclaw and he does not speak English. My cell phone number is 1-888-000-CHEM."

The name printed at the bottom was Alvin Havel.

Mac pressed the top of the mouse and the screen of James Feldt's laptop appeared with a musical hum. The computer sat on Mac's desk next to a cup of hot herbal tea.

The tickle in his throat had become a discernible soreness. He didn't have to use a thermometer, but he knew that he had a temperature.

He knew that cold and flu viruses came from human-to-human transmission and were not caused by cold or damp weather. Mac had also concluded, with reservations, that cold and wet weather might well create conditions under which the cold virus was more easily transmitted.

In any case, Mac Taylor had a sore throat and a cold and maybe some kind of flu. He drank some of the lukewarm tea and examined the computer screen.

Columns of numbers faced him each with an identification attached: "Woodrow Shelton, June Billing, $14,234; Monica Kobilski, June Billing, $18,333."

What interested Mac was the last entry on the page. It was a note that read:

*Primary associate billing and carryover billing adjusted is %12.23 higher than adam

Adam. Lowercase. No period. Mac could imagine a number of ways to end the sentence including something like "higher than adam predicted." But this was the last thing Feldt had written. "adam." No time for capitalization?

The tea soothed for a few seconds. Mac took a bottle of aspirin from his desk, removed three tablets and downed them with the help of the tea. Then he popped a lemon lozenge into his mouth.

Mac pressed more keys and pulled up the photos of the two mutilation victims. He scanned the photos and found the ones that showed the letters D and A carved into the thighs of the victims.

Time of death. Of course. If it hadn't been for the semi-fog of the flu, he would have seen it earlier. The body of Patricia Mycrant had been found first, a D carved into her thigh. Then Feldt A. But the temperature and condition of the two bodies indicated that Feldt had been the first one murdered, which meant first A and then D. Adam?

Were there going to be four victims? Another A and then an M? Not enough evidence yet. He could be carving anything into the victims, perhaps his initials, A.D. Or the two letters were the beginning of another word they didn't yet know. It would take another corpse to confirm Mac's suspicion that the next letter would be another A.

The other corpse existed. And the second A was carved into his thigh. The mutilated dead man was Timothy Byrold. His body had just been discovered by Dorrie Clarke, who saw the partly open door to Timothy's apartment and pushed it open farther.

Dorrie had gone down the hall to retrieve a tennis ball she had thrown. Dorrie was six years old.

"Umbrella Man?" asked Flack.

"That's what he calls himself," said Achmed from behind the counter of the Brilliance Deli.

There were no customers. Those who had been there earlier to escape the downpour had all fled when the blood-red rain gushed through the awning. Most of them had hurried into the rain under umbrellas purchased from Dexter the Umbrella Man.

"No name?" Flack pressed. "The Umbrella Man?"

"Dexter," said Achmed.

"And he stepped out on the street?"

"As soon as the bloody rain started to flow through the awning," Achmed said. "Went out there and looked up toward the roof, just stood there looking for a little while like he saw something or someone up there."

"How did he look?" asked Flack.

"Frightened, I think. Then he crossed the street and was gone."

Flack had stepped into the rain a few minutes earlier and looked up at the roof. Dexter the Umbrella Man would have been looking up at the spot where Mac had found evidence that the killer had leaned on the edge of the roof. Dexter the Umbrella Man could have seen the killer.

"And you don't know his last name or where he lives?" Flack asked Achmed.

"No, wait," said Achmed. "I know where he gets the umbrellas. He told me he gets the watches he sells when it isn't raining and the umbrellas when it is from somebody named Alberto, yes, at Alberto's place, I think he said on 101st Street."

"I know the place," said Flack.

His phone beeped.

"We've got another one," said Mac. "I'm on my way there. Find anything?"

"Maybe. Possible someone who saw the perp. And I want another crack at the victim's mother. Something's off about her. I feel it."

"Stay on it," Mac said. "Let me know if something turns up."

"Right," said Flack.

"You all right, Don?"

"Fine. Any news on Hawkes?"

"They're still working on it," Mac said. "I'll call you if I hear anything."

They hung up. Flack had a lot of ground to cover and the rain showed no sign of letting up.

Stella knelt next to the body of Henry Doohan, bartender and owner of what had been Doohan's Bar.

The gun that had killed Doohan had been fired at close range, very close. The entry wound and powder residue indicated to Stella that the gun had almost touched the right temple of the dead man's head. There was a large, rough-edged exit wound. Somewhere among the million or more remnants of the blast was a bullet or what remained of one. Stella would look for it. She might even find it.

She probed the dead man's nose with a swab and pried his mouth open to examine his tongue and throat. The swab would have to be examined microscopically. Stella examined the dead man's hands and took prints and scrapings from his palms. Then she covered the hands with plastic bags.

She was reasonably sure that Doohan had not shot himself. For one thing, there was no weapon near the body. For another, if she calculated the entry angle of the wound correctly, he would have had to hold the gun at an awkward angle and he would have to have been left-handed. The ME could insert a trajectory rod into the wound to confirm the angle of the wound. Doohan's watch was on his left wrist which more than strongly suggested that he was right-handed. That too could be confirmed.

Stella searched with flashlight and hands, reaching into nooks and puddles in search of the bullet. Nothing. She stood up and carefully made her way to the pit no more than two yards away where Hawkes and Custus were trapped. A lone young fireman knelt at the edge of the hole and monitored the pump that dropped down the sides of the pit and out of sight in the darkness.

"Hawkes," she called.

"Yes," Hawkes called back.

"Your cell phone working?"

"Wait…it's working."

"Answer it," she called, punching in his number.

Hawkes's fingers were growing numb. He kept flexing them and changing gloves to keep them warm. He flipped the phone open.

"Hear me?" Stella said.

"I hear," said Hawkes, looking at Custus who was gritting his teeth and grinning.

"What can we do besides keep working to get you out?"

"Morphine. He needs it."

"Morphine?" Stella said to the young fireman.

"I'll get Lieutenant Devlin," he said, rising and moving off.

"Hawkes, we ran the photos and samples back at the lab. Custus is a bomb maker."

"I'm not surprised," said Hawkes.

"IRA," she said. "At least he was. Left Ireland six years ago. The explosive he used to bring down this building was not up to standard IRA quality. This wasn't a terrorist bombing."

"What was it?" asked Hawkes.

"You might try asking Mr. Custus."

"I will," said Hawkes, looking at Custus, who was looking at him and listening. "Bonasera."

"Yes."

"I can hear a wall giving way down here."

"I'll see if I can get them to move a little faster."

"If they can't get us out right now," said Hawkes, "I've got to go in and get that bullet out. I think its pressing on the liver. If it penetrates the liver…"

"I get the picture," said Stella.

"Ironic," said Hawkes, looking at Custus. "I've got all the tools for removing a bullet from a dead body. Now I have a live one."

"Ironic," Stella agreed.

"There's more," he said. "I became a medical examiner and now a field investigator because I didn't want to work on living people. I didn't want to have anyone's life in my hands again."

"I know," said Stella.

Devlin and the young fireman were back at the rim of the pit as Stella closed her phone.

Devlin showed her a blue plastic case that fit easily into his palm.

"Morphine. I'll get it down to him," said Devlin. "Let him know it's coming."

"What about…?"

"I think we might have to take a chance or two here to get Doctor Hawkes and the other man out," said Devlin. "The sooner we can get down there, the better, before…"

"Before…?" Stella asked.

"Before it collapses," he said. "I'm not overly concerned about it, but we're still better safe than sorry."

"You have a family?" Stella asked.

The other fireman had gone back to monitoring the pump.

"Mother, father, brother, sister," he said.

"Married?"

"No."

"I don't have any family," said Stella. "No mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, husbands or children."

"You can't go down," Devlin said. "I'm trained to do it. I've done things like this before. You wouldn't know what to do."

"You could tell me," she said.

"We don't have the time and I don't think you'd have the strength that might be needed."

"I work out," she said.

"I bench-press three hundred and fifty pounds," he said. "This isn't a game of whose cojones are bigger, Detective."

"You're right," she said. "I'll get back to the dead. I know how to deal with them."

There was no answer at the number Alvin Havel had written on the card his father carried.

Maddie Woods, uniformed reception officer at the precinct, had tried the number four times before calling the telephone company and getting the address. A car was dispatched to check out the address before driving the shivering man there in the endless downpour.

There had been no problem finding dry clothes for the man to wear. There were three boxes of clothes in a closet next to the evidence room, clothes that had belonged to victims, drug dealers, a few murderers.

No one on duty spoke whatever it was Waclaw spoke. She did know the man's name, Waclaw Havel. That was all she could read on the inter-national driver's license in his wallet. He had reluctantly given up the wallet after much coaxing as he dressed in a pair of brown oversize winter corduroy slacks and an XX large T-shirt with a pocket. On the back of the T-shirt were the words "Life Sucks."

Maddie, short and plump with dyed blonde hair in a feather cut, tried communicating with the wild-haired man by using creative sign language. She had one basic question. What the hell had happened to him and how did he get to the front door of the police station? Sign language proved fruitless. Officer Jimmy Tuskov was brought in from directing traffic. He tried Russian. Waclaw didn't understand. Jimmy tried Czech, of which he knew just enough to get by. No luck.

"It's Polish," Jimmy decided.

Detective Art Rogetti wandered by the room as Waclaw was speaking to Jimmy.

"What's he talkin'?" asked Art, who had a cup of coffee in his hand. Art was tall, thin with a little belly, and a year away from retirement.

"Polish," said Maddie with a sigh. "You talk Polish?"

"No," said Art. "But I know someone who does."

"Who's that?" asked Maddie.

"Perp I'm bringing this coffee to," said Art. "Caught him looting a porno shop."

"It's not being called looting yet," said Jimmy.

"Okay. B and E then," said Art. "You want the guy?" he asked Maggie. "You don't want the guy?"

"We want the guy," said Maddie.

"Good, then I'll get the guy. His name is Zbilski."

A few seconds later a tough-looking little man in his late twenties was marched sullenly into the room. He looked at Waclaw and said something in Polish. Waclaw answered eagerly.

"What do I get?" asked Zbilski.

"Our sincere thanks," said Art.

"I just forgot how to speak Polish," said Alex.

"Remember fast," said Art. He handed the coffee to Zbilski.

Waclaw looked at Zbilski and said, "Rozumiesz polsku?" (Do you understand Polish?)

Zbilski answered, "Mowie po polsku."

"Well?" asked Art.

"Maybe it's coming back to me," said Zbilski.

"You deliver, you walk," said Art. "I'm feeling generous and curious." Truth was, Art didn't have enough evidence on Zbilski to be sure the breaking and entering charge would stick anyway.

After five minutes of talking to Zbilski, the three police officers knew why Waclaw had found his way to the station.

"Havel," Art said, looking at the driver's license Maddie had handed him. "Name rings bells. Wait a second."

Art left the room. Waclaw spoke again.

"He wants to know what happened to the car," said Zbilski.

"What car?" asked Maddie. "We've got abandoned cars all over the place."

Waclaw was in the process of explaining when Art returned and said, "Ask him if his son is Alvin Havel, the school teacher."

Zbilski asked. Waclaw said yes.

"He's dead," said Art. "Murdered at the school in Manhattan where he teaches."

"You want me to tell him?" asked Zbilski.

The three police officers exchanged looks.

"Make it gentle," said Maddie. "Real gentle and you walk. Okay with you, Art?"

Art nodded his agreement. Jimmy shrugged.

Zbilski smiled and handed the coffee he was holding to Waclaw, who accepted it with two hands. Then Zbilski leaned over, hand on the older man's shoulder and told him, gently.

Waclaw took a sip of coffee and handed the cup back to Zbilski, who handed it to Art. Then Waclaw wept and rocked and started to talk rapidly.

"What's he saying?" asked Jimmy.

"He's talking too fast," said Zbilski, who asked Waclaw in Polish to slow down.

Waclaw looked at him and kept talking.

"He says he knows who killed his son," said Zbilski. "He knows who and he knows why. He told his son to stop, but his son wouldn't listen. Now he's dead. His only son."

"Who does he think killed his son?" Maddie asked.

Zbilski asked the question and Waclaw Havel answered.

"What'd he say?" asked Maddie.

"He said, 'She did it,'" said Zbilski.

"Who is she?" asked Tuskow.

Zbilski asked and Waclaw answered.

"She's in the book," Zbilski translated.

"The book?" asked Art. "The phone book?"

Waclaw spoke rapidly. Zbilski said, "Wow wolniej."

Zbilski looked at the cops as Waclaw began speaking and said, "I asked him to slow down. Just says 'the book,'" said Zbilski.

"Che mi sie siusiu," said Waclaw.

"What'd he say?" asked Maddie.

"He has to pee," said Zbilski.