Death of a Blue Movie Star

  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, squaw
king. 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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  She got as far as the glass door.

  Hathaway looked soft but he was tougher than coat-hanger wire. He latched onto her wrists and wouldn't let go, then dragged her back into one of the wood-paneled bedrooms. Just like on the pier. He was the one who'd followed, he was the one who'd attacked her!

  He slapped her hard and she spiraled down to the ground. She couldn't get her hands up for protection. Her head hit first. She lay for a moment, stunned, the pain radiating from her eyes back into her skull. She felt a punch of nausea.

  "Warren--"

  "Gabriel," Hathaway said, as cheerfully as if he'd just picked her up at a church social. He stepped out of the bedroom to collect the bag and the explosive. As he walked back, sipping his iced tea, he said to her, "You can call me Gabriel."

  Rune whispered, "The Sword of Jesus ... There really is a Sword of Jesus...."

  "And we're very upset that people think we were just the creation of some psychotic murderer. We have you to thank for that. You and that film of yours."

  "What do you want? What are you going to do to me?"

  Hathaway began taking tools and wire and small boxes out of his canvas bag. "You have to understand I don't feel we can eliminate sin and evil. There've always been whores, there's always been sin. But there have also been those who fight against it, even if they have to sacrifice their own life." He looked at her carefully and when he spoke, the reasonable tone in his voice was somehow as terrifying as Tommy Savorne's craziness had been. "We're like advertising in a way. We get the message across. What people do with that message is up to them."

  Rune said, "You weren't a witness at all. The first bomb--you planted it."

  "As I was leaving the theater, a man stopped me. He called me 'brother.' He had a kind face. I thought I could help him, I could get him to repent and accept Jesus. Even if we both died in the blast he'd be entering the Kingdom of God. That would have been such a marvelous thing. Unfortunately, what he was looking for wasn't salvation at all but twenty dollars for a blow job. As I turned to leave the bomb went off. It removed most of his head but what was left of his body saved my life. That's ironic, I suppose. God works in strange and wonderful ways."

  And the injuries on her face--part of that was the tear gas.

  Rune realized too that he'd lied about the man in the red windbreaker being older--to shift suspicion away from himself. And he'd worn the hat to cover up his bald head.

  Hathaway continued. "I saw you outside the theater. Saw you with the camera. I thought you were one of those sinners. I was going to kill you. But then I thought maybe we could use you." He nodded around the room. "And I guess I was right."

  "What are you going to do with me?"

  "Make you a living testament to the will of God."

  "Why me? I don't make those movies."

  "You were doing this film about a pornographic actress. You're idealizing her--"

  "No I'm not. I'm showing what the business did to her."

  "She got exactly what she deserved. You should make your movies about missionaries, about the glory of God--"

  "I'll show you my film! There's nothing glamorous about it."

  Hathaway looked at her and smiled. "Rune, we all have to make sacrifices. You ought to be proud of what's going to happen to you. I think the press coverage should last a year. You're going to be famous."

  He sat down on the small bed, spreading out the components of the bomb, examining each one carefully.

  She eased forward, her feet sliding under the bed slightly.

  Hathaway said, "Don't think about jumping at me." The box cutter she remembered from the first attack on the pier was in his hand. "I can hurt you in very painful ways. It's why I wear a red windbreaker--I sometimes have to hurt people. They sometimes bleed."

  Rune sat back on the bed.

  Hathaway spoke in a soothing tone as he pressed a white cylinder into the middle of the wad of explosive. "This is about three ounces of C-3." He looked up. "I wouldn't go into this detail normally but since you're going to be my partner in this project I thought you'd like to know a little about what to expect. It's not fair to let you think you can just pull the wires out and wait for help." He held up a black plastic box, which he pressed the explosive into. "And what we have here is very clever. A rocker box. It has a liquid mercury switch. If you pick it up and try to pull the detonator out the switch sets off the explosive. The battery's inside, so you can't cut the power." He ran wires to another small black box with a clock on it. "The timer. It's set and armed electronically. There's a shunt. If you disconnect the wire or cut it the detonator senses a drop in voltage and sets off the bomb." He smiled. "God gave men such miraculous brains, didn't he?"

  "Please, I'll do whatever you want. Do you want me to make a movie about God? I can do that."

  Hathaway looked at her for a moment. "You know, Rune, there are clergy that will accept repentance at any time, whether the sinner's acting of his own will or whether he's, say, being tortured." He shook his head. "But I'm funny. I need a little more sincerity than this situation warrants. So in answer to your question: No, I don't want a little whore like you to make a movie about God."

  Rune said, "Yeah? And what do you think you are--a good Christian? Bullshit. You're a killer. That's all you are."

  Hathaway's eyes lifted to her as he picked up the wire. "Swear all you like. God knows who His faithful are."

  He stood back. "There we go." He placed the assembly of boxes and wires on the night table and slid it into the middle of the room. "Now let me tell you what's going to happen." He was proud. He looked critically at the ceiling and walls. "The explosion will take out most of the inner walls--they're only Sheetrock--and the floor and ceiling too. The outer wall is structural and shouldn't collapse. On the other hand you wouldn't want to be caught between that wall and the bomb."

  Hathaway bounced on the floor near the bomb. "Wood." He shook his head. "Hadn't counted on that. Splinters are going to be a problem. Fire too. But you'll just have to hope for the best. Now, there's easily enough explosive here to kill you. In fact, I'd say you've got a twenty percent chance of getting killed outright. So I would suggest you take the mattresses and springs and lay them over you...." He looked around. "In that corner there. You'll be blown into the living room. It's hard to know exactly what'll happen but I can guarantee that you'll be permanently deafened and bli
nded. When C-3 goes off it spreads poisonous fumes. So even if you aren't blinded by the explosion you will be by the smoke. I think you'll probably lose an arm or leg or hand. Lung burns from the fumes. Can't tell for sure. Like I was saying, the splinters are going to be a problem. That's how most sailors were killed in nineteenth-century naval warfare, by the way. Splinters, not cannonballs. Did you know that?"

  "Why are you doing this to me? What's the point?"

  "So you'll tell everyone about us. People will believe us and they'll be afraid. You'll live off charity, you'll live off God's grace. You might die, of course. In fact, you can always choose that. Just pick it up." He gestured to the box. "But I hope you won't. I hope you realize what kind of good you can do, what kind of message you can leave for our poor sinful world."

  "I know who you are. I can tell--"

  "You know Warren Hathaway, which isn't, of course, my name. And how are you going to pick me out of a lineup without eyes?" He laughed, then nodded at her and said, "You have thirty minutes. May God forgive you."

  Rune stared back at him.

  Hathaway smiled and shook his head and left the room. She heard a half-dozen nails slamming into the frame of the door. Then there was silence. A moment later, the black box clicked and a red light came on. The hand of the clock started moving.

  She ran to the window and drew her hand back to smash through the glass with her palm.

  Suddenly the window went black and she gave a soft whimper as Hathaway began nailing the thick plywood sheet over the glass.

  "No, no," she was crying, afraid the huge booming of the hammering would set off the bomb.

  Ten minutes.

  The canvas bag was at the gap by the gangplank.

  Sam Healy took a deep breath. Looked at the containment vehicle.

  The longest ten feet...

  "How you doing, buddy?" the ops coordinator asked through the radio headset.

  "Never been better," Healy replied.

  "You got all the time in the world."

  Breathing. In, out. In, out.

  He bent over the canvas bag and carefully closed the top. He couldn't keep it level holding it by the strap so he'd have to grip the base with both hands and pick it up.

  He backed down the gangplank, then went down on one knee.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.