Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

INBOUND MANHATTAN TRAFFIC WAS lighter than usual due to the heart-stopping news. I’d taken my unmarked Impala home the day before, and as I got on the LIE, I buried the pin of its speedometer, flashers and siren cranked.

Keeping off the crowded police-band radio, I had my iPod turned up as far as it would go, and blasted the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Gritty, insane seventies rock seemed extremely appropriate theme music for the world coming apart at its seams.

The Anti-Terror Unit in full force had already set up a checkpoint at the 59th Street Bridge. Instead of stopping, I killed some cones as I put the Imp on the shoulder and took out my ID and tinned the rookie at the barricade at around forty. There were two more checkpoints, one at 50th and Third, and the final one at 45th and Lex. Sirens screaming in my ears, I parked behind an ambulance and got out.

Behind steel pedestrian barricades to the south, dozens of firefighters and cops were running around in all directions. I walked to take my place among them, shaking my head.

When I arrived at the corner and saw the flame-gutted box truck, I just stood gaping.

I spotted Bomb Squad chief Cell through a debris-covered lobby. It looked like a cave-in had happened. One of the fire chiefs at the blast site’s command center made me put on some Tyvek and a full-face air mask before letting me through.

“Guess our friend wasn’t lying about the next one,” Cell said. “Looks like the same plastique that we found at the library.”

He smiled, but I could see the frozen rage in his eyes. He was angry. We all were. Even through the filters of the mask, I could smell death. Death and concrete dust and scorched metal.

There was no predicting what would happen next.

Chapter 21

THE REST OF THE DAY was as hellacious as any in my career. Later that morning, I helped an EMT dig out the body of an old, tiny homeless man who’d been buried under the collapsed Grand Central Lexington Avenue Corridor. When I went to grab his leg to put him in the body bag, I almost collapsed when his leg separated freely from his body. In fact, all of his limbs had been dismembered by the bomb’s shock wave. We had to bag him in parts like a quartered chicken.

If that wasn’t stressful enough, I spent the afternoon in the on-site morgue with the medical examiner, compiling a list of the dead. The morgue was set up in the Campbell Apartment, an upscale cocktail bar and lounge, and there was something very wrong about seeing covered bodies laid out in rows under a sparkling chandelier.

The worst part was when the slain police officer was brought in. In a private ceremony, the waiting family members were handed his personal effects. Hearing the sobbing moans, I had to get out of there. I walked out and headed down one of Grand Central’s deserted tracks. I peered into the darkness at its end for a few minutes, tears stinging in my eyes. Then I wiped my eyes, walked back, and got back to work.

I met Miriam that afternoon at the Emergency Operations trailer set up by the main entrance of Grand Central on 42nd Street. I spotted a horde of media cordoned off on the south side of the street by the overpass behind barricades. National this time. Global newsies would be showing up pretty soon to get their goddamn sound bites from this hellhole.

“We got Verizon pulling recs of the nearest cell sites to see if it was a mobile trigger,” Miriam said to me. “The rest of our guys are getting the security tapes from the nearest stores up and down the block. Preliminary witnesses said a large box truck pulled up around seven. A homeless guy sleeping in the ATM alcove in the bank across the street said he looked out and saw a guy pushing a hand truck with something on it before the first explosion.”

Miriam paused, staring at me funny, before she pulled me closer.

“Not only that, Mike. You need to know this. A letter came to the squad this morning. It was addressed to you. I had them X-ray it before they opened it. It was a typed message. It had today’s date along with two words: For Lawrence.”

I closed my eyes, the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

Addressed to me?

“For Lawrence?” I said. “What the hell? I mean, give me a break. This is insane. There’s no rationale, no demand for ransom. Why was it addressed to me?”

Miriam shrugged as Intelligence chief Flaum came out of the trailer.

“ATF is flying in their guys as we speak to help identify the explosive,” he said. “You still think we have a single actor, Mike? Could that be possible? One person caused all this?”

Before I could answer, the mayor came out of the trailer, flanked by the police and fire commissioners.

“Good morning, everyone,” the mayor said into a microphone. “I’m sorry to have to address you all on this sad, sad day in our city’s history,” he said.

Not as sorry as I am, I thought, blinking at the packs of popping flash bulbs.

Around four o’clock, I was at Bellevue Hospital, having just interviewed an old Chinese woman who’d lost one of her eyes in the blast, when my cell rang.

“Mike, I hate to tell you this,” Mary Catherine said. “With everything going on, I know it’s not the right time, but—”

“What, Mary?” I barked.

“Everyone’s okay, but we’re at the hospital. St. John’s Episcopal.”

I put down the phone for a minute. I took a breath. Another hospital? Another problem? This was getting ridiculous.