“What’s that?”
“Come with me a second.”
We got out of the car and walked around to the rear of the Ford. Even though the fire was put out days ago, the air still stank of burned plastic and rubber. Casey keyed open the trunk. And sitting there like a box of groceries was a box identical to the ones I had seen Susan and her two flunkies putting in the back of the old bakery truck. He reached down and pried off the lid with a small crowbar. He picked up a light tan-colored brick wrapped in clear plastic, ripped open the plastic, and handed the brick to me.
“Feels like Silly Putty,” I said.
“Essentially, that’s what it is. You can mold and shape it any way you want. Stick some blasting caps in it and you’re set to go. Of course, there’s also supposed to be stuff mixed in there that would blow the both of us into small pieces.”
“What do you mean ‘supposed to be’?”
“It’s inert, Moe. An atomic bomb couldn’t set this shit off. We couldn’t risk handing over live explosives to these nuts. In the beginning, I gave Bobby a few bricks of the real stuff, so he could prove he could get what the Committee needed. He tested it for them and they bought it hook, line, and sinker. We went through that whole elaborate charade at the airport many times just in case someone from the Committee was watching, but the stuff itself is harmless. You see what I’m saying, right? Whoever it was who blew up Bobby’s girl and the Lavitz kid, it wasn’t me.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?”
“That’s up to you.”
“If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t them …”
“It was somebody else.”
“But there isn’t any somebody else.”
“Let’s get back in the car. It’s cold, and it stinks out here,” he said, slamming the trunk shut. Before we drove away, he held his right hand out to me. “Do I have your word that you won’t say anything to the press?”
I shook his hand.
From Daily News
Radical Bomb Plot Blown Up
Gary Phillips
Late last evening the New York City Police Department prevented a potential disaster. The department’s bomb squad defused a large explosive device that was intended to destroy the 61st Precinct house on Avenue U and East 15th Street in Brooklyn. The device, which, according to unconfirmed reports, contained in excess of 40 pounds of plastic explosive, was located in the precinct’s basement and was timed to explode at or around midnight. Upon its discovery, the device was quickly rendered inoperable by the bomb squad. The detonation mechanism has been taken to the lab for study. The explosives were removed to an undisclosed site and detonated by the bomb squad.
“The bomb was meant to cause maximum loss of life because it would have detonated during a shift change,” explained department spokesman Richard Pioreck. “And not only would the precinct house have been destroyed, with that excessive quantity of explosives, the buildings surrounding the precinct house would have sustained serious damage as well. It may well have taken out the entire block.”
Although police won’t confirm it, sources have linked the group responsible for the planning and carrying out of this attack with this past December’s explosion of a smaller device in the Coney Island section of the borough. Two Brooklyn College students, Samantha Hope and Martin Lavitz, lost their lives in that explosion. Hope and Lavitz are alleged to have been members of a heretofore unknown radical group. It is thought that the explosive device they were transporting detonated prematurely, resulting in their deaths.
Asked how the investigation was progressing, Pioreck said that the department had not made any arrests directly related to either the December explosion or the plot to bomb the 61st Precinct house. “We have some strong leads, but no suspects at this time. We will continue to investigate both incidents. In any case, we believe our efforts have dealt a serious blow to the group or groups who believe such dangerous activities are the way to pursue a political agenda.”
From Daily News
Murders in Manhattan Beach
Scott Montgomery
Responding to reports of shots fired, the police discovered the bodies of three men in the basement of a private house in the Manhattan Beach section of Brooklyn. The owner of the residence, Hyman Bergman, was among the deceased. The other men have not yet been identified. Neighbors feared that Bergman’s granddaughter, Susan Kasten, also known to reside at the home, might have been harmed as well. However, she does not seem to have been at home at the time of the incident.
“All three of the deceased appear to have died as a result of gunshot wounds,” said a police spokesman. “We’re working on the theory that it was a botched robbery.”
Neighbors said that Bergman, a concentration camp survivor, kept to himself. “He was a troubled man,” said neighbor Dr. Raoul Mishkin. Bergman is known to have large real estate holdings, and was recently the victim of arson. Last week, one of Bergman’s properties was intentionally burned to the ground. Police refused to speculate whether the two incidents might be connected.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bobby’s parents visited only once during his stay in Coney Island Hospital, and then it was only to fill out the requisite paperwork. There was no tearful hand-holding or get-better-soon bouquets, nothing that even remotely resembled what had transpired between Mindy and her parents. There was only the superior disdain that Bobby’s parents exuded. I had known these people nearly all my life without really knowing them at all. They were disappointed in Bobby. Believe me, they did nothing to camouflage it. But I had created a fantasy that beneath their icy, Warsaw Pact exteriors, they loved their son beyond description. That they secretly held dear all those bourgeois rituals and milestones — Bobby’s first day of school, losing his first tooth, his high school graduation — that other parents so proudly celebrated. Now I came to see that my stubborn belief was naive and self-serving. The equation was simple: If Bobby’s parents really loved him, mine loved me. It’s not that my folks were stoic and unexpressive. They told me they loved me. It was just that they were such damaged goods, always so hungry for love and approval themselves, that I never trusted theirs for me. I couldn’t speak for Aaron and Miriam.
For the first few days, the hospital was crawling with cops and it was impossible for me to get anywhere near Bobby. I stopped trying. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to see him other than to tell him to go fuck himself. Below the surface, I think I felt almost as betrayed by him as Susan Kasten had. It was one thing for Detective Casey to have done what he did. It was his job. He believed he was doing right. It was different with Bobby. I still couldn’t get a handle on the angle he’d been playing. Look, I knew Bobby believed the war was wrong and that America was a profoundly inequitable place. On some level he might even have truly believed in revolution, but he wasn’t a bomb thrower. Nor was he Dudley Do-Right. At first I just assumed Casey had coerced Bobby into it, that he had something to hold over Bobby’s head to get him to act as an informant. I don’t know. Maybe he’d caught Bobby moving some real explosives, or transporting a fugitive. Something like that. Something where Bobby had no choice but to cooperate, or go away to prison for twenty years.
“He volunteered,” Casey’d told me the night it all came down.
“Get the fuck outta here!”
I could only imagine my ancestors spinning in their graves at the disrespect I was showing to a cop. Such a display flew in the face of the Diaspora’s mantra: Keep your head down and keep your mouth shut.