It was Madge who spoke first. “Tell him, Louie.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
Quinn said, “Everything’s something.”
“Tell him, Louie,” Madge said again.
Louie looked pained, but he spoke. “The big noise when the crane fell was when it slammed into the ground. But there was a small noise before that. A smaller explosion up high.”
“You sure? It could have been the crane hitting something on the way down.”
“It came before the crane hit,” Louie said. “Before it fell.” He clamped his lips closed again. Then parted them. “I was in bomb disposal in Afghanistan. I know explosives. I can know some things by the sound of the explosion, the extent and kind of damage that’s done. I’m pretty sure this was a shaped charge.”
“Which is?”
“A bomb—and it can be a small bomb—shaped a certain way so that it directs most of the force of the explosion in one direction. They’re used to take out tanks and other armored vehicles. I think one was used to separate the crane from the Taggart building.”
Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other. They seemed to be thinking the same thoughts.
“Would it take an expert to build and plant such a bomb?”
Louie squeezed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, then said, “An expert, yes. An artist, no.”
Quinn thought, here was a man who loved his previous occupation perhaps too much. “Could you build one?” he asked, smiling.
“Probably, but I might blow myself up. My expertise was in disassembling bombs so they wouldn’t detonate.”
“He might have gotten killed,” Madge said, patting Louie’s arm.
Fedderman said, “My guess is he knew what he was doing, or he wouldn’t be here.”
“Could an amateur have made and set this shaped charge?” Quinn asked.
“A gifted amateur,” Louie said. “Gifted and lucky. Like this Gremlin I keep hearing and reading about.”
“I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Quinn said. Fedderman shot him a glance. But Louie had jumped.
“I wasn’t gonna say anything about it at first,” he said. “It was Madge talked me into it.”
“You’re lucky to have Madge.”
“I am that,” Louie said, and gave Madge a hug.
When they were back out on the sidewalk, Fedderman said, “They’ve got a great marriage.”
Quinn kept quiet. He knew the problems of a cop marriage. He wondered if his and Pearl’s relationship would last, and if it had a better chance because they were both cops.
It took only a phone call for Quinn and Fedderman to ascertain that there hadn’t been any kind of safety inspection on anything owned by SBL Properties the day of the crane collapse. And the company’s hard hats were white and had a corporate logo on them.
“What now?” Fedderman asked, as they walked toward Quinn’s old but pristine Lincoln.
“We get that high-tech artist who made the so-called sketch to get with Little Louie, and maybe Helen, and improve on it.”
“The Gremlin isn’t getting better looking.”
“None of us is.”
“With him, there should be a portrait in his attic, where the subject gets uglier with every rotten thing he does. Know what I mean?”
Quinn said, “You’ve been seeing too much of Harold.”
36
Quinn phoned Renz and told him about the shaped-charge possibility. Renz thanked him, but told him the bomb squad had already been discussing the shaped-charge theory.
“Do they like it?” Quinn asked.
“They say it’s unlikely, except for a guy who disarmed bombs in the Navy. He said somebody with a little knowledge and a shit pot fulla luck might make such a bomb.”
“Why didn’t we learn this sooner?” Quinn asked.
“We just figured it out ourselves. But it’s only hypothetical. We’re still trying to decide how seriously we take it. Look at it piece by piece, and it doesn’t seem like much, so don’t go getting all excited. And for God’s sake, don’t talk about this to Minnie Miner.”
“Do I sound excited?” Quinn asked. “Or pissed off?”
“Do I sound gone?” Renz asked, and ended the connection.
Louie was still on sick leave, and still wearing the arm sling, when Helen and the NYPD sketch artist visited him in his and Madge’s apartment. They’d stopped for breakfast on the way, but that didn’t stop Madge from offering them coffee. Helen and the artist fell under the aromatic scent of freshly brewed coffee, though they managed to forgo the delicious but wildly caloric cinnamon-butter coffee cake.
The artist wasn’t Warfield this time, but an affable kid named Ignacio Perez, on loan from the FBI, who asked everyone to call him simply “the artist.” He set his laptop on the coffee table but off to the side. Then he ran some wires, turned on the fifty-two-inch screen on which Louie and Madge watched Justified and The Good Wife. He settled back on the sofa with a small mouse pad and a wireless mouse.
Up popped the digital likeness of the Gremlin, as it originally appeared on Minnie Miner ASAP.
“I wonder what he’d look like in a hard hat,” Helen said. “Carrying a clipboard.”
“I anticipated you,” the artist said. “Except for the clipboard.”
His fingers danced over the keys. He pressed some others, and there on the large screen was the Gremlin in a yellow hard hat that looked too big for him.
“My old friend,” the artist said.
“See anything that doesn’t look right?” Helen asked Louie, leaning toward the TV screen.
“No. That’s just the way the hat fit him, like he was a little kid playing dress up. How’s it look when you tug the hat down in front?”
The artist lowered the hard hat until the subject’s eyes almost disappeared. “Something like that?”
“Yeah. That’s more it. More hair sticking out.”
Helen said, “Now make the ears somewhat visible beneath the hair.”
“Like they’d stick out without the hair?” Louie said.
“Yeah, just like.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about the ears?”
“Naw. Not on this guy. Except for the right ear.”
“It sticks out more than the left?”
“Somewhat,” Louie said. “But like I told you, he was built like a flyweight boxer. Had a cauliflower ear, it looked like to me.”
The artist played electronically with the right ear. Made it slightly larger and more damaged by countless jabs and left hooks.
“That’s good,” Louie said. “But his hair should be a little longer, and slightly darker.”
Again the artist made some adjustments while the others looked on.
“More chin, less nose,” Louie said.
The artist complied.
“The ear that you can see all of, it is rather pointed, at least from a certain angle.”
Helen squinted at it. “So close to the head. Not like the other ear.”
“Other one probably came unstuck,” the artist said.
“Unstuck?”
“Like with movie stars. A guy’s or woman’s ears stick out like open car doors, so they got this flesh-colored two-sided tape. Like carpet tape. An ear won’t stay taped in for very long, but plenty long enough to shoot movie or TV scenes. And if it’s still too much trouble, there’s always an operation to make the ears flatter to the skull.”
“So tell me who’s had their ears operated on?” Madge said, from where she sat over in a corner where she could see the big screen.
The artist shook his head, smiling. “I couldn’t reveal that.”
“They’ve got their right to privacy,” Madge said
“I don’t know for sure about that, but they’ve got the right not to hire me if I shoot them or draw them with car-door ears.”
“Shoot?” Madge asked.
“Photograph. Shoot pictures.”