He spent thirty minutes inside the station, including ten minutes he spent at the fast-food counter off the main waiting room, sitting at a dirty little table from which he could look around.
The Vice President would certainly want to march right down the center of the main waiting room, after he rode up the escalator from the train platform.
Unfortunately, there were no rows of lockers on the platform itself, which would have simplified matters a great deal. If there had been lockers, all he would have had to do was wait until the Vice President walked past where he could have concealed one of the devices, and then detonate it.
He consoled himself by thinking that if there had been lockers there, the Secret Service, who were not fools, would almost certainly make sure they didn't contain anything they shouldn't
Once the Vice President and his entourage reached the main waiting room level of the station, there were three possible routes to where he would enter his official car. There were east, west, and south entrances.
The logical place would be the east exit, but that did not mean he would use it. There were a number of factors that would be considered by those in charge of the Vice President's movements, and there was just no telling, with any degree of certainty, which one would be used.
All three routes would have to be covered. The east and west routes, conveniently, had rows of lockers. If he placed in each of two lockers on both the east and west routes one device, the lethal zone of the devices would be entirely effective. The south route did not have a row of lockers.
Marion thought that it was entirely likely the Lord was sending him a message via the lockers in the Pine Barrens. In other words, why the symbolism of the lockers if they were not in some way connected with the disintegration of the Vice President?
It was unlikely, following that line of thought, that the Vice President would take the south, locker-less route.
But on the other hand, it was also possible that he was wrong. It was also clear that the Lord expected him to be as thorough as humanly possible. That meant, obviously, that he was going to have to cover the south route, even if the Vice President would probably not use it.
There was, of course, a solution. There was always a solution when doing the Lord's work. One simply had to give it some thought. Often some prayerful thought.
There was a large metal refuse container against the wall in the passage between the main waiting room and the doors of the south exit. All he would have to do is put the fifth device in the refuse container. For all he knew-and there was no way toknow without conducting a test-the metal refuse container would produce every bit as much shrapnel as one of the lockers.
The only problem, which Marion decided could be solved as he left 30^th Street Station, was to make sure the metal refuse container would accept one of the AWOL bags through its opening.
Marion bought one of the last copies of the Sunday edition ofThe Philadelphia Inquirer on sale at the newsstand. He sat down on one of the benches in the main waiting room and flipped through it for three or four minutes. Then he left the station by the south route, stopping at the metal refuse container to place the newspaper in it.
He kept the first section. First he opened it and laid it on the opening horizontally, and then tore the paper to mark how wide the opening was. Then he held the paper vertically, and tore it again, this time marking how tall the opening was.
Then he folded the newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and walked out of the station and home.
He had thirty minutes to spare before Masterpiece Theater came on the television.
Magdelana Lanza was waiting for her son Vito on the sidewalk in front of the house on Ritner Street.
"I had to call the plumber," she announced.
"I told you I would go by Sears when I got off work."
"The hot water thing is busted; there was water all over the basement. And the pipes is bad."
"What pipes?"
"What pipes do you think, sonny? Thewater pipes is what pipes."
"What do you mean they're bad?"
"They're all clogged up; they got to go. We have to have new pipes."
That sonofabitch of a plumber! What he did was figure he could sell an old woman anything he told her she needed. I'll fix his ass!
"I'll have a look, Mama."
"Don't use the toilet. There's no water; it won't flush."
"Okay, Mama. I'll have a look."
No water, my ass. What can go wrong with pipes? What I'm going to find when I go in the basement is that this sonofabitch has turned the valve off.
Vito went in the house and went to his room and took off the good clothes he had worn to take Tony to the Poconos and put on a pair of khaki trousers and an old pair of shoes.
I got to take a leak. What did you expect? The minute she tells you the toilet won't flush, you have to piss so bad your back teeth are floating.
He went into the bathroom and looked at the toilet. There was water in the bowl.
Nothing wrong with this toilet. What the hell was she talking about?
He voided his bladder, and pulled the chain. Water emptied from the reservoir into the toilet bowl. It flushed. But there was no rush of clean water. The toilet sort of burped, and when he looked down there was hardly any water in the bowl at all, and none was coming in.
Vito dropped to his knees and looked behind the bowl at the valve on the thin copper pipe that fed water to the reservoir, and then put his hand on it.
There was a momentary feeling of triumph.
The fucking thing's turned off! That sonofabitching plumber! Wait 'til I get my hands on you, pal!
He turned the valve, opening it fully. No water entered the reservoir. He waited a moment, thinking maybe it would take a second or two to come on, like it took a while for the water to come hot when you turned it on.
Nothing! Shit!
Three hours ago, I was in a bathroom with a carpet on the floor and a toilet you couldn't even hear flushing or filling, and now look where I am!
Wait a minute! He wouldn't shut it off here, he 'd shut it off in the basement, where nobody would see. I didn't turn that valve on, I turned it off!
He cranked the valve as far it would go in the opposite direction, and then went down the stairs to the first floor two at a time, and then more carefully down the stairs to the basement, because Mama kept brooms and mops and buckets and stuff like that on the cellar stairs.
His foot slipped on the basement floor, and he only barely kept from falling down. When he finally found the chain hanging from the light switch and got the bare bulb turned on, he saw that the floor was slick wet. Here and there, there were little puddles. And it smelled rotten too, not as bad as a backed-up toilet, but bad.
He found the place at the rear of the basement where the water pipes came in through the wall from the water meter out back. And again there was a feeling of triumph.
There's the fucking valve, and it's off!
It didn't have a handle, like the valve on the toilet upstairs, just a piece of iron sticking up that you needed a wrench, or a pair of pliers, to turn. He turned and started for the front of the basement, where there was sort of a workbench, and where he knew he could find a wrench.
It was then that he saw the water heater had been disconnected, and moved from the concrete blocks on which it normally rested. Both the water and gas pipes connected to it had been disconnected.