Flynn signaled his deputies to wait: 'What are you talking about?'
'My men took statements from a lot of folks who were there yesterday, Chief Flynn. Eyewitnesses. The horse and wagon pulled up on Wall Street only one or two minutes before the bomb exploded. Your anarchists, you got to hand it to them. They leave Wall Street at 11:59 or 12:00, and they get to Cedar and Broadway before 11:58, when the mailman picks up their circulars. How do you catch people who can do that?'
No one answered. Flynn stood up. He slicked back his oiled hair. 'So you're a captain, huh? How many men report to you? Six?'
'Enough,' said Littlemore, thinking of Officers Stankiewicz and Roederheusen.
'I got a thousand. And my men ain't like yours. There are two kinds of cops in the NYPD — the ones on the take, and the ones too stupid to realize that everybody else is on the take. Which kind are you?'
'Too stupid,' said Littlemore.
'You look it,' said Flynn. 'But not stupid enough to get in the way of my investigation. Are you?'
Littlemore went to the doorway. 'I don't know; I'm pretty stupid,' he said, shutting the door behind him.
Flynn turned to his deputies. 'Get me a file on that guy,' he said. 'Get me wife, friends, family — everything. And see if Hoover's got anything on him.'
Luc broke free from Younger and ran to the far side of the deck, which looked out on the water. Nearby, a pack of schoolboys shouted to one another about something they saw below. Luc ran toward them.
'Look at him,' said Younger. 'He understands what those boys are saying.'
'Not their words — how could he?' replied Colette.
'He can read the newspaper,' said Younger.
'In English? Impossible,' answered Colette. They stood side by side at the railing and gazed out onto the vast urban panorama. She put her hand on his. 'I wish I didn't have to go back.'
He removed his hand and took out a cigarette.
'You don't care if I leave?' she asked.
'I recommended you to Boltwood. You're leaving him with no one running his laboratory. Of course I care.'
'Oh. Well, I don't like your Professor Boltwood anyway. Do you know what he called Madame Curie the other day? A "detestable idiot.'"
'He's just jealous. Every chemist in the world is jealous of Marie Curie.'
'Men are very cruel when they're jealous.'
'Are they? I wouldn't know.'
No one glancing at the man who had limped into the center of the platform would have seen the dagger in his right hand, tucked invisibly against his inner sleeve. Colette herself might have turned around without recognizing Drobac, whose mass of whiskers was now shaved off. Only his eyes — the small, black, perceptive eyes peering out below his low-cocked hat — could have given him away He held the knife by its blade, one finger caressing its edge. There was no danger of his being cut: as with all good throwing knives, both of its edges were dull. The point alone was sharp.
An experienced practitioner of the knife-throwing art, if he intends to kill, will throw at the victim's heart. Of those organs whose puncturing is virtually certain to cause death, the heart is the largest — saving of course the brain, which is rendered inaccessible by the hard bone of the cranium. The victim's ribs might be thought a significant obstruction, but it isn't so. Provided that the throw is sidearm, not overhand, there is no real difficulty. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the victim's ribs will let the point slip through. Indeed one might almost say they guide it home.
Younger and Colette had their backs to Drobac, as did everyone else on the observation deck, because he stood in the center while they were all at the railings. A good knife-thrower has no compunction about taking aim at his victim's back, which assures, after all, the element of surprise. All that's required is a blade long enough to pass through the soft tissue of the left lung with sufficient metal remaining to pierce the meat of the heart. In the case of a slender victim, a shaft of eight inches will usually do. Colette Rousseau was slender, and the knife in this case was a dagger with a ten-inch steel blade. Drobac's breathing slowed.
'That's good,' shouted Detective Littlemore to a workman operating a pneumatic drill. 'Keep her clear.'
Littlemore was now on Wall Street, in front of the Morgan Bank, where the bomb had exploded the day before. Two uniformed officers — Stankiewicz and Roederheusen — kept pedestrians at bay. Across the street, the Treasury and Assay buildings still looked like an army garrison, with a company of soldiers positioned around them.
The drill bit cracked one cobblestone in the blackened crater, then another. Littlemore signaled the workman to stop. Crouching down, brushing dust and pebbles aside, the detective prized free a horseshoe from the stones. It was a size four shoe; the remains of a shamrock nail were visible. Stankiewicz and Roederheusen peered over his shoulder. Littlemore flipped the shoe over; the letters HSIU were imprinted on it.
'How do you like that?' said Littlemore. 'You boys know what HSIU stands for?'
'No, sir,' said Roederheusen.
'Horse Shoers International Union.'
'Something strange about that, Cap?' asked Stankiewicz.
'Sure is.' Littlemore did not explain what.
On the Woolworth Building observation deck, a clutch of schoolboys erupted with shouts and stampeded at full speed from one side of the deck to the next. Luc chased them, close on their heels; an alarmed schoolteacher trailed after, close on his. Colette cried out her brother's name and broke into a run, certain that Luc was going to trip and tumble over the guard rail.
Drobac smiled. He was still standing, alone and unmoving, in the center of the platform. Colette was running from his right to his left at the far side of the deck. The gusting wind died for an instant, and in that instant he took a single broad step, as a fencer does in a lunge, flinging his knife backhanded. In general, he favored moving targets, which offered more of a challenge. But Colette did not present even that challenge. She had become quite suddenly stationary: Luc had stopped abruptly, bringing the schoolteacher to a halt just behind him, bringing Colette to a similar halt.
The dagger spun in the air exactly three and a half rotations, parallel to the ground, and entered the girl's back. The point slipped through her ribs, puncturing her lung. But it was the right lung, not the left, and as a result the knife point, when it emerged from that lung, never touched her heart.
A knife piercing an individual's back characteristically causes its victim to throw both arms wide and high in the air, to scream, and to fall forward at least a step or two. All that happened here. This was unfortunate, because her forward steps propelled her over the railing. There was still a fair chance her fall might have been arrested by one of the balconies below. It was not to be. Her body, somersaulting, hit a parapet and bounced outward. The collision caused a morsel of concrete to crack loose and fall alongside the girl's body, accompanying her fifty-eight stories to the earth. At exactly the same moment, the girl and the concrete chip hit the sidewalk, which there consisted of a mosaic of colored glass squares. On contact, the concrete chip rebounded several stories high in the air. Considerably heavier, the girl's plummeting body ripped through the colorful glass tiles with a sickening thunderclap, plunging into the subway station below.
Littlemore heard the crash all the way from Wall Street. He listened for an aftermath, for the sounds of riot or terror. Hearing nothing more, he resumed his instructions to his men: 'Stanky, you take this shoe straight to Inspector Lahey.'
'Can I tell the press about it?' asked Stankiewicz.
'Make sure you do,' said Littlemore. 'But the Feds don't touch that shoe, you hear me?'
'Excuse me, Captain,' said Roederheusen. 'Mr O'Neill's still waiting to talk to you.'