Her voice, hurt veiled thinly with anger, matched his mood. One part of her message in particular stuck in his head: I’m only gonna wait so long. Before she moved on? Before she came looking for him? Because of the demands of the operation, he’d put himself out of touch with her at the worst time. He could hardly be surprised that his remoteness had raised resentment in her.
He slid his wedding band off and eyed the house through it, telescope style. A succinct composition of all he’d allowed to get fucked up. His hand felt naked without the ring, so he put it back on.
He rang the doorbell twice. No answer. He’d sneaked away from Commission duties to come here. The empty house confronted him with just how much he missed his wife and how large a hole her absence left. He was angry with himself for not taking more care to make sure she was home.
He entered through the garage and wandered through the house, not quite sure what he was looking for. He stared at Dray’s bottles arrayed on the counter of the master bathroom. Sitting on their bed, he picked up her pillow and inhaled her scent-lotion and hair conditioner. He painted over the new drywall he’d patched into the living room walls. He found his hammer in the garage and fixed the house number out front, swinging the 9 back into proper position and tapping the nail lightly until it came flush with the metal. When he returned to the kitchen, his head was buzzing.
He left Dray a Post-it on the fridge saying he loved her. He was almost to the door when he turned around and left another on the bathroom mirror telling her the same thing.
18
“MY NAME IS Jed. Using my full name, Jedediah, an anti-quated name, is an attempt by the government-controlled leftist media to distance me further from the average American, to make me a zealot.” On the cluster of closed-circuit TVs suspended in KCOM’s ground-floor window, seventeen televised Jed Lanes folded seventeen sets of hands and leaned back in seventeen plush interviewee chairs. An eighteenth screen reflected back the crowd itself, an array of irate and perversely curious faces.
Rolling his bike before him to split the crowd, Tim shouldered his way through the onlookers and picketers glued to the building’s immense front window. Melissa Yueh had Lane on set upstairs and was warming him up to go live inside the half hour. As a publicity stunt, KCOM programmers had elected to air the pre-interview banter on a closed-circuit network to the crowds gathered outside the building. Another link in the chain trailing back to the limited broadcast of Tim McVeigh’s execution.
The chants had only just quieted down, so Lane’s words could be heard, but disdain and outrage emanated from the crowd like heat. LAPD kept up a strong but unintimidating presence, the dark blue uniforms interspersed among the viewers and protesters at regular intervals. Just inside the lobby, KCOM security guards were checking IDs closely before moving visitors and employees through two airport-style metal detectors.
The minuscule detonator was wedged up beneath Tim’s bike seat. He had stuck nine flat magnets to the side of the chain stay and secured a tubular remote device the size of a lighter to the right pedal’s toe clip, disguised as a reflector. In addition to wearing eyeglasses, he’d let his scruff grow into a short beard and mustache, and he’d wedged a piece of Big Red at the gum line behind his bottom lip to alter the shape of his chin. A backpack slung over one shoulder, fake ID card flapping from the waist of his khakis, gold cross dangling from a necklace, he turned the corner and headed for shipping and receiving. A flick of his arm brought his watch out from cover: 8:31.
He picked out Robert’s picket sign among the others across the street: CHILD KILLER FANATIC. Something was wrong-the sign’s flip side, the slogan reversed, was to serve as the go-ahead. Robert continued to chant and follow the circling picket line, but Tim noted his tension in the thick cords of his neck.
Robert tilted his sign toward the shipping and receiving dock. Two new security guards had taken over in the wake of Lane’s posse’s entry. One patted down a courier at the base of the ramp, the other holding the bike to the side. They waved the courier through but kept his bike outside, despite his protests.
Plan A aborted.
Tim crossed the street and ditched the bike up against a garbage can after removing the hidden devices. He stood still for a moment, mind racing. On the ground by the trash can was a discarded guest pass, dated today. He smoothed it against his thigh. Joseph Cooper. That would do. New guards, after all, provided as many opportunities as disadvantages. Readjusting the backpack on his shoulder, he walked down the street and ducked into Lipson’s Pharmacy and Medical Supplies. The sole worker rustled with boxes in the back. “Be there in a minute!”
Seconds later Tim rolled out in the wheelchair previously displayed in the window, his backpack hooked over the seat back. His full-fingered biking gloves, which he’d worn down on a belt sander last night to give them a tatty authenticity, doubled nicely as protective padding against the fast-turning wheels. They also ensured a print-free entry.
Tim zipped over the crosswalk and headed straight at the new guards, flashing the guest pass when the taller one raised a meaty traffic-cop hand. “Hey, guys. I’m consulting with some editors up on eleven this week. I tried to get in at the entrance, but they told me to come around here today. Couldn’t get me through the metal detector with this baby”-he patted the side of the wheelchair lovingly-“but they said you could wand me down here.”
After shooting his colleague a quick, uncomfortable glance, the guard waved the wand near Tim, but the detector went apoplectic with all the metal from the wheelchair. Tim kept his hands on the tops of the wheels, hiding the detonator and remote wedged into the spokes. The other guard searched Tim’s backpack, digging through the clothes inside as if kneading dough. Tim was thankful for their awkwardness and evident fear of offending him-they hadn’t even asked him about his outfit.
He smiled shyly at the detector’s frenzied beeping. “It happens, man. You should see me at an airport. They practically call in the national guard.” He shot a wink. “Would you mind givin’ me a roll up the ramp?”
To his credit the guard patted him down first-and well-checking the small of his back and running his hands down the lengths of Tim’s legs. In his thoroughness he even removed a silver dollar from Tim’s pocket and studied it before returning it. Tim’s long-sleeved Lycra biking shirt hugged his chest, making him acutely aware of the thin layer of perspiration covering his body. The intensity reminded him of spinning up for a live op or kicking doors with the service.
Finally the guard nodded and shoved him brusquely up the ramp. “Elevator code’s the first five numerals of your floor-access code. They gave you that, right?”
“Yup. Thanks, bro. Appreciate it.” Tim eased his way over to the service elevator, punched in the code Betty had retrieved, and forced a smile at the guards while he waited. His muscles relaxed a notch when a ding announced the doors’ opening. He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he rolled inside and threw a sigh after the doors banged shut.
The elevator was a typical service cattle car-mesh walls, high ceiling, bolted hatch. A TV monitor pointed down from the right corner. “-any idea the crap the Clinton-Gore regime left us to sort through,” Lane was saying. “Them and their fuckdamned socialist associates, subverting and destroying our cultural institutions.” He had a booted foot up on the edge of the news table.
“When the interview goes live,” Yueh said, “you’re going to have to watch your language.”
“Of course I will,” Lane said. “I don’t expect I live in a free country.”