The Bohemian’s face remained impassive; we could have been discussing the weather. But Stanley’s face had turned crimson, and beads of sweat sprouted on his forehead, big, like raindrops on a waxed car. He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief.
Neither of them looked surprised.
“Why do you believe this?” the Bohemian asked in an even voice.
“Because you believe it.”
His face stayed expressionless, his eyes fixed on mine. A hell of a poker player, I would have bet.
“And because it fits the facts,” I continued. “Old paper, most likely with old writing on it. A type of explosive that hasn’t been available since then. And old dollar values: the fifty thousand, even the half million you just paid. Not huge dollars by today’s standards, but big bucks in 1970. But mostly,” I said, looking right back into the Bohemian’s unblinking eyes, “I believe it because you believe it.”
“Suspected,” he said then, without hesitation. “No, even that’s too strong a word. We’ve had an irrational fear of it, like a nightmare.”
“Yet you did nothing for all those years.”
“What would you have had us do, Vlodek? Dig up all of Crystal Waters on an irrational fear? Send everyone into a panic, launch a thousand lawsuits, ruin the developers and the people who bought the homes, and then probably find nothing? We paid the ten thousand dollars in 1970, and he went away. Don’t say we did nothing. There was nothing to do.”
Stanley put away his handkerchief and leaned toward me from across the table. “We thought it was over long ago, Mr. Elstrom. Like you, we thought it could have been a construction worker, but there had been a thousand men at Crystal Waters. As for him burying D.X.12 throughout the place… it was too farfetched to consider. How could we have found it, or him, without throwing everything at Crystal Waters up for grabs?”
“Stanley, you didn’t even try.”
The Bohemian knocked his knuckles on the table twice, quick, sharp. “No need. The man went away.”
“He left behind stashes of D.X.12.”
“We don’t know that.” The Bohemian’s eyes were shiny with anger. He took a long breath. “What we do know is that our predicament today is the same as it was in 1970, except that our financialrisk has gone up. Today, the homes at Crystal Waters, with the common acreage, the community house, and the other amenities, are worth collectively over one hundred million dollars. Dollars that will be gone forever if there is public speculation that explosives are buried at Crystal Waters.”
“So you sit back and hope the man will stay away more decades, now that he’s been paid?”
“It’s what happened the last time,” the Bohemian said.
“It’s time to go to the Feds.”
“With what?” The Bohemian waved his hand at the yellowed boxes of records stacked on the credenza. “Do you really think the authorities will have time to sift through all those records? And what would they be looking for?”
“The name of an old worker, recently paroled after spending the last thirty-five years in jail.”
The Bohemian leaned in. “You think his name is in those records?”
“If your bomber is one of your old construction workers, then the name of the company he worked for probably is. But if the bomber is somebody else…” I let it hang.
The Bohemian took it. “You mean if it’s one of the Members, or myself, or Stanley here, or even you, Vlodek, then the search through those old records will be pointless?”
“I think it’s probably pointless anyway,” I said. I took out my list of contractors and slid it face up to the center of the round table. “One hundred and seventy-two contractors paid for permits to work at Crystal Waters. I found current addresses for only sixty-one of them. More might exist under changed names, but it’s a safe bet most are out of business. We’ll never get a complete list of the men who worked there.”
“It’s a place to start,” the Bohemian said. He looked at Stanley. “Can you get information on recent parolees from your old police buddies?”
“I’d have to go to Chief Morris.”
“Be discreet. Tell him we’ve received some vague threats that we’d like to investigate ourselves, and remind him of our generosity with his charitable efforts.”
“Will do, Mr. Chernek.”
The Bohemian looked at me. “How about it, Vlodek?”
I turned to Stanley. “Is there any way to start searching for the D.X.12?”
“There’s ground-penetrating radar,” Stanley said. “Law enforcement uses it to locate all kinds of things buried beneath the ground. But it’s nondiscriminating. It shows shapes and masses that could be anything: buried bricks, solid refuse, pipes, whatever.”
“Would it have shown the D.X.12 buried beneath the bus shelter lamppost?”
“As a separate shape, maybe, if it was buried alongside the lamppost base. If it was buried directly beneath the base, then maybe not.”
“And the Farraday bomb?”
Stanley shrugged. “The same. The radar might have picked it up if it was buried alongside the foundation, but no way if it was inside the cement, or inside the house.” He turned to the Bohemian. “The problem is the radar doesn’t tell us what is under the ground, only its shape. We would have to dig down to examine each shape we pick up. We could end up digging up the whole community.”
“And find most of it,” I said.
They both looked at me.
“How will you ever know if you’ve found it all?” I asked.
“He’s got a point, Mr. Chernek,” Stanley added quickly.
“Check out the feasibility of it, anyway,” the Bohemian said to Stanley. “It’s worth trying, especially since it doesn’t require the police, and we can pass off any digging as electrical or sewer work.”The certainty was back in his voice; the captain was back at the helm. He turned to me. “So we’re back to those boxes. What now?”
Once again I marveled at the smooth way he was sidestepping my insistence on bringing in the Feds.
“Find the bomber.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “Vlodek-”
I cut him off. I’d been Vlodeked enough. “You can’t do this yourself. Ground radar won’t find all the D.X.12; your security won’t keep your man out forever. Eventually, he’ll be back, and he’ll find a way in. You have to find out who he is before he does that, and that means going to the police. Let them go through the records.”
“Is there any harm in us conducting a preliminary search first? The police can only benefit from our efforts.”
“How much time are you thinking?”
“With my staff somewhat diminished, say a month.”
“Today’s Wednesday. Friday afternoon, at whatever point we are in those records, I’m going to the Feds.”
We started right away. The Bohemian and Stanley sorted through the old invoices, waivers of lien, warranties, and receipts, calling out the names of the contractors. I made the notes, comparing the names with those on my list, and wrote down the kinds of work each contractor had done. It was slow, tedious work, but as the Bohemian said, we had to start somewhere.
By seven o’clock that evening, we’d gotten through three of the four boxes. The Bohemian sent Griselda out for sandwiches, and we continued working. At nine thirty we closed the last box. Adding the contractors that hadn’t needed permits increased my list to a total of two hundred and forty-nine names.
The Bohemian leaned back in his chair. “Not all of these would have had the means and opportunity to plant multiple explosive.”
“We have to rank them by the access they had,” I said.
Stanley glanced at his watch.
“Time to leave, Stanley?” the Bohemian asked.
“I think I better.”
“Go ahead. Vlodek and I will finish up. We’ll reconvene here tomorrow morning, say at eight.”