When the swing-away cover was moved to the left, the terminals looked like this:
This was December 31, a Saturday. The timer was already programmed for next Thursday, which would be January 5.
It was set for 8:15 p.m., at which time it would turn on whatever electrical appliance its wires were connected to.
Its wires were not connected to any electrical appliance.
There was a five-pound charge of dynamite inside the box. There was a plastic bag of black powder inside the box. One of the wires from the terminal led to a ground. The other wire was loosely twisted around the first wire. At 8:15 p.m. next Thursday, when the timer triggered the on switch, a surge of electricity would arc through the loosely twisted wires and cause a spark, which would ignite the black powder and subsequently the fuse leading to the dynamite charge. All Gopher had to do now was plug his phony voltage recorder into an ordinary 110-volt outlet and set the present time on the timer.
The rest would take care of itself.
In the squadroom upstairs the detectives were discussing the wanted flyers that had arrived in that day’s mail.
‘These have got to be the real article,’ O’Brien said.
‘Could’ve got ‘em from a post office,’ Fujiwara said.
‘Beautiful crowd, ain’t they?’ Willis said. ‘Rape, arson, armed robbery, kidnapping...’
‘You don’t think he’s pinpointing them, do you?’
‘Pinpointing who?’
‘The ones who did the Gruber’s job with him.’
‘What he’s doing,’ O’Brien said, ‘he’s telling us he can go into any goddamn squadroom in this city and do whatever the fuck he wants inside them.’
‘If he got them from a squadroom,’ Fujiwara said.
‘That’s where he got them, all right,’ Willis said.
Gopher stopped at the slatted rail divider separating the squadroom from the corridor outside.
‘Electric company,’ he said. ‘Got to put a voltage recorder on your line.’
‘Come on in,’ O’Brien said.
‘Where’s your fuse box?’ Gopher asked.
‘Who knows?’ Willis said.
Gopher had no reason to locate the fuse box. He simply wanted an excuse to look the place over. He set the box down near one of the desks and began poking around. Plenty of outlets all over the room, but he needed someplace to plant his incendiaries.
‘What’s in here?’ he asked, his hand on a doorknob.
‘Supply closet,’ Fujiwara said.
A naked light bulb with a pull chain was hanging inside the closet. Gopher pulled the chain. A 40-watt bulb, amazing these guys could see anything in here.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.
‘Long as you don’t set fire to the joint,’ O’Brien said.
Gopher laughed.
He checked the closet baseboard for outlets. Usually you didn’t find an outlet in a closet, but some of these old buildings, they divided a big room by throwing up walls wherever they felt like. He found a double outlet on the rear wall of the closet. Good. He could plug in his box right here, where there was plenty of flammable shit. Give it a roaring start with his incendiaries, should have a nice little blaze in minutes flat. Nice old wood all around the room. Oh, this would be a very pretty fire.
‘I’ll be through in a minute here,’ Gopher said. ‘You got an ashtray?’
‘Just grind it out on the floor,’ O’Brien said.
It took Gopher a minute and a half to carry his box into the closet, set it on the floor under a shelf at the rear, and plug it in.
It took him three minutes to set the timer with the present time, which he read off the squadroom clock.
‘I have to bring some other stuff up here,’ he said. ‘Some chemicals to keep the closet dry. Otherwise, the recorder won’t give us a true reading. I’ll stack them on the shelves, out of your way.’
He went downstairs for his incendiaries.
He stacked three innocent-looking cardboard cartons in the supply closet, one on each of three shelves above the box. As he worked, he listened to the detectives.
‘So why’s he trying to tell us he can get into squadrooms?’ Fujiwara said. ‘If that’s what he’s trying to tell us.’
‘‘Cause he’s crazy,’ Willis said.
* * * *
Over the past several years it had become a ritual. On New Year’s Eve, before they left the house for whatever party they were going to, Carella and Teddy made love. And when they returned to the house again, in the New Year this time, they made love again.
Once a long time ago Carella had been told by a detective of Scottish ancestry that in the northern parts of Great Britain the custom of first-footing is still honored on the first day of the New Year. A dark-eyed, dark-haired person—presumably because Britain’s enemies in days of yore were fair-haired and light-eyed—carries a symbolic gift, usually a piece of coal and a pinch of salt, over the doorsill of a friend’s house. The gift bearer is the first person to set foot in the house in the New Year: hence, first-footing. His or her gift is a wish for health and prosperity throughout the coming year.
Carella didn’t know whether he was recalling the story faithfully or even if the Scotsman had been idling the truth. He suspected, however, that one doesn’t kid around when it comes to custom. He liked the story, and he wanted to believe that such a custom, in fact, existed. In a world where too many people came bearing death, it was comforting to know that in some remote little village far to the north, someone—on the very first day of the bright New Year—came bearing the gift of life: a piece of coal for the grate, a pinch of salt for the pot. In a sense, the Scotsman had said, the custom was a reaffirmation of life.
For Carella love making was a similar affirmation of life.
He loved this woman completely.
This woman was his life.
And holding her in his arms on New Year’s Day—dark-eyed, dark-haired people both, no enemies here in this bed—he silently wished her the best that life could afford.
But New Year’s Day was also the eighth day of Christmas.
And someone would come bearing tidings of death.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWELVE
Before the Gruber’s holdup the Deaf Man had planned to hire someone else to do the horses—just as he had hired Gopher to do the cars and the squadroom. He did not enjoy messiness. Even cutting off the wino’s ear, a necessity if he was to make a point to the clods of the Eight-Seven, had been distasteful to him. The Deaf Man liked things clean and neat. Precise. The festivities he’d planned for the enjoyment of the detectives who worked out of the old station house on Grover Avenue were initially conceived as a fillip to the department store job. First let them know that he could do whatever the hell he wanted to in this precinct, pull off the job, get away clean, and then teach them once and for all that he would no longer tolerate their meddling in his affairs. End the relationship. Good-bye, boys.