“Edelweiss” was playing now, the Boston Philharmonic, one of the classics. That one-two-three beat made him want to dance, so he pounded out the rhythm on the steering wheel, feeling good; pleased with himself and smiling, until his cell phone rang.
A minor irritation.
He checked the caller ID. It was Shiva’s private number.
Izzy turned down the volume, pressed the talk button and said, “Talk to me, Jerry!”
He could call Shiva by his first name now. The Bhagwan was delighted by the results of the coordinated explosions on Sunday. The two men had never been on friendlier terms.
Izzy listened to Shiva say, “I’m spending the weekend at the Cypress Ashram. We still all set for the second service?”
“Service” meant “detonation.”
Izzy said, “I’m on my way there now.”
“Easter Sunday at sunset?”
“Yep. Seven fifty-seven sharp. I checked the almanac.”
“The church appreciates your dedication.”
“Thanks,” Izzy said. “One more thing: Make sure to remind Mr. Carter to answer his cell phone when I call. If he doesn’t, I’ll be seeing both of you on Monday.”
They had reason to be encouraged. The first series of explosions had been more convincing, and had received wider attention, than Shiva anticipated.
A reporter for the Seminole Tribune, “Voice of the Unconquered,” had interviewed a number of people, including Shiva, for a story they were doing on the recent earthquake. Izzy didn’t know or care about the particulars, but Shiva had jabbered on and on because the Indian writer knew about Tecumseh right away; what he’d predicted.
The real reason Shiva was so happy? It was because the Seminole Tribe of Florida were at least talking to him. They’d treated him like a con man right off the bat.
That might impress the less savvy tribe of Egret Seminoles.
Izzy was kicked-back, pleased with himself. He’d pulled it off. It had all gone so damn smoothly. And so far, the Feds hadn’t come snooping around.
Not that it was all luck. No.
First off, he’d taken the trouble to make certain Tomlinson, Ford and the Italian dick-Frank something-hadn’t eyeballed him when he was down there in the rock quarry, scoping out where to park the U-Haul while he was filling boreholes with ammonium nitrate. Which was a risky pain-in-the-ass, but had to be done.
They hadn’t. Didn’t say a word about him when they were sitting alone in the waiting room.
He’d taken his time learning how to do explosives, too. Did all the reading. Found out how to do it right. He’d put together a booklet of Bureau of Mines publications describing research on acceptable levels of underground disturbance. Cross the lines, you were inviting scrutiny.
He’d also learned that there was a subscience to achieving maximum efficiency with fewer explosives by drilling several “shot holes” or boreholes in a precise semicircular pattern. The holes had to be five to fifteen feet deep or so, with small diameters. Then the boreholes had to be “stemmed,” or packed tight with rock.
No problem.
For his Easter Sunday’s fireworks-the grand finale-Izzy had drilled thirteen boreholes in a sequential pattern (“delay intervals,” the literature called them) and in the exact semicircle shape of the Cypress Ashram’s elevated stage. Even though each of the boreholes was more than half a mile away from the outdoor theater, the series of explosions would rock the place in precisely connecting gradients-and much of the Everglades as well.
This was something else Izzy had learned: Water cannot be compressed. If he extended the boreholes below the water table, the power of the shock waves was quadrupled.
In the Everglades, the water table was seldom more than a few feet beneath the surface. Swampland was a demoli tionist’s dream. So, this final blast would register way over the government’s line of acceptable level of disturbance. Which would invite all kinds of heavy investigation.
Izzy didn’t care. He’d be on a plane, gone by late Sunday, never to return. He’d fly to Paris, stay long enough to switch passports, then fly to London, then back to Managua.
Plus, he now had a fall guy.
So there’d be a series of five substantial explosions, followed by a really big boom-the U-Haul truck packed with explosives, backed in tight against the wall of the old rock quarry.
The typical problem with ammonium nitrate, though, was that it wasn’t easy to detonate. Use commercial blasting caps, only a third of the stuff would probably explode. Because the truck would be holding six drums of fertilizer mixed with fuel oil, Izzy had decided to use a high-voltage-capacitor-discharge mini-blaster to detonate the rig. That meant he’d have to leave the truck’s engine running, hardwired to the mini-blaster to provide the necessary voltage.
The mini-blaster’s timer ran on a single dry-cell battery, but that was okay. He’d mount the timer and the dry-cell battery inside the truck so they couldn’t get wet. The other boreholes would be rigged to waterproof individual timers.
All the timers worked on twenty-four-hour clocks. He’d set the first charge to go off at 19:48 hours-7:48 P.M. Maybe a minute or two earlier or later. It had to seem random. After that, there would be five more “tremors” approximately one minute apart.
The last and largest explosion would be exactly at sunset, 19:57 hours. The truck going off. A ton of ammonium nitrate.
To people half a mile away, it would be like the sun exploding.
Religious types were big on sunrise, sunset. Same with the moon.
Izzy liked all of it. Liked the complicated engineering, the precision work, making it happen, fucking with self-important weirdos and geeks like Tomlinson and Ford.
Izzy was mostly happy about the money-his bonus-and moving to his island in Lake Nicaragua where he could afford all the women he wanted; get them to do anything.
There was an idea. Start with his sweet little video of Mrs. Minster, the Merry Widow, in her bathroom, then expand the business. Down there in Nicaragua, no one would much care. No one would lift a finger to stop him.
The image of Sally Minster, naked, looking at herself in the mirror, the color of her face changing, came into his mind.
He felt his thigh muscles twitch.
Izzy still had cameras and recorders hidden in her bedroom and bathroom, and he had a LACSA flight to Managua booked for late Sunday.
So why not visit the pretty blond lady’s house tonight?
Izzy was in the Bayliner, idling along Tahiti Beach and what looked to be some kind of county park-kids were necking in cars up there on shore, parked beneath coconut palms.
It was sunset. Harsh light angled across Biscayne Bay, coating the high-rise condos and hotels in shades of neon pink and gold, setting windows ablaze. Windy, too. The wind seemed to blow right out of the sun.
Izzy didn’t like being on boats when it was windy. It made him queasy, all the odors you never really noticed unless you were on a boat that was rocking. So he shoved the throttle forward and banged and splashed his way back to the marked entrance to Coral Gables Canal.
Shitty, cheap boat. Waves coming over the front got Izzy’s sports jacket and gray slacks soaked.
He idled west down the canal, pretending not to notice that the Italian, Frank what’s-his-name, was still parked outside the entranceway to Ironwood in his Lincoln Town Car. With the tinted windows and gold rims, the black car looked like some pimpmobile you’d find in Liberty City.
Izzy thought, Typical guinea, irked that this guy was screwing up his plans.
He’d rushed like hell mucking around in the swamp, mixing fertilizer in fifty-gallon drums, using a forklift to lift them into the U-Haul. Got all his work done, everything but the timers set. All ready for Sunday-which gave him a holiday feeling. His last two nights on American soil.
So he’d showered and changed at the bachelors’ club, hopped in a company car and raced up to Coconut Grove to see if he might discover some more interesting video of the church lady having fantasy sessions in her bedroom. Or maybe even meet her in person.