The big bus terminal on Eighth Avenue buzzed and jabbered about him; people moved to and from ticket windows; the hollow bass voice of the announcer filled the building; Erwin Beltman rode silently to the mezzanine.
Erwin stopped at the top of the escalator, turned, and looked down at the clean crowd movement, the solid lines of the Port Authority Building. He moved to the side as a short man in a leather jacket stepped off the escalator. He excused himself politely, but the man shoved past rudely. He watched the ebb and flow of me crowd, watching too, as the leather-jacketed man became just another cell of that monstrous organism. There was so much rudeness in the world today; so little graciousness. Erwin Beltman lounged over the aluminum rail that ran around the short wall beside the stairs. There was such a full pleasure from just standing there, legs crossed, bomb in hand, watching all those scurrying people.
Erwin Beltman felt a great identification with the masses.
The blast of the bus arrival from Ridgewood shattered Erwin’s thoughts as the microphone voice filled the terminal. He turned away, continued in the direction he had been going, with a sort of indefinite sigh.
Ah, it was an indefinite life.
As he passed the candy stand he scanned the headlines of the newspapers. Yes, by jingo, he still beat out the South American revolution, the busing problem and the ball scores for top spot. The Post had a dandy comment:
MAD BOMBER TIPS COPS
ROXY THEATER PIPE BOMB NIPPED!
There was always a certain ring of cleverness to the headlines the Post copy chief dreamed up. But he did wish they would get rid of that monstrous misnomer, “mad bomber.” Erwin Beltman would have been the first one to refute any such title.
Erwin stopped momentarily in front of the black-painted glass of the closed barber shop beside the candy stand. The reflection was poor, but he caught enough of himself to be able to nod his head severely, confide to himself, “I most certainly am not a mad bomber!” His soft brown eyes stared back at him. A mild, gray-haired man in an old, but neat, suit stared back at him. A kindly, intelligent, sensitive face stared back at him.
“Mad bomber. Indeed! ” he murmured, hurrying away from the closed barber shop. “No one can seem to understand that this is just a hobby … just a hobby! A man my age, living off the welfare, well, he just has to make something of himself!”
He wasn’t mad: muggers and junkies and people like the one the papers called the Slasher were mad. He was an artist!
But the ruminations were cut short by sight of his evening’s objective. The phone booth by the escalators. Erwin studied the terrain for a moment.
The empty corridor stretching back behind him, the cool off-yellow brick walls, the lighted number glasses in the walls, announcing what buses were in — on the floor above. The escalators. The silent phone booth.
Oh, fine!
He walked quickly to the booth, and sat down inside, carefully taking the receiver off the hook, planting it under his chin. He turned his back half-toward the glass panels in the phone booth door. That way, hunched over, but with the receiver in view, seemingly in use, he would not be studied too carefully nor be disturbed till the delicate work was completed. Then he stripped the brown paper bag from the evening’s baby.
Oh, wasn’t it just as lovely as anything!
The pipe was shiny, and the powder was stuffed inside just as tightly as Erwin had been able to do it with the soft-faced plunger. The clock-mechanism was not as fancy as last week’s bomb, but then, he’d have to wait till the pension check came in before extending himself with more elaborate equipment. But the hookup device was so much more effective it made up for the lack of fanciness in the clock.
“Oh, if they only knew what a perfectionist I am,” he thought earnestly. “If they could see how seriously I take my hobby, how I’m not just a low prankster. Then they would hold me in greater esteem, I’m sure.”
He taped the bomb to the underside of the ledge beneath the coin box, making certain it was out-of-sight from a natural, normal position. He held the triggering device open with his finger. He removed a bit of cotton-batting from his pocket and wedged it between switch and terminal, allowing him to work unhampered.
The wiring was the most delicate part of all, but he accomplished it quickly, arranging the mechanism so that nothing would happen when coins were put in the slot …
Ah, but when the dial was spun!
Then he set the clock, with a one-hour limit. It was a two-way bomb. If no one came along within an hour, to make a call (and that really seemed unlikely, didn’t it?), then the bomb would go off automatically … and well, perhaps it might catch a passerby or two. There was no way of telling.
Erwin philosophized as he casually strolled back toward the candy stand: “That’s the one thing I so dislike about my hobby: the element of uncertainty, the element of doubt, of chance. Oh well …”
Though Erwin was a sportsman at heart — didn’t he call the police quite often, tell them where the bomb was, approximately? — he still liked to make that kill. Still liked to get the thrill of seeing the bull downed.
That was why he positioned himself behind the late edition of the Post (with that clever headline) near the candy stand, to see what happened. Erwin did not usually linger, as there were other considerations than “watching for the kill,” as he put it to himself. The police were most unpleasant, and once they had almost caught him.
Erwin would not have liked that.
But this time, with the new mechanism, he knew he would not rest easily till he had seen what came of this baby. He leaned against the wall, and watched carefully.
Ten minutes later the college boy bounded up the stairs, swung his head around as though desperately searching for something, and sighted the phone booth. “Hot damn!” the boy said. He chuckled and, grinning, made a sprint down the corridor to the booth. He stood outside for a moment, fumbling in his pocket for change, and finally came up with two nickels.
Erwin’s palms were wet, and he felt a stiffness in his neck. The tension was almost more than he could bear as the boy swung the booth door open and slumped down in the seat. He watched — the boy left the door open — with growing excitement, feeling a flush climb his neck; the boy put the first nickel into the slot. He dropped the second one, and for an instant, Erwin thought he would surely see the bomb when he stooped.
But the boy picked up the nickel, and slipped it in after the first one; he began to dial.
Erwin waited across the street for the arrival of the police bomb squad and the ambulance. They had roped off the corridor.
He decided not to follow the ambulance this time; it had been sweet, a sure thing. What was left of the boy would arrive D.O.A. In sections.
The trouble started for Erwin a month after the Port Authority beauty went up through the top floor, carrying the sophomore from Duke University with it. It started with the flower lady.
Erwin was trying to set a difficult one in the vestibule of the Chanin Building on 42nd and Lexington, just beside the flower shop, when the little old lady came out, and stumbled into him. The package dropped, and Erwin’s eyes leaped open as the pipe bomb appeared. His tongue wadded up like moldy bread as he saw that the woman recognized what it was; he was terribly frightened.
The woman gripped her brown wicker basket all the tighter, the violets in it neatly arranged, and walked away. But she turned and stared at Erwin for a long moment before she went out the side door of the building. Erwin gathered the bomb back into its bag, and stood there watching the revolving door. It seemed to mock him; each glass panel whipped past shusssssh, and with each one he wanted to run after her, make up some story that he was a plumber, silence her. But he knew that would be foolish.