He dropped a quarter into the phone and, bleary-eyed, began punching in numbers, hardly able to see the keypad. The phone began to ring. Suddenly a male voice said, “Welcome to the podium of the Democratic convention.”
“What?” Edmonds said, outraged that he had gotten a wrong number. He reached into his pocket for another quarter, and as he did so, lost his balance, falling against the phone. His shoulder struck the keypad.
The Los Angeles Coliseum was lit only by emergency lighting at this time of night. The night watchman stopped in the high seats and inserted his key into the time clock. Before he could turn the key, a fireball rose from the platform at the other end of the building, and the shock wave in the enclosed space knocked him off his feet. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, and tried to clear his head. His ears ached from the noise and the shock wave. Before he could get up, the sprinkler system came on, immediately soaking him. A moment later, from somewhere outside, he heard sirens, and they were coming his way.
53
The van drove slowly down the street, past the row of neat houses. The Secret Service agent in the front seat spotted the number first. “That’s it,” he said, “but keep going.” He held his radio to his lips. “It’s quiet at the house; the front door is open, but there’s a screen door that might be latched. I want two vehicles in the alley behind the house; don’t go in until you hear the word from me, and use maximum caution. No unnecessary radio traffic.” He turned to the driver. “Make a U-turn and stop two doors short of the house.” He buckled on his helmet and zipped up his flak jacket.
Sixteen men — four agents and twelve in the LAPD SWAT team — hit the house simultaneously from front and rear. They swarmed around the ground floor, kicking open doors. The agent led a group up the stairs. The two bedroom doors were open, and the agent could see a bare foot across the doorway to one.
“All clear!” someone shouted.
The agent went into the room and looked at the body of the naked woman. “I want an evidence team in here, and tell them to bring a rape kit. I want swabs from the woman.” He looked around the bedroom. Except for the fact that there was a dead woman in the room and that the bed was bare of sheets, nothing seemed amiss.
The technician read from his notes: “The woman had sex, but I can’t tell you even approximately when.”
“I want semen samples for DNA.”
“There aren’t any,” the tech said. “She was douched with something that may be window cleaner. The bedsheets were in the washing machine downstairs, still wet, reeking of bleach. This is one careful guy. We haven’t been able to come up with a single fingerprint that doesn’t belong to the woman.”
“Shit!” the agent said.
Another agent came into the room. “Here’s what we’ve got so far,” he said, reading from a pad. “This Harry Grant rents an apartment in Vegas; it’s empty and extremely clean. He has a bank account with less than a hundred dollars in it, a social security number, and two credit cards, and he owns a two-year-old Lexus ES300. Here are his driver’s license and work ID photographs.” He handed his chief the pictures.
The agent looked at them. “The big moustache will be the first to go, then he’ll look like anybody. I want renderings of the photographs clean-shaven and bearded. My guess is his car is parked at a local airport, and it’s just as clean as this house.”
“The guy is a pro,” the other agent said.
The chief shook his head. “Not just a pro, a fanatic. Run these photographs against our files on militias, white supremacist groups, antigovernment organizations. We’ve got to have something on him.”
Will was lying in bed, spent and happy, having just made love to Kate. She was singing in the shower. He could not remember when he had felt so relaxed, so relieved, so unanxious. He flicked on the television.
“...and the ATF is saying that the explosive used at the Coliseum was the same type that was stolen from a construction site less than a mile away. Police and the FBI are looking for this man.” Two photographs of a sandy-haired man in his forties with a handlebar moustache flashed on the screen. “He is Harry Grant, of a Las Vegas address, who has been employed as a maintenance worker at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Police and Secret Service personnel raided the house where Grant rented a room early this morning. His landlady, Mrs. Rosa Rivera, forty-one, was found dead at the scene, having been strangled.”
Coliseum? Will thought. What was that about the Coliseum?
Kate came into the room, wearing only a towel. “Why do you look so funny?” she asked.
“It’s something about an explosion at the Coliseum,” Will said, switching to MSNBC.
Anchorwoman Laurie Dhue came on. “Secret Service sources have told MSNBC that the explosives planted under the Democratic convention platform at the Los Angeles Coliseum were probably set to go off during the speeches last night, but somehow didn’t detonate until the early hours of this morning. A Coliseum security guard was the only witness to the explosion.”
Kate sat on the bed. “It’s started,” she said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Will said, getting up.
“I will if I want to,” she replied, staring at the television.
As he climbed into the shower, Will didn’t doubt for a moment that he had been the target of the explosion.
Zeke got off the bus at a crossroads, and his son, Danny, was waiting for him in the pickup.
“Hey, Daddy,” Danny said, kissing Zeke on the cheek.
“Hey, son,” Zeke said, slapping the boy on the back.
“You want to go straight home?”
“That’s good, but I won’t be there long.”
Danny put the truck into gear. “How’d your trip go?”
“Not so good,” Zeke said.
The chief of Will’s Secret Service detail sat across the coffee table, explaining what they knew. “We haven’t been able to connect this man with any organization so far, but I have no doubt that he’s a member of some group. He had a complete, verifiable identity established; that takes time and money, and Grant had no visible means of support, except a paper computer business.”
“Do you know what flight he took last night?” Will asked.
“No. Half the people on airplanes are businessmen flying alone. We’ve run down every single person who bought a ticket with cash at the airport, but he was apparently too smart for that. We don’t even know if he actually left the city. Leaving his car at the airport could have just been a decoy.”
“Do you think he was the same man who was in Santa Fe?”
The agent nodded. “No doubt of it; he was registered at La Fonda under the Grant name. Our people are checking out the room, but it’s been cleaned a couple of dozen times since he was there. The parking attendant at the hotel remembered his car.”
“What’s this about Santa Fe?” Kate demanded.
“There was a man on the roof of a hotel near the Plaza,” Will said. “I didn’t tell you about it, because it seemed so far-fetched.”
“I don’t want anything else kept from me,” she said. “I hope that’s perfectly clear.”
Will nodded. “Is the airplane ready to leave?”
“It will be by the time we get to Van Nuys,” the agent said. “We’re putting you on the Kiel campaign airplane, which takes a longer runway than Santa Monica, and anyway, we now regard Santa Monica as insecure. Van Nuys has an eight-thousand-foot runway, which is plenty. We didn’t think LAX was a good idea.”
“All right,” Will said. “We’d better get packed.”
Zeke sat in his living room, drinking coffee, surrounded by the other men in his group. The women were in the kitchen.