"What?" I demanded. "Don't just nod your head like I'm some imbecile. What are you thinking?"
"This thing you just told me about Paul Bigg? And his friend-what's his name, Ramp?"
"Yes, Ramp."
"You're sure about it?"
"Yes." Suddenly, I wasn't sure.
She nodded again.
"Adrienne, what?"
"I'm afraid that there's no gentle way to put this. But Paul Bigg is dead, Alan. Very dead."
"Oh God," I said. "They found his body, too? Where was it? At their house? The Bigg house?" For some reason, I immediately suspected suicide. After he'd placed the bomb that killed his mother, he'd gone home and killed himself.
Adrienne shook her head and lowered her voice, making it so soft that her northeast accent almost evaporated. "No, hon. Paul Bigg died playing Little League baseball when he was twelve years old. He got hit in the chest by a ball and died from a heart rhythm abnormality."
I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut.
"What?"
"Paul's been dead for, like, five or six years. I told you the other night that Leo's family has had way too many tragedies, even before he went to prison. Don't you remember?"
I stared at her with my mouth in the classic O sign. It took me a few moments to form my next sentence. "That can't be right. No way. She told me he worked at Starbucks. On the Mall, down near Fifteenth Street. Naomi did." I almost argued that Naomi had said that Paul made the best mocha on the planet. I thought she'd said "on the planet." Maybe it was just that he made a "killer mocha." It bothered me that I couldn't remember exactly what she had said. She certainly hadn't said that her son was long dead and that she'd been making everything up.
"He doesn't work at Starbucks, Alan. He probably died before he ever laid eyes on a Starbucks. Paul Bigg is dead." Adrienne was being uncharacteristically gentle, as though she were speaking to somebody with severe mental instability.
Me.
"Adrienne, that can't be true. Naomi just talked with him. A few minutes before she died. I heard her tell Marin about it. She was mad at him about something. He can't be dead."
Adrienne said, "I think you're mistaken."
I protested. "He has this friend. Ramp."
"Maybe he did, Alan, back then. But not now. Paul's dead. Peter and I went to his funeral. I promise you that he's dead."
"I don't understand. I know all about him. His school, his friends. Everything. I know what psychiatrist he went to, Adrienne. What he was treated for, everything."
Adrienne began to nod again, but she caught herself. In retrospect, I'm sure she was fighting an urge to ask me if I knew my name, knew where I was right then, what day it was, who was the current President of the United States.
She didn't ask. She said, "Well, maybe you don't know quite everything that you think you know."
Duh.
CHAPTER 33
Ramp felt the flash from the bomb the same way he experienced the sun as it broke through a thick cloud cover. The light and heat washed over him and warmed him, licking at his exposed skin all at once. He raised his chin an inch or so to greet the energy as it pulsed and engulfed him. Since it was the first time he would be around to see one of his devices go off in public, he desperately wanted to keep his eyes open to record the visual landscape as it settled in the aftermath of his work, but his reflexes overwhelmed him.
The plastic box with the toggle switch in his jacket pocket was moist from the sweat on his hand. He fingered the slick plastic as impulses flooded him. The energy it consumed to control the urges thwarted his enjoyment of the consequences of the blast. He wanted to thrust his hands into the air and yell, "Yes!" He wanted to pull the transmitter from his pocket and thrust it to his lips and display it to the stunned citizens around him.
He didn't.
He monitored his excited breathing by forcing each deep breath to pass through his nose and go deep into his gut. Despite the chaos that was stirring in the aftermath of the explosion, he could hear himself snort and was afraid he sounded like a horse eager to canter.
Ramp had detonated the bomb from where he'd been standing on Walnut in front of the aging house that old-time Boulderites would probably forever consider to be the second home of Nancy's restaurant. As the echoes of the detonation stilled, Ramp heard people in front of Café Louie, the restaurant that had replaced Nancy's, screaming, "Did you hear that?" "What was that?" "Was that a car that blew up?" and "Oh no, oh my God! I think it was a bomb."
The sounds were all on separate tracks in his consciousness, laid down methodically, distinctly. They were the kinds of details that he knew he'd want to remember later.
As people ran past him toward the location of the blast, he wanted to follow them. He wanted to see for himself what havoc the explosive had wreaked. What carnage the metal splinters had wrought. Did he kill one? Or two? Or even three? But he didn't follow the throngs to the source of the damage.
He was sure he didn't want to see the bodies.
There were bodies. He knew that. The bodies meant casualties. The casualties were necessary, but he feared that each would remind him of the day he discovered his mother's body.
He turned and walked the opposite direction down Walnut, crossing Ninth and moving at a measured pace to cover the short blocks to the Downtown Mall. The plan called for him to linger for a while with the crowds on the Mall before he returned to his car.
He remembered something his grandfather had said about explosives: Maniacs destroy maniacally. Engineers destroy scientifically. You are the engineer.
"I am the engineer," he said, barely moving his lips, hardly making a sound.
"And how was it?" he asked himself, adopting a gravelly, deeper voice. The voice of someone who'd inhaled the poisons of way too many Camels. The voice of his grandfather.
"Better than I would have guessed, Granddad. The best, the absolute best. It's so much better when you're there."
The deeper voice responded, "Wait. They only get better. The better you get, the better they get. I liked the last one I did better than I did the first."
"I wasn't really sure I could do it. The first one went off accidentally, you know. So I wasn't sure I could actually detonate one myself. One that counted, I mean."
"I was sure. I was sure."
At the corner of Eleventh, outside the Walrus, a woman approached him on the sidewalk and Ramp ended the conversation he was having. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself a block and a half from the crime scene.
Another saying from Granddad: You don't hurry to meet deadlines. You change deadlines so you don't have to hurry.
Not this time, Ramp thought as he climbed into the driver's seat of his blue RAV 4. Most of what the old man had said was true. But not that, not this time. Ramp knew he'd have to accelerate the whole timetable. He knew that they'd be looking for him now.
Maybe they even knew who he was already.
He had to act now before it was too late. One quick stop at his apartment and he'd be ready to go.
The sign above the workbench in the explosives shed: Safety is the product of planning, discipline, and control. If you plan well, deploy with discipline, and control your charges, you will be safe.
But what if you don't care if you're safe? What if you're willing to go out with the blast?
The old man couldn't have imagined it, so he had never had an aphorism for that.
Ramp started the car.
He tuned the radio to AM and hit the scan button, listening for the sound of breaking news.
Before he made it to the edge of town, he was gripped with a hunger that was as tight as a choke chain. He stopped at the McDonald's on Baseline and ordered a Big Mac Extra Value Meal. As he pulled forward to the pick-up window, a young kid in the required bad clothes and polyester hat asked him if he'd heard about the explosion downtown.