The gist of all three stories was essentially the same; only the tone varied. Unidentified bomber kills self and one Dick Harte, real-estate magnate. Nothing yet about the bomber being a kid the guys downtown had somehow managed to keep the witnesses sequestered for the moment. Obvious comparisons to what Hamas and the rest did in Israel. The Post reporter had fabricated something about the bomber shouting Allah is great either found some lunatic who claimed to be a witness or made it up entirely but otherwise nothing appalling, beyond, of course, the event itself. All three had patched together what they could about Dick Harte, though his wife and kids werent talking. There were pictures: a scrupulously regular-looking guy, fifty-three years old, with that strange babylike blankness certain men could take on when they went bald, when that big dome of forehead made their features look smaller and more innocent. CEO of the Calamus Development Corporation. Wife Lucretia (Lucretia?) was a decorator based in Great Neck, where they did in fact live. Daughter Cynthia was a senior in public school, son Carl a sophomore at some school Cat had never heard of. The Times and the Post had the same photo, the straightforward one from God knew where that would go with the obit; the News had dug up one of Harte standing with a few others who looked more or less like him, at the dedication of what Cat knew to be yet another office monolith on Third Avenue.
She went to her cubicle at nine, took her place in the chair still warm from Eds dedicated ass. She looked over Eds entries in the log. Three callers who claimed responsibility, all scrupulously red-tagged. Two were variations on the same idea: now youll all be sorry (no specifics about what we should all be sorry for), and Im not finished yet; both were vague on the subject of how theyd survived the explosion and lived to make the call. The third said he was a member of something called the Brigade of Enlightenment and that the terror would continue until the U.S. stopped allowing women to murder their unborn children.
Pete stopped by just after nine, nursing his first cup of hot coffee-flavored, sugar-free liquid candy. How you doing? he asked.
Okay.
Get some sleep?
A little.
He stepped into the cubicle, made so bold as to put his hand on her shoulder. She and Pete had maintained an unspoken no-touching rule since that night three months ago when they were both working late, when theyd been exhausted and discouraged enough to duck into the womens room together. Cat still couldnt say why shed done it, she wasnt remotely interested, and yet mysteriously, unaccountably, shed been headed to the ladies and had nodded to him, and before you knew it she was sitting on the sink with her legs wrapped around his unpretty middle-aged ass, he because shed allowed it, because theyd seemed at that moment like the only two people in the world, because his wife was losing her sight and his only child had become an econut in Latin America, and she because because Petes wife was losing her sight and his only child had become an econut in Latin America, because shed let her own son die and shed been taking calls for going on twelve hours, because Petes neck reminded her of her ex-husbands neck, because this place was so ugly and silent and far from everything, because she seemed to have wanted, at that moment, to tear everything apart, to go down, to be as crazy and destructive and irresponsible as the people who called her. She and Pete had never spoken about it. They both knew it would not happen again.
You sure you feel like working today?
Entirely sure. Find out anything new?
Forensics is saying the kid was thirteen, maybe fourteen, but small for his age. Seems to have been healthy, from what theyve found so far.
I hate this.
Who doesnt?
I dont just mean this. I mean all this.
Pete nodded wearily, warily. Cat hesitated. There was an unwritten rule in the unit. No one speculated, ever. No one waxed philosophical. It didnt work that way. No one went moony about the notable increase in callers who were under eighteen and clearly well educated or about the increase in carry-throughs, from one in a thousand to one in 650 over the last five years. No one spun out over the collapse of the family or of civilization at large; no one wondered about atmospheric gases or irradiated food or rays being projected at the earth by hostile aliens. That was the callers realm.
Cat said, Sorry. Im a little tired right now.
Course you are.
She sat up straighter in her chair. What have they gotten from the wife and kids? she asked. Anything?
Wifes hysterical. Daughter, too. Son came down from Vermont, real eager beaver, wants to be of service and get to the bottom of all this and etcetera but cant tell us shit. Dad was a decent guy. Coached Little League, paid the bills on time. My opinion? I think the sons having the time of his life.
Whats he doing in Vermont?
Special school for underachievers, kids who do more than the usual amount of drugs. Like that.
Thats interesting.
Were checking into it.
Theyve got the tapes in Washington? she said.
They do.
And theyll be in touch?
Nobodys gonna nail you for missing a hint this small.
I wasnt supposed to call anyone. Jesus.
Unless, of course, they decide they really and truly need someone to nail, and I seem like the best candidate.
Unlikely. Why worry about it now?
Thanks.
Cat said, Sorry. Im a little tired right now.
Course you are.
She sat up straighter in her chair. What have they gotten from the wife and kids? she asked. Anything?
Wifes hysterical. Daughter, too. Son came down from Vermont, real eager beaver, wants to be of service and get to the bottom of all this and etcetera but cant tell us shit. Dad was a decent guy. Coached Little League, paid the bills on time. My opinion? I think the sons having the time of his life.
Whats he doing in Vermont?
Special school for underachievers, kids who do more than the usual amount of drugs. Like that.
Thats interesting.
Were checking into it.
Theyve got the tapes in Washington? she said.
They do.
And theyll be in touch?
Nobodys gonna nail you for missing a hint this small.
I wasnt supposed to call anyone. Jesus.
Unless, of course, they decide they really and truly need someone to nail, and I seem like the best candidate.
Unlikely. Why worry about it now?
Thanks.
Ill check in with you later.
Youre the best.
She got to work. It was a busy morning, which surprised no one. It always took about twenty-four hours for the callers to man their stations. After a big story hit the news, only the most labile reached immediately for the phone. The majority, the petit bourgeois lunatics, had to mull it over, settle in their own minds just exactly how the event in question belonged to them, and decide that someone in a position of authority ought to know about it. Now they were in full stampede. She got five in her first twenty minutes, three of them so unfocused that even Ed wouldnt have red-tagged them, just a trio of screamers who wanted somebody to know they hadnt seen anything yet, the worst was still to come, Judgment Day was upon us. The fourth was an English guy who wanted to tell her hed overheard a conversation in the lobby of his building and had come to understand that this incident was part of his neighbors master plan to bankrupt small businesses in the financial district, sorry, he couldnt leave his neighbors name or his own name, for fear of reprisals, but given this information, he hoped the police would know how to proceed. The fifth needed to tell her that certain evidence had been planted at the site by white supremacists to implicate the Muslim faith. This one did leave his name: Jesus Mohamed, minister of the Church of Light and Love. He was willing to work with the police in any capacity they required.
She red-tagged the Englishman and Jesus Mohamed, thus setting into motion the inquiries into their lives and natures that would cost taxpayers roughly fifteen grand. She wondered if these people knew, if they had any idea, how much money and muscle they could summon just by making these calls. Better, of course, if they didnt.
Between calls she filed what needed to be filed, wrote her follow-ups, checked the mail, which was for the most part unremarkable: a half-dozen threats and one hex, written variously by hand, on a computer, and on what appeared to be a manual typewriter. The letters about the explosion wouldnt arrive until tomorrow. The day began to establish its momentum; it started feeling ordinary. This would pass, wouldnt it? The kid would turn out to have been Dick Hartes sex toy, or he would turn out to have been regular crazy (the new regular crazy), a friendless and universally bullied weirdo whod been obsessed with computer games since before he knew how to walk. It was what else could it be? another disaster in a disaster-prone world, tragic but unavoidable. Life would go on.
The call came a little before ten-thirty. It was patched directly to her caller had asked for Cat Martin. She figured it was one of her regulars. She had a handful who called at least once a week, and twice that many who called sporadically, when they went off their medication or the moon was full or the papers (they were readers, these people) had featured something doomish that could conceivably have been somebodys fault. Antoine always called about anything that inconvenienced commuters (automotive industrys conspiracy to eliminate mass transit); Billy could be counted on whenever anything appeared about hostile conditions on other planets (ongoing attempt to disguise the fact that the aliens have been here for decades and are being tortured in government internment camps). Antoine and Billy and the others had been checked out long ago. Antoine lived on monthly disability in a rathole in Hells Kitchen; Billy was a sanitation worker on Staten Island. The regulars tended to love patterns. They scanned the news every day for further evidence. She couldnt blame them, not really. Who didnt want more patterns?