The Boardwalk Bomber

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 2

When the forensics team was done they took down the crime scene tape and I started cleaning up. Some of my neighbors dropped by to pitch in.

"Damn, Jack," Rex said walking up. "Who the hell did you piss off?"

Rex is the owner of Jockamo's, a bar at the other end of the boardwalk down by the marina. I waved off the question. "I don't think it was personal. Nobody's out to get me." Well, nobody local anyway.

"Coulda fooled me," he said, examining the hole, which was about the size of a small car. "Good thing that wasn't a load-bearing wall."

"I'm a little more worried about the balcony," I said, indicating the sagging stairwell.

"Yeesh, that's hardly held up at all. Have you called your insurance?"

"He's coming out today he said. Even so, I might get some two-by-fours and brace this up a bit."

He snapped his fingers. "I've got some left over from expanding the deck."

We started walking down the boardwalk to his place. Andy joined us and Rex greeted him with an elaborate handshake and high-five combination that always took eight or nine separate motions. Andy was pretty good at the moves, but Rex kept changing them until they were both laughing.

As I guessµed he would, Scottie drifted off as soon as there was work to be done. Andy, Rex and I walked down the boardwalk past the Canary Cafe, a couple of clothing stores, an art gallery, a coffee house, a comics shop a video rental place and then Jockamo's, with its sprawling deck, which extends over an inlet of water leading to the marina next door.

Rex is a musician and has lived here for about 15 years, running Jockamo's with his wife, Rita. He's a helluva guitar player and used to travel in rock bands until he met Rita and produced five kids in the span of six years. Actually Rita produced them, but Rex contributed. When the second kid was on the way he quit traveling with bands and he and Rita bought the bar. Rita does most of that work too, tending bar and managing the business. Rex mostly plays his music -- a mix of blues, Mardi Gras and the occasional rockabilly tune -- and circulates among the tables like the host of a contiual dinner party. On weekend nights he's backed by a band called "The Irregulars" -- so named because the membership varies depending on which of his numerous musician pals happen to be in town. He's even had me on stage a couple of times, but my musical talents are limited to the most basic of percussion instruments and a little backup singing if you aren't real particular.

We poked around in a storage area under the deck until we found a half dozen boards that would do temporarily. We also found some plastic sheeting I could tack up over the hole to keep the weather out.

"So you're not taking this personally, huh Jack?" Rex asked.

I waved it off. "There was an incident like this on campus last week. Probably just some anarchist with a chemistry set."

"An anarchist?" Rex asked. "Andy, is that anything like a Methodist? 'Cause I'm a Methodist and I'm pretty sure we're against blowing stuff up. 'Course I haven't been to church lately. They might have changed that part." Andy was in stitches, but he's an easy audience.

When we got back to my place Andy helped hold two 2x4s while Rex and I nailed them together to make 12-foot temporary beams and hammered them to what was left of the originals. We used the remaining boards to shore up the wall, which had lost three or four load-bearing studs.

Throughout the afternoon different people I know dropped by to› see what had happened -- some of my regular customers and most of the other shopkeepers along the boardwalk. Several pitched in and started cleaning up and moving books. Angela and Benita brought over food and Rita sent us some beers. It was like an Amish barn-raising or something.

A lot of the books were damaged, though repairable, and we set up a "triage" system on the counter. A couple people put themselves in charge of figuring out which pages came out of which books. Benita had majored in philosophy at Smith College (which is what made her qualified to run a restaurant, I guess). She and Curt Brennan got into a competition trying to identify books and authors based on loose pages, and they would read passages aloud to each other, like contestants on a really pretentious game show.

Curt is around 30 and works for me part-time, usually covering a couple evenings and Saturdays. He's a perpetual graduate student and as far as I can tell his degree program is in political science and has something to do with the general putrefaction of American society and culture, or so one would assume from his periodic rants on the subject.

Curt works for me three days a week, watching the shop from 4 p.m. to closing. I can't count on him to do much work -- he mostly sits behind the counter using my computer to write tirades for the alternative weekly paper, The Pamphleteer -- but with him around I can come and go without actually closing the shop.

He and Benita were sorting loose pages and debating about Herbert Marcuse and "mass materialism" as they reassembled volumes of "One Dimensional Man" and "Eros and Civilization." I love books but there are some that I just sell and have no opinion about otherwise. These fell into that category so I just made up some flour paste and showed them how to mend torn pages.

When I created Jack Durham I decided to put him in the used bookstore business because other than law enforcement it was the only line of work I knew anything about. My grandfather had a used bookstore in New York when I was a kid. After my mother died of cancer when I was 10 my dad, who was also a cop, would park me at Grampa's shop when he had to work an evening shift. Sometimes I'd sit around and read and sometimes Grampa would put me to work shelving books or repairing them.

That's where I learned the trick about the flour paste. You just mix flour and water, dab it on both edges of the tear with a paint brush, put wax paper on either side of the page to keep it from sticking to the other pages, then stack a few other books on it overnight. When it's dry you can hardly see where the rip was.

Not that I gave a rat's ass at the time. I was twelve and bored out of my mind and wished I could be riding around in a patrol car with my dad chasing criminals.

I worked for Grampa until I was in high school and along the way I learned how to spot first editions and look up market values and so on. But I still thought it was the most incredibly boring thing anyone could possibly do.

When I was about 16 there was a fire that took a whole city block, including Grampa's bookstore. At the time I didn't realize what a blow that was to him. I thought the important thing was that no one was hurt and he even had insurance, so no real loss, right? But Gramps didn't see it that way. It was like his best friend had died. And a few months later he did toor, just after I graduated from high school. And Dad didn't outlive him by much. The year he was supposed to retire he had a heart attack after chasing a perp down an alley and he was dead before they got him to the hospital. I was on the job myself by then and made detective a few years later. And then it wasn't long after that I got recruited into the organized crime unit and the whole Fugard mess began.

"What planet are we visiting today?" It was Angela. I'd been lost in thought and didn't realize she was standing beside me.

"Well, hey there," I said.

"Hey." She wore a pale green sundress with little string straps. Her shoulders are thin but every muscle shows.

"So how do you like my decorating?" I said. "Tomorrow I'm gonna blow up the geography section."

She looked at the stairway, still sagging but supported now by a utilitarian though inelegant brace of two-by-fours. "Hmmm," she said. "I'm not sure I'd try walking on that."

I sidled over to her and said quietly, "you may be right, but ... well I just don't know where else I'd sleep tonight."

Angela gave me a long look, her large hazel eyes unblinking, and then she leaned closer to whispering in my ear, so close I could have kissed her neck. "Guess you'll have to risk it then." She swirled around, her dress flaring out with the motion, and sauntered away as I watched her shifting hips and felt lucky just to be in the breeze of her wake.

It had turned into a pretty nice evening after all. I looked around the room and saw a half a dozen good friends helping me out for no reason other than wanting to. I went to the kitchen, which is on the first floor but marked off as a non-public area, and fetched a bottle of 18-year-old scotch. I filled plastic cups with ice and scotch and passed them around.

Rex and Curt had disappeared out the back door a few minutes earlier and now they were coming back inside, red-eyed and grinning, having evidently shared a joint. I didn't care so long as they kept it outside. I had been Mr. Clean all my years on the job, but as Jack Durham I had become a little more adventuresome. I tried pot a couple of times, but mostly found myself appreciating interesting patterns in the woodwork, or rereading the same paragraph in a book which seemed terribly profound yet impossible to remember. One time I sat out on my deck on a sunny afternoon, raptly watching sailboats and seagulls and marveling at the beauty of both. And then Angela jogged by on the beach wearing a sports bra and spandex shorts and my head almost exploded.

Scotch is more my speed, and it's too expensive to get really drunk on. I had just poured myself another glass and was walking around offering refills when someone rapped on the window of my front door.

The blind was down, but I could see the silhouette of a tall guy with a flat top. Behind him was the shadow of another figure. I opened the door, not standing directly in front of it.

The tall one turned out to be a woman. She was about six-one with short red hair that stood straight up on her head. She wore a 40s-style men's suit without a tie. Behind her was a squat ugly guy in a bad suit who might as well have been wearing a sign saying "cop." I figured the woman must be one too, though I wouldn't have guessed it if she'd been alone. Standing in the doorway she held out a gold shield. "I'm Detective Molly McCain, state police. This is Captain Arkin of the county sheriff's department. And you are Mr. Durham?"

That would be me," I said, motioning them to come in. Rex looked suddenly nervous, clutching his jacket pocket like a tourist covering his wallet in a third-world bus station. The room was quiet except for John Lee Hooker on the radio.

"Sorry we interrupted your little, uh, party," Arkin said, putting a little suspicion on the last word. "You celebrating something, Mr. Durham?"

I shrugged. "Not being dead?"

Arkin snorted and turned his back, waddling over towards the others.

Detective McCain politely asked me all the same questions I'd already been asked and I repeated what I'd told the uniforms. She had pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and an angular jaw line. She was about my height and I could tell she had an athletic build, though it was mostly hidden under the suit, which looked very stylish on her. I mentioned the boat I'd seen and repeated from memory the partial ID number. I didn't really suspect that guy, but he might have seen something. You never know what little fact will be relevant. She wrote it all down again, left handed, long fingers, clear nail polish, a silver ring on her index finger.

I found it hard to take my eyes off Detective Molly McCain but I kept Arkin in view also. Most people in law enforcement are good cops, but the occupation attracts its share of mean-hearted assholes and it didn't take much observation to put Arkin in that category.

I saw him interviewing Angela, who had been one of the first on the scene after the blast. Then he made a show of nosing around the shop, picking up books at random and glancing at their titles with a sneer that was probably meant to look disdainful. Behind his back Rex, who had recovered his composure enough to be stupid, was starting to mimic him. Curt was breaking up silently, like they were just screwing around in French class or something. This wasn't good. Arkin was a jerk, but Rex was going to hand him an excuse to pat him down and find that dope. And for a cop like Arkin that'd be enough to turn the place upside down and threaten me with property forfeiture.

"So," I said, loud enough for Arkin to hear. "You guys think this was connected to that bombing on campus last week?"

McCain lifted her eyebrows. "Do you?"

I shrugged in reply and by this time Arkin was strutting over. "You know something about that one too, Durham?"

"Just what I read in the papers," I said. "It was near the library, wasn't it? So maybe this is an anti-book thing."

"We'll keep that theory in mind," McCain said, flipping her notebook shut. "Thanks for your time. If you think of anything else, give us a call."

She handed me her card and glanced at my hand as I took it. She had already noticed the missing fingers on my left hand earlier. "You mind my asking how you were injured?" she asked.

I held up my hand, the ring finger and pinkie gone at the base. "It was a really ugly divorce," I said.

That was a joke I'd used before and it usually worked. She smiled a little but seemed to be expecting a real answer so I gave her the story I'd told everyone else. "Machinery accident a couple years ago," I said.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.

"It's okay," I said. "I've got eight others."

I spent the next few days making repairs. The insurance company gave me a lump sum check and I bought the materials and did the work myself -- and made a little profit on the deal. I had to drive down to Brayton to find the right type of wood siding and it still wasn't perfect but matched well enough. I did a crappy job of plastering on the inside wall, but I was rebuilding bookshelves over it so that didn't matter too much.

By Sunday morning I was pretty much finished, but was running out of primer. I walked down to the marina store, passing the mostly-closed shops along the boardwalk. Woodman's Marina & General Store is nearly at the end of the North Beach strip, just south of Jockamo's. You can buy just about anything at Woodman's, from a quart of milk to motor oil. The only business beyond the marina is "I Scream," a dilapidated ice cream stand that apparently used to be a pretty big deal but which has been in decline for decades.

The only problem with the Marina Store is it keeps irregular hours -- like I should complain -- because Fred is usually occupied with the boats and whenever Vi needs to go anywhere she just locks up and puts a sign in the window. As I approached I suspected that was the case because the door was closed and when she's open she usually just uses the screen door.

I was walking past Jockamo's and was surprised at first to see there were more than a dozen people sitting around tables on the deck before noon on a Sunday. But I remembered Rita was trying a Sunday brunch. Normally the place doesn't offer anything fancier than popcorn and bar pretzels, but the past couple weekends she was making omelettes out on a gas grill. I waved to her as I walked by. I didn't see Rex, but figured he was probably still in bed.

When I got to Woodman's I could see the little clock sign in the window. "Back at ..." and the clock hands were pointed to 1:00, which was more than an hour away. I took this as an omen that I should spend the rest of the day sailing. I looked out on the water. There were several boats out already. The wind was just right. I jogged past the little crowd at Jockamo's and back up the boardwalk.

I was just putting the key in my door when I heard the explosion. I looked back down the boardwalk to see a cloud of sandy smoke where Jockamo's deck should have been. And then I heard the screams.