Death of a Blue Movie Star

it’s moved.
    But not seeing them didn’t mean there weren’t any.
    He probed into the box with a pencil.
    “You going to render safe?” Rubin asked.
    “No, looks like the timer’s pretty fancy. I’m betting there’s a shunt, but I can see the circuitry. I’m not going to cut anything. I’m going to bring it out.
    “Okay, here we go.” He reached down. The gloves were plated, but Healy knew he was looking at enough plastic to snap a steel beam. The theory was that there wasn’t much you could do about your hands anyway. At least, if anything happened, you’d be alive afterward to retire on disability, even if somebody else had to endorse the checks for you.
    Healy squinted—pointlessly—and lifted the box off the ground. You had to be careful—you tended to think that explosives were going to be heavy as iron weights. They weren’t. The whole thing didn’t weigh more than a pound.
    “No rocker,” he said to the microphone. The smell of his own sweat was strong. He breathed slowly. “Or maybe I’ve got steady hands.”
    “Doing good, Sam.”
    The timer on the clock showed seven minutes until detonation.
    Healy backed out into the aisle, sliding his feet behind slowly to feel the way. He set the box into the arms of the robot.
    “This place is gross,” Healy said.
    “Okay, we’ll take over,” Rubin told him.
    Healy didn’t argue. He dropped his hands to his side and walked backward until he felt Rubin tap him on the shoulder.
    Rubin drove the robot out of the theater and up the ramp to the containment chamber, which fellow BOMB SQUAD officers had driven up from the garage connected to the 6th Precinct. It looked like a small diving bell on a platform. He gingerly manipulated the remote controls to get the box inside. The robot backed away and Healy approached the open door from the side. He pulled a wire to close the door most of the way, then quickly stepped in front and spun the lever. He stepped back.
    Rubin helped him out of the suit.
    “Whatsa time?” Rubin asked.
    “I make it about a minute to go.”
    Rune broke through the police line and ran up to Healy. She squeezed his arm.
    He pushed her around behind him.
    “Sam, are you all right?”
    “Shh. Listen.”
    “I—”
    “Shhhh,” Healy said.
    Suddenly, a loud ping—it sounded like a hammer on a muffled bell. Smoke and fumes began to hiss out of the side of the changer. A sour, tear-gassy smell filled the air.
    “C-3,” Healy said. “I’d know that smell anywhere.”
    “What happened?” Rune asked.
    “It just exploded.”
    “You mean that thing you were bringing out? It just blew up? Oh, Sam, you could have been killed.”
    For some reason Rubin was laughing at that. Healy himself was fighting down a grin.
    He looked at her. “I’m going to be here for a while.”
    “Sure. I understand.” She didn’t like the glazed, wild look on his face. It scared her.
    “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He turned and began speaking to a man in a dark suit.
    She started back to the sidewalk and then glanced at the tailgate of the BOMB SQUAD station wagon. Sam Healy’s briefcase was resting on it.
    She wasn’t exactly sure why she did it. Maybe because he’d scared her, looking the way he did. Maybe because she’d spent the day setting up little squares of plastic and enduring small-minded people.
    Maybe because it was just in her nature never to give up a quest—just like it was in Sam Healy’s to go into buildings like this and find bombs.
    In any case Rune quickly flipped open Healy’s briefcase and examined the contents until she found his small notebook. This she thumbed through until she found what she was looking for. She memorized a name and address.
    She glanced toward Healy, standing in a cluster of other officers. No one noticed her. Their attention was on a clear plastic envelope Healy held. A moment later Rune’s voice, theatrical and low, filled the theater. “‘The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water.’”

 
    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     

    “Look, I’ll talk to you. But you can’t use my name.”
    They sat on the deck of Rune’s houseboat that night, drinking Michelob Light. The skinny young man continued, “I mean, my mother thinks I was in a car crash. If she ever found out …”
    Warren Hathaway was the witness whose name she’d found in Sam Healy’s notebook. He’d been in the