The Devils Teardrop

shot. They believe that someone has fallen and started a chain reaction of people tumbling down the escalator. Clangs and snaps as phones and briefcases and sports bags fall from the hands of the victims.
    The hundred rounds are gone in seconds.
    No one notices the Digger as he looks around, like everyone else.
    Frowning.
    “Call an ambulance the police the police my God this girl needs help she needs help somebody he’s dead oh Jesus my Lord her leg look at her leg my baby my baby . . .”
    The Digger lowers the shopping bag, which has one small hole in the bottom where the bullets left. The bag holds all the hot, brass shells.
    “Shut it off shut off the escalator oh Jesus look somebody stop it stop the escalator they’re being crushed . . .”
    Things like that.
    The Digger looks. Because everybody’s looking.
    But it’s hard to see into hell. Below is just a mass of bodies piling up, growing higher, writhing . . . Some are alive, some dead, some struggling to get out from underneath the crush that’s piling up at the base of the escalator.
    The Digger is easing backward into the crowd. And then he’s gone.
    He’s very good at disappearing. “When you leave you should act like a chameleon,” said the man who tells him things. “Do you know what that is?”
    “A lizard.”
    “Right.”
    “That changes color. I saw it on TV.”
    The Digger is moving along the sidewalks, filled with people. Running this way and that way. Funny.
    Funny . . .
    Nobody notices the Digger.
    Who looks like you and looks like me and looks like the woodwork. Whose face is white as a morning sky. Or dark as the entrance to hell.
    As he walks—slowly, slowly—he thinks about his motel. Where he’ll reload his gun and repack his silencer withbristly mineral cotton and sit in his comfy chair with a bottle of water and a bowl of soup beside him. He’ll sit and relax until this afternoon and then—if the man who tells him things doesn’t leave a message to tell him not to—he’ll put on his long black or blue coat once more and go outside.
    And do this all over again.
    It’s New Year’s Eve. And the Digger’s in town.
    * * *
    While ambulances were speeding to Dupont Circle and rescue workers were digging through the ghastly mine of bodies in the Metro station, Gilbert Havel walked toward City Hall, two miles away.
    At the corner of Fourth and D, beside a sleeping maple tree, Havel paused and opened the envelope he carried and read the note one last time.
    Mayor Kennedy—
    The end is night. The Digger is loose and their is no way to stop him. He will kill again—at four, 8 and Midnight if you don’t pay.
    I am wanting $20 million dollars in cash, which you will put into a bag and leave it two miles south of Rt 66 on the West Side of the Beltway. In the middle of the Field. Pay to me the Money by 1200 hours. Only I am knowing how to stop The Digger. If youapprehend me, he will keep killing. If you kill me, he will keep killing.
    If you dont think I’m real, some of the Diggers bullets were painted black. Only I know that.
    This was, Havel decided, about as perfect an idea as anybody could’ve come up with. Months of planning. Every possible response by the police and FBI anticipated. A chess game.
    Buoyed by that thought, he replaced the note in the envelope, closed but didn’t seal it and continued along the street. Havel walked in a stooped lope, eyes down, a pose meant to diminish his six-two height. It was hard for him, though; he preferred to walk tall and stare people down.
    The security at City Hall, One Judiciary Square, was ridiculous. No one noticed as he walked past the entrance to the nondescript stone building and paused at a newspaper vending machine. He slipped the envelope under the stand and turned slowly, walking toward E Street.
    Warm for New Year’s Eve, Havel was thinking. The air smelled like fall—rotten leaves and humid wood smoke. The scent aroused a pang of undefined nostalgia for his childhood home. He stopped at a pay phone on the corner, dropped in some coins and dialed a number.
    A voice answered, “City Hall. Security.”
    Havel held a tape recorder next to the phone and pressed play. A computer-generated voice said, “Envelope in front of the building. Under the Post vending machine. Read it now. It’s about the Metro killings.” He hung up and crossed the street, dropping the tape recorder into a paper cup and throwing the cup into a wastebasket.
    Havel stepped into a