Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [27]
“Because I can’t be a cop anymore?” Mary asked. The sound of the words hurt more than saying them. A tear formed at the side of her good eye.
“You’ll always be a cop, Mom,” Frank said, touching her hand.
• • •
WHEN SHE WAS finally alone, she leaned her head back against the pillow, closed her eyes, and, for the first time since she was a child, began to cry. Her tears went beyond pain and past anger. They were filled with a sense of loss and a knowledge that something besides blood had been left back in that narrow alley.
The man with the knife had ripped away at more than just her body. He had torn into the deepest parts of her soul and walked out into the darkness holding what mattered most to the woman who loved being called Mrs. Columbo.
He had stripped off her badge.
Mary Silvestri was no longer a cop.
4
Geronimo
DELGALDO LOPEZ SAT under the altar of the church, staring at twelve sticks of dynamite. They were taped to a marble slab and set to a one-hour timer that was wound around a blasting cap. All about him, members of the Brooklyn Bomb Squad raced through the church, laying down heavy detainable mats and moving aside statues and votive lights. The front and back doors to the church had been sealed minutes before, and a dozen uniform cops in heavy vests and pith helmets stood guard.
Lopez ran his index finger alongside the dynamite sticks, checking their moisture level, careful as hell not to nudge the array of red, green, and blue wires wound around the hardware store timer.
“How much time?” Gerry Dumane, the Bomb Squad commander, asked as he knelt down next to Lopez.
“Not enough,” Lopez said, eyes never moving from the device. “Closing down to twelve minutes.”
“How strong?”
“Could take out half a block. Maybe more. Depends how fresh the dyno is and what else he packed in there.”
“Jesus,” Dumane said.
Lopez turned away from the bomb and looked over at his commander.
“Don’t have to look too far,” Lopez said, pointing to a large crucifix hanging above the altar. “He’s right behind you.”
• • •
AT AGE THIRTY, Delgaldo Lopez had already put in six years of service on the Bomb Squad. He joined the PD after an eighteen-month tour of army duty, where he earned his Special Forces stripes as a munitions expert. Delgaldo had always been fascinated by explosives, from his earliest years. His father, Carlos, a Puerto Rican merchant seaman, would help satisfy his son’s curiosity by bringing home books and different forms of fireworks from his various travels. His mother, Gloria, a half-Cherokee, would keep her only son up past the midnight hour, telling him folk stories and battle tales passed down by her grandfather.
When he was ten, Delgaldo built his first explosive device out of rubber bands, baking soda, the face of his father’s old Timex, powder from two boxes of firecrackers, and blue strands of wool from his mother’s knitting basket. He brought it into science class, set the timer at two minutes, and dismantled the piece in less than thirty seconds. His teacher gave him an A for the project and two days of detention for frightening the entire class into silence.
In his teens, Delgaldo gave some thought to going on to college and studying to be a chemist. But a laboratory was too tame a place to spend a life. It wouldn’t be enough for him just to know all there was about bombs and devices. Delgaldo was not meant to be a bystander. He had warrior blood and felt a desire to carry on what his mother had always called a family tradition.
He also needed to see the bombs in action. He wanted to be there when the ticking was down to the quick, where one slip of a cutter would mean victory for the bomber and destruction for everyone else. It made Delgaldo Lopez, a tall, muscular young man with thick black hair and eyes so dark that staring into them was like looking at a blank screen, the perfect candidate for the Bomb Squad. He was the one who took the danger calls, who didn’t sweat the risks, who never flinched as the