Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

“What’d they do after the explosion?”

“Disappeared. Mostly up to Canada.”

He took the book. Gazed at it. Closed his eyes.

I said, “What happened to them?”

He opened his eyes and sighed. “These two”- he jabbed a finger- “Harry and Debbie Delage. They stayed up there- they were French Canadian. I think they’re teachers in Montreal but I’m not sure, haven’t had contact with them. With any of them.”

The finger drifted. “Ed Maher and Julie Bendix went to Morocco, moved around, and then came back, got married, had a bunch of kids. I heard she died of breast cancer a couple of years ago. He’s probably back east- his family had money… Lyle Stokes got involved in this New Age crap- crystals and past lives. He’s making a fortune… Sandy Porter I don’t know… Gordy Latch married that fascist’s daughter and became a scumbag politician… Jack Parducci’s a lawyer in Pittsburgh, joined the GOP.”

He stared at the picture a while longer, closed the book, and gave it back. “Fuck nostalgia.”

I said, “Who determined which cadre someone went into?”

“It wasn’t anything formal, just kind of natural selection. The first cadre were the leaders- thinkers, theorists.”

I said, “The second cadre fared a hell of a lot better than the first.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing you haven’t wondered about yourself for seventeen years.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t wonder about anything. Wonderings a dead-end street.”

I said, “Why’d you choose Bear Lodge?”

“Randy Latch owned the property- her father had left it to her.”

“She was Mountain Properties?”

“Behind a bunch of dummy corporations- trust fund stuff, tax shelters. Her old man set it up for her. That’s why we pretended to lease it, so it would look businesslike, no one would dig into it.”

“With those connections,” I said, “didn’t Latch aspire to first-cadre status?”

“He might have, but that wasn’t a serious possibility. He was lots of noise, no substance. Not well respected. One of the reasons they kept him around was her money. After Bear Lodge, the two of them dropped out, reappeared as Jack and Mrs. Armstrong. Still lots of noise, no substance. The American public eats that up, right? No surprise he ended up doing what he’s doing.”

“Tell me about Wannsee Two.”

He sat up straight. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Ike Novato left some notes indicating he was researching it. He wrote it right above your name. He wondered about it.”

Crevolin gave a sick look. “That’s what he wanted to talk to me about? Hell that would have been easy.”

“Easy in what way?”

“Easy to answer. I could have told him the truth: Wannsee Two is government-issue drivel. Tricky Dicky Evil Empire Cointelpro disinformation tailor-made for John Q. Gullible. The government wanted to discredit us, so they planted bogus news items in the establishment press about us getting together with the neo-Nazi fringe- the old crapola about extremists on both ends being equivalent, Hitler and Stalin. Tarring us with the same brush as the KKK in order to isolate us, make us look bad. But in the end I guess it was just easier to blow us up- notice how you don’t hear about Wannsee Two anymore. And there are plenty of right-wing racist assholes running around.”

He shook his head, rubbed his temples. “Wannsee Two. I could have handled that in two minutes. I thought he wanted to get into personal stuff- his parents, raking up old memories.”

“Could Sophie Gruenberg have been interested in Wannsee Two?”

“Doubt it. That old lady was too sophisticated to be taken in by that kind of crap.”

“You knew her well?”

His headshake was vehement. “I only met her once. With Norm. But he talked about her. Said she was a revolutionary of the old stripe- well-read, intellectual. Even though he didn’t get along with her, he respected her intellect.”

“You only met her once?”

He was silent.

I caught his eye.

He said, “Twice. When I returned to L.A.- doing my little network page gig- I checked in with her. To see how things were going.”

“With Ike?”

“With the world.” He twisted his lip between thumb and forefinger.

I said, “Did you really just leave him on the step?”

“You bet I did. It was all I could do to hide and wait until she took him in. Going there in the first place was a risk. I was totally freaked-out, wanted to get the hell out of town before the men in the gray suits came calling. I figured eventually someone would figure out I hadn’t been blown up and try to finish the job.”

He laughed. “No one bothered. All these years.”

I said, “You mentioned the Feds’ running dogs. Any suspects?”

“Sure,” he said. “There were these weird trapper types skulking around in the forest. Mountain men- long hair, beards, homemade buckskins, eating grubs and whatever. Living off the land, like Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. We kind of did a mutual ignoring thing with them, but later, when I had time to think, I started to wonder. Because using them would have been a perfect government setup. We were naïve- we trusted anyone who looked counterculture. Crew-cut types sneaking around would have gotten us immediately paranoid, but those hairy fuckers we ignored. They’d been there before we got there, didn’t seem to have any real interest in us. Also, we respected the way they were doing their own thing. Thought of them as hippies with guns and Bowie knives. Macho freaks. We were jazzed by the whole live-off-the-land bit- that’s what we were aiming for. So it would have been easy for one of them to sneak in, plant the bombs, and sneak out. They were probably G-men or agents provocateurs - probably pushing paper in Toledo today. Which is punishment enough, right?”

The bitterness in his voice put the lie to his last statement.

I said, “Did you discuss any of these suspicions with Sophie Gruenberg the time you dropped by?”

“Didn’t have to. Moment she closed the door she sat me down and started lecturing to me about how the explosion had been a government plot; Norm and Melba and the others were martyrs. No tears- she was very tough. Just anger. This hot rage that made it seem as if she was vibrating.” He smiled. “She was a tough old lady. I could see her running a guillotine back in Bastille days.”

“Where’d she send Ike to be raised?”

“What makes you think she sent him anywhere?”

“He’d just moved to L.A. a few months before his death, told people he’d been living back east. That makes sense. Someone as suspicious as Sophie might be nervous keeping the son of martyrs around in plain view.”

“I don’t know the details,” he said. “When I asked about him, she said she’d sent him away to relatives. Said government people had come snooping around pretty soon after the blast, asking questions of the neighbors. She called them goddam cossacks. Said if they found out she had him with her, they’d kidnap him or something, claim she was unfit and take him away. She said he needed to be in a safe place for a while. I took that to mean temporary, she was planning to bring him back, but I guess she could have kept him away the whole time.”

“Any idea where these relatives lived?”

“She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I kind of assumed it was Philadelphia because Norm was born there- the family used to live there.”

“You only dropped in on her once?”

“That’s it. She was part of what I’d put behind me. So was Malcolm Isaac. That’s why I didn’t see him- it wasn’t just apathy. What would have been the point?”