up five minutes later. He had an imposing and unhurried stride, afraid of nothing, and was sipping a cocktail through a straw. This was his turf.
“Long time no see. Problems, boss?”
“Not exactly,” Brown replied, hooking the knife to his belt. “Have you been listening to the radio?”
“Yup,” said Hash with a grin. “The guy with no head? They really blasted it right off? We’ve been arguing all day about how it could have happened. Were the explosives taped up to his noggin?”
“Hash, six months ago you passed me some information on those guys who were selling grenades. Do you still have any contacts with arms dealers? I’m interested in C—4.”
“Plastic explosives? Oh, mama!” Hash shook his head with a smirk, but then grew serious. “People don’t bring that kind of shit to me. I’m a peaceful dude. You know that, boss.”
“You only have your peace because you have me, Hash,” Brown reminded him.
Hash’s real name was Tommy, but the nickname had stuck to him back in high school, where he started his street career selling weed. Tommy quit school, figuring that the main thing is to go into business and make money, and he knew how to do it. Also, there were rumors buzzing around school, and Tommy was afraid that he would end up in handcuffs. Almost immediately Hash switched to trading in harder stuff, pushing only to people he knew. His clientele at first was mostly former classmates and their friends. But this simple precaution did not help him, and before long one of his new customers turned out to be an undercover police officer. When he was arrested, Hash displayed unusual dexterity dumping the goodies. They had to let him go, but Hash still found his way into someone’s Rolodex at the Police Department.
That was when he met Brown, who had an interest in an acquaintance of Hash’s, another drug dealer. The pusher had decided to make himself a reputation for harshly punishing his debtors: He broke their arms. Brown arrested Hash with dope in hand, and offered him a choice: Go to prison for at least ten years or help catch the dealer. Of course, Hash chose the latter.
That was almost ten years ago. Now Hash himself had become a boss, king of the neighborhood between Griffin Road and Thurmont Street. His runners stood on the street corners selling meth, with secret caches and drop-boxes. Over the years, Brown had accumulated enough dirt on Hash to put him away for twenty years. But Hash turned out to be more valuable as an informer. “Use you brain, Hash, this is important. Ask around. Pretend you are just thinking about whether you should try dealing in something besides meth. Know what I mean? Check out carefully how much it might cost, whether you can actually buy C—4 in town. And if the answer is yes, find out who to contact.”
“Listen, boss, I try not to get involved in this kind of stuff.” Hash said. “I do business in my neighborhood and don’t poke my nose into other people’s shit. Boss, dope is one thing, or even guns. But explosives… Those guys, they really mean business, you savvy?”
“And I want to know who they are. Hash, they nabbed the director of the company when there was cash in the office. That means they have informants. So I think it’s someone local.”
Hash was skeptical.
“I’ve never heard of a crew like that. There’s been no buzz on the street about anyone out there about to hit the jackpot, nothing. And I’ve been on the street for fifteen years.”
“They don’t seem like some new guys in town.” After a pause, Brown decided to try another angle: “Hash, I’m moving to another city. If the gang continues to operate, the Feds will come in, and the cops will shake up the whole city to find these suckers. Businesses like yours will suffer. But I won’t be around, you’ll have no one to cover for you. So it’s in your interests too.”
“I’ll give it a try,” said Hash reluctantly.
“Get me the information, and you’ll be completely clean before the law. I’ll destroy all your files. Does that sound like a good deal to you?”
Grinning and slapping Hash on the shoulder, Brown got behind the wheel and started the engine. But he couldn’t resist saying, before driving off:
“And tell those three sleeping beauties of yours that a reconnaissance detail should stand watch on the perimeter, not smack in the middle of the neighborhood. Your pusher noticed me before they did. You are getting too soft, man.”
The explosives expert in the city Police Department’s forensic laboratory was a cheerful fellow by the name of Holtz. Despite his rather advanced age, Holtz adored gadgets and gizmos. That’s why he had stayed late in the lab. He was almost ecstatic.
“Just look at this! A hollow aluminum tube two inches thick. It had compartments separated by a partition. So far I’ve counted ten segments. A portion of the explosives was in each of them.”
Fragments of the explosive were lying on Holtz’s table: blackened bits of aluminum, burnt-out wiring, a scorched chip, and other bits and pieces of the device. Brown picked up one of them, trying to figure out what it was. “What kind of explosive?
“Plastic, C—4.”
“You sure?” Brown frowned.
“One hundred percent, Troy. Although I haven’t seen any C—4 for 10 years. Where did someone get an explosive like that in our sleepy town? And the most interesting thing is that they weren’t exactly stingy: There was about a pound of C—4 in the collar.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Let’s just say this collar would be the envy of any suicide bomber. If the explosion had occurred in a crowd, our morgue would have had nowhere to put all the corpses.”
“That’s just great,” Brown commented glumly. “Have you figured out how it worked?”
“Oh, that’s the most interesting part of all. Hell, it’s a real gem! These guys knew their business, Troy. Look here.” Holtz took one of the fragments of aluminum with partitions. “A web camera is attached to the front of the segmented tube packed with C—4, and there’s a cell phone on the side. This is a chip you see here, from the phone. The phone was for transmission. And the camera on the front transmitted the image in front of it to the phone and from there it went to someone on the other end, via a wifi connection. That is, the criminals saw everything that was happening to the victim and around him. What he did, where he was going, what he picked up – everything.”
“Now I see,” Brown nodded. “That’s why Pickman didn’t even try to call the police. He just did what they wanted. He gave them the money. But they still pushed the button.”
“In all the years I’ve worked in the police force, Troy, I’ve never seen anything like this! Don’t hold back,” said Holtz cheerfully. “This case is going straight into the textbook!”
Brown has already started to think along the same lines, but with much less enthusiasm.
The story of the explosion on the outskirts of the city got top billing on the 10:00 evening news. Half of the split screen image showed a picture taken by a cameraman at the crime scene: the cordon, a hearse from the city morgue, patrolmen. The anchorwoman, looking at the audience from the other side of the screen, announced:
“According to the Police Department, the victim, Eric Pickman, was the owner of Plate Build Construction. The criminals made off with $100,000 which was in the construction company office.”
But in the Browns” apartment, nobody was looking at the TV screen. Shelley, combing her hair in front of the mirror, indignantly snapped at her husband:
“I knew this would happen! I knew it!”
“I wonder how you knew, if even I didn’t,” muttered Brown in reply, flopping on the bed with a bottle of beer in his hand.
“Oh, don’t give me that!! You and I made an