The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer Read Online Free PDF Page A

to rummage around inside but it was chock-full of old plaster
and lath boards. The stuff was all tightly packed and very heavy; I
hated to guess what the whole thing weighed— probably about as much
as a destroyer. We drove on for another block and ran out of alley.
We were back on Broadway. I swore, and Joe suggested we try a few
more alleys, since the labboys wouldn't want us getting in their way
anyhow. We cruised around, never going more than ten blocks or so
from the gray house. Joe and I both figured they'd have dropped the
evidence off fast, not wanting it in the car.
    We struck pay dirt on the fourth alley. There was a
dumpster there, filled with the usual trash and garbage. We grabbed
an old fence board and snaked around in the mess awhile before we
turned up a shopping bag with a canvas strap sticking out of it. I
reached down and plucked out the bag by a corner. Inside were two
army-issue gas masks. Canvas and rubber, brand-new, each in a little
canvas carrying pouch. I kept rummaging with the fence board, turning
over juice and booze bottles, beer cans, frozen-dinner trays, plastic
garbage bags, and junk. Then I saw it.
    "Look. There's your bomb, Joe."
    "That can? Hey yeah. Look, Kev, it's all burnt.
I see a horse on the side of it. A horse jumping over a fence."
    "It's a tobacco can," I said. "Kentucky
Club. A tobacco can with a pry-off top is perfect; don't you see? The
lid's a friction fit, and airtight."
    I drew out the scorched can carefully, holding it by
the lip. It was a few minutes before we located the burnt and
blown-out lid with the little metal sliding pry lever still attached.
We looked at the can. A household electrical cord ran from its side
right near the bottom edge. The hole had been made neatly; it was
just the right size. Putty had been packed in around the cord. On the
can's interior bottom the broken copper strands of the wire were
fused solidly, and all around the wire ends was a white powdery
ashlike deposit.
    "Take that goddamn thing away from your nose,
Doc, you'll croak!" yelled O'Hearn. I thanked him for reminding
me.
    "Wire's melted all over in here," I said.
"It took a terrific amount of heat to do that. I'd say they used
powdered magnesium, or flash powder. Maybe they mixed in some crude
gunpowder too, for more oomph. This stuff here would be magnesium
oxide."
    " How come you know all about that chemistry
stuff?" asked O'Hearn belligerently. "Thought you were a
doctor."
    "A lot of medicine is chemistry. In my work with
teeth I deal a lot with metals and alloys . . . and their oxide
residues come with the territory I guess."
    The cord was long, about twenty feet, and terminated
in a standard-issue plug. They'd used current from Robinson's
apartment to set off the lethal bomb. Seven feet from the plug, the
wire on one side of the cord was stripped and cut. The wire on the
other side remained whole.
    "See? Here's their crude knife switch," Joe
said. Then, holding the wire ends about a half-inch apart by the
insulation still cleft on the cord, he touched them together several
times.
    "This opens and closes the circuit just like a
switch in the cord. Now the ends of the wires in the can were joined
to a fuse wire— a thin wire that'd heat up really fast as soon as
house current was run through it. Then this wire is covered with an
explosive substance, like flash powder."
    "Yeah, a rocket fuse," said O'Hearn. "But
how 'bout the gas? Where does it come from?"
    " Don't know. There's lots of different kinds.
Phosgene— that was the favorite of the Third Reich. Cyanide is
probably the most widely used. That's what they use in prison gas
chambers? "Then aren't there special military gases? Nerve gas?
Paralyzing gas? Stuff like that?"
    "Yeah. But if it was homemade, which it appears
to be, then cyanide is the best bet. All you need, if I remember
right, is ferrocyanide crystals and sulfuric acid. You can get those
chemicals. It's hard but it can be done. Then when they're mixed—
bingo,