cut through his jacket as if it weren’t there. He had made a call to the newsroom on the way here, instructing Panos to run the version of his column for tomorrow that contained the phrase golden age, the signal to Bernal that Frings was ready to meet. He wondered if what he had learned from Puskis would be enough to satisfy Bernal. He had a huge piece of the puzzle: that Samuelson was one of a couple dozen murderers who didn’t go to prison after their convictions. He hoped that Bernal could tell him why they were never incarcerated.
The cold was uncomfortable and the wait indeterminate, so Frings pulled a reefer from his coat pocket. The sweet, green smoke felt good in his lungs, and his sensation of the cold went from its being consuming to an odd, vaguely irritating feeling on his skin. The purple light above the City was interesting. And those searchlights beaming from the top of City Hall . . .
Frings’s muscles were stiff from the cold by the time a lone figure approached down the tracks. He was fifty feet away when he called out, “Frings?” The voice was high and tense.
Frings waved. The figure beckoned Frings with an arm motion and Frings followed, maintaining a constant fifty-foot distance, intuiting that this was his contact’s safety zone. They walked the tracks, past abandoned warehouses with the smoke of squatters’ fires filtering out through broken windows. Occasionally Frings saw a person lying at the bottom of the track-bed berm, either asleep or dead—it was impossible to tell in that light.
They arrived at a warehouse emitting smoke and even some light from its windows. Frings’s escort came to a stop by the front door and waited for Frings to catch up. Up close, Frings was surprised by how small his companion was—maybe just five feet. His escort knocked an intricate beat, and with a scrape of metal on concrete the door opened from within.
Inside, seven fires burned at various spots throughout the vast warehouse, illuminating oases in what was otherwise an indigo void. A fire near the door backlit a group of five standing figures. Like his escort, they were small as well, and it dawned on Frings that they were children.
“You Frings?” one of the boys asked, stepping forward, apparently the leader.
“I’m Frings.”
“We did them bombs.”
Frings wondered if he heard correctly. “You did those bombs?”
The leader grunted in the affirmative.
“Okay. If you are the bombers, what’s the point? What are you trying to prove?” Frings heard the doubt in his own voice.
“You don’t believe me.” From his position it was hard to get a sense of what these kids looked like—they were merely silhouettes.
“You weren’t what I was expecting.” Frings had never questioned children before and felt clumsy. In this situation, he thought, the reefer might actually help. Maybe.
The leader looked down at his hand and Frings could see the silhouette of the boy’s pocket-watch chain hanging.
The boy said, “Wait. Wait.”
Frings stayed quiet, not understanding.
“Wait. Listen.” The leader pointed at his watch as he spoke.
“Wait for what? What’s going on?” Frings’s pulse accelerated. Something was not right.
“The bomb. Then you’ll know.”
Frings nodded, guessing that he at least had the basic idea. The group waited in silence. From other parts of the warehouse came hollow noises and echoes. The boys, Frings noticed, were alive with excitement and tension, shifting weight from foot to foot, sighing.
“Out,” said the leader, motioning with his head. Frings followed him back out the door, the other boys in their wake, hunching their shoulders against the wind.
“Watch,” the leader said, and pointed off down the tracks. Frings squinted and thought he could make out two figures and something else; maybe a barrel or drum. After a quick spark, the figures ran off into the darkness. Everyone was still. Frings strained to hear.
A flash was accompanied by the deep bark of exploding dynamite. The kids were jumping up and down and clapping and laughing as debris rained around them. Two grabbed forearms and danced in circles.
“Ummm,” said the leader. “Now you know us.”
“Okay. I know.” Frings stared at the boys. What the hell was going on here?
This statement seemed to excite the boys anew and there was more clapping.
The leader’s voice was ecstatic, nearly yelling. “Got Block. Got Altabelli. Bernal next. We’ll get all of them.”
The boys let out whoops to accentuate this statement. “All of them. All of them. All of them.”
Some of the boys were uncontrollably shivering. Frings followed the group