“ ‘Well, you know, Early, like, uh, stole it. Early was always stealing stuff. He ripped me off, man. Stole my backpack.’
“ ‘Who’d he steal it from?’ ”
A look of consternation. “ ‘From me, dude.’ ”
Frank laughed. Pete grinned and went on.
“Frank stays calm. ‘No, I meant the TV. You said he stole it from relatives of yours?’
“ ‘Maybe. I dunno.’
“ ‘Why don’t you tell me what you do know,’ Frank says.
“ ‘Oh. Well, this guy. He drives a gray van. Musta been a cheap store — only had one of them magnet signs on it. He stops at Early’s neighbor’s house, and opens up the van. In the neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor comes out, asks what’s happening. Guy says he’s got a TV to deliver. The neighbor says, “I didn’t order no TV,” so the delivery guy asks, can he come inside and make a phone call to his boss. Neighbor says okay. The dumb-ass driver leaves the van open. And while the dude is in there calling his boss, Early sneaks over and rips off this big ol’ TV that’s sittin’ in the back of the van.’ ”
Pete straightened his back again to do Frank’s part. “ ‘What did the deliveryman do when he got back?’ ”
Slouching again. “ ‘That was weird. He just looks in there, smiles, and drives off.’
“ ‘You get a look at the name of the appliance store?’
“ ‘Yeah, ’cause it’s my name, man. I mean, not my whole name, just my last name. First name was different.’ ”
Puzzled. “ ‘Fawkes?’ ”
“ ‘Yeah, only he was Guy Fawkes. I mean, not him, the place. Guy Fawkes TV — hey, you think it’s a relative of mine? Maybe they would give me a job. What do you think?’ ”
I looked over at Frank. He was smiling.
The description of the van matched up with one that had been spotted near one of the other exploding houses. On that street, a member of the local neighborhood watch had seen a gray van pull up. The driver, a young, clean-cut man, left the van open as he walked around the corner, glancing between a clipboard and house numbers as if looking for an address. As she watched, her troublemaking neighbor had come out of his house and stolen a television out of the van. When the young driver came back some time later, she came out to tell him what had happened.
“Would you please call the police?” he asked politely, but drove away while she was making the call.
The police communications computer kept a record of the call, but with no appliance store making a complaint, the matter didn’t rate much attention. Frank went back to the neighbor; her description of the driver matched Fawkes’s. “Would you like to know the license plate number?” she asked.
He told her he would.
The plate turned out to be stolen off a pickup truck, not a match with a gray van.
Frank called every magnetic sign maker in the county, without luck. On a hunch he called the pickup truck owner, asked if he knew where the plate had been stolen.
“Sure,” the man said. “In the El Dorado Shopping Center, in Orange. I was in picking up some signs for a big construction job. Parked in an alley while I loaded them. Young man in there helped me carry them. Took four or five trips. He was the one who noticed it was missing. I had just washed the truck that morning, and I know the plate was on then. That sign place was my first stop, so I know it happened there.”
The description of the young man who helped him did not match that of the deliveryman. Still, Frank drove across the county line and down to Orange to talk to the sign maker. As it turned out, he immediately remembered Guy Fawkes TV. The kid at the counter who took the order hadn’t studied much history, but his boss, an Englishman, had nearly refused to make the sign. Guy Fawkes, after all, had tried to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.
The young man at the counter had protested that this must be mere coincidence; the order had been placed by a polite man who paid cash in advance. The man had even helped one of the other customers carry several armloads of signs out to his truck.
At Frank’s request, the sign maker went through his files. He had a phone number for Guy Fawkes Appliances, one his shop had called when the order was ready. The number was traced to an address down on Bay Shore Drive in Las Piernas, not a part of town you would have figured for housing terrorist gangs. The phone was still connected. The owner of the house and the name the phone was actually listed under were the same: Richard Lang.
Lang hadn’t lived in Las Piernas very long. He’d paid cash for the house, which had been for sale by owner. He’d told the previous owner that the cash had come from an insurance settlement he’d received from a car accident. Nobody had questioned that story.
The neighbors claimed that Lang had a live-in girlfriend and a frequent male guest who matched the description of the deliveryman. When, after several days of surveillance, the woman never showed, Frank’s boss started pushing for an arrest. Frank wanted to wait, but Carlson didn’t want to risk losing a murder suspect. Lang had no criminal record. Carlson figured he would break under pressure and give them the information they needed to arrest anyone else.
Armed with warrants, police searched the house. They found books on explosives and minute traces of C-4 in the van. The two men, Richard Lang and Jeffrey Colson, were arrested without resistance. Like Lang, Colson had no prior arrests. Both had served in the military, though, and had met while in the marines. Lang had worked with explosives during his military career. In lineups Lang was identified by the counterman at the sign shop and Colson by the neighbors he had encountered at two of the sites.
Frank wasn’t satisfied. “If we had found the computer equipment,” he told me, “I’d be feeling better. But at least we have part of the group in custody. Maybe the lieutenant’s right. Maybe they’ll talk.”
But Carlson had underestimated the ability of the two suspects to take the first sentence of the Miranda warning to heart. Lang and Colson had not been willing to talk about their friends. Lang had simply said, “Hocus will take care of me.” Although they had made no phone call, a lawyer had appeared. Lawyer or no, bail had not been
