Page 255

Two minutes later, Sister Fortitude ran out onto North Broad Street, looking for a policeman.

You never could find one when you needed one, she thought.

And then she saw one, in the coffee shop where the white man had gone to get the coffee he couldn't get in the Divine Lorraine Hotel Restaurant.

She walked quickly across Broad Street.

"I want you to come with me," Sister Fortitude said to the policeman. "I got something to show you."

****

At ten minutes past nine A.M., Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd and Detective Matt Payne were driving up North Broad Street in O'Dowd's unmarked car. They had finally been released at Internal Affairs, and although Matt thought he was about to fall asleep on his feet, he knew he had to go back to Northwest Detectives and get his Bug before all sorts of questions he didn't want to answer would be asked.

There was considerable police activity at the intersection of Broad and Ridge; Broad Street was blocked off, and a white cap was directing traffic in a detour.

When they finally got to the white cap, Jerry rolled the window down in idle curiosity to ask him what was going on.

And then he saw, at the same moment Matt Payne saw, the large blue and white Ordnance Disposal van, with the Explosive Containment trailer hitched to the rear of it.

Without exchanging a word, they both got out of the car and ran toward the Divine Lorraine Hotel.

"You can't just leave your car here!" the white cap called after them.

There was a uniformed lieutenant standing with a large black woman at the desk.

"What's going on here?" O'Dowd asked as he pinned his badge to his jacket.

"And who the hell are you, Sergeant?"

"Watch your mouth, we don't tolerate that sort of talk in here," Sister Fortitude said.

"I'm Sergeant O'Dowd, sir, of Special Operations. We're working on the bomb threat."

Matt took the artists' drawings of Marion Claude Wheatley from his pocket and gave them to Sister Fortitude.

"Ma'am, do you recognize these?"

Sister Fortitude studied both pictures carefully, and then held one out.

"This one, I do. I never saw the other one."

"This is the man who… what, rented a room?" Matt asked.

"Said he was about the Lord's work. Satan's work is more like it."

"Where is the bomb?" O'Dowd asked.

"Six-eighteen," Sister Fortitude said.

****

The elevators were not running. The hotel's electric service had been shut off to make sure no stray electric current would trigger the bomb's detonators.

Matt and O'Dowd were panting when they reached the sixth floor. O' Dowd pulled open the fire door on the landing, and they entered the dark corridor, now lit only by police portable floodlights and what natural light there was.

Halfway down the corridor Matt saw two Bomb Squad men in their distinctive, almost black coveralls. He remembered hearing at the Academy that they were made of special material that did not generate static electricity.

O'Dowd shook hands with one of the Bomb Squad men.