“Sir?” said Heller.

“Now, where are the books you and Epstein cooked? Where are they hidden?” demanded McGuire.

“Sir?” said Heller.

“We know God (bleeped) well that you had actual IRS manuals! Copies of the real law and everything. Where are they hidden?”

“Sir?” said Heller.

“Do you realize,” said McGuire, “if they got into public hands it would ruin us? Do you realize this is treason? Do you know what the penalty for treason is? Death! It says so right in the Constitution!”

“Sir?” said Heller.

“I don’t think he’ll talk,” said another agent.

McGuire said, “I’ll handle this, Malone.”

“There ain’t any manuals here,” said still another agent.

McGuire said, “Shut up, O’Brien. I’ll handle this. This kid is a red-hot suspect. I got to read him his rights. Now listen carefully. You have to testify to whatever IRS wants you to testify to. You have to swear to anything IRS tells you to swear to and sign anything you are told by IRS to sign. If you fail to do so you will be charged with conspiring to conspire with conspirators regardless of race, color or creed. Sign here.”

Heller had a slip of paper under his nose. “What’s this?”

“By the Miranda Rule,” said McGuire, “the prisoner must be informed of his rights. I have just informed you of yours. The IRS is totally legal, always. This attests you have been warned. So sign here.”

Heller signed, “J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Good,” said McGuire. “Now, where are the God (bleeped) cooked account books and where are the God (bleeped) IRS manuals and regulations?”

“Sir?” said Heller.

“He ain’t going to talk,” said Malone.

“I better just plant this Commie literature and these bags of heroin and we can get going,” said O’Brien.

“You know what’s going to happen to you, kid?” said McGuire with obvious satisfaction. “We’re going to force you to report downtown to the Federal Building. We’re going to cross-examine you, kid. We’re going to put you under the hot lights and we’re going to find out all about you. Everything. When we get through with you, there won’t be a thing about you we don’t know. Take this.”

McGuire had been scribbling a name on a legal document. He handed it to Heller. It said:

SUBPOENA! THE PEOPLE VERSUS EPSTEIN. J. Edgar Hoover is hereby summoned to appear at 0900 hours at the Federal Building, Room 22222, Permanent Federal Grand Jury, Internal Revenue Courts.

“Cross-examination?” said Heller. “Correct.”

“You find out everything there is to know about me?”

“Correct.”

“Actually, I think,” said Heller, “that under that board over there is a good hiding place.”

“That’s better,” said McGuire. “Which board?”

Heller got up. He went over. He knelt down.

And out of his pocket, his action hidden from them by his body, he took a red-and-white piece of candy. I recognized it. It was the candy he had been making aboard the tug! It had a wrapper that looked like paper. With a thumbnail and a twist, he pushed the paper down into the candy. He put it under a board.

He stood up. “There are no manuals there now.”

“Shows the right spirit. You can go now but you show up! Federal Building, nine hundred hours!”

Heller walked out.

He walked down the remains of the steps.

Outside, he walked up to one of the government cars. He bent over.

He had four sticks of dynamite strapped to his leg!

He undid the tape.

He laid the dynamite into the back seat of the car. No cap, no means to explode it. He just laid it there.

Then he walked very rapidly west on 125th Street.

The buildings on either side of him shook in concussion!

A gigantic flash whipped at the sky!

A roaring blast of sound struck a sledgehammer blow!

Heller looked back. As the smoke soared, I saw that the whole front of the abandoned apartment house was falling into the street in slow motion. Pieces of the roof were still sailing in the air!

The government cars, showered with rubble, did not explode: So he wasn’t that good with explosives after all.

Pieces of apartment house were falling out of the sky. Torrents of flame began to leap up.

It was the candy!

I knew what the stuff was now. It was a binary concussion-flame grenade. It didn’t operate until the wrapper, the needful element, was shoved down into the explosive. It had activated on a forty-second dissolve. The Apparatus never used them. They were too risky to carry!

“What the hell was that?” said an old man near Heller.

“There were ten terrorists in that building,” said Heller.

“Oh,” said the old man. “Vandals again.”

Heller went along 125th Street, first at a casual walk and then at a distance-increasing run.

Behind him, fire sirens were screaming.

Heller didn’t look back again. He was headed, apparently, for the river.

Speeding along, Heller could catch glimpses of the river ahead. His view was impeded with underpasses and overpasses of major roads.

He veered slightly to his left. The river lay just on the other side of some trunk highways along which traffic blurred.

Heller negotiated the obstacles.

Before him stretched a long dock, reaching west into the water.

He slowed, alert. He jumped up to see over some obstacles. Then he went speeding ahead.

On the end of the dock lay a tangle of something. Heller raced to it.

Right at the dock end lay a jacket. A pair of hornrimmed spectacles was sitting on it.

The Jersey shore, opposite, was a yellow haze of polluted air. The Hudson was blue with sky reflection despite the scum and filth in it.

Heller was looking up and down the river. Apparently an incoming tide from the ocean was slacking the current for the bits of dunnage and trash were going neither upstream nor down.

A hat!

A soggy, dark blue, snap-brim hat, still afloat with the air trapped in it.

Heller threw off his jacket. He pulled off his shoes. He zipped out of his pants. He threw his cap to the dock.

In a long dive he went into the water, debris and oil!

Down he went! Hands grabbing out and back, he was pulling himself toward the bottom.

The light went from brown to dim gray.

Yikes! How deep was this river?

Down, down, down, his eyes sweeping left to right through the murk!

Ooze!

He had hit bottom!

Up he went like a streak.

He blew to the surface. He treaded water, jumping his head up to look around.

He inverted.

Down he went again. Down, down, down, looking left and right.

Black ooze!

Around in a circle on the bottom. Old tires and cans.

Up, up, up! He blew to the surface again.

More treading water. More jumps to lift his head out.

A faint sound!

Heller made a bigger jump, lifting himself out of the water.

A faint voice, “I’m over here.”

Heller treaded water and looked toward the dock.

There in the water, clinging to an old ring sunk in concrete, was somebody, just a hand and head showing.

Heller struck out in that direction.

In a minute or two he was beside a very small young man, covered with oil, mostly eyes.

“I’m a failure,” moaned the pitiful figure. Then he coughed.

“I lost my nerve. I couldn’t keep my head under long enough to drown.”

“Are you Israel Epstein?” said Heller.

“Yes, I’m sorry I can’t shake hands. I’d lose my grip.”

Heller was surveying the fellow’s plight. The dock end was sheer above him and had no handholds.

A passing ship engulfed them in waves. Epstein lost his grip on the ring and got banged against the concrete. Heller put Epstein’s hand back on the ring. “Hold on!”

“I can’t climb up. I was a failure at drowning myself and now I’m a failure at saving myself. You better go off and leave me. I’m not worth rescuing.”