The blast bubbled outward as if it came from under water. The first wave knocked Danny’s legs out from under him and he landed in the gutter and watched the Rambler jump four feet in the air. It came back to earth almost exactly where it had left it. The windows blew out, and the wheels collapsed, and a portion of the roof peeled back like a can. The front steps of the church splintered and disgorged limestone. The heavy wooden doors fell off their hinges. The stained glass windows collapsed. Debris and white dust floated in the air. Flames poured out of the car. Flames and oily black smoke. Danny stood. He could feel blood dripping out of his ears.

A face loomed in front of his. The face was familiar. The face mouthed his name. Danny held up his hands, one of them still holding his revolver. The cop—Danny remembered his name now, Officer Glen Something, Glen Patchett—shook his head: No, you keep your gun.

Danny lowered the gun and placed it in his coat. The heat of the flames found his face. He could see Federico in there, blackened and afire, leaning against the passenger door, as if sleeping, a guy along for a drive. With his eyes closed, he reminded Danny of that first night they’d broken bread together, when Federico, seemingly enraptured by music, had closed his eyes and mock-conducted the music spilling from his phonograph. People began to exit the church, coming around from the sides, and Danny could hear them suddenly, as if from the bottom of a hole a mile deep.

He turned to Glen, “If you can hear me, nod.”

Patchett gave him a curious look but nodded.

“Put out an APB on a Tessa Ficara. Twenty years old. Italian. Five five, long brown hair. She’s bleeding from the right hip. Glen? She’s dressed as a boy. Tweed knickers, plaid shirt, suspenders, brown work shoes. You got that?”

Patchett scribbled in his notebook. He nodded.

“Armed and dangerous,” Danny said.

More scribbling.

His left ear canal opened with a pop, and more blood sluiced down his neck, but now he could hear and the sounds were sudden and painful. He placed a hand to the ear. “Fuck!”

“You hear me now?”

“Yeah, Glen. Yeah.”

“Who’s the crisper in the car?”

“Federico Ficara. He’s got federal warrants out on him. You probably heard about him at roll call about a month ago. Bomber.”

“Dead bomber. You shoot him?”

“Three times,” Danny said.

Glen looked at all the white dust and debris as it fell into their hair, onto their faces. “Hell of a way to fuck up a Sunday.”

Eddie McKenna arrived on-scene about ten minutes after the explosion. Danny sat amid the rubble on what remained of the church steps and listened as his godfather talked to Fenton, the Bomb Squad sergeant.

“Best we can figure, Eddie? The plan was to detonate the dynamite in the car once all the people were out front, you know, milling about for ten minutes afterward, the way these people do. But when the wops start coming out of the church, Coughlin’s kid over there yells at them to go back inside. Makes his point by discharging his weapon. So the people run back inside and Coughlin starts firing at the asshole in the Rambler. Someone else comes into play around then—I’m hearing from Tactical that it’s a woman, believe that?—and he’s drawing her fire, too, but hell if he’s letting that asshole out of the car. Makes him blow up with his own bombs.”