“William Danko was a card-carrying member of the Weathermen. You can be sure of it. He was sighted casing the site of the regional offices of Grumman, which were bombed in September of 1969. His code name, August Spies, was picked up in monitored phone traffic of known Weathermen lines. The kid was no innocent, Lindsay. He was involved in murder.”
Molinari pushed forward a yellow legal pad filled with his handwriting. “The FBI had begun following him about three months before the raid. There were a couple of others involved out of the Berkeley cell. The FBI was able to turn one of them, use him as a CI. It’s amazing how the threat of twenty-five years in a federal prison puts a crimp in a promising medical career.”
“Bengosian!” I said. A rush surged through my veins. I felt validated.
Molinari nodded. “They turned Bengosian, Lindsay. That’s how they got to the house on Hope Street that night. Bengosian betrayed his friends. You were right—and there’s more.”
“Lightower,” I said expectantly.
“He was Danko’s roommate,” Molinari replied. “The school cracked down on students active in the SDS. Maybe Lightower decided it was time for a semester abroad.
“And one of the FBI agents who led the raid, who went inside the house that morning, he got promoted. Spent his twenty years in the Bureau, retired right here in San Francisco. His name was Frank T. Seymour. Name ring a bell?”
Yeah, it rang a bell, but it didn’t fill me with exhilaration. Just a sickening feeling.
Frank T. Seymour was one of the people killed in the blast at the Rincon Center.
Chapter 92
IT WAS NIGHT NOW and Michelle liked the night. She could watch The Simpsons, reruns of Friends. Laugh a bit, like before everything had started, like when she was a kid in Eau Claire.
They’d had to ditch the Oakland apartment where they had lived for the past six months. Now they’d moved into Julia’s house in the Berkeley flats.
And they couldn’t go out much anymore. The situation was too tight. Sometimes on TV she saw a photograph of Mal, except the news reports called him Stephen Hardaway. Robert had moved in, too. It was the four of them now. And maybe Charles Danko would show up soon, too. Supposedly, he had the final plans, the endgame, which Mal promised would blow everybody’s mind. It was huge.
Michelle turned off the TV and went downstairs. Mal was hunched over the wires, tinkering with the new device, the latest bomb. There was a plan, he said, how they were gonna get this baby inside. Just being in the same place with the damn thing freaked her out.
She crept up behind him. “Mal, you want something to eat? I can fix you something.”
“You can see I’m working, Michelle.” More of a snap than a reply. He was soldering a red wire into a wooden table leg that she knew encased the blasting cap.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I need to talk with you, Mal. I think I want to leave.”
Mal stiffened up from the bomb. He pulled the lenses off his head, wiped the sweaty hair off of his face.
“You’re going to leave?” Mal said, nodding in her face, as if he found this amusing. “And you’re going where? Hop on a bus and go home? Back to Geewhizconsin? Enroll in Geewhizconsin junior college, after blowing up a couple of kids in the big city?”
Tears started in Michelle’s eyes. Telltale signs of weakness, she knew. Dreaded sentimentality.
“Stop it, Mal.”
“You’re a wanted killer, honey. The cute little nanny who blew up her kids. Did that slip your mind?”
Suddenly she saw it clearly. Lots of things. That even if they did this job, this last one, Mal would never go away with her. When she closed her eyes at night she could see the Lightower kids. Sitting around at breakfast. Getting dressed for school. She knew she had done terrible things. No matter how much she wished otherwise, Mal was right, there was nowhere for her to go. She was the murderous au pair. She always would be.
“Now come on,” Mal said, suddenly gentler. “As long as you’re here, you can help me, baby. I need that pretty finger of yours. On that wire. You remember, nothing to worry about.”
He held up the phone. “No juice, no boost, right? We’re gonna be heroes, Michelle. We’re gonna save the world from the bad guys. They’re never ever going to forget us.”
Chapter 93
ONE A.M., but who could sleep?
Molinari came into the squad room. I was watching the wires with Paul Chin. He looked at me and sighed. “Charles Danko.”
He tossed a green folder on the desk across from me. It was marked PRIVILEGED INFORMATION, FBI. “They had to go deep in the cold files to find him.”
I felt my blood rush. My skin prickled. Did this mean we were close to finding him?