The Babe Ruth Deception by David O. Stewart Read Free Book Online

the sky, the cart reduced to kindling. An open-top car rested on its side, its fender crumpled and driver gone, who knew where.
    Joshua grew steadier. He could hear more. Sirens now. Shouting. The air was still filled with . . . he pushed the thought aside. The front of a building across from Morgan was gone. Girders and struts and wiring stood naked to the world. There was moisture on his lips. He tasted it. Salty. He touched it. Blood was trickling from his nose.
    The Morgan entrance was torn open, its heavy doors intact but splayed to the side. A leg in blue serge extended from under one door. Joshua stepped over the corner of the door, over the leg. He peered into the bank. Daylight streamed in from unnatural holes, spotlighting debris in the air. He felt shaky again. His legs froze. He leaned against the thick granite wall that had withstood the blast. He breathed through his handkerchief. A massive chandelier had crashed down on the lobby, pulverizing everything beneath it.
    Nothing he saw looked like Violet. There was movement toward the back. The bomb’s impact would have been less there. He started forward, reaching out with both hands. He struggled past the chandelier, then beyond upended desks and chairs, chunks of ceiling. He veered around two bodies covered with rubble, stopped to cough. The coughing bent him over. He could hear himself. Bells and sirens, too.
    He wasn’t sure until he was standing over her. She made no sound. Her hands and arms were free, her eyes wide. One leg was under a heavy desk covered with ceiling plaster. The end of a ceiling beam rested on the desk. He spoke to her, his voice small in his head. She said nothing. Her eyes were scared eyes, but he thought they knew him. His brain was still slow. He didn’t see other people nearby. He stopped to calculate, to figure out how the debris would shift when he moved things. He didn’t want something new sliding on top of her. He started methodically, removing one piece at a time. His strength started coming back. Then he reached the ceiling beam. It was too big. He looked back to the doorway. Others were climbing inside, arms held out for balance, to ward off the horror. He called out and waved his arms.
    A young white man approached. Joshua pointed at the beam, then at the direction it should go. Once the newcomer understood the job, he shouted to the front of the bank. More men came near. The building was filling up. Joshua crouched down to Violet. He explained what they had to do. Her eyes were wet but she nodded.
    Five of them strained. They lifted the beam, pivoted it, then dropped it with a thud. Joshua lifted the side of the desk by himself, fired by the prospect of setting her free. Balancing the desk up on its end, he made sure it was stable, then turned back. Her right leg was turned at a slant. It was black from internal bleeding. He bent down and spoke again, urgently. She shouldn’t look down. She nodded but then looked. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
    Joshua felt his control slip. “Stretcher!” he screamed. Then screamed again. “For God’s sake, where’s a stretcher?”

Chapter 5
    F raser walked quickly from his lab to the Flower Hospital, a ponderous brick structure that resembled a home for ghosts and witches more than a place of healing. Happily, the hospital’s human residents included the city’s finest orthopedic surgeon. A week after the bombing, Violet and her poor leg still needed the best.
    The call came through before he heard about the blast on Wall Street. An unfamiliar voice, distorted by the overloaded telephone lines of that terrible day, said it was Joshua Cook. Violet, the voice said, had been in an accident. She was at Volunteer Hospital near City Hall. Fraser hadn’t asked for details. He said he’d be right there, slammed down the phone, ran downstairs, and jumped in his car.
    He had learned more from the shouts of street-corner news vendors,