The Righteous Men (2006) (2 page)

‘Have you seen the corpse?’ Will asked, sure there was a term of
the trade he was conspicuously failing to use. ‘Stiff, perhaps.

‘Yeah, right through there,’ said the dean, nodding towards the
squad cars as he brought a cup of Styrofoam coffee to his lips.

Will headed for the space between the police vehicles, a kind of man-made
clearing in this urban forest. There were a couple of unexcited cops milling
around, one with a clipboard, but no police photographer. Will must have missed
that.

And there on the ground, under a blanket, lay the body.

He stepped forward to get a better look, but one of the cops moved to block
his path. ‘Authorized personnel only from here on in, sir. All questions
to the DCPI over there.’

‘DCPI?’

‘Officer serving the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.’
As if speaking to a dim-witted child who had forgotten his most rudimentary
times tables.

Will kicked himself for asking. He should have bluffed it out.

The DCPI was on the other side of the corpse, talking to the TV guy. Will
had to walk round until he was only a foot or two from the dead body of Howard
Macrae. He stared hard into the blanket, hoping to guess at the face that lay
beneath. Maybe the blanket would reveal an outline, like those clay masks used
by sculptors. He kept looking but the dull, dark shroud yielded nothing.

The DCPI was in mid-flow. ‘… our guess is that this was either
score-settling by the SVS against the Wrecking Crew, or else an attempt by the
Houston prostitution network to take over Macrae’s patch.’

Only then did she seem to notice Will, her expression instantly changing to
denote a lack of familiarity. The shutters had come down. Will got the message:
the casual banter was for Carl McGivering only.

‘Could I just get the details?’

‘One African-American male, aged forty-three, approximately a hundred
and eighty pounds, identified as Howard Macrae, found dead on Saratoga and St
Marks Avenues at 8.27pm this evening. Police were alerted by a resident of the neighbourhood
who dialled 911 after finding the body while walking to the 7-Eleven.’
She nodded to indicate the store:
over there
. ‘Cause of death
appears to be severing of arteries, internal bleeding and heart failure due to
vicious and repeated stabbing. The New York Police Department is treating this crime
as homicide and will spare no resources in bringing the perpetrator to justice.’

The blah blah tone told Will this was a set formulation, one all DCPIs were
required to repeat. No doubt it had been scripted by a team of outside
consultants, who probably wrote a NYPD mission statement to go with it.
Spare
no resources
.

‘Any questions?’

‘Yes. What was all that about prostitution?’

‘Are we on background now?’

Will nodded, agreeing that anything the DCPI said could be used, so long as
Will did not attribute it to her.

‘The guy was a pimp. Well-known as such to us and to everyone who
lives here. Ran a brothel, on Atlantic Avenue near Pleasant Place. Kind of like
an old-fashioned whorehouse, girls, rooms — all under one roof.’

‘Right. What about the fact that he was found in the middle of the
street? Isn’t that a little strange, no attempt to hide the body?’

‘Gangland killing, that’s how they work. Like a drive-by shooting.
It’s right out there in the open, in your face. No attempt to hide the
body ‘cause that’s part of the point. To send a message. You want
everyone to know, “We did this, we don’t care who knows about it.
And we’d do it to you.”‘

Will scribbled as fast as he could, thanked the DCPI and reached for his
cell phone. He told Metro what he had: they told him to come in, there was
still time to make the final edition. They would only need a few paragraphs.
Will was not surprised. He had read the
Times
long enough to know this
was not exactly hold-the-front-page material.

He did not let on to the desk, to the DCPI or to any of the other reporters
there that this was in fact the first murder he had ever covered. At the
Bergen
Record
, homicides were rarer fare and not to be wasted on novices like him.
It was a pity because there was one detail which had caught Will’s eye
but which he had put out of his mind almost immediately. The other hacks were
too jaded to have noticed it at all, but Will saw it. The trouble was, he
assumed it was routine.

He did not realize it at the time, but it was anything but.

A
t the office, he hammered the
‘send’ key on the keyboard, pushed back his chair and stretched. It
was half past midnight. He looked around: most of the desks were empty, only
the night layout area was still fully staffed — cutting and slicing, rewriting
and crafting the finished product which would spread itself open on Manhattan
breakfast tables in just a few hours’ time.

He strode around the office, pumped by a minor version of the post-filing
high — that surge of adrenalin and relief once a story is done. He
wandered, stealing a glance at the desks of his colleagues, bathed only in the
flickering light of CNN, on mute.

The office was open plan, but a system of partitions organized the desks
into pods, little clusters of four. As a newcomer, Will was in a far-off
corner. His nearest window looked out onto a brick wall: the back of a Broadway
theatre bearing a now-faded poster for one of the city’s longest-running
musicals.

Alongside him in the pod was Terry Walton, the former Delhi bureau chief who
had returned to New York under some kind of cloud; Will had not yet discovered
the exact nature of his misdemeanour. His desk consisted of a series of meticulous
piles surrounding a single yellow legal pad. On it was handwriting so dense and
tiny, it was unintelligible to all but the closest inspection: Will suspected
this was a kind of security mechanism, devised by Walton to prevent any snoopers
taking a peek at his work. He was yet to discover why a man whose demotion to
Metro meant he was hardly working on stories sensitive to national security
would take such a precaution.

Next was Dan Schwarz, whose desk seemed to be on the point of collapse. He
was an investigative reporter; there was barely room for his chair, all floor
space consumed by cardboard boxes. Papers were falling out of other papers;
even the screen on Schwarz’s computer was barely visible, bordered by a
hundred Post-it notes stuck all around the edge.

Amy Woodstein’s desk was neither anally neat like Walton’s nor a
public health disaster like Schwarz’s. It was messy, as befitted the
quarters of a woman who worked under her very own set of deadlines — always
rushing back to relieve a nanny, let in a childminder or pick up from nursery.
She had used the partition walls to pin up not yet more papers, like Schwarz, or
elegant, if aged, postcards, like Walton, but pictures of her family. Her
children had curly hair and wide, toothy smiles and, as far as Will could see,
were permanently covered in paint.

He went back to his own desk. He had not found the courage to personalize it
yet; the pin-board partition still bore the corporate notices that were there
when he arrived. He saw the light on his phone blinking. A message.

Hi babe. I know it’s late but I’m not sleepy
yet. I’ve got a fun idea so call me when you’re done. It’s
nearly one. Call soon. ‘

His spirits lifted instantly. He had banked on a tip-toed reentry into the
apartment, followed by a pre-bed bowl of Cheerios. What did Beth have in mind?

He called. ‘How come you’re still awake?’

‘I dunno, my husband’s first murder perhaps? Maybe it’s just
everything that’s going on. Anyway, I can’t sleep. Do you wanna
meet for bagels?’

‘What, now?’

‘Yeah. At the Carnegie Deli.’

‘Now?’

I’ll get a cab.’

Will liked the idea of the Carnegie Deli as much as, perhaps more than, the
reality. The notion of a coffee shop that never slept, where old-time Broadway
comedians and now-creaking chorus girls might meet for an after-show pastrami
sandwich; the folks reading first editions of the morning papers, scanning the
pages for notices of their latest hit or flop, their cups constantly refilled
with steaming brown liquid — it was all so New York. He wanted the
waitresses to look harried, he liked it when people butted in line — it
all confirmed what he knew was a tourist’s fantasy of the big city. He
suspected he should be over this by now: he had, after all, lived in America
for more than five years. But he could not pretend to be a native.

He got there first, bagging a table behind a noisy group of middle-aged
couples. He caught snatches of conversation, enough to work out they were not
Manhattanites, but in from Jersey. He guessed they had taken in a show, almost certainly
a long-running musical, and were now completing their New York experience with
a past-midnight snack.

Then he saw her. Will paused for a split second before waving, just to take
a good look. They had met in his very last weeks at Columbia and he had fallen
hard and fast. Her looks could still make his insides leap: the long dark hair framing
pale skin and wide, green eyes. One look and you could not tear yourself away.
Those eyes were like deep, cool pools — and he wanted to dive in.

He jumped up to meet her, instantly taking in her scent.

It began in her hair, with an aroma of sunshine and dewberries that might
once have come from a shampoo, but combined with her skin to produce a new
perfume, one that was entirely her own. Its epicentre was the inch or two of skin
just below her ear. He only had to nuzzle into that nook to be filled with her.

Now it was the mouth that drew him. Beth’s lips were full and thick;
he could feel their plumpness as he kissed them.

Without warning, they parted, just enough to let her tongue brush against
his lips, then meet his own. Quietly, so quietly no one but him could hear it,
she let out a tiny moan, a sound of pleasure that roused him instantly. He
hardened.

She could feel it, prompting another moan, this time of surprise and
approval.

‘You are pleased to see me.’ Now she was sitting opposite him,
shrugging off her coat with a suggestive wriggle. She saw him looking. ‘You
checking me out?’

‘You could say that.’

She grinned. ‘What are we going to eat? I thought cheesecake and hot
chocolate, although maybe tea would be good…’

Will was still staring at his wife, watching the way her top stretched
across her breasts. He was wondering if they should abandon the Carnegie and go
straight back to their big warm bed.

‘What?’ she said, feigning indignation. ‘Concentrate!’

His pastrami sandwich, piled high and deluged with mustard, arrived just as
he was telling her about the treatment he had got from the old-timers at the
murder scene.

‘So Carl whatsisname—’

‘The TV guy?’

‘Yeah, he’s giving the policewoman all this Raymond Chandler,
veteran gumshoe stuff—’

‘Give me a break here, you know I got a lawyer friend downtown.’

‘Exactly. And I’m Mr Novice from the effete
New York Times
—’

‘Not so effete from what I saw a few minutes ago.’ She raised
her eyebrows.

‘Can I get to the end?’

‘Sorry.’ She got back to her cheesecake, not picking at it like
most of the women Will would see in New York, but downing it in big, hearty
chunks.

‘Anyway, it was pretty obvious he was going to get the inside track
and I wasn’t. So I was thinking. Maybe I should start developing some
serious police contacts.’

‘What, drinking with Lieutenant O’Rourke until you fall under
the table? Somehow I don’t see it. Besides, you’re not going to be
on this beat long. When Carl whateverhisnameis is still doing traffic snarl-ups
in Staten Island, you’re going to be covering the, I don’t know,
the White House or Paris or something really important.’

Will smiled. ‘Your faith in me is touching.’

‘I’m not kidding, Will. I know it looks like I am because I have
a face full of cake. But I mean it. I believe in you.’ Will took her
hand. ‘You know what song I heard today, at work?

It’s weird because you never hear songs like that on the radio, but it
was so beautiful.’

‘What was it?’

‘It’s a John Lennon song, I can’t remember the title. But he’s
going through all the things that people believe in, and he says, “I don’t
believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Bible, I don’t believe in
Buddha”, and all these other things, you know, Hitler and Elvis and
whatever, and then he says, “I don’t believe in Beatles. I just
believe in me, Yoko and me.”

And it made me stop, right in the waiting area at the hospital.

Because — you’re going to think this is so sappy — but I
think it was because that’s what I believe in.’

‘In Yoko Ono?’

‘No, Will. Not Yoko Ono. I believe in us, in you and me.

That’s what I believe in.’

Will’s instinct was to deflate moments like this. He was too English
for such overt statements of feeling. He had so little experience of expressed
love, he hardly knew what to do with it when it was handed to him. But now, in
this moment, he resisted the urge to crack a joke or change the subject.

‘I love you quite a lot, you know.’

‘I know.’ They paused, listening to the sound of Beth scraping
her cheesecake fork against the plate.

‘Did something happen at work today to get you—’

‘You know that kid I’ve been treating?’

‘Child X?’ Will was teasing. Beth stuck diligently to the rules
on doctor-patient confidentiality and only rarely, and in the most coded terms,
discussed her cases outside the hospital. He understood that, of course,
respected it even. But it made it tricky to be as supportive of Beth as she was
of him, to back her career with equal energy. When the office politics at the
hospital had turned nasty, he had become familiar with all the key
personalities, offering advice on which colleagues were to be cultivated as
allies, which were to be avoided. In their first months together, he had
imagined long evenings spent talking over tough cases, Beth seeking his advice on
an enigmatic ‘client’ who refused to open up or a dream that
refused to be interpreted. He saw himself massaging his wife’s shoulders,
modestly coming up with the breakthrough idea which finally persuaded a silent
child to speak.