The Righteous Men (2006) (22 page)

The system was simple. At any moment, the rich could come in and leave money
inside the chamber. And, also at any moment, the poor could come in and take
what they needed.

The beauty of it was its anonymity. The doors operated on an
automatic-locking system that ensured only one person could be inside the
chamber at any one time. That way a giver and a receiver were guaranteed never
to meet. The wealthy would not know who had benefited from their largesse; the
deprived would not know who had helped them.

Port-au-Prince’s well-off would not get the chance either to lord it
over their beneficiaries or to judge them insufficiently needy. And the city’s
impoverished would be spared the sense of indebtedness that can make charity so
humiliating.

The four doors were the finishing touch. It meant that there could never
arise, not even informally, a givers’ entrance or a receivers’
entrance; it was too random for that. And so, if you saw someone walking in or
out, you had no idea what kind of errand they were on.

There was only one more thing Jean-Claude had to do to make it work. He had
to exploit a Haitian national trait, one that applied as much to the
SUV-drivers of Petionville as the searingly poor of Cite Soleil: superstition.

He spoke to the healers and voodoo priests whose writ ran among the MREs,
slipping a few dollars to those with a knack for spreading the word. Before long
the wealthiest folk in Port-au-Prince came to believe that they would be cursed
if they did not visit the Secret Chamber and do the right thing.

So Jean-Claude smiled as he stood inside the chamber now, looking at a bowl
filled with US dollars as well as local currency and even the odd item of
jewellery. Those outside assumed he was another visitor; his own role in
setting up the chamber had remained unknown to all but the handful of holy men whose
PR skills he had enlisted.

He was picking up a discarded food wrapper from the floor when the lights
flickered and went off. With all four doors closed, the room was now in
complete darkness. Jean-Claude silently cursed the electric company.

But it did not stay dark for long. Someone struck a match, just behind him.
The power failure must have short-circuited the automatic locks, allowing this
man to gain access.

‘I’m sorry, sir. Only one at a time, that’s the rule.’

‘I know the rule, Monsieur Paul.’ The voice was unfamiliar; speaking
French not Creole.

‘Well, perhaps I’ll leave and then you can do what you need to
do.’

‘For that I need you here.’

‘No, no. It’s all private and confidential, my friend. That’s
why we call this the Secret Chamber. It’s secret.’

The match had burned out now, shrouding the chamber once more in perfect
black.

‘Hello? Are you still here?’

There was no answer. Not a sound, in fact, until the gasp of Jean-Claude’s
own breath as he felt two strong hands on his neck. He wanted to protest, to
ask what he had done wrong, to explain that this man could take all the money
he needed — there were no restrictions, no maximum. But the air would not
come. He was rasping, a sandy, dry exhalation that barely sounded human. His
leg was trembling, his hand clinging onto the forearm of this man who was strangling
him.

But it was no good; darkness came upon darkness. He slumped to the floor.
The stranger lit a new match, crouched down and closed the dead man’s
eyes. He murmured a short prayer, then straightened himself up and shook the
dust off his clothes. He headed for the door he had used to come in, taking
care to reconnect the circuit he had broken a few minutes earlier. And then he
stepped out into the night, anonymous and unseen, just as Jean-Claude Paul had intended.

W
hen they talked in the night TC
had not been that interested in Yosef Yitzhok. She was focused on the rabbi and
on everything that happened inside the classroom and later at the
mikve
.
Now, though, she trained the full beam of her intellect on the encounter that
had concluded Will’s brief and unhappy stay at Crown Heights.

‘You’re wrong about one thing,’ she told Will rapidly. It doesn’t
make sense for Yosef Yitzhok to have brought in the paper just to make the
point that you work for The
New York Times
, and therefore they’ve
got to be careful. They already knew you worked for the
Times
. They sent
that very first email to your
Times
address. That much they had worked
out. So as soon as they realized you were not Tom Mitchell but were Will Monroe,
they knew exactly who they were dealing with. Beth’s husband. A reporter
for the
Times
.’

‘So why did they have a copy of my story laid out? Why had Yosef
thingy brought it in?’

‘You don’t know he brought it in. Might have been in there throughout.’

‘No, I definitely—’ Will stopped himself. After the Rebbe fiasco,
there was nothing he knew for definite. He thought he had heard the arrival of
a new person in the room, the rustling of paper and a row — but he had
not seen that. He might have just got it wrong.

‘So what did Yosef Yitzhok — we’ll call him YY, it’ll
save time. What did YY say to you outside?’

‘He apologized for what had happened inside. At the time I thought
that was bullshit and I ignored it. But maybe that was his way of telling me he
disagreed with what was happening. Maybe he’s a dissenter! Perhaps he can
help. You know, from the inside.’

‘Will, I know you’re stressed out but we really have to keep it
cool and calm. This is not the movies. Just tell me what he actually said.’

‘OK, so there’s the apology. And then there’s this stuff about
my work. ‘If you want to know what’s going on, look to your work.’

‘Hmm.’ TC began pacing, stopping by a painting she had done of
the Chrysler Building apparently melting in the twilight rain. ‘So he’s
seen your story in the paper; he knows what you do. It’s possible he didn’t
know that until that moment.’

‘I thought you said they knew the moment they emailed me.’

‘That’s true. They knew. The rabbi and whichever one of his
techie helpers sent you the email knew. But this guy might not be inner circle.
It may have been news to him.’

‘So it’s possible that he was steaming in there, warning them
that I was a reporter and could make trouble.’

‘It’s possible. But something about it doesn’t feel right.
If he’s in the room, he must be trusted enough to know what’s going
on. It must be something else. But OK, let’s say you’re right. He
doesn’t like what’s happening and so he breaks Shabbat to tell you
urgently that you must not give up. Why would he do it in code? You know,
foot
runs
?’

‘Just in case someone read it over his shoulder. Or saw it in his “Sent
messages”.’

‘All right. I’ll buy that. And I suppose the thing he said to you
last night — “look to your work” — is related. Perhaps
he’s telling you to do what you do in your work: to keep looking, keep
asking questions.’

‘I reckon that’s it. Don’t stop, keep probing.’

‘Good. So that’s what it is. OK.’ Will could see she was only
partly persuaded. ‘What do you want to do now? Are you going to reply?’

Will had not even thought of that, but she was right. He should just hit
Reply, send a message of his own and see what happened.
Who are you?
That might scare YY off.
What do you want me to do?
He needed to get
this right. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think I need some coffee.’ She flicked on the machine and,
clearly out of habit, flicked on the radio at the same time. It was big,
old-fashioned and splattered with paint; a builder’s radio. Except hers
was not programmed to KROC or Kiss FM, but WNYC, New York’s public radio
channel.

Will fell back into the sofa, willing himself to have a brainwave. He had to
think of something that would end this ordeal. Beth had now spent a night as a
captive. God only knew where she was and in what conditions. He had seen how
hard these men could be, nearly freezing him into unconsciousness. What pain
were they inflicting on Beth? What strange rules would allow them to hurt a
woman who, they admitted, had done nothing wrong. He imagined how frightened she
was. Think, he urged himself. Think! But he just stared at the cell phone,
bearing its message of bland, coded encouragement —
Don’t stop
— and at the BlackBerry which had, so far, brought only bad news. One in
each hand, they yielded nothing.

The radio was burbling with a signature tune, announcing the top of a new
hour. Will looked at his watch: 9am.

‘Good morning, this is Weekend Edition. The
President promises a new initiative in the Middle East. The Southern Baptist conference
gets underway with a promise to make war on what it calls “Hollywood
sleaze”. And in London, more revelations on the scandal of the year…

Will spaced out for most of it, but he caught the latest on Gavin Curtis. It
turned out that the red-faced cleric Will had seen on TV the other night was
right: Curtis had been siphoning off colossal amounts of public money. Not just
millions, which would have made him fantastically rich, but hundreds of
millions at a time. Apparently the money had been diverted into a numbered
account in Zurich. The humble Chancellor Curtis, riding around the British
capital in a modest sedan car, had made himself one of the richest men in the world.

In his current mood, Will found even this news depressing. It was
confirmation on a grander scale of everything the last twenty-four hours had
been saying. You could trust no one; everyone was up to no good. Then, as if to
reproach himself, he thought of Howard Macrae and Pat Baxter. They had both done
something good — but they were the exceptions.

‘Will, listen.’

TC had turned the volume all the way up. Will recognized the voice: WNYC’s
anchor, giving the local news.

‘Interpol have made a rare trip to Brooklyn this morning, with the
mainly Hassidic neighbourhood of Crown Heights the scene.

Officials from the NYPD say they are working with police
from Thailand on a murder inquiry. NYPD spokesperson Lisa Roderiguet says the
case relates to the discovery in the Hassidic sect’s Bangkok centre of
the body of a leading Thai businessman. He’d been missing for several
days, believed kidnapped. The rabbi in charge of the Bangkok centre is now
under arrest and the Thai authorities requested, via Interpol, that the NYPD investigate
the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement, here in New York, to further
their inquiries.

‘The weather: in Manhattan, another chilly day …’

TC looked pale. ‘I need to get out of here,’ she said suddenly. She
seemed choked, claustrophobic. She moved across the room, picking up essentials
— purse, phone — until Will realized this was not a negotiation.
They were leaving.

Watching her frightened him. There was no mistaking TC’s reaction: she
thought Beth had either been murdered or was about to be. He had not realized
it, but TC’s earlier calmness, almost insouciance, had been a comfort as
well as an irritant. Now, with TC slamming the steel concertina door of the elevator
after her, jabbing the buttons to make the damn thing go faster, he was robbed
of that illusion. He felt his palms grow damp: while he had been dicking around
playing amateur sleuth, his beloved Beth, his partner in life, might have been
strangled or drowned or shot … His eyes closed in dread.
More than
yesterday, less than tomorrow
.

They were outside, TC grabbing him by the wrist, not so much walking
alongside him as leading him, like a mother escorting a reluctant child to nursery.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘We’re going to play them at their own game. See how they like
it.’

They had only walked a couple of blocks when she strode into NetZone, an
internet cafe which actually served coffee.

There were copies of The
New York Times
, including the Sunday magazine
and Arts and Leisure section, traditionally released twenty-four hours in
advance, piled up invitingly by the fashionably shabby arm chairs. The Internet
Hot Spot on Eastern Parkway felt very far away.

TC was not here to sip cappuccino. She was on a mission, first handing cash
over and then planting Will at a free terminal.

‘OK, log on.’

Will suddenly remembered what going out with TC had been like. He had always
felt as if he were somehow the junior partner and she the person in charge. He
used to think that was because she was the native New Yorker while he was the
outsider, that he deferred to her because she knew her way around what was for
him a foreign land. But he had been in America for six years now and she was
still at it. He realized TC was plain bossy. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Let’s
talk about this first. What exactly are you suggesting I do?’

‘Log on to your email and I’ll show you.’

‘Why do we have to do this here? Why don’t we just use the
BlackBerry?’

‘Because I can’t think using my thumbs. Now come on.

Log on.’

He relented, typing in the string of letters that enabled
Times
staffers to access their email remotely. Name, password and he was in: his
inbox. There were no surprises, just the same list of messages he had already
seen on his BlackBerry.

‘Where’s the last message from the kidnappers?’

Will scrolled down until he found it, the string of garble in the ‘name’
field and the subject: Beth. He opened it, seeing the unblinking words anew.

WE DO NOT WANT MONEY

The news from Thailand made this sentence look positively cruel. If it was
not money they were after, what motivated them: the simple, sick pleasure of
killing? Will could feel his blood rising, in anger — and desperation.

‘OK, hit
Reply
.’