The Righteous Men (2006) (3 page)

But Beth was not quite like that. For one thing, she seemed to need it less
than Will. For him, an event had not happened until he had talked about it with
Beth. She appeared able to motor on all by herself, drawing on her own tank.

‘Yes, OK. Child X. You know why I’m seeing him, don’t you?
He’s accused of — actually, he’s very definitely guilty of
— a series of arson attacks. On his school. On his neighbour’s house.
He burned down an adventure playground.

‘I’ve been talking to him for months now and I don’t think
he’s shown a hint of remorse. Not even a flicker. I’ve had to go
right down to basics, trying to get him to recognize even the very idea of
right and wrong. Then you know what he does today?’

Beth was looking away now, towards a table where two waiters were having
their own late-shift supper. ‘Remember Marie, the receptionist? She lost
her husband last month; she’s been distraught, we’ve all been
talking about it.

Somehow this kid — Child X — must have picked something up,
because guess what he does today? He comes in with a flower and hands it to
Marie. A gorgeous, long-stemmed pink rose. He can’t have just pulled it
off some bush; he must have bought it. Even if he did just take it, it doesn’t
matter. He hands Marie this rose and says, “This is for you, to remember your
husband”.

‘Well, Marie is just overwhelmed. She takes the rose and croaks a
thank you and then has to just run to the bathroom, to cry her eyes out. And
everyone who sees this thing, the nurses, the staff, they’re all just
tearing up. I come out and find the whole team kind of, having this moment. And
there, in the middle of it, is this little boy — and suddenly that’s
what he looks like, a little boy — who doesn’t quite know what he’s
done. And that’s what convinces me it’s real. He doesn’t look
pleased with himself, like someone who calculated that “Hey, this will be
a way to get some extra credit”.

He just looks a little bewildered.

‘Until that moment, I had seen this boy as a hoodlum. I know, I know
— I of all people am meant to get past “labels” and all that.’
She mimed the quote marks around ‘labels’, leaving no doubt that
she was parodying the kind of people who made that gesture. ‘But, if I’m
honest, I had seen him as a nasty little punk. I didn’t like him at all.
And then he does this little thing which is just so good. You know what I mean?
Just a simple, good act.’

She fell quiet. Will did not want to say anything, just in case there was
more. Eventually Beth broke the silence. ‘I don’t know,’ she
said, in an ‘anyway’ voice, as if to signal that the episode was
over.

They talked some more, their conversation noodling between his day and hers.
He leaned over several times to kiss her, on each occasion hoping for a repeat
of the openmouthed treat he’d had before. She was denying him. As she stretched
forward, he could see the bottom of her back and just a hint of her underwear,
visible in the gap between her skin and her jeans. He loved seeing Beth naked,
but the sight of her in her underwear always drove him wild.

‘Check please!’ he said, eager to get her home. As they walked
out, he slid his hand under her T-shirt, over the smooth skin of her back and
headed south into her trousers. She was not stopping him. He did not know that
he would replay that sensation in his hands and in his head a thousand times before
the week was out.

This is Weekend Edition. The headlines this morning.
There could be help for homeowners after the Fed’s quarter point rise in
interest rates; the governor of Florida declares parts of the panhandle a
disaster area thanks to Tropical Storm Alfred; and scandal, British style.
First, this news …

It was eight am and Will was barely conscious. They had
not fallen asleep till well past three. Eyes still shut, he now Wretched an arm
to where his wife should be. As he expected, no Beth. She was already off: one
Saturday in four she held ‘a weekend clinic and this was that Saturday.
The woman’s stamina astounded him. And, he knew, the children and their parents
would have no idea the psychiatrist treating them was operating on a quarter
cylinder. When she was with them, she was at full strength.

Will hauled himself out of bed and headed for the breakfast table. He did
not want to eat; he wanted to see the paper. Beth had left a note —
Well
done, honey. Big day today, let’s have a good night tonight
— and
also the Metro section folded open at the right page. B3.
Could be worse
,
thought Will. ‘Brownsville slaying linked to prostitution’, ran the
headline over less than a dozen paragraphs. And, in between, was his by-line.
He had had to make a decision when he first got into journalism; in fact, he
had made it back at Oxford, writing for
Cherwell
, the student paper.
Should he be William Monroe Jr or plain Will Monroe? Pride told him he should
be his own man, and that meant having his own name: Will Monroe.

He glanced at the front page of the Metro section and then the main paper to
see who among his new colleagues — and therefore rivals — was
prospering. He clocked the names and made for the shower.

An idea began to take shape in Will’s head, one that grew and became
more solid as he got dressed and headed out, past the young couples pushing
three-wheeler strollers or taking their time over a cafe breakfast on Court
Street. Cobble Hill was packed with people like him and Beth: twenty- and
thirtysomething professionals, transforming what was once a down-at-heel
Brooklyn neighbourhood into a little patch of yuppie heaven. As Will made for
the Bergen Street subway station, he felt conscious that he was walking faster
than everyone else. This was a working weekend for him, too.

Once at the office, he wasted no time and went straight to Harden, who was
turning the pages of the
New York Post
with a speed that conveyed
derision.

‘Glenn, how about “Anatomy of a Killing: the real life of a
crime statistic”?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘You know, “Howard Macrae might seem like just another brief on
the inside pages, another New York murder victim.

But what Was he like? What had his life been about? Why was he killed?”‘

Harden stopped flicking through the
Post
and looked up. ‘Will,
I’m a suburban guy in South Orange whose biggest worry is getting my two
daughters to school in the morning.’ This was not hypothetical; this was
true. ‘Why do I care about some dead pimp in Brownsville?’

‘You’re right. He’s just some name on a police list. But don’t
you think our readers want to know what really happens when someone gets
murdered in this city?’

He could see Harden was undecided. He was short on reporters: it was the
Jewish New Year, which meant the
Times
newsroom was badly depleted, even
by weekend standards.

The paper had a large Jewish staff and now most of them were off work to
mark the religious holiday. But neither did he want to admit that he had become
so tired, even murder no longer interested him.

‘Tell you what. Make a few calls, go down there. See what you get. If
it makes something, we can talk about it.’

Will asked the cab driver to hang around. He needed to be
mobile for the next few hours and that meant having a car on stand-by. If he
was honest, it also made him feel safer to have the reassuring bulk of a car
close at hand. On these streets, he did not want to be completely alone.

Within minutes he was wondering if it had been worth the trip. Officer
Federico Penelas, the first policeman on the scene, was a reluctant
interviewee, offering only one-word Answers.

‘Was there a commotion when you got down here?’

‘Nah-uh.’

‘Who was here?’

‘Just one or two folks. The lady who made the call.’

‘Did you talk to her at all?’

‘Just took down the details of what she’d seen, when she’d
seen it. Thanked her for calling the New York Police Department.’ The
consultants’ script again.

‘And is it your job to lay that blanket on the victim?’

For the first time, Penelas smiled. The expression was one of mockery rather
than warmth. You know nothing. ‘That wasn’t a police blanket.
Police use zip-up body bags. That blanket was already on him when I got here.’

‘Who laid it out?’

‘Dunno. Reckon it was whoever found the dead guy. Mark of respect or
something. Same way they closed the victim’s eyes. People do that: they’ve
seen it in the movies.’

Penelas refused to identify the woman who had discovered the corpse, but in
a follow-up phone call the DCPI was more forthcoming — on background, of
course. At last Will had a name: now he could get stuck in.

He had to walk through the projects to find her. A sixfoot-two Upper East
Side guy in chinos and blue linen jacket with an English accent, he felt
ridiculous and intensely white as he moved through this poor, black
neighbourhood. The buildings were not entirely derelict but they were in bad shape.
Graffiti, stairwells that smelled of piss, and plenty of broken windows. He
would have to buttonhole whoever was out of doors and hope they would talk.

He made an instant rule: stick to the women. He knew this was a cowardly
impulse but, he assured himself, that was nothing to be ashamed of. He had once
read some garlanded foreign correspondent saying the best war reporters were
the cowards: the brave ones were reckless and ended up dead.

This was not exactly the Middle East, but a kind of war whether over drugs
or gangs or race — raged on these streets all the same.

The first woman he spoke to was blank, so was the next.

The third had heard the name but could not place where.

She recommended someone else until one neighbour was calling out to another
and eventually Will was facing the woman who had found Howard Macrae.

African-American and in her mid-fifties, her name was Rosa. Will guessed she
was a churchgoer, one of those black women who stop communities like this one
from going under.

She agreed to walk with him to the scene of the crime.

‘Well, I had been at the store, picking up some bread and a soda, I
think, when I noticed what I thought was a big lump on the sidewalk. I remember
I was annoyed: I thought someone had dumped some furniture on the street again.

But as I got closer, I realized this was not a sofa. Uh-uh. It was low down
and kind of bumpy.’

‘You realized it was a body?’

‘Only when I was right up close. until then, it just looked like, you
know … a shape.’

‘It was dark.’

‘Yeah, pretty dark and pretty late. Anyway, when I was standing over
it, I thought. That ain’t a sofa, that ain’t a chair.

That’s a body under that blanket.’

‘Sorry, I’m asking you to go back to what you saw right at the
beginning. Before the blanket was laid on the corpse.’

‘That is what I’m describing. What I saw was a dark blanket with
the shape of a dead man underneath.’

‘The blanket was already there? So you were not the first to find him.’
Damn.

‘No, I was the first to find him. I was the one who called the police.
Nobody else did. It was the first they’d heard of it.’

‘But the body was already covered?’

That’s right.’

‘The police seem to think it was you who laid down the blanket, Rosa.’

‘Well, they’re wrong. Where would I get a blanket from in the
middle of the night? Or do you think black folks carry blankets around with
them just in case? I know things are pretty bad round here, but they’re
not that bad.’ None of this was said with bitterness.

‘Right.’ Will paused, uncertain where to go next. ‘So who
did leave that blanket on him?’

‘I’m telling you the same thing I told that police officer.

That’s the way I found him. Nice blanket, too. Kind of soft.

Maybe cashmere. Something classy, anyway.’

‘Sorry to go back to this, but is there any chance at all you were not
the first there?’

‘I can’t see how. I’m sure the police told you. When I
lifted that blanket, I saw a body that was still warm. Wasn’t even a body
at that time. It was still a man. You know what I’m saying? He was still
warm. Like it just happened. The blood was still coming out. Kind of burbling,
like water leaking from a pipe. Terrible, just terrible. And you know the
strangest thing? His eyes were closed, as if someone had shut them.’

‘Don’t tell me that wasn’t you.’

It wasn’t me. Never said it was.’

‘Who do you think did that — closed his eyes, I mean?’

‘You’ll probably think I’m crazy, what with the way they knifed
that poor man to death, but it was kinda like … No, you’ll think I’m
crazy.’

‘Please go on. I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Go on.’

Will was stooping now, an instinctive gesture. Being tall was usually a
plus: he could intimidate. But right now he did not want to tower over this
woman. He wanted to make her feel comfortable. He bent his shoulders lower, so
that he could meet her eyes without forcing her to look up. ‘Go on.’

‘I know that man was murdered in a horrible way. But his body looked
as if it had been somehow, you know, laid to rest.’

Will said nothing, just sucked the top of his pen.

‘You see, I told you. You think I’m crazy. Maybe I am!’

Will thanked the woman and carried on through the projects.

He only had to walk a few blocks to get into real sleaze country. The
boarded-up tenements he knew served as crack houses; the shifty looks of young
men palming off brown parcels to each other while looking the other way. These
were the people to ask about Howard Macrae.

Will had ditched his jacket by now — a necessary move on this bright
September day — but he was still encountering major resistance. His face
was too white, his accent too different. Most assumed he was a plain-clothes
cop, drugs squad probably. For those who spotted it, the car following a few
blocks behind hardly helped. Most people started walking the moment they saw
his notebook.