‘Let’s go.’
Russell understood that she had received some upsetting news. Anyone would have understood that. Obeying her curt voice, he got up from the bench, threw the tray in the garbage and followed her in silence to the car.
Vivien was grateful to him for that.
They went back to the precinct house the same way they had come, using the flashing light and the siren to get through the traffic.
They reached their destination without exchanging a word. The whole time, Vivien had driven as if the fate of the world depended on the speed with which they returned to base. She had barely seen the cars they passed – she had seen only her sister’s face.
As she loosened her belt, Vivian wondered if her sister was still alive right now. She raised her face and looked at Russell. She realized that for the whole of the journey she had forgotten he was even there.
‘I’m sorry. Today’s not a very good day for me.’
‘No problem. Tell me if I can help in any way.’
Of course you can help me. You could take me in your arms and let me be an ordinary girl crying on someone’s shoulders and …
She erased the thought. ‘Thanks. It’s over now.’
They got out of the car, entered the precinct house and went straight upstairs to the captain’s office. By now, the presence of Russell was taken as an established fact, even though it might not have been accepted by everyone. Without supplying too many details, the captain had told his men that he was someone who had information about a particular investigation and was collaborating with Vivien on it. Vivien knew her colleagues weren’t stupid and that sooner or later one or other of them would suspect something. But for the moment, whatever surliness they encountered, they just had to pretend everything was all right until the case was solved.
When he saw them come in, the captain looked up from the papers he was signing. ‘Well?’
‘We may have a lead.’
Bellew immediately closed the file he had in front of him. Russell and Vivien sat down in front of his desk. Briefly, Vivien told him about Mr Newborn and the Phantom of the Site, a man with a disfigured face who’d been suspiciously eager to work on Major Mistnick’s house. She told him how perfectly the house had imploded and how carefully the charges must have been positioned to obtain such a result.
The captain leaned back in his chair. ‘Thinking about the letter, and how precise these recent explosions were, then yes, it could be the right person.’
‘That’s what we think, too.’
‘Now we just have to check if he worked on other sites, and find out his name. How we do that, and how long it’ll take, I don’t know. One useful thing we could do in the meantime is find out more about this major. We need to contact the army. Bowman and Salinas have just called me from Pike’s Peak. They have the material we’re looking for. I think they’ll be here soon. Nothing yet from the other men I sent out.’
The telephone on the desk starting ringing. Vivien saw from the light on the front of the apparatus that the call came from the lobby. The captain reached out his hand and lifted the receiver to his ear. ‘What is it?’
He listened for a moment, then allowed himself an angry outburst. ‘Christ almighty, I told them to come to me as soon as they got back. Now they’re suddenly concerned with etiquette and don’t ask for me? Send them up, and fast.’
The telephone returned to its natural home with a little more force than necessary. The light went off.
‘Fucking assholes!’
Vivien was surprised by this flare-up. Bellew was usually a restrained person, who tended to stay deadpan under pressure. Everyone in the precinct had had at least once to bear the brunt of his calm, cold voice, which made the dressing down they were receiving all the more effective. An outburst such as this wasn’t like him. Then she told herself that in these circumstances, with the burden of all those deaths and the prospect of other deaths to come, it would become increasingly difficult to say what was like him or anyone else.
Preceded by footsteps on the stairs, the outlines of two officers appeared on the frosted glass of the door. In a loud voice, and not without a touch of sarcasm, Bellew said, ‘Come in!’ before either of them had had time to knock.
Officers Bowman and Salinas entered, looking grim faced, each carrying a large, heavy cardboard box. The desk sergeant had clearly conveyed the captain’s words to them.
Bellew pointed to the floor next to the desk. ‘Put them down over here.’
As soon as the boxes were on the ground and Vivien was able to look inside, she felt a distinct sense of discouragement. They were full of printouts. If the employee lists from the other companies were as voluminous as these, it would take a very long time to look through them. She glanced up at Russell and realized that he was thinking the same thing.
The captain, still bent over and looking inside the boxes, expressed everybody’s thoughts. ‘This is like the fucking Encyclopaedia Britannica.’
Officer Bowman tried to rehabilitate himself and his colleague in his chief’s eyes by placing a thin square of black plastic on the desk. ‘We also had a CD made with all the data.’
‘Great work, boys. You can go.’
Freed by the captain’s words, the two officers headed for the door. Vivien could sense how curious they were about all this research they’d been asked to do without knowing the reason why. In fact, there was a general curiosity in the air. She was sure that by now everyone had figured out that it was connected with the two explosions that had taken place in the space of three days.
Russell was the first to express his anxieties. ‘If we want to be quick, we’re going to need a lot of men for this.’
If the captain had been overwhelmed with the same discouragement for a moment, he had already got over it. His voice was positive and determined as he came out with the only possible reply.
‘I know. But we can’t afford to fail. I can’t do anything for now, until the other data gets here. But we’ll have to get it done, even if it means putting every police officer in New York on the job.’
Vivien went to one of the boxes, and took out a file. She sat down again and placed it on her lap. There was a long list of names, in alphabetical order, on the white and blue lines of the pages. To get rid of the sense of stagnation that everyone was feeling she started running through the names.
The endless series of letters became almost hypnotic as her eye slid down the page.
A
Achieson, Hank
Ameliano, Rodrigo
Anderson, William
Andretti, Paul
and then all the rest down to the next page
B
Barth, Elmore
Bassett, James
Bellenore, Elvis
Bennett, Roger
and then more names and another page
C
Castro, Nicholas
Cheever, Andreas
Corbett, Nelson
Cortese, Jeremy
Crow …
Vivien stopped abruptly. The name had jumped out at her, reminding her of a face smiling with contentment after she had treated poor Elisabeth Brokens like dirt. She leaped to her feet, dropping the papers on the floor.
Russell and Bellew looked on in surprise as she rushed to the door, crying out just two words.
‘Wait here.’
She descended the stairs as fast as she could without breaking her neck. There was a rush of adrenaline inside her. After so many ifs and maybes, so many I can’t remembers, at last a small stroke of luck. By the time she reached the lobby, she was praying that this didn’t turn out to be another illusion.
On the steps she stopped and looked around her for a moment.
A car with two officers was reversing out of the parking lot next to the entrance. Vivien waved to them and ran down the short flight of steps. She reached the car, and saw the reflection of the sky disappear from the side window as the officer lowered it.
‘I
need a ride to 23rd and Third.’
‘Get in.’
She opened the back door and sat down in a seat usually reserved for arrested people. But she was in too much of a hurry to register that.
‘Use the siren.’
Without asking for explanations, the driver switched on the flashing light and pulled out quickly, with a slight screech of tyres. She was so impatient to arrive that the journey seemed very long, even though it was only three blocks. When she saw the orange plastic barriers around the site, she relived the discovery of the body of Mitch Sparrow, which at first had seemed to be yet another case to be filed away in the records, but which had in fact given a whole new direction to this crazy business, and might even help to bring it to a conclusion. The madness of chance, as well as of human beings, was turning out to be the one thing connecting all the threads of this case.
The car had not yet come to a compete halt when Vivien opened the door and jumped out.
‘Thanks, boys. I owe you one.’
She didn’t hear the reply, didn’t hear the car drive off. She had already approached a worker who had just come out of the gap in the perimeter fence and took him aback with the urgency of her request.
‘Where can I find Mr Cortese?’
The man indicated a point beyond the fence. ‘He’s right behind me.’
After a moment, the figure of Jeremy Cortese appeared. He was wearing the same jacket as on the day they had first met. When he saw her coming towards him, he recognized her immediately. Difficult to forget someone who reminds you of the discovery of a corpse!
‘Hello, Miss Light.’
‘Mr Cortese, I need to ask you a few questions.’
Surprised, but realizing there was no way out, he said, ‘Go ahead.’
Vivien drew Cortese aside. The place where they were standing, between the fence and the barriers, was used by the workers and she didn’t want them to be disturbed, or for them to disturb her. She took up a position facing Cortese and spoke as clearly as possible, as if she and the man were speaking two different languages.
‘I need you to dig deep into your memory. I know it’s been a long time, but your answer’s important. Very important.’
He nodded to confirm that he had understood, and waited in silence for the question.
‘I know you worked for the company that constructed the building on the Lower East Side, the one that was blown up last Saturday.’
A hint of fear and alarm appeared in his eyes, as if she had just told him that the police were investigating him personally. His shoulders drooped a little and when he spoke, there was a distinct unease in his voice. ‘Before we go on, I’d like to ask you a question. Do I need a lawyer?’
Vivien tried to put him at his ease. ‘No, Mr Cortese,’ she said, as reassuringly as possible, ‘you don’t need a lawyer. I know perfectly well you had nothing to do with that. There are just a few things I need to know about.’
‘Go on.’
‘Among the men who worked with you on that building, do you remember if there was one with a heavily scarred face?’
The answer came without hesitation. ‘Yes.’
Vivien’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Are you sure?’
Now that his fears had been calmed, Cortese seemed reassured by the turn taken by the interview, and was eager to reply. ‘He wasn’t in my team but I do remember seeing the guy a few times. With a face like that, you couldn’t exactly miss him.’
Vivien’s heart was standing still in her chest. ‘Do you remember his name?’
‘No. I never even spoke to him.’
The disappointment Vivien felt at this lasted only a brief moment before it was wiped out by a new thought that suddenly occurred to her.
‘God bless you, Mr Cortese. God bless you a thousand times. You have no idea how helpful you’ve been. You can go back to work now, and don’t worry.’
The briefest of handshakes, and Vivien had already turned her back on him, leaving him standing there on the sidewalk, surprised and relieved. She took out her cellphone and dialled the captain’s number.
She didn’t even give him time to say his name. ‘Alan, it’s Vivien.’
‘What’s going on? Where the hell are you?’
‘You can call off the men. We won’t need to search through those names any more.’
She waited a moment, to give Bellew time to prepare for what she was about to ask him.
‘You need to send officers to the oncology departments of every hospital in New York to check if they had any patient with a strongly disfigured face who died in the last year and a half.’
Now that the cancer has done its work and I’m on the other side …
Bellew, like the others, knew that letter by heart by now. Vivien’s excitement immediately became his.
‘Great work, Vivien. I’ll put the men on it right away. We’re waiting for you here.’
Vivien folded the cellphone and put it back in her pocket. As she walked briskly back to the precinct, surrounded by the crowd, she would have given anything to be just a normal person. Instead of which, every person she passed aroused the anxious question of whether this was one she would lose or one she would save. For them, too, there was still hope. Maybe the man who had left a trail of bombs behind him, like a trail of stones in a tragic fairy tale, had, at the time of death, also left behind him a name and an address.
CHAPTER 27
Father McKean reluctantly made his way through the crowd thronging the Boathouse Café. His face bore clear traces of his sleepless night, spent in front of the television absorbing the images on the screen with all the avidity of a thirsty man and at the same time dismissing them from his mind as too horrible to contemplate.
I am God …
Those words continued to echo in his head, like a ghastly soundtrack to the visions his memory continued to play back to him. The destroyed cars, the damaged buildings, the fires, the wounded and bloodstained people. An arm, torn from a body by the violence of the blast, lying on the sidewalk, pitilessly framed by the TV cameras.
He took a deep breath.
He had prayed for a long time, asking for comfort and enlightenment where he usually found it. Faith had always been his consolation, his point of departure and point of arrival, whatever the nature of the journey. It was because of faith that his adventure with the community had begun, and thanks to the results he had achieved with many kids he had allowed himself to dream. Other Joys, other houses spread all over the state, in which young people attracted by drugs would be able to stop feeling like moths drawn to a flame. After a certain point, the kids themselves had been his strength.
But this morning he had wandered among them trying to hide his pain, smiling when he was asked to smile and replying when he was asked to reply. But as soon as he was alone it all crashed down on top of him, like objects falling out after being crammed into a closet.
For the first time in his life as a priest, he didn’t know what to do.
He had found himself in that situation before, when he still lived in the world, before realizing that what he wanted to do in his life was to serve God and his fellow man, and he had resolved his doubts and anxieties then by entering the peace of the seminary. This time it was different. He had called Cardinal Logan without a great deal of hope. If he had been in New York, he would have met with him more for moral support than to obtain an authorization he knew would never come. Not in the time or the circumstances that would be needed. He knew perfectly well the iron rules that governed that aspect of the relationship with the faithful. It was one of the fixed points of their creed, guaranteeing as it did that anyone could approach the sacrament of confession with a free heart and without fear and receive absolution in return for repentance. In his capacity as a minister, the Church condemned him to silence – and simultaneously condemned hundreds more people to death, if those attacks continued.
‘So you’re the famous Father McKean, the founder of Joy.’
He turn
ed in the direction of the voice and found himself facing a tall woman in her forties, with dark, impeccably groomed hair. She was too heavily made-up, too elegant, probably too rich. She was holding two glasses full of what must have been champagne.
The woman did not wait for his answer. Anyway, it hadn’t been a question, but a statement of fact.
‘They told me what a charismatic and fascinating man you are. And they were right.’
She held out one of the two glasses. Taken aback by these words, Father McKean took it instinctively. He had had the impression that, if he hadn’t, the woman would have let go and it would have fallen on the ground.
‘My name’s Sandhal Bones and I’m one of the organizers of the exhibition.’
The woman shook the hand he held out and kept it in hers a moment longer than necessary. Father McKean added embarrassment to all the emotions already churning inside him. He looked away from her and saw little bubbles rising vivaciously to the surface of the flute.
‘So you’re one of our benefactors.’
Mrs Bones tried, without too much success, to downplay her role. ‘Benefactor is pitching it a little high. Let’s say I like to give a hand where it’s needed.’
Father McKean, although with no desire to drink, lifted the glass to his lips and took a small sip. ‘It’s thanks to people like you that Joy continues to thrive.’
‘It’s thanks to people like you that it exists at all,’ she replied, taking him by the arm.
He smelled a delicate and doubtless highly expensive perfume, and heard the swish of her dress.
‘And now let’s go and see the work of your protégés. I’ve heard great things about them.’
Making her way nonchalantly through the crowd, Mrs Bones moved to the other side of the balcony overlooking the little lake.
The Boathouse Café was an elegant venue in the middle of Central Park, joined to the rest of the city by East Drive. A single-storey building, its facade consisted of wide windows that allowed the customers a view of the water and the greenery as they dined. When the weather was fine, tables were put out on the terrace that ran all the way alongside it, and visitors could eat in the open air.