I Am God

by Giorgio Faletti

  ‘I mean it. Promise me.’

  ‘Don’t talk crap. And get out of my kitchen. I left clean towels for you in the bathroom.’

  Russell saved what he had written and went to get clean clothes from his bag. He slipped into the bathroom, where he found a pile of towels placed on a cabinet next to the washbasin.

  It was only a detail, a trifle. But it made him feel at home all the same.

  He stepped into the shower and let the water and foam wash away all the fatigue. After the business with Ziggy and then the explosion, he had felt truly alone for the first time in his life, totally inadequate to the burden that had been placed on him.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Vivien was sitting in front of the laptop. She had opened the document named for her and was reading what Russell had written.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Vivien continued reading, without even turning her head, as if it was quite natural for her to open someone else’s computer. ‘What I should be doing as a police officer. Investigating.’

  Russell protested, without a great deal of conviction. ‘This is a flagrant violation of privacy and press freedom.’

  ‘If you don’t want me to stick my nose in, then don’t give my name to a file.’

  When she finished reading, she stood up and, without making any comment, walked to the kitchen counter. Russell noticed there was a saucepan on the boil, and a frying pan of red sauce next to it. Vivien increased the volume of the extractor fan, then pointed to the water, which was starting to boil.

  ‘Penne all’arrabbiata. Or spaghetti, whichever you prefer.’

  Russell looked surprised.

  ‘I’m Italian,’ she said. ‘I know how to make it. You can trust me.’

  ‘Of course I trust you. I just wonder how you managed to rustle together a sauce in such a short time.’

  Vivien threw the pasta in the saucepan and put the lid over it, to keep the steam in. ‘Is this your first visit to earth? Aren’t there freezers and microwaves on your planet?’

  ‘On my planet we never eat at home.’

  Russell approached Vivien, who was on the other side of the counter. He sat down on a stool and looked curiously at the frying pan.

  ‘Actually, I’ve always been fascinated by people who can cook. I once tried boiling some eggs and managed to burn them.’

  Vivien was still concentrating on the pasta and the sauce, undistracted by Russell’s little joke. ‘I keep asking myself who you really are,’ she said.

  Russell shrugged. ‘An ordinary guy. I don’t have any particular qualities. I’ve had to make do with particular defects.’

  ‘You do have one quality. I read what you wrote. It’s beautiful. Convincing. It reaches out to the reader.’

  This time it was Russell’s turn to be pleased with the compliment and not let it show. ‘Really? It’s the first time I’ve done it.

  ‘Really. And if you want to know what I think, then I’d add one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you hadn’t spent your life trying to be Robert Wade, you might have discovered that his brother could be just as interesting.’

  Russell felt something stir inside him, something he couldn’t give a name.

  All he knew was that there was one thing he wanted to do. And he did it.

  He walked around to the other side of the counter, took Vivien’s face in his hands and gently kissed her on the lips. For a moment she returned the kiss but then immediately put a hand on his chest and pushed him back.

  Russell noticed that her breath was coming faster.

  ‘Hey, calm down,’ she said. ‘This wasn’t what I intended when I invited you here.’

  She turned, as if to erase what had just happened. For a few moments she occupied herself with the pasta, leaving Russell a view of her back and the smell of her hair. Then she murmured a few words, under her breath.

  ‘Or maybe it was. I don’t even know myself. The one thing I know is that I don’t want complications.’

  ‘Neither do I. But if they’re the price to pay to have you, I accept them gladly.’

  After a moment, Vivien turned off the hob and put her arms around his neck. ‘Then to hell with the pasta.’

  She raised her head and this time the kiss wasn’t accompanied by hands pushing him away. Her body against his was exactly the way Russell had imagined it would be. Strong and soft, immature and ripe. As he moved his hand under her sweater and found her skin, he asked himself why here, why now, why her, why not before. Vivien continued kissing him as, with eyes closed, she drew him to the bedroom. The semi-darkness welcomed them, convincing them that this was the right place for them.

  As he lost himself inside her, as he forgot names and people, Russell wasn’t sure if Vivien was the light before the dawn or a glow after sundown.

  He knew only that she was like her name. Light, period.

  Afterwards, they lay clinging together as if the skin of one was the natural clothing of the other. Russell felt himself slipping into the warmth of sleep and immediately shook himself, for fear of losing her. He realized that he must have fallen asleep for a few minutes. He reached out his hand and found the bed empty.

  Vivien had gone to the window. He saw her against the light that filtered through the curtains, accepting the glow that came from outside in return for the prospect that her body offered him.

  He got up and went to her. He embraced her from behind, feeling her lean body against his. She moved closer in to him, naturally, as if this was meant to be.

  Russell put his lips on her neck and breathed in the scent of her skin, the skin of a woman after making love. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here. There. Everywhere.’ With a vague gesture, Vivien indicated the river beyond the window and the whole world.

  ‘And am I with you?’

  ‘I think you always have been.’

  She added nothing, because there was nothing to add.

  Beyond the window, the river flowed calmly. They were still standing there, looking out, exchanging the consolation of presence and fragments of regret, when all at once a blinding light appeared on the horizon and filled the spaces between the buildings opposite, imprinting them in the frame of the window like a photographic negative.

  A few moments later, they heard the obscene, arrogant roar of an explosion.

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘We’re in deep shit.’

  Captain Alan Bellew threw down the New York Times, adding it to the other dailies that already lay strewn over the desk. After the previous night’s explosion, all the newspapers had produced special editions. They were full of theories, conjectures, suggestions. All of them were asking what the police were doing to ensure the safety of the citizens. The television channels could talk about nothing else, pushing all other world events into the background. All eyes were on New York. Correspondents were arriving from all over the world, as if America was in a state of war.

  The latest explosion had occurred after nightfall on the banks of the Hudson, in Hell’s Kitchen in a warehouse on Twelfth Avenue, near the corner with 46th Street, right next to the Sea-Air-Space Museum, where the aircraft carrier Intrepid was on display. The building had disintegrated. Fragments had hit the moored ship and damaged the planes and helicopters displayed on the bridge, like a tragic echo of the wars they had fought. The window panes in the neighbouring buildings had been shattered by the blast. An elderly man had died of a heart attack. The street had partly slid into the Hudson. For a long time, burning fragments had floated on the water. It had been a desolate scene. Only the late hour had prevented another major massacre. The death toll amounted to no more than twenty, plus an unspecified number of wounded, none of them seriously. A group of night birds, whose only fault was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, had been blown apart and their remains strewn over the asphalt. No trace had been found of the warehouse’s night watchman. Some passing cars had been struck by the explosion and flung away as tangles of
crumpled metal. Others had not braked in time and had ended up in the river together with the detritus of the street. The passengers had all died. The firefighters had fought for a long time to bring the blaze under control and the crime scene team had started their investigations as soon as the place had become accessible.

  They were expecting the results at any moment.

  After a sleepless night, Russell and Vivien were in the captain’s office, sharing his feelings of frustration, his inability to defeat the man who was defying them in this way.

  One invisible man.

  Bellew finally stopped pacing about the room and sat down, although that didn’t make him any less restless.

  ‘There’s been a lot of phoning going on. The president, the governor, the mayor. Anyone with any authority in this country has grabbed the phone and called someone else. Who then called the commissioner. Who of course called me straight afterwards.’

  Russell and Vivien waited in silence for him to finish.

  ‘Willard feels as if he’s sinking, and he’s dragging me down with him. He feels guilty for being too cautious.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  Bellew made a gesture that seemed to say that the answer was obvious and at the same time far from obvious. ‘I told him two things. One, that we don’t know for certain that we’re pursuing the right lead. Two, that the more people who know about this the more likely it is that the news will get out. If it reached the ears of Al-Qaeda, we’d have a real disaster on our hands. We’d have a ruthless competitor searching for that list. Think what a field day they’d have if they found it. The city already mined, just waiting to be blown up. If it was common knowledge, New York would be a desert in the space of three hours. You can just imagine it. Clogged highways, fighting, people dispersed all over the fucking map.’

  Vivien could well imagine the picture the captain had conjured up. ‘What are the FBI and NSA saying?’ she asked.

  The captain rested his elbows on the table. ‘Not much. You know how close to their chests those people like to keep things. Apparently they’re still pursuing the terrorism angle. Which means there’s not too much pressure coming from over there. Not for the moment, anyway. That’s one good thing, I guess.’

  Russell had been lost in thought throughout the conversation between Vivien and Bellew. Now he intervened.

  ‘The only thing linking us to the person who set the bombs is Mitch Sparrow. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no doubt he was the guy in the wall. Nor is there any doubt that the document holder with the photographs isn’t his, which makes it likely that it was accidentally left behind by whoever stuck the poor guy in the concrete. So the two photographs, the one with the cat and the one taken in Vietnam, have to show his killer. What I think happened is that Sparrow discovered what he was doing, and the man killed him to stop him talking.’

  The captain thought this over. ‘So they were co-workers.’

  ‘Whether continuously or occasionally, I don’t know. One thing’s for sure. That they were working in the same place when Sparrow disappeared.’

  Russell took another moment to think, as if putting his ideas in order. Vivien was fascinated by his degree of concentration.

  ‘The person we’re looking for is clearly the son of the man who planted the bombs. The father was a Vietnam veteran, who came back with huge psychological wounds. Many soldiers were transformed by the war. Some never lost the taste for killing, even when they got back to civilian life. My brother saw this many times.’

  Vivien heard the ghost of Robert Wade in Russell’s voice, but without any sense of anxiety. She looked at him and saw a face she knew looking out at the world with different eyes. She felt her heart swell for a moment before thoughts of the immediate problems facing them gained the upper hand.

  Russell had not noticed a thing. Clearly and rationally, he continued, ‘Unfortunately, if whoever wrote the letter and planted the bombs had mental problems, his son seems to have inherited them tenfold. I get the impression from that letter that he never knew his father, and only found out about him after his death. I wonder why.’

  Russell paused, leaving that crucial question hanging.

  As if granting them a pause for thought, the telephone on the desk started ringing. The captain reached out his hand and lifted the receiver to his ear.

  ‘Bellew.’

  He listened in silence to whatever the person at the other end was telling him. Vivien and Russell saw his jaw gradually clench. When he hung up, it was clear from the expression on his face that he would have liked to smash the telephone.

  ‘It was the head of the explosives team that’s been examining the debris on the Hudson.’

  He paused, then said what they were all expecting to hear.

  ‘It’s him again. Same explosive, same kind of primer.’

  Russell stood up, as if he needed to move after that confirmation.

  ‘Something just occurred to me. I’m no expert, but for this man to have decided to carry out what his father had planned, he has to be a sociopath or something like that, with all that that implies.’

  He turned to look at Vivien and Bellew.

  ‘I’ve read that people like that usually develop compulsive patterns of behaviour. The first blast took place on Saturday evening. The second between Monday and Tuesday. Nearly two days later. If that madman has fixed that in his mind as the interval between one explosion and the other, we should have two more days to catch him before he decides to act again. I don’t even want to think …’

  He left the sentence hanging. Then he concluded it, expressing in his tone all the gravity of the situation.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about what would happen if another explosion took place. Maybe in a building where thousands of men and women work.’

  He had saved the worst hypothesis until last.

  ‘Not to mention that he might even decide to blow up all the buildings on the same day.’

  Vivien saw the captain looking at Russell as if, in spite of everything, he was still wondering who this guy was and what he was doing in his office. A civilian discussing with them facts that according to the rules should have been confined to the police. The situation that had been created was absurd but had its own warped logic. The three of them were linked by a secret that must not be divulged at any cost, that it was in nobody’s interest to divulge.

  Bellew stood up and leaned with his clenched fists on the desk. ‘We urgently need a name to put with those photographs. We can’t publish them with the words Who knows this man? If he saw that, the son might realize we’re on to him, panic and start to blow up the buildings one after the other.’

  Vivien realized that they were referring to these two unknown people as the father and the son. Absurdly, memories of her childhood welled up to underline the tragic irony of the situation.

  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit …

  The image of herself, still a child, in a church with the scent of incense around her was erased by other images: buildings in flames and bodies being put in ambulances.

  There was a knock at the door. Detective Tyler entered the office holding a file. His stubbled chin and generally dishevelled appearance indicated a sleepless night. When he saw Russell, a grimace of disapproval crossed his face for a moment.

  Ignoring Russell and Vivien, he said, ‘Captain, I have the results you wanted.’

  His tone was that of someone who had done hard, boring work and knew that it wouldn’t be recognized. The captain reached out his hand, took the file and looked through it quickly.

  He spoke without raising his eyes from the paper. ‘OK, Tyler. You can go.’

  The detective went out, leaving a trace of stale cigarettes and surliness in the room. Bellew waited for him to move away from the door, before informing Vivien and Russell of what he had just read.

  ‘I put a couple of three-man teams on it. Telling them as little as I could. This is what he have
.’

  He turned his attention back to the papers in his hands.

  ‘The house that blew up on Long Island belonged to an ex-soldier, a Major Mistnick. Apparently he served in Vietnam. That may not mean anything, but it’s curious all the same. The firm that built it was indeed a small company in Brooklyn, Newborn Brothers. The company responsible for the building on the Lower East Side on the other hand is called Pike’s Peak Buildings. And here we’ve had a real stroke of luck. Some time ago, the management hired an IT company to put all its data on computer. That means we can look at everything, even from years ago.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ Vivien said.

  ‘There’s more.’ There was no joy in the captain’s voice. ‘We need to look at the company that fixed up Twelfth Avenue and built the warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, the one that blew up last night. It was a municipal contract, so the company must have used union labour, which means the data should still be available. We’ll proceed in the same way with the company that renovated the building on 23rd Street, where the body was found. If we can get hold of the names of the people who worked on those four sites, we can compare them and see if any coincide.’

  Bellew passed his hand through his hair, maybe thinking that he was too old for his professional expertise to be put to the test like this.

  ‘It’s not much of a lead but it’s all we’ve got. I’ll ask the commissioner for backup, and put as many men to work on this as I can. I’ll tell them it’s a Code RFL.’

  Russell frowned. ‘Code RFL?’

  Vivien intervened with an explanation. ‘It’s a code that doesn’t exist but every police officer in New York knows. RFL stands for Run for Life. In police jargon it means those cases where speed is of the essence.’

  She looked back at her chief.

  ‘I want you to talk to Newborn Brothers. If it was a small company, with not many workers, the direct contact may be more productive. Someone may remember something. While you’re on your way down, I’ll ask the switchboard to get the number. You can pick it up from the desk officers.’