by Sam Bourne
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.
But Beth was not quite like that. For one thing, she seemed to need it less than Will. For him, an ev
ent 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.
CHAPTER FOUR
Brooklyn, Saturday, 8am
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.’
