by Simon Toyne
He also had another agenda, not quite as strong as his instinct for survival, but strong nonetheless. It involved the man who had put the bullet in his leg and forced him to leave his cousin lying dead in the road. He’d never been particularly close to Serko, but he was family. He figured if these guys found the girl then maybe they’d find the guy who killed him as well. He really hoped he’d try and get in their way.
The hourglass icon had disappeared from the screen and in its place was a dialogue box listing a name and address. He watched Cornelius copy the information into a text message.
‘The guy says he saw someone about five minutes ago sounds like our girl.’ The policeman leaned in through the open window, chewing his last mouthful of bread. Kutlar recoiled at the garlic on his breath. ‘Says he thinks maybe she hopped in a cab.’
Cornelius pressed send. Waited for it to go.
‘Listen,’ Sulleiman said, ‘if she’s mobile she could be anywhere by now. I mean, you’ll pick her up again as soon as she switches her phone back on. But I really need to be getting back to the station. I took a big risk to give you guys a head start. . and if I don’t get back and call the girl in missing, it’s going to get ugly.’
Cornelius waited until message sent flashed up then squinted at the traffic. Every other car was a cab. ‘Sure,’ he said finally. ‘Hop in, we’ll give you a ride.’
Sulleiman hesitated for a beat then climbed in.
Kutlar edged away from him as far as he could. The smell of garlic and sweat coming off the policeman almost made him gag.
Chapter 84
It was cold in New York, colder than Rodriguez remembered it, and he’d put on the red windcheater as soon as he shuffled off the plane with the other passengers. He was walking through the international arrivals hall when his cell phone vibrated in its pocket. He glanced at the new name and address: somewhere in Newark; residential, by the look of it.
He looked around for a newsstand or a bookstore. The old TWA Flight Centre was all curved edges and scooped, elegant lines; it looked like it had been built by giant bugs rather than bureaucrats and Teamsters. He spotted a Barnes and Noble.
The last time he had been here was six years ago. Back then he thought he was leaving his country and his old life for ever. Now here he was, back in town and back to something close to his old ways. He cleared the message and dialled a number from memory. He had no idea if it was still valid, nor even if the person he was trying to contact was dead or in jail. The phone started ringing as he walked into the bookstore, past displays of cookbooks by celebrity chefs and paperbacks with one-word titles.
‘Hello?’
The voice sounded like the rustle of dry paper. He could hear a TV turned up loud in the background; angry people shouting, other people yelling and applauding.
‘Mrs Barrow?’ He’d arrived at the shelf where they usually kept the city guides.
‘Who dat?’ The tone was guarded.
‘Name’s Guillermo,’ he said, upping his old street accent, which now tasted strange on his tongue. ‘Guillermo Rodriguez. Used to go by the name Gil. I’m an old friend of JJ’s, Mrs B. Been outta town fo’ while. Be nice to hook up with him — if ’n he’s around.’
There was a pause filled with more TV applause and whoops of encouragement. It sounded like Springer, or Ricki Lake. The type of show he’d forgotten existed.
‘Loretta’s kid!’ the woman said suddenly. ‘Used to live in that two-room walk up over on Tooley Street.’
‘Sure am, Mrs B. Loretta’s kid.’
‘Ain’t seen nothin’ o’ her in a while.’
An image flashed into his mind. Skin stretched tight over brittle bones. Tubes feeding medicine into spots on her arms where the junk used to go.
‘She died, Mrs Barrow,’ he said. ‘’Bout seven years back.’
‘Aw yeah? I’m real sorry, son. She was a nice lady, far as she went.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, knowing what she meant but letting it go all the same.
The strident voices from the TV stretched into the silence again until he began to wonder if she’d forgotten he was there.
‘Say, son, give me your number,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ll pass it on to Jason. If’n he wants to talk with ya, he’ll talk.’
Rodriguez smiled. ‘Thanks, Mrs Barrow,’ he said. ‘Really ’preciate it.’
He gave her his number and she hung up while he was in the middle of thanking her again. He grabbed an ADC street map of Newark and headed over to the till. His phone rang again as he collected his change. He thanked the cashier and went back into the concourse.
‘Gil? That you, mon?’
‘Yeah, JJ my man, it’s me.’
‘Goddamn. Gilly Rodriguez.’ A big smile lit up his voice. ‘I heard you got took by the God Squad.’
‘Nah, man. Just been outta town fo’ while. .’
He let the silence hang. In his old life being ‘outta town’ generally meant being in the pen.
‘So where you at now, man?’
‘Queens. Got a few things lined up, you know how it is. Just need to get hooked up again.’
‘Yeah?’ JJ’s tone narrowed in the same way his grandma’s had. ‘What y’all need?’
He thought of what he’d read on the flight over; first-hand accounts of heretics being purified in the flames of the Tabula Rasa. ‘You think you can line me up with something a little. . specialized?’
‘I can get you whatever you want, long as you got the money.#x2019;
Rodriguez smiled. ‘Yeah,’ he said, pushing through the exit door and into the chill of a New York morning. ‘I got money.’
Chapter 85
The brass plaque on the wall announced that the building housed the offices of Itaat Eden Kimse, translated underneath as the Ruin Observer. The cab driver turned on his hazards and Liv handed him her phone. ‘I’ll send someone right out,’ she said.
She was directed by the world’s oldest receptionist to the international desk on the first floor. As soon as she walked into the open-plan office she instantly felt at home. Every press room she’d ever been in looked exactly like this one: low suspended ceilings; nests of desks separated by half-height partitions; strip lights that kept the place lit in the same non-descript fashion, day and night. It never ceased to amaze her that all the great works of modern journalism, all the government-baiting, Pulitzer prize-winning, life-enriching material that poured on to newsstands on a daily basis was conceived in surroundings so deeply uninspiring they could just as easily be used to sell life insurance.
She scanned the bland magnificence of the office, and clocked the eager woman with dark 1940s hair marching towards her, smiling most of the way through perfect lipstick. She looked so full of bristling energy that if she’d suddenly burst into song or a tightly choreographed dance routine, Liv wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
‘Miss Adamsen?’ The woman thrust out a manicured hand like a low-flying Nazi salute.
Mesmerized, Liv nodded and held out her own hand.
‘I’m Ahla,’ the vision said, taking it, shaking it, then handing it back like a punched ticket. ‘I’m office manager.’ Her voice was surprisingly deep and guttural, quite at odds with her china-doll looks. ‘I’m just getting OK for your cash float,’ she added, turning and leading the way across the office.
‘Oh,’ Liv said, the mention of money snapping her to attention. ‘There’s a taxi downstairs holding my phone to ransom. Could someone rescue it for me? I have absolutely no cash.’
The perfect lips pursed. ‘Not a problem,’ she said, in a way that left Liv in no doubt that it was. ‘For today, you use this,’ she flourished a manicured hand in the direction of an unoccupied desk. ‘But if you need any longer, you’ll have to share. Everyone’s in town for the Citadel story. You also?’
‘Er, no,’ Liv said. ‘I’m writing a. . travel piece.’
‘Oh! OK, well here’s what you asked for. I bring cash as soon as I get someone to sign. I’ll. .
go and pay taxi.’ She swivelled on an elegant heel. ‘Oh, and your boss asked you to call him,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Dial nine for outside line.’
Liv watched her march away, all energy and purpose. In a movie she would be played by a youngish Katharine Hepburn.
She gave the borrowed desk the once-over. Took in the standard-issue beige computer and multi-line desk-phone, a cactus that was being tortured to death by over watering, and a framed photo of a man in his mid-thirties leaning over a woman who hugged a squirming three-year-old boy on her knee. The kid was a miniature version of the man. Liv wondered which of them the desk belonged to: the man, probably. He looked kind of anal. Whoever usually lived here was suspiciously tidy for a journalist.
But maybe she was just jealous.
She looked at the frozen tableau of joyous family life. Saw the blaze of emotions that shone from the photograph, binding the three people together with invisible but unbreakable bonds. It felt like flicking through the brochure of an amazing holiday destination she would probably never visit.
She pulled her eyes away from the photograph and grabbed a notebook, one of the old-fashioned pads with a big spring on the top. She flipped it open and wrote the date and her location at the top of the first page. In the normal course of things she went through so many of these things it was vital to be able to match their contents to a time and a place.
Next she drew the outline of a human body and traced from memory the pattern of scars she’d seen in the post-mortem photos. When she’d finished, she gazed at the image, each stroke a record of her brother’s suffering.
She turned the page and copied the original pairings of seed letters and symbols from her newspaper as well as every word she’d so far managed to extract from them. Studying the results, she found herself honing in repeatedly on two in particular: ‘Sam’, for obvious reasons; and ‘Ask’, because it stood out. It was one of the few verbs and it read like a command.
Her college professor had told her that all journalism boiled down to this one word. He’d said the difference between a good reporter and a bad one was simply the ability to pose the right question. He’d also told her if she ever got bogged down in a story, to ask the five ‘W’ questions and focus on the gaps.
Liv flipped to a new page and wrote down:
Who — Samuel
What — Committed suicide
When — Yesterday morning at about 8.30 local time
Where — At the Citadel, in the city of Ruin
Why -
The empty line stretched away from the final question. Why had he done it? Ordinarily she would seek out and interview anyone who had spoken to the victim in the run-up to their death, but Arkadian had said that was impossible. The Citadel spoke to no one. It was the silence at the centre of everything.
‘There,’ the office manager said, suddenly reappearing with Liv’s phone and a bulging envelope. ‘I took twenty lira to pay taxi. Receipt is inside. Sign please. .’ She held out a receipt ledger with blue carbon paper separating the pages.
Liv signed and plugged the phone charger into the wall. The screen lit up and the charging symbol appeared. ‘Say, who should I talk to round here to get some background on the Citadel?’
‘Dr Anata. But she very busy with monk story. Maybe too busy to talk about — travel piece. .’
Liv took a deep breath and forced a smile. ‘Well, why don’t you give me her number anyway?’ she said, wishing she’d picked a cover story with a bit more kudos. ‘The least I can do is give her a try.’
Chapter 86
Rodriguez watched his old life sliding past the cab window. Freshly scrubbed new builds on patches of former wasteland and sand-blasted brownstone tenements for people who couldn’t afford Manhattan, or even Brooklyn, so had to settle for the South Bronx. The closer they got to the 16th District, it all started looking more familiar. New money still hadn’t reached these parts yet, leastways not the sort that showed up on tax returns, and by the time the cab reached Hunts Point, it was like he’d never been away.
The driver pulled over on Garrison Avenue and twisted in his seat. ‘Far as I go, my friend,’ he said from behind his pitted Perspex cage. They were still three blocks from the address JJ had given him. Rodriguez said nothing, just paid the guy, got out and started to walk.
The ’hood may have stayed the same, but in the years he’d been away Rodriguez had become something else. Last time he’d been here his life had been shadowed by fear and suspicion. Now he stood in the warmth of God’s light. He could feel it on his back as he strode down the polluted streets. Others sensed it too; he saw it in the way they looked at him. Even the dealers on the corners and the crack-whores didn’t hassle him. He’d become like the guys he used to cross the street to avoid. A man with a purpose. Confident. Fearless. Dangerous.
He passed a stripped-out car parked on cinder blocks and a store with scorch marks blackening the fringes of its steel-shuttered windows. He remembered torching the place himself when he’d lived here. It had been a pizza joint back then. He’d stuffed rags through a cracked window, set light to them and watched from the shadows until a group of guys showed up and doused it. He’d always loved to see stuff burn. Now he’d found a flame that never went out. He could feel its purity inside him, lighting his way in this place of permanent darkness.
The house looked empty, so did the whole street, but he could feel eyes upon him as he walked up the steps. The door opened before he reached it. A kid in a G Star hoodie ducked outside, scoped the street and checked him out. He made no move to let him in. From somewhere behind him, Rodriguez could hear the sound of gunfire.
‘JJ in?’ he said.
‘Let the man pass,’ a voice hollered through the explosions. The kid blinked slowly then stood aside.
Inside it was a different house. The short hallway opened into a room stuffed with brand-new furniture and electronics. A huge aquarium filled one wall and a flat-screen TV the size of a double bed dominated the other. A high-def surround-sound combat game was in full flow. Two guys were welded to the screen, thumbs jabbing away at handsets, triggering CG weapons while their real guns rested alongside an ashtray and a crack pipe. One of them glanced up fleetingly then returned his attention to the virtual warzone.
‘Gilly Rodriguez!’ he shouted through the carnage. ‘Look at you, mon, all beardy. Look like Jesus in a parka.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Rodriguez just smiled, sizing up his old friend and seeing a shadow of what he might have become. JJ had lost about thirty pounds since he’d last seen him and his skin had the same greyness his momma’s had when she was too deep in the life and too far gone to care. He had all the trappings of street success, with his clothes and his crew, but street years weighed heavy. His youth was almost gone and his light was dimming. Rodriguez gave him two years maybe. Perhaps less. ‘Good to see you,’ he said. ‘You looking good, man.’
JJ shook his head ruefully. ‘Nah, I need t’lay off a little. Maybe grow a beard, git you to introduce me to your tailor.’ He hit pause on his controller and held it out to the kid by Rodriguez’s shoulder. ‘You take over,’ he said. ‘Shoot me some white folks.’
He levered himself out of the soft leather sofa and stood in front of Rodriguez. ‘Man,’ he said, looking up at him. ‘You get taller?’
Rodriguez shook his head. ‘I always been this big. You just ain’t seen me in a while.’
They embraced, bumping shoulders and slapping each other on the back like it was old times, then stood back and regarded each other awkwardly, because it wasn’t.
‘You got something for me?’ Rodriguez said.
JJ dipped into the fish tank and pulled a dripping plastic bag from behind a tower of coral. ‘Some exotic tastes you got, my friend.’
Rodriguez took it and examined the contents: a Glock 34, a spare clip, an Evolution-9 silencer and a small plastic lunch box containing a pistol with a fat barrel and twelve stubby, shotgun-style cartridges.
; ‘What you need that for?’ JJ asked. ‘Scared of the dark?’ Rodriguez snapped the lid down tight and slipped his bag from his shoulder. ‘I ain’t afraid of nothing,’ he said, and tossed across a thick wad of cash.
He watched JJ count the money, his jittery fingers rubbing his nose every few bills like he had an itch that wouldn’t quit. His momma used to do that. Rubbed it until it was raw. He glanced over at the other two, blazing away at each other with fake guns while real ones lay on the table. JJ definitely wouldn’t last another two years, not unless he saw the light that led to salvation. He’d be lucky if he made it to Christmas.
Chapter 87
Dr Miriam Anata was standing by a drinks machine in the hallway of a local news station when the tinny strains of ‘Ode to Joy’ sounded inside her jacket — charcoal grey today, but still a pin-stripe; she liked to think of it as her trademark.
She was supposed to have turned off her phone, but too many people were ringing her for interviews and she was damned if she’d give them the excuse to call someone else. She reached in to answer it, but accidentally disconnected the call in the process. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
Turning her attention back to the drinks machine, she fed in enough coins to bail out a bottle of iced tea and send it thumping down into the tray. She popped the lid and drank thirstily. She’d been under hot studio lights almost constantly since the monk had fallen to his death the previous day. Not that she minded. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to boost her book sales. The key, she’d learned early on, was to frame all her answers in reference to one of her titles. That way the producer couldn’t edit them out.
