Even Flow

by Darragh McManus

  An officer surprised Danny as he turned back to the main part of the room, making him jump a little despite himself. “Sorry to have startled you, sir. Officer Churchill, First Precinct. We’re, ah, we’re the nearest station, sir.”

  Danny said, amused, “Churchill? Like the British politician?”

  “Yes, sir. The funny thing is, I’m not actually of British descent at all. I’m half German and one third Portuguese. Not too sure about the rest of it.”

  “I won’t even ask where the name came from. What’s the story here, Officer?”

  Churchill blew out his cheeks, readying himself for the telling. “We got here about 50 minutes ago, sir. Secured the scene, called for a CSU team. Those two gentlemen were tied together on the rug in the corner. Both naked almost, bound at the ankles, wrists, and neck by, uh, by ladies’ underwear, sir. Heavy duct tape underneath; a bitch to cut off.” He leaned in close, obscuring his voice from the two men on the ground. “They seem okay—physically, I mean—but we’re checking them for exposure and hypothermia. Apart from some burns and tearing on the legs and feet, they haven’t got any serious wounds to the body. But, ah…they’re pretty fucked-up in the head, sir, excuse the old language. Especially the fairer one.”

  “Excused. When will they be ready to talk?”

  “We’re just feeding and dressing ’em now, sir. Give us five minutes and they’re all yours.”

  “Good job, Officer Churchill. I can see you going places in the world.”

  Churchill smiled, a funny, innocent pride on his face. “Like into politics, sir?”

  Danny smiled too and moved to the window. He lit a cigarette without thinking and checked his cell phone for messages—there were none. He caught his reflection in the window: the long hooked nose, the deep-set eyes. He’d often been told he looked like Daniel Day-Lewis, except maybe ten years younger, and he could see the resemblance, sometimes. It was the nose, he decided; that, and the way his overall look, despite his blond hair, had always cast something of a dark shadow.

  His reverie was disturbed by a shout: “Hey! Hey, you. Who said you could smoke in here?”

  He turned to where the dark-haired fellow sat up, dressed now though still shoeless, glaring at him, a fire in his eyes. Danny had to hand it to him: a night of trauma and catastrophe, and the guy was still willing to be bellicose with a cop he’d never met before.

  He walked over, still carrying his cigarette, and said, “Mr. Ainsworth?”, realizing in that split-second that he’d mixed the names up.

  “No, I’m not Mr. fucking Ainsworth. That’s Steve. I’m Clifford Hudson, and I asked you who said you could smoke here.”

  Danny looked to the paramedic tending the two, who shrugged and said, “He’s been like that since we got here. He’s pissed over… something.”

  Hudson exploded in angry laughter. “Ha! Pissed!? You think so, genius? Christ. You’re goddamned right I’m pissed. I’ve been lying on this fucking rug freezing for eight hours.” He glared at Danny. “And where the fuck were you assholes all night?”

  Danny said, “We got here as soon as possible, Mr. Hudson. Now, you need to calm down and…”

  “I will not fucking calm down!” He stopped, thinking. “I knew it. Not one of those bastards called you. You only just found out about this, right? We had 45 people here last night, and they all saw what happened, and not one of those motherfuckers called the cops!”

  Danny crouched down, half-wondering what he was going to do with that cigarette. He fixed his trousers over his thighs and said, “Why do you think that might be the case, sir?”

  “Well, they…” Hudson looked away, his bravado mingling with something else; something quieter, less assured. “How the hell should I know? You’re the fucking cop, go do your job. Shut up, Steve.”

  Ainsworth was rambling again, swaying beneath the blanket and still shivering, despite the fact that the paramedic had by now helped him to put on trousers, a shirt, and a heavy sweater. He had tears in his eyes, or else it was sweat trickling down from his hairline.

  “We…we didn’t hurt ’em,” he mumbled. “Look, they’re okay. It was all his idea… Look, you can see they’re not hurt…”

  The paramedic said, “He might be in shock. I’d better take him to the hospital, just to be sure.”

  Danny nodded, and the paramedic lifted Ainsworth from the ground, gingerly, and led him away by the elbow.

  “Okay, Mr. Hudson,” Danny said. “Feel up to answering a few questions?”

  “I don’t see why… Yes, godammit. Ask your questions and let me the fuck out of here.”

  Danny stubbed out the cigarette in a plant pot and the two men moved to the low coffee table, settling into luxuriant sofas. Danny pulled out a notebook and poised with his pen.

  “Alright. Let’s start at the start. How did these men enter the apartment?”

  “They…someone must have buzzed them through the outer doors. With the electronic security lock. One of us at the party. When they reached here, they just…kicked the fucking thing off of the hinges, I don’t know.”

  “How many were they?”

  “Three. One of them was really big. They went by code-names, you know? What was it? Wilde…”

  “…Waters and Whitman.”

  Hudson looked up, surprised. “Yeah. That was exactly it.”

  “Okay. Were they armed?”

  “Yeah, they had, uh, pistols. With silencers. They each had a bag, too, so I dunno…could have had more shit in there, I guess.”

  Danny pressed on, scribbling furiously. He’d have to decipher that spidery scrawl later, which would be a royal pain in the ass, but right now the momentum was important—get Hudson to lock onto his memories, all of them, even the ones he didn’t realize he held.

  “Good. Did you notice anything about them? A voice, an accent, something you might recognize?”

  “Nah, their voices were…just regular voices, I guess. No particular accents. They were kinda…deep, or… They were muffled anyway, by the, uh, the hoods they wore.”

  “Regular voices. And they all wore a tuxedo, and a balaclava on the head?”

  “Balaclava, that’s right. We could just see, like, their eyes and mouths. Nothing else.”

  “That’s a pity… Okay, so they burst in here, they stripped you, they tied you up in…in, whatever…and hung you outside the window. Correct?”

  Hudson glowered again. “Yes. Jesus, do we really have to go through all the tiny fucking details over and over?”

  “Just once should do it. So what then? Did they beat you, hurt you, what? What did these men actually do to your friend and you?”

  The young man leaned back into the plump cushions, dropped his head over the couch’s headrest. He groaned quietly, and resurfaced with a glaze of extreme fatigue like a shroud over his face.

  “They…didn’t really do anything,” he said. “It was weird, okay? I was wiped out; I’d had a lot to, uh, to drink. They just strung us up and asked us things, about ourselves, and what we were doing last night. And they made us, like, defend ourselves, and read stuff off cards. Confession, that’s what they called it. Motherfuckers. Thought they were in a goddamn courtroom. Or a church.”

  “And that was it? Just questions?”

  “Pretty much. They let the rope slip a few times—trying to scare us, I guess, and it fucking worked. I can tell you, man, I was terrified. Steve went completely. Pissed down on both of us a few times. But other than that they didn’t hurt us, no. Just…talked. And asked their goddamn questions.”

  Danny squeezed the bridge of his nose. He paused, bracing himself for this question.

  “Okay. That’s about it. Just one last question, Mr. Hudson—why you?”

  “Why me what?”

  “Why you and your friends? Why did they target this particular party?”

  Hudson’s belligerence flared again, like the sulfurous yellow of a match head. He shouted, “Hey, what is this shit? ‘Why us?’ How the fuck should
I know?”

  Danny kept his voice low and calm, but insistent—Hudson had to know who had the power here. “Calm down, Mr. Hudson. I’m just trying to work out if maybe you knew these guys, if there was some sort of personal vendetta going on…”

  Hudson sat up, tried to stand, fell back into a sitting position again. He said, “Get the fuck outta my face, okay? How should…? …Look, I don’t… We didn’t know them, okay? I haven’t got a fucking clue why they picked on us, but I don’t know them.”

  Danny stared at him; held the stare, made the other man’s eyes come around to meet his. He said, “Okay. They must have had their own reasons, then.”

  Hudson looked pointedly at the waxed wooden floors. “Yeah, that’s it. Their own reasons. Now why don’t you stop treating me like I’m the goddamned criminal instead of the victim.” His eyes rose once more—there was that fire again. “They assaulted us, for Christ’s sake!”

  Danny stood and gathered his things from the table. “You can, ah, rest assured—sir—that these men will be subject to the full rigor of the law when they are apprehended.”

  He moved off, Hudson calling in his wake: “Ah, stick your fucking smart talk, okay, pal? Who are you to judge me anyway…?”

  The forensics people had set up equipment at the other corner of the room. Danny strolled over, feeling irate and strung-out and weirdly conflicted, and flashed his badge at the team leader, a portly man in his fifties with graying, wavy hair which flowed over the collar of his jacket.

  Danny said, “Detective Sergeant Everard, Midtown South. Would I be way off the mark in guessing that you haven’t found anything much?”

  “Bill Rosenberg—good to meet ya. No, you’d be pretty much exactly on the mark. No prints that stand out, no physical evidence left lying around… There are fibers, of course, but those could belong to our three fun boys, or Prince Charming over there and his pals last night.”

  “Oh, so you’ve met the lovely Mister Hudson, then?”

  Rosenberg glanced across the room, still scribbling something in a small box on the top page of his clipboard. “Yeah—a real beauty. We’ll take fiber samples and analyze them anyway, but don’t hold your breath.”

  “Shit. That’s it?”

  “Not quite. We also found…” Rosenberg gestured to one of his team. “Hey! Maria! Bring that over here, please.”

  Maria was young, dark, and sweet-faced, with enormous brown eyes. An Old World sort of look. She handed Rosenberg a sealed plastic bag and smiled pleasantly at Danny.

  “Alright, Maria, alright. Run along,” Rosenberg said. “You can flirt with Detective Everard after work.”

  She rolled her eyes indulgently and left. Danny smiled, a little embarrassed. He said, “Um… So, uh, so what is it?”

  The forensics expert handed him the bag and a pair of surgical gloves. “It’s a card. Found it in that crystal bowl over there on the table.”

  Danny put on a glove and gingerly lifted the card out. It was coated in a fine dust. He touched his left little finger to the dust and then to his tongue.

  “Have your team check the bowl for traces of cocaine,” he said, looking back at a sheepish Hudson. “No rule against investigating two crimes at once, right?”

  Rosenberg smiled. Danny examined the card: plain, clean-edged, off-white or ivory in color. Hand-written, in neat block capitals, was “YOU DIDN’T THINK WE WERE GOING TO KILL THEM, DID YOU?”, followed by a line in quotation marks, which he read aloud: “‘…with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies.’ Hmm.”

  “Very moving. What is that?”

  “I know this. It’s Allen Ginsberg. Part of Howl. Near the end, I think.”

  “Another ‘berg’, huh? Well, I can’t fault their taste.”

  Danny flicked the card gently with his gloved fingers. “No. Me neither. Keep me posted, would you?”

  Rosenberg said, “No problem”, and returned to his painstaking, intricate, fascinating work.

  Chapter 4

  Love awaits

  DOYLE’S was warm, dark, welcoming, and very crowded. Raucous folk-rock thumped through the walls and vibrated on the street outside as Patrick approached. He stopped for a moment in the doorway, scanning the posters for forthcoming musical attractions and big-screen sporting events. Bright highlighter marker, glossy white paper. Tonight, he saw, Doyle’s would be “rocking to the Celtic fusion sounds of The Ribbonmen, New York’s finest Irish pub band.” He smiled skeptically and went inside.

  Drums snapped, guitars twanged, and a fiddle wheeled around the melody, a juiced-up version of the old folk standard, The Raggle Taggle Gypsy. Through the mass of people he just about saw Cathy standing at the bar, drinking beer from the bottle, and nodding her head to the music. Beside her was a tall, serene-looking gentleman who Patrick assumed to be her husband Philip. They looked a little odd together, the variance in height and body shape, but sort of cute, too. Patrick passed the band in the corner, all straggly hair and flared, retro trousers, the lead singer rattling a tambourine like a shaman warding off ill fortune. He struggled through the crowd and finally reached Cathy, shouting to be heard.

  “Hey! Sorry I’m late.”

  Cathy smiled in greeting and shouted back, “Hi there. What?”

  “I said… Listen. It’s kinda loud in here. Can we go to a table?”

  “Huh?”

  Patrick smiled hello to Philip, then pointed toward the far corner, a vacant table nestled beneath warped wooden shelves holding dusty old bottles. Cathy shrugged in agreement. Philip tilted his head in the direction of the bar and mouthed the word, “Beer?” Patrick nodded and mouthed, “Thanks.” Then Cathy took his hand and led him through the crowd. He slumped into the seat, the noise receded somewhat, muffled by a wall of people and the stairway passing over their heads.

  He said, “That’s a bit better. Jesus, this place is loud.”

  “Ah, don’t be such a wuss. This is what’s called atmosphere, darling.”

  Patrick laughed. “I should have known better than to meet you in an Irish bar. Are they all like this?”

  She said, deadpan, “Yes, Patrick. We Irish listen to this type of music all the time. We’re like the world’s kings and queens of drinking and carousing. Seriously.”

  He punched her playfully on the shoulder as Philip returned with the drinks, clutched in his large hands. He carefully lowered them onto the table and leaned over to shake Patrick’s hand, saying, “How are you? Philip Genet. Cathy’s better half.”

  Cathy said, “And such a better half, darling. This is Patrick. I mentioned him earlier?”

  Patrick stood into the shake and said, “Hi, Philip. Good to finally meet the man brave enough to commit himself to this tyrant.”

  He returned to his seat, where Cathy returned the punch. Philip drank a healthy measure of beer, the foamy head forming a thin moustache which he licked clean, and said, “So whereabouts you from, Patrick? Are you local here?”

  “Yep, born and bred a city boy. I was in LA for five years—university first and then dicking around for a while. Traveled abroad a bit. Came back to New York when I got the Network 4 job a few months ago.”

  “Where are you staying, actually?” Cathy said.

  “My folks’ old place. Upper west side. They retired two years ago; on one of those world tour things ever since.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Yeah. Then there’s only my sister Marie, and she’s married in Canada, so…I sort of have the place to myself.”

  “And that’s even nicer.”

  Philip leaned across the table, resting his arms on it, saying, “So, Patrick, tell me about this thing today. This videotape. Cathy said it was something pretty weird.”

  Patrick sighed and took a sip from his drink. “Yeah, well… It was sorta strange, alright. It was…hard to describe, really.”

  “Got Bailey pretty spooked,” Cathy said.

  “There’s a tragedy, huh? Nah, I’m kidding… I
think we should just leave it with the cops, you know? They’re the experts.”

  Philip nodded in understanding and rose from the table. “Probably can’t say too much, right? I understand.” He turned to Cathy. “I’m just gonna check on the babysitter.”

  She made a face, a sort of affectionate reproach, and Philip waved his hands. He said, “No, no, she’s young. I’m not doubting her, I’m just…checking in. Back in a tick.”

  Patrick and Cathy sipped their beers for a few moments, not speaking. A cheer rose from the crowd on the completion of the song, and Cathy touched Patrick’s hand, a concerned look behind the reflection on her spectacles.

  “Patrick, seriously: what did you think of that today?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, Cath. I honestly don’t. Like I said, it was…strange.”

  “But do you think there’s gonna be more? I mean, are we being dragged into something here? And Jonathon. I know you don’t like him—Jesus, I can’t stand him half the time—but I don’t like this. The fact that they addressed it to him. I know what that detective said, but…”

  Patrick crossed his legs, turning toward her. He placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. I think your cop friend was right. They picked him ’cause he’s a name, you know? The famous Jonathon Bailey. Who better to…to get the message across, or whatever?”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t want any of us getting involved in this.”

  He gazed into the crowd, mulling it over, focusing his thoughts by distracting the senses. He said eventually, “As far as I can tell, none of us are. Not directly, anyway. They’re using us as a…what? A medium or something, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.” Patrick squeezed her hand firmly. “Trust me, Cath: none of us is going to get hurt. Okay?”