I nodded. 'Oh yeah? What's up?'
'Do you mind telling me where you were last night?'
'Yes.'
I looked from Smith to McClean. McClean reached out to me again. I shrugged his hand off. 'Please, Starkey, don't be awkward, this is important.'
There was just a hint of pleading in his voice. Smith looked intently at me. I looked intently back. 'I went down to Times Square to score some crack.' He held my gaze. 'But I came back with a pair of fluffy bunny slippers.' He looked at McClean.
He said it quietly. 'Mary McMaster has disappeared.'
I'd been too preoccupied with my own problems even to notice. She'd gone out shopping and hadn't come back. The police were looking into it. The FBI had expressed an interest but hadn't done much about it. Geordie McClean, millionaire, had expressed his concern and displayed his largesse by hiring an overfed ex-cop eking out a living as a private eye on the mean streets of New York.
Smith continued his luxuriant pedalling. At the rate he was going it would take him forty-eight years to get down to his fighting weight. He wore a trench coat, unbuttoned, a pair of wire-framed spectacles, fawn trousers and a pair of brown brogues. He didn't look like much, but then nobody had me pegged as a Booker-Prize-winning novelist. I told them I hadn't seen her. Told them I went to a few pubs to get the New York flavour for my book. They didn't seem too concerned. I asked Smith how far he'd gotten with his investigation.
He raised an eyebrow. 'Last thing we have on her is a Visa card used in Macy's. She bought three shirts and a pair of sunglasses. Hasn't been seen since. Nothing's been touched at the hotel.'
McClean mopped at his brow with the sleeve of his buttoned cashmere coat. 'I'm trying to keep the publicity on this down to the absolute minimum, Starkey. In fact, we weren't going to tell you at all, but I decided honesty was the best policy. As the journalist in the party we would appreciate your cooperation on this. We have to approach it as a team.'
'What're you worried about, Geordie, the fight going down the tubes or Mary turning up safe?'
'Both, Starkey.'
'Of course. I take it you think the two are connected.'
'We haven't heard anything. Certainly no ransom demands or anything like that. The police are treating it simply as a missing person at the moment. And a missing person who hasn't been missing that long. That's why I hired Pete here. To get things really moving.'
I thumbed back towards the ring. 'I see Bobby's taking it well.'
McClean scratched his neck and looked uncomfortable. 'I know ... almost makes you wish ... nah ... of course not. It's just so bloody unfair! Everything was going so well. Then those bloody heathens.. .'
'Aha. The jigsaw thickens.'
'Starkey. Use your head. Of course it's the Sons of Muhammad. Who else could it be?'
Smith stopped his pedalling. He freewheeled. 'This is New York, Mr McClean. It could be anyone. Or anything. You're thinking of the Sons of Muhammad because they've threatened your boxer. But there's a hundred different groups out there could be involved. She might have been taken for a reason totally unconnected with the fight. She might have been murdered for the sheer hell of it, raped, been knocked down by a car. She might have amnesia. It happens, believe me. I wouldn't rule out the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles having her.'
'Are you trying to cheer me up?'
'Mr McClean, if she's out there, I'll find her.'
It was admirable confidence. I could see how McClean was approaching it. A black terror group had her. So he thought by hiring a black detective he would immediately get an inside track on it. Sure. Like hiring PC Plod in whitest Hampstead when you needed Sherlock Holmes.
Maybe I was prejudging him. Frank Cannon hadn't looked like much either, but had always come up with the goods. And then eaten them.
'So,' I said, 'now that I'm in on the secret, what can I do to help?'
'Keep your trap shut, for a start,' said McClean, a little too quickly. 'I'm sorry. Of course you will. But I'd like you to stick with Bobby as much as you can. Stop him doing anything silly or saying anything dumb.'
'I thought Stanley was his bosom buddy.'
'Stanley can stop him getting shot, but he's hardly a member of the diplomatic corps. You'll need to handle the press with kid gloves. Keep them away from Bobby until we get this sorted out, but keep them on our side. Can you do that?'
I nodded.
Smith clambered off the bike. 'Of course,' he said slowly, even slightly breathlessly, 'she might just have run off with someone else.'
McClean looked round sharply. 'She wouldn't do that. You haven't seen them together. They love each other.'
'Doesn't always keep people together, Geordie,' I said and turned for the door.
Someone who didn't know me might have taken it as the cynical observation of a bitter man.
17
'Did I ever tell you how I met her?'
I shook my head and looked at my steak. He hadn't, but it still felt like a lie. He wanted to talk.
I'd made little impression on my food. Bobby, on the other hand, hadn't let his obvious concern for his missing wife interfere with his prodigious appetite; he had laid waste to a small cow.
'Like, I was only a wee lad, walking home. She was getting beaten up by these other girls and I chased them off. I suppose she was grateful, and she went out with me.' He shook his head and grinned at me. 'I'd never had a girlfriend before. We started seeing each other all the time, everything was going great, then for a couple of days she went all quiet and I thought I was going to get dumped. I kept asking her what was wrong, and she kept saying nothing, but I knew there was, and I'd more or less resigned myself to losing her. I mean, it wasn't a question of pregnancy or anything, I knew that much. But she took so long telling me I lost my temper and stormed off and she came running after me crying and finally blurted out what had been worrying her. She said she was embarrassed with me walking about in a pair of flares. She said they never had and never would be in fashion and could I please get rid of them because they were killing her. I know it seems a bit superficial now, but I've seen photographs of myself then and I did look daft. Have you ever seen a hundredweight of spuds in a pair of flares? Sexy or what?'
He laughed, a warm laugh of love. I'd had laughs like that. I felt for him. I'd been in his situation before: a missing wife, possibly dead. But there was nothing much I could say. I hated the inanities of reassurance. She'll be okay. She'll turn up. It's some thing quite simple. Never you worry, get on with your training. Neither was it a time for brutal honesty: she'll turn up, Bobby - in bits. It was a time for nodding and being there.
Stanley was there, ish. He lounged in a seat by the hotel restaurant door, looking deceptively sleepy, like Switzerland. The butt of his pistol protruded from his jacket; it was meant to be seen, and those guests who opted to stay in the restaurant once they saw it and his casual but still somehow threatening demeanour kept a wary eye on him.
When the death threat became public knowledge the hotel management had briefly considered asking the McMaster camp to decamp, particularly with the arrival of a hundred or so rowdy protesters on the sidewalk outside. Then they'd negotiated with Poodle Clay for a guaranteed number of positive mentions for the hotel during the pre-fight build-up in exchange for allowing us to stay on. They'd even provided some security guards on the front doors to keep the protesters out, and a couple outside McMaster's rooms. Stanley didn't like the idea of being superfluous and had set about being super-conscientious.
I played with a tomato. I could picture Bobby being the hero. Mary had told me. A big fat spotty git who was transformed into a knight in shining armour, with flares.
'Yeah, dead sexy,' I said. 'I never had time for flares myself. I was always a drainpipe and winklepicker man myself.'
Bobby nodded and took another mammoth bite. Or bite of a mammoth. It could have been.
'Is she strong, Bobby? Could she withstand being held by someone, some group?'
Bobby chewed on for a few moments. Swallowed. Began to cut another piece of steak, then stopped and looked up. 'She's as hard as nails and as soft as butter. She's as harsh as a gale, as soft as a summer's breeze. She's Arctic ice and Ballygowan Spring Water.'
Satisfied with his response, he cut, chewed, swallowed.
In the afternoon the contender slept for a few hours. We weren't that close that he wanted me in his room. I stood outside for a while with the guards the hotel had posted and then wandered on down to the end of the corridor. Round the bend, resting against the wall by the elevators, Stanley sat on what appeared to be a bar stool.
'You going to shoot everyone who comes through those doors, Stanley?'
'Why don't you find out, Starkey? Away down to the bottom and ride up again.'
I nodded and pressed the button. I stood with my back to him. After half a minute of silence, he said: 'How is he?'
'He's okay.'
'If I knew where to find them, I'd go and get her back myself.'
I turned, slightly. 'I'm sure you would, Stanley.'
'What about this fella Smith? What d'ya reckon?'
'Early days. He knows the city better than us.'
'He doesn't look like much.'
'Which of us do? Who of us does?'
'If I knew where to find them, I'd go down there and blow them away myself.'
'So you say.'
'It's them're the fuckin' racists. Takin' her like that.'
The snigger came, before I even thought about it. 'That's rich, Stanley, coming from someone so adept at cutting the throats of Catholics.'
'In a different life, Starkey. A different world.'
'Sure, Stanley.'
And then he thumped me in the back and sent me crashing against the elevator doors. I managed a stifled 'Fuck!' before he pushed my face into the cold metal.
'Fuck, Starkey,' he hissed, 'I really am getting sick of you and your fuckin' innuendo.'
He rapped my head once more against the door then stepped back. I turned quickly, fists bunched ... I counted to ten in the time it takes most people to get to one. Calm and control were required. Calm and control. Calm and control. He was, after all, a notorious killer, and if the pen was ever mightier than the sword, on this occasion I had managed to run out of ink.
'Stanley,' I said, calm and in control, but with a sore head, 'I was not innuendoing anything, if such a word exists. I just don't see much change in you. Your propensity for violence does not seem to have diminished any as far as I can see. Save for your choice of more legitimate targets, like the Sons of Muhammad, you're the man I wrote about all those years ago. That's all.'
It was maybe a bit wordy, but it filled a gap which might otherwise have been filled by further violence against me.
Stanley shook his head sadly. 'You just don't understand, do you? You think if I hadn't changed I'd be so keen on trying to save Mary from those bastards? She is a fucking Fenian after all.'
'Stanley,' I began, and then spread my palms to him. It wasn't worth bothering with. We looked at each other in silence, then the elevator doors opened and I stepped in.
When the doors had six inches left to close, I gave him the fingers. I'm not a total coward.
My head was sore, but my pride was damaged. I went to the downstairs bar and got hold of a couple of glasses of something which could cure my head and plaster over the damage. Just a couple. The bar was well inside the hotel but I could still hear the protesters outside. Not distinctly, not what they were ranting on about, but it was there, like the persistently annoying hum of a swarm of tsetse flies. And they carried with them the disease of racism they thought they were protesting about.
I was starting my third, pacing myself, when Jackie Campbell came in. He perched himself on a stool beside me and ordered an Irish whiskey. I nodded to him and he nodded back.
'How's it going, Jackie?' I asked.
'Okay,' he said.
'Bobby was looking good today, wasn't he?'
He fixed his eyes on me. They crossed a little. 'Do I know you?' he asked.
I snorted. I shook my head. 'Doesn't matter.'
'No, wait, hold on.' He fished in his tracksuit pocket and produced a pair of glasses. He slipped them on, then looked warily about the bar. 'I hate these bloody things,' he said, then focused on me. The lenses were dusty. He nodded. 'Dan, isn't it?'
'Yes, Jackie. Do you want another?'
'Sure. If you're buying. What McClean's paying me doesn't allow me to buy rounds.'
'I thought he'd be looking after you okay.'
'Like getting blood out of a stone. If I was only here for the money, I wouldn't be here. Except for the money. The only reason I'm here is to make sure that big eejit does his best against Tyson.'
I nodded to the barman to replenish our drinks. Jackie licked his lips. 'I've never seen him punch better than he did this morning,' I said. 'He looked lethal.' Jackie didn't reply. He swirled the whiskey. 'You think he'll win?' I prompted.
'No. But that doesn't matter.'
'It's the taking part that matters.'
'No, it's being able to get out of the ring with your head held high, and without the use of a life support machine.'
'You think he'll manage that?'
'All things being equal.'
'And all things being equal isn't helped by Mary disappearing.' He nodded his head for a second, then looked sharply up. 'What?'
'Mary's disappearance doesn't help things.'
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'Mary. Mary McMaster.'
'I know who the fuck Mary is. What about her?'
'She's been missing for two days, Jackie. The police are looking for her. The FBI are looking for her. Geordie has a private eye on the trail as well.'
Jackie slammed a brittle-looking hand down on the bar. 'Why the fuck am I always the last to know?' he demanded. I shrugged, helplessly. 'Jesus!' He drained his second glass in one gulp and slipped off the stool. 'I'm going to find that fucker McClean and punch his fuckin' lights out!'
He hurried out the door. I finished my drink, then found a call box and called Smith. I needed to get involved. Something about it all was getting to me. Deja vu, maybe, or maybe it just reminded me of something that had happened before.
He answered on the sixth ring. There was a lot of background noise. Traffic.
I introduced myself. He remembered me. 'The reporter,' he said. 'Absolutely. How goes it?'
'Fine.'
'I don't wish to put you down or anything,' I said, 'but from the noise around you I'd say your office phone is a call box. Can't you even afford an office?'
'You're not putting me down at all, Starkey. I appreciate your concern over the success of my chosen profession. I also realize that you're from Ireland.'
'Which is supposed to mean what?'
'Well, you probably haven't heard of carphones before.'
'Ah, yes. Well.'
'Starkey, you strike me as a man with a habit of opening his mouth before he knows what he really wants to say.'
'True.'
'I don't know where that kind of attitude gets you at home, but it's liable to get you into trouble here.'
'No, well, it kind of gets me in trouble at home as well.'
'I thought as much.'
We were silent for a minute, while I thought about how best to rectify the situation.
'So did you phone me for a particular reason or just to draw attention to me?' he asked. 'I am working.'
'On the McMaster case?'
'Yes.'
'What're you up to?'
'That's my concern, Starkey.'
'Ach, come on. We're part of a team, aren't we?'
'No, you're part of a team.'
'But you're employed by us.'
'No, I'm employed by Mr McClean.'
It was time to talk tough. And lie. 'And I'm employed by Mr McClean to report on every aspect of this fight. This disappearance is a very important part of that repo
rting.'
He pondered that. 'So?' he said eventually.
'I had a word with Geordie, and he said it would be okay for me to follow you about for a bit, just to get a flavour of how you work.'
'He didn't say anything to me.'
'He said it would be at your discretion.'
'You don't think your following me about would somehow draw attention to what I'm trying to do?'
'Why should it?'
'Well, right now I'm sitting in a car in Harlem, staking out a house. You think you'll blend in here?'
'Okay, so you're in Harlem. It's not a no-go area for whites, is it?'
'No, but. . .'
'Mr Smith, I've lived in the heart of one of the worst trouble spots in the world for thirty years. Harlem doesn't exactly scare the pants off me.'
He cleared his throat into the receiver. 'It should,' he said wearily.
18
.
Marcus Savant lived in a gentrified apartment block off Morningside in Harlem. By all accounts it was a perfect little palace. Quite why he therefore chose to spend the best part of his days sitting on the front stoop, even frosty March afternoons, was anyone's guess. Maybe, like Tyson, you could take the man out of the ghetto, but not the ghetto out of the man. Maybe he felt he had to be out on the street, keeping a constant eye on the world. He was thirty-four years old, tall, rake thin. His clothes were top of the range. He wore a little jewellery, but nothing too flashy. Tortoiseshell glasses. He played dippy MOR ballads I was proud not to recognize from a portable CD, but not so loud that they annoyed anyone else, and read the New Yorker, although probably just the cartoons. He hadn't quite made the transition to drinking cool white wine of certain vintage. He slurped at a can of Budweiser. He showed his class by not hiding it in a brown paper sack. He had a plastic bag from Saks. Marcus Savant was a Son of Muhammad.
At least, he was according to Peter Smith. The inflatable detective sat on the hood of a '74 Oldsmobile the size of a small trawler, chomping on his third McChicken Sandwich in an hour. I thought it lacked something as undercover surveillance. Two or three times I caught Savant glancing in our direction. Not for long, but interested. Smith munched on. I sat beside him, notebook open, pretending to take down his life story.
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