Authors: Giorgio Faletti
Ron made a gesture with his head towards the door. ‘It might be better if you came and saw for yourself.’
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed for the exit. Jeremy followed him, feeling a mixture of surprise and anxiety. It was quite rare to see his deputy fazed by an emergency of any kind.
They walked along the street side by side. As they approached the site, they saw that the men had left the
fenced-off
area, a homogenous mass of work jackets and hard hats.
Without realizing it, he had started walking faster.
When they reached the entrance, the workers silently stood aside for them. It was like a scene from an old movie, the kind where the camera tracks along a row of despairing faces standing at the top of a mine shaft where a sudden collapse has trapped some of the miners inside.
What
the
hell’s
going
on?
They lost no time in putting on their hard hats. Ronald turned right, and Jeremy followed. They walked along the fence, next to what was still standing of a wall, then found themselves descending a staircase that led to the old
basement
, which was now almost completely open to the sky. As soon as they were at the bottom, Ronald led him towards the opposite side of the excavation. The only wall still partially standing here was the solid one between the two buildings, which was currently being demolished.
They reached the left-hand corner, the furthest from the staircase. Ronald stopped and with an almost choreographed effect, as if raising a curtain, moved aside and left the way free.
Jeremy shuddered, and felt like retching. He was glad he’d only eaten salad.
The demolition work had exposed a cavity wall. Through a gap in it, made by a pneumatic hammer, an arm was visible, dirty with time and dust. Above it, a head, reduced almost to a skull, was resting on what remained of a shoulder and seemed to be looking towards the outside world with all the bitterness of someone who has waited too long to see light and air again.
Vivien Light parked her Volvo XC60, switched off the engine, and waited a moment for the world to catch up with her. All through the journey back from Cresskill, she had had the feeling of being out of sync, of moving in a parallel dimension of her own, where she was faster than everything else. As if leaving in her wake a trail composed of fragments of the past, rapid splinters of coloured time, as visible as the tail of a comet by the cars, houses and people that flashed on the screens of her car windows.
The same thing happened every time she went up to see her sister.
She always felt hope when she set out. There was no reason for it, which made it all the stronger – and made her
disappointment
all the stronger when she found her sister the same as ever. Still a beautiful woman, as if the months and years were absurdly compensating her by having no effect on her face, but with eyes like blue spots staring into an emptiness that grew more all-encompassing as her illness developed.
That was why the journey back was a kind of leap into hyperspace, from which she emerged somewhere in the middle of reality.
She turned the rear-view mirror so that she could see herself. It wasn’t vanity. She just wanted to recognize herself,
to make sure she was normal again. She saw the face of a young woman some people had called beautiful and others had brushed past as if she didn’t exist. The approval, as always happens, was invariably in inverse proportion to her own interest in that person.
She had short brown hair, rarely smiled, never folded her arms, and only allowed physical contact when she couldn’t avoid it. In her clear eyes there seemed to be a constant hint of sternness. And in the glove compartment of her car there was a Glock 23 pistol.
If she had been a normal woman, her approach to life might have been different. So might her appearance. But her hair was short to prevent anyone from grabbing it during a fight, her stern expression told other people to keep their distance, folding her arms could denote insecurity, and touching someone helped to create a sense of safety and trust, useful if you wanted that person to come clean. And the reason she had a pistol was because she was Detective Vivien Light of the New York Police Department, working out of the 13th Precinct on 21st Street. The entrance to her place of work was just behind her, and she would only have to get out of the car and take those few steps to be transformed from a troubled woman into a police officer.
She leaned forward to take the pistol from the glove compartment, slipped it into her jacket pocket and came back to earth.
In the side mirror she saw two uniformed officers come out of the precinct house through the glass-fronted main door, descend the steps, get into a car and drive off at speed, lights flashing and siren wailing. They were answering a call, one of the many they received every day: an emergency, someone in need, a crime. Every day in this city, men, women and
children walked in the midst of danger, unable to predict when it would strike, unable to fight it.
That was what they were there for.
Courtesy.
Professionalism.
Respect.
That was written on the doors of the police cars.
Unfortunately
, courtesy, professionalism and respect weren’t always enough to protect all those people from the violence and madness of mankind. Sometimes, in order to fight it, police officers had to allow a little of that madness into themselves. The difficult part was that they had to be aware of it and keep it on a tight leash. That was the difference between them and the people whose violence they were sometimes obliged to meet with violence. And that was why she wore her hair short, rarely smiled, and had a shield in her pocket and a pistol on her belt.
For no particular reason, she thought of an old Indian fable she had once told Sundance, about an old Cherokee sitting watching the sunset with his grandson.
‘Grandfather,
why
do
men
fight?’
The
old
man,
his
eyes
turned
to
the
setting
sun
as
the
day
lost
its
battle
with
night,
spoke
in
a
calm
voice.
‘Every
man,
sooner
or
later,
is
called
to
do
so.
For
every
man
there’s
always
a
battle
waiting
to
be
fought,
to
win
or
lose.
Because
the
fiercest
clash
is
the
one
between
the
two
wolves.’
‘What
wolves,
grandfather?’
‘The
wolves
every
man
carries
inside
himself.’
The
boy
didn’t
understand.
He
waited
for
his
grandfather
to
break
the
silence
he
had
let
fall
between
them,
maybe
to
arouse
his
curiosity.
Finally,
the
old
man,
who
had
the
wisdom
of
time
inside
him,
resumed
in
his
calm
tone,
‘There
are
two
wolves
in
each
of
us.
One
is
bad
and
lives
a
life
of
hate,
jealousy,
envy,
rancour,
false
pride,
lies,
and
selfishness.’
The
old
man
paused
again,
this
time
to
allow
him
to
absorb
what
he
had
just
said.
‘And
the
other?’
‘The
other
is
the
good
wolf.
He
lives
a
life
of
peace,
love,
hope,
generosity,
compassion,
humility
and
faith.’
The
child
thought
for
a
moment
about
what
his
grandfather
had
just
told
him.
Then
he
expressed
what
was
especially
on
his
mind.
‘And
which
wolf
wins?
’
The
old
Cherokee
turned
to
look
at
him
and
replied,
clear-
eyed
,
‘The
one
we
feed
more.’
Vivien opened the door and got out of the car. As soon as she turned on her cellphone, it started ringing.
She lifted it to her ear and instinctively replied as if she was sitting at her desk. ‘Detective Light.’
‘Bellew here. Where are you?’
‘Just outside. I’m coming in.’
‘I’ll go down. Let’s meet in the lobby.’
Vivien climbed the steps, opened the glass-fronted door, and was inside the building.
A black man with his hands cuffed behind his back stood in front of the desk, with a uniformed officer beside him holding him by one arm. One of the officers behind the desk was taking down the details of his arrest.
As Vivien entered, she returned the officer’s wave. She turned right and found herself in a large room, painted a
nondescript colour, with rows of chairs in the middle and a whiteboard on the wall facing them. Another whiteboard stood on an easel next to a raised desk. This was the room where the officers on duty gathered for roll call, to be given the rundown on the current operations and assigned their tasks for the day.
Captain Alan Bellew, her immediate superior, came in through another door facing the entrance. Seeing her, he came towards her with that rapid walk of his that gave an
impression
of physical vigour. He was a tall, highly capable man who loved his work and was good at it.
He knew all about Vivien’s difficult love life. In spite of that, and her youth, her unquestionable qualities in the job had led him to hold her in high regard. A relationship of mutual respect had sprung up between them, and whenever they had worked together they’d always achieved excellent results. One of Vivien’s colleagues had once called her ‘the captain’s pet’, but when Bellew had found out about it he had taken the officer aside and given him a little talk. Nobody knew what he had said, but from that moment on all comments had ceased.
Coming level with her, he did what he always did: he came straight to the point.
‘A call just came in. We have a homicide. The body’s apparently years old. They found it on a construction site during demolition. It was inside a wall between two basements.’ He paused, just long enough to give her time to focus on the situation. ‘I’d like you to handle it.’
‘Where is it?’
Bellew made a vague gesture with his head. ‘Two blocks from here, on 23rd and Third. The crime scene team should be there by now. The ME’s on his way, too. I already sent
Bowman and Salinas to keep an eye on things until you get there.’
‘Isn’t this something for Cold Case?’
Cold Case was the squad that dealt with long-unsolved homicides. From what the captain had said, this sounded completely like their thing.
‘We’re handling it for now. Later, we can consider if it’s appropriate to transfer it to them.’
Vivien knew Captain Alan Bellew regarded the 13th Precinct as his personal territory and didn’t like anyone who didn’t work directly for him muscling in.
Vivien nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll get right on it.’
Just then, two men came through a door to the right of the desk. One was older, with grey hair and a tanned face.
Sailing, maybe, or golf.
Or
maybe
both,
Vivien thought.
His dark suit, leather briefcase and serious demeanour were like a sign around his neck, marked Lawyer.
The other man was younger, about thirty-five. He was wearing dark glasses, and there was several days’ growth of beard on his drawn face. His clothes, distinctly more casual than his companion’s, bore traces of the night he had spent in a cell. That wasn’t the only thing he bore traces of: he had a cut on his lip and the left shoulder seam of his jacket was torn.
The two men went out without looking around. Vivien and Bellew watched them until they disappeared beyond the swaying of the glass-fronted door.
The captain gave a half smile. ‘We had a celebrity guest in the Plaza last night.’
Vivien knew what that meant. Upstairs in the squad room, along with the detectives’ desks, which were so close together
they made the place look like an office furniture showroom, there was a cell. This was where the arrested were kept, sometimes for a whole night, waiting to be either freed on bail or transferred to the jail in Chinatown. With a sense of irony, given how uncomfortable the long wooden bunks fixed to the walls were, they had dubbed it the Plaza.
‘Who is that guy?’
‘Russell Wade.’
‘The
Russell Wade? Who won the Pulitzer at the age of twenty-five? And had it taken away from him three months later?’
The captain nodded, the smile fading abruptly from his lips. ‘Yeah, that’s the guy.’
Vivien knew when there was a touch of bitterness in her chief’s voice. And few things made him more bitter than when people deliberately, almost complacently, destroyed themselves. For reasons of her own, it was a situation she was familiar with.
‘We picked him up last night in a raid on a gambling joint, blind drunk and resisting arrest. I think he caught a punch from Tyler.’
Bellew immediately filed that brief parenthesis away among the closed files and came back to the matter in hand.
‘No offence to the living, but I think you have a dead man to deal with. He’s been waiting a long time – best not to keep him waiting any longer.’
‘I think he has every right.’
Bellew left her. Vivien went outside again, into the mild air of that late spring afternoon. She descended the short flight of steps, and as she did so she had a fleeting vision of Russell Wade and his lawyer disappearing into a chauffeured limousine, over to her right. The car pulled away from the
curb and glided past. The guest who had spent a night in the Plaza had now taken off his dark glasses, and their eyes met through the open window. For a moment, Vivien found herself looking into two intense dark eyes and was astonished by the immense sadness she saw in them. Then the car was past her and that face disappeared behind the screen of the electrically operated window.
The site where they had found the body was so close, it was easier to get there on foot. And in the meantime she was already processing the small amount of information she had in her possession. A construction site was often an ideal place to get rid of an unwanted person for ever. This wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. A murder, a body buried in concrete, an old story of violence and madness.
Which
wolf
wins?
Those wolves had been battling it out since the dawn of time. Over the centuries, there had always been some who had fed the wrong wolf. Vivien walked on, feeling the unavoidable excitement she always felt on the verge of a new case. Along with the awareness that, whether she solved it or not, everyone would – as they always did – end up defeated.