Authors: Giorgio Faletti
‘Jack Borman.’
‘Vivien Light.’
They both knew who they were, where they were and what they were doing. Right now, any other consideration faded into the background.
‘Any idea yet of the cause of death?’
‘In layman’s terms, I’d hazard a guess, from the position of the head, that someone broke his collar bone. With what I don’t know. I’ll know more after the post mortem.’
‘How long do you think he’s been here?’
‘From the body’s state of preservation, I’d say around
fifteen years. But the state of the hiding place also has to be taken into account. An analysis of the fibres should get us there. And I think forensic tests on the material of the clothes will come in useful, too.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
As the medical examiner walked away, Vivien realized that everything that could be done had been done. She gave the order to remove the body, said goodbye to the men, and left them to their tasks. At this point, she considered it pointless to talk to the worker who had found the body. She had given Bowman the job of taking down the details of all the people who might be useful to their investigation. She would talk to them later, including Mr Charles Brokens, who woke up every morning with that woman in his bed.
In a case of homicide like this, the most important leads usually came from the technical data rather than from witness statements. They’d have to wait for the test results before deciding on a plan of action.
She went back the way she had come, until she reached the site entrance. The workers watched her with a mixture of admiration and awe. She set off for the precinct house to pick up her car. She needed to think.
Bellew hadn’t assigned her to an easy case. He presumably considered her capable of solving it, but what he was asking her to do was equivalent to pulling chestnuts from the fire. And from the facts that had emerged so far, these chestnuts had been in the fire for at least fifteen years and had been burned to a cinder.
She passed a bar and instinctively looked through the window. Sitting at a table, talking to a girl with long blond hair, was Richard. The way they were looking at each other
suggested they were more than just friends. She felt like a voyeur, and hurried away before he could see her, although he seemed to have eyes only for his companion. She was not surprised to find him there. He lived nearby and they’d been there together several times.
Maybe
a
few
more
times
would
have
been
better.
She’d had a relationship with Richard that had lasted a year, full of laughter, food and wine, and tender, gentle sex. A relationship that had been one step away from being love.
But, what with her work and the situation of Sundance and her sister, she had found it more and more difficult to devote herself to the two of them. In the end, the affair had ended.
As she walked, she realized that she had the same problem as all the people moving on that street and in that city. They all assumed they would live and knew they would die.
Ziggy Stardust was good at camouflage.
He was capable of being a perfect nobody among the millions of New York nobodies. He was a perfect example of neither-nor: neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, neither handsome nor ugly. He was the kind of person you didn’t notice, didn’t remember, didn’t love.
The king of nobodies.
But he had turned being a nobody into an art. In his own way he considered himself an artist. In the same way as he called himself a traveller. On average he rode more miles on the subway every day than most passengers in a week. In Ziggy’s opinion, the subway was a place for suckers. Which made it the ideal place for one of his many activities: bag snatching. Another of his activities, more of a fringe activity but no less important, was being the dealer of choice for those who loved white powder but didn’t like risks or problems.
With Ziggy, they never had any problems.
He wasn’t a big time dealer, but the income, though small, was regular. All these grand ladies and gentlemen had to do was call a safe number and they’d get a home delivery of whatever they needed for their parties or be given an address to go to for fun and games. They had the money – he had what they were willing to pay for. This meshing of supply
and demand was so natural, it wiped out any possible scruples – not that Ziggy had ever had any.
Occasionally, when he was able to, he also sold
information
to anyone who needed it. Sometimes even to the police, who in return for a few useful tip-offs – strictly confidential, of course – turned a blind eye to Ziggy’s frequent subway trips.
Obviously, that wasn’t his real name. Nobody remembered what his real name was. Even he forgot it sometimes. The nickname had been given him, when someone had remarked on his resemblance to David Bowie at the time the record
Ziggy
Stardust
and
the
Spiders
from
Mars
had come out. He couldn’t remember who it had been, but the name had remained.
It was the only thing that removed him a little from the anonymity in which he had always tried to live. He never walked in the middle of the sidewalk, but always hugged the walls and kept to the most shadowy areas. If he could choose, he preferred to be forgotten, rather than
remembered
. In the evenings he went back to his hole in Brooklyn, watched TV, surfed the internet and only went out to make phone calls. All calls related to work he made from a public phone booth. At home, on a cabinet, he always kept a roll of quarters, for every eventuality. There were a lot of people who hadn’t realized there was a good reason cellphones were called cellphones. They were telephones but they were also what landed you in jail. And those who ended up in jail because their calls had been intercepted got what they deserved. Not because they were criminals, but because they were stupid.
Even now, as he descended the stairs to Bleecker Street station, he couldn’t help feeling justified in his conviction.
Better to make everyone believe you were a nobody than have someone sooner or later decide that they’d prove it to you.
He reached the platform and got on the green express line going uptown. The opening and closing of the sliding doors, the constant getting on and off of weary passengers who wanted only to be somewhere else, meant a lot of pushing and shoving, the contact of bodies, the smell of sweat. But it also meant wallets and distraction, the two basic elements of his work. There was always a purse slightly open, a pocket not well closed, a bag next to someone immersed in a book so engrossing they forgot everything else.
Of course the good old days were long over. Credit cards were everywhere now, and there was less and less cash in circulation. That was why he had decided to branch out – to diversify his activities.
The
door
is
closing,
came the voice of the loudspeaker.
He moved towards the rear of the carriage, where it was more crowded, making his way between hanging elbows and whiffs of garlic. Sitting next to the door was a guy in a green military jacket. He found it hard to judge his age. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see him well because the blue hood of a coverall came up from under the jacket to partly hide his face. His head was slightly tilted to the side, and it looked as if the swaying of the carriage had made him doze off. Next to his feet was a dark canvas bag.
Ziggy felt a slight sense of pins and needles in his fingertips. There was part of him that displayed something close to extrasensory perception when he singled out a victim. It was a knack, a gift, which had sometimes given him the idea that he had been born to do this work. Of course, the clothes the man was wearing didn’t suggest there might be
something of value in that bag. But the hands resting in his lap weren’t the hands of a man who did heavy work, and his watch looked like a good one.
In his opinion, there was something here that went beyond the guy’s appearance. His instinct had rarely let him down, and over time he had learned to trust it.
He had once removed a wallet from a guy in a jacket and tie only because, in brushing against him, he had felt, by touch alone, a cashmere overcoat that must have been worth more than four thousand dollars. Trusting to nothing but the texture of the material, he had made his move. A few minutes later, going through the guy’s wallet, he had found seven dollars, a fake credit card and a subway season ticket.
Cheapskate!
He went closer to the man in the green jacket, although staying on the other side of the door. He waited a couple of stops. The number of passengers was increasing. He moved into the middle and then, as if shifting to leave the door clear, he moved next to him.
The canvas bag was on the floor. It was on his left, close to his feet, the handle in the perfect position to be
grabbed
at
the
right
stop
getting out while the other passengers got on. He checked that the man still had his head in the same position. He hadn’t moved. Many people dozed off on the trains, especially those who had a long way to go. Ziggy was convinced that this guy belonged to that category of person. He waited until they got to Grand Central, where the number of people getting on and off was usually greater. As soon as the doors opened he grabbed the bag in an extremely rapid but natural movement, and got off. He immediately hid it with his body.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he was trying to melt into
the crowd, he thought he saw a green jacket getting out of the carriage a moment before the train left.
Shit.
Grand Central was always full of cops and if that guy had sussed him, there was the possibility there would be quite a scene. And maybe a few days in the cooler. He passed a couple of police officers, an older man and a black girl, who were chatting just outside the station. Nothing happened. Nobody came running, crying ‘Stop thief!’ to attract the attention of the two officers. He preferred not to turn around. Better to let the guy who was following him think he hadn’t noticed anything.
He came out onto 42nd and immediately turned right and then right again, onto Vanderbilt. There was a stretch where there wasn’t much traffic and that was the right place to check if the guy in the military jacket really was following him or not. He went back into the terminal through the side entrance, taking advantage of the opportunity to throw a casual glance to his right. He didn’t see anybody come around the corner who looked anything like him. But that still didn’t mean anything. If the guy was clever, he knew how to follow someone without being spotted. Just as he himself knew the best way to throw someone who was tailing him. He wondered again how come the guy hadn’t told the two cops. If he’d noticed the theft and had followed him to get the bag back personally, that could mean two things.
Firstly: he was running the risk that this was a dangerous guy. Secondly: there might be something valuable in the bag the guy wasn’t too eager for the police to clap eyes on. And if this second point turned out to be correct, then Ziggy’s interest in the contents grew considerably. But at the same time it made the guy
very
dangerous.
That feeling he’d had that he’d found the right target was turning sour. He went down to the lower level, which was packed with ethnic restaurants. The huge space was full of signs, colours, food smells and a sense of hurry. And it was the last of these things that was communicating itself to him, even though he was forcing himself to walk at a normal pace.
He got to the other side and as he was climbing the stairs again he turned to check out the street behind him. Nobody suspicious. He started to relax. Maybe it had only been an impression. Maybe he was starting to get too old for this work.
He followed the signs and went back into the subway, heading for the purple line, which went north into Queens. He waited until the train arrived and followed the stream of passengers getting on. A necessary precaution. If what he’d been thinking earlier was right, the man in the green jacket, assuming he really was following him, would never try
anything
against him in a crowded place. He waited nonchalantly until the usual voice announced that the doors were closing.
Only then did he rush out and go back to the bench, like a passenger who suddenly realizes he has got on the wrong carriage. He waited for the clatter of the departing train to fade, then changed back to the green line, which would take him downtown and then on to Brooklyn.
He did the journey in several stages, waiting at each stop for the next train, continuing to glance around him with a nonchalant air.
When he decided that everything was OK, he got on another train and found a place to sit. He made himself comfortable and waited, with the bag in his lap, overcoming the impulse to open it and find out what there was inside.
Better to do that at home, where he’d be able to examine everything calmly and unhurriedly.
Ziggy was good at waiting.
He had done it all his life, ever since he was a boy and had started hustling every which way he could think of to make ends meet. He had carried on in the same way, never making the mistake of getting too greedy, contenting himself with what he had, but always with the unshakeable certainty that one day everything would suddenly change. His life, his home, his name.
Farewell Ziggy Stardust, welcome back
Mister
Zbigniew Malone.
He changed lines again before arriving at a station near home. He lived in Brooklyn, in a neighbourhood with the largest concentration of Haitians in New York, where even the signs on some of the restaurants were in French. A
multiethnic
world – women with huge asses and shrill voices and young guys who shuffled as they walked and wore their caps with the peak turned to the side. Bordering that area, the Jewish neighbourhood, houses with well-tended lawns and Mercedeses in the drives. Silent people, who moved like dark shadows, faces serious beneath their black hats.
But he liked things that way. In expectation of the day when he’d be able to say, That’s enough of that, and choose for himself.
On the wall of the building where he lived, the windowless wall facing the street, someone had painted a mural. The artist was nothing special, but the colours, in a place so faded, so washed out, had always cheered him up. He went in through the front door and descended the steps that led to the basement where he lived. A single room with a tiny bathroom, worn, second-rate furniture and the smell of exotic
cooking wafting down from the upper floors. The unmade bed was against the wall opposite the door, beneath the high window that let in a dim light. Everything seemed to belong to a bygone time, even the few modern touches: the
high-definition
TV, the computer and the all-in-one printer/copier, which were covered with a layer of dust.
The only surprising thing was the bookcase against the
left-hand
wall, filled with volumes neatly arranged in alphabetical order. Others were strewn about the room. There was even a pile of books on the night table to the right of the bed.
Ziggy placed the bag on the table, which was cluttered with old magazines, took off his jacket, and threw it on an armchair. He took the bag and went and sat down on the bed. He opened the bag and started emptying it onto the sheet. There were two newspapers, the
New
York
Times
and
USA
Today,
a blue and yellow plastic box that turned out to be a small toolkit, a roll of copper wire and one of grey adhesive tape, the kind electricians used. Then he pulled out the heaviest thing in the bag, the thing that really weighed it down: a photograph album with a brown leather cover and pages of rough paper of the same colour, full of black and white images of people he didn’t know in places he didn’t know. All the photographs were quite old. From the clothes, he guessed at the 1970s. He leafed through a few pages. An image caught his attention. He removed it from the adhesive tabs that held it to the page and looked at it closely for a few moments. A young man with long hair and a smile on his lips that didn’t quite reach his eyes, holding a big black cat. The snapshot, quite by chance, had managed to capture a strange resemblance, as if those two living beings, although of different species, were mirror images of each other.
He slipped the photograph into his shirt pocket and
continued to explore the contents of the bag. He extracted a black plastic object, rectangular in shape, slightly longer and narrower than a cigarette pack, with adhesive tape around the middle to stop it from opening. At one end was a series of buttons of different colours.
Ziggy looked at it for a moment, bewildered. It was like a home-made remote control. Rudimentary maybe, but that seemed to be what it was. He put it down next to the other things and took the last object out of the bag. It was a large, slightly crumpled brown envelope with a name and address written on it, the words already partly faded. The size of it suggested it had been used to send the photograph album.