Vivien swerved and pulled up at the kerb, provoking a reaction from the motorists behind her. She let go of the wheel and turned to Russell.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ she said. ‘You may have charmed the captain with that story about your redemption, but I’m not such a pushover.’
Russell sat looking at her in silence. His dark, apparently defenceless eyes made her think she was being made fun of. When she next spoke, it was with a harshness that was uncharacteristic of her.
‘People don’t change, Wade. We are what we are, and we all have our own place. However much we stray, we always come back to it in the end. And I don’t think you’re any exception.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You came to the precinct with a photocopy in your pocket of the sheet of paper Ziggy gave you. That means you still have the original, the one that’s stained with his blood. And in case we didn’t believe you and threw you out, you’d have used it to show to the FBI or the NSA or whoever.’
Vivien continued the onslaught.
‘If for any reason we’d asked you to empty your pockets we’d have found only the photocopy of a page you could have passed off as something you’d dreamed up. Passing off one thing for another seems like a speciality of yours.’
Her words did not seem to have fazed Russell. This was a sign either that he had amazing self-control or that he was used to it. In spite of her anger, Vivien leaned more towards the second of these hypotheses.
She grabbed the wheel, pulled away from the kerb, and resumed her journey to Coney Island. Russell’s next question took her by surprise. Maybe he, too, was trying to form an opinion of his travelling companion.
‘Detectives usually have partners. How come you don’t have one?’
‘Right now, I have you. And your being here reminds me why I usually work alone.’
After that curt reply, silence fell in the car. During the conversation, Vivien had driven the car downtown and was now crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. When they had left Manhattan behind them, Vivien tuned the radio to Kiss 98.7, a black music station. She drove the Volvo along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and then onto Gowanus.
Russell was looking out the window on his side. When a particularly rhythmical song came on, he started, perhaps without realizing it, to beat time with his foot. Vivien realized that this whole thing had fallen on her shoulders at a particularly difficult time. Sundance’s situation and Father McKean’s curious behaviour had affected her ability to think clearly and calmly. Or at least made her too harsh in her judgement.
As she parked the car on Surf Avenue in Coney Island she felt a slight pang of guilt.
‘Russell, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. Whatever your motives, you’re helping us a lot and we’re grateful to you for that. The other stuff, it’s not for me to judge. It’s no excuse, but I have a few personal problems right now, and I guess I’m not acting normally.’
Russell smiled, apparently impressed by her sudden openness. ‘It’s OK. I should understand better than anyone the way personal problems can influence our choices.’
They got out of the car and walked to the address that Vivien had pulled out of the file on the Skullbusters. It turned out to be a large Harley Davidson dealership, with a workshop for repairing and personalizing motorbikes. The place looked clean, efficient and businesslike, a long way from Vivien’s experience of bikers’ hangouts in the Bronx or Queens.
They went in. To their left was a long line of bikes, different models but all Harleys. To the right, a display of gear and accessories, from helmets to coveralls to mufflers. Facing them was a counter, from behind which a tall, sturdy man in a pair of jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt emerged and came towards them. He had a black bandana, sideburns and a drooping moustache. As he approached, she realized the moustache was dyed, the bandana was probably there to cover a bald patch, and beneath his tan he must be well over seventy. On his right shoulder he had a tattoo of a Jolly Roger with the same words they’d found on the body walled up fifteen years earlier.
‘Hello. My name’s Vivien Light.’
The man smiled, amused. ‘Like in the movie?’
‘No, like in the police,’ she replied curtly and took out her shield. The fact that her name was similar to Vivien Leigh had bugged her all her life.
The man didn’t skip a beat.
‘I’m Justin Chowsky, the owner. Is there something wrong?’
‘I believe this used to be the headquarters of a group of bikers called the Skullbusters.’
‘It still is.’ Chowsky smiled at Vivien’s look of surprise. ‘Things have changed a bit since the old days. We used to be a pretty wild bunch of guys. Some of us even had problems with the law. Me too, to be honest. Nothing big, you can check. A few joints, a few fights, a few benders too many.’
For a moment, he stared at one of the windows as if scenes from his youth were projected on it.
‘We were hotheads but we weren’t delinquents. The really heavy guys left of their own accord.’
He made a circular gesture with his hand, taking in both the space around them and his visible sense of pride.
‘Then one day, I decided to open this place. Before too long, we were one of the biggest centres for sales and personalization in the state. And the Skullbusters became a quiet group of nostalgic old men who still go around on bikes like they were kids.’
Vivien looked at Russell, who so far had kept back and hadn’t introduced himself. She liked that. He knew his place.
She turned her attention back to the man in front of her. ‘Mr Chowsky, I need some information.’
She took the man’s silence as consent.
‘About fifteen years ago, did a member of your group suddenly disappear without a trace?’
The reply came without a moment’s hesitation, and Vivien felt her heart swell with hope.
‘Mitch Sparrow.’
‘Mitch Sparrow?’ Vivien repeated the name, as if afraid it would immediately vanish from their memories.
‘That’s the one. Now let me see, it happened…’
Chowsky removed his bandana. Vivien had been wrong: he still had a full head of hair in spite of his age, although it was clearly dyed. He passed his hand through it, as if that would help him to remember.
‘It happened exactly eighteen years ago.’
Vivien noted that the date fitted the margin of error in the ME’s report. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
‘One hundred per cent. My youngest son was born a few days later.’
From the inside pocket of her jacket, Vivien took one of the two photographs she had brought with her, the one with the cat, and held it out to Chowsky.
‘Is this Mitch Sparrow?’
He did not even need to take it from her. ‘No. Mitch had fair hair and this guy’s dark. And anyway he was allergic to cats.’
‘Have you ever seen this person before?’
‘Never saw him in my life.’
For a moment, Vivien considered the implications of that statement. Then she did what
