“What happened here?”
I looked at the front of their car. There were a few minor chips and scratches in the paintwork, and a small crack in one of the headlight lenses.
“Did you kill that guy?”
Lower down, on the fender, there was a sticker offering a reward if you phoned a special number after a cop had been shot.
“OK, I’ve had enough. You’re coming back to the station house. Let the detectives sort this out.”
Klein took my left arm just above the elbow and led me to his side of the car. He opened the back door, reached up to put his hand flat on my head, and guided me inside. He made sure I was clear, then slammed the door behind me. The seat was square and hard. The car was wide, but there wasn’t much room for my legs because of a thick glass screen that rose up from the floor, isolating the rear of the cabin. The surface was scratched and cloudy, obscuring my view through the windshield. I sprawled out sideways and tried to keep my weight off my hands.
The air in the back of the car was warm and stale. I could smell industrial disinfectant. It had a strong sweet scent, but it wasn’t quite enough to cover the lingering odor of dirty, sticky humans. I looked around and saw there were greasy marks on the window next to me. From people’s foreheads. Previous occupants must have rested against the glass. I started to breathe through my mouth. I wished there was some way I could keep my hands off the upholstery.
After five minutes another car arrived. It parked carelessly, sticking out from the curb at a lazy angle next to the entrance to the alley. It was another Ford. The same model as the radio car but with plain, dark blue paintwork. It needed a wash. There was a red, flashing beacon on the dashboard. Two men got out without switching it off. They appeared to be in their fifties, and were wearing suits and raincoats with gold shields hanging from their breast pockets. The men moved slowly and deliberately. Both looked a little overweight.
An unmarked, white box van pulled up on the other side of the car. Two men in navy blue overalls jumped down and walked over to join Kaufmann and Klein. As they came closer I could see woven cloth NYPD badges on their sleeves. One of them turned back toward their vehicle for a moment, and I read CRIME SCENE UNIT in tall white letters on his back.
The technicians started looking into the alley. The guys in suits looked into the car, at me. The taller one came over to my side and peered at me through the glass, like a kid drawn to a repugnant reptile at the zoo. His shield identified him as a detective, but it didn’t give a name. Only a number set into the metal at the top. After twenty seconds of staring he called the others together. Kaufmann and Klein closed their doors so I couldn’t hear what was being said. I watched them talk for a couple of minutes. They were very animated. Then the group moved to the front of the car. I could make out lots of hand movement from the uniformed officers. They kept gesturing and pointing at the body, at me, at things in the alley, and at something out on the street. I couldn’t make out what it was.
The taller detective brought the conference to a close, and the officers came and got back into the car. Neither of them looked at me. Kaufmann started the engine and backed out into the street. Then the car pitched forward and we sped away from the alley.
And, I thought, away from any more trouble.
TWO
Ask me where I live these days, and I’d struggle to find an answer.
I do have an address, obviously, but that doesn’t help much. It would just point you to a half-empty apartment in the Barbican, in London. One bedroom, Cromwell Tower, nearer the top than the bottom. I’ve owned it for years. Bank statements still get sent there, and copies of bills, but that’s about all. I haven’t set foot through the door in seven months. The time before it was fifteen months. Home for me has become a succession of hotel rooms. Different cities, different countries, one after the other, rarely a break in between. Memories of one place blur into the next. That’s been the way for fifteen years now, so I’m comfortable with it. But I still recall the first hotel I ever stayed in. It was in Edinburgh, not long after I left college. I was broke. A soft drinks company was looking for recruits. For sales and marketing. I didn’t know much about either, but the money was good so I gave it a shot. I filled in the forms. Then they invited twenty of us up to their local Holiday Inn so they could pick out the five best candidates. We were there for one night. When I went to check out the next morning, the receptionist asked if I’d enjoyed my stay. I said apart from the work, yes. And I was about to go when I heard someone else being asked the same question. A guy called Gordon, from Cambridge. Only his reply was very different. He wasn’t satisfied at all. His pillows had been too soft. His towels had been too rough. And worst of all, they’d sent up the wrong kind of honey with his breakfast.
They may have sounded petty, but Gordon’s complaints really unsettled me. I could hardly move my feet to walk away. Each word felt like a sharp finger poking through my skin and gouging at my innards. How had such a shallow little weasel spotted all those flaws when they’d completely passed me by? What was wrong with me?
I mulled over the whole episode on the journey home and eventually the answer came to me. It was actually dead simple. I’d really been aware of it my whole life, in a vague kind of way. Gordon’s bleating had just brought it into focus. It came down to this. What you see depends on what you look for. You can enjoy the positives, or seek out the negatives. It’s your choice.
I’d gone one way, he’d gone the other.
I still take that path, as far as I can. I don’t know about him. Because they didn’t offer me the job.
I love the city at night. I prefer it to the day. The darkness draws out a wider spectrum of people, not just shoppers and office workers. Sounds carry farther. Everything you see feels closer and more personal. And the shadows are never far away, whenever you need them.
Kaufmann drove fast. Neither officer spoke. Away from the alley the streets were still busy. They were full of cars and taxis and limos and vans. A few people were still out walking. There were tall buildings all around, made of brick and stone and glass and concrete. They were squashed in on top of each other, bearing down, connecting you to the darkness up above.
The journey didn’t last long. Less than six minutes. The station house was only a dozen blocks away and Kaufmann took a direct route, basically northwest, toward the Hudson. He stopped outside an eight-story, stone- fronted building midway down a side street. Police cruisers and unmarked sedans were parked at forty-five degrees from the curb, jutting out evenly like fish bones. We joined the end of the row. Klein came round and opened my door. I shuffled out and he led me to the end of a metal railing that separated the sidewalk from the street. Kaufmann caught up with us and we followed him along to a pair of solid, studded wooden doors at the center of the facade. Big keystones were set all around the doorway and on either side a bright green lantern was hanging on a metal bracket.
Inside, the reception area was small and cramped. It smelled of dust and floor polish, like a school. The walls were painted apple green, which is supposed to be a calming color, and there were notices plastered everywhere. About a quarter showed monochrome photofit images of people the police wanted to question, and the rest gave pedantic warnings about every conceivable petty misdemeanor from smoking in the building to dropping litter in the interview rooms.
Kaufmann approached the reception desk and rested his elbows on the wooden counter. Another uniformed officer emerged from a back room and leaned over to talk to him. The pair of them spoke for a minute. They seemed to know each other. This was probably a familiar ritual. I wouldn’t be the first person Kaufmann had dragged in at the dead of night. Finally the officer behind the desk laughed and slapped Kaufmann on the shoulder. He pressed a button, and a gate in a waist-high glass barrier to our right swung open. Klein ushered me through, then led the way down a flight of stairs that followed around three sides of a square elevator shaft.
The next corridor opened up into a broad square lobby area. The far wall was divided into two sections. The right-hand part was wider. It was made of metal. The surface was painted gray, with large rivets set into it at regular intervals. The remainder was blocked off by dull, dirty white metal bars. The other walls were made of whitewashed stone, and the floor had been covered with some kind of speckled, shiny material. It felt like being in a cellar. The atmosphere was cold and vaguely damp. There were only three windows. They were long and narrow,
