Don’t worry, corporal. We’re going to take care of you …
‘Yes. Maybe we can come to an arrangement.’
A flash of hope appeared on the sheriff’s face, and in his words. ‘Sure we can. Come with us to the bank tomorrow morning and take whatever you want.’
‘Yes, we could do that …’ His voice changed abruptly. ‘But we won’t.’
With what was left of the gasoline in the jerrycan, he marked a line on the floor as far as the door. Then he put his hand in his pocket and took out a Zippo. A nauseating odour joined the pungent smell that already filled the room. Farland had relieved himself in his pants.
‘No, I beg you, don’t do it, don’t do it, for—’
‘Shut your fucking mouth!’
It was Westlake who had interrupted his deputy’s pointless snivelling. The strength of his hate and curiosity had given him back a little pride.
‘Who are you, scumbag?’
The young man who had been a soldier looked at him for a moment in silence.
The planes will come from that direction …
Then he said his name.
The sheriff opened his eyes wide.
‘That isn’t possible. You’re dead.’
He clicked the Zippo. The two men stared at the flame in terror.
He smiled, and for once was pleased that his smile was a grimace. ‘No, you sons of bitches. You’re dead.’
He opened his hand more than necessary and let the Zippo fall to the floor. He didn’t know how long the fall of the lighter would last for the two men. But he knew from experience how long such a short journey could be.
No thunder, for them.
Only the metallic noise of the Zippo hitting the floor. Then a hot bright whoosh, followed by a tongue of flame that advanced on them.
He stood listening to them scream and watching them squirm and burn until the smell of roasting flesh spread through the room. He breathed it in, savouring the fact that this time the flesh wasn’t his.
Then he opened the door and went out on the street. He started walking, leaving the house behind him, the screams accompanying him like a blessing as he moved away.
Soon afterwards, when the screams stopped, he knew that the captivity of Sheriff Duane Westlake and his deputy Will Farland was over.
Too Many Years Later
CHAPTER 7
Jeremy Cortese watched the dark-coloured BMW move away, and wished it would blow up. He was sure that, apart from the driver, none of the people inside would be much of a loss to the world.
‘Go fuck yourselves, assholes.’
Having got that off his chest, he went back into one of the two huts on the site. Actually, they weren’t so much huts as sheet-metal boxes mounted on wheels and put there as a barrier to mark off the work area.
He resisted the temptation to light a cigarette.
The technical meeting that had just ended had upset him, aggravating the bad mood that had been dogging him since the beginning of the day.
The previous evening, he had gone to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks go belly-up, losing to the Dallas Mavericks. He had come out feeling bitter, as he always did – leading him to wonder why he still insisted on going to games.
That old feeling of being part of a crowd, celebrating a shared passion, just wasn’t there any more. Whether his team won or lost, he always returned home thinking the same thing.
And alone.
Going in search of memories is never an easy matter. Whatever you dig up, it never really works. You can’t fully recapture the good memories, and you can’t kill the bad ones.
But he kept going back, feeding that instinct for self-harm that every human being, to a greater or lesser degree, carries within himself.
Several times during the game he had looked around at the bleachers until he gradually lost interest in what was happening in the game.
With a sad tub of popcorn in his hands, he had seen fathers and sons overjoyed at a slam dunk from Irons or a three-pointer by Jones and screaming in chorus with the rest of the fans, ‘Defence! Defence! Defence!’ when the other team attacked.
He had done exactly the same in the days when he went to games with his sons and felt that he meant something in their lives. But that had turned out to be an illusion. The truth was, they meant something in his.
When one of the Knicks had put in a three, he, too, had risen to his feet by sheer force of habit, rejoicing with a crowd of perfect strangers and using it as an opportunity to repress the tears rising to his eyes.
Then he had sat down again. On his right was an empty seat and on his left a boy and a girl with eyes for nobody but each other, clearly wondering why they were here instead of in bed, having a lot more fun.
When he’d come here with his sons, he’d always sat between them. John, the younger of the two, usually sat on his right and seemed equally interested in the game and the comings and goings of the people selling drinks, candy floss and all kinds of food. Jeremy had often compared him to a furnace that could burn hot dog and popcorn the way an old steam locomotive burned coal. More than once he had thought that the boy wasn’t really interested in basketball and the real reason he liked going to the stadium was his father’s generosity when they were there.
Sam, the older one, who was more like him, both physically and in character, and would soon be taller than him, was really fascinated by the game. Although they had never talked about it, he knew that his dream was to be a star of the NBA. Unfortunately, Jeremy was convinced it would remain a dream and nothing more. Sam had inherited his big bones and the kind of build that with time would tend to spread outwards rather than upwards, even though he was in the school team and regularly beat his father when they shot hoops behind the house.
Mortifying as that was, his pride as a parent always made Jeremy happy to be humiliated like that.
Then the things that had happened had happened. Actually, he didn’t feel any sense of guilt, and didn’t see why he should.
It had simply been a piece of demolition.
He and his wife Jenny had found themselves talking less and less and arguing more and more. Then the arguments had ended and only silence had remained. Without any real reason, they had become strangers. At that point, the demolition was over and they didn’t have the strength left to start rebuilding.
After the divorce, Jenny had moved closer to her parents and now lived in Queens with the boys. They had stayed on good terms, and in spite of what the judge had ruled, she allowed him to see his sons whenever he wanted. Except that Jeremy couldn’t always get away and before long the boys were seeing less and less of him and were less and less enthusiastic when they did. Their excursions had become less frequent, and going to games had stopped altogether.
It seemed that demolition had become his speciality, both at work and outside.
He shook himself free of these thoughts and tried to get back to the present.
Sonora Inc., the hugely successful construction company he worked for, had acquired two adjoining four-storey buildings on the corner of Third Avenue and 23rd Street, paying a considerable sum to the owners and decent compensation to the few families who still lived in those buildings. In their place there would be a forty-two-storey condominium, with a gym, a roof swimming pool and other facilities.
The new was elbowing aside the old.
They had almost finished the demolition. Jeremy found this part of the process necessary but extremely boring. After months of effort and noise, it was as if the work hadn’t even started. He had even felt a touch of sadness as he watched those two old redbrick buildings come down, as if a chunk of history was disappearing with them. But the excitement of construction would soon put paid to that feeling. Before too long, the excavators would carve out sufficient space to throw down foundations appropriate to a building of that kind. And then the creation would begin, the gradual climb upwards, the adding of piece to piece, until the joyful moment when they planted a Stars and S
tripes on the roof.
Standing in the doorway of the hut, he saw the workers downing tools one by one and walking towards him.
He looked at his watch. The argument with those assholes had lasted so long, he hadn’t realized it was lunchtime. He wasn’t hungry, but more than that, he had no desire right now to join in the chatter that always accompanied lunch. He’d always been on cordial, even friendly terms with his men. They didn’t share anything outside work, but work did take up most of their time, after all. And on the sites that he supervised he liked people to work as harmoniously as possible. That was why he had earned the esteem of his bosses and the respect of the workforce, even though they all knew that, when necessary, he was ready to take the gloves off and show an iron fist.
The fact that in his case it wasn’t a velvet glove, but a work glove, didn’t change anything.
Ronald Freeman, his deputy, came into the hut, making the floor sway slightly as he did so. He was a tall, well-built black man with a passion for beer and spicy food. Both tendencies had left their mark on his face and body. Freeman had married an Indian woman – something spicy to get his teeth into, as he put it. Jeremy had been to dinner at their house once. No sooner had he put in his mouth the first piece of something that had a name like masala than he had felt himself burst into flame and had been forced to take an immediate swig of beer. Then he had laughed and asked his host if you needed a firearms licence to serve food like that.
Ron took off his hard hat and went to the corner where he had put the thermal container his wife prepared for him every day. He sat down on the bench that ran along one side of the hut and placed the container on his knees. He saw Jeremy’s face and realized it was one of those days.
‘Trouble?’
Jeremy shrugged his shoulders, downplaying the situation. ‘The usual crap. When an architect and an engineer agree after arguing for hours, you can bet the next thing they’ll do is go off in search of a third pain in the ass, so they can put together a kind of Bermuda triangle.’
‘And did they find one?’
‘You know how it is. It isn’t hard to find a ballbuster.’
‘The Brokens woman?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If that woman understood double what she understands now, she’d still understand shit. She must be a sensation in bed, if her husband lets her off the leash like that.’
‘Or else she’s a stiff in bed, and her husband hopes she’ll tire herself out during the day so she won’t make any demands on him at night. Imagine what it must be like to have that woman lying beside you and feel her reaching out her hand …’
Ron gave a grimace of horror. ‘If it was me, they’d have to stick a pack of dogs in my underpants to dig it out.’
At that moment, two men climbed the steps to join them. Ron took advantage of their arrival to open his container. A strong smell of garlic pervaded the hut.
James Ritter, a pleasant-looking young worker, took a step back towards the door he’d just come in through. ‘Holy shit, Ron. Does the CIA know you’re carrying a weapon of mass destruction around with you? Eat all that stuff, you’ll be able to solder metal with your breath.’
Freeman’s only response was to ostentatiously lift a forkful of food to his mouth. ‘You’re an asshole. You deserve that trash you usually eat. You know, Viagra, which by the way I’m sure you’re already taking, sure ain’t gonna work with that crap inside you.’
Jeremy smiled.
He liked this atmosphere of camaraderie. Experience had taught him that men were better able to do heavy work if things were kept light. That was why he usually prepared something at home and ate his lunch sitting in one of the two huts with his workers.
But when he was in a bad mood, he preferred to be alone. To think about his own business and not weigh things down for others.
He went to the door and stood there for a moment looking out.
‘Not eating, boss?’
He shook his head, without turning. ‘Nah, I’m going to the deli around the corner. When I get back, I’ll count how many victims Ron’s food has claimed.’
He descended the steps of the hut, and went back to being an ordinary citizen. He crossed at the crossing and set off along 23rd Street, leaving Third Avenue behind him. The traffic wasn’t too heavy at this hour and in this part of the city. The rhythms of New York were very regular, except from time to time when things went crazy.
It was like an endless conjuring trick. In this city everything appeared and disappeared constantly. Cars, people, houses.
He got to the deli at a steady pace, without stopping to look in any windows. Partly because he wasn’t interested in what was in those windows, but mainly because he didn’t want to see his own reflection. For fear of discovering that he, too, had vanished into thin air.
He pushed open the door of the crowded deli, and the smell of food hit his nostrils. Seeing him come in, the oriental girl behind the cash register found the time to smile at him before turning to the line of people waiting to weigh their food and pay for it.
He went slowly along the long display counter, looking for something that attracted him in the various containers. Assistants, also oriental, replaced them as they emptied. He took a plastic container, served himself a few pieces of stewed chicken that looked acceptable enough, and prepared himself a mixed salad.
In the meantime, the line at the cash desk had grown shorter and a minute or so later he found himself facing the girl who had smiled at him when he had entered. At a first distracted glance, he had judged her to be much younger than she was. Now that he saw her at close quarters, he realized she wasn’t young enough to be his daughter after all. She smiled at him as if she might be willing to become something different for him. She probably did that with everyone, Jeremy thought. He weighed his containers, paid the money he was asked to, and left the woman to smile at the next customer in the same way.
He went to the back of the deli and sat down alone at a table for two. The chicken kept its promise – in other words wasn’t very good. He almost immediately left it and devoted his attention to the salad, remembering how Jenny had insisted, when they were still together, that he eat more vegetables.
Everything always happens too late …
With his tongue, he pursued the fragments of salad that got stuck between his teeth and washed them away with sips of the beer.
His thoughts returned to the morning’s meeting with Val Courier, a famous architect of somewhat dubious sexuality, and Fred Wyring, an engineer with equally dubious calculations, who had been joined by the wife of the owner of the company. Mrs Elisabeth Brokens, who looked like a brochure for Botox, having tired of going from one analyst to another, had decided that the best cure for her neuroses would be work. Having no aptitude, no training, and no ideas, she had been forced to turn to her husband. Maybe she had freed herself from her neuroses, but only by passing them on to all the people she came in contact with.
Jeremy Cortese didn’t have any qualifications, but had graduated on the job. Day after day, working hard and learning from those who knew more than him. He found arguing with incompetents a waste of time, which he’d eventually have to account for to someone, in this case Mr Brokens in person. Mr Brokens knew his work well but evidently didn’t know his wife quite as well, if he let her stick her nose in things like that.
Every time he saw her show up, he was tempted to set the stopwatch, so that he could demonstrate to his boss how much a visit from his wife to the site had cost him. Maybe it would have been better for him to keep paying the analysts’ fees.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t see Ronald Freeman come in. It wasn’t until he was standing right in front of him that he became aware of his presence and looked up from his salad.
‘We have a problem.’
Ron paused, then put his hands down on the table and looked him straight in the eyes. The expression on Ron’s face was one he’d never seen there before. If such a thing w
as possible, Jeremy would have said he was pale.
‘A big problem.’
That started ringing alarm bells in Jeremy’s head. ‘What’s up?’
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.