Authors: Benjamin Black
Tags: #Family Life, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
The Lemur (5 page)
“What did he want?”
“It seems someone has been killed.”
Far uptown a speck-sized helicopter was hovering like a mosquito above a building site on the roof of a skyscraper, with a cable or something dangling from it, taut and straight, like a proboscis.
“Killed?” he said faintly.
“Yes. Murdered. What on earth have you been up to?”
SWEET GUYS
T
he police station, if that was what to call it—headquarters? precinct house?—looked just as it would have in the movies. John Glass was led through a big, low-ceilinged, noisy room lined with desks and cramped cubicles, where many shirtsleeved people, some in uniform and some not, walked determinedly about, carrying documents and paper coffee cups and shouting at each other. Glass idly entertained the fancy that, if it were viewed from above, all this apparently random toing and froing would resolve into a series of patterns, forming and re-forming, as in a Busby Berkeley musical. Everyone seemed to be either bored or in a temper. The women, washed-out blondes, mostly, were heavy eyed and slow-moving, as if they had not slept last night, which perhaps they had not, since to Glass it appeared that every other working woman in New York City was a single mother, either divorced or abandoned. The big room had a somehow familiar aspect, which was more than just the memory of countless crime films, and after a minute or two it came to him: it looked exactly like a newspaper office.
he police station, if that was what to call it—headquarters? precinct house?—looked just as it would have in the movies. John Glass was led through a big, low-ceilinged, noisy room lined with desks and cramped cubicles, where many shirtsleeved people, some in uniform and some not, walked determinedly about, carrying documents and paper coffee cups and shouting at each other. Glass idly entertained the fancy that, if it were viewed from above, all this apparently random toing and froing would resolve into a series of patterns, forming and re-forming, as in a Busby Berkeley musical. Everyone seemed to be either bored or in a temper. The women, washed-out blondes, mostly, were heavy eyed and slow-moving, as if they had not slept last night, which perhaps they had not, since to Glass it appeared that every other working woman in New York City was a single mother, either divorced or abandoned. The big room had a somehow familiar aspect, which was more than just the memory of countless crime films, and after a minute or two it came to him: it looked exactly like a newspaper office.
Captain Ambrose had the face of an El Greco martyr, with deep brown, suffering eyes and a nose like a finely honed stone ax head. He was tall and cadaverous, and his light-olive skin was smooth and seemingly hairless. Glass thought he might be an Indian, Navajo, maybe, or Hopi. His accent was pure New York, though, broadvoweled and nasal. He wore a dark brown suit the same shade as his eyes, a white shirt and nondescript tie, and big black leather shoes with quarter-inch rims. There was nothing in the room that did not need to be there. The desk at which he sat showed him to be a fanatical tidier, with documents all sorted and squared, pens ranked by size and color, and every pencil freshly sharpened. On the wall were two framed photographs, of the president, and the late Pope John Paul II.
“Take a seat, Mr. Glass,” the policeman said. “Thanks for coming in.”
A heavy-haunched woman with black roots showing in her butterblond hair entered without knocking and laid a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Think us two thirsty fellows could get a cup of coffee, Rhoda?” Captain Ambrose asked.
The woman glared at him. “Machine is busted,” she said. “Walensky punched it again.” She went out, and the glass panel in the door rattled behind her.
“How did you get my number?” Glass asked.
The policeman reached for the papers Rhoda had brought and held them upright and tapped them on the desk to align their edges. “It was in the call log on Riley’s cell phone,” he said. “When did you speak to him?”
“This morning. At ten forty-seven.”
The captain lifted an eyebrow.
“I happened to be looking at the clock.”
“Ah. Right. That every witness should be so accurate.”
Witness.
The word sent something like a small electric charge along Glass’s spine. It seemed to him that everything in the headachey, noise-assaulted, vertiginous six months he had lived in New York had been leading to just this moment, when he would be sitting here in this policeman’s office, dry mouthed and faintly nauseous, with a tingle in his backbone and his veins fizzing. What was happening was at once ordinary and outlandish, inevitable and contingent, as in a dream. “What happened?” he asked. “I mean, how did you … ?”
The word sent something like a small electric charge along Glass’s spine. It seemed to him that everything in the headachey, noise-assaulted, vertiginous six months he had lived in New York had been leading to just this moment, when he would be sitting here in this policeman’s office, dry mouthed and faintly nauseous, with a tingle in his backbone and his veins fizzing. What was happening was at once ordinary and outlandish, inevitable and contingent, as in a dream. “What happened?” he asked. “I mean, how did you … ?”
The captain was leaning forward at the desk with his long, narrow dark hands clasped before him, which intensified the sainted look. “His girlfriend called us. She’d been out of town, came back and found the body, still warm.” Glass had not reckoned on Dylan Riley having a girlfriend. What kind of girl could she possibly be? The captain went on: “We’re not getting much out of her at the moment, naturally. She didn’t do it. We checked: she was in a Boeing somewhere over Pennsylvania when it happened. She says stuff was taken, two, maybe three computers.”
“Then there must have been more than one person.”
“Oh?”
“To be able to carry so much.”
A faintly pitying light came into the policeman’s eye. “Computers are compact and light these days, Mr. Glass. That’s why they’re called laptops.” He uncoiled himself from his chair, pushing down on the desk with the steepled fingers of one hand. He really was a very tall man. “Listen, I’ve got to get that cup of coffee. You want to come? There’s a place across the street.”
They moved in chill sunlight through the late-afternoon crowds. The captain loped along at a forward stoop, his arms slightly bowed and his head turned a little to the side, like an Indian scout, one of his ancestors, perhaps, leaning down intently to listen for the sound of the cavalry’s distant hoofbeats. They were in the coffee shop before Glass thought of lighting up. A cigarette would have calmed him, but not much.
The place was crowded and while they were waiting for a table the policeman, jingling coins in a pocket of his trousers, talked in relaxed tones about the circumstances of Dylan Riley’s death. Other customers, also waiting, stood within earshot, but paid no heed; apparently murder was a conversational commonplace, in the environs of Police Headquarters. “A very smooth job,” the captain said. “Small-caliber bullet through the left eye. A Beretta, we think, maybe. Then the place was neatened up, with the victim on his bed and all, ready for the meat wagon. He was shot at his desk, though.”
“How do you know that?”
Again the captain flashed that mild, pitying look. “Stains on the chair,” he said. “Like the medical textbooks tell us:
no death without defecation.
”
no death without defecation.
”
A gum-chewing waitress in a gingham apron showed them to a table in a corner; the tabletop was sticky to the touch. Glass really, really wanted a cigarette.
“You’re Irish, right?” the captain said. “How long you been here?”
“Since November.”
The ginghamed waitress brought their coffee.
“You planning on staying?”
“It seems so. My wife is American.” The policeman nodded, and Glass saw that he knew a great deal more about him than the fact of his American wife. “My father-in-law has commissioned me to write his biography.” It sounded entirely implausible. “That’s William Mulholland.”
Captain Ambrose nodded again, watching his hand as it spooned sugar into his cup. Glass felt he was back in a dream, trying to exonerate himself for some nameless thing he had not done, desperately offering up scraps of evidence to an omniscient but preoccupied and wholly unimpressible interrogator.
“I went to the Jesuits,” the policeman said. Glass stared, helplessly, imagining himself a goldfish in a clouded bowl. What new tack was this? “Saint Peter’s, in Jersey City. You know Jersey City? No, I guess not. You educated by the priests?”
“Mine was a diocesan college, in Ireland. Also called Saint Peter’s, as it happens. Since in disgrace.”
“Pedophiles? Right. We had them, too. No one cared, in those days. And we never talked, I mean us kids—who would have listened?” He shook his head sadly. “Tough times.”
“And not so long ago, either.”
“That’s right.” He stirred his coffee slowly, slowly. Glass was trying to think which character in
Alice in Wonderland
the captain reminded him of. Was there a sloth? Or maybe the Caterpillar? And then at last the question came: “Tell me, Mr. Glass, what was the connection with Dylan Riley?”
Alice in Wonderland
the captain reminded him of. Was there a sloth? Or maybe the Caterpillar? And then at last the question came: “Tell me, Mr. Glass, what was the connection with Dylan Riley?”
Glass heard himself swallow. “The connection?”
“Yeah, his connection with you, yours with him.” He was still frowning into his cup, as if an answer might at any moment present itself there, etched in the froth. “Why was he phoning you?”
“As I said, I’m writing a biography of Mr. Mulholland.”
“A biography. Right.”
“And Dylan Riley, he’s—he was—a researcher. I had hired him—was thinking of hiring him—to work with me, on the book.”
“Right,” the policeman said again. “I figured that must be it.”
After that there was a lengthy pause.
In his lifetime John Glass had known many occasions of fear. Once, on a plane flying into Lebanon under Israeli rocket fire, he had very nearly shat himself. It had been a humbling moment, never to be forgotten, or forgiven. What he felt now was not fear, exactly. His mouth was still dry, but he had a sensation deep in his gut that was as much excitement as anxiety. He was, in a strange way, he realized, thrilled: thrilled to be mixed up in a murder, thrilled to be here being questioned by this peculiar lawman, thrilled that, somehow, after all these months, he could be said to have really arrived at last in New York, this place that was so vividly, so violently, so murderously alive. He recalled a phrase from Emerson about death, and our thinking of it:
There at least is reality that will not dodge us.
There at least is reality that will not dodge us.
He drank the bitter black coffee. “Where did he live,” he asked, “Dylan Riley?”
“SoHo, near the river. He had a warehouse on Vandam, filled with all this surveillance stuff. Remember Gene Hackman in
The Conversation?
I suspect our boy was a keen moviegoer.”
The Conversation?
I suspect our boy was a keen moviegoer.”
“They say he was very good at what he did.”
“That right? Who’s
they
?”
they
?”
Glass retracted instantly, like a touched snail. “Some people I know—journalists. That’s how I got his name.”
The captain had taken out a gunmetal cigarette lighter and was turning it idly in his fingers. A fellow smoker! Glass experienced a rush of brotherly warmth for this long, emaciated, saintly-seeming figure. Ambrose saw him looking hungrily at the lighter and grinned. “Gave them up six months ago—about the time you moved here to our fair and wondrous city.” He shifted sideways on his chair to allow his long legs more space. The espresso machine behind the bar began to hiss like an industrial boiler and he had to raise his voice to be heard. “My problem is, Mr. Glass, somebody shot this Dylan Riley, which means somebody had a reason to shoot him, and I don’t know what that reason might be. He was a researcher, you say, but from the look of the inside of that warehouse of his he was a lot more than that, or aspired to be.” He picked up his empty cup and peered into it regretfully, as if there would never be another drink of coffee to be had. His eyes were hooded. “Secrets, Mr. Glass,” he said. “Dangerous things.”
Another silence followed. The policeman kept his eyes downcast and seemed to be pondering the woes of the world.
“I don’t think,” Glass said, measuring his words, “that I can help you, Captain. I didn’t know Dylan Riley, not in any real sense.”
Those olive-dark lids shot up and the eyes fixed him, wet-brown and shining. “But you met him.” It was not a question.
“Yes, I—he—that is, he came to my office, to discuss the possibility of his working with me on the book. Nothing was agreed.”
The policeman was still watching him. “What kind of research would you have wanted him to do, if ‘something’ had been ‘agreed’?”
Glass’s nerves were thrumming for the want of a cigarette. “Just … general. Dates, places, people Mr. Mulholland met, where, when. That kind of thing.”
The captain flipped open the lid of the lighter but did not ignite the flame. Glass caught a faint whiff of gas from the pinprick nozzle, or imagined that he did, and his craving nerves stretched another notch.
“Mr. Mulholland,” the captain said, “is a pretty interesting man. That’s to say, he’s led a pretty interesting life. Must be some things in his past you won’t be able to write about.”
“There are things in all our pasts that wouldn’t bear the light of day.”
The policeman gave a low, deprecating laugh. “But that’s not the same thing, is it. What I mean is, Mr. Mulholland is likely to have secrets that wouldn’t be
allowed
to see the light of day. Given his line of work before he set up Mulholland Cable.”
allowed
to see the light of day. Given his line of work before he set up Mulholland Cable.”
“Then I’m wasting my time.”
That seemed to require no comment, and again a silence fell between the two men, uneasy, and faintly rancorous. Glass was calculating the number of lies he had told the policeman so far today. Or not lies, perhaps, in the strict sense, the sense the Jesuits of Saint Peter’s in Jersey City would have insisted on, but shifted emphases, strategic withholdings. What was the phrase? Sins of omission? That was it. Yet it was no task of his to incriminate himself. He paused on that thought. Incriminate himself in what? He had not shot Dylan Riley. All he was doing was trying to cover up the possibility, the distinct possibility, that what the Lemur had unearthed was the fact of Glass’s affair with Alison O’Keeffe, and that he had been out to blackmail Glass by threatening to reveal the affair to his wife and her father. What man, what husband, no matter how far estranged from his wife, would not want to suppress such a revelation and preserve the arrangement that had been suiting everyone for so long? And then, deny the thought though he might, there was that million dollars …
“I read that thing you wrote,” the captain said, “that thing in one of the magazines, about the Menendez brothers.” Glass stared, and the captain rolled his scarecrow’s shoulders in a parody of prideful shyness. “Shucks, yeah, I read, don’t even move my lips.” He stirred his coffee again. “It was a good piece. Lyle and Erik. Sweet guys. You meet them?”
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