I Am God (26 page)

On the steps she stopped and looked around her for a moment.

A car with two officers was reversing out of the parking lot next to the entrance. Vivien waved to them and ran down the short flight of steps. She reached the car, and saw the reflection of the sky disappear from the side window as the officer lowered it.

‘I need a ride to 23rd and Third.’

‘Get in.’

She opened the back door and sat down in a seat usually reserved for arrested people. But she was in too much of a hurry to register that.

‘Use the siren.’

Without asking for explanations, the driver switched on the flashing light and pulled out quickly, with a slight screech of tyres. She was so impatient to arrive that the journey seemed very long, even though it was only three blocks. When she saw the orange plastic barriers around the site, she relived the discovery of the body of Mitch Sparrow, which at first had seemed to be yet another case to be filed away in the records, but which had in fact given a whole new direction to this crazy business, and might even help to bring it to a
conclusion
. The madness of chance, as well as of human beings, was turning out to be the one thing connecting all the threads of this case.

The car had not yet come to a compete halt when Vivien opened the door and jumped out.

‘Thanks, boys. I owe you one.’

She didn’t hear the reply, didn’t hear the car drive off. She had already approached a worker who had just come out of the gap in the perimeter fence and took him aback with the urgency of her request.

‘Where can I find Mr Cortese?’

The man indicated a point beyond the fence. ‘He’s right behind me.’

After a moment, the figure of Jeremy Cortese appeared. He was wearing the same jacket as on the day they had first met. When he saw her coming towards him, he recognized her immediately. Difficult to forget someone who reminds you of the discovery of a corpse!

‘Hello, Miss Light.’

‘Mr Cortese, I need to ask you a few questions.’

Surprised, but realizing there was no way out, he said, ‘Go ahead.’

Vivien drew Cortese aside. The place where they were standing, between the fence and the barriers, was used by the workers and she didn’t want them to be disturbed, or for them to disturb her. She took up a position facing Cortese and spoke as clearly as possible, as if she and the man were speaking two different languages.

‘I need you to dig deep into your memory. I know it’s been a long time, but your answer’s important. Very important.’

He nodded to confirm that he had understood, and waited in silence for the question.

‘I know you worked for the company that constructed the building on the Lower East Side, the one that was blown up last Saturday.’

A hint of fear and alarm appeared in his eyes, as if she had just told him that the police were investigating him personally. His shoulders drooped a little and when he spoke, there was a distinct unease in his voice. ‘Before we go on, I’d like to ask you a question. Do I need a lawyer?’

Vivien tried to put him at his ease. ‘No, Mr Cortese,’ she said, as reassuringly as possible, ‘you don’t need a lawyer. I
know perfectly well you had nothing to do with that. There are just a few things I need to know about.’

‘Go on.’

‘Among the men who worked with you on that building, do you remember if there was one with a heavily scarred face?’

The answer came without hesitation. ‘Yes.’

Vivien’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Are you sure?’

Now that his fears had been calmed, Cortese seemed reassured by the turn taken by the interview, and was eager to reply. ‘He wasn’t in my team but I do remember seeing the guy a few times. With a face like that, you couldn’t exactly miss him.’

Vivien’s heart was standing still in her chest. ‘Do you remember his name?’

‘No. I never even spoke to him.’

The disappointment Vivien felt at this lasted only a brief moment before it was wiped out by a new thought that suddenly occurred to her.

‘God bless you, Mr Cortese. God bless you a thousand times. You have no idea how helpful you’ve been. You can go back to work now, and don’t worry.’

The briefest of handshakes, and Vivien had already turned her back on him, leaving him standing there on the sidewalk, surprised and relieved. She took out her cellphone and dialled the captain’s number.

She didn’t even give him time to say his name. ‘Alan, it’s Vivien.’

‘What’s going on? Where the hell are you?’

‘You can call off the men. We won’t need to search through those names any more.’

She waited a moment, to give Bellew time to prepare for what she was about to ask him.

‘You need to send officers to the oncology departments of every hospital in New York to check if they had any patient with a strongly disfigured face who died in the last year and a half.’

Now
that
the
cancer
has
done
its
work
and
I’m
on
the
other
side
…

Bellew, like the others, knew that letter by heart by now. Vivien’s excitement immediately became his.

‘Great work, Vivien. I’ll put the men on it right away. We’re waiting for you here.’

Vivien folded the cellphone and put it back in her pocket. As she walked briskly back to the precinct, surrounded by the crowd, she would have given anything to be just a normal person. Instead of which, every person she passed aroused the anxious question of whether this was one she would lose or one she would save. For them, too, there was still hope. Maybe the man who had left a trail of bombs behind him, like a trail of stones in a tragic fairy tale, had, at the time of death, also left behind him a name and an address.

Father McKean reluctantly made his way through the crowd thronging the Boathouse Café. His face bore clear traces of his sleepless night, spent in front of the television absorbing the images on the screen with all the avidity of a thirsty man and at the same time dismissing them from his mind as too horrible to contemplate.

I
am
God
…

Those words continued to echo in his head, like a ghastly soundtrack to the visions his memory continued to play back to him. The destroyed cars, the damaged buildings, the fires, the wounded and bloodstained people. An arm, torn from a body by the violence of the blast, lying on the sidewalk, pitilessly framed by the TV cameras.

He took a deep breath.

He had prayed for a long time, asking for comfort and enlightenment where he usually found it. Faith had always been his consolation, his point of departure and point of arrival, whatever the nature of the journey. It was because of faith that his adventure with the community had begun, and thanks to the results he had achieved with many kids he had allowed himself to dream. Other Joys, other houses spread all over the state, in which young people attracted by drugs would be able to stop feeling like moths drawn to a flame. After
a certain point, the kids themselves had been his strength.

But this morning he had wandered among them trying to hide his pain, smiling when he was asked to smile and replying when he was asked to reply. But as soon as he was alone it all crashed down on top of him, like objects falling out after being crammed into a closet.

For the first time in his life as a priest, he didn’t know what to do.

He had found himself in that situation before, when he still lived in the world, before realizing that what he wanted to do in his life was to serve God and his fellow man, and he had resolved his doubts and anxieties then by entering the peace of the seminary. This time it was different. He had called Cardinal Logan without a great deal of hope. If he had been in New York, he would have met with him more for moral support than to obtain an authorization he knew would never come. Not in the time or the circumstances that would be needed. He knew perfectly well the iron rules that governed that aspect of the relationship with the faithful. It was one of the fixed points of their creed, guaranteeing as it did that anyone could approach the sacrament of confession with a free heart and without fear and receive absolution in return for repentance. In his capacity as a minister, the Church condemned him to silence – and simultaneously condemned hundreds more people to death, if those attacks continued.

‘So you’re the famous Father McKean, the founder of Joy.’

He turned in the direction of the voice and found himself facing a tall woman in her forties, with dark, impeccably groomed hair. She was too heavily made-up, too elegant, probably too rich. She was holding two glasses full of what must have been champagne.

The woman did not wait for his answer. Anyway, it hadn’t been a question, but a statement of fact.

‘They told me what a charismatic and fascinating man you are. And they were right.’

She held out one of the two glasses. Taken aback by these words, Father McKean took it instinctively. He had had the impression that, if he hadn’t, the woman would have let go and it would have fallen on the ground.

‘My name’s Sandhal Bones and I’m one of the organizers of the exhibition.’

The woman shook the hand he held out and kept it in hers a moment longer than necessary. Father McKean added embarrassment to all the emotions already churning inside him. He looked away from her and saw little bubbles rising vivaciously to the surface of the flute.

‘So you’re one of our benefactors.’

Mrs Bones tried, without too much success, to downplay her role. ‘Benefactor is pitching it a little high. Let’s say I like to give a hand where it’s needed.’

Father McKean, although with no desire to drink, lifted the glass to his lips and took a small sip. ‘It’s thanks to people like you that Joy continues to thrive.’

‘It’s thanks to people like you that it exists at all,’ she replied, taking him by the arm.

He smelled a delicate and doubtless highly expensive perfume, and heard the swish of her dress.

‘And now let’s go and see the work of your protégés. I’ve heard great things about them.’

Making her way nonchalantly through the crowd, Mrs Bones moved to the other side of the balcony overlooking the little lake.

The Boathouse Café was an elegant venue in the middle
of Central Park, joined to the rest of the city by East Drive. A single-storey building, its facade consisted of wide windows that allowed the customers a view of the water and the greenery as they dined. When the weather was fine, tables were put out on the terrace that ran all the way alongside it, and visitors could eat in the open air.

It was here that an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and crafts involving kids in the care of institutions similar to Joy had been organized by a committee whose name Father McKean could never remember. It was a way of allowing them to communicate with people, both personally and through their artworks. When the idea had been suggested, Father McKean had approached Jubilee Manson and Shalimar Bennett. The two of them were still in the middle of a difficult journey, but eventually he had become convinced, as had John, that this experience could only do them good.

Shalimar was a white girl from a normal middle-class family. They had managed to get her off heroin, as well as the self-harming that had covered her arms with scars. Father McKean wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even the Inquisition, but she was his favourite. She had a face that inspired tenderness and a wish to protect her. And light seemed to radiate from her eyes whenever anyone complimented her on her work, which was halfway between sculpture and jewellery. Original and colourful bracelets, necklaces, earrings were all made from materials that were not so much random as rudimentary.

Jubilee, a seventeen-year-old black boy, came from a very different kind of family, one where there were no rules and where in order to survive you had to fight. His mother was a prostitute and his father had been stabbed to death in a fight.
His brother Jonas claimed to be a rapper, under the stage name Iron7. In reality, he was the head of a gang mainly involved in drugs and prostitution. When his mother had found crack in Jubilee’s room, she had realized that her younger son was about to follow in his brother’s footsteps. In one of her rare lucid moments, by some lucky intuition, she had taken him to see Father McKean at Joy. The same afternoon she had killed herself.

Once past his initial difficulties, Jubilee had adapted well to the life of the community and soon after his arrival had shown marked artistic gifts, which had been encouraged and cultivated. Now some of his most interesting works – although quite immature and needing allowances to be made – formed part of this exhibition in Central Park.

Father McKean and Mrs Bones reached the area where three of Jubilee’s paintings were displayed on easels. The influence of pop-art, and particularly Basquiat, was obvious but the bright colours, and the originality with which they were juxtaposed, showed great promise for the future.

The young painter was standing next to his works. Mrs Bones stopped in front of the pictures, in order to cast an eye over them.

‘And this is our young artist.’

She examined the works with great attention, not devoid of a certain bewilderment. ‘Well, I’m no critic and this certainly isn’t Norman Rockwell. But I have to say they are … they are …’

‘Explosive?’

Having suggested this definition Father McKean winked at Jubilee, who was trying hard not to laugh.

Mrs Bones turned to the priest as if she had seen the light. ‘Of course. That’s exactly what they are. Explosive.’

‘That’s what we all think.’

Having gratified both the artist’s ego and Mrs Bones’ obsession with patronage, Father McKean started to find her presence annoying. A short distance away, he saw John Kortighan talking to a group of people and threw him a glance that contained a desperate plea for help.

John immediately grasped the situation. He freed himself from the people he had been talking with and came towards them.

Father McKean made as if to get away. ‘Mrs Bones …’

In return, she gave him a look in which there was a little too much fluttering of the eyelashes. ‘You can call me Sandhal, if you prefer.’

Just then, John reached them and released him from his ordeal.

‘Mrs Bones, this is John Kortighan, who works with me. He’s the principal architect of the smooth running …’

As he introduced him, Father McKean turned his head to look at him. John was standing with his back to the water, and the priest’s eyes were drawn past him, past the crowded balcony, all the way to the cycle track that ran alongside the little lake on the left.

Standing there with his hands in the pockets of his jeans was a man in a green military jacket. Father McKean felt as though the breath had been knocked out of him. A wave of heat rose to his face. He somehow managed to finish the introduction.

‘… of our little community.’

John held out his hand, diplomatic as always. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Bones. I know you’re one of the principal architects of this event.’

The woman’s little laugh came to him as if in a trance. ‘As
I was saying to Father McKean, I’ve always been ready to do something for my fellow human beings.’

The words seemed to come from a great distance, as if muffled by space and fog. He couldn’t take his eyes off that man standing alone, looking in his direction, while bicycles passed close by him. He told himself jackets like that were very common and that an event like this was bound to attract the attention of outsiders. It was perfectly normal for a person to stop and look to see what was going on.

It was a reasonable attempt to reassure himself, but he knew that wasn’t the case. He knew this was no ordinary person but the man who had whispered those sacrilegious words to him inside the confessional along with his murderous intentions.

I
am
God
…

The faces and the noise and the people around him had vanished. Only that disquieting figure drew his attention, his thoughts, his eyes. His longing for mercy. Somehow he was certain that the man had seen him and that, of all the people there, he, Father McKean, was the one he was staring at.

‘Excuse me a moment.’

He didn’t even hear what John and Mrs Bones said in reply.

He had moved away from them and was making his way through the crowd, straight to the other end of the balcony. Losing and finding again the sombre eyes of that stranger who had taken up residence inside him like a harbinger of doom. He wanted to reach him and try to talk to him, try to make him see reason, even though he knew it was a desperate enterprise. On his side, the man continued to watch him as he walked, waiting, as if he had come to the Boathouse Café with the same intention.

Father McKean suddenly found two black men barring his way.

One was just a little shorter than him and was wearing a hooded down jacket that was much too big for him and much too heavy for the season, a black cap with the peak at the side, jeans, and a pair of heavy sneakers. On his chest, a glittering gold chain.

The man who loomed behind him was huge. It didn’t seem possible that a man that size could actually move. He was dressed all in black, and his head was covered in a kind of bandana that looked like one of those hairnets men used to wear at night to straighten their hair.

The thinner of the two men put his hand on Father McKean’s chest and stopped him. ‘Where are you going, priest man?’

Annoyed by this hitch, Father McKean instinctively turned to look to his right. The man in the green jacket was still there, observing the scene without expression. Reluctantly, he turned his attention back to the person in front of him.

‘What do you want, Jonas? I didn’t think you’d been invited.’

‘Iron7 doesn’t need an invitation if these assholes can get in. Right, Dude?’

The big man merely nodded impassively.

‘Well,’ Father McKean said, ‘now that you’ve
demonstrated
how strong you are, I think you can leave.’

Jonas Manson smiled, revealing a small diamond encrusted in one of his incisors. ‘Hey, hold on a minute, priest. What’s the hurry? I’m the brother of one of the artists. Can’t I admire his work like everyone else?’

He looked around and, beyond Father McKean, glimpsed Jubilee still standing next to his paintings and commenting on them to other people.

‘There he is. There’s my boy.’

The man who called himself Iron7 pushed Father McKean aside and headed towards his brother, followed by the impressive hulk of Dude. People instinctively stepped aside for them. Father McKean walked behind them, trying to keep the situation under control.

Jonas reached the paintings and, without even greeting his brother, assumed a dramatic studio pose in front of them. On seeing him coming, Jubilee had fallen silent, taken a step backwards and started shaking.

‘Hey, great stuff. Really great stuff. What do you think, Dude?’

Again the fat man, without speaking, confirmed his chief’s words with a movement of his head. John, who had grasped the tricky nature of the situation, approached, trying to put his body between Jonas and his brother.

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘Oh yes? Who says so? You, runt?’ The rapper turned to the giant and smiled. ‘Dude, get this asshole out of the way.’

The man reached out his huge hand, grabbed John by his shirt collar, pulled him towards him as if he were weightless and then pushed him back again so that he hit the balustrade. Father McKean intervened to stop John trying to react. If a fight broke out, others might get involved.

‘Let it be, John. I’ll deal with this.’

Jonas let out a vulgar laugh. ‘Oh, great. You’ll deal with this.’

In the meantime a void had formed around them. All the people who had been standing nearby, while not quite sure exactly what was happening, had decided that it was better to move away from these two gaudy characters with their rude behaviour and unappetizing faces.