The Righteous Men (2006)

For Sam, born into a family of love.

T
he night of the first killing
was filled with song. St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan trembled to the
sound of Handel’s Messiah, the grand choral master that never failed to rouse
even the most slumbering audience. Its swell of voices surged at the roof of
the cathedral. It was as if they wanted to break out, to reach the very heavens.

Inside, close to the front, sat a father and son, the older man’s eyes
closed, moved as always by this, his favourite piece of music. The son’s
gaze alternated between the performers — the singers dressed in black,
the conductor wildly waving his shock of greying hair — and the man at
his side. He liked looking at him, gauging his reactions; he liked being this
close.

Tonight was a celebration. A month earlier Will Monroe Jr had landed the job
he had dreamed of ever since he had come to America. Still only in his late
twenties, he was now a reporter, on the fast track at The
New York Times
.
Monroe Sr inhabited a different realm. He was a lawyer, one of the most
accomplished of his generation, now serving as a federal judge on the second
circuit of the US Court of Appeals. He liked to acknowledge achievement when he
saw it and this young man at his side, whose boyhood he had all but missed, had
reached a milestone. He found his son’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

It was at that moment, no more than a forty-minute subway
ride across town but a world away, that Howard Macrae heard the first steps
behind him. He was not scared. Outsiders may have steered clear of this
Brooklyn neighbourhood of Brownsville, notorious for its drug-riddled
deprivation, but Macrae knew every street and alley.

He was part of the landscape. A pimp of some two decades’ standing, he
was wired into Brownsville. He had been a smart operator, too, ensuring that in
the gang warfare that scarred the area, he always remained a neutral. Factions would
clash and shift, but Howard stayed put, constant. No one had challenged the
patch where his whores plied their trade for years.

So he was not too worried by the sound behind him. Still, he found it odd
that the footsteps did not stop. He could tell they were close. Why would
anybody be tailing him? He turned his head to peer over his left shoulder and
gasped, immediately tripping over his feet. It was a gun unlike any he had ever
seen — and it was aimed at him.

Inside the cathedral, the chorus were now one being,
their lungs opening and closing like the bellows of a single, mighty organ. The
music was insistent:

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Howard Macrae was now facing forward, attempting to break
into an instinctive run. But he could feel a strange, piercing sensation in his
right thigh. His leg seemed to be giving way, collapsing under his weight,
refusing to obey his orders. I have to run! Yet his body would not respond. He
seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if wading through water.

Now the mutiny had spread to his arms, which were first lethargic, then
floppy. His brain raced with the urgency of the situation, but it too now
seemed overwhelmed, as if submerged under a sudden burst of floodwater. He felt
so tired.

He found himself lying on the ground clasping his right leg, aware that it
and the rest of his limbs were surrendering to numbness. He looked up. He could
see nothing but the steel glint of a blade.

***

In the cathedral, Will felt his pulse quicken. The Messiah
was reaching its climax, the whole audience could sense it. A soprano voice
hovered above them:

If God be for us, who can be against us?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?
It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?

Macrae could only watch as the knife hovered over his
chest. He tried to see who was behind it, to make out a face, but he could not.
The gleam of metal dazzled him; it seemed to have caught all the night’s
moonlight on its hard, polished surface. He knew he ought to be terrified: the
voice inside his head told him he was. But it sounded oddly removed, like a
commentator describing a faraway football game. Howard could see the knife
coming closer towards him, but still it seemed to be happening to someone else.

Now the orchestra was in full force, Handel’s music
coursing through the church with enough force to waken the gods. The alto and
tenor were as one, demanding to know:
O Death, where is thy sting?

Will was not a classical buff like his father, but the majesty and power of
the music was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention.
Still staring straight ahead, he tried to imagine the expression his father
would be wearing: he pictured him, rapt, and hoped that underneath that
blissful exterior there might also lurk some pleasure at sharing this moment
with his only son.

The blade descended, first across the chest. Macrae saw
the red line it scored, as if the knife were little more than a scarlet marker
pen. The skin seemed to bubble and blister: he did not understand why he felt
no pain. Now the knife was moving down, slicing his stomach open like a bag of
grain. The contents spilled out, a warm soft bulge of viscous innards. Howard
was watching it all, until the moment the dagger was finally held aloft. Only
then could he see the face of his murderer. His larynx managed to squeeze out a
gasp of shock — and recognition. The blade found his heart and all was
dark.

The mission had begun.

T
he chorus took their bows,
the conductor bowing sweatily.

But Will could only hear one noise: the sound of his father clapping. He
marvelled at the decibels those two big hands could produce, colliding in a
smack that sounded like wood against wood. It stirred a memory Will had almost
lost. It was a school speech day back in England, the only time his father had
been there. Will was ten years old and as he went up to collect the poetry
prize he was sure that, even above the din of a thousand parents, he could hear
the distinct handclap of his father. On that day he had been proud of this
stranger’s mighty oak hands, stronger than those of any man in the world,
he was sure.

The noise had not diminished as his father, now in his early fifties, had
entered middle age. He was as fit as ever, slim, his white hair cropped short.
He did not jog or work out: weekend sailing trips off Sag Harbor had kept him
in shape. Will, still applauding, turned to look at him, but his father’s
gaze did not shift. When Will saw the slight redness around his dad’s
nose he realized with shock that the older man’s eyes were wet: the music
had moved him, but he did not want his son to see his tears.

Will smiled to himself at that. A man with hands as strong as trees, welling
up at the sound of an angels’ choir. It was then he felt the vibrations.
He reached down to his BlackBerry to see a message from the Metro desk: ‘Job
for you. Brownsville, Brooklyn. Homicide.’

Will’s stomach gave a little leap, that aerobic manoeuvre that
combines excitement and nerves. He was on the ‘night cops’ beat on
the
Times
Metro desk, the traditional blooding for fast-trackers like
him. He might be destined to serve as a future Middle East correspondent or
Beijing Bureau Chief, ran the paper’s logic, but first he would have to
learn the journalistic basics. That was
Times
thinking. ‘There’ll
be plenty of time to cover military coups. First you have to know how to cover
a flower show,’ Glenn Harden, the Metro editor would say. ‘You need
to learn people and you do that right here.’

As the chorus basked in their ovation, Will turned to his father with a
shrug of apology, gesturing to the BlackBerry.
It’s work
, he
mouthed, gathering up his coat. This little role reversal gave him a sneaky
pleasure. After years living in the glow cast by his father’s stellar
career, now it was Will’s turn to heed the summons of work.

‘Take care,’ whispered the older man.

Outside Will hailed a cab. The driver was listening to the news on NPR. Will
asked him to turn it up. Not that he was expecting any word on Brownsville.
Will always did this — in cabs, even in shops or cafes. He was a news
junkie; had been since he was a teenager.

He had missed the lead item and they were already onto the foreign news. A
story from Britain. Will always perked up when he heard word from the country
he still thought of as home. He may have been born in America, but his
formative years, between the ages of eight and twenty-one, had been spent in
England. Now, though, as he heard that Gavin Curtis, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was in trouble, Will paid extra attention. Determined to prove to
the
Times
that his talents stretched beyond the Metro desk, and to
ensure the brass knew he had studied economics at Oxford, Will had pitched a
story to the Week in Review section on only his second day at the paper. He had
even sketched out a headline:
Wanted: A banker for the world
. The
International Monetary Fund was looking for a new head and Curtis was said to
be the frontrunner.

‘… the charges were first made by a British newspaper,’ the
NPR voice was saying, ‘which claimed to have identified “irregularities”
in Treasury accounts. A spokesman for Mr Curtis has today denied all
suggestions of corruption.’ Will scribbled a note as a memory floated to
the surface. He quickly pushed it back down.

There were more urgent matters at hand. Digging into his pocket he found his
phone. Quick message to Beth, who had picked up his British fondness for
texting. With a thumb that had become preternaturally quick, he punched in the
numbers that became letters.

My first murder! Will be home late.
Love you.

Now he could see his destination. Red lights were turning noiselessly in the
September dark. The lights were on the roofs of two NYPD cars whose noses
almost touched in an arrowhead shape, as if to screen off part of the road. In
front of them was a hastily installed cordon, consisting of yellow police tape.
Will paid the fare, got out and looked around. Rundown tenements.

He approached the first line of tape until a policewoman strolled over to
stop him. She looked bored. ‘No access, sir.’

Will fumbled in the breast pocket of his linen jacket. ‘Press?’
he asked with what he hoped was a winning smile as he flashed his newly minted
press card.

Looking away, she gave an economical gesture with her right hand.
Go
through
.

Will ducked under the tape, into a knot of maybe half a dozen people. Other
reporters.
I’m late
, he thought, irritated. One was his age, tall
with impossibly straight hair and an unnatural dusting of orange on his skin.
Will was sure he recognized him but could not remember how. Then he saw the
curly wire in his ear. Of course, Carl McGivering from NY1, New York’s
twenty-four-hour cable news station. The rest were older, the battered press
tags around their necks revealing their affiliations:
Post
,
Newsday
,
and a string of community papers.

‘Bit late, junior,’ said the craggiest of the bunch, apparently the
dean of the crime corps. ‘What kept you?’ Ribbing from older hacks,
Will had learned in his first job on the
Bergen Record
in New Jersey, was
one of those things reporters like him just had to swallow.

‘Anyway, I wouldn’t sweat it,’ Old Father Time from
Newsday
was saying. ‘Just your garden variety gangland killing.

Knives are all the rage these days, it seems.’

‘Blades: the new guns. Could be a fashion piece,’ quipped the
Post
,
to much laughter from the Veteran Reporters’ Club whose monthly meeting
Will felt he had just interrupted. He suspected this was a dig at him,
suggesting he (and perhaps the
Times
itself) were too effete to give the
macho business of murder its due.