White Death (16 page)

MIThenge only lasts a few minutes, and Unzicker was in position a quarter-hour beforehand. He’d become a minor fixture of the occasion himself, dressing up in solar-themed costumes. His first year, he’d come as the Egyptian sun god Ra, with a falcon mask and a golden disk on his head. Last year, he’d turned up as the Hindu deity Surya, hair and arms painted gold and sitting yogi-like in a cardboard chariot pulled by a cardboard seven-headed horse.

At MIT, such exhibitionism was practically encouraged:
the wackier the students, the more likely it was thought that
they’d produce works of genius. The tight asses at Harvard, where Unzicker had been an undergraduate, would have sneered.

This time round, Unzicker came as tarot card XIX: The Sun.

The crowd began to gather, pressing themselves to the
sides of the corridor to allow others the best view possible. Someone enterprising was selling special eyeglasses – smoked glass, usually used to observe eclipses – for five bucks a pair, cajoling the reluctant with the sales pitch ‘Cheaper than being blind for the rest of your life’.

As the sun approached, the outer rays started to filter through the window, dappling on the corridor’s reflective floor. Unzicker tapped the design on his costume and began to speak. ‘An infant rides a white horse under the sun. The child of life holds a red flag, representing the blood of renewal.’ A couple of people tried to shush him, but they in turn were shushed by others, veterans of the occasion: if Unzicker wanted to behave like a freak, let him. ‘All the while a smiling sun shines down on the child. The sun represents accomplishment. See too the sunflowers behind.’

There was a gasp as a corner of the sun proper appeared in the window. Light snaked down the corridor, bathing walls and ceiling in hues of flaming orange.

‘“Who are you?” you ask the child. The child smiles at you and seems to shine. And then he grows brighter and brighter until he turns into pure sunlight. “I’m you,” he says. “I’m you.” As his words fill you with warmth and energy, you realize that you’ve just met your own inner light. Your mind’s illuminated, your soul light and bright as a sunbeam.’

The sun filled the window now, nothing but the sun, no sky visible around it. Every part of the corridor, all the way along and all the way around, was ablaze with light, and the light thickened and darkened until it was the red of blood.

It was long gone eleven when Howard Lewis clocked off from his shift in the Twenty-Sixth Precinct. He felt as though he’d spent pretty much an entire week at Columbia University, first asking every student he could find whether they had any information about Dennis Barbero’s murder, and then interviewing those kids whose therapists had reported them for violent propensities.

Listening to some of the therapy kids talk, Lewis had thought it surprising not that there were so many high school and college shootings, but that there were so few. These kids might be brainy as all hell, but boy were they screwed up. Perhaps that was the price of being so intelligent. Lewis was no idiot, but he knew he wasn’t Einstein either. He’d made sergeant, and knew that was probably the top of the ladder for him. He had a wife and two kids, and he thought himself a good father and husband. He’d never cheated on his wife, never raised his fists to her or the kids. He’d raised his fists to criminals, sure – that was the only way to knock sense into some of the punks who came through Central Booking – but never to good people.

He’d never been to a therapist, never taken anti-depressants
or any of that shit. Howard Lewis had yet to come across a problem that couldn’t be solved by chewing it over with his buddies over a beer. People complicated life unnecessarily, he thought. It was very simple. Get up, work hard, don’t be a dick. Repeat.

He changed back into civvies, walked to the subway and caught the last C-train going north. The C had a dire reputation for reliability – the line’s stock was the oldest on the entire system – but this particular train got Lewis to his stop at 155th Street, and that was all he cared about.

Located in the Sugar Hill district, 155th Street is part of Harlem. A lot of people – more precisely, a lot of white people – think of Harlem as one big slum, but that’s not the case. In the thirties and forties, Sugar Hill had got its name because it offered the sweet life: big old houses up on the bluff, famous residents like Ralph Ellison and Paul Robeson. By the seventies and eighties, it had become Crack Central. Now it was halfway between the two: you could still find pushers on street corners, but some of those big old houses were going for north of two million bucks.

Howard Lewis didn’t live in one of those houses, of course: not on a cop’s salary. He had a three-bedroom, split-level maisonette on 152nd, and that did him just fine. He was a black man raising a black family in Harlem, and he wouldn’t have changed it for the world. His maisonette was less than a block from the Thirtieth Precinct’s station. Maybe one day he’d get round to putting in a transfer request, and have the shortest commute of any cop in the NYPD.

To get home, he used as a shortcut an alley that ran from 153rd through to 152nd. Perhaps it wasn’t that sensible to walk down a secluded alley late at night – not in any big city, let alone Harlem – but heck, he was a police officer. He was trained, he had a gun. Any punk tried to rob him, they’d soon be wishing they hadn’t.

He reckoned the shortcut saved him a couple of minutes each time.

Tonight, it cost him his life.

A garbage collector found Lewis’ body at dawn. There was no problem identifying it: the wallet with Lewis’ police badge and ID card was still clipped to his belt. Dufresne was on site a half-hour later, and Patrese an hour after that. Dufresne was still shaking when Patrese got there, and it wasn’t the cold or the gruesome sight of a man without his head.

It was anger.

Ebony had just graduated from serial killer to cop killer, and police departments the world over reserve a special level of hell for anyone who kills one of their own. Patrese put his hand on Dufresne’s shoulder. Dufresne nodded, the muscles in his jaw bunching under the skin like walnuts. Patrese didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

Dufresne handed him a transparent evidence bag. A tarot card with a prince in armor sitting in a chariot pulled by two sphinxes, one black and one white. The Chariot.

The Chariot was one of the seven cards that Anna had picked out for him, Patrese remembered. It symbolized a battle that could be won with the requisite willpower: alternatively, it marked the ruthless desire to win at any cost. The charioteer succeeded by attacking from the side: it was that kind of lateral thinking, letting his brain go blank while he ran down to the lighthouse in New Haven, that had given Patrese the twin killer theory to start with.

He’d seen in the library at Yale how the Chariot card applied to him: and now it was the marker of a dead cop. Coincidence? A symbol that worked for law enforcement in general? Something against Patrese personally? Or another reason entirely? Some weird Ivy League intellectual game-playing shit? Lewis had been part of the team investigating Dennis Barbero’s murder at Columbia, and the task force was still interviewing those Ivy League students flagged as potentially violent. No joy on that front yet.

‘He was a good man,’ Dufresne said. ‘I know folks always say that about people when they’re dead, but he was. Not a saint. None of us are. But a good man.’

The leather wallet with Lewis’ police badge and ID card was in another evidence bag. Patrese looked at it through the plastic. The badge was a gold shield with an eagle and Lewis’ number. The ID card had a serious-looking photo of him above his name:
HOWARD LEWIS, SERGEANT, 26TH PRECINCT
.

Howard Lewis. The name rang a bell. Where had Patrese heard it before? It floated on the edge of his memory like Tantalus’ grapes, right there yet out of reach. He relaxed, imagined himself crouching down and then leaping for the answer …

Got it.
‘He was the one who arrested Regina King at the Iraq demo, wasn’t he?’

Dufresne looked at Patrese in surprise, realization dawning. ‘Yeah. Yeah, he was.’

‘And she brought a case against him …’

‘… which was all bullshit, and which we settled in the end just to be done with it.’

‘Really?’

‘Really what?’

‘Was it really bullshit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she have a case?’

‘Depends whether you ask a lawyer or whether you ask someone with horse sense.’

‘Five victims. First, Kwasi’s mom. Now, the guy she sued.’

‘Looks like we got ourselves a prime suspect.’

‘Who? Kwasi?’

‘Who else?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘He didn’t kill his mom.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was in New York that weekend.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says he.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘No, but … he and his mom were, you know.’ Patrese wrapped his middle and index fingers round each other. ‘Like that.’

‘Franco, have you lost your mind? Those are exactly the kind of relationships where one party
does
kill the other!’

‘Sometimes. But … I told him his mom was dead. I stayed with him that evening. Kid’s halfway autistic. No way could he be that good an actor, to have played me like that. No way. So he can’t have done it. And, and, it was because I stayed with him, because he liked me, that he came to help us out when things were getting hairy at Columbia that day.’

‘Help us out? Or insert himself into the investigation, the way some killers do?’

‘He’s got no connection with Dennis Barbero.’

Dufresne shrugged. ‘Maybe not. But he’s got a hell of a connection to the other two.’

Patrese looked at his watch. ‘His world title match is due to start in a couple of hours. If you think he’s been preparing by going round killing people … no. Far more likely that someone’s trying to get to him.’

‘Why? Why would they want to do that?’

‘Who knows? To stop him playing. Lot of competing interests in something like this.’

‘Stop him playing? Everybody
wants
him to play, surely?’

‘Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think.’

‘Far as I can make out, the only person who’s gonna stop him playing is Kwasi himself. He’s the one making all these conditions, no?’

‘I’ll go and see him.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he trusts me, that’s why not. Listen, Bobby, I know this is going to sound weird, but he’s not like others. He doesn’t see the world the way we do.’

‘All the more reason to bring him down the station and question his ass.’

‘Two hours before he goes on stage at Madison?’

‘I couldn’t give a damn if it’s two minutes before.’

‘We’ll bring down the shitstorm to end all shitstorms if we do. Imagine the press. Imagine the lawsuits. Kwasi doesn’t show up, that’s his lookout. We stop him from going there, we’re the ones who get blamed.’

‘If we have a case, we have a case. Fuck everything else.’

‘No. Listen. He doesn’t need arresting. If anything, he needs protecting.’

‘Protecting?’

‘Sure. His mom’s dead, so’s the dude she sued. Why shouldn’t Kwasi be in line?’

‘Why
should
he?’

‘If we knew why these killings were taking place, I could give you an answer.’

‘Franco, you’re in charge, it’s your case. You think you’re better off going in there alone, because he trusts you and only you, and you and he have some big mystical connection, then sure. You’re worried about screwing him up before a match – even assuming he wants to play the damn thing, which don’t seem to me the case – I see that too. But you ask me, you’re being an asshole.’

Patrese went to Bleecker Street alone. Dufresne went back to his precinct house.

The press pack outside Kwasi’s condo block looked to be almost a hundred strong. As he’d done on previous visits, Patrese ignored them and their catcalls. The doorman, Sherwood, opened the main door, and Patrese went up to Kwasi’s apartment.

‘You gonna play?’ Patrese asked.

‘You come here to ask me that?’

‘Not exactly. But what I’m about to tell you might alter your decision.’

‘I’m going to play if he agrees to my terms.’

A matter of hours before the biggest chess match in almost half a century, and Kwasi and Nursultan were still playing brinkmanship? Patrese didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled. This wasn’t chess, he thought: it was some gigantic game of poker, each side daring the other one to call his bluff first.

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Then I won’t play.’

‘I read that if you don’t turn up for the first game, you forfeit. Is that right?’

‘Sure. He starts my clock, I’m not there after an hour, I forfeit that game.’

‘But not the match?’

‘Only the game.’

‘You’ll lose the first game without playing just to make a point?’

‘He has my conditions. He has a car waiting outside for me. I even heard he’s got the city to keep all the traffic lights from here to Madison Square Garden on green so we can get there fast. All he has to do is say the word.’

Well, Patrese thought, Kwasi was certainly more talkative than when they’d first met.

‘What is it you’ve got to tell me?’ Kwasi added.

‘We found a body this morning. Howard Lewis.’

‘The one who beat up my mom?’

‘The one your mother sued, yes.’

‘The one who beat up my mom. How did he die?’

‘Same way as your mom.’

Kwasi ran a hand through his dreads. ‘Jeez, Franco. What the fuck is happening?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

‘I can’t … I don’t … You think they’re connected, right?’

‘They
are
connected. Kwasi, I’ve got to ask: where were you last night?’