windows. He would have to buttonhole whoever was out of doors and hope they would talk.
He made an instant rule: stick to the women. He knew this was a cowardly impulse but, he assured himself, that was nothing to be ashamed of. He had once read some garlanded foreign correspondent saying the best war reporters were the cowards: the brave ones were reckless and ended up dead. This was not exactly the Middle East, but a kind of war – whether over drugs or gangs or race – raged on these streets all the same.
The first woman he spoke to was blank, so was the next. The third had heard the name but could not place where. She recommended someone else until one neighbour was calling out to another and eventually Will was facing the woman who had found Howard Macrae.
African-American and in her mid-fifties, her name was Rosa. Will guessed she was a churchgoer, one of those black women who stop communities like this one from going under. She agreed to walk with him to the scene of the crime.
‘Well, I had been at the store, picking up some bread and a soda, I think, when I noticed what I thought was a big lump on the sidewalk. I remember I was annoyed: I thought someone had dumped some furniture on the street again. But as I got closer, I realized this was not a sofa. Uh-uh. It was low down and kind of bumpy.’
‘You realized it was a body?’
‘Only when I was right up close. Until then, it just looked like, you know … a shape.’
‘It was dark.’
‘Yeah, pretty dark and pretty late. Anyway, when I was standing over it, I thought. That ain't a sofa, that ain't a chair. That's a body under that blanket.’
‘Sorry, I'm asking you to go back to what you saw right at the beginning. Before the blanket was laid on the corpse.’
‘That is what I'm describing. What I saw was a dark blanket with the shape of a dead man underneath.’
‘The blanket was already there? So you were not the first to find him.’ Damn.
‘No, I was the first to find him. I was the one who called the police. Nobody else did. It was the first they'd heard of it.’
‘But the body was already covered?’
‘That's right.’
‘The police seem to think it was you who laid down the blanket, Rosa.’
‘Well, they're wrong. Where would I get a blanket from in the middle of the night? Or do you think black folks carry blankets around with them just in case? I know things are pretty bad round here, but they're not that bad.’ None of this was said with bitterness.
‘Right.’ Will paused, uncertain where to go next. ‘So who did leave that blanket on him?’
‘I'm telling you the same thing I told that police officer. That's the way I found him. Nice blanket, too. Kind of soft. Maybe cashmere. Something classy, anyway.’
‘Sorry to go back to this, but is there any chance at all you were not the first there?’
‘I can't see how. I'm sure the police told you. When I lifted that blanket, I saw a body that was still warm. Wasn't even a body at that time. It was still a man. You know what I'm saying? He was still warm. Like it just happened. The blood was still coming out. Kind of burbling, like water leaking from a pipe. Terrible, just terrible. And you know the strangest thing? His eyes were closed, as if someone had shut them.’
‘Don't tell me that wasn't you.’
‘It wasn't me. Never said it was.’
‘Who do you think did that – closed his eyes, I mean?’
‘You'll probably think I'm crazy, what with the way they knifed that poor man to death, but it was kinda like … No, you'll think I'm crazy.’
‘Please go on. I don't I think you're crazy at all. Go on.’ Will was stooping now, an instinctive gesture. Being tall was usually a plus: he could intimidate. But right now he did not want to tower over this woman. He wanted to make her feel comfortable. He bent his shoulders lower, so that he could meet her eyes without forcing her to look up. ‘Go on.’
‘I know that man was murdered in a horrible way. But his body looked as if it had been somehow, you know, laid to rest.’
Will said nothing, just sucked the top of his pen.
‘You see, I told you. You think I'm crazy. Maybe I am!’
Will thanked the woman and carried on through the projects. He only had to walk a few blocks to get into real sleaze country. The boarded-up tenements he knew served as crack-houses; the shifty looks of young men palming off brown parcels to each other while looking the other way. These were the people to ask about Howard Macrae.
Will had ditched his jacket by now – a necessary move on this bright September day – but he was still encountering major resistance. His face was too white, his accent too different. Most assumed he was a plain-clothes cop, drugs squad probably. For those who spotted it, the car following a few blocks behind hardly helped. Most people started walking the moment they saw his notebook.
The first crack in the ice came the way it always does – from just one person.
Will found a man who had known Macrae. He seemed vaguely shifty but, above all, bored, with nothing better to do than to while away a few daytime hours talking to a reporter. He rambled on and on, detailing long gone and wholly irrelevant local disputes and controversies as if they would be of burning interest to The New York Times. ‘You want to put that in your paper, my friend!’ he would say over and over, with a bronchial, smoker's laugh. Heh-heh-heh. Humouring folks like this was, Will concluded, an occupational hazard.
‘So what about this Howard Macrae?’ said Will, when his new acquaintance finally took a breath during an analysis of the flawed stop light system on Fulton Street.
It turned out he did not know Macrae that well, but he knew others who did. He offered to hook Will up with them, introducing the reporter each time with the priceless character reference: ‘He's OK.’
Soon Will was forming a picture. Macrae was a certifiable, card-carrying low-life. No doubt about it. He ran a brothel; had done for years. The sleaze community seemed to have a high regard for him: apparently he was good at being a pimp. He ran a functioning whorehouse, kept it looking all right – even took the girls' clothes to the Laundromat. Will got inside, to see the rooms for himself. The best he could say for it was that it was not nearly as disgusting as he had imagined. It looked a bit like a clinic in a poor neighbourhood. There were no needles on the floor. He even noticed a water-cooler.
The whores told him the same story. ‘Sir, I can't tell you anymo' than what the lady already told you: he sold ass. Tha's what he did. He collected the money, gave some to us, and kept the rest for hisself.’
Howard seemed to have been a contented sort of pimp. The brothel was his domain and he was obviously a genial host. At night, Will discovered, he would put on loud music and dance.
It was late in the evening before Will found what he had been looking for all day: someone genuinely mourning the death of Howard Macrae. Will had contacted the undertakers, who were waiting for the body to be transferred to them from the police morgue.
