Walls of Silence Read online

  PART I

  Summer 2001

  ONE

  Iwas a morning person.

  So when JJ Carlson rang me at 6:00A.M.that Monday, he caught me on my second cup of black coffee and the last page of theWall Street Journal.

  He had something to show me, he said. Something neat. No clues. I was just to get myself to the corner of East 80th and First. I knew it was going to be special, worth the journey. It wouldn’t be JJ’s vacation snapshots.

  I was with him in no time. I stood and stared.

  My God, it was a beautiful car.

  I ran my hand along the silver paneling. The headlights glared from the foot of a massive hood that reared up into a subtly tinted sweep of windshield. A thousand car magazine clichés ran through my mind as I fought to find a single word that might do justice to this piece of machinery.

  “A McLaren F1,” I murmured.

  “Yup,” said JJ Carlson. His tanned and manicured finger tappedlightly on the bodywork. “Only one in Manhattan, least that’s what the guy said.”

  He was probably right. In my five years in New York, I’d never seen an F1 weaving through the clutter of yellow cabs and buses or stuck in a line headed for the Lincoln Tunnel. But JJ would’ve wanted it in writing. He never left anything to chance.

  He towered over me, sleek as the car. He opened the gull-wing door and signaled for me to get inside. I wanted to look casual, cool. But it wasn’t easy as I squatted down low and eased a leg over the sill. I was then confounded by the sight of the steering wheel on a console sticking out from the center of the dash. Where the hell was I supposed to go?

  Then I noticed that there were three seats. The driver’s was in the middle.

  I eased myself back into the rock-firm leather. The seatbelt was like a parachute harness. JJ slid behind the wheel and turned to buckle me up.

  I scanned the dash—utilitarian, serious; portholes of precise data.

  “Two hundred and forty miles per hour,” JJ said, reading my mind. “And before you ask, a million and change.”

  A million dollars for a car.

  I whistled appreciatively and JJ seemed pleased. He turned on the engine. To my surprise the noise wasn’t anything special, neither a purr nor a growl. JJ put the car into first gear, brought up the clutch, and gently pressed on the accelerator. The light caught pricks of sweat on his temples as he tilted his head back a fraction.

  He rammed his foot down.

  I was thrust back into my seat. We headed down East 80th, hitting one hundred miles an hour in too few seconds to count.

  JJ’s arms stretched out, locked on the stubby steering wheel at an unyielding three o’clock. Eyes glossed by a film of adrenaline.

  The world outside was a blur. Before I could begin to assess the likelihood of bowling over a pedestrian or atomizing another car coming out of a parking space, JJ slammed on the brakes and came to a dead stop at the junction of East 80th and East End Avenue.

  I felt the steel grip of his hand on my shoulder.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  I thought of those gut-wrenching roller-coaster rides I’d never completely enjoyed as a kid. “Awesome,” I managed.

  “It’s only a car,” he said, then started to listen intently to the rumble of the idling engine. “I heard a noise.”

  He toed the throttle a little.

  “Sounds okay to me,” I ventured.

  “Maybe you’re right,” JJ said after a moment. He pressed something and my door opened. “But I just want to give it another run.” He turned to me with a grin. “No distractions this time.”

  As I got out, JJ leaned over and gave me a helpful shove. His eyes were cold blue now.

  “Chill out, Fin,” he said. “When I get back I’m going to let you have a go behind the wheel. You like?”

  “Oh, yes, I like.” I smiled.

  “Cross over East End Avenue and wait for me at the end of East 80th. I’ll be with you in two minutes.”

  JJ waited for the light to turn green before easing the car from a standstill and turning right to head around the block.

  “What the hell was that?” a dog walker asked, rocking back on his heels and yanking at about ten leashes like he was auditioning for the chariot race inBen-Hur.

  “A McLaren F1,” I said.

  “Never heard of it,” he said. “But I guess it goes pretty fast.”

  “About two-forty miles an hour.”

  The dog walker thought for a moment. “What’s the point of a car like that in Manhattan?” he said.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” I replied.

  I looked up East 80th and could make out headlights flashing about two blocks up. I ran to the other side of East End Avenue.

  East 80th at this point was a dead end. A sign made that quite clear. And to emphasize the fact, there was a stoplight showing a permanent red. The street ran about twenty yards before terminating at a steelbarrier. Beyond the barrier there was a sheer drop into a deep gully, about thirty feet across. Beyond the gully lay the FDR Drive. I could hear the hum of early-morning traffic nose-to-tailing it down the southbound lane. Beyond the FDR lay the East River.

  I headed toward the barrier so that I could stand facing up East 80th and get a full frontal view of the McLaren as it approached. I noticed that there was some old burlap and a few strips of lumber lying on the sidewalk. Unusual in this part of town; the residents would not be pleased. Two pieces of lumber were laid up against the barrier.

  I heard the shriek of an engine at full throttle. JJ was about a hundred feet from the junction. He covered the distance between us in a blink and I realized he wasn’t going to stop. I threw myself to the side and looked up in time to see the front wheels mount the lumber. The wood snapped, but the car had cleared the barrier and spun out over the gully.

  There was silence.

  I watched the sun flash against bodywork as the McLaren rolled and revealed its dark underbelly. For a second, the car held still at the top of its arc, as if it had a decision to make.

  Then it dropped.

  There was an ear-splitting crash as it landed in the midst of the traffic on the FDR. I could hear the helpless thuds of vehicle after vehicle piling into one another.

  Then, again, silence.

  I got up and looked over the parapet. The nucleus of the impact was an insoluble puzzle of twisted metal, shimmering in a haze of gas vapor and boiling coolant. Farther back, the zigzag of wreckage was more intelligible, somehow retaining more familiar shapes, badly bent but still recognizable.

  For a moment, there was nobody to be seen. It was as if dozens of vehicles had decided to stage a mass suicide and just gone out and done it, leaving their owners at home.

  Then I heard the screaming. Cars don’t scream. People do that; hurt, trapped people. And then those who weren’t trapped—or dead—started to emerge, stooped, bloodied, like blitzkrieg survivors venturing from their bunkers.

  Drivers and passengers from the cars in front of where JJ had landed were running toward the center of the conflagration that had missed them by less than the jolt of a second hand. Those in their wake had been doomed by an extra spoonful of cereal, the clean bra they couldn’t find, the lazy gas pump attendant.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  It was the dog walker again.

  “I don’t know,” I said weakly.

  I stared at the carnage, trying to make sense of it.

  Then the sirens came.

  The noise rose, the cranking up of the emergency service’s cacophony. Time dissolved into shouts and the scrape of cordons being dragged into place. The rattle of helicopters vied with the drone of generators powering lifting and cutting equipment. A news reporter,
one hand cupped over his ear, yelled real-time commentary at a camera set up next to a van gored by a transmitter mast as tall as a tree.

  I didn’t bother to check my wristwatch. Time was now the allotted slice of satellite uplink.

  I wanted to go back to my apartment and hear the seconds lazily clack by on the simple kitchen clock.

  TWO

  But I didn’t go back to the apartment. I went to the office instead. There I was, in the unremarkable lobby of the Credence Building, checking in with security and heading for the bank of elevators that would take to me to the twenty-fifth floor and Clay & Westminster’s New York headquarters.

  Clay & Westminster. English attorneys. A leader in London. Europe and the Far East too. But here in New York, something smaller, something clinging halfway up a modest tower facing the East River, a stone’s throw from Wall Street. Yet for the past ten years it had survived here; more than survived, it had prospered to a degree: attracted clients, made money. It didn’t generate waves, but its ripples were regular and well defined.

  People were staring at me. I checked myself up and down: charcoal suit, black laced shoes. I fingered the knot of my burgundy Ferragamo tie, returning it to geometrical precision across its bed of crisp white cotton.

  I tried to review the day’s schedule in my head. A blank. Meetings.Something tedious droned from a recess of my mind, but wouldn’t identify itself. The social calendar? That wouldn’t be up to much. No, wait. Ernie. Drinks with Ernie Monks. Ernie visiting from London; another fish out of water. Was it today or tomorrow?

  “Are you okay?” someone asked.

  A little light-headed, maybe.

  I stepped into the elevator and checked my watch. Nine-thirty. Late. Just a few more, lingering minutes. That’s all I needed, a short linger. Then I’d be fine; then things would start swimming back into focus.

  In reception, clients and visiting attorneys sat in black leather armchairs or perched awkwardly on the edge of matching overdeep couches. They were reading newspapers or studying files, ignoring me, uninterested. A lone woman stood with her back to the floor-to-ceiling window. She would have a choice of views: to her left, the Brooklyn Bridge, to her right, Governor’s Island. Ahead, the quaint sailing ships of South Street Seaport, and below, the FDR. I could hear the sirens; nothing unusual about that, though. Glancing at me, she frowned and turned away.

  The receptionist stirred and slid her headset onto her shoulders. Was I okay? she asked.

  Smiling, I ran my hand along the mahogany curve of her desk before heading down the hallway leading to the attorneys’ offices.

  Paula, my secretary, was coming the other way, as if she had been hanging around for my arrival.

  “Fin, where the hell have you been?”

  With my buddy, JJ Carlson, where else?

  “Sorry I’m late.” I carried on walking toward my office, letting her trot beside me.

  She tugged crossly at my sleeve. “What happened to you?”

  To me? Nothing really. To JJ, to those poor bastards on the FDR—they should have ignored the alarm clock.

  We reached my office and I satisfied myself it hadn’t changed since eleven-thirty the night before. The dark-stained wood shelves still held the same books and journals, the spinach-green leather-topped desk still supported a PC and brimming in-trays. The phone still winked its unchecked messages.

  The newness of the day was heralded only by the presence of a faxed copy ofThe Times of Londoncrossword puzzle, my affected genuflection in the direction of the Mother Country. At the top of the single sheet: “To Fin Border—your Red Cross parcel. Regards, Jessica.”

  I didn’t know Jessica. Secretaries for attorneys at my link in the food chain put little distance between joining Clay & Westminster and leaving it. But she knew me, it seemed; the temporary keeper of the lighted candle in the window back home.

  I fired up the PC while Paula planted herself in front of me and pointed at my forehead. Paula had been with me five years, the whole of my expatriate life in New York. My interpreter, my streetfinder.

  “You seen your face?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got a cut. It’s difficult to tell where it is, there’s a mess of blood all over.”

  I put my hand to my forehead and could feel the crusty ridges of clotted blood from behind the hairline down to my eyebrows. How could I have missed it? Suddenly it felt itchy. A splinter from one of JJ’s snapping launch ramps, perhaps.

  “I better get cleaned up,” I said.

  I started to lever myself out of the seat, but Paula splayed her hand across my chest and pushed me back.

  “I’ll take a look at it,” she said. “Then either you’re going to the emergency room or you go to your meeting. You’re already late.” She sighed theatrically. “Look at your screen, boss, while I get something to clean you up.”

  I logged into my calendar. There it was: nine-thirty, Schuster Mannheim. Our office, Conference Room B. Coffee and cookies to be provided.

  Fin the Quartz. That was the pet name Sheldon Keenes, our resident partner, had christened me with. Never late, dependable.

  Paula returned with the office first-aid kit and sidesaddled on the edge of the desk before tipping gauzes, creams, and bandages over it. Dunking a ball of cotton in a plastic cup filled with warm pink liquid, she started to sponge me down. I didn’t say anything; I just looked upinto her beautiful black face and those dark, dark eyes, slightly scrunched up in concentration. She would make a great nurse.

  After a while and about five wads of cotton, she arched her back to assess her work.

  “You’ll live,” she said. “Like most head cuts, it looks worse than it really is. You don’t even need a stitch.” She took a small bandage and stuck it near the center of my forehead.

  “Sonowtell me what happened,” she said.

  I tried to piece it together in my head, an autopilot rehearsal: telephone call, car, speed, road. Crash. I hadn’t been in the car, had I? No, no. It was JJ. JJ Carlson, Jefferson Trust’s star banker. I didn’t know where to begin. I smiled wanly and massaged my temples with both hands. I had a headache.

  Paula gave me a curious look. “Anyway,” she said. “While you’ve been bumping your head, things have been happening on the FDR up in the eighties. Big car wreck, shut the whole thing off. Ten people dead, they reckon, and a whole lot more injured. It sounds bad.”

  “How do you know?” I murmured, not that it mattered how she knew.

  “Clara looks at the news every ten minutes on the net; she says it makes her feel part of the real world. I know what she means. Sometimes the inside of this place feels like all there is.”

  Paula would have no reason to suppose that I would have been that far up the FDR. I lived in Battery Park; just ten minutes’ walk to the downstairs lobby.

  “Did they say who was killed?” I asked. Among the twisted metal were names and the names belonged to people.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Paula scolded, “it only just happened. They’re not even sure how many. They haven’t started interviewing the relatives yet. That’ll be on tonight’s news.” She tapped the screen on the desktop computer.

  “Thanks, Paula,” I said. “I know what a TV is and how to use one.”

  “That knock to the head must have shaken you loose. Look where I’m pointing, you turkey.”

  She had a long red fingernail leveled against my meeting withSchuster Mannheim. “What do you want to do about the meeting? I think you should let me get the doctor, you don’t look so good.”

  I shook myself like a wet dog. “No, I’m fine.”

  “If you say so,” she allowed reluctantly. “Sheldon was mad that you didn’t show for the start and he said he’d go on without you. What papers do you need? Which deal file? You haven’t told me, and the schedule didn’t say.”

  Ninety-nine percent of my world was Clay & Westminster, and ninety-nine percent of that world was known to Paula: the files, the clien
ts, the details. All the screwups. She had a better handle on my workload than I did.

  But she didn’t know much about this deal, maybe no more than the rumor-mongers knew. And the rumor-mongers usually got this one wrong. The twists and turns had provided a natural smokescreen. The deal was on, it was off, it had changed in some key respect. But, as of eleven-thirty last night, the deal was on, it was hot. And I was now missing a crucial meeting.

  “I don’t need anything, thanks. Just my brain,” I said.

  “Then we’re in big trouble.” Paula slid herself off my desk and put what was left of the first-aid kit back in its box. She gave me a look that told me she knew I wasn’t leveling with her.

  Sheldon Keenes came into the room. I heard Paula mutter good luck to me under her breath. She gave me a conspiratorial wink.

  “Would you excuse us for a moment, Paula,” Sheldon said.

  Paula blurted a quick “I’m outta here” and almost ran from the room.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Sheldon’s voice was usually smooth, quiet, upper-crust English, but it wasn’t now. He looked flustered and his normally bouffant blond hair was in disarray. He glanced at the wastebasket, saw the wads of bloodied cotton, and looked perplexed. He came up and peered at the bandage on my forehead.

  “What silly buggers have you been playing at?” There was something in his tone that told me the answer to the question might be important to him.

  I told him what had happened.

  “You were there,” he said in a horrified whisper.

  “So you know about it already?”

  “Of course I bloody know about it. The whole of New York knows about it. But they don’t yet know that our primary contact at one of our main clients was the star turn. And they don’t know that one of our attorneys was guest of bloody honor.”

  What else did Sheldon know, I wondered, as he pushed past me and snatched at my phone? He punched in a four-figure number and waited long enough to deliver five or six impatient thumps to my desk with his fist. “At last,” he said. “Get me Mendip on the line and have it put through to my office. I’ll be along in a moment. And answer the phone a bit quicker in future.” He slammed down the receiver.