Authors: Colin Harrison

Manhattan Nocturne (17 page)

BOOK: Manhattan Nocturne

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I popped out the videocassette. Clearly Simon was interested in fragments of what might be termed “found reality,” even if that reality included himself in the back of a limousine with a prostitute. I wondered if he had spent long hours studying these clips; he was a movie directorâsomeone with an eye for the nuance of human behavior and movement and voice, someone who might feel himself instructed by these tapes in some meaningful way. Or then again, he might have just liked them for their voyeuristic satisfaction; after all, we are nothing now if not a nation of voyeurs. I stood up from the chair and opened the door and peered down the hall. Nothing, just a row of doors on either side and the expensive Persian runner down the center and a row of lights on the ceiling.

Back inside, I pulled out another tape. On the label, in
clear handwriting, was the notation TAKEN BY M. FULGERI 5/94.

TAPE 67

[A Third World village. Low buildings of cheap construction, burnt-out cars. Camera pans across village; no one is in sight. But then it is clear that there are shapes on the ground across the way and the camera proceeds in that direction. Sound of footsteps, two people walking. The shapes are humans, flopped on the ground, motionless. Black bodies. They are piled casually, here and there, as if the whole village has been thrown violently from their beds and remained asleep. A mother with her child here, two little boys there, an old man, a small child impaled upon a thick poleâ

Unidentified voice, British accent: I'd just keep it loaded, in case.

Second voice, Italian accent: Try the church. [Camera moves toward a larger building that has a peaked tin roof and low, glassless windows cut into the walls. The camera passes a woman lying in the dust, her breasts hacked off. In the entry to the church the camera is suddenly dark, and then the photoelectric eye adjusts.]

Italian voice: Yes, there, too. [Camera now enters a church full of bodies, all dead, piled on one another. - It is impossible to count, but certainly there are hundreds, maybe even a thousand, all dead, mostly children, their faces slack in the repose of death, flies buzzing from one to another. There are handprints on the wallâa hieroglyphic of swipings and drag-gings, suggestive of frantic activity. At the far end of the church there is movement, and the camera zooms closer; it is a small dog, eating in jerky bites; it looks up, its ears moving, and then looks down again and resumes eating. Camera pans back and forth over the dead; they had clearly herded themselves into the church for refuge, far too many than
could sit on the pews, and the density of corpses suggests a methodically brisk pace of killing by hand. And yet the killers have lingered here and there; several of the bodies show extensive damage to the mouth, as if teeth have been cut out.]

British voice: I thought I heard some shots.

Italian voice: No, no. I don't think so.

British voice: Maybe they're killing the dogs.

Italian voice: You know what they all are doing now in my country?

British voice: No, what?

Italian voice: They watch the NBA play-offs. You know this thing? Very big in Italy. Basketball. Patrick Ewing. Everyone knows all the names.

British voice: Have a look over there. [Camera swings around again, taking in the panorama of death, and then proceeds outside the church. Three soldiers with blue U.N. helmets approach.]

First soldier: We ask you now to leave, please.

British voice: We're documenting here. Colonel Aziz knows we're here.

First soldier: My orders say to tell you now to leave, please. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am thanking you. Thank you. [Jerky panorama of church and earth and blue sky. Tape ends.]

I turned off the machine. But for the soft rush of the ventilation system, the room was utterly quiet now, and I was surprised to hear my own exhalation. Why had Caroline not told me about what was on the tapes? I found this vaguely disturbing. She and I had now entered into some kind of manipulated dialogue. But what kind of statement was she trying to make about her dead husband and perhaps about herself, too? That Simon Crowley was a connoisseur of human suffering? That he saw nothing of the goodness of life, that by collecting examples of what was ugly and dark and eternal about man's nature he understood it better? That he was a true artist? A false one? I did not know or especially care.
There is no image that is unavailable now. In terms of marvel or fantasia or pornography, it's all been done. We carry inside ourselves an encyclopedia of ingested images; we can dream in slowmo and split-screen; in today's special effect and about tomorrow's atrocity. None of Simon Crowley's images, even the tape from Rwanda, seemed less disturbing or more real than the daily offerings on CNN. I'd only seen a small portion of them, but they suggested that Simon Crowley had developed a fascination with “authentic” images. Whether these tapes were studies made for the purpose of improving upon his movie art or constituted an end in themselves was a question I couldn't answer. No, the significance of the tapes for me was not that they characterized Simon but that they might reveal something about Caroline.

I was about to slip another tape into the machine when my beeper went off. My irritation was quickly superseded by fear. GO TO MR. HOBBS, the message read, followed by a phone number. GO TO MR. HOBBS. The only people with the beeper's number were my wife, Josephine, the cops, my father upstate, Bobby Dealy, now off-duty, and the city editor. Hobbs, or one of his representatives, had called the newsroom and gotten the number from the city editor, who, although he knew the number was private, would not have refused Hobbs. Nor, of course, would I.

He maintained his international headquarters in London but kept a New York office in several floors of a building not far from Grand Central. Outside the bank, I stood in the cold, wondering whether I should call ahead to get an idea of what might await me or simply blunder into it. I opted for the call, found a pay phone, and was put through to Hobb's office. “Yes, we are waiting to see you,” said a secretary. “Mr. Hobbs would like a word with you.”

“We could talk on the phone right now,” I suggested.

“Mr. Hobbs would like to see you in person, Mr. Wren.”

It was almost five-thirty in the afternoon. “Now?”

“Now would be wonderful.”

I didn't answer.

“Tomorrow Mr. Hobbs will be in Los Angeles,” she said. “May we expect you in the next twenty minutes?”

The only allowable answer was yes. I hung up and put my arm out for a cab. They flew along Park Avenue as if whipped by the wind; it was the hour that men and women, hunched in coats and hats and scarves, hurried through the gloom, sensing that they were made small by the forces of nature and time, knowing that in a blink it would be all new people in the same stone grid. I wanted to be with my wife and children, warm in the kitchen, Sally drawing at the dining-room table, Tommy rearranging the magnets on the refrigerator. In my cab I pondered why a billionaire would summon a lowly columnist. I could think of no reason that comforted me. Hobbs was a man who did not waste time on people who could not provide him with something he desired.

When I arrived, a secretary was waiting for me like a sentry next to the elevator door. She smiled officially and took me back to a paneled office. Out the window, ten blocks to the south, stood the Empire State Building. I was introduced to a Walter Campbellâa polished walking stick of a man in a black suit who shook my hand vigorously, as if he were running for office.

“Always enjoy your columns,” he said with a London accent. “Quite vivid, I've thought.”

I blinked.

“Very good then, as to why we're here this afternoon,” he said, leaning forward. “Now, this is an off-the-record conversation. You are present as an employee of the company, not, and I repeat that expressly,
not
as a journalist.”

I sat.

Campbell followed my eyes. “I assume this is understood.”

“Okay,” I said.

Campbell nodded. “Right. You are here because we have a problem. None of us has created the problem, but there is, however, a problem.” He looked at me. “My difficulty hereâIâ” Campbell smoothed his tie, then dropped his eyes to a piece of paper on his desk and turned it over. He gazed at it
for perhaps ten seconds, then lifted his eyes to me. “You, sir, have recently been in the company of a certain woman who is not your wife. I attach no moralistic interpretation to this fact. I simply state what is known.”

I sat there, confused, anxious.

“You first spent time with her two nights ago, leaving her apartment sometime after two-thirty A.M. You visited her the next day in the afternoon and spent nearly three hours with her. Today, you met her at a restaurant, and then proceededâ”

“I know where I've been.”

“Right. Of course. Mr. Hobbs is going to ask you to accomplish something on his behalf. It is neither illegal nor dangerous, nor, in my opinion, unreasonable. Thus, the nature of our request is quite-” Here Campbell's face became dull and cold, so much so that I understood now that he was an expert at this sort of matter, a corporate bagman. “Quite mandatory, I should say.”

“Or you'll give me the heave-ho?”

“Well, we would have a response. Let us simply say that.” Campbell lifted a stapled document from his desk and handed it to me. “We've had a quick look at your contract. Look at page three, down at the bottom, please. There is a clause I should like for you to see.”

“You're referring to âprofessional conduct'?”

“No. Next line.”

“âInsubordination'?”

“Yes,” said Campbell.

“I haven't done anything,” I said.

“Yes. That's true.”

“What do you want?”

Campbell stared at me, then nodded vigorously, once. “We have reached the end of this part of our conversation. If you will kindly follow me â¦” He stood and indicated another door, which he opened. I followed him down a short paneled hallway, through a door, and then into another office, also paneled.

There, sitting in peaceful immensity, drinking tea, was
Hobbs himself. He looked up and lifted a giant arm. “Mr. Porter Wren, chronicler of the people's woe! Good afternoon, sir, do come in!” His fingers flicked in the direction of a chair, and his green eyes followed me as I entered the room. To one side, set in the wall, were five digital clocks: HONG KONG, SYDNEY, LONDON, NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES. When I Was seated, Campbell nodded stiffly at his boss, and then drew the door shut behind him as he left. “Quite cold out, I'm told. Now then, I'm delighted that you are here and that we may discuss a certain question.” He smoothed his immense hands down the wool of his vest. He seemed like the globe itself. “I hope very much that we like each other, that we can reach a mutually agreeable understanding â¦” He lifted his eyebrows, as if acting out what my expression might be if I found out what would happen if such an agreement. were not reached. “I'll get to the matter straightaway. You, sir, are having an affair with Miss Caroline Crowley, andâ”

“Look,” I protested, my anger returning to me, “this is of noâ”

“I would ask you not to interrupt!” Hobbs dropped his hands on the top of the desk, palms down, fingers spread. “A bloody
awful
habit of Americans. Now then, why do I
claim
you are having an affair? Because you
are
, sir. I should add that it is no matter to me. Except in that it presents an opportunity. Life is full of opportunities, no?”

He was playing with me. “Of one sort or another,” I answered.

“Yes, quite. This is one sort and not the other. This is an opportunity for me to get something I want and an opportunity for you not to get something you don't want.” He tilted his head at me in such a way that I was to understand that he was irritated by his own cleverness. “Now then, Caroline Crowley isâ”

A chime sounded and Campbell reappeared. “Excuse me. You did have an appointment with the conservator,” he said.

“What was it today?” Hobbs asked, ignoring me.

“I believe it was masks.”

Hobbs swirled his hand in the air. “Send him in.”

A short, well-dressed man in his fifties appeared, pushing a wheeled display device the size of a high-school chalkboard, on which were hung about a dozen African masks, carved from ivory, faces elongated and fearsome.

“Mr. Hobbs, we have a very excellent selection today,” he began, a butcher with his cuts. “Rather fine, I would say, these being excellent examples of sixteenth-century Nigerianâ”

Hobbs thrust out a finger. “I'll take that one on the left and the two larger ones in the middleâ”

“Ah!” the man said, as if genuinely delighted by the choice, “the ceremonial mourning mask, a veryâ”

“And the one on the bottom â¦ yesâthat one.”

BOOK: Manhattan Nocturne

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