Hour of the Wolf

SIX
36

Chief Inspector Reinhart landed at Kennedy airport at 14.30 on Friday, 18 December. He was met by Chief Lieutenant Bloomguard, with whom he had spoken on the telephone and exchanged half a dozen faxes over the last twenty-four hours.

Bloomguard was about thirty-five, a stocky, close-cropped and energetic man whose very handshake seemed to indicate the abundant generosity, open-heartedness and warmth of American culture. Reinhart had already declined his invitation to stay in his home in Queens during his New York visit, and had several opportunities to do so again in the car on the way to and through the increasingly dense traffic in Manhattan.

Reinhart checked into Trump Tower in Columbus Circle. Bloomguard gave him a pat on the back and three hours to wash away all the dust accrued during his travels: then he was required to be on parade outside the entrance in order to be conveyed out to Queens for a slap-up dinner with the family. Yes sir.

When Reinhart was alone he stood by the window of his room and looked out — the twenty-fourth floor with a view to the north and east of Manhattan. Especially Central Park, which was spread out like a frosty miniature landscape diagonally below him. Dusk was closing in, but as yet the skyline was grey and drab. As they waited for night to fall the skyscrapers seemed to be hiding away in an anonymity that could hardly be ascribed to Reinhart’s lack of knowledge about their names and functions. Not entirely, at least, he told himself. He could identify the Metropolitan and Guggenheim towers in Fifth Avenue on the other side of the park, but then he was uncertain. In any case, it didn’t seem particularly hospitable. Positively hostile, in fact. The temperature was a degree or so below freezing, Bloomguard had told him, and the forecast was that it would become colder during the night. No snow so far this year, but maybe they could hope for some soon.

It was fifteen years since Reinhart was last in New York. The only time he’d been there, in fact. It had been a holiday visit, in August. As hot as a baking oven: he recalled having drunk four litres of water a day, and that his feet had ached. Recalled also that what he’d liked best were walks along the river promenade, and the tumbledown state of Coney Island. And Barnes amp; Noble, of course, especially the premises on Eighth Street. The world’s best bookshop, open more or less all day and night long, where you could read as much as you liked for free in the cafeteria.

It had been a pleasure trip that time. He sighed, and left the window. Now he was on duty. He took a shower, slept for an hour, then had another shower.

Lieutenant Bloomguard was married to a woman called Veronique who did her best to look like Jacqueline Kennedy.

With a degree of success. They had a daughter two weeks older than Reinhart’s Joanna, and lived in a low hacienda-inspired house in north-west Queens which looked exactly like what he had always imagined an American middle-class home ought to look like. During the meal his host recounted selected tales from the family history (with occasional contributions by his hostess). His father, who had fought in both Africa and Korea and had half a dozen medals and a wooden leg for his troubles, had just undergone a triple heart bypass operation, and looked as if he was going to survive. Veronique had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday and came originally from Montana, where they used to spend long vacations enjoying the clear mountain air. Bloomguard’s younger sister had been raped in Far Rockaway just over two years ago, but had found a good therapist who seemed able to get her back on her feet again; and they had switched to decaffeinated coffee, but were thinking of going back to the normal stuff. Etcetera. Reinhart recounted a similar tenth or so of his own journey through the vale of tears, and by the time they came to the ice cream he realized that he knew more about Lieutenant Bloomguard and his family than he knew about any of his colleagues in the Maardam CID.

When Veronique withdrew with Quincey (which Reinhart had always thought was a boy’s name) after doing her duty most efficiently, the gentlemen detectives sat down in front of the fire, each with a brandy, and started serious discussions.

By half past ten Reinhart began to feel the effects of jet lag. Bloomguard laughed and slapped him on the back once again. Put him into a taxi and sent him back to Manhattan.

Apart from having been obliged to stand outside on the terrace to smoke his pipe, Reinhart thought it had been a pleasant enough evening.

He would probably have fallen asleep in the taxi had it not been for the fact that the driver was a gigantic, singing Puerto Rican (Reinhart had always thought that Puerto Ricans were small), who insisted on wearing sunglasses although it was the middle of the night. Reinhart remembered a line in a film he’d seen — ‘Are you blind or just stupid?’ — but although it was on the edge of his tongue all the way, he couldn’t summon up the courage to say it.

Once in his room he telephoned Winnifred, and was informed that it was a quarter to six in the morning in Europe. He undressed, crept into bed and fell asleep.

There were five days to go to Christmas Eve.

It was Lieutenant Bloomguard himself who drove him to Brooklyn on the Saturday morning. They turned off Fifth Avenue after Sunset Park, and parked a short way up 44th Street. Only a few houses away from the premises they were intending to visit, on the corner of Sixth Avenue. A dirt-brown brick building, narrow with three storeys, no lights in the windows, and an exact copy of every other building in the area. A few steps up to the front door, a few tired-looking rubbish bags on the pavement outside.

Latinos and orthodox Jews, Bloomguard had told him. And Poles. These are the usual types in these parts — although the Jews live mainly a bit further up, around Tenth and Eleventh Avenue.

They remained seated in the car for a while, and Reinhart tried to make it clear how delicate an occasion the first meeting was. Extremely damned delicate. Bloomguard took the hint.

‘I’ll stay in the car,’ he said. ‘You go in on your own — I find it so hard to hold my tongue.’

Reinhart nodded and got out. Glanced over the park, the open, sloping expanse of grass and the low, greyish white, wall-less buildings in the middle. Something that looked like a swimming baths. It wasn’t exactly a place for tourists to visit, Bloomguard had said. Hardly a place for honest folk at all. Not at night, at least. After nightfall Sunset Park changed its name to Gunshot Park. That’s what the locals called it.

But just now it looked perfectly peaceful. A jogger was struggling up a tarmacked path while a bunch of obviously out-of-work gentlemen in woolly hats were sitting on a bench, throwing a bottle in a plastic bag from one to the other. Two fat women were pushing a pram and making ostentatious gestures as they talked. One of the bare trees at the side of the street had masses of shoes hanging from every branch — a motif Reinhart recalled from a picture postcard he’d once received, he couldn’t remember from whom.

The air was cold. An icy wind was blowing from down by the Hudson River; it felt as if snow was on the way. The view was magnificent. To the north was Manhattan’s skyline against steel-grey clouds, a little to the west was the whole of the entrance to the harbour with the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island. This is where they came to, Reinhart thought. This is what became the New World.

He walked past three houses and four cars — big, slightly rusty gas guzzlers — and came to number 602. The digits indicated the location — the second house between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, he had read. He mounted the eight steps to the front door and rang the bell. A dog started barking.

Delicate, he thought again. Extremely damned delicate.

The door was opened by a boy in his early teens, with glasses and protruding teeth. He was holding a chocolate sandwich in his hand.

‘I’m looking for Mrs Ponczak,’ said Reinhart.

The boy shouted into the house, and after a while a solidly built woman came puffing and panting down the stairs and greeted him.

‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m Elizabeth Ponczak. What do you want?’

Reinhart explained who he was and was invited into the kitchen. The living room was occupied by the boy and a television set. They sat down at a small, rickety laminated table, and Reinhart began to explain why he was there, as he had planned it. In English, he didn’t know why.

It took several minutes, and all the time the woman sat opposite him, stroking a yellowish-grey cat that had jumped up onto her knee. The barking dog evidently belonged next door: he could occasionally hear it howling or yelping at something or other.

‘I don’t understand what you saying,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Why he want to visit me? We have not had contact in fifteen years. I am sorry, but I can’t help you a sniff.’

Her English was even worse than his, he noted. Perhaps she spoke Polish to Mr Ponczak, if there still was anybody of that name around. He didn’t seem to be at home at the moment, in any case.

Okay, Reinhart thought. That’s that, then.

He hadn’t been speaking the truth. Had she?

He had no way of knowing. As he sat there spinning his tale he had paid special attention to her reactions, but seen no sign that she was hiding or suspecting anything.

If only she weren’t so phlegmatic, he thought in irritation. Fat, sloppy people like this one never had any problem when it came to hiding something. He’d often thought about that in the past. All they needed to do was to sit gaping out into space, just like they always did.

When he came out into the street he recognized that that was an unfair generalization. Unfair and inappropriate. But what the hell, he’d only had one trump card with him over the Atlantic. One miserable little trump card: he’d played it and it hadn’t won him anything at all.

He plodded back to Bloomguard and the car.

‘How did it go?’ asked Bloomguard.

‘Nix, I’m afraid,’ said Reinhart.

He flopped down onto the passenger seat. ‘Can we go somewhere for a coffee? With caffeine.’

‘Of course,’ said Bloomguard, starting the engine. ‘Plan B?’

‘Plan B,’ said Reinhart with a sigh. ‘Four days, as we said, then we drop it. I’ll take as much time as I can cope with. And it’s definite that you can place people at my disposal?’

‘Of course,’ said Bloomguard enthusiastically. ‘You don’t need to sit here sleuthing on your own. We have plenty of resources in this village of ours — there’s a different wind blowing compared with fifteen years ago. Zero tolerance. I was a bit sceptical at first, I admit; but the fact is, it works.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ said Reinhart. ‘But I don’t want to feel like a tourist. And we need to work round the clock, or there’s no point.’

Bloomguard nodded.

‘You’ll get a car for your own use,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the station and work out a timetable, and you can pick out the times you want to have. Then I’ll look after the rest. Okay, compadre?’

‘No problem,’ said Reinhart.

In fact he delayed his first shift until Sunday. Bloomguard made sure that there was a car with two plain-clothes police officers parked at the junction of 44th Street and Sixth Avenue out in Brooklyn from four o’clock on Saturday. Reinhart spent the afternoon and evening wandering around Lower Manhattan. Soho. Little Italy. Greenwich Village and Chinatown. He eventually ended up in Barnes amp; Noble. That was more or less inevitable. Sat reading. Drinking coffee and eating brownies, and listening to poetry readings. Bought five books. It was half past nine by the time he left and managed to catch the correct subway train to Columbus Circle. When he came up to street level he found it had started snowing.

I wonder what I’m doing here? he thought. There are over seven million people in this city. How can I imagine that I’ll ever find the right one? There must be better odds on my getting lost and disappearing than on discovering anything.

As he travelled up in the lift he reminded himself that it had in fact been The Chief Inspector who had convinced him he would be successful in his quest, but that wasn’t much of a consolation. Not for the moment, at least, in the loneliness of Saturday evening

When he phoned and woke Winnifred up for the second night in succession, she told him it was snowing in Maardam as well.