by Barber, Tom
Archer walked on, past Times Square, past 50th Street, headed up Broadway. It was slightly quieter and less frenzied here, but he moved on, headed for Central Park on 59th.
In one way, that whole time and phase of his life seemed like a different lifetime ago. So much had happened since then. He’d joined the police two years later, done his training, spent five years at Hammersmith and Fulham before being reassigned to the Armed Response Unit. He had grown into a man, his own person, independent and strong. But then again, in another way, it seemed as if it had all happened yesterday. The wounds remained raw. He still felt betrayed and angry that his father had never even picked up the phone and called once in the eleven years since. His parents had fallen out, but severing speaking terms with each other didn’t mean they could do the same to the kids.
In the years since, Archer had often thought about re-establishing contact with his father. But he never had. He’d always waited, promising himself he’d do it tomorrow. And now that he was gone, there were suddenly a million things he wanted to tell him that he could now never say. He shook his head and walked on up the street, his hands in the pockets of his suit, past 54th and up Broadway towards the Park.
This whole situation was troubling. He’d known Gerry for as long as he could remember. They hadn’t seen each other since Archer was a teenager, but time didn’t matter with a guy like Gerry. If you were friends with him, you were friends for life. He was as reliable as anyone he’d ever met, and an old acquaintance to boot. If he was convinced that Farrell or someone in his crew had killed his father, then he was probably right. The young cop glanced up at the sky as he walked. He’d lost his mother a couple of years ago, but they’d all known that was coming. She’d passed in her sleep, not in any pain, and Archer was at peace with that. Goodbyes had been exchanged. They’d been prepared, and everything that needed to be said had been said.
But this wasn’t gentle or peaceful. Someone had got the jump on his father and executed him. Whoever did it didn’t even have the courage to look him in the eye as he pulled the trigger. Not the way a person should leave this world. And whoever did it was out there right now, walking around, figuring they’d got away with it, moving on with their lives and forgetting about the one they just ended.
He shook his head again, his anger rising.
He arrived on 59th, the entrance to Central Park across the street. Twenty four blocks, just like that. The Park looked stunning in the afternoon light, green and verdant and healthy.
Looking left and right, he saw there were scores of people up here, tourists and wealthy residents, tour operators and people in athletic gear headed into the Park for a workout. Archer was standing at a crossing beside a group of other pedestrians, waiting for the lights to change. Once the orange hand on the crossing lights flashed to the white man leaning forward, he walked over the white lines on the tarmac, and continued onto a footpath that led into Central Park.
From the exterior, the place had looked special, but it was even more beautiful inside. The grass and trees were full and healthy and a vibrant green, golden sunlight streaming through the branches and leaving dark shadows on the ground. People of all shapes and sizes were wandering along the dusty winding paths, some licking ice-creams, others snapping photographs of family and friends, others like Archer just here for a quiet stroll and a chance to get some private thinking done.
As he walked on, a stream of joggers and partners on bicycles passed him on the road, moving down designated lanes, the occasional bell on a bike ringing to prevent a collision with someone crossing the road up ahead. There were people scattered here and there on patches of grass, lying back on towels or rugs, soaking up the rays, working on their tans. The occasional horse-drawn carriage trotted past, a couple or family sat in the back, enjoying the novelty of being pulled along by a horse whilst snapping photographs as they passed the gorgeous scenery around them. It was an amazing place, surreal for those who visited and an escape for those who lived here, a welcome respite from the frantic pace of the city streets. One moment, everywhere you looked was concrete, taxi-cabs and glass windows, and the next you were surrounded by nature and wildlife, green leaves and brown trees, birds and earth.
Alongside the bike path, Archer sat on a bench facing the Upper West Side, alone, and loosened his tie further, taking in a deep breath of the clean air.
Gerry was right.
He was going to be in town anyway. His return flight wasn’t until Sunday, a week tomorrow, and Cobb didn’t want him back before then anyway.
And he couldn’t just pack his bags and leave knowing that he hadn’t helped in any way to catch the killer.
Waking up every day in London knowing that the person who did it was still out there.
Knowing that they were still robbing banks, stealing themselves rich and living the lavish life.
His knuckles whitened and his eyes narrowed, and he shook his head slowly, staring straight ahead through the trees to the street.
He couldn’t live with himself if he just left and didn’t at least try to find the culprit.
But this wasn’t going to end well, whatever happened. These were tough, brutal, dangerous people. Gerrard said Farrell had already served time for murder, and from what he’d told Archer about Ortiz it sounded like she was a homicide charge waiting to happen. They wouldn’t go down without a fight or without taking other people with them. They’d duke it out if they got cornered, and anyone who got in the way would be necessary collateral damage. He knew the type from back home in London. Criminals like this didn’t care who they killed, be it other crooks, Federal agents, city cops or just innocent bystanders. For some it was something to brag about later, like a badge of honour. For others it was just an everyday part of their criminal life, and they didn’t give whoever they murdered another moment’s thought.
As he watched the cyclists and joggers move past him, he tried to picture his father in his head, and to hear his voice.
What would he say?
What would he want me to do?
He closed his eyes, listening for anything, something.
But there was nothing.
All he could hear were the birds in the park.
This was something he was going to have to get done himself.
He sat there on the bench for a further thirty minutes, then walked back to where he’d entered the Park at the south entrance and got on an Astoria-bound R train at the 5th Avenue subway stop. The train rumbled and rattled as it moved under Manhattan, the East River and into Queens, and Archer stood inside gripping the rail for support. The carriage was quiet, and there were only a handful of other people sitting inside.
After fifteen minutes or so and several stops, they arrived at Steinway Street in Astoria. Once the doors opened, Archer stepped out and moved along the platform, walking up two flights of stairs and arriving up on Steinway Street itself.
He paused for a moment and looked at the neighbourhood around him. He hadn’t been here in a long time, not since he was twelve or thirteen, but he knew the area well. His father used to own a place in Woodside, Queens, and Archer had stayed there often as a kid on visits from the UK on his summer visits. He pulled the piece of paper Gerrard had given him and glanced at the address in his hand. The apartment was just a five minute walk from here, and he headed off down the street towards it.
Seeing as it was a Saturday afternoon, Astoria was busy. He’d loved this neighbourhood as a boy. It was a separate little community, just like Williamsburg in Brooklyn or Flushing further east in Queens, and if someone wanted to avoid Manhattan, they could find everything they’d ever need right here in these streets. As he walked down Steinway, crossing over Broadway and headed towards 30th Avenue, he passed vendors on street corners, one of them an old war vet with a red USMC Korea hat, sitting or standing beside stalls containing electrical goods. He saw kids running in and out of gaming and shoe stores, their parents talking with each other nearby whilst trying to keep their ch
ildren out of trouble. He passed another Starbucks on the left and saw a small group of people sitting outside, sipping on drinks and chatting, enjoying the sunlight. His father had told him a long time ago that the world-famous Steinway pianos originated from this street and were still made here to this very day. Archer liked that. Amongst any potential Manhattan snobbery that figured Queens was a neighbourhood not worth coming out to, there was a little piece of the area in every concert hall around the world that used a Steinway piano.
Soon he arrived at the corner of 31st Avenue and Steinway. A grill station was parked on the corner, a small line formed in front as people waited to order cooked meats from the counter. Archer walked through the smoke and steam from the grill, and walked north a block to arrive on 38th Street, where the address on the piece of paper Gerry had given him was located.
It was a picturesque stretch of road, clean and well-maintained. One curse of Manhattan was the seemingly endless piles of trash and rubbish bags piled on the sidewalks for collection, but that wasn’t an issue here. The local council had done a good job. As he walked down the street, he realised this was a walk his father would have done hundreds, thousands of times. Aside from the wind in the trees, the street was quiet, the only sound the click-clock of the soles of his shoes as he moved down the concrete sidewalk. To his left, the wind tickled the branches and leaves of trees planted along the sidewalk as he passed them, and Archer found the noise calming, helping momentarily to alleviate his mood.
After a sixty second walk, he arrived at the building matching the address on the scrap of paper to his right. He pulled the slip of paper from his pocket and double-checked, looking at the number on the front door.
This was the place.
It was a semi-detached building, three levels inside a small gated yard. Each side of the street was lined with these three-floor places, structures made from wood and brick, put up probably some fifty odd years ago and gradually renovated since then to keep up with the times. He knew from coming here as a boy that most of them were rented by young folks in their twenties and early thirties, people who couldn’t quite afford the Manhattan rents just yet, and the landlords and landladies would be old Europeans, locals who had been born and raised their whole lives here, whose families had settled here sometime in the last century and who made a living renting out the apartments in the buildings.
Looking at the building in front of him, he saw that the upper two floors each had a balcony guarded by black railings. On the second floor he saw a guy in a t-shirt and shorts using a grill, the sizzle and smell of cooking meat in the air. The man saw Archer on the street below and they nodded a greeting to each other.
‘Can I help?’ the man said.
‘Yeah. I think my dad was renting a place here. His name’s Archer. James, or Jim, or Jimmy.’
The guy nodded. ‘Top floor. Want me to buzz you in?’
‘I’ve got a key. Thanks.’
‘No problem.’
Archer pushed open the gate as the guy returned his attention to the grill, and walked towards the front door. He slid one of the two keys in the lock and twisted, pushing the door open and shutting it behind him.
Inside, it was quiet. The sounds of birdsong from the trees and sizzling meat from the grill were suddenly gone.
He moved up the stairs, past the second floor, and continued up to arrive outside the door to the third floor apartment.
He took the second key and slid it into the lock.
It fit.
This was the place.
Archer paused.
Then he took a deep breath, twisting the handle, and opening the door, he stepped inside the apartment.
The first thing that struck him about the place was the cleanliness. It was tidy and organised, unusually so considering the traits of the man who had formerly lived here. The air smelt of polished wood and cigars, oaky but fresh. He shut the door gently behind him, and examined the interior around him.
It was a medium sized apartment. Straight ahead of him was a kitchen, a living area to the right with a couch and television, none of it separated by walls or doors. To the right, a screen door led out to the balcony he’d seen from the street, and to the left was the main bedroom and bathroom. The floor was wooden and polished, the walls white and equally clean. It was a nice place and it had been immaculately maintained. Archer figured an apartment like this in this neighbourhood would cost around a thousand-five a month in rent, maybe closer to two. In Manhattan, it would be two, three or four times that.
Archer walked into the kitchen. It was also surprisingly tidy, every pot, pan and plate put away, no washing up left in the sink, the countertops clean. He looked around, examining the space, and turned to the fridge and reached for the handle. As he took it in his hand, something caught his eye and made him pause. There was a newspaper clipping from The New York Times stuck by a fridge magnet to the door. He read the headline.
British police foil terrorist attacks in London.
Gerrard’s voice echoed in his mind.
He always talked about you, you know. He was proud. He kept saying ‘that’s my son’.
Archer looked at the cutting for a moment longer, then pulled open the fridge door. It was sparsely filled, just a carton of eggs, some milk and some preserves on the shelves.
No beer.
Closing the door, he moved out of the kitchen into the living area on the right. A table was pushed against the wall facing the kitchen, knick knacks and odd items placed on the desktop. Standing by the table, Archer saw something he recognised resting there and picked it up. It was a wallet. Jim Archer had used the same one for twenty years. He felt the soft leather in his hands. The texture. The smell. Memories flooded back. His dad giving him money to spend at the weekend with his friends. Buying his son a bottle of Coke then sitting outside a pub in the English summer, the leathery wallet resting on the wooden table. Asking his dad for some spare coins for sweets, and seeing him pretend to consider refusing, knowing he’d always end up saying yes and helping him out.
He flipped it open and saw a New York State driver’s licence.
James Anthony Archer. D.O.B: 05/10/1957.
He thumbed through the bank cards and other I.D cards. He found a couple of pictures of him when he was a kid and his sister, Sarah, tucked into the back. He stared at them for a moment then returned them, putting the wallet back where he’d found it, not wanting to disturb anything.
He turned and moved to the main bedroom. This too was surprisingly tidy, the bed made, the sheets white and clean. He pulled open the closet. A series of suits hung there, lined up neatly on the rail alongside some shirts with ties hung over the coat-hangers. Several pairs of shoes had been lined up side-by-side underneath, some of the laces still tied. Clothes and shoes that would never be used again by their owner, Archer thought. Like everything else in this apartment.
He sat back on the bed. It was comfy and springy. He turned his attention to the nightstand by the bed and reached for the top drawer, curious. It was jammed. He grabbed the side of the stand with his free hand and pulled hard, and the drawer suddenly opened. There were a couple of books in there, with the memory card to a digital camera laid on top. It had a small square of tape on the underside, as if it had been stuck to something. Archer ignored it as something else caught his eye. There was a steel pistol in there, resting on the small stack of books towards the back of the drawer. Archer reached inside and took it out. It was a Sig Sauer P226, FBI issue, well-maintained, smelling of gun oil. His father’s service weapon. It was still here in the drawer which meant he hadn’t taken it the night he had been murdered.
Possibly meaning he hadn’t been expecting any trouble.
It was unloaded, no round in the pipe, no magazine in the base. Archer pulled the drawer open all the way and found three mags at the back, each one fully loaded. He took one of them out and thumbed the bullets out of the clip one-by-one, each round landing in a metal huddle on the bed, dinging as they
dropped onto each other on the pile. Fifteen bullets in total landed on the bed. He pushed them all back into the magazine one-by-one, then slotted it into the base of the weapon and pulled the slide, loading it and checking the safety catch was on.
The gun in his hand, Archer lay back on the bed. Everything that had happened in the past two days suddenly caught up with him. He realised he was pretty worn out.
Learning of his father’s death, the flight, the funeral, the meeting with Gerrard and the collective weight of it all on his mind had left him way more tired than he thought. He stared up at the ceiling, his arms stretched out to the sides, the pistol in his right hand, the soft mattress supporting his back.
And before he knew it, he drifted off to sleep.
A sudden noise brought him back to consciousness and he stirred awake. Opening his eyes, he stared at the ceiling, briefly wondering where he was. The phone on the bed-side table was ringing. He blinked, looking at it sleepily, then glanced at a clock on the dresser.
7:00 pm.
It was Gerry.
Archer reached for the receiver, and grabbed it off the handle, sitting up.
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s me,’ Gerrard’s voice said. ‘What’s the answer?’
Archer looked at the gun in his hand. He shifted his gaze through the bedroom door at the empty, silent apartment ahead of him.
‘OK. I’m in.’
He didn’t wait for Gerry to respond.
He just returned the phone to the handle, and looked down at the steel Sig Sauer pistol in his right hand again.
Someone murdered James Archer.
They thought they’d get away with it.
But his son was going to find out who they were.
SEVEN
‘I think I’m in,’ Archer told Gerrard, back in that same Starbucks on 35th and 7th, three days later. Across the table, Gerry’s eyes widened.
‘Already? How?’