Paul Johnson: The nameless dead

Manhattan, December

Two degrees above freezing, and people’s breath was rising over their heads like souls en route to another dimension. It was after 9:00 p.m. and the shops in Greenwich Village were still open, even if customers with money to spend were scarcer than beat cops near an actual crime.

Laurie Antoinette Simpson came out of the subway at Christopher Street-Sheridan Square and headed down Grove Street toward her apartment. Gasoline fumes hung in the air and burned her throat. She pulled the cashmere scarf that her mother had given her for her thirty-fourth birthday over her mouth, but that only impeded her breathing. She needed to get back to jogging. The problem was that the legal practice she had established in Harlem was swamped with civil rights cases, many of them involving immigrants. She no longer had time to produce the articles about extremist organizations that had made her name when she was still in her twenties.

‘Hey, Laurie.’

She smiled at the young man with the straggly beard, who was leaning against a wall. ‘Cousin Sam, how are you? I thought you went to Brooklyn.’

‘Nah, nothing doing over there. Too much competition.’

‘And there isn’t around here?’

He shrugged. ‘People know me. Hey, you need anything?’

‘No, thanks. You got somewhere to sleep?’

‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

‘Those clothes could do with a wash. What have you been lying in?’

Cousin Sam peered at the stains on his threadbare Levi’s as if he was seeing them for the first time. ‘I don’t know, Laurie. Maybe I-’

‘Save it,’ she said, raising a hand. ‘Come around on Sunday afternoon and I’ll wash them for you.’

‘Hey, thanks.’ He looked over her shoulder. ‘Gotta go. Customers.’

‘Don’t rip them off,’ she said, watching his skinny frame weave between the cars. Time was, she’d have preached him a sermon about the dangers of drug use, but she knew that was pointless. Keeping him clean was the best she could do, that and being thankful that he wasn’t really her cousin, with all his problems.

Shouting reached her from farther down the street. Two black youths, all Converse All-Stars and baggy denim, were being ejected from a music store. As she passed, Laurie heard the shop owner say they were lucky he wasn’t calling the cops. Between curses, the young men claimed they hadn’t done anything. She was about to take their side when one of them pulled a switchblade.

‘Knife, Andy!’ she shouted.

The troublemakers looked around at her, giving the shop owner time to grab a baseball bat. After exchanging glances, the young men took to their heels and disappeared around the corner ahead.

‘Thanks, Laurie,’ said the overweight man with a ponytail. ‘Those assholes asked to see my Bob Marley bootlegs. I barely managed to hold on when they tried to grab ’em.’

‘Times are hard, Andy.’

‘You got that right. Got time for a drink? I have some ten-year-old Calvados.’

‘Tempting, but I’ll pass. I’m in court first thing.’

She continued down the street, keeping her eyes off the antique furniture store. She had paid the weird Frenchman who ran it plenty when she moved into her apartment. Nineteenth-century European fittings and expensive spirits had been her only weaknesses in recent years. Her mother was forever needling her to spend more on her appearance. She had such beautiful features, how did she expect to get a man if she let herself turn into an old maid? What was she doing in the Village when she could be on the Upper West Side? Her father would happily buy her a place and it was much more convenient for work, though why Laurie insisted on helping people who couldn’t pay was beyond her.

The truth was, Laurie had no interest in moving closer to her parents. Her father was a property developer with a beach house in the Hamptons and a ski lodge in Aspen, but he had never been interested in her and would never even speak to her if her mother didn’t hand him the phone.

Neither did she have any desire to find another man.

She stopped and looked up and down the street. It had been several months since Wendell had appeared to her, and over a year since she had last run after a tall black man and embarrassed herself by grabbing his arm and saying her dead lover’s name. Wendell and she had been together for eight years. Sometimes she could remember every detail about him and the things they had done together, but more and more she could hardly recall his face without help. She only kept one photograph of him on the wall in her apartment because it hurt almost as much to see his sweet smile and perfect skin as it would to banish him from her mind’s eye. But suddenly she felt a strong desire to see his features again and extended her stride.

Six years since he had been taken by leukemia. Would she finally be able to look at the photo without tears? The prospect made her heart beat faster, as if she was going to meet her lover in the flesh following a long separation.

Laurie turned the key in the lock and went quickly up the stairs-there was no elevator in the converted family house. She felt the breath catch in her throat, aware that her feet were heavy on the steps. She really did need to get a fitness program organized. Filling her lungs, she opened the pair of locks and went inside. There was an unusual smell, something chemical, but she hardly noticed it, so eager was she to lay eyes on Wendell. She flicked on the light, shucking her coat and throwing off her scarf. Then she stepped toward the dining room door, her heart hammering.

There was a wide smile on Laurie Simpson’s face as she walked into the knife that killed her. The last thing she saw, and it hurt much more than the blade slicing through her abdomen, was the red swastika that had been sprayed over Wendell’s face. She opened her mouth to let out a cry of anguish, but no sound came as she went to join her beloved.

A healthy mind in a healthy body-yeah, right. A crow cawed, then took off with a rattle of wings from the trees on my left. The sounds were immediately swallowed by the sodden vegetation and chill damp air. I came round the bend in the path and sprinted toward the timber wall. I’d been over it so often recently that I knew exactly where the hand and toeholds were. That didn’t stop me getting more splinters in my fingertips. After I was over, I ran to the rope slide. That added to the abrasions on my palms. Now there was only the long stretch to the finish. My knee had started to ache from its old injuries, but I reckoned it would hold out. Since I had started doing the circuit, my body had found numerous ways to show its displeasure at being treated like a delinquent at boot camp. Which, of course, is what I was. There weren’t so many twinges as there had been at the start. The winter air hadn’t helped when I was given the go-ahead to use the course a couple of weeks back. It could have been worse. I’d been told that this part of Illinois could easily have had snow and been freezing cold by now.

I pressed the button on my watch-one of the few personal possessions I’d been allowed to keep-as I crossed the line in the ground. Twenty-two minutes and sixteen-point-six seconds. I bent over, hands on my knees, and tried to get my breathing under control.

‘Not bad.’

I looked up. ‘Close to my best time,’ I said between gasps.

The tall individual in green vest and thigh-hugging shorts gave me an indulgent smile. ‘Like I say, not bad.’ He paused. ‘For a civilian.’

‘Uh-huh. What’s your record, Superman?’

The soldier dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups at a frightening rate. ‘You don’t want to know,’ he replied, his breathing still regular.