Page 136 of Two Marlboros

I slipped one out and peered at it. I was immediately reminded of Nathan’s lips, barely moistening the filter. I gripped it with my thumb and index and brought it closer to my mouth, dry as few could be.

It scared me.

The cigarette was Nathan, and I felt the need to make it mine, if only for fun. I put it between my lips and a jolt electrified my body, all the way to my lower abdomen.

The first time I had spoken to Nathan, he had been smoking. He had done it many other times, but I remembered well that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He had like hypnotized me.

I took the cigarette out of my mouth and held it between my fingers.

I remembered the text he had sent me and wondered if I would ever see him again and, if so, if he would want too. I hadmade a mistake, performed a boyish act, something that was not like me. Why had I done it?

I waited for the light of dawn to brighten my face, hoping the rays would free me from the torments that had gripped me all night.

I gave up almost immediately.

Car keys, investigation file, and a good dose of trembling on me: I was ready for the day. I had taken stock of the situation with Church and Ash, the latter waiting for me outside the station. He seemed relaxed as usual, as if every event didn’t really touch him, or maybe because he knew I had most of the responsibility. The goal was to wring some useful information out of Michael Cossner for the investigation, without making him stymied. It was not something complicated, but I felt the weight of potential bad choices.

I greeted Ash, intent on texting on his cell phone.

“Are you ready?”

He barely looked up, nodded and put the phone away. “Sure, let’s go.”

I felt a little envy for all that quietness.

Past the entrance sign to Chinatown, the first thing that struck me was the smell of fish. I sniffed the air to follow its trail, which led me to turn toward a street market run by Chinese people and selling specialties of all kinds; for as little as two dollars you could take home an oyster and with four you could take home a crab. One customer approached the fish stall and the manager muttered something to him in Chinese, so the other began to point to shrimps and they gesticulated a bit to haggle over the price, until the customer managed to snatch a handful of fresh shrimps from him for only three dollars.

In Brighton there was never any haggling. You picked and you paid, and you took home what you thought you had won;whether you got a good deal afterward, only you and the one you left behind could know.

I had grown up on the bay, and the sea had been the background to more than one of my torments. It had seen me as a child and teenager; it had listened to the fights over a toy and the first relationships gone wrong; it had made me feel the desire to run away, when that bay, that pier and those people, whom I knew too well, were beginning to get too close to me. I had abandoned that beach and its tranquility for a reality at the antipodes of the one in which I had grown up. In leaving the Bay behind, I had also left some of my youth there.

In Manhattan I had learned what responsibility was. There had been no more room for the boy I was, but I was proud of that. However, when I remembered what I was doing there, in Chinatown, I put memories aside and was seized by a strange feeling, accompanied by a wish that I had never left.

We passed the market and turned onto Baxter Street, by which time the images of the bay had faded. I reminded myself that I was there, that the case was in my hands, and that, without joking too much, much of the success of the investigation depended on me; there was no one there to keep me guided to the right thing to do.

When we arrived in front of the red building we were looking for and I read Clide’s last name, I felt a twinge in my stomach. Ashton was already off to a flying start, and I couldn’t stop him from ringing the doorbell. I imagined Michael getting up from the couch, where he might have been sitting, crossing the living room, reaching the front door, picking up the receiver and asking, “Who is it?” I strained my ear toward the intercom and thought he would answer before I had finished exhaling all the air, but I inhaled one more time, held my breath without realizing it, and threw it out.

Silence.

“Maybe he’s not home,” Ash proposed, but I knew better. Michael could not afford to go outside.

“I say we should try plan B.”

I pressed any doorbell, whose name I didn’t even read, and put my ear to the intercom. I heard it barely sizzle, then an elderly woman’s voice answered, croaking louder than the intercom itself.

“Who is it?”

“Excuse me, it’s Clide, I forgot my keys. Couldn’t you at least open the door downstairs for me?”

The lady opened it without saying anything. We only heard the rustle of the receiver being hung up and the click of the lock.

The interior of the building smelled fishy. It was dimly lit and rather bare, so much so that every step rumbled, and when we climbed the steps, it was a must to hold on to the now-smooth handrail to keep our balance. I walked down two flights of stairs before I realized that the walls had bias cracks and there were cobwebs in the corners, making the room more cramped than it already was.

Seeing the apartment door calmed me, for after much waiting, I had discovered what my monster looked like. The fear subsided a little to give way to adrenaline, to the desire to give my everything for the cause to which I had devoted myself: justice.

I thought my mind would leave it to Ashton to ring the bell, but my finger moved without my noticing, and in a moment the air was filled with a trill after I pressed it. We waited a while, but no answer came from the apartment. We then tried ringing again, without success; we also tried the “Police, open up” card, but no one showed up.

“I leave the honor to you,” I said facing Ashton, who had more muscle than me. He loosened his right shoulder, sprang to his feet and crashed into the door, which vibrated quitenoticeably. All it took was a handful of shoulder thrusts for the tenant inside the apartment to rush in. We heard him slide the latch and slip off the chain that held the door closed, then open it. A young man with a brown mop and a petite physique popped up on the threshold and stared at us with a look somewhere between guarded and bewildered.

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