Page 74 of Two Marlboros

“I must be careful not to cross paths with my father. Otherwise, I might find myself on the newspaper, crime section.”

He pulled a smile as if to downplay, but there didn’t seem to be much reason to do so.

“I’m sorry. Do you really have to go there?”

Only then did he look into my eyes, if only for a moment.

“I’m doing it for my mother, she would want our family to be united. Although I wonder what we have left to reunite after all.”

I was about to say something, but he beat me to it.

“Whatever, I’m off. Thanks for the company. And there’s no guarantee I won’t call you back tomorrow, too, if it goes as crappy as I think it will.”

“Anytime,” I replied, and in his eyes I seemed to catch a glimpse of the pain he was trying to hide with the half-smile he had put on. We said our goodbyes, and as I watched him walk away I thought back to when he had brought the phone back to me at the station, to the moment when he had said that he, too, had lost someone important. I didn’t know if he was referring to his family, but I felt sorry for him.

I walked back into the house and stood on the threshold, the same one where only a few hours earlier Nathan had hugged me. I tried to recall that feeling on my skin, but without succeeding. Instead, as I entered the room and cast a glance at the picture of Oliver watching me from the bedside table, I could very well feel guilty about wishing again, if only for a moment, for the thrill of holding someone in my arms.

I went to bed, tired, aware that I would open my eyes again in the morning with a good dose of anxiety. There was aninvestigation to be carried out, and I was feeling less and less in control of my thoughts.

The next morning, Edmond summoned Ashton and me to his office. We opened the door and a cloud of cigars’ smoke waved above our boss’s head, making the “No Smoking” sign visible in places. As he saw us, he smiled and pointed to the person sitting next to him, barely shook the cigar, and crumbs of ash settled on the pile already there.

“Meet Matthew Church. He will be the person you will have to answer to from now on for the Lexington Avenue case.”

Mr. Church was a man in his forties, with early white hair, a trim jacket, and rather squashed rectangular glasses. Ash and I shook his hand, and, with a complicit glance at my colleague, I could tell he had shaken his to death as well.

“From now on I will be coordinating the investigation. If you don’t mind, I would like to take stock of the situation with you. Under such circumstances, every moment is precious, so I propose to start right away.”

He adjusted his glasses on his nose and did not even wait for our response to walk toward the door leading to the hallway. We watched as, with broad, confident stride, he walked out of the room, leaving Ash and me more astonished than ever.

Edmond’s phone rang. Instinctively, I turned toward the device, but met the chief’s gaze; he slipped the cigar out of his mouth and gave me a sly smile.

“You wanted someone with experience, right?”

We followed Church into a room that turned out to be his office. We could tell right away that it had recently been renovated, starting with the swivel chairs that still had soft, thick seats, unlike mine and Ashton’s, whose nails had begun to peep through.

We took a seat in front of his desk, and at the ends were two frames whose pictures I could not see, but which must have been of his family; on the right side was a high-sided binder where I readDM14-Post Office-Lexington Avenue: it was the robbery file. The air was filled with his musk room perfumer, as pungent as he was.

The moment he grabbed the file, my breath shortened because it was my first important case. He opened it and his eyes scrolled over the information he had gathered, word by word, his eyebrows furrowing more and more. He turned the page after a short while and lingered on the insert where I had placed the photo from the tabloid newspaper, with connected information about the two alleged protagonists of the photo. From the way his eyes moved over the words, I sensed that he was reading carefully, but apprehension turned to concern when his gaze stopped, followed by a sigh. I swallowed making a noise. At that moment, my embarrassment was palpable throughout the room.

“Let’s take stock.”

I straightened my back, ready to answer his questions.

“Two weeks ago, a robbery occurred at the Lexington Avenue post office, carried out by two men with covered faces. On the premises were Mirtha Jones and James McCain, while another employee, Michael Cossner, was absent and declared on sick leave. The interview with Michael’s parents revealed that the boy had in fact been missing for two weeks, but the parents did not report him missing in response to a direct request from their son written on a note, found in a notebook in his room. Is everything correct, so far?”

I nodded without thinking, and so did Ashton, but a moment later I wondered if it had been a trick question.

“The first question is this: is there any evidence or clues to suggest that the robbery and Cossner’s disappearance are connected?”

I thought about this for a moment, summarizing all the evidence at our disposal. The robbery had apparent economic motives, but we couldn’t rule anything out.

“I asked you a question, Scottfield.”

Upon hearing my name, the synapses instantly disconnected and seemed overwhelmed by a flood that made them disperse within my mind, but not without leaving me with the right answer to that question.

“No direct connection, but there is to be noted that the robbery took place in a post office and not in a bank or a jewelry store, and this would suggest that in addition to the economic factor there is something more. Also, according to the testimonies of the office employees, one of the two robbers kept asking ‘Where is he?’ but we don’t know whom he was referring to. That’s why we would like to investigate Cossner’s disappearance; it could be a lead.”

“Hmm. What has been done, so far, to track him down?”

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