The Righteous Men (2006) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to each other while looking the other way. These
were the people to ask about Howard Macrae.
    Will had ditched his jacket by now — a necessary move on this bright
September day — but he was still encountering major resistance. His face
was too white, his accent too different. Most assumed he was a plain-clothes
cop, drugs squad probably. For those who spotted it, the car following a few
blocks behind hardly helped. Most people started walking the moment they saw
his notebook.
    The first crack in the ice came the way it always does from just one person.
    Will found a man who had known Macrae. He seemed vaguely shifty but, above
all, bored, with nothing better to do than to while away a few daytime hours
talking to a reporter. He rambled on and on, detailing long gone and wholly
irrelevant local disputes and controversies as if they would be of burning
interest to The New York Times . ‘You want to put that in your
paper, my friend!’ he would say over and over, with a bronchial, smoker’s
laugh. Heh-heh-heh. Humouring folks like this was, Will concluded, an
occupational hazard.
    ‘So what about this Howard Macrae?’ said Will, when his new
acquaintance finally took a breath during an analysis of the flawed stop light
system on Fulton Street.
    It turned out he did not know Macrae that well, but he knew others who did.
He offered to hook Will up with them, introducing the reporter each time with
the priceless character reference: ‘He’s OK.’
    Soon Will was forming a picture. Macrae was a certifiable, card-carrying
low-life. No doubt about it. He ran a brothel; had done for years. The sleaze
community seemed to have a high regard for him: apparently he was good at being
a pimp.
    He ran a functioning whorehouse, kept it looking all right even took the
girls’ clothes to the Laundromat. Will got inside, to see the rooms for
himself. The best he could say for it was that it was not nearly as disgusting
as he had imagined. It looked a bit like a clinic in a poor neighbourhood.
There were no needles on the floor. He even noticed a water-cooler.
    The whores told him the same story. ‘Sir, I can’t tell you anymo’
than what the lady already told you: he sold ass.
    Tha’s what he did. He collected the money, gave some to us, and kept
the rest for hisself.’
    Howard seemed to have been a contented sort of pimp.
    The brothel was his domain and he was obviously a genial host. At night,
Will discovered, he would put on loud music and dance.
    It was late in the evening before Will found what he had been looking for
all day: someone genuinely mourning the death of Howard Macrae. Will had
contacted the undertakers, who were waiting for the body to be transferred to
them from the police morgue. He got the cab to drive over to the funeral home, a
rundown place that was depressing even by the standards of the rest of the
neighbourhood. Will wondered how many of these ‘garden-variety gangland
killings’ they had to clear up.
    Only the receptionist seemed to be around, a young black woman with the
longest, most outlandishly decorated nails Will had ever seen. They were the
only spot of brightness in the entire place.
    He asked if anyone had been in touch to organize a funeral for Howard
Macrae. Any relatives? No, none. The girl on the desk had the impression Macrae
had no family. Will tutted: he needed more personal detail, more colour, if
this piece was to work out.
    Will pushed harder. Had no one been in touch about Mr Macrae, no one at all?
‘Oh, now that you mention it,’ said Nail Girl. At last, thought
Will. ‘There was one woman, called in around lunchtime. Asked when we
were going to have the funeral. Wanted to pay her respects.’
    She found a Post-it with the woman’s details. Will dialled the number
there and then. When a woman answered, he said he was calling from the funeral
home: he wanted to talk about Howard Macrae. ‘Come right over,’ she
said.
    In the cab, Will instantly reached for his BlackBerry,