City of Sins. Daniel Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ brought low, they’d looked around for someone to blame. Patrese was clearly that someone. That this was unfair – Beradino had brought all the bad luck and trouble on himself – was irrelevant. A scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb, had been sought, and Patrese was its name.

      There’d been a time, perhaps as recently as a month ago, when Patrese would have said ‘screw the lot of you’ and put up with it until people came to their senses. But as he walked through the endless institutional corridors, catching snatches of discussion about the Steelers’ upcoming championship game in Foxborough, he realized that he simply couldn’t be bothered. He’d just spent three weeks among people who really had lost everything. The static he was getting now seemed so petty in comparison.

      He found an empty meeting room and dialed his old college buddy Caleb Boone, now in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.

      ‘Franco! Man, am I glad to hear from you! Been trying you for weeks.’

      ‘Caleb, you want to grab a beer?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘No. I want to grab many beers.’

      Patrese laughed, relieved. ‘I believe that’s the recognized international signal for a serious FatHeads session.’

      ‘I believe it is. Seven?’

      ‘Sounds good. And listen; we can talk about this more when we’re there, but I was wondering … I was wondering if the Bureau has any vacancies. For a cop.’

      ‘Vacancies? In the Pittsburgh field office?’

      ‘No. In any field office apart from Pittsburgh.’

      The FatHeads session indeed turned out to be serious; seriously liquid and seriously long. Patrese stumbled to bed sometime nearer dawn than midnight, and trod gingerly through the next day as a result. He was just about feeling human again by the time he went round to his sister Bianca’s for dinner, and for a few hours lost himself in the uncomplicated and riotous warmth of her own family’s love for him; her briskly efficient doctoral clucking, her husband Sandro’s watchful concern, and the endless energy and noise of their three kids.

      ‘Here,’ Bianca said suddenly, as they were clearing away. ‘Meant to give you this.’

      She reached up to the highest shelf and pulled down a small jar. There was some kind of fabric inside, Patrese saw. It looked old and frayed.

      ‘What’s this?’ he said.

      ‘It’s your caul. I found it while packing up Mum and Dad’s stuff.’ Their parents had been killed in a car crash a few months before.

      ‘Funny thing to keep around the place.’

      ‘Mom, what’s a caul?’ said Gennaro, Bianca’s youngest.

      ‘Some babies are born with a membrane covering their face and head.’

      ‘Yeeuch!’

      ‘Not “yeeuch”, honey. It’s perfectly natural; it’s just part of the, er, the bag which holds babies inside their moms’ tummies. Uncle Franco was one of those babies. And having a caul is special.’

      ‘Why’s it special?’

      ‘Lots of reasons. If you have a caul, it can mean you’re psychic …’

      ‘I wish,’ Patrese muttered.

      ‘…or you can heal people, or you’ll travel all your life and never tire, or –’

      Bianca stopped suddenly and clapped her hand to her mouth.

      ‘What?’ Patrese said.

      She spoke through her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘Tell me.’

      She took her hand away, put it on his shoulder, and looked him squarely in the eye.

      ‘It means you’ll never drown.’

      Boone rang as Patrese was driving back home.

      ‘This a good time to talk, buddy?’

      ‘Er … sure.’

      ‘You OK? You sound a little, er, distracted.’

      Patrese glanced at the caul jar on the passenger seat. ‘No. Just driving.’

      ‘OK. You asked about the Bureau? Got a name for you: Wyndham Phelps.’

      Patrese laughed. ‘Sounds like someone from Gone with the Wind.’

      ‘Good Southern name. I told him all about you, and he wants to meet with you.’

      ‘Where’s he at?’

      ‘He heads the field office in New Orleans.’

PART ONE

      Friday, July 1st

      The jury were coming back in today; Marie was certain of it. And that meant she could leave nothing to chance.

      She took six white candles, stood them in a tray of holy water, and lit them. Then she took twelve sage leaves, wrote the name of one of the apostles (with Paul standing in for Judas) on each leaf, and slipped six into one shoe and six into the other. This was so the jury would decide in her favor.

      She dabbed court lotion on her neck and wrists, just as she’d done every day during the trial. She’d made the lotion herself, by mixing together oils of cinnamon, calendula, frankincense and carnation, and adding a piece of devil’s shoestring and a slice of galangal root all mixed together. This was to influence the judge and jury.

      Finally, she took a white bowl piled with dirt. The dirt she’d gathered herself, with her right hand, from the graves of nine children in the St Louis Number One cemetery. She placed the bowl on her altar, facing east, between three white candles. Then she added three teaspoons of sugar and three of sulfur, recited the 35th psalm, asked the spirits to come with all their power to help her, and smeared the dust on the inside of her kaftan. This was so the court would do as she wished.

      She was ready.

      The sidewalk outside the courthouse was packed: crowds four or five deep, pressing against hastily erected barriers and watched by police officers who shifted uneasily from foot to foot in the oppressive heat. The gathering felt more like a street party than a demonstration. People passed food to each other, creased their faces in laughter. Marie wasn’t the only one convinced she’d be acquitted, clearly.

      The trial had lasted only a week. Marie’s defense had been simple: Ortiz had killed himself. The ‘problem’ she’d referred to on the surveillance tape was his carrying a gun: she’d seen it on his waistband as he’d shifted position. Then he’d brought the gun out and, before she’d even been able to react, he’d shot himself. As to why he’d done so, she had no idea: but then the burden of that proof wasn’t on her, was it?

      She’d СКАЧАТЬ