Jacob walked home, through a grey morning of cranky commuters, a speeding cyclist nearly knocking him over as the guy sped through a crossing signal. A younger Jacob would have screamed at the guy. This Jacob, here, today, was in a happier place. He frowned after the bike and whispered Asshole.
The bar had been fruitful, though he’d almost felt like a dirty old man, so many young girls, so many gracious curves, such silicone-enhanced wonders, what tattoos of skulls and Jesus and symbols of anarchy, and so many hipsters, more beards than Kabul. The music could barely be defined as such, a horrible banging and screeching, melody vaguely discernible. Weren’t there city statutes regarding noise levels in an internal public place? But the crowd loved it, lapped up every syllable, every thud, every caterwaul.
So this is what it means to be young.
But through the banging, he perceived an undercurrent, a tangible malaise. From the song lyrics talking about ending it all, to the wan-looking girls in pale dresses with heavy mascara that kept trying to talk to him. Got any Xanax? Or I’d love a sugar daddy before I die. This is the end, the decline of Western capitalism. Such events always bring out death-obsessions in the young, who feel the sadness, the exhaustion, the sheer futility of life about twenty-five years too young. Little wonder that they’ve had enough. They always go back to the European Romantic ideal, Tristan and Isolde with their Liebestod. Love death.
This world is dying, so let’s party!
Jacob clutched his bottle of Heineken, smelled it, stood at the end the bar, furthest possible point from the stage. He tried to work out if the sound would be less, right under the speaker, in the shadow of the cones. But, Christ, getting through that mass of writhing, leaping lunatics? No.
He was ready to leave when the music stopped abruptly. Show's over. Jacob worked his jaws up and down to try and equalise the pressure, ease the ringing. Then Sarah bounded up to him, took his beer, drained it in one long, beautiful swig.
Sweet sweat gleamed on her clavicles, the little keys to Jacob’s secret heat.
‘Jesus Christ. Thanks. Let me get you one back,’ she said, her face shining and wet. Glowing.
‘Take it easy,’ Jacob said, nodding to the girl behind the bar, two fingers raised. She'd gotten to understand his sign language during the gig. He was a gesturer.
‘They're great. How was it up front?’
‘Amazing. It’s like being in a collective consciousness, part of the music, a sweaty hive.’
‘A sweaty hive? I like that. My ears are still buzzing.’
‘Thanks for coming down. You want to go to a party? The band will be there?’
So he went to the party and it rocked.
Jacob ate silvery Beluga caviar and drank twentieth century wines as he entertained a group of hungry, sparkling Columbia University students with amazing tales of Nazi art hordes and meeting Picasso, getting ever closer to his one true quest: the definitive definition of art. Chemistry is life. Design makes life easier, better. But art… His last memory was of a French-manicured hand stroking his forearm.
Now, reality was poking its way back into his brain. A black coffee from a street vendor on Broadway helped. Jacob was down to the last mouthful as he reached his apartment building, The Leinster, on Maiden Lane, leading to South Street, the East River and the beautiful, flowing mass of cast iron engineering known as the Brooklyn Bridge. He threw the cup in a trash can, checked the time. Then the scene registered. Police cars. An ambulance. A crowd of people, just standing around, nothing better to do on a Thursday at 8.19am. Damned recession.
He made the edge of the crowd just as a medical team came out the front door of the building - his building - with somebody on a stretcher. Two policemen told the crowd to get back, get back. Jacob saw that it was a young woman, girl even. She had an oxygen mask over her face and her eyes were lolling, her shaggy blond hair tousled. It was like she was having a fit or something.
Her heart laboured, unable to maintain the blood pressure that every cell demanded.
They loaded her onto the ambulance and screamed away to Bellevue, over on First Avenue, a police car in front. The audience muttered, started to disperse. Jacob went to the cop who waited by the door, asked if he could get in.
‘You live here, sir?’
‘Yes. Apartment 5C.’
‘5C? Just a second.’ He spoke into the radio mic at his shoulder. Jacob didn’t like his tone.
Something was up. Dread piled up in his belly, turning the coffee to inky acid.
‘Just a moment, sir,’ said the cop, moving that little step closer to Jacob.
A minute later, two detectives appeared at the door, experienced-looking guys with tired, lined faces.
‘Mr Johnson?’ said one, a black man with a shaved head and a nice grey suit, white shirt, blue silk tie.
‘Yes,’ stuttered Jacob. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘You bet there's a problem,’ said the other detective, a more crumpled looking character, hint of Russian off him. As if in slow motion to Jacob’s still sluggish understanding, he took a pair of handcuffs from a holster on his belt and, in a smooth motion fixed the hard, hard loops around Jacob’s wrists.
‘You have the right to remain silent,’ began his partner.
As Jacob’s rights were read to him, his knees weakened and he felt like he could throw up. His legs buckled and both detectives lunged for him, grabbed him hard under his armpits.
‘I’m okay. Thanks,’ he said, stronger now, aware of all the eyes fixed on him, able to actually feel the gazes on his wet skin.
The black detective started firing questions at Jacob.
‘Where were you between midnight and 8am this morning? When were you last in your apartment? Does anybody else have keys to your apartment?’
Jacob tried to think, tried. I can’t remember. I honestly don’t know. Sweet God no, not me, not now!
‘I can’t remember. Sorry.’
The ambulance well gone, some of his neighbours suddenly became aware of Jacob's situation. They came nearer, asked the policemen what they were doing. They just want gossip fodder, thought Jacob, as he tried to look innocent, which is how, exactly? Don't smile, they'll think you're mad. Just look relaxed. Yeah. Right.
‘Step back, please,’ said the cops.
The detectives looked at each other. One nodded. They each gripped an elbow, gripped hard, led him through the entrance doors.
‘Okay, Mr Johnson. We’re taking you up to your apartment, see if your memory comes back, yeah?’
‘I have the right to see my attorney, you just said.’
In the lobby, the black detective said ‘I’m Detective Ryan and this is Detective Sanders. We’re from 1st Precinct. We’re investigating a very serious crime which has been committed in your apartment. Until we know otherwise, you’re the prime suspect. Do you understand?’
Jacob nodded.
‘Do you understand? Yes or no?’
‘Yes, goddammit.’
His head was pounding, a pleasant morning comedown had swiftly degenerated into a killer hangover.
‘Now,’ continued Detective Ryan, ‘we have to move this investigation forward real fast. Unbelievably fucking fast. Get me? I’m prepared to release you temporarily if you will come to the apartment with us now and tell us what's what.’
‘Then what? Then you arrest me again? I didn't do anything!’
There was a little bit of reefer in a metal box in the kitchen, he used it to get to sleep sometimes. Anyway, glaucoma ran in his family.
‘We'll see what happens next. Do you agree?’
‘I agree. Now get these primitive fucking shackles off of me.’
The cuffs were released and Jacob rubbed his wrists - just like in the movies - to ease the tingling as his blood rushed back into the constricted vessels.
They took the lift to the fifth, Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major merrily chirping from the overhead speaker. Jacob felt the weight lifted from him, if only for a few seconds.
‘That man was a genius,’ said Jacob as they exited the lift, into the all-too-familiar corridor, the music still playing there. ‘Mozart. I came that close,’ index finger and thumb an inch apart, ‘to getting hold of the original score of his Paris Symphony.’
‘Oh.’
A uniformed cop with a clipboard stood at the door to Jacob’s apartment. The detectives gave him Jacob's name and he added all three of them to the Entry/Exit Log.
‘Don't touch anything. Clear?’
‘Okay,’ Jacob said. ‘This is weird.’
A detective led the way, Jacob following. The weirdness was just beginning.
He’d been trying to work out what relevance the injured woman had to his arrest, to the whole damned mess. He'd figured her for a burglar who’d been double-crossed by an accomplice - couple of damned junkies, how did they get in? - after the Picasso signature was noted. She got shot maybe, and the cops assumed that Jacob had hurt her himself, revenge, then fled the scene in panic. What else could it be?
So he was both relieved and confused to see the art still on his walls.
What else?
A gaggle of cops and crime scene investigators was busy in the tiny kitchen, but the detectives led him past it and into the living room, where another huddle was in progress. A female detective, tall, athletic, gorgeous like a Gauguin vision from the South Seas stood quietly watched him intently. Her gaze made Jacob uncomfortable. He caught her eye but couldn’t hold it, glanced back at his Picasso. She won.
A chair was by the window and there was some debris on the coffee table. Blood across his bible, Gombrich’s The Story of Art. Pools of it under the chair, splashes of bold red across the carpet and onto the table. Got to get that off the pile before it sets, thought Jacob, or it'll need ammonia.
‘What do you think?’ asked the black detective. Nobody else took any notice of Jacob. He wanted to blurt out that they were in his home.
‘This is new to me,’ started Jacob. 'When I went out yesterday, that chair by the window was over at the dining table. The coffee table was clean. There was no blood.'
What a ludicrous statement. Is this really happening?
The hope of a dream, a narcotic relapse. No.
The other detective took a call on his cell. The last of the colour dropped from the hard face.
'The commissioner's on her way. We need to have something for her.'
'Fuck,' said his partner. 'What’s the point in her coming here? Okay. Okay. Mr Johnson, let's take a look at your kitchen. How's your stomach this morning? Hungry?'
Jacob swallowed but his mouth and throat were painfully dry, just like the detective's sense of humour. Coffee and bile gurgled up from his shivering stomach. He swallowed it back down, the burning, knowing that just one more little thing would push him over the edge.
Going into the kitchen was all it took.
The sight of human meat. Cooked!
The sound of the blood thundering in his ears.
The smell of some kind of casserole, thick, heavy notes.
The strong grip of the detective biting into his bicep. Stop!
And the urgent taste of last night’s party delicacies as they made their way up his throat.
He managed to get his hand to his mouth, forced the vomit back as he ran to the bathroom, the detectives right behind him.
A painful stream of orange and black - blood? - shattered the pure Zen of the white enamel.
What is my life now?