Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(5)

The man nods and lifts his eyes to the crane. “Her head was … I could see it.”

“What could you see, exactly?”

“I saw her foot first, then, well, once I saw the foot and I knew, I could tell. Her color, she didn’t match the scrap.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I f*cking picked this lady up. I didn’t f*cking see her in the pile and I closed her in the hook and … I was thinking, I don’t know. I was thinking how cold she was.” He shivers and wipes his hand across his face.

I need more. I need him to say something like, “I couldn’t believe it—I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Wow,” I say. “I mean, could you even believe it?”

He shrugs and shakes his head. That’ll do.

“How long have you worked here?” I ask.

“Almost a year.”

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“A dead body in the pile? No.”

“Can I ask your name?”

He hesitates. “Nah, I think … I think that’s enough.”

“Are you sure?” The desk frowns on anonymous quotes. “Even just a first name?”

He shakes his head. Last ditch, I smile and lean in a little. “Are you sure? It would really help me out.”

“I think I probably helped you out already.”

“What about … Markie?” I say. “Do you think he might talk to me?”

“Maybe.”

“Could you maybe point him out for me?” I’m smiling again, cocking my head, trying to make my eyelids flutter.

He looks around, his hands deep in his pockets. He nods his head toward a group of Hasidic men and workers huddled at the wheels of the excavator.

“Don’t tell him I gave you his name.”

“How can I tell him?” I ask, trying one last time. “I don’t even know your name.”

He nods. No smile of recognition. Just a nod. I wait another moment, then say thank you and turn toward the crowd at the base of the scrap pile, which is more like a mountain range than a mountain. It spans hundreds of feet along the canal, rising and falling in peaks and valleys of broken steel. The scale of the piles is dizzying. Mack trucks parked at the base look like plastic Tonkas in their shadow. The grapple is shaped like that claw you manipulate to grab a stuffed animal in those impossible games in the lobby of Denny’s. I stuff my notebook in my coat pocket and my phone rings. It’s a 718 number.

“It’s Rebekah,” I say.

“Becky, it’s Johnny!” Johnny, the photographer from Staten Island, is the only person in the entire world who has ever referred to me as Becky more than once. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the scrap yard.”

“Where? I’m here. I’m in the Camaro.” Johnny and I have worked a couple stories together. I turn around and see his silver Camaro parked across the street, near the air pump at the gas station. Johnny once told me that he “owns” Staten Island. On one of my first stories, he told me to follow him in my car to a subject’s house; then he slid through the end of a yellow light on Victory Boulevard. I gunned through the red, annoyed. Later, in the parking lot where we were scoping for a recently released sex offender, he leaned against my car and said I should be more careful going through reds. They got cameras, he said. Did you see a flashing light? I said maybe and he said he’d take care of it. Write down ya’ plate number for me. I’ll ask a buddy. I wrote down my number and gave it to him; he wrote “Rebecca” beside the numbers. I didn’t correct his spelling. I never got a ticket, though I doubt that had anything to do with him.

I catch his eye across the street and walk over to his car. My former car, a 1992 Honda Accord, died when winter came. It had never seen snow. I sold it to someone for two hundred dollars. On my first day working after it was towed away, I had to tell the desk when I called in before my shift that I couldn’t drive. I worried I might be out of a job. At my interview, Mike specifically asked if I had a car. A good stringer is an asset—we run around the five boroughs to crime scenes and press events, knocking on doors, bothering neighbors; we can get the information or the quote or the photo that sells the story—but a stringer with a car is considered an even bigger asset. Stringers with cars can get to Westchester to sit on big houses owned by sloppy, greedy politicians or doctors or professional athletes. Stringers with cars can knock on doors in Long Island for four hours and get back in time to get a quote from someone in Queens before the first edition deadline. But when I stopped having a car, nobody seemed to care. My guess is that Mike simply forgot I’d ever told him I had one.

“Becky! Get in.”

I go around the Camaro and sink into the passenger seat. The car smells like home. There is a coconut-scented palm tree hanging from the rearview mirror. Johnny’s got the heat blowing high, and I put my hands up close to the vents in the dashboard.

“Warm up, girl,” says Johnny. Johnny is a flirt, and though he’s always overfamiliar, I never feel like he’s actually leering at me. I don’t think I’m his type. Johnny likes big hair and tight sweaters and big blue moons of eye shadow. In Staten Island, he does well. Or so he says.

“Have you talked to the desk?” I ask.