First Born(20)

On the bus I manage to get a seat next to a gaunt man with patchy stubble.

The buildings grow in stature: two storeys, five storeys, seven. The skyline is an uneven concrete wedge growing towards Midtown and beyond.

I dig deeper into the social media accounts of Scott Sbarra. His Instagram is locked but his Twitter is public. The guy next to me takes a call and says, ‘I’m still in Inwood. Well, you’re gonna have to wait,’ and then ends the call. Scott follows the people most other people seem to follow: Obama, Trump, Elon Musk, comedians, Oprah, a few astronauts and public speakers. I find videos of him rowing, and an official Columbia University video with a short clip of him talking about the heavyweight row team and their training trip to Canal 54 in Florida. He’s handsome in an obvious, almost cartoonish way, I guess.

We pass through Sugar Hill and into Hamilton Heights, and it feels safe enough from inside the bus, as though I’m watching it all on a TV screen. It’s not so different from London but it’s also totally different. The bus smells of weed and breath mints and leather, and some of the buildings outside have wooden water towers atop their roofs. London does not have these water towers.

I check for KT’s name on the news and the stories are building. There are pieces about her death on Fox News, CNN, the BBC, but also 4Chan. There’s a whole thread about her on Reddit. And then I see it. Someone has written that KT’s identical twin has arrived from London.

I look around the bus, self-conscious, even more self-conscious than I usually am. I take out the monkey fist from my pocket and hold the heavy end in my palm. The paracord weave isn’t as perfect as I would like it to be but it’d still hold up as a weapon.

I find Professor’s Groot’s office on the Columbia website, and I call it. I leave a message with my number asking him to call me back. I say it’s urgent.

The guy next to me disembarks in the Upper East Side and, unfortunately, a less than ideal passenger replaces him. She’s ninety, or at least she looks ninety. She tells me all about her father and how he died riding the Cyclone at Coney Island. I listen politely but, when she talks about going to meet her grandfather now in the park to pick native raspberries, I turn my head to look forward. It’s not that I’m being rude, I just don’t want to encourage her. She says, ‘You heading down to Times Square? Phew-ee, the things I could tell you about that intersection, and 42nd Street – course that was in the time before, and things have long since changed, all different now in the modern day, I ain’t sayin’ it’s better, just changed is all. Back then the Square was a Wild West kind of a place. A friend of my grandaddy got hit in the eye by a cooked egg back in ’82, cracked him right in the socket, hard-boiled – well, he never did journey back to Manhattan, that man. Now what was his name?’

I get off at Grand Central Station and it feels good to be in Midtown again. The verticality of the place is overwhelming but at least I can identify familiar shops and cafés. At least the grid system makes sense down here. It’s almost impossible to get lost in Midtown Manhattan so long as you can count.

I glance up at the MetLife Building, and head west towards Madison Avenue, hungry, and grimy from the air.

There’s a guy I notice in a shop window. He has a thick moustache and a baseball cap. I keep on walking and wait for the green man and then cross Madison. He crosses fifty feet behind so I take a left and head south. Past the Park Avenue Liquor Shop. He doesn’t follow me. I go into a Starbucks. Slow, deep breaths. I scan the street through the window as I eat a sandwich. It makes me feel a whole lot more human. When I exit I see the moustache guy across the road looking at his phone. So I go back into Starbucks and head out of a side exit. No sign of the guy. I walk back towards Grand Central. If he’s really following me then I’ll know soon enough. Can’t see him. I turn away and head to Fifth Avenue, close to the New York Public Library. I see him tracking me, photographing the library with his phone, trying to look like a tourist, so I duck into a Muji store. He doesn’t come inside. After five minutes I walk out, monkey fist in hand, and head back to Grand Central two blocks away. No sign of him. My heart is racing. I enter Grand Central Station and walk down the steps and look back and he’s right there and then I really panic. I start running, my coins jangling in my pocket. I sprint down to the concourse area and scan the place for him and for help. There’s an oyster restaurant. I stand with my back to the restaurant and then from behind me, from inside the restaurant itself comes a voice into my ear. ‘Molly Raven, do not be afraid.’

I turn and bring my monkey fist up and show him the weapon and he backs off a few paces. Nobody else seems to notice us.

‘Why are you following me? Who are you?’

He holds out his palms in a calming manner and then a cop approaches and says, ‘Everything OK here? This man bothering you?’

The man says, ‘Bogart DeLuca, private investigator, I used to work out of the three four.’

The cop ignores him. ‘You OK, ma’am? You need any help?’

I look at moustache guy.

Moustache guy repeats, this time to me, ‘My name is Bogart DeLuca. I’m a licensed private investigator here in New York City. I’ve been hired by Columbia to look into your sister’s case. I want to help is all.’

‘Anyone you want me to call, ma’am?’ says the cop.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m OK. Thank you, officer.’