A PERFECT LIE: Chap. 2 (ENGLISH VERSION)

WARNING! This story is for adult readers. It includes violence, delicate themes, sex and drugs. Each reference to real people or facts is purely random. The photos of the actresses are related to the virtual cast of the characters, used only for making the story more appealing.

VIDEO PROMO:

Manhattan’s Hunter

1 Reminiscence


I arrive at the entrance of Central Park, thinking to find her there, the crazy one instead seems to be gone inside. After walking a little, indeed, I find her on Gapstowe Bridge.
I wasn’t here in the early morning before, there is no one around.
Except for her.
She looks under the bridge, as if she is about to jump; if there was a great height, she would have probably done that. Or I’d have killed myself while trying to save her.
I can feel her mental absence even from a distance.
I don’t know if I can feel that since I know her well, or because this is the impression that anyone could feel.
“Where is the car?”
“Are we arrived at this point? You don’t even ask me how I feel…”
“Have you ever asked yourself how I was feeling in this last year and half?”
“You’re right…forgive me…” she cries.
Red eyes, smudge make-up, her shirt stained of don’t-know-what, are not sufficient to make me understand what happened.
“Anyway, I’m here…” I can’t help but making her feel my presence, something still links us, after all. Or maybe not. Because what I say is not noticed.
“It’s not good for you to stay here, we should go home, Diana…”
“I cannot forget. I don’t want to…you haven’t seen her…” she watches under the bridge again, as if Noa’s body was there, again.
No, I haven’t seen her, but I knew in what conditions she has been found: after exhausting research lasted a couple of months, the girl was fished out of the lake, under Gapstowe Bridge. She was found by Diana, with tied wrists and her mouth sealed with tape.
Hit by a bullet on her chest, but the cause of death was overdose of cocaine.
She has told me, after our first acquaintance.
My investigation did not bring me the expected results, since as I thought, police was hiding the details.
The several articles written by colleagues, were stating that the victim was one of Diana’s relatives…but I couldn’t think she was her daughter, back then.
I come close to her, more than what I have done lately. I can’t even remember the last time I did it, so I decide to be brave, I place my arm around her shoulders, and she turns to me. She hugs me. Looks up and watches me. Her eyes are wonderful, even if sad and full of tears. She wants to say something, but she doesn’t. I want to kiss her, but I don’t. She understands I won’t do it, and she looks down. I wipe her tears away with my thumbs and she lays her head on my chest.
“Come on, let’s go to take the car.”

Diana’s car is on 5th Avenue, near a traffic light, next to the sidewalk.
Just when I try to understand what happened, I see the police coming.
Some guys get off the car, to be policemen they are weird: one is big with a huge beer tummy, the other two are not very tall but strong, one of them having a blonde tuft of hair.
“Is it yours?”
“Yes.”
“Some shopkeepers reported it, but no one was able to tell us what happened.”
“Well, I don’t…” the guy with the big tummy notices Diana. I can see he’s looking at her interested.
“You are…were detective Bitton! What did you do? Did you get drunk again, huhn?” if only he didn’t add a stupid laughter to the unlucky sentence, Diana wouldn’t have felt offended.
“Motherfucker!” I have never seen her spitting into someone’s face, and the big tummy guy doesn’t take it very well, he immediately tries to jump on her, but the other two policemen and I walk in the middle.
“Who the fuck you think you are, asshole?”
“Thank the fact you’re a woman and you’re not alone” the big tummy guy cleans his face from Diana’s spit, pouring on his nose’s side.
“I should have fired you when still…”
“Shut up, Bitton!” the guy doesn’t want to stop it, so I decide to intervene.
“Enough. We’re here to take the car and leave.”
“How do you think you can do it?” The blonde policeman waves his foot in the front wheels’ direction:  they are punctured. 
“Something’s strange also on the car hood” he adds with a stupid smirk.
“What the fuck happened, Diana?” I can’t understand. She talked about an accident, but all I can see is confused and absurd.
Punctured wheels. Heavy dent on the car hood. Nothing that makes me think Diana has lost control of the car. Everything seems happened “later” and not “during”.
“I…can’t…can’t remember…”
“Let me call you a tow truck” the blonde guy walks away with his cellphone in a hand, with the other hand, instead, gives a light friendly punch to the big tummy guy, who’s still looking at Diana. The three policemen walk away, once they reach enough distance, I decide to talk to her.
“Would you explain me?” she doesn’t say a word, goes opening the trunk and pulls out an iron bar.
“I hit the car.”
“You…what? Since when you go around with this shit?”
“Since when I haven’t a gun anymore.”
“What the fuck does it mean? Are you kidding me? Didn’t Steve get you one, recently?”
Steve is one of the few policemen Diana is in good terms with, after being dismissed from the police.
“Hello?!?”
“I, well…I think I lost it! Why are you fucking looking at me like this?” I know she gets defensive when she is about to lie. This is one of those moments.
“Bullshits! Tell me what the fuck have you done to that gun!” without even realizing it, I start yanking her shoulders, and she burst out laughing in my face. 
“I sold it.”
“Congratulations, a great idea!” I am getting mad, because that smile on her lips turns into a laughter, but I can’t find anything to laugh about.
“You’re still funny when you get mad” I turn my face around to avoid looking at her and get even madder than I am already.
She gets closer. She’s in front of me, at few centimeters, when I feel her hand in my hair, while she is pushing my head to her face. She kisses me on my lips, and I can’t understand anything for a moment, so I let her do it. It didn’t happen in such a long time, that I lost count. But when I’m losing my mind and the kiss becomes deeper, I regain consciousness.
I feel her bitter tongue. In that moment I put an end to that kiss without sense. It’s not the first time.
“You’re high again! Shit!”
“So what?”
“When I lower my defense down, I realize you’re the usual asshole!”
“You still haven’t lost the habit to judge me…”
“No, because who you are has ruined our lives! You get high, sell the only weapon that could be useful and walk around with an iron bar in the trunk! Why? How did you use it for? I want an explanation, quickly!”
“For HIM…”
“He was exonerated.”
“Noa…it was him! You know it!”
“He’s just a kid! You could never find concrete proofs!”
“You perfectly know they prevented me! In any case, I found his new home, and last night I found him here, dealing in this area.”
“And you got your chance to stock up.”
“Yeah, I did it to get close to him, then things got bad, he almost killed me…and…”
We get interrupted by the guys of the tow truck. Of course, I should pay for the removal and storage costs. Diana changes her mood again, because she feels bad for that, but she doesn’t do anything for things to change, after all.
I take her by the arm, and I ask her to follow me.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Now we go home and then you have to explain me all that happened.”

I never know when to believe Diana, or not. Her story seems reliable, but her habit to lie never passed. After trying to buy drugs, Diana tried to hit the kid with the iron bar, but he managed to run away.
“It went well for you.”
“I still have perfect reflexes. I managed to get in the car. I ran after him for three blocks, I almost hit him with the car…then…”
“Then…what?”
“I had a panic attack and I stopped…then I simulated an accident.”
“Pray that insane won’t denounce you.”
Lucas Walsh was a 20 y/o kid with Irish origins. From Diana’s investigation, we found out he was the son of a mugwump of Irish Mob. Mostly, he was dealing, but he didn’t subtract himself from other illegal activities. The last murdered kid, the one Diana was investigating on when we have met, was going to the same high school Lucas was going to, with the difference that he was an avid repeater. Noa was going to the same institute, and she knew them both. It was not difficult to combine the elements that brought to those results. Then things got complicated when also Noa’s dead body, disappeared.
“I could have killed him, if…”
“…if you weren’t high.” 
“Ruby, fuck!”
“It’s the truth! You want to say it’s not like that?”
“That damned has a great strength to be a kid.”
I stop the car, we arrived home.
I feel terribly tired, in pieces. Weak. As if a mountain fell on me. 
I rest my head on the steering wheel.
“I can’t take it anymore.”

2 All in one night


Diana took one photo frame and handed it to Ruby, without saying a word.
The photo portrayed the woman and her daughter, when she was still a child.
“She resembles you a lot…”
“Resembled” she added, with strangled voice.
“I…don’t know what to say…I’m so sorry…”
“You don’t have to, I am sorry enough. Want some?”
She poured Jack Daniels in a glass.
“No, thank you. I don’t like it.”
“Really? Beautiful and faultless?”
Diana smiled sarcastically.
“And you? Beautiful and faulty…?” Ruby couldn’t help it.
“You can’t even imagine…” she leaned towards the sofa with bottle and glass in her hands, to sit near Ruby, maintaining some distance.
“Alcohol is the only thing that makes me feel less lonely.”
“Isn’t there anyone in your life?”
“No, only my ex-husband who bothers me sometimes…but I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know you, after all.” She sipped the whiskey, then she poured some more and swallowed it all again.
“I’m not interested in your love affairs. You’re the one who wanted to meet me.”
“Yeah. I don’t even know why. Maybe…well, doesn’t matter. I know you’re a great journalist…”
“So, you did research about me…” she smiled.
“Of course. Anyway, I want to show you something.”
She took the notebook, put the password, and Noa’s crime scene photos were immediately shown.
Ruby suddenly understood Diana was filling herself with alcohol to bear the vision, so she went close to her. 
Then, Noa’s pictures series started, she was naked, laid on the morgue’s cot, supine: yellow skin with hypostatic stains, generated by the corpse’s pressure, she seemed only a piece of meat.
The two women were in silence, only interrupted by the “click” from the pad and by the light coming from the laptop. 
Ruby tried to swallow, but there was no spittle in her mouth.
“Are…are there also photos from the autopsy?”
“Photos and clip, if you’re interested.”
Diana didn’t wait for the woman’s reply and clicked on another folder on the desktop, then she started one of the videos with a couple of doctors harnessed for the occasion and the camera switching to Noa’s naked breast.
The image was not in high quality, but everything was clear enough.
When one of the doctors was getting close to Noa’s body, with the scalpel in his hand, Diana took the bottle and filled a glass of Jack Daniels, that swallowed all suddenly, while the camera zoomed on the doctor’s hand, who started to open the rib cage with the scalpel, with a sharp “Y” cut.
Skin and adipose tissue seemed like butter to the doctor’s touch, who easily cut the nerves with scissors, until the rib cage was open. 
When the first internal organs were extracted, Ruby had a retch that couldn’t hold, throwing up on the floor.
“I had the same reaction the first time.”
“Shit, this is horrible” she cleaned her mouth with her hand.
“Even the second, and the third…now I can bear it, but only thanks to the alcohol.”
“Why are you watching again this horror?”
“So, I can realize my failure as a mother…”
There was a brief silence.
“Let me clean, you can go to freshen up. Make yourself at home.”

Under the warm shower, she was expecting to wash away the cruel images just seen. 
Ruby took some shower gel from the dispenser and strongly rubbed her hands. Then her body. Then again, her hands, with strength, again and again, making them bleed.
“Shit!”
Scared, she looked around and took the first towel she could find, to dab her wounds. 
“Great! Of course, white, of all colors!”
“All ok?” Diana knocked on the door, but Ruby was distracted and didn’t hear anything, so, worried, the woman opened it a little bit. Sufficient to have a conversation, without invading personal space. 
“Ruby??”
“Yes, yes! I just need to wash my clothes…can I use your washing machine?”
“No problem, are you sure you’re ok?”
“Yes.”
Diana wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t insist. She was drunk, and it has been years since the last time someone visited her.
Being intrusive with Ruby could make her run away. She didn’t want to. But for what reason? 
“I got you some of my clothes. We have the same size, more or less.”

Ruby came out of the bathroom, making sure the wounds on her hands were not visible.
Diana was a little drunk, but she was a cop, after all.
“I made you a cup of warm tea.”
“Oh, well, thank you.”
“I haven’t only alcohol here, if this is what you think.”
“I don’t think anything” both sat at the kitchen table.
“Why did you show me that video?”
“You were curious, no?”
“Not to see a slaughtered teenager.”
“Since the first time we met, you didn’t do anything else than getting involved in my stuff!”
“You let me get involved.”
“Only to avoid that your paparazzi nature could make damages spreading the wrong information, what do you think?”
“Ok, enough! Thanks for the tea. Don’t worry, I will pretend that I don’t know anything!”
“You can’t. Now you’re involved. Moreover, you’re leaving with my clothes…”
Ruby got up, removed her t-shirt throwing it on the table, staying half naked in front of Diana, who lowered her eyes.
“Please, get dressed…let’s talk again tomorrow. You can use my bed, I have to do some research.”
Ruby knocked her hand on the table, starting to scream.
“How do you think I can sleep, after all I’ve just seen?”
“I can give you some good pills I use…”
“Your bed, your pills…you’re crazy!”
“Maybe, but it’s not me who’s screaming half naked in the apartment of an almost stranger. Now, please cover yourself up” she handed her the t-shirt, noticing the wounds on her hands. But she didn’t react. 
“Your cop attitude is not working with me!”
Diana got up and placed herself in front of Ruby, looking at her straight in the eyes. The women had almost the same height.
“If I wanted to use my cop attitude, I wouldn’t pray you…” she took Ruby’s hands in hers and squeezed them.
“I didn’t want to trouble you showing those videos. There’s more.”
“Excuse me?” the journalist withdrew.
“Don’t think bad, nothing similar to what you’ve seen, I swear you.”
“Sorry, but I got a huge headache. Maybe now I really need your bed.”

Diana stayed at the laptop for another good hour, she watched the screen: it was almost 3AM. She closed the laptop, got up from the sofa making her way to the window, but she was distracted by a motorcycle rumble. Sticking out her eyes, she saw the driver stop and take out the helmet, to then look up, just in the woman’s direction.
The trees on the sidewalk did not offer a clear view, but she could see a very young boy, middle length hair, tied up in a tail, shaved right under. Some beard, not very tidy, and a showy scar on his left eyebrow.
This last detail was not leaving space to any doubt: it was him!
Lucas Walsh!
She thought of taking her gun first, but she was not as fast as the boy, who left again. In any case, it would not have been a good idea, considering all the alcohol she has drunk.
She could not understand why he was there, and how he could have her home address, but she decided she was going to find out soon.
Meantime, the tiresome hit her as well, so she decided to look at the material on her laptop comfortably, in her room.
She entered, trying to make as less noise as possible.
She placed her open laptop on the night table, sitting on the bed and, thanks to the screen light, she could see Ruby, sleeping on her side, with her arm completely out of the sheets. The light highlighted the woman’s hand, full of small cuts.
She touched it, trying to move her fingers, noticing some dry blood, but her investigation ended quickly: Ruby woke up and turned around suddenly, grabbing Diana’s wrist, holding it without the intention to hurt her.
“What were you going to do?”
“How did you get these cuts?”
“It’s none of your business!”
“You know, I was suffering of the same disorder when I was a kid…” Ruby grabbed Diana’s wrist stronger, but she turned the situation upside down, blocking both woman’s wrists.
“You always forget I’m the cop” her voice was almost ironic, mixed with a sarcastic smile.
Their eyes were so close.
“Since when you want it, Ruby?” she became serious all of a sudden, without distracting herself from the woman’s eyes, then she let her go.
The two were not talking anymore, their eyes were communicating instead. They stared at each other for a long time, not to lose a centimeter of each other’s features. 
Diana’s eyes became shiny and started sparkling of a new light, when Ruby moved her eyes on the woman’s lips, who smiled, moving some rebel hair behind her ear. Without a reason, they both felt completely relieved from the terrible day: now only them both existed. Ruby placed a hand behind Diana’s neck, with the explicit intention of receiving what seemed inevitable, when all stopped.
“I apologize.”
“It’s ok.” Ruby suddenly got up from the bed, with Diana’s astonishment.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have stayed here.”
“No, please, wait a second… Is it my fault, isn’t it?”
“You scare me. Always changing your mood.”
Ruby was aware that the woman couldn’t be emotionally stable. She experienced a tragedy, after all, but she didn’t feel to stay beside her. Even less, after all just happened. 
“Don’t go, please. I…cannot bear the silence of this place any longer…”
“Is this the reason why you tried to kiss me? To shake your loneliness? See you around, detective.”
She managed to open the bedroom door a little, but Diana was in front of her again. 
“Stay.”

3 Luke


Lucas Walsh, called Luke, was the son of the boss of Irish Mob, Aaron Walsh. Not one, but the mugwump of Irish mafia: a man who managed to climb on top with every kind of trick and without any care, not even for his family. 
He thought that the activity of the organization could and should enlarge towards illicit more profitable than the simple drugs dealing and prostitution.
Lucas was the unintentional incipit to extend the organization in a direction that could lead Aaron to enrich himself beyond all expectations. 
That night, he arrived at the Global Gas Station, near Hunts Point. He stopped his motorcycle near one of the petrol pumps and took his phone out of his pocket, checking the time.
“Shit, hurry up!”
The person he was waiting for was late, so he entered the shop of the gas station to take something to drink. 
Just then, the phone rang.
“Come out, asshole.” The call suddenly stopped. 
Going out of the shop, to the other side of the street, he could see a black Mercedes.
Lucas approached, when one of the back doors was suddenly open: a big man came out, dressed of the same car color, tugged the boy, and pushed him inside the car.
“Shit, Thompson! Teach some manners to this beast!”
The kid complained, touching his arm with a grimace of pain.
“I always told you not to call me by name, piece of shit!”
“I repeat your fucking name, instead! Thompson! Thompson! Thomp…” the guy who have previously bumped him, slapped his face, while the other man laughed, to get angry a second later.
“Thank your father and that my name is not Thompson, otherwise you would have been dead already!”
“And you can thank to be with this kind of Hulk!”
“Try to have some respect, dickhead! Now, tell me…did you place the device where I ordered you?”
Lucas watched the man with a questioning face, then he replied.
“But you didn’t say…”
“Where the fuck did you place it?!?”
“Well, I…in the car…among the compressors of the air conditioning…”
“You’re a real asshole! Why did I fucking give you her address, what do you think?”
“But I could not get in, and…”
“You didn’t have to get in! Hiding it in the area would have been enough. Pray that all runs smoothly, or I will make you come to a bad end!”
Lucas was grinding his teeth, and his closed fists seemed willing to find the face of his interlocutor. But he could not make it. The bodyguard would have immediately broken him in pieces.
“Now get out and keep me informed.” The man with the fake name threw the kid out of the car, making him fall to the ground in a bad way, then made a sign to the driver for leaving. 
Lucas stayed on the ground for a moment, crying and punching the concrete. It was impressive and at the same time pitiful, that such a wild kid could hide an open childish side. 
“Fuck, fuck! I should never have…never…!”
The fall made his phone go out of his jeans’ pocket, he noticed that after a little bit and checked that it was still working, then he waited for a moment, and clicking on the menu he entered the photo gallery, scrolling to some images that portrayed him, while he was in tender attitudes with a girl. That girl was Noa, Diana’s daughter.
“It’s too late…if only I could go back…”
He watched them for a while, then selected them all and, with his trembling thumb, he pressed the button “delete”. That action was putting an end to his moment of weakness, a moment he had to push away, because the night was not over, and he still had to finish “working”. Also, he didn’t want to remember. Not in that moment. He got up swaying, then he opened the bag on the back of his motorcycle, taking out some small bags of cocaine, some other with marijuana. From one of these last he took the right quantity for rolling a joint: he needed to smoke. 
After a couple of mouthfuls, he took again the phone, searching for his father’s number, but it was ringing without reply.
He tried again and this time his dad picked up.
“What now, Luke?” he hated being called in that way. His name was Lucas. Lucas was the name his mother chose. It was all that was left of her. 
“I just met Thompson…”
“I know. He told me. He also told me that you haven’t been so good. Anyway, Luke…don’t think you can come home until you don’t put an end to this story.” 
“Fuck, dad…”
“I don’t want anyone, and again, anyone of those who have seen everything, sending my work to hell. Do what you must and make a good work. Tomorrow is the last useful day. I won’t repeat it again.”
Lucas wanted to counter, but the phone call was interrupted before he could do it, so, as if he was crazy, he put together a conversation with his father in the middle of the street, keeping the phone on his ear and screaming.
“I don’t do anything else than living with the constant fear of failure! And I fail, dad! I always fail! You taught me nothing! Only to obtain things you want doing bad actions! Even at the cost of taking lives! That the existence doesn’t count! The only things that matter are the respect towards who’s above you and the money! Fuck! Fuck! Even mom…mom was different…I wanted to be like her…and instead…”
The phone ringtone brought Lucas back to reality: it was Thompson.
He thought they had nothing to talk about any longer.
“You must fix Liam. Tonight.”
“But dad said…”
“He said. But there’s no time. Tell me if you need someone for this.”
“No, I can handle it on my own. As always.”
“Good.”
Lucas jumped on his Harley. He gave so much gas that seemed like a thunder. His tormented thoughts were running faster than his motorcycle.

4 Lucas


It was already 5AM when Lucas arrived in the area where Liam lived.
The kid was living with his maternal grandparents in Williamsburg, in a popular building near the rich buildings on the river. Even though their lives and their money were different, Lucas considered Liam his best friend. No, his only friend. He had no other.
Their friendship was born when Lucas, for the third time, was repeating the third year of High School, ending up in Liam’s classroom. The passion for motorcycles and races, immediately united them, with the difference that Liam didn’t own a motorcycle, since he was only 16 y/o and his grandparents could only afford the necessary for him. Going on with their friendship, Lucas found out that Liam’s parents were dead: his father had murdered his mother for jealousy and subsequently committed suicide, when Liam was very small. The hatred Liam was feeling for his dad was the same Lucas felt for Aaron: with the difference that Lucas’ dad was still alive. Moreover, Lucas didn’t like school, and even if everybody knew he was coming from a millionaire family, this was not making his school life easy: often he was caught up dealing in the corridors, even in front of teachers. They said he was a difficult kid, because he has lost his mother some years before, in unknown circumstances. Even this was bringing he and Liam together. Somebody was suspecting he had even killed his mother, since he was a stupid. All of this was making the boy suffer, and he rarely went to school, but he couldn’t make any friend the few times he tried to go. Liam was the exception. The only one that, instead of judging him when he was skipping the most difficult classes, skipped them with him as well. When Lucas one day arrived at school with a new motorcycle, all people thought it was a whim fulfilled by his millionaire dad, but it was a gift for his best friend, instead. So, besides the voices depicting him as a matricide, the voices he was a homosexual followed, because “a friend could never make you a gift like that”; nobody knew that Lucas found a brother in Liam. Younger, and a little fragile. Both, for different reasons, could not count on a parental figure, and this was making him feel so bounded to Liam in such an unhealthy way. He wanted to bring him everywhere, even the damn day that changed not only their destinies, but Noa’s as well.
Being there in that moment was making him sick, but he could not avoid it.
He parked the motorcycle in the last slice of darkness left of the night, then he started walking back and forth like a wild beast prisoner in a zoo, trying to think of a way to escape, even if there was none.
He was sweating, despite the autumnal temperature was all but warm.
He looked around, as if someone could discover what was in his mind, and in the end he decided.
He made Liam’s phone ring: two rings, a pause, and again two rings. It was their secret code to communicate an urgency. 
Liam replied in the same way, and after some minutes reached his friend on the street.
“What are you doing here? How did it go with “her””?
“Forget about it. Listen, you have to leave.”
“What? Where should I go?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you have relatives, somewhere?”
“You said everything was going to be ok, Lucas! You promised me!”
“I know, but you’re the only one left…”
“Shit! Shit!”
“I…cannot make any exception…the only way to avoid killing you is to tell my father that I didn’t find you, but you have to leave…”
“I have no money! And I can’t ask my family! They would question me…”
“Sell the moto.”
“What?”
“Sell it. Better, I will sell it to a guy I know. Then I will give you some money, but that piece of shit of my father won’t give me a cent until he doesn’t know I completed my work with you. He won’t drop anything in any case when he will know that I didn’t kill you.”
“I’m scared, Lucas…”
“I know.”
Liam jumped in Lucas’ arms, who was surprised by so much tenderness, returning the hug as well.

TO BE CONTINUED…