Walsh had divested himself of his coat and was staring at it with an air of pained disappointment, as though he had hoped that by removing its physical burden he might also relieve himself of afflictions to which he could ascribe neither name nor form. Outside, the city continued its rapid acquiescence to dusk. In the time it had taken the two men to drive down to the waterfront and seek shelter, a combination of cloud and the hour had caused near darkness to fall.
‘I hate winter,’ said Walsh. ‘Thank God it’s over.’
He added one sugar to his coffee, followed by two more, then took an experimental sip before bringing the total to five.
Parker gestured at the empty packets.
‘If it’s any consolation, you’re unlikely to live to see another.’
‘Small pleasures. We take them where we can.’
A young woman drifted by, trailing the scent of soap, and Walsh’s nose rose like a hound to the hunt. Parker had heard whispers that Walsh’s marriage was in trouble, and he and his wife were no longer living under the same roof. The news, though unsurprising, gave Parker no pleasure: guests at weddings involving police were well advised to skip the toasters or fryers and instead club together for a deposit on the services of a pair of good divorce attorneys. But Parker liked Walsh, even if a mutuality of feeling was no longer certain, and Walsh’s wife seemed like a nice woman. Perhaps they’d pull through, but only if Walsh had sense enough to ignore the tickle in his pants.
‘She’s too young for you,’ said Parker, when it began to look as though Walsh might have become fatally distracted.
‘She’s too everything for me.’
‘Long as you know.’
‘You the voice of my conscience now?’
‘I’m not even the voice of my own.’
‘Long as you know.’
‘Touché,’ said Parker.
‘Your boys been around town?’
Parker guessed Walsh was referring to Angel and Louis.
‘I don’t think Louis would care much for being called “boy.”’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t take it personally.’
‘I’m sure he would.’
‘The question still stands.’
Parker knew that Walsh was keeping a watchful eye on Angel and Louis, and had been ever since they first chose to spend part of each year in Portland.
‘Not so much,’ said Parker. ‘Angel is ill.’
‘Really? What kind of ill?’
‘The tumor kind.’
Walsh, who until then had been doing his utmost to maintain a tone of barely veiled hostility, now moderated it.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘So was he. Stage two colon cancer. They caught it before it could spread to the lymph nodes, but not before it perforated the colon wall. Still, it was close. He’ll need chemotherapy once he’s recovered from the surgery, although he won’t lose his hair. He was more worried about sacrificing what’s left of it than he was about giving up a piece of his bowel.’
‘Jesus. Everybody’s getting cancer. I don’t recall it being like this in the past.’
‘It was always something. I think the world just keeps finding new ways to kill us.’
‘How is Louis taking it?’
‘About as well as you’d expect.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Still waters run deep.’
‘Cold, too.’
‘If you’re trying to score points, maybe you should wait until he gets back to town, so you can do it to his face.’
‘Maybe I will. And you haven’t answered my earlier question: Has he been up here lately?’
‘Can I ask why you’re interested?’
‘No, but let me remind you that if you’re looking for information – which I presume you are, because we’re sitting here – then that road runs two ways.’
Parker gave up. He couldn’t see any percentage in obstruction.
‘He was here last weekend.’
‘You meet him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Various places.’
‘Any of them on Commercial?’
‘I don’t recall. And this doesn’t seem like an exchange of information. I think the correct word is “interrogation.”’
Walsh arranged the sugar packets, opened and unopened, into a pattern on the table: a swastika.
‘Somebody blew up Billy Ocean’s truck.’
‘Not everyone likes R and B.’
‘You think you’re the first person to make that joke?’
‘It’s not even the first time I’ve made it.’
‘Yeah? How come?’
‘Billy’s old man tried to hire Moxie Castin to look into anyone who might have a personal grievance against his son, or an objection to how he chooses to express his political views, on account of how you flatfoots may not be up to the task.’
‘What did Moxie say?’
‘Moxie’s Jewish. What do you think Moxie said?’
‘Moxie’s Jewish?’
‘I know. Even I was surprised.’
Walsh swiped away the sugar packet swastika.
‘It takes someone of a very particular disposition to blow up a man’s truck because he doesn’t like his politics.’
‘From what I hear,’ said Parker, ‘Billy Ocean doesn’t have any politics, or none worth the name. What Billy had was a truck decked with Confederate flags.’
‘All of which may be true, but blowing up his truck suggests a higher than usual level of intolerance.’
‘And driving around the northernmost state in the Union flying the flag of the Confederacy doesn’t? Give me a break. I made some calls after I spoke with Moxie. The business in Freeport and Augusta with the Klan? Word is that someone saw two men in a truck like Billy’s throwing objects into Freeport yards.’
In January, residents in both areas had woken to find Klan flyers, wrapped in sandwich bags and weighted with stones, lying in their driveways. The flyers were advertising a KKK neighborhood watch service, and came with an 800 number for something called the Klanline.
‘And two men who might, at a stretch, fit descriptions of you and Louis were seen drinking in an adjacent bar not long before Billy’s truck exploded,’ said Walsh.
‘Is that so? And were two men fitting our descriptions seen blowing it up?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘You have to admit it’s a hell of a coincidence.’
‘What, a black guy and a white guy drinking together in a bar the night a racist’s truck gets torched?’
‘This is Maine,’ said Walsh. ‘There are black people here who can’t make black friends. You may even be the only person I know who has a black friend.’
‘You ought to expand your horizons.’
‘Every time I do, I live to regret it, especially when it comes to men of your acquaintance.’
Walsh had briefly drifted too close to Louis during the events in Boreas, believing he could exploit Louis’s knowledge to advance the course of an investigation, and got his fingers burned because of it. Parker thought the experience might have exacerbated Walsh’s natural tendency to brood on old hurts.
‘I wish I could help you, but I can’t,’ said Parker.
Parker was keeping his tone level, even amused, throughout. He wasn’t about to rise to Walsh’s bait, and Walsh knew it. Both men drank their coffee. By now they were the last people in Arabica.
‘Then I guess the whole business is destined to remain unsolved,’ said Walsh.
‘It could be for the best.’
‘Could be.’ The troubled look returned to Walsh’s face. ‘You know, those flyers in driveways were likely just the work of a couple of troublemakers. Hell, we don’t have any Klan here, not since Ralph Brewster was shown the door.’
Ralph Brewster was a Portland state senator who ran as the Republican nominee for governor back in 1924, when the Klan claimed a statewide membership of 40,000 largely by stoking up anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant feeling. Brewster always denied he was a Klansman, but nobody believed him, and it didn’t matter much either way since he supported the organization and accepted its support in turn, which helped him to win the governorship in 1924. By the 1930s the Klan in Maine was a spent force, weakened by scandal and the general reluctance of Mainers to spend too much time hating one another. That situation had largely persisted until the present day.
‘But?’ said Parker.