The text came as Parker shadowed the man he was now thinking of as Smith One. Parker knew the type: a crony, a consort, a willing servant to the demands of others, regardless of their moral complexion, just as long as they paid promptly – although the Smith Ones of this world preferred that the morality of their employers assumed tones of gray, fading to black.
Which wasn’t to suggest Smith One lacked intelligence. He was keeping his head down as he headed along Ashmont, maintaining a steady pace and not looking back, but Parker was sure he was primed for the possibility of pursuit, if not already actively aware of his pursuer. Not that Parker cared. He didn’t intend to follow Smith One for very long. What Parker did intend was to grab Smith One at the first opportunity before encouraging him to share any and all information he might possess about his drinking companion, along with details of anyone else that might have paid him to monitor Parker’s movements.
Parker closed the gap as Smith One passed Cottage Street. Deering Avenue was the next big intersection, and Parker didn’t make Smith One for a Portland local, which meant he was unlikely to have walked to the Bear. Either he was catching a bus on Deering, or he was parked somewhere nearby.
Smith One crossed Cottage before stopping as something to his left caught his attention. He turned slowly, his eyes drawn by a presence as yet concealed from Parker’s gaze. For a moment the texture of the night appeared to thicken, the shadows deepen. Parker tasted metal on the air, like the coming of an electrical storm. He could hear cars passing in the distance, but their sound was muffled, and the surrounding houses began to lose their definition. He had the sudden uncomfortable sensation of being immersed in water or lost in a rapidly descending fog without either medium being made manifest. Only Smith One remained fixed and unchanged, so that the two men found themselves trapped in a space warping into immateriality.
A child crouched in the center of the street: pale and malformed, naked and sexless, its leg and elbow joints bent at unnatural angles, its right arm shielding its eyes as though from a light visible only to itself. It extended its left hand toward Parker, and despite the distance between them, he thought he felt its touch on his skin, the nails on its fingers sharp and cold as needles.
Smith One started to run, but Parker could not tear himself from the child. It possessed a kind of reality, being both present yet insubstantial. It looked as though it might be possible to pass straight through it, but one would deeply regret the experience, like breaching a cloud of chlorine gas.
Slowly, the child began to glow. Parker glimpsed the network of veins and arteries running beneath its skin, and what might have been internal organs – lungs, kidneys, a heart – albeit atrophied and seemingly without function, for the lungs did not swell or contract, and the heart did not beat. The light grew stronger, splitting apart, and Parker heard the roar of an engine, and the clamor of a horn, and he just had time to press himself against the side of a car as a van ripped through the child, its body vanishing at the moment of impact, and passed Parker with barely inches to spare, the driver mouthing obscenities at him as he went.
The child was gone. In its place was a great chunk of dirty ice, possibly displaced from a building or truck by the thaw, and tire-marked by the passage of the van. If it had ever resembled a child, it no longer did so.
Smith One was also gone.
Parker waited for his hearing and vision to return to their normal states, but they did not. He was nauseous, and it was all he could do to return to his own car, where he remained seated behind the wheel until some semblance of order was restored to his senses. When he was sufficiently recovered, he called the cab company that had picked up Smith Two and his partner. He told the dispatcher he believed he might have left an item in one of its taxis, and was given a cell phone number for the driver. Parker contacted him, but was too tired to make up any more stories. He identified himself as a private investigator and promised a fifty if the driver told Parker the drop-off point for the fare he’d picked up on Forest Avenue about half an hour earlier.
‘For fifty bucks,’ said the driver, ‘I’d tell you who killed Kennedy.’
Parker settled for the location, a single-story strip motel out on Route 1, although he did ask the driver if he’d happened to overhear any conversation in which his customers might have engaged.
‘They didn’t talk at all,’ the driver said. ‘I didn’t take them for friendly types, not even toward each other.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘They were linking arms when they hailed me, but as soon as they got in the cab, they moved to opposite doors.’
Parker thanked him, and told him he’d put the cash in an envelope and drop it off at the cab office in the morning. He then drove out to the motel, showed his ID and a twenty, and informed the old guy behind the desk that he was interested in two guests, a man and a woman. Parker described them in as much detail as he could, as well as giving an estimate of the time they had probably returned to their rooms that night. The old guy examined Parker’s ID before handing it back, minus the twenty.
‘Nope,’ he said. He was wearing a T-shirt that read BOWLERS DO IT WITH TWO BALLS, which Parker decided was barely a single entendre.
‘Nope what?’
‘Nope, we don’t have anyone of that description staying here tonight.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Four rooms taken, two by young couples, two by old couples. And by old, I mean old. I’m old, but they’re real old. They’re so old they might be dead by now.’
‘You could have told me all that before you took the twenty.’
‘You should have held on to the twenty until you got an answer. You been at this P.I. business for long, son?’
‘I’m considering retiring.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I might cash out, and use the money to buy a can of gas to burn down this motel.’
‘I don’t care. It isn’t my motel. And the way you throw money around, you won’t have enough left to pay for matches, never mind gas.’
‘I don’t suppose you saw a cab pick up a couple outside a while back?’
‘Saw a cab, but didn’t see who got in or out. None of my business.’
Parker decided that the night wasn’t about to get any better, not at this late stage. Sometimes a man had to learn when to take a write-off.
‘You’ll understand if I don’t thank you for your time. I figure I’ve paid you enough to skate over the niceties.’
‘That you have. But if you ever need a place to stay, I’ll get you a good deal.’
‘Someplace else, I hope,’ said Parker, and left.
Parker’s head was still swimming as he neared the turn into his driveway. He used his phone to check the status of the security system. It was second nature to him since the attack that had almost taken his life, but it still irritated him, reminding him of his own vulnerability. The system was green. No one had entered the property since his departure earlier in the evening. Had anyone done so, the phone would have beeped an alarm, and the nearest camera would have sent him a picture of the intruder.
He parked, went inside, and searched the medicine cabinet until he found some pills that claimed to tackle both headaches and nausea: prescription medication left over from the aftermath of the shooting. He wasn’t even sure they were still in date, but he swallowed two of them dry before heading to his office and sitting by the window, staring out at the moon on the marshes, the saltwater tributaries trickling like molten silver to the sea.