Grandpa Owen was just beginning to stir when Daniel returned to the house, giving him enough time to get to the bathroom and clean the dirt from his hands and under his fingernails. The knees of his jeans were filthy, and he wished he’d had the foresight to bring a piece of cardboard or an old towel on which to kneel, but it was too late now. He stripped off the jeans, stuck them at the bottom of a pile of laundry, and changed into a new pair. They weren’t the same color, but Grandpa Owen would never notice the difference.
When all this was done, Daniel went to the kitchen and stared out over the yard to the spot where the phone was now buried. Even if it rang underground, he wouldn’t be able to hear it. No one would. He hoped this might make Karis give up. Maybe she’d go back to where she came from, wherever that might be. He’d seen the footage of the body being carried away from the woods on a stretcher. It had seemed very small. Daniel wondered if Karis had been little in real life, or if death had just made her so. Perhaps only bones had been left by the time she was found. If so, how was she speaking to him? Skeletons didn’t talk, except in cartoons. Daniel had heard his mom and Grandpa Owen say that the dead lady had been taken to a mortuary. When Daniel asked what that was, his mom told him it was a place where dead people were kept before it came time to bury them, although she seemed annoyed that he’d asked, or just annoyed he’d overheard them speaking about the woman to begin with; Daniel wasn’t sure which. Did they have phones in mortuaries? Daniel guessed so. Was that how Karis was calling him? Did she creep out of her drawer at night (because that was where they kept the bodies, in drawers, like Grandpa Owen’s business files), bare bones clacking on the floor, and hide under a desk so she could call Daniel?
But Karis couldn’t be in a drawer because she claimed to live in the woods, and sometimes Daniel could hear the sound of branches rustling in the background. In the end he decided it was probably best not to think too hard on such matters. Karis was a ghost, that was all, and ghosts weren’t like people. They probably had their own ways of doing things. He just wanted Karis to do those things someplace else, and with someone else. Perhaps they just needed to bury her again. It could be that Karis didn’t like being locked away in a drawer, although being buried under dirt seemed worse to Daniel, and being burned – like some dead folks were – sounded worse still.
He heard Grandpa Owen calling, asking if he was okay.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Yes, he hoped.
59
Ivan Giller knew nothing of atlases or buried gods. He did not go to church and believed that death marked the snuffing out of all consciousness. He disliked violence, and consequently did not own a gun, even though he regularly dealt with violent men. He was a buyer and seller, mostly of information. He was a source, and a channel, and was very good at what he did.
Giller’s introduction to the lawyer Quayle had been facilitated through a series of trusted cut-outs, with the promise of a bonus well above the norm if he could help the Englishman successfully tie up his affairs, and thus – it was made clear – encourage his speedy departure from the continental United States. Giller was aware that the commission ultimately came from the same people who paid him to watch Parker, although he had never met any of them face-to-face, and didn’t care to. From what Giller had gleaned of them, a little knowledge certainly qualified as dangerous, and a lot might prove fatal.
Initially it had seemed like a simple assistance job, but now Giller was regretting ever becoming involved in it. First of all, there was the lawyer himself. Giller had met plenty of attorneys in his time, and could count on his thumbs the number he trusted, but Quayle resembled a being created from the distilled essence of all that was disreputable about the legal profession. Giller suspected that when Quayle died, every bone in his body would be revealed as slightly bent.
And there was Mors, Quayle’s shadow, who dressed like a schoolmarm and smelled like a whorehouse mattress. Giller couldn’t recall ever encountering a more malformed woman, with her graveyard pallor, her too-shiny skin, her too-small teeth, her fingers like the legs of a spider crab, and a voice that had the same impact upon the ear as an abrading instrument. She made Giller want to hide in a cellar.
Then there was Parker. Giller’s days of monitoring him from a discreet distance had come to an end. Parker now knew what Giller looked like, and was probably already endeavoring to put a name – other than ‘Smith’ – to the face. No good could come from having Parker take an interest in the fact of Giller’s existence.
Finally, and most pressingly, there was the not-too-small matter of the mutilated child – Giller could conceive of it in no other way – glimpsed the previous evening. He might have managed to convince himself he had imagined it, or conjured it from his subconscious as a prelude to a fever, except he knew Parker had seen it too. Giller understood on some primal level that its presence must somehow be linked to Quayle and Mors, but he wasn’t about to invite either of them to clarify the relationship. He was simply aware of having wandered into a situation that presaged no good for anyone, least of all Ivan Giller, and it would be a very good idea for him to extricate himself from it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
With that in mind, Giller made a call to his contact, he who had finally put Giller in touch with Quayle, seeking to void what was, in essence, no more than a gentlemen’s agreement, absent the gentlemen. This particular contact was an elderly dealer in rare coins and stamps, although he was said to have secured a comfortable old age by selling very specialized pornography back in the good old days before the Internet drained much of the profit from distributing sexual images on paper and film. The dealer got back to him within the hour, making it clear that Giller’s involvement with Quayle could not be undone, and not only Giller’s continued good health but the good health of a number of people up the line, including the dealer himself, were dependent on his remaining in Quayle’s good graces.
So Giller was screwed, and no mistake. This left only plan B: get Quayle what he wanted, collect the bonus, and consider not answering the phone again for a very long time.
To this end, Giller began calling in a lot of favors.
The Principal Backer was working on the restoration of a Georgian walnut bureau dating from about 1740. It was in miserable condition when he first acquired it, although that was part of the challenge for him, and the pleasure. The feet were beyond salvation, and the handles were incongruous Victorian replacements, but the boxwood inlay and ebony stringing remained intact, and it had somehow retained its original leather writing surface, along with the eighteenth-century lock and key for the desk itself.
He had been laboring over the piece for almost a year now, and had recently sourced appropriate handles from a similar bureau with mortal injuries. His bureau, by contrast, would soon be suitable for resale – through an agent, of course, and without the Principal Backer’s own name ever being mentioned in connection with it. He expected it to make about $2,000 at auction, even if this return wouldn’t even begin to compensate him for his efforts. Money wasn’t the object, though; it was the act of bringing something back almost from the dead. It was about returning some beauty to the world. This was why he was so careful to conceal his involvement in the restoration. He was surrounded by those who regarded this world as forfeit, and would therefore consider even the most minor of aesthetic improvements to it as indicative of a deeper malaise, one worthy of further investigation.
Beside him, his cell phone began to ring. He wiped the oil from his hands before picking up.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Quayle,’ said a woman’s voice. Her name was Erin, and she took care of the minutiae of the Backers’ affairs.
‘What now?’
A pause.