Owen Weaver survived. His lungs were damaged, and he would always walk with a limp, but he would live.
Louis survived. He was concerned that his principal sexual organ might never be the same, but the doctors assured him it would continue to function as well as before, just not for a little while. Parker, nursing a busted ankle, advised Louis to think clean thoughts. Louis told Parker to go fuck himself.
And Angel survived, although he was quieter now, and sometimes he found himself numbering his days.
In the matter of Daniel Weaver there would be pain and recriminations, court cases and custody hearings. Moxie Castin would do what he could for all involved, and because Moxie was a most accomplished attorney, nobody would serve jail time, and Daniel Weaver would call Holly Weaver, and no other, his mother. The tale of the ‘Woman in the Woods’ would enter the lore of the state, and like all good stories much of the truth of it was destined to remain hidden.
The man named Quayle vanished, and the woman called Mors vanished with him, although she left a trail of blood in her wake, both figuratively and literally.
Louis was right. He had hit her.
For the time being, Parker chose to store in a safe-deposit box the single vellum page he had kept from Quayle, while Bob Johnston worked on establishing its provenance.
And eventually, Parker sat down with SAC Edgar Ross of the FBI, and shared with him most of what he knew about Quayle and the vellum leaves. Parker did so with some reluctance. Ross had once sent a private detective to spy on Sam, Parker’s daughter – why, Parker did not know – although Parker had decided to keep his knowledge of the surveillance to himself, for now.
So he did not entirely trust Ross.
But then, Parker had never entirely trusted Ross.
119
The Principal Backer sat in the library of the Colonial Club, sipping a scotch.
Thinking.
Worrying.
Quayle and Mors were gone. They had not availed themselves of the Backers’ assistance in returning to England, choosing instead a route home via Mexico, which suggested a certain lack of trust. And although reports indicated Mors had been injured in the confrontation with Parker, it was also clear that Quayle was in possession of the pieces of his precious fucking Atlas when he left.
The Principal Backer had expended a great deal of time and energy in hampering the search for the Buried God. He had done so with the active collusion of a number of his fellow Backers, each of whom was as anxious as he to ensure the continuance of the status quo. They had wealth, power, and influence, all of which they would someday bequeath to the next generation: old blood in new bottles.
But if Quayle was not deranged, and the Atlas could do as he claimed, then the world was already being reordered, its boundaries redrawn in preparation for the coming of the Not-Gods, and the war on the Old. The Backers would not be spared. No one would.
Not unless Quayle was stopped.
120
The funeral of Billy Stonehurst took place on a clear spring morning amid blossoms, birdsong, and rebirth, when no young man should be laid to rest. A choir sang, and handshakes and sympathy were offered to the grieving parents. Afterward drinks and a buffet were served at a hall in South Portland, not far from the cemetery. During the reception, Bobby Ocean’s wife slapped her husband repeatedly on the face. She subsequently departed, and did not return.
Two weeks later, Bobby Ocean commenced his retirement from business, and initiated the sale of his companies. Two weeks after that, he and his wife announced their separation. By then Bobby Ocean was already in the process of establishing, in memory of his son, the William Stonehurst Foundation for American Ideas, which would quickly ally itself with the American Freedom Party, American Renaissance, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and the National Policy Institute, among other white power organizations.
Bobby Ocean had become pure hatred.
Parker ran into Gordon Walsh after a movie at the Nickelodeon. Walsh was with a woman Parker didn’t recognize, and he was no longer wearing a wedding ring. Walsh introduced the woman as Jessica, but offered no further details. He and Parker stood outside the theater while Jessica went to the bathroom. It was the first time the two men had spoken properly since Parker’s brief confinement in Augusta.
‘I wanted to apologize for calling you a son of a bitch,’ said Walsh. ‘I mean, you are a son of a bitch occasionally, but I wouldn’t like to think it defined you.’
‘You should market that as a greeting card.’
‘I have others. I’ll just add it to the pile.’
‘You see that thing about Bobby Ocean?’ said Parker.
‘The far right business? Yeah. No surprise, but still.’
‘Not good.’
‘No,’ said Walsh. He sniffed at the night air. ‘You smell that?’
Jessica appeared beside Walsh.
‘Smell what?’ said Parker.
Walsh laid his left hand on Parker’s shoulder, and used his right to point in the direction of Commercial, and the waterfront, and a parking lot still slightly blackened by fire.
‘A hint of smoke,’ said Walsh. ‘You shouldn’t have let Louis burn that truck.’
It took Parker a few moments to respond.
‘You’re right,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘I shouldn’t have left it to a black man to call out a racist. I should have done it myself.’
121
The crossword setters for The Times of London took great pride in their work, and rarely invited, or tolerated, outside interference in their puzzles. It took a great deal of convincing, the intervention of an agent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the promise of some small favors to the newspaper’s parent company – and, indeed, to the setters themselves – before the insertion of a very particular set of clues into the cryptic crossword of March 30 was permitted. Even then, rumblings of immense discontent accompanied the inclusion of one clue, because its appearance would require an apology to be made to Times cruciverbalists the following day, with all blame for the error being ascribed to a mysterious, and forever unnamed, assistant.
London’s Jamaica Wine House, a wood-paneled Victorian pub, lies in St Michael’s Alley, a pedestrian laneway between Cornhill and Lombard Streets, not far from the Thames. On March 30, shortly after midday, a figure dressed in velvet and tweed sat at a quiet table to the rear, drinking coffee and studying, as was his wont, the Times crossword. The Jamaica was one of his regular haunts, although he had not been seen for its environs for some time, and he appeared more troubled than usual, and was short with the staff.
He was musing on ten down, which read To pursue, fearful or not, the bird thus flown. A poor but obvious clue, he thought, and well below the usual standards of the setter. It seemed to him that ‘hunting quail’ must be the answer, but the final letter had to be ‘e,’ to allow for ‘locomotive’. (The reason, perhaps, for a murder on The Orient Express), while the second last must surely be ‘bombshell’ (Alarming blast of beauty). But how could the compiler misspell ‘quail’ as ‘quayle’? There would be complaints about it.
The lawyer Quayle paused. He looked at nine across, another odd clue that had bothered him with the awkwardness of its construction: Jazzes up, but only once the vehicle is secure. That had to be ‘Charlie Parker.’
He placed circles around the solutions to the two clues in question, isolating four words.