The Wrath of Angels

38





Marielle heard the phone ring at the same time as her doorbell. For a moment she was torn between the two, but clearly the phone could wait while the doorbell could not.

‘You want me to see who it is?’ asked Ernie Scollay.

He had come over earlier, seemingly still troubled by the amount they had revealed down at the bar in Portland, but Marielle knew that he was also lonely. A shy man, and one who did not care much for either of the local bars, he had formed a bond with Marielle’s father following his brother’s suicide, and when Harlan Vetters in turn had died, he had transferred his affection for the father to Marielle. She did not mind. Apart from being kind, if cautious, company, Ernie was good at fixing anything from a stubborn hinge to a car engine, and Marielle’s old car needed more attention than most. Her brother’s best friend, Teddy Gattle, had frequently offered to look after it for her at no charge, but Marielle knew better than to take him up on it. Ever since they were teenagers, Teddy had eyed her with a mixture of adoration and barely concealed lust. According to her brother, Teddy had cried more than her own mother had on the day Marielle got married, and he had celebrated her divorce with a drunk that lasted three days. No, even if Ernie Scollay had not been around, she would have paid money she could little afford to maintain her car – would, in fact, have set the car on fire and walked to her two jobs – rather than accept a favor from Teddy Gattle.

Marielle stepped out of the kitchen and looked down the hall. Her brother’s familiar, rangy figure stood outside, although she could not see him clearly because the exterior light wasn’t working. Odd, she thought: I only changed that bulb last week. There must be a fault with the wiring. Another job for Ernie, she supposed.

‘It’s okay, it’s just Grady,’ she said.

He’d probably come to apologize, she figured. About time too. He’d had enough of Teddy Gattle’s hospitality, and realized what a jerk he’d been for bringing that vacant space in female form into her house. She’d been tempted to burn the sheets once Grady and whatever-her-name was had departed, the skank. Ivy, was that what Grady had said? Holly? What an idiot. What a pair of idiots.

But she loved her brother, for all his flaws, and now they were all that was left of the family. Two failures: he in art, she in marriage, both in life. She didn’t want to lose him again. Even when absent, whether at college or trying to make it as an artist in New York, and, finally, lost to his addictions for a time, a part of him had always been with her. They had been so close as children, and although he was her little brother, he had done his best to take care of her. When her marriage finally ended, he had trudged back to Falls End to console her, and they had spent a couple of days drinking, and smoking, and talking, and she had felt better for it. But then he had drifted away again, and when he came back their father was already dying.

The machine picked up the call, and she heard a voice that was kind of familiar, but she wasn’t quick enough to catch the caller’s name.

The doorbell rang for a second time.

‘Coming!’ she said. ‘I’m coming. God, Grady, you could have a little patience, you know . . .’

She opened the door and the light from the lamp in the hall caught his face. He looked sorrowful and scared. He also looked doped up. He was swaying, and having trouble staying focussed on her.

‘Ah, Grady, for crying out loud,’ she said. ‘No, no. You jerk. You stupid—’

Grady flew at her. She reacted fast enough to step back, one hand instinctively outstretched to ward him off, but he was too big and heavy for her. His weight carried them both to the floor, and her head bounced hard on the boards.

‘Jesus, Grady!’ she cried, trying to push him from her even as he struggled to find his own footing.

Two people appeared in the doorway, a woman and a child. Even in the soft lamplight Marielle could tell that the woman’s face was damaged, and the child, a boy, had a strange, ugly swelling at his neck, and bruising to his nose and eyes.

In the woman’s right hand was a gun.

‘Who are you?’ said Marielle. ‘What do you want?’

But as the woman advanced, Marielle knew who she was. Although she had never met her, Marielle had heard her described. She was no longer beautiful, not with her burned, glistening skin, but enough of her former looks remained for Marielle to imagine her as she once had been, drawing men to her, buying drinks in return for stories of lost planes. Her left eye was a different color from her right: most of the color had gone from it, and it reminded Marielle of a raw shellfish dotted with Tabasco sauce.

Ernie Scollay appeared in the hall. He took a single look at the woman and the boy, then turned to run. Darina Flores shot twice him in the back. Ernie fell on his face and tried to crawl to safety, but the third shot stilled him forever.

Darina and the boy stepped inside and closed the door behind them. The boy locked it and pulled down the blind, cutting them off from the world. By now, Marielle had managed to get out from under Grady. She knelt before the intruders, afraid to move. Blood began to spread from under Ernie Scollay, flowing across the boards and dripping between the gaps into the darkness below. Grady lay against the wall, and she could see him trying to overcome whatever drug was in his system.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t . . .’

While Darina and the boy watched, unspeaking, she went to her brother and held him, and she hardly felt the needle as it entered her arm.

They did not inject her with as much of the drug as they had given to her brother. They wanted her to be coherent, but to present no risk to them. They were a woman and a child in a room with two grown adults, and Darina had to ensure that there was no risk of either Marielle or Grady Vetters fighting back. Once again, they secured their captives’ hands behind them with plastic ties, just to be certain. Darina poured the boy a glass of milk, and gave him a freshly baked cookie from a tray beside the stove. He sat at the dining table and nibbled the cookie, eating around the edges, his small teeth following the line of the frosting, examining his efforts as he went, just like a normal boy.

Marielle lay supine on the couch with a cushion beneath her head. She was watching all that was taking place, seeking any possible advantage, but there was none. Her eyes were just slightly heavy, her responses dulled, but she was still thinking clearly, if slowly. Grady Vetters sat in an armchair beside the TV, his eyes barely open, a string of spittle connecting his chest to his chin. He glimpsed his own reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, and wiped his chin on his shirt. The effort seemed to bring him more clarity. He sat up a little straighter and tried to find a smile for his sister, but she took no reassurance from it.

Darina pulled up a chair beside Marielle. She held the gun loosely in her right hand, and with her left brushed some stray strands of hair from Marielle’s face.

‘Are you comfortable?’ she asked.

‘What did you inject me with?’

Her words were not remotely slurred. Darina wondered if they shouldn’t have given her a bigger dose.

‘Just something to help you relax. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, or too frightened.’

Behind Darina, Marielle could see Ernie Scollay’s outstretched arm. The rest of his body was hidden by the wall. Darina saw her looking at it, and called to the boy.

‘Move that, would you? It’s distracting.’

The boy put down the cookie, wiped the crumbs from his hands, and went into the hallway through the alcove beside the kitchen. There was a dragging sound as Ernie Scollay’s feet were lifted and his body began to move. The boy was stronger than he looked, and the arm disappeared.

‘Better?’ said Darina.

‘He was just an old man,’ said Marielle. ‘You didn’t have to kill him.’

‘Even old men can run,’ said Darina. ‘Old men can talk. Old men can call the police. So, yes, we did have to kill him, but there doesn’t have to be any more killing. If you answer my questions, and answer them honestly, I’ll spare you and your brother. That’s a basement under the stairs, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s where we’ll leave you, then. I’ll put water and food in bowls, and you can feed yourselves like dogs, but you’ll be alive. We won’t be in town for long: a day or two at most. The more you share with me, the easier our task will be, and the sooner we’ll be gone. I give you my word.’

Marielle shook her head in dismissal.

‘We’ve seen you,’ said Marielle. ‘We know who you are. We saw you kill Ernie, saw you shoot him in the back.’

Grady stirred in his chair again.

‘They killed Teddy too,’ he said. ‘She killed Teddy.’

Marielle flinched. Poor, sad, pathetic Teddy Gattle. He might have been irritating, and besotted with her, but he had been loyal to her brother, and he had meant no harm to anyone.

‘He was the one who led us here,’ said Darina, ‘if it makes his loss any easier to bear. It was Teddy Gattle who alerted us to the truth about your father, and the plane.’

Marielle turned on her brother.

‘You told Teddy?’ Teddy Gattle couldn’t hold a secret for longer than it took to draw another breath. He was a human sieve.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all Grady could mumble, again.

‘But my offer stands,’ said Darina. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I have no interest in killing you. Once that plane is found, and I get what I want, we’ll disappear, and you can tell the police anything you like. You can describe us down to the last hair, and it won’t matter. We’ll be long gone, and we hide ourselves well. I won’t even look like myself any more.’ She pointed a finger at her ruined face. ‘Would you want to stay like this? No, Marielle, they won’t find us. You’ll live, and so will we. All you have to do is talk. I know a lot already, but I want to hear it all from you as well: every word, every detail that your father shared with you, anything that might enable me to find that airplane. And don’t lie to me. If you lie, there will be consequences, both for you and for your brother.’

The boy returned to the room. Marielle saw that he had trailed a line of bloody footprints across the carpet. He was carrying a backpack illustrated with figures from one of those Japanese animation movies that everyone else seemed to like but for which she didn’t much care, all big-eyed children and mouths that didn’t match the English dialog. He unzipped the pack and drew from it a pair of pliers, a heavy boxcutter, and three pocket knives of varying lengths. He laid the tools out neatly on the dining room table, then pulled up a chair and sat, his feet dangling a good six inches above the floor.

‘Now, Marielle, why don’t you begin with the first time you heard your father mention that airplane.’

Marielle told the story, then told it again. Midway between the two tellings, Darina injected her a second time, and her mind grew foggier. She had trouble keeping details straight in her head, and at one point she must have said something wrong, or contradicted herself, because Grady screamed and when she got him in focus she saw that the bottom of his face was bloody and she realized that the boy had sliced off the tip of Grady’s nose. She started to cry, but Darina slapped her hard, which made her stop. She was careful after that to tell the truth, because what did it matter? It was only a plane. Her father was dead. Paul Scollay was dead, and his brother Ernie too. Teddy Gattle was gone. Only she and Grady remained.

‘Who else have you told?’ asked Darina.

‘Nobody.’

‘The old man,’ said Darina. ‘Who was he? What was he doing here?’

‘Paul Scollay’s brother. He knew already. Paul told him.’

‘Who else did you tell?’

‘No one.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No one,’ she repeated, ‘I told no one.’

Her mind was clearing – not much, but just enough. She wanted to live. She wanted Grady to live. But if they didn’t, if the woman was lying, then she wanted revenge: for her, for her brother, for Ernie and Teddy, for everyone this woman and that terrible child had ever hurt. The detective would find them. He would find them, and he would punish them.

‘Nobody,’ she repeated. ‘I swear it.’

Grady screamed again, but she closed her eyes and her ears to it.

I’m sorry, she thought, but you shouldn’t have told. You just shouldn’t have told.

Deep darkness without, and darkness within, illuminated only by a lamp on the small table beneath the mirror.

Grady was moaning softly. The boy had sliced vertically through his lips with the boxcutter blade, but they had stopped bleeding, at least for as long as Grady could keep from moving his mouth. They were still alive, though, and Darina Flores had eventually stopped her questions. They had ceased when Marielle had come up with one detail, one small half-remembered piece of information from her father’s final days. A fort: her father had mentioned passing a fort as they returned home with the money. She hadn’t told the detective about it because she hadn’t trusted him enough, not then. Now she wished that she’d told him all as she watched Darina use a laptop to check maps and histories in an effort to confirm the truth of what she had just heard.

Marielle must have slept for a time. She couldn’t remember the main lights in the room being turned off, or a blanket being laid over her to keep her warm. She was having trouble breathing. She tried to alter her position, but it didn’t help. The boy was staring at her. His pale, washed-out features repelled her, his thinning hair and his swollen throat. He looked like an old man shrunk to the size of a child. She’d dreamed of him, she realized, and the memory of it made her feel ashamed. In the dream, the boy had been trying to kiss her. No, it was not quite a kiss: his mouth had fixed upon hers like a lamprey attaching itself to prey, and he had begun sucking, pulling the breath from her lungs, drawing the life from her, but he hadn’t managed to do it because she was still here, still breathing, however poorly.

Just a dream, but as she thought that she felt the tenderness of her lips, and there was a foul taste in her mouth, as though she had eaten a piece of meat that was past its best.

The boy smiled at her, and she began to retch drily.

‘Get her some water,’ said Darina, but she did not look up from the screen.

The boy went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. She was reluctant to accept it, hated having him anywhere near her, but better some brief proximity to him than to reject the water and keep that taste in her mouth, so she drank, and the water dribbled down her chin and fell coldly upon her chest. At last, when she could drink no more, she pulled her head back. The boy removed the glass from her lips but remained standing over her, watching.

Marielle’s back ached. She shifted on the couch so that she was sitting upright. A blinking red light caught her eye, hidden before by the table. It was a red number ‘1’ blinking on the telephone answering machine. She remembered the earlier call, and the voice that had sounded so familiar.

It had been the detective’s voice.

She turned her head away too quickly. The boy frowned. He looked over his shoulder.

‘More water,’ said Marielle. ‘Please.’

‘Do as she asks,’ said Darina. ‘Give her more water.’

But the boy ignored them both. He put the glass on the dining room table and approached the answering machine. He put his head to one side, like an animal faced with an unfamiliar object. One pale finger reached out and hovered uncertainly above the ‘play’ button.

‘Please!’ said Marielle again.

Darina glanced up from her screen.

‘What are you doing?’ she said to the boy. ‘This work is important. If she wants more water, then give her more water. Just shut her up!’

The boy stepped away from the machine. He lowered his hand.

Marielle sank back against the arm of the sofa. She drew in an inadequate, shuddering breath, and closed her eyes.

There was a single beep from the other end of the room, and a voice began to speak, deep and male.

‘Hi, Marielle, this is Charlie Parker. I just wanted to let you know—’

The rest of the message was lost in a scream of rage and pain unlike any that Marielle had heard before, made more awful by the fact that it came from a child. The boy screamed a second time. His back arched, his neck straining so far back that it seemed as though his spine must break or the swelling on his throat erupt in a shower of blood and pus. Darina rose to her feet, the laptop falling to the floor, and even over the screaming Marielle could hear the voice of the detective telling her that he was coming up to talk with her, that he just had one or two more questions to ask her and Ernie.

There was a buzzing in the room. Even Grady, immersed in his own misery, heard it. His head moved, trying to find the source of the sound. The house grew colder, as though someone had opened a door, but the air that came through was not filled with the smell of trees and grass but with smoke.

An insect flew across Marielle’s line of sight. She shrank away from it instinctively, but it came back, buzzing a foot from her face. Even in the dim light, she could see the wasp’s yellow and black striped body, and the curve of its venomous abdomen. She hated wasps, especially those that lived this late into the year. She drew up her knees to her chest and tried to use her feet to flip the blanket at it, but now there was a second insect, and a third. The room began to fill with them, and even in her fear she could not understand how. There were no nests nearby, and how could so many have survived?

Still the boy screamed, and suddenly Grady was screaming too, his voice joining with that of the boy, and her brother’s bisected lips burst with the effort, and the sound of pain was added to his fright, for Grady’s had been a cry of fear at first.

The mirror: the wasps were pouring out of the mirror. It had ceased to be a reflective surface, or so it appeared to Marielle, and had instead been transformed into a framed hole in the wall. The dying wasps, once trapped behind it, were now free.

But that was a supporting wall. It was solid concrete, not hollow, and the mirror was just a mirror. Nothing could pass through it. It was simply glass.

She felt a wasp land on her cheek and begin crawling toward her eye. She shook her head and blew at it. It buzzed away angrily, then returned. Its stinger brushed her skin, and she prepared for the pain, but it did not come. The wasp departed, and the others went with it, the little swarm returning to the mirror where they buzzed and roiled in a circular motion, forming a cloud that took on the dimensions of a head with two dark waspless holes for eyes, and another larger slit for a mouth, a face of wasps that stared out at them from the mirror, and its rage was the wasps’ rage, and it vented its fury through them.

The wasp mouth moved, forming words that Marielle could not hear, and the boy’s screams ceased. Darina clasped him to her, the back of his head against her breasts, and he shuddered in her embrace.

Grady, too, stopped screaming. The only sound in the room was the boy’s sobbing breaths, and the buzzing from the mirror.

Darina kissed the top of the boy’s head, and laid her cheek on his pale scalp. Her eyes found Marielle staring at her, and Marielle could see that Darina was both smiling and crying.

‘He remembers,’ said Darina. ‘He’s back now. He’s mine again. My Brightwell. But you shouldn’t have lied. You shouldn’t have told us lies.’

The boy stepped away from her. He wiped his eyes, and walked to the mirror. He stood before the face of wasps, and he spoke to it in a language that Marielle did not recognize, and it spoke back to him. He stayed that way until the buzzing stopped, and one by one the wasps began to fall to the floor where they crawled sluggishly for a time before dying, leaving only the boy staring at his own reflection.

Grady Vetters had curled in upon himself. He was weeping and shaking, and Marielle knew that something had snapped inside him. When she called his name he did not look at her, and his eyes were those of a stranger.

‘He has so many forms,’ said Darina to Marielle, ‘so many names.’ She was pointing to the mirror. ‘He Who Waits Behind The Glass, The Upside-Down Man, The God of Wasps . . .’

The boy found a sheet of paper in his bag. On one side was a drawing of a truck, but the other side was blank. He began to write on it with a crayon. When he was done, he handed the sheet of paper to Darina, and she read what was written there before folding the page and placing it in her pocket. She then spoke one word:

‘Parker.’

The boy advanced on Marielle, and the sense of an old mind trapped in a younger body was stronger than ever. His lamprey mouth opened, and a pale tongue flicked at his lips. Darina laid a hand upon his shoulder, and he stopped, his face inches from Marielle’s.

‘No,’ she said.

The boy looked up at her questioningly. He tried to say something, but the words just came out as a pair of harsh croaks, like the cawings of a young crow.

‘We promised,’ said Darina. ‘I promised.’

The boy stepped away from her. He went to the table and began packing his tools in his child’s bag. It was time to leave.

Darina stood over Marielle.

‘You lied to me,’ she said. ‘You should have told me about the detective. I could declare our bargain void, and kill you for it.’

Marielle waited. Nothing she could say would make any difference now.

‘But perhaps because of your lie something special has been restored to us. Do you know what your detective once did?’

‘No.’

‘He killed the being that you see here.’ She pointed at the boy. ‘He stilled his great spirit for a time.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Marielle.

‘No, but Parker will when we confront him. I promised that I would let you and your brother live, and I’ll keep my word. We always keep our word.’

The boy went searching in his bag again, and came out with his metal case of syringes. He filled one from a small glass bottle of clear liquid that Marielle had not seen before.

‘No more, please,’ said Marielle.

‘This is different,’ said Darina. ‘But don’t worry: it won’t hurt.’

Marielle watched as the boy injected Grady for the last time. Her brother did not react to the needle, or to the boy’s presence. His gaze was directed inward, but within seconds his eyes had closed, and his chin fell upon his chest. The boy refilled the syringe from the glass bottle. When he was done, the vessel was empty. He dropped it in his bag, and approached Marielle.

‘It’s Actrapid,’ said Darina. ‘Injectable insulin.’

Marielle made her move. Her knees were still drawn up to her chest, her feet flat on the couch. She launched herself at Darina, but the woman was too fast, and Marielle caught her only a glancing blow before she landed hard on the floor, and then the boy was on top of her, the needle was biting, and the world was filling with shadows.

‘You’ll sleep,’ she heard Darina say. ‘You’ll sleep for a very long time.’

The massive dose flooded Marielle’s system, and her mind began to descend into coma.





39





Eldritch woke in a hospital bed and thought, I have dreamed this dream before: a bed; a small, clean room; the pinging of a machine nearby; the sharp chemical odor of antiseptic and, beneath it, all that it was meant to hide; and the clawed fingers pulled at him, trying to keep him forever in the darkness. He lifted his arm and felt a tug as the intravenous drip caught on the sheet. He reached for it, and a hand closed gently but firmly upon his arm.

‘No, let me,’ said the voice, and he smelled that familiar scent of fire and nicotine, and he knew that his son had come to him; not the Collector but his son, for the Collector was never so gentle. His voice sounded slightly muffled: Eldritch’s hearing had been damaged in the blast.

‘I dreamed,’ said Eldritch. ‘I dreamed that she was gone, and then I dreamed that it was but a dream.’

His face hurt. He touched his fingers to it and explored the dressings on the worst of his wounds.

‘I’m sorry,’ said his son. ‘I know what she meant to you.’

Eldritch looked to his left. They had brought his possessions from the scene: his wallet, his keys, his watch. Little things.

But the woman was gone.

‘What do you remember?’ asked his son.

‘The power. We lost power: twice, I think. I went down to the basement, but I could see nothing wrong.’

‘And after that?’

‘A man. He passed me on the street, and I was concerned, but then he walked on, and I let him go. Seconds before it happened, I thought that he called to me. I think he was trying to warn me of something, but then there was an explosion, and I did not see him again.’

‘Do you recall anything about him?’

‘He was in his late forties or early fifties, I think. Unshaven, but not bearded. Perhaps six feet tall. Carrying some weight.’

‘In which direction did he walk?’

‘South.’

‘South. On the far side of the street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell the police this?’

‘No. I don’t think I have spoken to anyone until now. I held her in my arms, but she was gone, and I don’t remember anything else.’

‘The police will want to talk with you. Don’t mention the man to them.’

‘No.’

The son took a cloth and wiped his father’s brow, cooling it while avoiding the wounds.

‘How badly am I hurt?’ asked Eldritch.

‘Cuts and bruises, for the most part. Some concussion. They want to keep you under observation for a few days, though. They’re concerned.’

‘I have trouble hearing. Your voice, my voice, they don’t sound right to me.’

‘I’ll tell the doctors.’

Eldritch twisted on the bed. There was a pain in his groin. He looked beneath the sheet, saw the catheter, and groaned.

‘I know,’ said his son.

‘It hurts.’

‘I’ll tell them about that as well.’

‘My mouth is dry.’

His son took a plastic beaker of water from the bedside locker and held his father’s head while he drank. The old man’s skull felt fragile in his hand, like an egg that could be broken with just a tensing of the fingers. It was a miracle that he had survived. Minutes earlier, and he would have been gone too.

‘I’ll come back later,’ said the son. ‘Do you need anything?’

Now it was his father’s hand that gripped his arm, and his upper body rose from the bed. So strong, this old man . . .

‘Parker came. Parker came, and she died. She was getting his file, and then she died.’ Eldritch was tiring now, and tears of grief squeezed themselves from the corners of his eyes. ‘He warned me, warned you, to back off. He was afraid of the list. He knew that his name was on it.’

‘I had doubts. So did you. The woman, Phipps, she told me something—’

But his father was no longer listening.

‘The list,’ he whispered. ‘The list.’

‘I still have it,’ said his son, and in the soft dawn light filtering through the drapes he was altering in spirit and form, and he was both son and other. ‘And I know where I can find the rest of it.’

‘Kill them,’ said Eldritch, as he fell back on the bed. ‘Kill them all.’

He closed his eyes as his son’s transformation was completed, and it was the Collector who left the room.

Jeff and Rachel came to pick up Sam shortly after nine a.m. She had been with Angel and Louis in the kitchen since before eight, buttering toast and scrambling eggs, and as a result I had to make her change her sweater before her mother saw her and blew a gasket.

Jeff was driving a Jaguar now. From my office window, Angel and Louis watched him pull up outside, step from the car, and take in the view of the Scarborough marshes with the winter sun shining coldly upon them while Rachel walked to the front door.

‘He acts like he owns them,’ said Angel.

‘Or he made them himself,’ said Louis.

‘Transference,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t like him, so you don’t like him either.’

‘No, I just don’t like him,’ said Angel.

‘He got so much money, why’s he driving a Jaguar?’ asked Louis. ‘Jaguar depreciates faster than dollars from Zimbabwe.’

‘He drives it because he has so much money,’ said Angel. ‘How old is he?’

‘Old,’ said Louis.

‘Very old,’ said I.

‘Ancient,’ said Angel. ‘It’s a wonder the man can stand without a stick.’

The front door opened, and Rachel stepped into the hall and called ‘Hello!’

‘We’re in here,’ I said.

She came into the office and raised an eyebrow at the sight of the three of us standing there.

‘The welcoming committee?’

‘Just taking in the view,’ said Louis.

She saw where we were looking, and at whom.

‘Ha-ha,’ she said.

‘He’s younger than I expected,’ said Angel.

‘Really?’

‘No. He’s real old.’

Rachel scowled at Angel.

‘You keep saying things like that and you won’t live to be his age.’

‘I don’t want to live to be his age,’ said Angel. ‘He’s, like, Methuselah in pastels. Who dresses like that anyway?’

Rachel, to her credit, seemed determined to fight Jeff’s corner.

‘He’s playing golf later,’ she said.

‘Golf?’ said Louis. It might have been possible to inject more contempt into four letters and one syllable, but I couldn’t see how.

‘Yeah, golf,’ said Rachel. ‘Regular people play it. It’s a sport.’

‘Golf’s a sport?’

He looked at Angel. Angel shrugged. ‘Maybe we didn’t get the memo.’

‘You guys are jerks, you know that?’ said Rachel. ‘Where’s my daughter? I need to get her away from here before she contracts jerkdom.’

‘Too late,’ said Louis. ‘She got her father’s genes.’

‘You guys are jerks, you know,’ I told him, as I followed Rachel.

‘The cool kids are being mean to us,’ Louis said to Angel.

‘It’s homophobia,’ said Angel. ‘We ought to complain, or write a show tune about it.’

I left them to it.

‘Hey,’ called Angel to my back, ‘does that mean we can’t go to the prom?’

In the hallway, Rachel was helping Sam with her bag.

‘What happened to your nice new sweater?’ asked Rachel, noting that Sam was wearing the old one with holes that I kept in the house for her to use when we worked in the garden.

‘It got eggded,’ said Sam.

‘That figures,’ said Rachel. ‘Did mean Uncle Louis and Uncle Angel throw them at you and call you names?’ She glowered at me.

‘I didn’t put them up to it,’ I said. ‘They can be mean without my help.’

‘Uncle Angel said a bad word,’ said Sam. ‘The one beginning with “f”.’

There was a cry of shock from my office. ‘You promised she wouldn’t tell!’

‘That doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ said Rachel. She raised her voice and directed it to the office. ‘But I’m very disappointed in Uncle Angel.’

‘Sorry.’

Rachel checked that Sam had both socks on, that her underwear was the right way round, and she had her toothbrush and her dolls.

‘Okay, say goodbye to your daddy, and then go to the car,’ she told Sam.

Sam hugged me, and I held her tight. ‘Bye, Daddy.’

‘Bye, honey. I’ll see you soon, okay? I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

She pulled away, and I felt my heart break a little. ‘Bye, Uncle Angel who said a bad word,’ she called.

‘Bye,’ said an embarrassed voice.

‘Bye, Uncle Louis who promised to shoot that man.’

There was a long, awkward pause before Louis said ‘Bye,’ and Sam trotted out the door.

Rachel gave me the hard eye. ‘What?’

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t really have shot him.’

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Can I ask why they’re here?’

‘Just a thing,’ I said.

‘You’re not going to tell me?’

‘Like I said,’ and it was my turn to give her the hard eye, ‘it’s just a thing.’

Her temper was rising now: Angel and Louis’s ribbing of her, Sam’s sweater, Angel’s swearing, and whatever the hell she thought Louis had said, all of it combined to work on her like heat on a pressure cooker. Then again, she hadn’t looked too happy when she’d arrived. An evening spent listening to Jeff tell a crowd of wealthy folk that the banking collapse was all the fault of poor people for wanting a roof over their heads probably hadn’t helped. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked beautiful, but telling her that wouldn’t have helped the situation.

‘I hope you get shot in the f*cking ass!’ she said. She opened the office door wide – ‘That goes for all of you!’ – then slammed the door shut behind her.

‘Come out and say hi to Jeff,’ she ordered. ‘Be polite and act like a normal guy.’

I followed her outside. Sam was already sitting in the child seat in the back of the car. She waved at me. I waved back.

‘Hey, big guy,’ said Jeff. He smiled whitely.

Big guy. What an a*shole.

‘Hey . . . Jeff,’ I said.

We shook hands. He did that thing he always did where he held on to my right hand for too long with his right hand while gripping my upper arm with his left hand, and examined my face the way a surgeon will check out a patient who is seriously ill and doesn’t appear to be getting any better, and is thus an affront to his caregiver.

‘How you doing, fella?’ he asked.

Fella: it just got better and better. Rachel grinned maliciously. It was revenge for earlier.

‘I’m good, Jeff. And you?’

‘Fantastic,’ he replied. ‘Just fine.’

‘Speech went well last night?’

‘It went down a storm. There were people asking me to run for office.’

‘Wow. Somewhere in Africa would be good. I hear Sudan needs ironing out, or maybe Somalia.’

He looked puzzled, and the smile faltered for a moment, then recovered.

‘No, here,’ he said.

‘Right. Of course.’

‘There was a reporter who came along from the Maine Sunday Telegram. They’re going to report the details of my speech on the weekend.’

‘That’s great,’ I said. If they did, the Telegram wouldn’t be getting my dollar seventy-five that Sunday. ‘Any other reporters there?’

‘Some guy from the Phoenix, but he was just hanging around to cause trouble.’

‘Asking awkward questions? Not accepting the party line?’

‘Ordinary people just don’t understand deregulation,’ said Jeff. ‘They think it involves a state of lawlessness, but it simply means allowing market forces to determine outcomes. Once government begins to interfere, those outcomes start to become unpredictable, and that’s when the trouble starts. Even light-touch regulation interferes with the natural running of the system. We just want to make sure that it runs right so everyone can benefit.’

‘So you’re the good guys?’

‘We’re the wealth generators.’

‘You’re certainly generating something, Jeff.’

Rachel intervened. ‘It’s time to go, Jeff. I think you’ve been baited long enough.’ She hugged me and kissed my cheek. ‘You’ll come see Sam in a week or two?’

‘Yes. Thanks for letting her spend the night. I appreciate it.’

‘I didn’t mean that part about you getting shot,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘The other two maybe, but not you.’

She looked to the office window. Angel and Louis were dimly visible through the blinds. Angel raised an arm, as if thinking about waving, then thought better of it.

‘Jerks,’ Rachel said again, as she got into the car, but she was smiling as she said it. Jeff wasn’t joining her, though, not yet. Instead he was looking to the road, where a black Cadillac CTS coupe was slowing down before turning into my drive.

‘Hey, just in time,’ he said.

‘In time for what?’ I asked. Clearly, someone wasn’t being hit too hard by the recession, but it was nobody I knew.

‘There’s a man I’d like you to meet,’ said Jeff. ‘He drove up to hear my speech, and he said he might take a look at some new development up on Prouts Neck while he was in town. I told him I’d keep him company, and he should look out for my car.’

The Cadillac pulled to a gentle halt behind Jeff’s car. The man who climbed out looked a couple of years younger than Jeff and glowed with good health, and he couldn’t have smelled more of money if he was printing off bills in the back of his car. He had opted for a smart casual wardrobe: tan pants, a black roll-neck sweater, and a black mohair jacket. He was balding, but he hid it well by keeping his hair short, and he wasn’t carrying more than a couple of pounds of excess baggage around the waist. He also had the decency to apologize for driving up to my home uninvited, pointing out that the road took a sharp bend and he was concerned about causing an obstruction by leaving his car there. I told him that it was okay, even if I didn’t think it was. This guy made my skin prickle.

‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he said. He waved at Rachel, and she waved back, but she was careful not to look at me.

‘I’d like to introduce you to someone,’ said Jeff, but he didn’t make it clear to whom he was speaking until his next statement. ‘Garrison Pryor, this is Charlie Parker.’

Pryor stretched out a hand, and after only a slight hesitation I shook it.

‘Garrison Pryor, as in Pryor Investments?’ I said.

‘I’m surprised that you’ve heard of us,’ he replied, although he didn’t sound surprised. ‘We’re not one of the big houses.’

‘I get the Wall Street Journal,’ I lied.

‘Really?’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Know thy enemy, perhaps.’

‘Excuse me?’ It was an odd thing for him to have said.

‘It’s just that Jeff has told me a little about you,’ he continued. ‘From what I could gather, you didn’t strike me as a Journal reader. Jeff thinks you may be a closet socialist.’

‘Compared to Jeff, most people are socialists.’

Pryor laughed, displaying white teeth with slightly elongated canines and sharp incisors. It was like being snarled at by a domesticated wolf.

‘How true. I’ve been very interested to make your acquaintance for some time,’ said Pryor. He maintained steady eye contact, and his smile never wavered.

‘Really?’ I said.

‘I’d read a lot about you, even before Jeff entered your realm of acquaintance. The men and women who you’ve hunted down, well, it’s just frightening that such people could have roamed free for so long. It’s quite the service that you’re doing for society.’

From where I stood, I could see Rachel. She still wasn’t looking at me, but she was biting her lower lip hard. I’d seen that expression before: it was as close as Rachel got to a display of concern in public.

I didn’t reply, so Pryor went on talking.

‘Do you know what I find most interesting about you, Mr Parker?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

‘If I’m correct, when a policeman uses his gun there are committees of inquiry, and paperwork, and sometimes even court cases. But you, a private operator, seem to skate around such obstacles with ease. How do you do that?’

‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘And I only shoot the right people.’

‘Oh, I think it’s more than that. Somebody must be looking out for you.’

‘God?’

‘Perhaps, although I was thinking along more terrestrial lines.’

‘I try to keep the law on my side.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Pryor. ‘So do I, and yet I don’t believe we’re at all alike.’

Jeff, who had been smiling at the start of our conversation, wasn’t smiling any longer. He seemed to realize that this wasn’t going the way he might have hoped, whatever that was.

‘We’d better be going, Garrison,’ he said. ‘Rachel and I have to get Sam home, so if you’d like me to take a look at that development with you . . .’

‘You know, Jeff, I don’t think that will be necessary. Maybe this part of the world isn’t for me after all.’

Jeff’s face fell faster than a busted elevator. I guessed that he’d been hoping to cut himself in on the deal by acting as a go-between if Pryor started throwing money around in Maine.

‘If you’re sure,’ said Jeff.

‘I’m very sure. Goodbye, Mr Parker. I’m sorry again for the intrusion, but I’m happy to have made your acquaintance at last. I look forward to reading more about you in the future.’

‘Likewise,’ I said.

Pryor said his goodbyes to Jeff, waved again to Rachel but not to Sam, and reversed his car onto the road before heading west toward the Interstate.

‘See you, big guy,’ said Jeff to me.

As he prepared to get into his car, I leaned in close to him.

‘Jeff,’ I said softly, ‘don’t ever bring any of your friends onto my property again, not without asking me first. You understand?’

He smiled thinly, and nodded. Only Sam waved at me again as they drove away.

Angel and Louis joined me on the driveway.

‘Who was that?’ asked Angel.

‘His name’s Garrison Pryor,’ I replied, ‘and I don’t think he’s one of the good guys.’

Within the hour, I received two messages arising out of that encounter. The first was a text from Rachel. It read only ‘Sorry.’ The second was an email notifying me of a gift subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

It came courtesy of Pryor Investments.