CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MICKEY WALLACE LEFT PORTLAND early the next day. He was simmering with resentment and a barely containable anger that was unfamiliar to him, for Mickey rarely got truly angry, but his encounter with Parker, combined with the efforts of Parker’s Neanderthal friend to scare him off, had transformed him utterly. He was used to lawyers trying to intimidate him, and had been pushed up against walls and parked cars, and threatened with more serious damage at least twice, but nobody had punched him the way Parker had in K Pa′ ut many years. In fact, the last time Mickey had been in anything approaching a serious fight was when he was still in high school, and on that occasion he had landed a lucky punch that had knocked one of his opponent’s teeth out. He wished now that he had managed to strike a similar blow at Parker, and as he boarded the shuttle at Logan he played out alternative scenarios in his mind, ones in which it was he who had brought Parker to his knees, he who had humiliated the detective and not vice versa. He entertained them for a couple of minutes, and then dispensed with them. There would be other ways to make Parker regret what he had done, principal among them the completion of the book project on which Mickey had set his heart and, he felt, his reputation.
But he was still troubled by his experience at the Parker house on that mist-shrouded night. He had expected the intensity of his responses to it, his fear and confusion, to diminish, but they had not. Instead, he continued to sleep uneasily, and had woken on the first night after the encounter at precisely 4:03 A.M., convinced that he was not alone in his motel room. On that occasion, he had turned on the lamp by his bed, and the eco-friendly bulb had glowed slowly into life, gradually spreading illumination through most of the room but leaving the corners in shadow, which gave Mickey the uncomfortable sensation that the darkness around him had receded reluctantly from the light, taking whatever presence he had sensed with it and hiding it in the places where the lamp could not reach. He remembered the woman crouched behind the kitchen door, and the child moving her small finger across the window of his car. He should have been able to glimpse their faces, but he had not, and something told him that he should be grateful for that small mercy at least. Their faces had been concealed from him for a reason.
Because the Traveling Man had torn them apart, that’s why, because he left nothing there but blood and bone and empty sockets. And you didn’t want to see that, no sir, because that sight would stay with you until your eyes closed for the last time and they pulled the sheet over your own face. Nobody could look upon that degree of hurt, of savagery, and not be damaged by it forever.
And if those were people whom you loved, your wife and your child, well…
A friend and her daughter; two visitors: that was how Parker had described them to Mickey, but Mickey didn’t accept that explanation for one moment. Oh, they were visitors all right, but not the kind who slept in the spare room and played board games on winter evenings. Mickey didn’t understand their nature, not yet, and he hadn’t decided whether or not to include his encounter in the book that he would present to his publishers. He suspected that he would not. After all, who would believe him? By including a ghost story in his narrative, he risked undermining the factual basis of his work. And yet this woman and child, and what they had endured, represented the heart of the book. Mickey had always thought of Parker as a man haunted by what had happened to his wife and child, but not literally so. Was that the answer? Was what Mickey had witnessed evidence of an actual haunting?
And all of these thoughts and reflections he added to his notes.
Mickey checked into a hotel over by Penn Station, a typical tourist trap with a warren of tiny rooms occupied by noisy but polite Asians, and families of rubes trying to see New York on the cheap. By late that afternoon, he was sitting in what was, by his standards, and the standar J A the stands of most other people who weren’t bums, a dive bar, and considering what he could order without endangering his health. He wanted coffee, but this looked like the kind of place where ordering coffee for any reason unconnected with a hangover would be frowned upon at the very least, if not considered actual evidence of homosexual leanings. In fact, thought Mickey, even washing one’s hands after visiting the restroom might be viewed as suspect in a hole like this.
There was a bar menu beside him, and a list of specials chalked on a board that might as well have been written in Sanskrit, they’d been there so long and unchanged, but nobody was eating. Nobody was doing much of anything, because Mickey was the only person in the place, the bartender excepted, and he looked like he’d consumed nothing but human growth hormone for the past decade or so. He bulged in places where no normal person should have bulged. There were even bulges on his bald head, as though the top of his skull had developed muscles so as not to feel excluded from the rest of his body.
“Get you something?” he asked. His voice was pitched higher than Mickey had anticipated. He wondered if it was something to do with the steroids. There were peculiar swellings on the bartender’s chest, as though his breasts had grown secondary breasts of their own. He was so tan that he seemed at times almost to fade into the wood and grime of the bar. To Mickey, he looked like a pair of women’s stockings that had been stuffed with footballs.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Well, order something while you’re waiting. Look on it as rent for the stool.”
“Friendly place,” said Mickey.
“You want friends, call the Samaritans. This is a business.”
Mickey ordered a light beer. He rarely drank before nightfall, and even then he tended to limit his intake to a beer or two, the night of the visit to Parker’s house excepted, and that night had been exceptional in so many ways. He wasn’t thirsting for a beer now, and even the thought of sipping it made him feel queasy, but he wasn’t about to offend someone who looked like he could turn Mickey inside out and back again before he’d even realized what was happening. The beer arrived. Mickey stared at it, and the beer stared back. Its head began to disappear, as though responding in kind to Mickey’s lack of enthusiasm for it.
The door opened, and a man stepped inside. He was tall, with the natural bulk of someone who had never felt the need to use any form of artificial growth enhancers stronger than meat and milk. He wore a long blue overcoat that hung open, revealing a substantial gut. His hair was short and very white. His nose was red, and not just from the cold wind outside. Mickey realized that he’d made the right choice in ordering a beer.
“Hey,” said the bartender. “It’s the Captain. Long time, no see.”
He reached out a hand, and the newcomer took it and shook it warmly, using his free hand to slap the man’s substantial upper arm.
“How you doin’, Hector? See you’re still using that shit.”
“Keeps me big and lean, Captain.”
“You’ve grown tits, and you must be shaving your back twice a day.”
“Maybe I’ll keep it long, give the boys something to hold on to.”
“You’re a deviant, Hector.”
“And proud of it. What can I get you? First one is on the house.”
“That’s decent of you, Hector. A Redbreast, if you don’t mind, to get the cold out of my bones.”
He walked down to the end of the bar where Mickey was sitting.
“You Wallace?” he asked.
Mickey stood up. He was about five ten, and the newcomer towered over him by seven or eight inches.
“Captain Tyrrell.” They shook hands. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”
“Well, after Hector has obliged me, the drinks are on you.”
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
Hector placed a substantial glass of whiskey, untroubled by ice or water, beside Tyrrell’s right hand. Tyrrell gestured to a booth against the back wall. “Let’s take our drinks down there. You eaten yet?”
“No.”
“They do a good hamburger here. You eat hamburger?”
Mickey doubted that this place did a good anything, but he knew better than to refuse.
“Yes. A hamburger sounds fine.”
Tyrrell raised a hand and shouted the order to Hector: two hamburgers, medium, with all the trimmings. Medium, thought Mickey. Jesus. He’d prefer it charred to within an inch of its life in the hope of killing whatever bacteria might have taken up residence in the meat. Hell, this might be the last burger he ever ate.
Hector duly entered the order on a surprisingly modern-looking register, even if he operated it like a monkey.
“Wallace: that’s a good Irish name,” said Tyrrell.
“Irish-Belgian.”
“That’s some mix.”
“Europe. The war.”
Tyrrell’s face softened unpleasantly with sentimentality, like a marshmallow melting. “My grandfather served in Europe. Royal Irish Fusiliers. Got shot for his troubles.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Ah, he didn’t die. Lost his left leg below the knee, though. They didn’t have prosthetics then, or not like they do now. He used to pin up his trouser leg every morning. Think he was kind of proud of it.”
He raised his glass to Mickey.
“Sláinte,” he said.
“Cheers,” said Mickey. He took a mouthful of beer. Mercifully, it was so cold that he could barely taste it. He reached into his satchel and produced a notebook and pen.
“Straight down to business,” said Tyrrell.
“If yo J A“Ifu’d prefer to wait…”
“Nah, it’s good.”
Mickey took a little Olympus digital voice recorder from his jacket pocket, and showed it to Tyrrell.
“Would you object if—?”
“Yes, I would. Put it away. Better still, take the batteries out and leave that thing where I can see it.”
Mickey did as he was told. It would make things a little more difficult, but Mickey had reasonable shorthand and a good memory. In any case, he wouldn’t be quoting Tyrrell directly. This was background, and deep background. Tyrrell had been quite clear about that when he had agreed to meet with Mickey. If his name appeared anywhere near the book, he’d stomp Mickey’s fingers until they looked like corkscrews.
“Tell me some more about this book you’re writing.”
So Mickey did. He left out the more artistic and philosophical elements of his proposal, and tried to tread as neutral a path as possible as he described his interest in Parker. Although he hadn’t yet ascertained Tyrrell’s views on the subject, he suspected that they were largely negative, if only because, so far, anyone who liked or respected Parker had refused point-blank to talk to him.
“And have you met Parker?” asked Tyrrell.
“I have. I approached him about an interview.”
“What happened?”
“He sucker-punched me in the gut.”
“That’s him all right. He’s a sonofabitch, a thug. And that’s not the worst of it.”
He took a sip of his whiskey. It was already half gone.