‘I had considered that.’
‘It’s why you are a detective.’
‘That’s right. I like to think of myself as wise for a white man.’
‘That bar is set low,’ said Ronald.
‘Not for all of us, and perhaps not for Annie Broyer. I get the sense, from the people I’ve spoken with about her, that she wasn’t dumb. Otherwise she wouldn’t have survived on the streets for as long as she did. I think she would have asked for some proof that these people were on the level. If she said she was going to Prosperous, then I believe that’s where she ended up. Unfortunately, according to the local police, there’s no sign of her, and never has been.’
I hadn’t told Ronald anything that Shaky or the cops in Portland didn’t already know for the most part. Any other thoughts or suspicions, among them the peculiar history of the Familists, I kept to myself.
Ronald remained seated silently in his chair. He appeared to be contemplating something, even if it was how he was going to get out of the chair now that he’d found out what he wanted to know.
‘How did the people who killed Jude find him?’ said Ronald at last.
People: Ronald knew that it took more than a single person to stage a hanging, even one involving a man as seemingly weak as Jude.
‘They watched the shelters,’ I replied. ‘He was, as you remarked, a distinctive figure.’
‘Someone might have noticed them. The homeless, the sharp ones, they’re always watching. They keep an eye out for the cops, for friends, for men and women with grudges against them. It’s hard and merciless at the bottom of the pond. You have to be careful if you don’t want to get eaten.’
Ronald was right. I hadn’t asked enough questions on the streets. I had allowed myself to become sidetracked by Prosperous and what it might represent, but perhaps there was another way.
‘Any suggestions as to whom I might talk with?’
‘You go around using words like “whom” and nobody will talk to you at all. Leave it with me.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’ll get more out of them than you will.’
I had to admit the truth of it.
‘One thing,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘I’d be discreet about it. If I’m right, and Jude was murdered, the people who did it won’t be reluctant to act if they have to cover their tracks. We don’t need any more bodies.’
‘I understand.’
Ronald rose to leave. As anticipated, he had some trouble extricating himself from his seat, but by pressing down hard with his arms he somehow managed it. Once he was free, he regarded the chair in a vaguely hostile manner.
‘Next time, I will not sit,’ he said.
‘That might be for the best.’
He looked out the window at the moonlight shining on the marshes.
‘I have been thinking about getting another dog,’ he said.
Ronald hadn’t owned a dog since Vietnam.
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Ronald, and for the first time since he had arrived at my door, he smiled. ‘Yes, I believe it is.’
When he was gone, I called Angel and Louis in New York. Angel answered. Angel always answered. Louis regarded telephones as instruments of the devil. He used them only reluctantly, and his conversation was even more minimal over the phone than it was in person, which was saying something – or, in Louis’s case, nothing at all.
Angel told me that he was working on finding more of the Collector’s nests, but so far he’d come up empty. Maybe we’d taken care of all of them, and the Collector was now living in a hole in the ground like a character in a book I’d read as a boy. The man had tried to assassinate someone who might have been Hitler, and failed. Hunted in turn, he had literally gone underground, digging out a cave for himself in the earth and waiting for his pursuers to show their face. Rogue Male: that was the title of the book. They’d made a movie of it, with Peter O’Toole. Thinking of the book and the movie reminded me of those holes in the ground around Prosperous. Something had made them, but what?
‘You still there?’ said Angel.
‘Yes, sorry. My mind was somewhere else for a moment.’
‘Well, it’s your dime.’
‘You’re showing your age, remembering a time when you could make a call for a dime. Tell me, what did you and Mr Edison talk about back then?’
‘Fuck you, and Thomas Edison.’
‘The Collector’s still out there. He can rough it, but the lawyer can’t. Somewhere there’s a record of a house purchase that we haven’t found yet.’
‘I’ll keep looking. What about you? Whose cage are you rattling these days?’
I told him about Jude, and Annie, and Prosperous, and even Ronald Straydeer.
‘Last time I talked to you, you were process-serving,’ said Angel. ‘I knew it wouldn’t last.’
‘How’s Louis?’
‘Bored. I’m hoping he’ll commit a crime, just to get him out of the apartment.’
‘Tell him to watch a movie. You ever hear of Rogue Male?’
‘Is it porn?’
‘No.’
‘It sounds like gay porn.’
‘Why would I be watching gay porn?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re thinking of switching teams.’
‘I’m not even sure how you got on that team. You certainly weren’t picked first.’
‘Fuck you again, and your team.’
‘Tell Louis to go find Rogue Male. I think he’ll like it.’
‘Okay.’ His voice grew slightly fainter as he turned away from the phone. ‘Hey, Louis, Parker says you need to go find some rogue male.’
I caught a muffed reply.
‘He says he’s too old.’
‘Rogue Male, starring Peter O’Toole.’
‘Tool?’ said Angel. ‘That’s the guy’s name? Man, that’s gotta be porn …’
I hung up. Even ‘hung’ sounded mildly dirty after the conversation I’d just had. I made some coffee and went outside to drink it while I watched the moon shine on the marshes. Clouds crossed its face, changing the light, chasing shadows. I listened. Sometimes I wished for them to come, the lost daughter and the woman who walked with her, but I had no sense of them that night. Perhaps it was for the best. Blood flowed when they came.
But they would return in the end. They always did.