‘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.
40
The late morning news bulletins detailed the death of a fifty-eight-year-old woman in an explosion at a lawyer’s office in Lynn, Massachusetts: I knew nothing about it until then because my focus had been entirely on Sam. The woman, who was not being named until relatives could be informed, was said to be an employee of the business. The principal, Thomas Eldritch, was described only as having suffered injuries in the blast, and was being kept under observation. As yet, the police declined to speculate on the cause of the explosion as investigators remained at the scene, but I knew.
‘The list,’ I said to Angel and Louis. ‘Once the Collector killed Tate, they must have known that he had a copy, either partial or full.’
‘And because they couldn’t get to him, they tried to take out his lawyer,’ said Angel.
I thought about the chain-smoking woman who had guarded the stairs to Eldritch’s office, and the look on her face when she believed that I had upset him in some way. I couldn’t say that I had liked her, exactly, but she had been loyal to the old man, and she had not deserved to die.
The picture on the screen returned to a view of the exterior of Eldritch’s offices. The explosion had started a fire that gutted the building, and it had taken fire department units from adjoining towns to bring it under control. The Pakistani cell phone store was gone too. One of its owners was interviewed on the street. He was weeping. An idiot reporter asked him if he thought the explosion might have been linked to Islamic extremists. The Pakistani businessman stopped weeping for long enough to look shocked, and hurt, and enraged, and then started crying even more.
I was saved the trouble of contacting Epstein by his call to me. He was at last in Toronto, after spending most of the previous night with the police telling them of the circumstances of Adiv’s death. I hadn’t liked Adiv much either. It was turning into a bad week for people who had crossed me. While I spoke to Epstein, Louis slipped my delivery copy of the New York Times in front of me. Adiv’s death had made the front page in what was being described as an assassination attempt on a prominent figure in the Jewish community. The picture of Epstein had been taken a long time before, perhaps a decade or more. Epstein had been doing his best to avoid the limelight ever since the death of his son. The story mentioned that as well. I made the continuation of the story inside, since I was the one who had found his son’s killers. That didn’t make me happy at all. When I checked my cell phone there were forty missed calls, and my message box was full. I gave the phone to Angel and let him start listening to, and deleting, the messages.
‘You’re okay?’ I asked Epstein.
‘Shaken, but otherwise unharmed.’
‘I’m sorry about Adiv.’
‘I know you are. Had he lived, he might have grown to find that incident of the Pine Barrens amusing.’
‘It would have taken some time.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Did you see hear the news about our lawyer friend in Lynn?’
‘I was informed of it this morning,’ said Epstein. ‘We’re assuming that the two attacks are linked?’
‘It’s a big step up to the majors for coincidence if they’re not,’ I replied. ‘No word on Eldritch’s client, though. I figure he was out of town when it happened.’
I was always careful how I discussed the Collector on the phone. It was force of habit, but then I was careful how I discussed the Collector, period.
‘And the reason: revenge? An attempt to discourage further investigation? All of these things, and more? After all, it was not my people who killed Davis Tate.’
‘Tate’s death, and whatever else the client might have been up to, let them know that some version of the list is already out there, courtesy of the late Barbara Kelly. If Eldritch and his client had a copy, then it was logical to surmise that you probably had a copy too. Maybe they hoped to catch Eldritch and his client with the blast at Lynn, or maybe they just wanted to destroy his records. At the very least, it was a way of distracting the client for a time, just as they hoped the attack on you, whether it yielded casualties or not, might be enough to—’
I paused. The word that was on the tip of my tongue was ‘delay’, but why did it spring to mind?
‘Mr Parker?’ said Epstein. ‘Are you there?’
‘It was a delaying tactic, a distraction,’ I said.