Bad Men (2003) (31 page)

They should be dead.

Then he turned and saw that his surroundings—the remains of the houses, the grave markers, even the great cross—were now entirely obscured by the insects, their slow movements seeming to bring the stones to life. Dupree could hear the moths brushing against one another, the sound of them like a soft whispering carried on the breeze. With the back of his hand, he touched those on the nearest tree and felt their wings trembling against his skin, but not a single insect fled from his touch or took to the air.

Small fragments of their tissue adhered to his fingers, coating them lightly with a pale dust. He thought that he could taste them in his mouth, just as Sylvie Lauter must have tasted them in her final moments.

Dupree stood silently among them as the sun crossed the sky and the clouds lowered, until at last he left that place, the pitch of the whispering increasing in intensity as he went before abruptly ceasing entirely, as though some secret, half-heard conversation had concluded at last in unity and resolve.

Barron was having a very bad day.

In fact, Barron was having his second bad day in a row. The first had commenced with the phone call from Boston, advising him that his services would be required in the very near future. Barron had tried to explain to the man on the other end of the line that this wasn’t a good time for him, that he was under pressure. The appearance of Parker in the bar had rattled him badly. He had no idea how much the private detective knew, or even suspected, but Barron feared his persistence. He wanted to keep his head down and behave like a model cop for a while. Still, he told the caller nothing about Parker. He was afraid that they might scent trouble and feed him to the department. They had photographs. Christ, they had a video. Barron would have to eat his gun, because there was no way he was doing jail time. No way.

Then there was Terry Scarfe. Part of Barron’s deal with the Russians was that he would look out for Scarfe. Scarfe had contacts. He was a fixer. Scarfe also owed them, and he couldn’t pay them back if he was stuck in jail. Barron knew that they had their hooks in Scarfe until his dying day, and that he would never be permitted to pay in full the debt that he owed. Barron understood this because he feared that he was in the same terrible position. What worried Barron was that Scarfe knew about him, and Scarfe was a screwup. The dipshit had run from him that night he was on patrol with Macy. If he had kept his head down, they might well have passed by him. Instead, Barron had been forced to chase him, to search him, and then to empty him out because the moron was carrying. If another patrol had picked him up ten minutes later and found his stash, Barron might have been compelled to explain how he had missed it during his search, assuming Scarfe didn’t hand him over on a plate to save his own skin. True, he could have argued that Scarfe had been clean during the first search, and nobody would have been able contradict him, but there was still the danger of arousing suspicion.

Then there was Macy to contend with. Barron didn’t know how much Macy had seen during his search of Scarfe, but trainee cops had buckled under pressure in the past and Barron didn’t know if Macy would be a stand-up girl if push came to shove. Even if she kept her mouth shut, Barron didn’t like the idea of Macy having anything on him.

The Russian didn’t listen to Barron’s objections. He was bought and paid for. He was to wait for a call. When that call came the following morning, it marked the start of Barron’s second bad day.

Because the call came from Scarfe.

Dupree made it back to town in time for the arrival of the twelve-thirty
P.M
. ferry, still shaken by his experience at the Site. Amerling was right. Things were happening, and there was nothing that they could do except hold on tight during the ride and pray that it was over quickly.

He smelled perfume close by. He looked to his left and saw that Marianne Elliot was beside him, smiling shyly. There was a knapsack on her back, and she was sipping coffee from a steel travel mug.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. You going over to the mainland?”

“I’ve got some things to do,” she said. “I’ll get the ferry back this evening.”

“And Danny?”

“He’s still with Bonnie Claeson. I dropped by to say hi. I think he’s forgiven me for last night. Anyway, I promised to bring him back something from Portland and he seemed happy with that.”

She touched his sleeve.

“I had a good time with you last night,” she said quietly.

“Thank you.”

“You’re supposed to say that you had a good time too,” she teased.

“I had the best time,” he said.

She leaned in the window, kissed him quickly on the lips, then headed toward the dock. Over by the diner, Nancy Tooker, who had witnessed the exchange, raised her hand and gave him a cheerful wave.

Dupree tried to sink deeper into his seat.

Barron met Scarfe in the parking lot behind the Levi’s store in Freeport. It was relatively quiet there, and most of the cars had out-of-state tags. They sat in Barron’s Plymouth, watching the lot.

“They’re coming in today,” said Scarfe. “They want to meet you.”

“No way,” said Barron.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to argue.”

Barron’s right hand lashed out, catching Scarfe on the side of the face. Scarfe’s head struck the passenger window.

“Don’t you ever talk to me like that again! The fuck you think you are, talking to me that way?”

He stared straight ahead, gripping the wheel tightly, working at the plastic. Scarfe said nothing. Barron wanted to scream, to rage at the injustice of it all. He was a cop. These people had no right to put him through this. He could smell Scarfe beside him. He stank of sweat and unwashed clothes and desperation. Barron needed to get away from him.

“Give me the keys.”

Scarfe handed over the keys to an Isuzu Trooper parked out at the Maine Mall. The Trooper, sourced by Scarfe, was scanner equipped. Barron was to use the Trooper for his part of the job, then just leave the keys in it and walk away. Scarfe would take care of its disposal.

“Now get out of the car,” said Barron.

Scarfe climbed out silently. There was a red mark on his left cheek, and his left eye was tearing.

“You didn’t have to hit me,” he said.

“I know,” said Barron. “I did it because I wanted to.”

Then he drove away.

They ditched the vans at a wrecking yard just outside Brockton and prepared to pick up some replacements. Powell and Tell took care of the details, although Powell, who had grown fond of driving the Econoline, expressed his regret at seeing it go.

“Well, maybe we could hold on to it, just for you,” suggested Tell. “We could get something written along the side, like ‘We Are the Guys You’re Looking For!’ ”

They watched as the Econoline’s roof collapsed inward under the pressure of the crane’s jaws. Glass shattered, and the van shuddered as if in pain. It reminded Powell of the way a man’s face will crumple when he’s shot.

“Yeah, you’re right. Still, we had some good times in that van.”

Tell tried to figure out if Powell was joking, but couldn’t. “You need to make some more friends, man,” he said.

They headed for the battered trailer that functioned as the lot’s office. It smelled bad. An ancient gray filing cabinet spewed yellowed paper from an open drawer, and the carpet was dotted with cigarette burns. Nicotine-smeared blinds obscured the windows.

“Looks like business is booming,” said Powell. “You guys must be planning to float on the stock exchange pretty soon.”

There were three men waiting for them, and none of them smiled. Two pieces of ex-Soviet muscle stood at either side of a third man, who sat behind a cheap plastic desk. The seated man was wearing a plaid jacket over a vile sports shirt. The other men favored leather blouson jackets, the sort that bad disc jockeys wore to public events. Even Powell, who still missed the days when a guy could wear the sleeves of his pastel jacket rolled up to his elbows, thought the men were kind of badly dressed.

Tell, meanwhile, was trying to figure out where the guys were from. Dexter had told him that the main man was Russian, so he figured the others were probably Russian too. They were dressed like shit, which was kind of a giveaway. Tell didn’t know what it was about the new breed of immigrant criminals, but they had the dress sense of fucking lizards. Everything had to shine. If these guys were making money, they were spending it all on acrylics.

The seated man had skin like a battlefield. He’d tried to mask the damage with a beard but it was scraggly and untidy. His hair was thinning unevenly. A patch of pink showed over his left ear. Tell wondered if the guy had some kind of disease, and was relieved that he hadn’t been forced to shake his hand. He had introduced himself as Phil. Yeah, right, thought Tell: Phil, short for Vladimir.

“Dexter didn’t come himself, no?” asked Phil.

“Dexter’s kind of busy right now,” said Tell.

“I’m offended that he would not take the time to visit an old friend.”

“You get his Christmas card? ’Cause I know he sent it.”

“No card,” said Phil.

“Well, that’s a shame,” said Tell.

“Yes,” said Phil. “It is.”

He looked genuinely hurt.

Tell was getting antsy. Dexter had warned him to stay cool, Shepherd too, but Phil was beginning to get on his nerves and he’d been in his company for only a couple of minutes.

“We’re in kind of a hurry here,” said Tell.

“Yes, always hurry,” said Phil. “Too much rush.”

“It’s the way of the world,” said Powell. “People don’t take the time to stop and smell the roses.”

Tell looked at him, but Powell appeared to be genuine. The only thing Tell was smelling in here was rotting carpets and cheap aftershave.

“Your friend know,” said Phil. “He understand.”

Tell was going to have words with Powell once they got outside. He didn’t want Powell to start thinking of himself as some kind of mystic.

Phil picked up a brown envelope from the desk and tossed it to Tell. “Two vans,” he said.

“We wanted three.”

“No three. Two only. No time.”

“Too much rush,” said Tell.

Phil smiled for the first time. “Yes, yes, too much rush. You tell Dexter to come see me.”

Tell raised the envelope in farewell, and tried to smile back. “Yeah, you bet.”

He and Powell turned to leave. They were at the door when Phil said: “And, hey!”

Tell looked back. Phil was now standing, and all three men had guns in their hands.

“You tell him to bring my money when he comes,” Phil said. “And you tell him to hurry.”

Macy was enjoying Larry Amerling’s company. She could tell that he was used to charming the pants off the women who came by the post office (literally, in some cases, she felt certain), but he was funny and knowledgeable and Macy was already beginning to get some sense of the geography of the island.

Amerling told her to hang a right and they followed the road uphill until they came to the main lookout tower. It had five stories, four of them with horizontal slit windows on three sides, a concrete lip overshadowing each window. There was a single chimney at the top. Five glass-strewn steps led up to the reinforced-steel doorway. The door was open.

“Kids,” said Amerling. “Joe tries to keep the towers locked up, but they just break right back in again.”

“Mind if I take a look?” asked Macy.

“Hold your nose,” said Amerling. “I’ll stay here and smoke a cigarette.”

They both got out of the Explorer. Amerling walked down to the road to light up, stealing a glance back at Macy as she climbed the steps. Fine-looking woman, thought Amerling. If I was only…

He tried to make the calculation, then gave it up as too depressing.

Macy pushed the door open and stepped inside. To her left, the words “Toilet Here” had been spray-painted on the wall over what had once served as a fireplace. She decided not to look down. There were no windows on this level, and the floor was bare concrete. To her left, a flight of concrete steps led up to the next level. She took them and came to the second floor. The slit windows were masked with layers of Plexiglas, and dead insects were trapped inside. Macy continued to climb until the concrete steps were replaced with wooden stairs to the top floor. A ladder hung down from a square access door leading to the roof. She climbed up and slipped the bolt.

The wind hit her as she stepped onto the roof, causing her jacket to flap outward like the wings of a startled bird. She zipped it up and walked to the edge. The tower stood high above even the tallest trees, and from her vantage point she could see the Cove, the smaller towers along the coastline, the neighboring islands, ships heading out to sea, even the mainland itself in the distance. The air smelled clean and fresh, with a faint hint of smoke, but the skies were heavy and gray and there was a bitingly cold edge to the wind. She turned to her right and saw Amerling smoking his cigarette. He looked up and waved, and she raised a hand in return until she was distracted by the sight of a blue truck rolling up the road. It was in bad shape, because gray-blue exhaust fumes not only curled from the pipe but seemed to envelop the vehicle entirely. That can’t be right, Macy thought. He’s moving fast, and the wind is blowing against him anyway. How can the fumes surround him in that way?

Then, as she watched, the truck slowed and the smoke appeared to peel away, forming two columns that faded into the forest to the left and right and then dispersed. Macy waited for a moment or two longer, still unsure as to quite what she had seen, then climbed back down the ladder and headed to the door.

She didn’t notice the crude drawings of dying men and burning houses carved into the concrete with a piece of discarded stone, or the length of white hair caught in the bottom rung of the ladder.

Or the child’s cloth doll that watched her impassively from the corner of the room, its body shimmering as the moths moved upon it.