The Wrath of Angels (43 page)

‘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 fucking 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 asshole.

‘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.

T
he 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.

‘But distracting us from what?’ said Epstein.

‘The plane,’ I said. ‘Somehow they’ve found out about the plane, and they know that we’re looking for it too.’

‘How long before you can start the search?’

‘Tomorrow, if we’re lucky and we can get a solid lead on its location. I still haven’t spoken to Marielle Vetters again. If she can’t help us, I have one other idea.’