Parker placed a ten on the bar, and the bartender poured three large plastic glasses of soda over ice. They carried their drinks to the smoking area out back. The door to the Porterhouse opened behind them, but nobody looked back, so absorbed were they by the progress of Parker and his associates.
As soon as they were gone, one of the tribesmen took his cell phone from his pocket and started to dial. A shadow fell over him, which was immediately joined by a second. It was as though a pair of mountains had just dropped from space and landed in the Porterhouse. If the bartender had started to believe that his day couldn’t possibly get any worse, he was about to be profoundly disillusioned.
The tribesman, whose name was Dale Pittsky, discovered the massive twin bulks of the Fulci brothers staring down at him. They’d had difficulty parking, a consequence of owning a truck that was like a building on wheels.
The Fulci brothers rarely blessed the Porterhouse with their business. They preferred to avoid blighted institutions on the grounds that they brought their own trouble with them, and so drinking somewhere like the Porterhouse was like taking sand to a desert. They were on new medication, according to Louis, but it didn’t appear to be working any better than the old one, although Paulie Fulci claimed it made everything taste like Grape-Nuts.
Tony Fulci reached out and took Dale’s phone from his hand. It was an old flip top, and Tony stared at it curiously, the way a paleontologist might have examined a particularly obscure fossil.
‘I didn’t think they still made these,’ said Tony. He handed the phone to Paulie, who amused himself by flipping it open and closed with a thumb that was roughly the size and shape of the top of a hammer. His fun came to an end when the phone snapped, leaving the screen dangling by a wire. Paulie shook it, like a cat trying to understand why a dead mouse wouldn’t play anymore.
‘That was the guy’s fuckin’ phone, man,’ said Tony.
‘Sorry,’ said Paulie. He handed the stricken instrument back to Dale.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dale.
‘You know,’ Tony told Dale, ‘they got these things called smartphones now. You should ask for an upgrade.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Who were you calling?’ said Tony.
‘Nobody,’ said Dale.
‘Aw, you must have been trying to call somebody. Here, why don’t you use mine?’
Tony handed Dale a phone the size of a cinder block, encased in rubber.
‘You don’t mind if we listen in, do you?’ asked Tony. ‘I mean, you might be calling France, or –’ He tried to think of another country right off the top of his head, and failed, so settled for ‘somewhere’.
Dale didn’t take the phone. He was seriously wishing that he’d never left the house that day. Fuck Harpur Griffin. Dale barely knew him anyway, and no longer saw any percentage in making a call for help on Griffin’s behalf.
‘It’s not urgent,’ said Dale.
‘If you’re sure,’ said Tony. The massive phone vanished into one of the pockets of his jacket, causing it to bulge like a tumor. ‘In that case, why don’t you just sit quietly and wait until our friends have concluded their business, and then we’ll be on our way.’
Tony gestured to the bartender.
‘You got any board games?’
‘No.’
Tony shrugged, and turned back to Dale.
‘You know any songs?’
35
The three men were sitting behind the Porterhouse, smoking around a wire spool table with sawed-off beer cans as ashtrays. Parker had a description of Harpur Griffin, supplemented by a couple of mug shots courtesy of Moxie Castin’s contacts. Griffin was the kind of man who had probably skated by on looks and a certain superficial charm in his youth, but his stocks of both were dwindling and he had nothing with which to replace them. His features were fading into vacuity, and his charm had curdled to sleaze. Jail must have been hard for him at the start. What Griffin inflicted on Burnel had probably been visited on him earlier in his incarceration. He was not tall – five-five or five-six – and wore dark blue Levi’s, tan cowboy boots, and a white shirt. His hair was long and blond, and he was laughing about something, displaying yellowed jail teeth. The tabletop was littered with bottles of Bud and a handful of shot glasses, although the glasses – and most of the bottles – seemed to be piling up at Griffin’s side of the table.
He was seated so that he was facing away from the back door of the bar, which meant he was either careless, drunk, or simply didn’t believe he had any cause for concern. Then again, it might have been the men with him who had provided Griffin with an enhanced sense of personal security. The one nearest the door wore black jeans and a black shirt buttoned to the neck, along with a gray fleece to keep out the gathering chill that didn’t appear to be bothering Griffin. He had scuffed black work boots on his feet, and hands that had put in some heavy manual labor. His hair was brown running to gray, and his face was heavily lined around the eyes and mouth, and pitted with flecks of black, as though a gun had once gone off too close to him. He had picked at the label on his bottle, and made a pile of the shreds on the table.
The one who sat alongside him was like a fox in human form. His features were distorted so that his nose and mouth were strangely elongated, lending him his vulpine aspect, accentuated by red hair flecked with silver, and sideburns that extended neatly almost to the corners of his mouth. His eyes were a very dark brown, and the nails on his fingers had been trimmed to points. He seemed almost to snarl at the three men approaching him, baring his teeth to reveal the spaces between them, so that they resembled pale fence posts long stripped of their wire.
A Gunpowdered Man and a Fox: they were quite the pair.
As though to a prearranged signal, Parker, Angel, and Louis spread out, never taking their eyes from the two silent men, for they, and not Griffin, were unmistakably the threat. Griffin, realizing suddenly that he had lost the attention of his listeners, turned to face the newcomers, but did not rise. He was that smart, at least.
‘Help you?’ said Griffin.
‘I hope so,’ said Parker. He gave Griffin his attention, knowing that Angel and Louis had the other two marked. ‘I was wondering if you’d heard from Jerome Burnel lately.’
‘I don’t think I know that name,’ said Griffin.
‘You were in Warren with him.’
‘I was in Warren with a lot of guys. Pardon me, but I don’t think you’ve told us your name.’
He put the emphasis on both ‘us’ and ‘your’, which gave Parker all he needed to know about him. Griffin would always rely on a pack for support. Alone, he’d run.
‘My name is Charlie Parker. I’m a private investigator. I could give you a card, but I figure your friend there would probably just add it to his collection of torn paper.’
The Gunpowdered man’s face had not moved a muscle. He hadn’t even blinked much, as far as Parker could tell. Parker thought that he’d encountered human-shaped voids like this one before: they could skin a man alive without breaking a sweat or raising their blood pressure.
‘I don’t believe I have to answer any questions from a private investigator,’ said Griffin.
‘That’s right, you don’t. But here’s how it goes: you don’t talk to me, and I feed you to the police, and then you have to get all lawyered up if you decide not to answer their questions. It’s easier just to deal with me.’
‘And your friends – are they private investigators too?’
‘No, they’re just private.’
Griffin took a sip of beer to give himself time to think.
‘Just private,’ he said. ‘I like that.’
‘Aren’t you going to make the introductions?’ asked Parker. ‘Shame to have us all out here, and nobody knowing anyone’s name but yours and mine.’
‘My friends are private too,’ said Griffin.
‘From away, is what I hear.’
Louis shifted his weight, like a big cat vacillati
ng between a stretch and a pounce.
‘These are Southern boys,’ he said, ‘the low-down kind.’ Louis sniffed the air, then added: ‘I can smell it on them – all grease, and blood, and damned ignorance.’
The Gunpowdered Man tensed, and the Fox raised the index finger of his right hand in warning to his colleague.
‘Aw, you don’t like that, huh?’ Louis continued. ‘Don’t care to be called on your roots. I’ve been dealing with peckerwoods like you all my life, men whose mommas shit them out after their daddies put their pole in the wrong fishing hole. See, I’m a Southern boy too, but not your kind, and it’s nothing to do with the color of my skin. I just got more self-respect than to keep company with a jailhouse rapist.’
This time, the Gunpowdered Man was halfway out of his seat when the Fox gripped his forearm, digging those nails into his partner’s flesh. And all the time the Fox’s eyes flicked from Louis to Angel and back again, as though uncertain from which of them the first attack might come, but unafraid of either.
‘Least we know who’s in charge,’ said Louis, and he leaned back against the wall, content to have stirred the pot to his liking.
Harpur Griffin was gnawing at his lower lip. He pointed a finger at Louis.
‘You take that back, what you called me,’ he blustered, but Louis didn’t even bother giving Griffin the oxygen of his attention. Instead he remained focused on the Fox, the hint of a smile on his lips, his head bobbing slightly to music that only he could hear, a private soundtrack to the possibility of violence. To Parker’s right, Angel stood with his hands clasped before him and his jacket open, ready to go for the gun.
‘I said—’ Griffin began to say, until Parker interrupted.
‘He heard you,’ said Parker. ‘He just doesn’t care.’
‘He’s all biggity with his buddies close by.’
Biggity. Interesting.
‘He’s kind of biggity even without them.’
‘He called me a rapist.’
As Griffin grew more annoyed, his Southern accent grew more pronounced. Parker was sorry that Louis hadn’t goaded the others into speech so that they might reveal themselves too. Southern, Louis had guessed, but there was a lot of the South to go around.
‘That’s right,’ said Parker. ‘He called you a jailhouse rapist because you sexually assaulted Jerome Burnel in Warren – more than once, from what I hear.’
‘I told you: I don’t know that name.’
‘You raped a man and didn’t even have the good manners to ask him his name?’ said Parker. ‘That’s uncouth. Let’s try again: Jerome Burnel.’
‘Get the fuck out of here. We’re done.’
‘You know, he was released from prison not long ago,’ said Parker, as if Griffin had not even spoken. ‘Unfortunately, he seems to have gone missing. That troubles me because he’s my client.’
‘You hiring on for pedophiles?’ said Griffin. He pronounced it ‘pee-doe-fills’.
‘So you do know him.’
‘Maybe I heard the name.’
‘Have you seen him since he got out?’
‘No. Unlike you, I don’t consort with men of that stripe. I’d rather watch two dogs screwing.’
He picked up his bottle of Bud, drained what was left, then shifted his grip to the neck and made a little feint at Parker. Parker didn’t react, but Angel’s hand inched closer to his gun, and the Fox glared at Griffin in the manner of one dumbstruck by such foolishness.
Griffin laughed. ‘I was only fucking with you,’ he said.
He threw the bottle at the bar’s back wall and watched it shatter.
‘You made Burnel’s life a misery while he was in prison,’ said Parker.
‘If he’s the same man I’m thinking of, then he had no cause to complain,’ said Griffin. ‘He was a deviant. There was a line to make him pay for his ways.’
‘What about you?’ said Parker. ‘Did you get ten years for robbing from the rich to give to the poor?’
‘I didn’t fuck no children.’
‘Neither did he.’
‘Might as well have.’
‘Doesn’t answer my question.’
‘The hell with your question.’
‘You got ten years for aggravated assault on a pair of old women in the course of a home invasion. One of them died six months later.’
‘That wasn’t on me. Old people die. It happens. And I am done answering your questions. Go talk to the cops. Send them here if the mood takes you. I won’t be hard to find. I’ll tell them what I told you: maybe I remember this Burnel, and maybe I gave him a lick or two, but that’s all I know. I’m done with Warren. That’s another life to me now.’
Parker took in the three men. The Fox was now staring at the table, and the Gunpowdered Man had returned to tearing his beer label into even smaller strips.
‘Well, thank you all for your time,’ said Parker.
He headed for the door, not quite giving them his back, even though Angel and Louis remained close. He paused with his fingers on the handle, the door now open, the bar ahead dim after the daylight.
‘I did have one more question,’ he said. ‘Who is the Dead King?’
Ah, there it was. The Gunpowdered Man scattered his strips of paper to the breeze, and the Fox’s eyes were not on Parker, or Angel and Louis, but on Griffin.
‘I don’t know what that is,’ said Griffin, but he was speaking to the Fox, and each word was a lie.
‘I heard you were shouting the Dead King’s name all over Warren,’ said Parker, ‘like he was the Lord and you were testifying, but maybe I was mistaken. In the meantime, though, I’ll keep asking around, just in case.’ He nodded at Griffin’s companions. ‘I hope you boys enjoy your stay in the city.’
He stepped into the bar, Angel and Louis following behind, never taking their eyes from the men at the table.
‘I’ll see you again,’ said Louis to the feral man, who did not reply, and then was lost as the door closed upon the trio.
‘I heard glass break,’ said the bartender.
‘And you came running, right?’ said Angel.
‘I’m not that dumb. But nobody got hurt, did they?’
‘Not yet.’
They moved quickly to the exit, Angel and Louis making no effort to hide the fact that their hands were on their guns, staring back at the closed door, waiting for it to spring open, waiting for the men to come. The Fulci brothers were already ahead of them, and they confirmed that the street outside was clear. Only when both their vehicles were safely away, and the Porterhouse was fading into the distance, did Parker breathe more easily.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
It was Louis who answered.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that maybe Harpur Griffin ain’t long for this world.’
36
They met back at the Great Lost Bear. The Fulcis parked in the lot across the street so they could watch the door, while Parker, Angel, and Louis took a booth at the back – the same booth, in fact, in which they’d recently listened to Jerome Burnel’s tale. Parker and Louis drank wine, while Angel had a beer. All felt in need of a drink, because the presence of the two men at the Porterhouse had been profoundly unsettling to them. Parker experienced a sense of weight and oppression, as though he had passed through a storm and his clothing was heavier than before, and the clouds above yet threatened to spill more rain.
‘Three possibilities,’ he said. ‘One: assuming Burnel hasn’t simply run, taking only the clothes on his back, then those men had nothing to do with his disappearance, and the fact that they were keeping company with Griffin was purely coincidental.
‘Two: they took Burnel, but they didn’t leave town, which means Burnel is still somewhere in Maine, or even Portland. Anyone else want to guess Three?’
‘They’re the rearguard,’ said Angel. ‘Someone else took Burnel, and they were left behind to make sure that nobody beyond the probation service cared much if he was gone.’
‘And
then we showed up,’ said Louis.
‘And baited them. You even found a way to insult their moms.’
‘I don’t think I want to meet either of their moms. The redhead looked like one side of his family made a habit of having sex with animals.’
‘And then you threw Harpur Griffin to them,’ said Angel.
‘Yeah, they didn’t like that,’ said Louis. ‘Old Harpur didn’t care much for it either, judging by the way the blood left his face. It means they now have a choice to make: they can cut and run, and leave Griffin here to clean up the mess; or, more likely, they put Griffin in a hole, then go back to wherever they came from.’
‘Unless Griffin’s dumb, then right now he’s pleading his case to be left alive,’ said Angel. ‘Maybe he’ll offer to try and take care of us for them.’
‘He didn’t look that good,’ said Louis.
‘Few people do,’ said Parker. ‘If he can’t keep his mouth shut, and he can’t come after us, then what good is he to them?’
‘No good at all,’ said Louis. ‘Which is why you put his blood in the water to begin with by talking about this Dead King. You think Griffin might break, and if he does he’ll turn to us.’
‘It’s what I’m hoping. You think it’ll work?’
‘No. Like I said in the car, I think they’ll kill him.’
Parker sipped his wine. He realized that he didn’t really care either way what happened to Griffin, beyond his potential usefulness as a possible lead to the whereabouts of Jerome Burnel. But Griffin wouldn’t have shared what he knew willingly – Parker had understood that the moment he’d set eyes on him – and needed to be forced into a situation where information was the only currency he had to spend, and all that might save him. Other than that, Griffin was a minor blight on the human race, a stain that would fade with his passing. The men with him, though, were harbingers of a greater evil, outriders for whoever it was that called himself the Dead King.