‘Is it?’ she repeated.
‘Maybe not,’ I conceded.
‘Yeah.’
There was an uncomfortable silence, but it was still less uncomfortable than actually trying to conduct a conversation. She continued to puff on her cigarette and view me through the fug of the smoke. She produced a lot of smoke, so there was a limit to how much of me she could see through it. I suspected that she liked it better that way.
‘I’m here to see Mr Eldritch,’ I said, just before I threatened to lose sight of her entirely.
‘You have an appointment?’
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t see people without an appointment. You ought to have called ahead.’
‘I would have, but nobody ever answers the phone.’
‘We’re real busy. You could have left a message.’
‘You don’t have an answering service.’
‘You could have written. You can write, can’t you?’
‘I wasn’t thinking that far ahead, and it’s urgent.’
‘It always is.’ She sighed. ‘Name?’
‘Charlie Parker,’ I said. She knew my name. After all, she’d let me in without the aid of the intercom to identify me.
‘You got some ID?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘I look like a kidder to you?’
‘Not really.’ I handed over my license.
‘It’s the same picture as last time,’ she said.
‘That’s because I’m the same guy.’
‘Yeah.’ She made it sound as though that represented a regrettable lack of developmental ambition on my part. My license was handed back to me. She picked up the receiver on her beige phone and dialed a number.
‘That man is here again,’ she said, even though it had been years since my presence had dampened her day. She listened to the voice on the other end of the line, and put the phone down.
‘Mr Eldritch says you can go up.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Wouldn’t have been my choice,’ she said, and commenced feeding another double sheet of paper into her typewriter, shaking her head and scattering cigarette ash across her desk. ‘Wouldn’t have been my choice at all.’
I headed up to the third floor, where an unmarked door stood closed. I knocked, and a cracked voice told me to come in. Thomas Eldritch rose from behind his desk as I entered, a pale, wrinkled hand extended in greeting. He was dressed, as usual, in a black jacket and pinstripe trousers with a matching vest. The gold chain of a watch extended from a buttonhole on his vest to one of the pockets. The bottom button of the vest remained undone. Eldritch adhered to tradition in his modes of attire as in so many other matters.
‘Mr Parker,’ he said. ‘It is a pleasure, as always.’
I shook his hand, expecting it to crumble to pieces in mine. Shaking hands with him was like grasping quail bones wrapped in rice paper.
His office was less tidy than before, and some of those piles of documents from his secretary’s lair below had begun to colonize it. Names and case numbers were handwritten on the front of every file in glorious copperplate, the quality of the lettering consistent throughout, even as some of the writing itself had faded over time.
‘You seem to accumulate a lot of paper for someone with such a limited client base,’ I said.
Eldritch looked around his office as if seeing it for the first time, or perhaps he was just trying to view it as a stranger might.
‘A slow, consistent trickle that has grown to form a lake of legalese,’ he said. ‘It is the lawyer’s burden. We throw away nothing, and some of our cases drag on for many, many years. Lifetimes, it often seems to me.’
He shook his head sadly, clearly regarding the propensity of individuals to lead long lives as a deliberate attempt to complicate his existence.
‘I suppose a lot of these people are dead by now,’ I said, in an effort to provide some consolation.
Eldritch minutely adjusted the neatly ordered stack of files on his desk, flicking the little finger of his left hand along their spines. The finger was missing a nail. I had not noticed its absence before. I wondered if it had simply fallen out, a further manifestation of Eldritch’s disintegration.
‘Oh yes, very much so,’ said Eldritch. ‘Very dead indeed, and those that are not dead are dying. They are the dead who have not been named, you might say. We are all walking in their ranks, and in time each of us will have a closed file with our name written upon it. There is great pleasure to be had in closing a file, I find. Please, take a seat.’
The visitor’s chair in front of his desk had recently been cleared of paperwork, leaving a clean, rectangular patch in the center of the dust on the leather cushion. It had obviously been some time since anyone had been offered a seat in Eldritch’s office.
‘So,’ said Eldritch, ‘what brings you here, Mr Parker? Do you require me to prepare your will? Do you feel the imminence of your mortality?’
He chuckled at his joke. It was the sound of old coals being raked on a cold, ash-laden fire. I didn’t join in.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I have a lawyer.’
‘Yes: Ms Price up in South Freeport. You must prove quite a handful for her. After all, you do get up to all sorts of mischief.’
He wrinkled his nose, and blew the last word at me as if it were a kiss. In the right light, and the right mood, he might have resembled an indulgent, avuncular figure, except that it was all a pose. Throughout our exchange, not once had an unsettling steeliness left his eyes, and, for all of his obvious ongoing decrepitude, those eyes remained remarkably clear, and bright, and hostile.
‘Mischief,’ I echoed. ‘The same observation might equally be made about your own client.’
I chose the singular carefully. Whatever impression Eldritch’s practice gave of even the slightest interest in conventional legalities, I believed that it existed for only one true purpose: as a front for the work of the man who occasionally went by the name of Kushiel, but was more commonly known as the Collector. The law firm of Eldritch & Associates targeted putative victims for a serial killer. It was engaged in an ongoing discourse with the damned.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Parker,’ said Eldritch. ‘I do hope that you’re not implying some knowledge of wrongdoing on our part.’
‘Do you want to search me for a wire?’
‘I doubt that you would be so crude in your methods. I suspect that it simply amuses you to make accusations you can’t possibly prove about suspicions on which you lack the courage to act. If you have questions to ask about the behavior of this “client”, then you should put them to him yourself.’
‘We’ve had words about it, but infrequently,’ I said. ‘He’s a difficult man to find. He tends to hide under rocks, waiting to pounce on the unwary and the unarmed.’
‘Oh, Mr Kushiel usually hides much deeper than that,’ said Eldritch, and any pretense of goodwill vanished. The office was very cold, much cooler than the morning outside, but I could find no sign of an air-conditioner. There wasn’t even a window to be opened, and yet, as Eldritch spoke, his words found form in plumes of condensation.
And just as my use of the singular about his client had been carefully chosen, so too was his use of his client’s name at that particular point in our discussion. I was aware of the derivation of that particular identity.
In demonology, Kushiel was Hell’s jailer.
The first time I had approached Eldritch, his client had been waiting for me outside when I left. If that was going to be the case again, I wanted to know. There was an entente between us, but it was delicate, and far from cordiale. The existence of the list was likely to complicate that relationship further, especially if the Collector had begun to target those on it.
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘Abroad in the world,’ came the reply. ‘There is work to be done.’
‘Is he a fan of talk radio?’
‘Somehow, I doubt it.??
?
‘Did you hear that Davis Tate died?’
‘I didn’t know the man.’
‘He was a minor cheese on right-wing radio. Someone shot him in the head.’
‘Everyone is a critic nowadays.’
‘Some more than others. Usually a bad review on the Internet suffices.’
‘I don’t see how this concerns me.’
‘I believe that you and, by extension, your client, might have been in contact with a woman named Barbara Kelly. She provided you with a document, a list of names.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
I ignored him, and continued. ‘Your client may be tempted to act upon that information. In fact, I think he may already have started with Davis Tate. You need to tell him to keep his distance from the people on the list.’
‘I don’t “tell” him anything,’ replied Eldritch acidly. ‘You should not presume to do so either. He will do as he sees fit, within, obviously, the limits of the law.’
‘And what law would that be, exactly? I’d like to see where serial killing has been enshrined as a legal act.’
‘You’re baiting me, Mr Parker,’ said Eldritch. ‘It’s uncouth.’
‘Your client is more than uncouth: your client is insane. If he is beginning to take action against the individuals on that list, he’ll alert others on it, and those who control them, to the fact of its existence. We’ll lose them all just to satisfy your client’s bloodlust.’
Eldritch’s limbs stiffened in anger. It brought out the excessive politeness that was his lawyer’s training.
‘I would contest your use of the word “bloodlust”,’ he said, enunciating each syllable slowly and clearly.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It implies an emotional capacity to which he can’t even aspire, but we can have a semantic discussion about the best definition of his mania on another occasion. For now, all he has to know is that there are larger interests at stake here, and other parties involved.’
Eldritch’s hands gripped his desk as he leaned forward, the scrawny tendons in his neck extending so that he looked like a turtle deprived of its shell.
‘Do you think he cares about some old Jew squatting in New York, fingering his tassels as he prays for his lost son? My client acts. He is an agent of the Divine. There is no sin in his work, for those whom he chooses to confront have forfeited their souls through their own depravity. He is engaged in the great harvest, and he will not, cannot, stop. Files must be closed, Mr Parker. Files must be closed!’
Spittle flecked his lips, and his usually bloodless features had bloomed with an unexpected rush of sanguinity. He seemed to realize that he had overstepped his usual boundaries of decorum, for the tension eased out of his body, and he sank back into his chair, releasing his grip upon his desk. He took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, patted it against his mouth, and looked with distaste at the marks on the material. It was spotted with red. He caught me staring at it, so he folded it quickly and put it away.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘That was uncalled for. I will pass on your message, although I can’t promise that it will do any good. He seeks and finds, seeks and finds.’
‘There’s another risk involved in his actions,’ I said.
‘Which is?’
‘He will force them to act against him, but he’s hard to pin down. You’re much easier to find.’
‘That could almost be interpreted as a threat.’
‘It’s a warning.’
‘To borrow your expression, that’s a matter of semantics. Will there be anything else?’
‘I do have one last question,’ I asked.
‘Go on.’ He did not look at me, but began writing on a yellow legal pad in that elegant copperplate. Already he had dismissed me in his mind. I had forced him to shout. I had seen the blood on the handkerchief. He wanted me gone from his presence.
‘It concerns the list that you were sent.’
‘List, list.’ A drop of blood fell from his lips and exploded upon the paper. He continued writing, so that blood and ink combined. ‘Again, I know of no such list.’
I ignored him.
‘I was wondering if my name was on it.’
The nib of the pen stopped moving, and Eldritch peered up at me like some old, malicious imp.
‘Worried, Mr Parker?’
‘Interested, Mr Eldritch.’
Eldritch pursed his lips.
‘Let us speculate, then, since you seem so convinced of its existence, and my knowledge of it. If my name were on such a list, I might well be worried, for what could one have done to justify one’s place upon it?’
He wagged the bloodied nib of his pen at me.
‘I think that perhaps you will be meeting my client sooner than you anticipate. I’m sure that the two of you will have a great deal to discuss. If I were you, I would begin preparing my defense now.
‘And perhaps,’ he added, as I rose to go, ‘you might like to think again about that will.’
Eldritch’s secretary was standing at her door when I left her boss’s office, looking anxiously up the stairs, alerted by the earlier shouting. Despite her concern, a cigarette still dangled securely from her lips.
‘What did you do to him?’ she asked.
‘I endangered his blood pressure a little, although I was surprised he had enough blood in him to manage it.’
‘He’s an old man.’
‘But not a nice one.’
She waited for me to come down before she started up the stairs to check on her employer.
‘You’ll get what’s coming to you,’ she said, and she practically hissed the threat. ‘You’ll vanish from the face of the earth, and when they search your home for clues, they’ll find something is missing if they look hard enough: a photograph in a frame, or a pair of cufflinks inherited from your father. It will be an item that had meaning for you, a cherished heirloom, a memory enshrined in a possession, and it will never be found again, because he will have added it to his collection, and we will close and burn the file with your name written on it, just as you too will burn.’
‘You first,’ I said. ‘Your dress is smoldering.’
One of her feet was on a higher step than the other, and her dress had formed a neat basket for the cigarette ash that was burning a hole through the fabric. She brushed at it with her hand, but the damage was already done. It was all relative, as the dress had been horrible to begin with.
‘Let’s talk again soon,’ I said. ‘You take care now.’
She whispered some obscenity, but by then I was already heading for the door. The night before, I had taken the precaution of removing my gun from the locked box under the spare tire in my car, and I was now armed. Before I left Eldritch’s building I took off my jacket, and used it to conceal the gun in my right hand. I kept it there as I walked back to my car, making a slow turn in the middle of the street to make sure that there was nobody at my back. Only when I was driving out of Lynn did I begin to feel even remotely secure, but it was a temporary, compromised thing. My meeting with the old lawyer had unnerved me, but the certainty and venom with which his secretary had spoken had given me the confirmation that I was seeking.
The Collector was in possession of the same list as Epstein.
And my name was on it.
31
Grady Vetters lay unconscious on the floor of Teddy Gattle’s living room. The boy had given him a second, stronger dose of sedative after they had finished questioning him, and he would remain out cold for many hours. Darina had closed the drapes and pulled the blinds, and she and the boy had fed themselves from the contents of the refrigerator. Eventually the boy had drifted off to sleep, curled up on the couch with his mouth open and one small fist curled against his chest. One might almost have mistaken him for an innocent.
Darina did not sleep, not yet. Her face hurt, but she made do with swallowing Advil at regular intervals, and watched television with the volume turned down l
ow. Daylight came, but she was not afraid of being discovered. Both Vetters and his friend had confirmed that the house received few visitors during the day, and Vetters’ recent argument with his sister meant that even she would be unlikely to trouble her brother until he framed some apology for his actions.
Darina now knew the story of the airplane in the woods, or as much of it as Harlan Vetters had chosen to share with his son, but she was certain that he had told his daughter more. It was clear from what Vetters had said that his father regarded him as untrustworthy, a disappointment. The old man had placed his faith in the sister, Marielle. She had looked after him in his last illness, and who knows what they had spoken of together over those final weeks and months? Darina had been tempted to confront Marielle Vetters immediately, but she and the boy needed to rest. The pain of her burns had debilitated her, and anyway, it would be easier for them to move around once darkness fell. Her ravaged face would attract attention in daylight, and there were those in this town who might remember her from before, when she was still beautiful.
Careful not to wake the boy, she walked to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. Her wounds glistened beneath their layer of ointment, and her damaged eye resembled a drop of milk in a pool of blood. She had loved being beautiful because it was a reminder of her true nature, but she would never be beautiful again, not in this form. She would be scarred forever, even if she consented to grafts. Perhaps she would shed this skin, just as the boy had done, and wander for years before cocooning herself in another body, there to await her emergence.
In time, though, in time. The plane was important. The list had to be secured.
Grady Vetters stirred, and moaned from where he lay beside the cold fireplace. They had only been forced to injure him a little. The sodium thiopental had made him more malleable, but he had still instinctively tried to protect his sister. The boy had been forced to crush the tips of two of Vetters’ fingers with a pair of pliers, and after that he had told them everything.
What he could not tell them, though, was whether his sister had spoken to anyone else about the plane. Grady Vetters had been foolish enough to share the story with Teddy Gattle, and Gattle, believing that he was doing his friend a favor, had made the call to Darina. Apparently, Vetters had been reluctant to contact Darina himself. He had been smart enough to realize that it might draw unwanted attention to himself and his sister. Teddy Gattle, unfortunately, had not been quite so smart, which was why he was now dead. Marielle Vetters, according to both her brother and his late friend, was smarter than both of them, but Grady Vetters admitted to Darina that his sister had recently raised the possibility of seeking some professional advice on their situation. Her brother had been less than supportive, and his sister had not brought up the subject again, but she was strong willed, and Grady Vetters knew that she was more than capable of going behind his back if she believed it was the right thing to do. If she had sought counsel, that made finding the plane all the more urgent.