‘I think you know. For sneaking around my property. For being dumb enough to drop your card while you were here.’
He leaned against the rail to support himself. ‘I didn’t drop it.’
‘You’re telling me you left it for me in the dirt on my back porch? That doesn’t sound likely.’
‘I’m telling you that I didn’t drop it. I slipped it under the door for the woman who was in your house last night, but she just pushed it back.’
I looked away. I saw skeletal trees amid the evergreens, and the channels in the salt marshes shining coldly amid the frozen snow. I saw a single black crow lost against the gray sky.
‘What woman?’
‘A woman in a summer dress. I tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t say anything.’
I glanced at him. His eyes couldn’t meet mine. He was telling a version of the truth, but he had hidden away some crucial element. He was trying to protect himself, but not from me. Mickey Wallace was scared to death. I could see it in the way his eyes kept returning to something behind the window of my living room. I don’t know what he expected to see but, whatever it was, he was glad that it hadn’t appeared.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I came out to the house. I thought you might be more amenable to a discussion away from the bar.’
I knew that he was lying, but I wasn’t about to call him on it. I wanted to hear what he had to say about the events of the previous night.
‘I saw a light, and I went around to the back door. There was a woman inside. I slipped my card under the door, and she slid it back. Then—’
He stopped.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘I heard a girl’s voice,’ he continued, ‘but she was outside. I think the woman joined her at some point, but I didn’t look so I can’t be sure.’
‘Why didn’t you look?’
‘I decided to leave.’ His face, and those four words, spoke volumes.
‘A wise choice. It’s a shame that you were here in the first place.’
‘I just wanted to see where you lived. I didn’t mean any harm by it.’
‘No.’
He breathed in deeply, and once he was certain that he wasn’t going to throw up, he rallied and pulled himself up to his full height.
‘Who were they?’ he asked, and now it was my turn to lie.
‘A friend. A friend and her daughter.’
‘Your friend’s daughter always go walking in the snow in dense fog, writing things on other people’s windows?’
‘Writing? What are you talking about?’
Mickey swallowed hard. His right hand was trembling. His left was jammed in his coat pocket.
‘There was something written on the window of my car when I got back to it,’ he said. ‘It said, “stay away from my daddy.”’
It took all of my self-control not to reveal myself to him. I wanted so badly to look up at the attic window, for I remembered a message written on the glass there, a warning left by an entity that was not quite my daughter. Yet the house did not feel the same way that it had felt then. It was no longer haunted by rage and grief and pain. Before, I had sensed their presence in the shifting of shadows and the creaking of boards, in the slow closing of doors where there was no breeze, and in the tapping on windows where there were no branches to touch them. Now the house was at peace, but if Wallace was speaking the truth, then something had returned.
I recalled my mother once telling me, some years after my father died, that on the night his body was brought to the church, she dreamed that she woke to a presence in the bedroom, and thought she could feel her husband close to her. In the far corner of the room there was a chair where he used to sit every night to finish undressing. He would ease himself into it to take off his shoes and socks, and sometimes he would remain there quietly for a while, his bare feet planted firmly on the carpet, his chin resting on the palms of his hands, and reflect upon the day that was coming to a close. My mother said that, in her dream, my father was back in his chair, except she couldn’t quite see him. When she tried to focus on the shape in the corner of the room, there was only a chair, but when she looked away a figure shifted position in the corner of her eye. She should have been frightened, but she was not. In her dream, her eyes became heavy. But how can my eyes be heavy, she thought, when I am still asleep? She fought against it, but the urge to sleep was too strong.
And just as she lost consciousness, she felt a hand on her brow, and lips softly brushed her cheek, and she sensed his sorrow and his guilt, and in that moment I think that perhaps she started to forgive him at last for what he had done. For the rest of the night, she slept soundly and deeply, and despite all that had occurred, she did not weep as the final prayers were said for him in the church, and when his body was lowered into the ground, and the flag was folded and laid in her hands, she smiled sadly for her lost man and a single tear exploded in the dirt like a fallen star.
‘My friend’s daughter,’ I said, ‘playing tricks on you.’
‘Really?’ said Wallace, and he did not even try to keep the skepticism from his voice. ‘They still here?’
‘No. They’re gone.’
He let it go. ‘That was a low thing you did. You always hit people without warning?’
‘It comes from the line of work. If I had told some of them that I was going to hit them, they would have shot me first. A warning kind of dulls the impact.’
‘You know, right now, I kind of wish someone had shot you.’
‘At least you’re honest.’
‘Is that why you called me out here, to warn me off again?’
‘I’m sorry that I hit you, but you need to hear this face to face, and not in a bar either. I’m not going to help you with your book. In fact, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that it never gets beyond some scratches in one of your notebooks.’
‘You’re threatening me?’
‘Mr. Wallace, do you recall the gentleman at the Bear who was discussing the possible motives of alien abductors?’
‘I do. In fact, I met him again yesterday. He was waiting for me in the parking lot of my motel. I assumed that you’d sent him.’
Jackie. I should have known that he’d take matters into his own hands in some misguided effort to help me. I wondered how long he’d spent trawling the parking lots of the city’s motels, looking for Wallace’s car.
‘I didn’t, but he’s the kind of man who can’t easily be controlled, and he has two buddies who make him look like a gentle soul. They’re brothers, and there are prisons that don’t want them back because they frighten the other inmates.’
‘So? You’re going to set your buddies on me. Tough guy.’
‘If I wanted to hurt you that badly, I’d do it myself. There are other ways to deal with the kind of problem that you represent.’
‘I’m not a problem. I just want to tell your story. I’m interested in the truth.’
‘I don’t know what the truth is. If I don’t know after all this time, then you’re not going to have any more success than I’ve had.’
His eyes narrowed shrewdly, and some of the color returned to his face. I had made a mistake even discussing the matter with him. He was like an evangelical Christian who finds someone on a doorstep willing to debate theology with him.
‘But I can help you,’ he said. ‘I’m a neutral party. I can find out things. It doesn’t all have to go in the book. You’ll have control over how your image is presented.’
‘My image?’
He realized that he had taken a wrong turn, and backpedaled furiously.
‘It’s just a phrase. What I meant to say was, this is your story. If it’s to be told properly, it has to be told in your voice.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. It doesn’t have to be told at all. Don’t come to my home, or to my place of work, again. I’m sure you know that I have a child. Her mother won’t talk to you. That I can tell you for sure. If you a
pproach them, if you even pass them on the street and catch their eye, I’ll kill you and bury you in a shallow hole. You need to let this slide.’
Wallace’s face hardened, and I saw the man’s own inner strength reveal itself. Instantly, I felt tired. Wallace wasn’t going to fade into the night.
‘Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Parker.’ He mentioned the name of a famous actor, a man around whom rumors of a sexual nature had long circled without finding purchase. ‘Two years ago, I agreed to write an unauthorized biography of him. It’s not my area, all that Hollywood bullshit, but the publisher had heard of my talents, and the money was good, given the subject. He’s one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. His people threatened me with financial ruin, the loss of my reputation, even the loss of limbs, but that book is due to be published in six months’ time, and I can stand by every word of it. He wouldn’t cooperate, but it didn’t matter. The book is still going to appear, and I’ve found people who’ve sworn that his whole life is a lie. You made a mistake punching me in the gut. It was the action of a frightened man. For that alone, I’m going to claw and dig in every dirty corner of your life. I’m going to find out things about you that you didn’t even know existed. And then I’m going to put them in my book, and you can buy a copy and read about them, and maybe then you’ll learn something about yourself, but I can tell you for sure that you’ll learn something about Mickey Wallace.
‘And if you ever lay a hand on me again, I’ll see you in court, you fuck.’
With that, Wallace turned around and trudged back to his car.
And I thought: Aw, hell.
Aimee Price dropped by later that evening, after I had left another message for her at her office detailing most of what had happened since Wallace had appeared at the Bear. She declined coffee and asked if I had any wine uncorked. I didn’t, but I was happy to open a bottle for her. It was the least that I could do.
‘Okay,’ she said, once she had sipped the wine carefully and decided that it wasn’t about to send her into convulsions, ‘this isn’t my area, so I’ve had to ask around, but here is where we stand, in legal terms, on the book. Potentially, as the subject of an unauthorized biography of your life, you could bring a lawsuit for a number of legal reasons – libel, misappropriation of the right of publicity, breach of confidence – but the most likely avenue in your case would be invasion of privacy. You’re not a public figure in the way an actor or a politician might be, so you have a certain right to privacy. We’re talking about the right not to have private facts publicized that might prove embarrassing if they’re not related to matters of public concern; the right not to have false or misleading statements or suggestions made about you; and protection against intrusion, which means literal physical intrusion on your privacy by entering onto your property.’
‘Which Wallace did,’ I said.
‘Yes, but he could argue that the first time he came by was to remonstrate with you, and to leave his card, and the second time, according to what you’ve told me, was at your invitation.’
I shrugged. She was right.
‘So how did that second visit go?’ she asked.
‘Could have gone better,’ I said.
‘In what way?’
‘Not punching him in the stomach would have been a start.’
‘Oh, Charlie.’ She seemed genuinely disappointed, and I felt even more ashamed of my actions. In an effort to make up for my failings, I recounted my conversation with Wallace in as much detail as I could remember, leaving out any mention of the woman and child that he claimed to have glimpsed.
‘You’re telling me that your friend Jackie threatened Wallace too?’ she said.
‘I didn’t ask him to. He probably thought that he was doing me a favor.’
‘At least he exhibited more restraint than you did. Wallace could have you charged with assault, but my guess is that he won’t. Clearly he wants to write this book, and that may override any other concerns as long as you didn’t do him any lasting damage.’
‘He walked away under his own steam,’ I said.
‘Well, if he knows anything about you at all, he can probably consider himself lucky.’
I took the hit. I wasn’t in any position to argue.
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘You can’t stop him writing the book. As he said himself, a lot of the relevant material is a matter of public record. What we can do is request, or otherwise obtain, a copy of the manuscript, and go through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for instances of libel, or egregious invasion of privacy. We could then apply to the courts for an injunction preventing publication, but I have to warn you that the courts are generally reluctant to permit injunctions of this kind in deference to the First Amendment. The best we could hope for would be monetary damages. The publisher has probably had a warranty and indemnity clause inserted into Wallace’s contract, assuming the contract has been formally agreed upon. Also, if the whole thing has been handled right, there will be a media-perils insurance policy in place to cover the work. In other words, not only will we not be able to stop this horse from bolting, but we probably won’t even be able to do more than close the door halfway once it’s gone.’
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.
‘You sure you don’t want some of this wine?’ said Aimee.
‘I’m sure. If I start, I may not stop.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to some more people and see if there are any other avenues open to us, but I don’t hold out much hope. And, Charlie?’
I opened my eyes.
‘Don’t threaten him again. Just keep your distance. If he approaches you, walk away. Don’t get drawn into confrontations. That goes for your friends too, regardless of their good intentions.’
Which brought us to another problem.
‘Yeah, well, that could be an issue,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘Angel and Louis.’
I had told Aimee enough about them for her to be under no illusions.
‘If Wallace starts digging, then their names may come up,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they have any good intentions.’
‘They don’t sound like the kind of men who leave too many traces.’
‘It doesn’t matter. They won’t like it, Louis especially.’
‘Then warn them.’
I thought about it. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what happens.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Not really, but Louis believes in preventive measures. If I tell him that Wallace may start asking questions about him, he could decide that it might be better if Wallace didn’t ask any questions at all.’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ said Aimee. She finished her wine in a single gulp, and appeared to be debating whether or not to have more in the hope that it might destroy any memory of what I’d just said. ‘Jesus, how did you end up with friends like that?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t think that Jesus had anything to do with it.’
16
Mickey Wallace left Portland early the next day. He was simmering with resentment and a barely containable anger that was unfamiliar to him, for Mickey rarely got truly angry, but his encounter with Parker, combined with the efforts of Parker’s Neanderthal friend to scare him off, had transformed him utterly. He was used to lawyers trying to intimidate him, and had been pushed up against walls and threatened with more serious damage at least twice, but nobody had punched him the way Parker had in many years. In fact, the last time Mickey had been in anything approaching a serious fight was when he was still in high school, and on that occasion he had landed a lucky punch that had knocked one of his opponent’s teeth out. He wished he had managed to strike a similar blow at Parker, and as he boarded the shuttle at Logan he played out alternative scenarios in his mind, ones in which he had brought Parker to his knees and had humiliated the detective, not vice versa. He entertained them f
or a couple of minutes, and then dispensed with them. There would be other ways to make Parker regret what he had done, principal among them the completion of the book on which Mickey had set his heart and, he felt, his reputation.
He was still troubled by his experience at the Parker house on that mist-shrouded night. He had expected the intensity of his responses to it, his fear and confusion, to diminish, but they had not. Instead, he continued to sleep uneasily, and had woken on the first night after the encounter at precisely 4:03 a.m., convinced that he was not alone in his motel room. He had turned on the lamp by his bed, and the eco-friendly bulb had glowed slowly into life, spreading illumination through most of the room but leaving the corners in shadow, which gave Mickey the uncomfortable sensation that the darkness around him had receded reluctantly from the light, hiding whatever presence he had sensed in the places where the lamp could not reach. He remembered the woman crouched behind the kitchen door, and the child moving her finger across the window of his car. He should have been able to glimpse their faces, but he had not, and something told him that he should be grateful for that small mercy at least. Their faces had been concealed from him for a reason.
Because the Traveling Man had torn them apart, that’s why, because he left nothing there but blood and bone and empty sockets. And you didn’t want to see that, no sir, because that sight would stay with you until your eyes closed for the last time and they pulled the sheet over your own face. Nobody could look upon that degree of savagery and not be damaged by it forever.
And if those were people whom you loved, your wife and your child, well . . .
A friend and her daughter; two visitors: that was how Parker had described them to Mickey, but Mickey didn’t accept that explanation for one moment. Oh, they were visitors all right, but not the kind who slept in the spare room and played board games on winter evenings. Mickey didn’t understand their nature, not yet, and he hadn’t decided whether or not to include his encounter in the book that he would present to his publishers. He suspected that he would not. By including a ghost story in his narrative, he risked undermining the factual basis of his work. And yet this woman and child, and what they had endured, represented the heart of the book. Mickey had always thought of Parker as a man haunted by what had happened to his wife and child, but not literally so. Was that the answer? Was what Mickey had witnessed evidence of an actual haunting?