The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  Michael Leehagen might have been a king in waiting, but he was loyal to the old ruler.

  11

  They didn’t give Hoyle notice of their arrival. They simply turned up in the lobby after hours and told one of the security staff to inform Simeon that Mr Hoyle had visitors. The guard didn’t seem unusually troubled by the request. Angel guessed that, given the fact of Hoyle’s residency in the building, and his reluctance to face the world on its own terms, the guards had grown used to human traffic at odd hours.

  ‘What name should I give?’ asked the guard.

  Louis did not answer. He merely stood beneath the lens of the nearest camera, his face clearly visible.

  ‘I think he’ll know who it is,’ said Angel.

  The call was made. Three minutes went by, during which an attractive woman in a tight-fitting black skirt and white blouse passed through the lobby and eyed Louis appreciatively. Almost imperceptibly, except to Angel, Louis’s posture changed.

  ‘You just preened,’ said Angel.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yeah, you did. You stood straighter. You became straight. You de-gayed.’

  The doors of the private elevator opened in the lobby, and the guard gestured at them to enter. They walked toward it.

  Louis shrugged. ‘A man likes to be appreciated.’

  ‘I think you’re confused about your sexuality.’

  ‘I got an eye for beauty,’ said Louis. He paused. ‘So does she.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Angel, ‘but she’ll never love you as much as you do.’

  ‘It is a burden,’ said Louis, as the doors closed.

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  Only Simeon was waiting for them in the lobby when they arrived at Hoyle’s penthouse. He was dressed in black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. This time, the gun that he wore was clearly visible: a Smith & Wesson 5906, housed in a Horseshoe holster.

  ‘Customized?’ asked Louis.

  ‘Maryland,’ said Simeon. ‘Had it dehorned.’ He drew the gun smoothly and rapidly and held it so that they could see where the sharp edges had been removed from the front and rear sights, the magazine release, the trigger guard extension, and the hammer. The display functioned both as a surprising act of vanity on Simeon’s part that Angel would not have associated with a man like him, and also as a warning: they had arrived unscheduled, and at a late hour. Simeon was wary of them.

  He put the gun back in its holster and wanded them almost casually, then showed them once again into the room overlooking the pool. This time, the pattern created by the ripples on the wall was distorted and irregular, and Angel could hear the sound of someone swimming. He wandered over to the glass and watched Hoyle performing butterfly strokes through the water.

  ‘He swim a lot?’ he asked Simeon.

  ‘Morning and evening,’ said Simeon.

  ‘He ever let anyone else use that pool?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I guess he’s not the sharing kind.’

  ‘He shares information,’ said Simeon. ‘He’s sharing it with you.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a regular fountain of knowledge.’

  Angel turned away and joined Louis at the same table at which they had sat with Hoyle earlier in the week. Simeon stood nearby, allowing them to see him, and him to see them.

  ‘How come you work for this guy?’ asked Louis at last. The sounds of swimming had ceased. ‘Can’t be too much call for your talents, stuck all the way up here with someone who don’t get out much.’

  ‘He pays well.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘You serve?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t know. Paying well covers a lot of sins.’

  ‘He got a lot of sins to cover?’

  ‘Maybe. It comes to that, we’re all sinners.’

  ‘Guess so. Still, those Marine skills of yours, they’ll get rusty, sins or no sins.’

  ‘I practice.’

  ‘Not the same.’

  Angel saw Simeon twitch slightly.

  ‘You implying that I might need to use them soon?’

  ‘No. Just saying that it’s easy to take these things for granted. You don’t stay sharp and they may not be there for you when you need them.’

  ‘We won’t know until that day comes.’

  ‘No, we won’t.’

  Angel closed his eyes and sighed. There was enough testosterone in the room to make a wig bald. They were one step away from arm wrestling. At that moment, Hoyle entered. He was wearing a white robe and slippers, and was drying his hair with a towel, although he did so while wearing the ubiquitous white gloves.

  ‘I’m glad that you came back,’ he said. ‘I just wish it could have been under better circumstances. How is your –’ He searched for the right word to describe Gabriel, then fixed on ‘“friend?”’

  ‘Shot,’ said Louis simply.

  ‘So I gathered,’ said Hoyle. ‘I appreciate the confirmation, though.’

  He took a seat across from them and handed the damp towel to Simeon, who did his best not to bristle at being reduced to the status of pool boy in front of Louis. ‘I presume that the attack on Gabriel is the reason you’ve returned. Leehagen is taunting you, as well as attempting to punish another of those whom he blames for his son’s death.’

  ‘You seem sure that it was Leehagen who targeted him,’ said Louis.

  ‘Who else could it be? No one else would be foolish enough to attack a man of Gabriel’s standing. I’m aware of his connections. To move against him would be unwise, unless one had nothing to lose by doing so.’

  Louis was forced to agree. In the circles in which Gabriel moved, there was a tacit understanding that the provider of the manpower was not responsible for what occurred once that manpower was put to use. Louis was reminded of Gabriel’s description of Leehagen: a dying man, desperate for revenge before the life left him entirely.

  ‘So,’ said Hoyle. ‘Let us be clear. Perhaps you’re wondering if this apartment is wired, or if anything that you say here might find its way to some branch of the law enforcement community. I can assure you that the apartment is clean, and that I have no interest in involving the law in this matter. I want you to kill Arthur Leehagen. I will provide you with whatever information I can to facilitate his demise, and I will pay you handsomely for the job.’

  Hoyle nodded to Simeon. A file was produced from a drawer and passed to Hoyle. He placed it on the table before them.

  ‘This is everything that I have on Leehagen,’ said Hoyle, ‘or everything that I believe might prove useful to you.’

  Louis opened the file. As he flipped through its contents, he saw that some of the material replicated what he had uncovered himself, but much was new. There were sheafs of closely typed pages detailing the Leehagen family history, business interests, and other enterprises, some of them, judging by photocopies of police reports and letters from the attorney general’s office, criminal in nature. They were followed by photographs of an impressive house, satellite images of forests and roads, local maps, and, last of all, a picture of a balding, corpulent man with a series of flabby chins folding into a barrel chest. He was wearing a black suit and a collarless shirt. What was left of his hair was long and unkempt. Dark pig eyes were lost in the flesh of his face.

  ‘That’s Leehagen,’ said Hoyle. ‘The photograph was taken five years ago. I understand that his cancer has taken its toll upon him since then.’

  Hoyle reached for one of the satellite images, and pointed to a white block at its center. ‘This is the main house. Leehagen lives there with his son. He has a nurse who lives in her own small apartment adjoining it. About a quarter of a mile to the west, perhaps a little further –’ He grabbed another photograph, and placed it beside the first. ‘– are cattle pens. Leehagen used to keep a herd of Ayrshire cattle.’

  ‘That’s not cattle land,’ said Louis.

  ‘It didn’t matter to Leehagen. He liked them. Fancied himself as a br
eeder. He felled forest so they could graze, and utilized areas that had been cleared by storm damage. I think they made him feel like a gentleman farmer.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ asked Angel.

  ‘He sent them for slaughter a month ago. They were his cattle. They weren’t going to outlive him.’

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Louis. He pointed to a series of photographs of a small industrial structure with what appeared to be a town nearby. A thin straight line ran along the bottom of a number of the photographs: a railway line.

  ‘That’s Winslow,’ said Hoyle. He placed two standard maps side by side in front of Louis and Angel. ‘Look at them. See any difference between them?’

  Angel looked. In one, the town of Winslow was clearly marked. In another, there was no sign of the town at all.

  ‘The first map is from the 1970s. The second is only a year or two old. Winslow doesn’t exist as a town anymore. Nobody lives there. There used to be a talc mine near the town – that’s what you can see to the east in some of the pictures – owned by the Leehagen family, but it gave out in the nineteen eighties. People started to leave, and Leehagen began buying up the vacant properties. Those who didn’t want to go were forced out. Oh, he paid them, so it was all above board, but it was made clear what would happen if they didn’t leave. It’s all private land now, lying to the northeast of Leehagen’s house. You know anything about talc mining, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Louis.

  ‘It’s a nasty business. The miners were exposed to tremolite asbestos dust in the mines. A lot of the companies involved knew that the talc contained asbestos, the Leehagens included, but chose not to inform their workers about either its presence or the prevalence of asbestos-related diseases in their mines. We’re talking mainly about scarring of the lungs, silicosis, and incidents of mesothelioma, which is a rare asbestos-related cancer. Even those who weren’t directly involved in mining began developing lung problems. The Leehagens defended themselves by denying that industrial talc contains asbestos or poses a cancer risk, which I believe is a lie. This stuff ended up in kids’ crayons, and you know what kids do with crayons, right? They put them in their mouths.’

  ‘With due respect, what does this have to do with the matter in hand?’ asked Louis.

  ‘Well, it was how Leehagen managed to empty Winslow. He offered financial settlements to the families, most of whom had relatives who had worked in the mines. The settlements indemnified Leehagen and his descendants against any future action. He screwed those people to the wall. The amounts they received were far less than they might have been awarded had they been prepared to take their cases to court, but then this was the nineteen eighties. I don’t think they even knew what was making them sick, and most of them were already dead when the first cases from elsewhere began coming before the courts a decade or more later. That’s the kind of man Leehagen is. It is ironic, though, that his own cancers may well have been caused by the mines that made him wealthy. They killed his wife –’ When Hoyle said the word ‘wife’, he winced slightly. ‘– and now they’re killing him.’

  Hoyle found another map, this one depicting the course of a river. ‘After he’d emptied the town, he got permission to redirect a local stream, the Roubaud, on some spurious environmental grounds. Effectively, the redirection allowed him to cut himself off. It functions as a moat. There are only two roads that cross it into his land. Behind Leehagen’s house is Fallen Elk Lake, so he has water at his back as well. He’s sown the lake bed with rocks and wire to prevent anyone from gaining access to the house from that direction, so the only way on to his land is over one of the two bridges spanning the stream.’

  Hoyle pointed them out on the map, then traced the roads that led from them with his finger. They formed the shape of an inverted funnel, cut at four points by two inner roads that ran through the property parallel to the eastern shore of the lake.

  ‘Are they watched?’ asked Angel.

  ‘Not consistently, but there are still homes nearby. Some of them are rented by Leehagen to the families of the men who used to tend his cattle, or who work his property. There are a couple of others that belong to people who’ve reached an arrangement with him. They stay out of his affairs, and he lets them live where they’ve always lived. They’re mainly on the northern road. The southern road is quieter. It would be possible for a vehicle going down either of those roads to get pretty close to Leehagen’s house, although the southern road would be the safer bet, but if the alarm was raised then both those bridges could be closed before any trespassers had a chance to escape.’

  ‘How many men does he have?’

  ‘A dozen or so close to him, I’d guess. They stay in touch on the land through a dedicated, secure high frequency network. Some have served time, but the rest are little more than local thugs.’

  ‘You guess?’ said Angel.

  ‘Leehagen is a recluse, just as I am. His disease has made him one. The little that I do know about his current circumstances was dearly bought.’ He moved on. ‘Then there’s his son and heir, Michael.’ Hoyle found another photograph, this time of a man in his forties with something of Leehagen Senior in his eyes, but who weighed considerably less. He was wearing jeans and a checked shirt and cradled a hunting rifle in his arms. An eight-point buck lay at his feet, the animal’s head resting on a log so that it faced the camera. Louis recalled the man whom he had killed in San Antonio, Jonny Lee. He had looked more like his father, from what Louis could remember of him.

  ‘This one is quite recent,’ said Hoyle. ‘Michael looks after most of his father’s business affairs, legal and otherwise. He’s the family’s link to the outside world. Compared to his father, he’s quite the bon viveur, but by any normal standards he is almost as reclusive. He ventures out a couple of times a year, but usually people come to him.’

  ‘Including your daughter,’ said Louis.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hoyle. ‘I want Michael killed as well. I’ll pay extra for him.’

  Louis sat back. Beside him, Angel was silent.

  ‘I never pretended that this was going to be easy,’ said Hoyle. ‘If I could have dealt with this matter without the involvement of those outside my own circle, then I would have. But it seemed to me that we had a shared interest in putting an end to Leehagen, and that you might succeed where others had failed.’

  ‘And this is all you have?’ asked Louis.

  ‘All that might prove useful, yes.’

  ‘You still haven’t told us how your beef with Leehagen began,’ said Angel.

  ‘He stole my wife,’ said Hoyle. ‘Or the woman who might have been my wife. He stole her, and she died because of it. She worked at the mine, helping with paperwork. Leehagen believed that it would be good for her to earn her keep.’

  ‘This is over a woman?’ said Angel.

  ‘We’re rivals in many matters, Leehagen and I. I bested him repeatedly. In the process, I alienated the woman I loved. She went to Leehagen as a means of getting back at me. He was, I should add, not always so repellent in appearance. He had been ill for many years, even before the cancer took hold. His medication affected his weight.’

  ‘So your woman went to Leehagen –’

  ‘And she died,’ finished Hoyle. ‘In retaliation, I stepped up my efforts to ruin him. I fed information about him to business rivals, to criminals. He came back at me. I retaliated again. Now we are where we are, each of us sealed away in our respective fortresses, each nursing a deep hatred of the other. I want this thing ended. Even weak and ill, I begrudge him his existence. So here is my offer: if you kill him, I will pay you five hundred thousand dollars, with a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar bonus if his son dies alongside him. As a gesture of good faith, I will pay you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the bounty on the father in advance, and one hundred thousand on that of the son. The balance will be placed in escrow, to be paid over on completion of the job.’

  He replaced the photographs and maps in the file, clo
sed it, and eased it gently toward Louis. After only a moment’s hesitation, Louis took it.

  The call woke Michael Leehagen from a stupor. He staggered to the phone in his dressing gown, his eyes bleary and his voice hoarse.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What have you done?’

  Michael recognized the voice instantly. It dispelled the last vestiges of sleep from him as surely as if he had stood in the face of a raging, icy gale.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The old man. Who gave you the authority to target him?’ There was a calmness to Bliss’s voice that made Michael’s bladder tighten.

  ‘Authority? I gave myself the authority. We got his name from Ballantine. He set my brother up, and he was meeting with Louis. He’ll make the connection. It will bring him here for sure.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bliss. ‘Yes, it will. But it’s not how these things are done.’ He sounded distracted, as though this was not a development that he had anticipated, or desired. It made no sense to Michael. ‘You should have spoken to me first.’

  ‘With respect, you’re not the most contactable of men.’

  ‘Then you should have waited until I called you!’ This time, the anger in Bliss’s voice was clear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Michael. ‘I didn’t think there would be a problem.’

  ‘No.’ Michael heard him breathe in deeply, calming himself. ‘You couldn’t have known. You may have to prepare for reprisals if the attack is connected to you. Some people won’t like it.’

  Michael had no idea what Bliss was talking about. His father wanted everyone involved in Jonny Lee’s death wiped from the face of the earth. How things were done elsewhere was of no consequence to him. He was interested only in the end result. He waited for Bliss to continue.