The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  ‘You okay with the gun you’ve got?’ asked the Detective.

  ‘Louis gave it to me.’

  ‘It should be good, then. You fired a weapon recently?’

  ‘Not since Vietnam.’

  ‘Well, they haven’t changed much. Show me the gun.’

  Willie handed the Browning to the Detective. It weighed less than two pounds fully loaded, and had a blued finish. It was a pre-1995 model, as the magazine had a thirteen-round capacity, not a ten. The chamber was unloaded, according to the indicator on the extractor.

  ‘Nice and light,’ said Parker. ‘Not new, but clean. You got a spare clip?’

  Willie shook his head.

  ‘With luck, you won’t have to use it. If we have to empty clips, then we’re probably outnumbered, so it won’t matter too much either way.’

  Willie didn’t find this entirely reassuring.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is it just us? I mean, no offense meant, but we ain’t exactly Delta Force.’

  ‘No, it’s not just us. There are others.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘They went on ahead. In fact –’ Parker checked his watch. ‘– we ought to be joining them about now.’

  ‘I had another question,’ said Willie, as the Detective started the engine.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Is there a plan?’

  The Detective looked at him.

  ‘Not getting shot,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s a good plan,’ said Willie, with feeling.

  The Detective kept the headlights on as they drove. Willie thought they might be a little high, but he said nothing. He could worry about headlights another day. Getting shot was on his mind. He’d been shot at in Nam, but no bullets had come even close to him. He was kind of hoping to keep things that way. Still, it paid to know what to expect. He’d been around men who’d been shot, and the range of re actions had startled him. Some screamed and cried, others just stayed silent, holding all the pain inside, and then there were those who acted like it was a minor thing, as though the wind had just been taken out of them a little by a shard of hot metal buried deep in their flesh. Finally, he felt compelled to ask the question.

  ‘You’ve been shot, right?’ he asked the Detective.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been shot.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘I don’t recommend it.’

  ‘You know, I’d figured that out for myself.’

  ‘I don’t think mine was your typical experience. I was in freezing water, and I was probably already in shock when I got hit. It was a jacketed bullet, so it didn’t spread out on impact, just passed straight through. It got me here.’ He pointed to his left side. ‘It was mainly fatty tissue. I don’t even remember too much pain at first. I got out of the water and started walking. Then it began to hurt like hell. Bad, really bad. A woman –’ Here, the Detective paused. Willie didn’t interrupt, merely waited for him to continue. ‘– a woman I knew, she had some nursing experience. She sewed it up. I kept going for a couple of hours after that. I don’t know how. I think I was still in shock, even then, and we were in trouble, Louis, Angel, and I. It happens that way sometimes. People who’ve been injured find a way to keep going because they have to. I was running on adrenalin, and there was a girl missing. She was Walter Cole’s daughter.’

  Willie had heard some of this story from Angel.

  ‘A couple of days after it was over, I collapsed. The doctors said it was a delayed reaction to all that had happened. I’d lost some teeth, and I think what they did to repair that damage hurt almost as much as the gunshot. Anyway, it seemed to precipitate everything that followed, like my body had decided enough was enough. They tried to put me in the hospital, but I rested up at home instead. Took a while for the gunshot wound to stop hurting. When I turn a certain way, I think I can still feel a twinge. Like I said, I don’t recommend it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Willie. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  They turned off the main road, heading south. Eventually, the Detective slowed, searching for something to his right. A road appeared, marked ‘Private Property.’ The Detective turned onto it and followed it for a short distance until they came to a bridge, where he stopped the car. They sat there, neither of them moving. There was a light in the trees, and Willie thought that he could hear a repetitive beeping sound. He looked to his left and saw that the Detective had a gun in his right hand. Willie took the Browning from his jacket pocket and removed the safety. The Detective looked at him and nodded.

  They got out of the car simultaneously, and moved in the direction of the light. As they drew closer, Willie could see the vehicle more clearly. It was a Chevy Tahoe. Its side window had disintegrated, and the body of a man lay slumped over one of the seats, a ragged wound torn in his chest. The Detective skirted the Chevy, his gun raised, until he came to a second body farther into the woods. Willie joined him, and looked down at the remains. The man was lying facedown with a hole in the back of his head.

  ‘Who are they?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He knelt and touched the man’s skin with the back of his hand. ‘They’ve been dead for a while.’ He looked at their boots. They were clean, shining with what Willie thought was almost a military polish. There was only a little mud on them.

  ‘Not from around here,’ said the Detective.

  ‘No,’ said Willie. He looked away. ‘You think these guys came with Louis and Angel?’

  The Detective thought about it. ‘They wouldn’t have tried to take Leehagen alone, not with so much territory to cover. It would make sense to try to hold the bridges. So my guess is, yes, they were part of whatever Louis was planning, which means Leehagen’s people found them and killed them.’

  He approached the bridge and stared across it toward the dark woods beyond.

  ‘So where’s the rest of the cavalry?’ asked Willie.

  The Detective sighed and gestured across the bridge. ‘In there. Somewhere.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’s not where they’re supposed to be, right?’

  The Detective shook his head. ‘These guys are never where they’re supposed to be.’

  20

  The two men were named Willis and Harding. Coincidentally, they shared a first name: Leonard. It was what had set them at each other’s throats when they were small boys in a small town in a large state, the kind of town where it mattered who was Leonard Number One and who was Leonard Number Two.

  As things turned out, the two boys were pretty evenly matched, and in time a bond of friendship had developed between them, a bond that was finally cemented when they stomped a man named Jessie Birchall to death outside a bar in Homosassa Springs, Florida, for having the temerity to suggest that Willis ought not to have touched Jessie’s fianceé on the ass as she was making her way to the ladies’ room. The fianceé in question claimed to have no memory of what the two young men had looked like when the police came to question her, even though one of the men had hit her hard enough to break her left cheekbone when she attempted to intervene on her fiancé’s behalf, a forgetfulness not unconnected to the fact that Willis, his hands still warm with the dying man’s blood, had whispered in her ear for thirty seconds while Jessie Birchall suffocated in redness on the garbage-strewn concrete of the parking lot, time enough to let his little lady know exactly what would happen to her if she saw fit to share with the law everything that she had witnessed. Actually, Jessie Birchall’s fianceé hadn’t liked him that much anyway, not enough to endure what Willis was proposing. She was only eighteen, and there would be other fiancés.

  Eventually, Willis and Harding ended up in the pay of Arthur Leehagen, a man whose illegal means of making money sat easily, if discreetly, alongside his more legitimate business concerns. Willis and Harding, like a number of Leehagen’s more specialized employees, were involved principally with the former activities, although they had proved useful whene
ver problems had arisen with the latter as well. When the cancers had begun to bloom like dark red flowers, it was Willis and Harding who had been sent out to talk to the more indignant sufferers, the ones who were threatening loudly to sue, or to go to the newspapers. Sometimes it took just one visit, although occasionally the two men had been forced to wait outside school gates to smile at mothers picking up their children, or to sit high in the bleachers during cheerleading practice, watching those short skirts ride up, their eyes lingering hungrily on thighs and breasts. And if the coach decided to ask them what they thought they were doing, well, the coach had kids too. As Willis liked to say, there was plenty for everybody, boys and girls alike, and he was not a picky man. And if the cops were called, then Willis and Harding were Mr Leehagen’s men, and that was as good as diplomatic immunity right there.

  And if someone was stubborn enough, or foolish enough, to ignore those warnings, well . . .

  Willis and Harding might almost have been related, because they looked a little alike. Both were tall and rangy, with straw blond hair darkening to red, and pale skin dotted with the kinds of freckles that joined together in places to form dark patches on their faces like the shadows cast by clouds. Nobody had ever asked them if they were related, though. Nobody ever asked them much of anything. They had been employed precisely because they were the type of men whom it seemed unwise to question. They spoke rarely, and when they did it was in tones so quiet and unobtrusive that they seemed to belie the substance of what was being said, yet left the listener in no doubt about their sincerity. It was whispered that they were gay, but in fact they were omnisexual. Their intimacy with each other had never extended to the physical, yet each was otherwise happy to sate his appetites wherever the opportunity lay. They had shared men and women, sometimes together, sometimes apart, the objects of their attentions sometimes submitting willingly, and sometimes not.

  As the sun grew lighter that morning, and the rain briefly ceased, they were both dressed in jeans, black work boots, and blue denim shirts as they sat in the cab of the truck, Willis driving, Harding staring out of the window, idly blowing cigarette smoke into the air. Their primary role in the operation was to keep watch on the northern bridge and its surrounds, as well as patroling the outer ring road of Leehagen’s property in case, through some miracle, the two trapped men managed to break through the initial cordon.

  Beside them were the guns they had used to kill Lynott and Marsh. Others had taken care of the second pair of men. Willis had felt a grim satisfaction that Benton, despite his protests, had been excluded. Willis didn’t like Benton: he was a local bully boy who would never graduate to the majors. Willis was of the opinion that he and Harding should have been sent to New York, not Benton and his retard buddies, but Benton was a friend of Michael Leehagen’s, and the old man’s son had decided to give him a chance to prove himself. Well, Benton had proved something, that was for sure, but only that he was an asshole.

  Now that the men at the bridges were dead, Willis and Harding were no longer concerned about further incursions, although they planned to stick to the outer road, just in case. Their thoughts had moved on to other matters. Like a number of Leehagen’s employees, Harding didn’t understand why they weren’t simply being allowed to deal with the other intruders themselves. He didn’t see the point in paying someone good money to do it for them. It never struck him that the man who would be arriving to kill them might have personal reasons for doing so.

  He was distracted from his meditations by a single word from Willis.

  ‘Look.’

  Harding looked. An enormous four-by-four was parked on the righthand side of the road, facing in their direction. On either side of the road, pine trees stretched away into the distance. There was a man sitting on a log close to the truck. He was chewing on a candy bar, his legs stretched out in front of him. Beside him was a carton of milk. He did not appear to have a care in the world. Willis and Harding both simultaneously decided that this would have to change.

  ‘The hell is he doing?’ said Willis.

  ‘Let’s ask him.’

  They pulled up about ten feet from the monster truck and climbed out of the cab, shotguns now cradled loosely in their arms. The man nodded amiably at them.

  ‘How you boys doin’?’ he said. ‘It’s a fine morning in God’s country.’

  Willis and Harding considered this.

  ‘This isn’t God’s country,’ said Willis. ‘It’s Mr Leehagen’s. Even God doesn’t come here without asking.’

  ‘Is that so? I didn’t see no signs.’

  ‘You ought to have looked closer. They’re out there, “Private Property” printed clear as day on every one. Maybe you just don’t read so good.’

  The man took another bite of his candy bar. ‘Aw,’ he said, his mouth full of peanuts and caramel, ‘maybe they were there and I just missed them. Too busy watching the sky, I guess. It is beautiful.’

  And it was, a series of oranges and yellows fighting against the dark clouds. It was the kind of morning sky that inspired poetry in the hearts of even the most tongue-tied of men, Willis and Harding excepted.

  ‘You’d better move your truck,’ said Harding, in his quietest, most menacing voice.

  ‘Can’t do that, boys,’ said the man.

  Harding’s head turned slightly to one side, the way a bird’s might at the sight of a worm struggling beneath its claws.

  ‘I don’t think I heard you right,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that’s okay, I didn’t think I heard you right either,’ said the man. ‘You talk kind of soft. You ought to speak up. Hard for a man to get another man’s attention if he goes around whispering all the time.’ He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice rumbled up from deep in his chest. ‘You need to get some breath in your lungs, give the words something to float on.’

  He finished his candy bar, then carefully tucked the wrapper into the pocket of his jacket. He reached for the carton of milk, but Harding kicked it over.

  ‘Aw, I was looking forward to finishing that,’ said the man. ‘I’d been saving it.’

  ‘I said,’ repeated Harding, ‘that you better move your truck.’

  ‘And I told you that I can’t do it.’

  Willis and Harding advanced. The man didn’t move. Willis swung the butt of his shotgun around and used it to break the right headlamp of the four-by-four.

  ‘Hey, now –’ said the man.

  Willis ignored him, proceeding to the left headlamp and shattering that too.

  ‘Move the truck,’ said Harding.

  ‘I’d love to, honest I would, but I really can’t oblige.’

  Harding pumped a round into the chamber, placed the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The windshield shattered, and the leather upholstery was pockmarked by shot and broken glass.

  The man put his hands in the air. It wasn’t a gesture of surrender, merely one of disappointment and disbelief.

  ‘Aw, fellas, fellas,’ he said. ‘You know there was no need to do that, no need at all. That’s a nice truck. You don’t want to do things like that to a nice truck. It’s –’ He struggled for the right words. ‘– a matter of aesthetics.’

  ‘You’re not listening to us.’

  ‘I am, but you’re not listening to me. I told you: I’d like to move it, but I can’t.’

  Harding turned the shotgun on him. If anything, his voice grew softer as he spoke again.

  ‘I’m telling you for the last time. Move. Your. Truck.’

  ‘And I’m telling you for the last time that I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s not my truck,’ said the man, pointing behind Harding. ‘It’s their truck.’

  Harding turned around. It was the second-last thing he ever did.

  Dying was the last.

  The Fulci brothers, Tony and Paulie, were not bad men. In fact, they had a very clearly developed, if simple, sense of right and wrong. Things that were definitely wrong in
cluded: hurting women and children; hurting any member of the Fulcis’ distinctly small circle of friends; hurting anyone who hadn’t done something to deserve it (which, admittedly, was open to differing interpretations, particularly on the part of those who had been on the receiving end of a pummeling from the Fulcis for what seemed, to the victims, like relatively minor infractions); and offending Louisa Fulci, their beloved mother, in any way whatsoever, which was a mortal sin and not open to discussion.

  Things that were right included hurting anyone who broke the rules listed above and – well, that was about it. There were creatures swimming in ponds that had a more complicated moral outlook than the Fulcis.

  They had come to Maine when they were in their early teens, after their father had been shot in a dispute over garbage collection routes in Irvington, New Jersey. Louisa Fulci wanted a better life for her sons than for them to be drawn inevitably into the criminality with which her late husband had been associated. Even at the ages of thirteen and fourteen respectively, Tony and Paulie looked like prime candidates for use as instruments of blunt force. They were then barely five feet four inches tall but each weighed as much as any two of his peers, and their body fat ratio was so low that a waif model would have wept for it.

  Unfortunately, there are individuals whose physical appearance condemns them to a certain path in life. The Fulcis looked like criminals, and it seemed inevitable that criminals they would become. The possibility of their cheating fate was further hampered by their emotional and psychological makeup, which might charitably have been described as combustible. The Fulcis had fuses so short that they barely existed. As time went on, a great many medical professionals, including a number attached to prison welfare and probation services, attempted, unsuccessfully, to balance the Fulcis’ moods by pharmaceutical intervention. What they discovered in the process was quite fascinating, and interesting papers for professional and academic study might well have resulted had the Fulcis been willing to stay still long enough to cooperate in their formulation.