The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  Angel doubted it, but you never knew.

  “You think Ross figures it’s a false trail?”

  “Ross don’t care one way or the other. It’s one more nail in their coffin, and it don’t matter to him who hammered it in.”

  “Doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. You have inconsistent grammar, you know that?”

  Louis’s public and private personae were different, but sometimes he forgot which role he was supposed to be playing.

  “Fuckin’ Ross was right about you, you know that?” said Louis.

  “Ross can’t even get a parking ticket fixed. He said so himself. So we go back to Cambion and tell him what—that we sold out his future to the Feds? Or do we just lie and make out like you’re still trying to burn the contract?”

  “Neither. I know people in the Carolinas. If there’s a team of ­husband-and-wife shooters operating out of there, someone’s got to have heard.”

  “Not if they’re selective. Not if they don’t work for money but out of some misguided sense of purpose.”

  “What, you mean like us?”

  “Exactly like us, except without the religion.”

  “Yeah, and look how hard we were to find. It wasn’t so long ago we had delivery men with explosives trying to blow our door off, and tonight Ross could have run our asses over if he’d felt like it. But we’ll nail them, however long it takes.”

  “And then?”

  “We make them talk.”

  “And after that?”

  Louis tried the wine. It was good.

  “We kill them.”

  LOUIS WAS CORRECT IN more than one of his assumptions. Even the most cautious of men can be found, if his pursuer has the commitment and the resources. The man who stood at the rain-soaked corner on the Upper West Side, where the poor were in sight of the rich and, more worryingly for those who feared imminent societal collapse, the rich were in sight of the poor, had spent a long time, and a not inconsiderable amount of money, trying to establish where Angel and Louis lived. In the end, it was the attack on the building—“the unpleasantness” over which Angel and Mrs. Bondarchuk had bonded—that brought them to his attention. Louis had made every effort to ensure that word of what happened didn’t leak to the police, but the man on the corner represented a different form of law and justice, and such matters were very difficult to keep from him and his father.

  The Collector cupped his hands over the match and held it to the cigarette at his lips, then smoked it with the butt held between the thumb and index finger, the remaining fingers sheltering it from the rain. He had arrived just as Angel and Louis entered the ­building. He did not know where they had been, but he could guess: they would be tracking those responsible for the attack on the detective. The Collector admired their single-mindedness, their focus: no mercy dash north to be at the detective’s bedside, none of the fruitless beating at the darkness that comes from those who have grief without power, and anger without an object. They would even have set aside their pursuit of the Collector himself in order to concentrate on the more immediate matter. The Collector knew that most of that impetus probably came from Louis, but his lover was not to be underestimated either. Emotionless killers rarely survived for long. The trick was not to stifle the emotions but to control them. Love, anger, grief—all were useful in their way, but they needed to be kept in check. The one called Angel enabled Louis to do this. Without him, Louis would have died long ago.

  But Angel was dangerous too. Louis would calculate the odds and, if the situation wasn’t to his liking, back off and wait for a better opportunity to strike. The logician in him was always at the fore. Angel was different. Once he made the decision to move, he would keep coming at his target until one of them went down. He knew how to channel emotion as a weapon. That kind of force and determination wasn’t to be underestimated. What most people failed to realize was that fights were decided in the opening seconds, not the closing ones, and there was something about facing an attacker of apparently relentless belligerence that could psychologically undo even a bigger, stronger opponent.

  But what was strangest of all for the Collector, as he assessed these two men, was the realization that he had come to admire them. Even as they hunted him from nest to nest, and destroyed the hiding places that he had so carefully constructed for himself, he was in awe of their ferocity, their guile. Neither could he deny that he and these men, through their allegiance to Parker, were engaged in variations on the same work. True, the Collector had been forced to kill one of their number, but in that he had erred. He had let emotion get the better of him, and he accepted that he must pay a price for his lapse. The loss of his nests had been the price, but now he was tiring of the chase. He would give these two men what they wanted in order to secure a truce. If they did not agree, well, there was work to be done, and their pursuit of him was getting in the way of it. The distraction and threat that they posed, and the time and effort they were causing him to expend, enabled men and women of profound viciousness to continue to prey on those weaker than themselves. Judgments were waiting to be handed out. His collection needed to be replenished.

  He called Eldritch from a pay phone. Over the old man’s objections, the Collector had secured the services of a nurse for the period of his enforced absence. The Collector trusted the nurse implicitly. She was a niece of the woman who had kept Epstein’s office in order, and put warmth in his bed, until her recent passing. She was discreet, and selectively deaf, mute, and blind.

  “How are you feeling?” said the Collector.

  “I’m well.”

  “The woman is taking good care of you?”

  “I can take care of myself. She just gets in the way.”

  “Consider it a favor to me. It puts my concerns at rest.”

  “I’m touched. Have you found them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you approached them?”

  “No, but soon I’ll have a message delivered to them. Tomorrow we will meet.”

  “They may not agree.”

  “One is a pragmatist, the other driven by principle. What I offer will appeal to both.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then this goes on and, inevitably, more blood will be spilled. They will not want that, I guarantee it. I believe that they are as weary of it as I am. The detective is their priority—the detective, and those who pulled the trigger on him. And, who knows, I may manage to negotiate a little extra for us—a prize that you’ve been seeking for many years.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The location of a corrupted man,” said the Collector. “The lair of a leper.”

  CHAPTER

  XLVII

  Garrison Pryor’s tame cop had experienced difficulty gaining access to the scene of the shooting. Not only was the Scarborough PD all over it; so were the Maine State Police’s Major Crimes Unit and the FBI, which had immediately sent agents not just from its field office in Boston but from New York too. The house and its environs had been locked down from the instant the first patrol car arrived, and the flow of information was being tightly controlled amid threats of suspension and possible imprisonment for any breaches by police or emergency personnel.

  But, despite all those precautions, Pryor’s guy was able to talk to one of the ambulance crew, and—cops being cops—managed to piece together small details just by keeping his mouth shut and listening. Nevertheless, days went by before Pryor learned of the symbol that had been carved into the wood of the detective’s kitchen door. The knowledge placed him in a difficult position: should he alert the Principal Backer immediately, or wait until he had clarified the situation? He decided to take the former course of action. He did not want to give the Principal Backer any cause to doubt him, and better to plead ignorance initially, and work to correct it, than be accused of withholding information, leaving himself open to suspicion.


  As the morning sun tried to pierce the gray clouds over Boston, the Principal Backer listened in silence while Pryor communicated what he had learned. The Principal Backer was not the kind of man who interrupted, or who tolerated being interrupted in turn.

  “Well, was this the work of Believers?” he said when Pryor had finished.

  “It’s possible,” said Pryor. “But, if so, it’s not any of whom we have knowledge. There’s no connection to us.”

  He didn’t need to mention that most of the Believers were dead. Only a handful had ever existed to begin with, and the detective and his allies had wiped most of those out. Although it had never been formally discussed, many of the Backers regarded the elimination of the Believers as something of a blessing. Each group had its own obsessions, its own motives, and while its ultimate aims sometimes intersected or followed a similar path, neither party entirely trusted the other. But generations of Backers had been content to use the Believers when it suited them. Some had even allied themselves to the Believers’ cause. Connections existed.

  “If someone is scratching the Believers’ symbol into the woodwork of scenes of attempted murder, then there is potentially a connection to all of us,” said the Principal Backer. “Any investigation could damage us.”

  “It may be the action of renegades,” said Pryor. “If so, they could be difficult to find. We know the identities of the ones who have crossed Parker. Any others have kept themselves hidden, even from us. Ultimately, my instinct says that the symbol is a false trail. Whoever carried out the attack, or ordered it to be carried out, wants to divert attention from themselves.”

  “There are those who would willingly use even a suspicion of involvement to act against us. What of the detective?”

  “His condition remains critical. Privately, the doctors are suggesting that he won’t survive. Even if he does, he will not be the same man. Perhaps he has no part to play in what is to come after all.”

  “Perhaps not, or it could be that his role has simply changed.”

  Laurie, Pryor’s personal assistant, knocked at his office door. He waved her away in irritation. How urgent could it be? If there was a fire, he’d hear the alarm bells.

  But she persisted, and her face contorted into a rictus of anxiety.

  “Sir, I may have to get back to you,” said Pryor.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “I think so.”

  He hung up the phone, and Laurie immediately entered.

  “I had asked—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Mr. Pryor, there are agents from the Economic Crimes Unit downstairs. Security is trying to delay them, but they have warrants.”

  The Economic Crimes Unit was the branch of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Divison tasked with investigating securities and commodities fraud, among other areas. The Principal Backer’s fears were being realized. The attack on the detective had given their enemies an opening. This might just be a fishing expedition, but through it a message was being sent to them.

  We know of you.

  We know.

  WHILE GARRISON PRYOR PREPARED to confront the federal investigators, Angel called Rachel Wolfe. She had just returned to her home in Vermont, having spent a couple of nights in Portland to be close to the father of her child. Her daughter had not stayed with her. Rachel felt that it was important for Sam to continue her routines, and not be engaged in some ongoing deathwatch, but she had been permitted to see him briefly in the ICU. Rachel was worried about exposing Sam to the sight of her father lying broken and dying in a hospital bed, but the child had insisted. Jeff, Rachel’s partner, drove Sam over to Portland, then took her home again. He might not have been particularly enamored of Rachel’s former lover, but he had behaved sensitively since the attack, and she was grateful to him for it. Now Rachel spoke to Angel of tubes and needles, of wounds and dressings. One kidney gone. Shotgun pellets painstakingly removed from his skull and back, including a number perilously close to his spine. Potential nerve damage to one arm. Murmurs of possible brain injury. He remained in a coma. His body appeared to have shut down all but the most essential of systems in order to fight for survival.

  “How did Sam do?” asked Angel.

  “She didn’t shed a tear,” said Rachel. “Even Jeff looked broken up, and he doesn’t even like Charlie. But Sam, she just whispered something to him, and wouldn’t tell me what it was. Apparently she was quiet on the ride home. She didn’t want to speak. Then, when Jeff looked back at her somewhere around Lebanon, she was fast asleep.”

  “You try talking to her about it since the visit?”

  “I’m a psychologist—all I ever do is talk about things. She seems . . . fine. You know what she told me? She said she thought her daddy was deciding.”

  “Deciding what?”

  “If he wanted to live or die.”

  And Rachel’s voice broke on the last word.

  “And how are you doing?”

  He could hear her trying to control herself, trying not to cry.

  “Okay, I guess. It’s complicated. I feel disloyal to him, somehow, like I abandoned him. Does that make any sense?”

  “It’s guilt.”

  “Yes.”

  “For fucking an asshole like Jeff.”

  She couldn’t help but splutter with laughter.

  “You’re the asshole, you know that?”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “Jeff’s been good, you dick. And, hey, you know what the weirdest thing about being at that hospital was?”

  “I get the feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “You bet I am. It was the number of women who kept coming into the place asking about him. It’s like waiting by the bedside of King Solomon. There was a little dark-haired cop, and a woman from that town, Dark Hollow. You remember it? You ought to. There was shooting.”

  Angel winced, not so much at the memory of the town itself but at the mention of the woman. Her name was Lorna Jennings, and she was the wife of the chief of police up in Dark Hollow. There was history there, the kind you didn’t want to discuss with the mother of a man’s child, even if they were now separated and he was dying in a hospital bed.

  “Yeah, it rings a bell.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Liar. Did he sleep with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know! I don’t follow him around with a towel and a glass of water.”

  “What about the cop?”

  That had to be Sharon Macy. Parker had told Angel about her.

  “No, he didn’t sleep with her. I’m pretty certain of that.”

  Angel tried to remember a more awkward conversation that he’d had, but failed.

  “And there’s another woman. She doesn’t stray far from the ICU, and I get the impression she has police permission to be there, but she’s no cop. She’s a deaf mute, and she carries a gun. I’ve seen how she looks at him.”

  “Liat,” said Angel. Epstein must have sent her to watch over Parker. She was a curious choice of guardian angel. Effective, but curious.

  “He slept with her, didn’t he? If he didn’t, he should have.”

  What the hell, thought Angel.

  “Yeah, he slept with her.”

  “Trust him to sleep with a woman who couldn’t answer back.”

  “It was just once,” said Angel.

  “What are you, his personal apologist?”

  “You’ve made me his apologist! I only called to see how you were. Now I’m sorry I asked.”

  Rachel laughed. It was genuine, and he was happy that he had given her that, at least.

  “Will you come up to see him?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Yo
u’re looking for them, aren’t you, the ones who did this to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody ever got this close to him before. Nobody ever hurt him so badly. If he dies . . .”

  “Don’t say that. Remember what your daughter told you; he’s still deciding, and he has a reason to come back. He loves Sam, and he loves you, even if you are fucking an asshole like Jeff.”

  “Go away,” said Rachel. “Do something useful.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Angel.

  He hung up. Louis stood beside him, waiting. He handed Angel a Beretta 21 fitted with a suppressor that was barely longer than the pistol itself. The Beretta could now be fired in a restaurant and would make a sound only slightly louder than a spoon striking against the side of a cup. Louis carried a similar weapon in the pocket of his Belstaff jacket.

  They were off to do something useful.

  They were going to meet and, if necessary, kill the Collector.

  CHAPTER

  XLVIII

  Ronald Straydeer sat in the living room of his home near the Scarborough Downs racetrack. He held in his hands a photograph of himself as a younger man in uniform, his left arm encircling the neck of a massive German shepherd. In the picture, Ronald was smiling, and he liked to think that Elsa was smiling too.

  He wished that he still smoked pot. He wished that he still drank. It would have been easy to return to doing one or the other, or even both. Under the circumstances, it would not have been surprising or blameworthy. Instead, he spoke to the picture, and to the ghost of the dog within it.

  He was often asked, by those who didn’t know any better, why he hadn’t found himself another dog in the intervening years. He knew there were some who said that those who kept dogs had to resign themselves to their eventual loss because of the animals’ relatively short lives. The trick—if “trick” was the right word—was to learn to love the spirit of the animal, and to recognize that it transferred itself from dog to dog, with each one representing the same life force. Ronald believed that there might be some sense in this, but he felt, too, that men might equally say the same thing about women, and vice versa. He had known plenty of women, and had even loved one or two of them, so he had a degree of experience in the matter. But some men and women lost a partner early in life and never managed to give themselves again to another. Ronald thought there might have been something of that catastrophic sense of loss to his feelings for his abandoned dog. He wasn’t a sentimental man—although, again, some mistook his grieving for a dead animal as sentimentality. Ronald Straydeer had simply loved the dog, and Elsa had saved his life and the lives of his brother soldiers on more than one occasion. In the end, he was forced to abandon and betray her, and the sight of her, caged and scratching at the wire as she was taken from him, had torn at him every day since then. His only hope was that he might eventually be reunited with his dog in a world beyond this one.