Bad Men (2003)

by John Connolly

  He was heading straight for her.

  Willard didn’t talk much. He guessed that a lot of folks considered him dumb, seeing as how he had never been much for school, and maybe they thought he was afraid to open his mouth because people might laugh at what came out. But Willard wasn’t afraid of anyone, and those who might have felt the urge to laugh at him would quickly have suppressed it as soon as they looked in Willard’s eyes. Sure, Willard had trouble with reading, and he wasn’t so good with figures, but he had the instincts and intelligence of a natural hunter, combined with a curiosity about the nature of pain and hurt when applied to others.

  He had sensed something from the woman when she had looked at him. It was more than the natural fear that he frequently recognized in women: the care they took not to get themselves trapped alone with a stranger; the grip with which they held on to their purses; the casual look around the smarter ones took as they prepared to open their car door in the parking lot. No, this was different, keener. Separated, thought Willard, with a husband who isn’t taking it too well; or maybe trying to avoid a boyfriend who doesn’t want to split from her, because then he’ll have to find someone else to beat on. Willard’s nostrils were almost twitching as she stood before him. He liked the scent of her. It aroused the predator in him.

  He wasn’t so sure about her hair, though. She’d dyed it some dowdy color that didn’t suit her, streaking it more than altering it entirely. He couldn’t figure out why she’d do something like that, except he’d heard on TV that it was kind of the fashionable thing to do a few years ago. If so, this woman needed to get back on the fashion train, because it was surely leaving the station without her.

  Willard watched her walk away. She had slim legs, and a nice ass beneath her coat. He could see the shape of it as she pulled the coat against herself. On another occasion, he might have followed her, learned more about her, just in case he decided to visit her at some point in the future, but Moloch had warned him after the incident with the woman in the bedroom. Willard hadn’t liked the way Moloch spoke to him. Neither had he appreciated the look that had passed between Moloch and Dexter afterward, like a principal and a teacher agreeing on the unspoken decision to expel an errant student from school.

  Willard saw the woman try to hail a cab. She looked anxious. Strange, he thought. She walks to the movie theater from the mall, and now she suddenly has to get a cab? He rubbed his foot across the still-smoldering cigarette butt, crushing it into the sidewalk. And then there was that hair: it was shitty, almost as if it was designed to make her look more common than she was. There was a good-looking woman under there, but she seemed to be deliberately trying to hide her presence. A mental picture flashed: a woman standing beside Moloch at the state fair, the woman smiling uneasily. Willard tried setting the image of the woman with the dyed hair beside Moloch’s wife.

  Shit.

  Marianne saw the cab at almost the same instant that Willard began to speed up his progress. The lights were changing to amber over by Chili’s restaurant, and the cabdriver seemed inclined to stop. She waved her hand frantically, causing cars to honk their horns as she ran across the road, and saw the driver glance to his right, where a competitor was exiting from the Hampden Inn with an empty cab. In that second, he made his decision and hit the accelerator, shooting through the lights as they turned to red in his rearview mirror. He pulled in alongside her and she clambered in, just as Willard started to run.

  “Commercial,” said Marianne. “Please, and quickly.”

  The cabdriver glanced in the rearview as he got ready to pull out, and spotted Willard.

  “Hey,” he said, “you know this guy?”

  Marianne looked back. Willard was running between the traffic, dodging the oncoming hoods almost gracefully. He was maybe thirty feet from the cab.

  “A guy I once dated,” she said. “I really don’t want to talk to him. There’s ten bucks in it for you.’

  “For an extra ten, I’ll date him myself,” said the cabdriver. He swung out and shot away from the curb. Marianne heard a noise from behind, like fingers vainly dragging along the trunk of the cab, but she did not look back.

  Willard stood on the curb, watching the cab head off toward Portland. Had the lights at the mall entrance gone red, then he might have caught up with them, but the cab had a free run to the main intersection. Willard took a deep breath and debated whether or not he should tell Moloch what had occurred. He might have been wrong about the woman, of course, but the look on her face as she had seen him approach through the back window of the cab told him that his suspicions were correct. It was her. She knew who he was, and if she knew that, then she must also know that they had come for her at last. The shock on her face told him one more thing: she didn’t know that Moloch was free, otherwise she wouldn’t have been trying to pass an idle evening with some shitty movie.

  He had to tell Moloch. Already, the woman would be preparing to run again.

  Willard was surprised by how calm Moloch appeared to be, at least initially. As it turned out, the calm didn’t last long.

  “You’re certain it was her?” said Moloch.

  “Pretty sure. Her hair is different, and she looked kind of dowdy, but I saw her face as that cab pulled away. She knew me.”

  “How? There’s no way that she could have known who you are.”

  “Maybe she picked up on me when I was tailing her, back before she ran.”

  “If she did, then you’re the shittiest tail I ever knew.”

  Willard bridled at the insult but said nothing.

  “You should have caught her. Now she knows we’re here.”

  “Where can she go? There’s no way she could have made the ferry.”

  “You think that’s the only boat down there? They have water taxis. She could go to another island and get someone to bring the kid to her. You think we have time to scour every island for her? Get the others. Describe her to them, and set them to looking for her in town. If nobody has found her by seven, we bring everything forward.” Willard left him. Moloch called Braun in his room. Braun listened, then hung up.

  “We need to get going,” he told Dexter.

  “The hell are you talking about?” asked Dexter. “This shit is only starting to get good.”

  “Willard saw the wife. He thinks she made him.”

  Dexter swore, then turned off the TV. They packed up and joined Moloch and the others in his room. Shepherd and Tell had just arrived. Tell still had sugar on his sweater.

  “An extra twenty-five thousand for the one who finds her,” said Moloch. He looked at Willard. “And I want her intact, you hear?”

  Willard didn’t even nod, but he could see Dexter grinning at him. Once again, he recalled the look that had passed between Dexter and Moloch. Willard decided that he was going to have to deal with Dexter, and sooner rather than later.

  The cab dropped Marianne on Commercial, footsteps from the ferry dock. The dock was empty and she could see the lights of the ferry disappearing into the evening darkness. She swore and felt the fear wash over her. It almost reduced her to tears. She tried to hold herself together.

  They would be expecting her to head back to the island, if only to get Danny. Maybe if she could get someone to pick up Danny and get him off the island, then she could avoid going back to Dutch at all. Briefly, she considered calling the cops and telling them everything, but Marianne was afraid that they would take Danny away from her, perhaps even jail her. No, the cops were not yet an option.

  Except…

  She dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that she had seen a man out by the mall who looked like the guy on TV, you know, the blond guy. She gave an accurate description of Willard’s dress, right down to the baseball cap, then hung up.

  That would give them something to think about.

  She didn’t have much time. She dropped some coins in the slot and rang Bonnie Claeson’s number. The phone rang three times and then was picked up.

  “Hello?”
she said.

  There was static on the line, but it wasn’t regular static. It ebbed and flowed. At first, it sounded a little like soft cotton being rubbed between someone’s fingers. For an instant, an image came to her unbidden: an insect beating its wings, while around it a host of others did the same in preparation for some great flight.

  Then the line died.

  She tried again, and got only a busy signal. She tried three more numbers, including Jack’s, with the same result.

  Finally, Marianne gripped her bag and ran for a water taxi, just as the first flurries of snow began to fall.

  Shepherd arrived first at the pier, only to see the water taxi disappearing from sight, a tiny puff of smoke seeming to mock him as it went. He removed a pair of binoculars from his pack and found the woman in the prow of the boat. She was, as far as he could make out, the only passenger. As he stared at her, she looked back toward the pier and he was certain that she was looking at him. He thought he could read fear in her eyes.

  Tell appeared beside him, and Shepherd smiled.

  “She’s going home.”

  Willard’s instincts were honed to perfection. He saw the patrol car before the cop inside could spot him, and slipped into the Starbucks in the Old Port, stripping himself of his coat and hat as he went. He didn’t know who they were looking for, but he could guess. The woman had seen him, and she had called the cops to make life difficult for him.

  Willard didn’t care. Life had always been difficult for him.

  He ordered a coffee, then slipped back out onto the streets and lost himself from view.

  As soon as Willard told him of his encounter with Marianne, Moloch called Scarfe and headed for the meeting place he had suggested, the rocky outcrop by the twin lights in Cape Elizabeth. The rocks and the small beach were deserted. With the approaching storm, even the locals had retreated to their homes.

  There were two men waiting on the beach, snow already whitening their shoulders and hair. One was Scarfe. The other was Barron.

  “So this is the tame cop?”

  Moloch looked at the policeman with a mixture of distaste and amusement. Barron was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a padded jacket. He looked uneasy.

  “I’m not your tame cop,” he said.

  “What would you prefer to be called? Pedophile cop? Child molester cop? Please, let me know. I want you to be as comfortable as possible in your dealings with me.”

  Barron’s face flushed, but he didn’t reply.

  “You should have been more careful, Officer. Your tastes have made you the bitch of anyone to whom your creditors choose to offer you.”

  “Just tell me what you want,” said Barron softly.

  Moloch turned to Scarfe. “I’ve heard a lot about you, none of it very impressive. I advise you not to let me down. Now, tell me about the island.”

  For the next ten minutes, Scarfe detailed all that he had discovered from Carl Lubey, including the presence and routines of the giant cop, Joe Dupree, and the reported arrival that morning of the rookie cop Macy. (“A rookie?” Moloch had interrupted. “Maybe our luck is holding.”)

  “And the woman, Marianne Elliot?”

  “She’s out there. Her house is over on the southeastern shore. There aren’t too many other houses around there. The boy is with her.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?” asked Moloch.

  Scarfe swallowed.

  “Lubey says she’s been seen around with the cop Dupree. They had dinner together last night.”

  Moloch motioned him to continue, but he looked unhappy at the development.

  “There’s a boat waiting for you down at the Marine Company. You go in after dark on the northern shore, some ways from the woman’s house. There are no good landings over where she is, except for a little inlet that belongs to an old painter guy who watches the bay like a hawk. You try coming in that way and if he spots you, he’ll start making calls. The sea there is threaded with rocks anyway. Even experienced sailors steer clear of it. You need to stay as far as possible from the dock on Island Avenue on your way in, and from any houses along the shore. Like the painter, people on the island keep a close eye on what happens there, and who comes and goes. The northeastern shore is virtually unpopulated, though. Lubey will meet you at the landing. He has a truck. He’ll take you to the woman’s house, then bring you back to the boat when your business is done. He doesn’t want money. He has one favor to ask.”

  “Go on.”

  “He wants you to kill Dupree if you get the chance.”

  “No cops,” interrupted Barron. “Nobody gets hurt, that was the deal.”

  “I don’t remember making a deal with you, Officer,” said Moloch. “You will do as you’re told, or your superiors will receive information that will end your career and make you the whore of every disease-ridden rapist that your state’s prison system can put your way. Don’t interrupt us again.”

  He turned back to Scarfe.

  “I make no promises about the cop.”

  “It might be easier to get rid of him at the start.” It was Leonie.

  Moloch bit at his lip. If the cop was seeing his wife, then the cop deserved what was coming to him. There was nothing worse than the thought of another man inside his wife.

  Scarfe unfolded papers from his pocket. “This is a map of the island. I’ve made some copies. It’s kind of rough, but it shows the main roads, the town, and the location of the woman’s house and those of her nearest neighbors.”

  Moloch took the map, examined it, then folded it and handed it, along with the copies, to Leonie.

  “I couldn’t help but notice that you said ‘you’ in your detailing of the arrangements made. ‘You’, not ‘us.’ That worries me.”

  “I’ve done what you asked me to do.”

  “You’re coming with us.”

  “You don’t need me.”

  “You know about boats, and you know this area. Some of my associates have experience of such matters, but these are unfamiliar waters and there is bad weather approaching. And if your friend Mr. Lubey lets us down, we will have someone to fall back on. Heavily.”

  Scarfe nodded.

  “I understand.”

  Moloch turned to Barron.

  “Your role in this affair is simple, Officer. You monitor the police bands. If there is even a hint of police activity that might concern us, I want you to nullify it. I understand that there is no cell phone coverage on the island?”

  “There are pockets, but only close to town. The eastern shore is out of range.”

  “You will take up a position on the dock. If our return is jeopardized in any way, you will signal us with your headlights as we return to land. Is that clear?”

  “That’s all?”

  “For now. Mr. Scarfe, you’ll come with us. Our departure is imminent.”

  Moloch, Dexter, and Willard dropped Leonie and Braun on Commercial. The two older men sat in the van close by the Casco Bay Ferry Terminal while Willard stayed in the shadows and watched the approaches along Commercial. The plan was virtually unchanged: one group would make for the island with Scarfe, while Leonie and Braun would follow by water taxi and land at the Cove, as the late ferry crossing had been canceled due to Thorson’s innate caution and the early arrival of the snow. Barron would keep an eye on all new arrivals, just in case the woman managed to slip by them and make it back to Portland.

  “I didn’t want her to see us before we came,” Moloch said to Dexter. “I didn’t want her to know. I wanted to see the shock on the bitch’s face myself.”

  “You’ll still see it. I reckon she has a lot of shock left in her.”

  Moloch didn’t look so happy, Dexter thought. He had been sleeping badly. Dexter had heard him crying out. That happened to men who had been jailed, Dexter knew. Even after their release, part of them always remained incarcerated, and that was the part that intruded on their dreams.

  Dexter, meanwhile, had his own worries.

  “I don’t lik
e this whole island deal,” he said. “Too many things can go wrong. I don’t like having just one escape route. I don’t like having to leave the same way I came in. And we don’t know shit about this Lubey guy.”

  “We have a boat. One of us will stay with it the whole time. Like I told you, we can take her and be gone before anyone even knows we’ve been there. We just need to stay out of trouble. As for Lubey, he’s a driver, nothing more.”

  “Do you trust the cop?”

  “No, but I think he’s too frightened of the consequences to cross us. Plus, our friends in Boston have promised him a little gift for his cooperation. His fear and his lust should combine to keep him in line.”

  “And the policeman out on the island?”

  “When they get there, Braun and Leonie will kill him, if only for having the temerity to fuck my wife.”

  “And Willard?”

  Something like regret flashed across Moloch’s features.

  “No pain,” he said. “I want him to feel no pain.”

  In the shadows, Willard was looking at a small map of the bay held behind a protective Plexiglas screen. He had changed his clothes and was now wearing a tourist’s fleece with a lobster on the front. He had darkened his hair in a men’s room with a kit he had bought in a drugstore, and it was now a shimmering black. With the index finger of his right hand, he traced the route of the ferry, following each little dot as carefully as if he were tracing the route onto paper. His finger stopped on the island, then he jerked it back suddenly.

  A spider was crawling across the map. Its body covered the island. Somehow, the spider had found its way inside the case and now it was trapped, vainly seeking a way out. Maybe it had been trying to shelter from the cold, but now the case would be its tomb. There would be no insects in there for it to feed on and eventually it would grow thin and die. Willard watched it crawl, its legs occasionally slipping on the surface of the map, causing the spider to drop an inch or two before its silk arrested its slide. At last it crawled back up to the top-right-hand corner of the case and huddled there, waiting for its end.