Charlie Parker Collection 1

by John Connolly

  ‘About the girl? I asked Stan Ornstead to set something in motion. That’s all I can do.’

  ‘So what’s your conclusion about Faulkner? That he’s psychic?’

  ‘No, not psychic. I don’t think there’s a word for what Faulkner is. Before I left him, he spit at me. Actually, he spit into my mouth.’

  I felt her stiffen.

  ‘Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about it too. There isn’t enough mouthwash in the world to take that one away.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He told me it would help me to see better.’

  ‘See what better?’

  This was delicate ground. I almost told her then: about the black car, about the things on the prison walls, about the visions of lost children that I’d had in the past, about Susan and Jennifer visiting me from some place beyond. I so badly wanted to tell her, but I could not, and I did not understand why this should be. She sensed some of it, I thought, but chose not to ask. And if she had asked, how could I have explained it to her? I was still unsure myself about the nature of the gift that I had. I did not like to think that something in me drew these lost souls to me. It was easier, sometimes, to try to believe that it was a psychological disturbance, not a psychic one.

  I was tempted, too, to call Elliot Norton and tell him that his troubles were his own, that I wanted no part of them, but I had made a promise to him. And as long as Faulkner remained behind bars, awaiting a decision on his bail, I believed that Rachel would be safe. Faulkner, I felt certain, would do nothing that might endanger the possibility of his release.

  The black car was another matter. It was neither a dream nor a reality. It was as if, for a brief moment, something that resided in a blind spot of my vision had drifted into sight, that a slight alteration of perception had permitted me to see that which usually existed unseen. And, for reasons that I did not fully understand, I believed that the car, real or imagined, did not represent a direct threat. Its purpose was more indistinct, its symbolism more ambiguous. Still, the thought that the Scarborough PD would be watching the house provided an added consolation, even if I thought it unlikely that police officers would be reporting sightings of a battered black Coupe de Ville.

  There was also the matter of Roger Bowen. No good could come of a confrontation with him, but I was curious to see him, maybe to dig around a little and see what I could come up with. Most of all I felt a convergence of events, of which Elliot Norton’s case was a distinct yet linked part. I’m not a great believer in coincidence. I have found in the past that what passes for coincidence is usually life’s way of telling you that you’re not paying enough attention.

  ‘He thinks the dead talk to him,’ I said at last. ‘He thinks that there are deformed angels hovering above Thomaston prison. That’s what he wanted me to see.’

  ‘And did you see them?’

  I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling.

  ‘I saw ravens,’ I answered. ‘Scores of ravens. And before you consider making me sleep in the spare room, I wasn’t the only one that saw them.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you,’ said Rachel. ‘Nothing you could tell me about that old man would surprise me. Even locked up he gives me the creeps.’

  ‘I don’t have to go away,’ I told her. ‘I can stay here.’

  ‘I don’t want you to stay here,’ she replied. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Give it to me straight: are we at risk?’

  I thought about it. ‘I don’t think so. In the end, nothing’s going to happen until his lawyers appeal the bail decision. After that, we’ll have to reconsider. For now, the Scarborough PD’s guardian angel role is just a safeguard, although they may need a little unofficial backup.’

  She opened her mouth to raise some fresh objection, but I covered her lips gently with my hand. Her eyes narrowed in reproach.

  ‘Look, it’s as much for my sake as yours. If it comes it won’t be conspicuous or obtrusive, but I’ll sleep a little easier for it.’

  I lifted my hand slightly from her mouth and prepared myself for the tirade. Her lips parted and I pressed my hand down again. She let out a resigned sigh, her shoulders sagging in defeat. This time, I took my hand away completely and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t respond at first, then I felt her lips part and her tongue move cautiously against mine. Her mouth opened wider, and I moved against her.

  ‘Are you using sex to get what you want?’ she asked, her breath catching a little as my hand brushed the inside of her thigh.

  I raised my eyebrows in a poor imitation of hurt.

  ‘Of course not,’ I assured her. ‘I’m a man. Sex is what I want.’

  I could taste her laughter on my tongue as we gently began the slow dance together.

  In blackness I awoke. There was no car waiting, yet the road seemed newly empty.

  I left the bedroom and walked softly down to the kitchen. I could no longer sleep. When I reached the final steps, I saw that Walt was sitting in the doorway to the living room. His ears were erect and his tail was beating slowly on the floor. He looked at me once, then returned his attention to the room beyond. When I scratched at his ear, he didn’t respond. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on a patch of darkness in the corner, denied light by the thick drapes but darker yet than it should have been, like a hole torn between worlds.

  Something in that darkness had drawn the dog close to it.

  I found the only weapon to hand – the letter opener on the coatstand – and palmed it, then stepped into the room, conscious of my nakedness.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked. At my feet, Walt let out a little whine, but it was more excitement than fear. I moved closer to the darkness.

  And a hand emerged.

  It was a woman’s hand, very white. Three horizontal wounds had been torn upon it so deeply that I could see the exposed bones in the fingers. The wounds were old, gray-brown within, and the skin had hardened around them. There was no blood. The hand extended farther, palm facing out, fingers raised,

  stop

  and I knew that these wounds were only the first, that she had lifted up her hands against the blade but it had made its way to her face and her body despite them, and there were more cuts like this upon her, made unto death and beyond.

  please

  I stopped.

  Who are you?

  you’re looking for me

  Cassie?

  i felt you looking for me

  Where are you?

  lost

  What can you see?

  nothing

  dark

  Who did this to you? Who is he?

  not one

  many in one

  Then I heard a whispering begin, and other voices joined with her own.

  cassie let me speak let me talk to him cassie will he help us does he know cassie does he know my name cassie can he tell me my name cassie cassie can he take me away from here cassie i want to go home please i’m lost cassie please i want to go home

  please

  Cassie, who are they?

  i don’t know

  i can’t see them

  but they’re all here

  he put us all here

  Then, from behind me, a hand touched my bare shoulder, and Rachel was beside me, her breasts against my back, the feel of the sheets cool against my skin. The voices were fading, barely audible, yet desperate and insistent.

  please

  And in her sleep, Rachel’s brow furrowed and she whispered softly:

  ‘Please.’

  8

  I flew out of the Portland Jetport the next morning. It was early Sunday and the roads were still quiet when Rachel dropped me at the door of the terminal building. I had already called Wallace MacArthur to confirm that I was leaving and had passed on my cell phone and hotel numbers to him. Rachel had arranged a date for him with a friend of hers named Mary Mason, who lived out at Pine Point. Rachel knew her from the local Audubon Society and figured that she and Wallace would probably get along pre
tty well. Wallace had taken the trouble to check out her photo through the BMV and had professed himself pleased with his prospective mate.

  ‘She looks good,’ he told me.

  ‘Yeah, well don’t get too cocky. She hasn’t seen you yet.’

  ‘What’s not to love?’

  ‘You have a pretty healthy self-image, Wallace. In anyone else it would come across as smugness, but you manage to pull it off.’

  There was a noticeable pause before he asked: ‘Seriously?’

  Rachel leaned across and kissed me on the lips. I held her head close to mine. ‘You take care of yourself,’ she said.

  ‘You too. You got your cell phone?’

  She dutifully raised her phone from her bag.

  ‘And you’re going to leave it on?’

  She nodded.

  ‘All the time?’

  Pursed lips. Shrug. Reluctant nod.

  ‘I’ll be calling to check.’

  She punched me on the arm. ‘Go get on your plane. There are flight attendants waiting to be charmed.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I said, and instantly wondered if I had more in common with Wallace MacArthur than was really healthy.

  She smiled. ‘Yep. You need all the practice you can get.’

  Louis once told me that the New South was like the Old South, except everybody was ten pounds heavier. He was probably kind of bitter, and he certainly wasn’t a fan of South Carolina, often considered the most redneck state in the South after Mississippi and Alabama, although it had managed its racial affairs in a slightly more developed way. When Harvey Gantt became the first black student to go to Clemson College in South Carolina, the legislature, rather than opting for blockades and guns, grudgingly accepted that the time for change had come. Still, it was in Orangeburg, S.C., in 1968 that three black students were killed during demonstrations outside the whites-only All Star Bowling Alley; anyone over forty in South Carolina had probably gone to a segregated school; and there were still those who believed that the Confederate flag should fly over the state Capitol in Columbia. Now they were naming lakes after Strom Thurmond, as if segregation had never happened.

  I flew into Charleston International via Charlotte, which seemed to be a kind of clearinghouse for the runts of evolution and a dumping ground for the worst fashion excesses of the polyester industry. Fleetwood Mac was playing on the jukebox in the Taste of Carolina saloon, where overweight men in shorts and T-shirts drank light beer in a fog of cigarette smoke, the women beside them feeding quarters into the poker machines that stood on the polished wood of the bar. A man with a tattoo of a skull in joker’s regalia on his left arm gave me a hard look from where he sat, splay-legged, at a low table, the neck of his T-shirt soaked with sweat. I held his gaze until he belched and looked away with a studiedly bored expression on his face.

  I checked the screens for my departure gate. There were planes flying out of Charlotte to places that nobody in his right mind would want to visit, the kind of places where the routes should have been strictly one-way, heading out of there to just about anywhere else, doesn’t matter, just get me a damn ticket. We boarded on time and I sat beside a big man with a Charleston Fire Department cap on his head. He leaned across me to look out at the military vehicles and aircraft on the tarmac, and at a US Airways Express twin-prop that was taxiing toward the runway.

  ‘Glad we’re on one of these here jets and not one of them little biddy planes,’ he said.

  I nodded as he took in the aircraft and the buildings of the main terminal. ‘I remember when Charlie was just a little old two-runway place,’ he continued. ‘Hell, they was still building it. That was when I was in th’ army . . .’

  I closed my eyes.

  It was the longest short flight of my life.

  Charleston International was near empty when we landed, the walkways and stores largely devoid of passengers. To the northwest, at Charleston AFB, gray-green military aircraft stood in the afternoon sun, tensed like locusts prepared for flight.

  They picked me up at the baggage claim, close by the car rental desks. There were two men, one of them fat and wearing a bright hemp shirt, the other older with slicked-back dark hair, dressed in a T-shirt and vest beneath a black linen jacket. They watched me discreetly as I stood at the Hertz desk, then waited at the side door of the terminal building as I walked through the heat of the parking lot to the small marquee beneath which my Mustang was waiting. By the time I had the keys in my hand, they were sitting in a big Chevy Tahoe at the intersection with the main exit road and they stayed two cars behind me all the way to the interstate. I could have lost them, but there didn’t seem to be much point. I knew they were there, and that was what mattered.

  The new Mustang I had rented didn’t drive like my Boss 302. When I put my foot to the floor nothing happened for about a second while the engine woke up, stretched, and scratched itself before eventually getting around to accelerating. Still, it had a CD player so I was able to listen to the Jayhawks as I drove along the neobrutalist stretch of I-26, ‘I’d Run Away’ blaring as I took the North Meeting Street exit for Charleston, until the ambiguity of the lyrics made me turn it off in favor of the radio, the words of the bridge still echoing in my head.

  So, we had a little baby boy,

  knew it wouldn’t last too long.

  Kind of what I had in mind,

  but what I had in mind was strong.

  Meeting Street is one of the main arteries into Charleston, leading straight into the heart of the business and tourist district, but its upper reaches are pretty unsavory. A black man sold watermelons by the side of the road from the back of a pickup, the fruit piled up neatly in rows, a sign advertising the Diamonds Gentleman’s Club rising up above him. The Mustang juddered over railroad tracks, past boarded-up warehouses and abandoned strip malls, drawing glances from kids shooting hoop on overgrown green lots and old men in porch chairs, the paint peeling from the fronts of the houses and weeds bursting through the cracks in the steps in a mockery of fruition. The only building that looked clean and new was the housing authority’s modern glass-and-red-brick office. It seemed to be inviting those who lived by its gift to storm it and steal all of the furniture and fittings. The Chevy stayed behind me the whole way. I slowed down once or twice, and did a full circle from Meeting, through Calhoun and Hutson and back on to Meeting again, just to bug the two men. They maintained their distance until I reached the courtyard of the Charleston Place Hotel, then moved slowly away.

  In the hotel lobby, wealthy blacks and whites dressed in their Sunday best stood talking and laughing in their postservice ease. Occasionally, calls were made for parties to head to the dining room, Charleston Place’s Sunday brunch being a tradition for some. I left them to it and headed up the stairs to my room. It had a pair of queen-size beds and a view of the ATM at the bank across the street. I sat on the bed nearest the window and called Elliot Norton to let him know that I’d arrived. He let out a long sigh of relief.

  ‘The hotel okay for you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, noncommitally. Charleston Place was certainly luxurious, but the bigger the hotel, the easier it is for strangers to gain access to the rooms. I hadn’t noticed anybody who looked particularly like hotel security, although security was probably deliberately discreet here, and the hallway had been empty apart from a chambermaid pushing a cart loaded with towels and toiletries. She hadn’t even looked at me.

  ‘It’s the best hotel in Charleston,’ said Elliot. ‘It’s got a gym, a pool. You prefer, I can book you in someplace where the roaches will keep you company.’

  ‘I got followed from the airport,’ I told him.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  He didn’t sound surprised.

  ‘You think they could be listening in on your calls?’

  ‘I guess. I never bothered to have the place swept. Didn’t see the need. But it’s hard to keep a lid on anything in this town. Also, like I told you, my secretary left this week and she made it pretty clear th
at she didn’t approve none of some of my clients. Her last act was to make your hotel booking. Could be she let something slip.’

  I wasn’t too concerned about the tail. People involved in the case were going to know I was here soon enough anyway. I was more worried about the possibility that somebody might find out our plans for Atys Jones and take action against him.

  ‘Okay, just in case: no more calls to or from the hotel, your office, or your home. We’ll need clean cells for routine business. I’ll pick them up this evening. Anything sensitive can wait until we see each other in person.’ Cells weren’t an ideal solution, but if we didn’t sign contracts, kept the numbers to ourselves, and used them carefully we would probably get away with it. Elliot gave me directions to his house again, which was about eighty miles northwest of Charleston, and I told him I’d be there later that afternoon. Before he hung up, he added: ‘I had another reason for checking you into the CP, apart from your comfort.’

  I waited.

  ‘The Larousses go there for Sunday brunch most weeks, catch up on gossip and business. You go down there now, you’ll probably see them: Earl, Earl Jr., maybe some cousins, business associates. Thought you might like to get a feel for them discreetly, but if someone tailed you from the airport, then I figure they may be checking you out as much as you’re checking on them. Sorry, bud. I fucked up there.’

  I let it go.

  Before I headed down to the lobby I checked the yellow pages and called a company named Loomis Car Rental. I arranged to have an anonymous Neon delivered to the parking garage within the hour. My guess was that anyone who was keeping tabs on me would be looking out for the Mustang, and I wasn’t about to make life too easy for a potential tail.

  I spotted the Larousse group as it was coming out of the dining room. Earl Larousse, instantly identifiable from the newspaper photos I’d seen, wore his trademark white suit and a black silk tie, like a mourner at a Chinese funeral. He was about five eight, bald, and heavily built. Beside him stood a younger, slimmer version of himself, although there was a slight effeminacy to the son that was absent from the father. Earl Jr.’s slim frame was concealed beneath a billowing white shirt and a pair of black trousers that were too tight around the ass and thighs, making him look like a flamenco dancer on his day off. He had very fair hair, which rendered his eyebrows almost invisible, and I reckoned he had to shave about once a month. Five other people – three men, two women – were talking with them as they left the room. The party was quickly joined by an eighth person, the man with the slicked-back hair, who walked up to Earl Jr. and whispered discreetly in his ear before moving on. Immediately, Earl Jr. looked over at me. He said something to his father, then detached himself from the group and came over to me. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it certainly wasn’t to see his hand outstretched and a regretful smile on his face as he reached me.