Scavenger

by Tom Savage

  “Yes. Your father didn’t live to see your divorce, but if he were here, I know he’d agree with me on this.”

  Tracy nodded distractedly, wondering how her mother was so uncannily able to zero in on the very subjects she was trying to avoid. They’d been talking about dresses for the simple civil service she and Mark were planning, and the small reception after the ceremony. Then, somehow, the discussion of designers and restaurants had given way to this one, the What Do You Really Know About This Man speech. It was a mother thing, obviously.

  “Okay, Mother,” she heard herself saying. “I’ll think about it. I really will. Now let me tell you about my new client, the one I met this morning.…”

  With the deft finesse she usually reserved for negotiations with publishers, Tracy guided the conversation away from the danger zone to safer waters. Her new author, the first novelist whose book was sure to be a big hit. The various publishing houses that were already calling with offers. Mrs. Morgan’s own news, the upcoming international bridge tournament she and her friends were planning to attend.

  But all the while, as the spaghetti gave way to ice cream and the lights of Queens across the river appeared beyond Mrs. Morgan’s picture window, Tracy thought about her mother’s suggestion. It would be difficult to do. It might be impossible. And it would certainly be embarrassing. But it would answer some questions, she was sure of it. And for that alone, it might be worth it.

  She regarded her mother as she spoke, and she remembered her late father. Henry and Irene Morgan had been the best kind of parents, she knew: loving and attentive and nurturing. They had provided her with everything a child and, later, a young woman could possibly want or need. Private schools, tuition to Harvard, trips to Europe, a car. They’d even helped her finance the Gramercy Park co-op. They’d entertained a long line of friends and boyfriends, never once objecting or balking at her choices. As a child, she’d announced the usual assortment of professions to which she aspired: actress, ballet dancer, Olympic gymnast, policewoman. Her parents had smiled and nodded enthusiastically, knowing that things would change.

  And they had. She’d always loved books. From early childhood she’d read voraciously, anything she could get her hands on. When, in her junior year of high school, she’d told them she wanted to be a writer, they were delighted with the choice. Her father had immediately suggested Harvard, his alma mater, and offered to pay for it. She’d insisted on augmenting his payment with her own contributions, and she’d found babysitting jobs and waited tables and tutored other students in English. When she graduated cum laude, her parents beamed. She’d soon decided that she didn’t enjoy writing as much as finding and promoting other writers, and they had supported that decision, too. Her first job as an editor’s assistant at Bantam, her eventual employment by the Jaffee/Douglas Agency, her early author clients, her first bestselling writer, her various romances, her wedding to Alan: all had been approved of and applauded. And now, with her father gone, her mother was continuing the tradition alone.

  Tracy loved her mother, and she knew that the suggestion had been a kind one. She had also been wondering all afternoon about the two boxes she’d seen Mark putting in the suitcase, which led inevitably to the next question in her mind. She smiled at her mother and nodded, only half listening to the details of the bridge tournament, thinking:

  Where are you, Mark?

  15

  Mark was back in the living room of O’Hara’s house, and the two of them were drinking coffee. After their meal, they had cleaned up the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. From the way O’Hara did these things, Mark was certain that the man was unused to living alone, unaccustomed to fending for himself in the kitchen. Miss Morris’s departure was apparently very recent, and any maids or housekeepers there might have been had evidently departed with her.

  O’Hara lit a cigar and settled back on the couch. He regarded Mark silently for a long while, and Mark knew instinctively not to break the silence. Whatever the big man had to say, he would say it when he was ready. That was his way, and there was no changing it. Mark knew this, as he knew that it had cost the man dearly to invite the former suspect into his house and discuss a case that was obviously still painfully frustrating for him.

  But he had invited Mark in. Mark had succeeded in what he had been instructed to do, and he shook his head now as he remembered his trepidation yesterday, in his apartment in New York City. Now, twenty-four hours later, here he was with the man he was supposed to see.

  At last O’Hara said, “I believe Sarah Tennant is still in New Orleans. She was nineteen when the murders occurred, a student at Yale, majoring in drama. She and a couple of her student friends were staying at her family’s house outside New Orleans on the weekend before Mardi Gras. On Monday night, Lundi Gras, she and her friends went into town, and they crashed with another friend who lived there. They did the whole Mardi Gras thing the next day, the parades and all that, and they came back to the Tennant house at about two o’clock Wednesday morning. That’s when they found the rest of her family. They’d been dead nearly twenty-four hours. I guess you know that much; everybody does. And you wrote the book, so to speak.”

  Mark nodded.

  “Well, Sarah had a bad time for a while,” O’Hara continued. “She was treated for shock, and later for depression. She went to live with an uncle, her father’s brother, in downtown New Orleans, and she never completed her education. She joined an amateur drama group while working in her uncle’s law firm as a secretary. I understand she married a young local lawyer. But she’s had recurring psychological problems. Anyway, she and her husband are still in New Orleans, so far as I know.”

  Mark leaned forward. “Mr. O’Hara—”

  The former agent held up a big hand. “Ron. You might as well call me Ron. I’ll call you Mark, I guess, seeing as that’s the name you use now.”

  “Okay. Ron, you resigned from the FBI—when was it? Six years ago?”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven. Okay. So how do you know all this about Sarah Tennant?”

  O’Hara shrugged and relit his cigar. “I’m still interested in the case. I guess I’ve kept up with all the players. I kept up with you, as soon as I found you again—or, rather, you found me—last year. You used to be a journalist, and you were married to a woman named Carol Johnson, now Carol Grant. You’ve just announced your engagement to a literary agent named Teresa Morgan, or Tracy, as everyone calls her, and the two of you are planning to marry in June. I’ve read all four of your books—which are quite good, by the way. But did you have to make my character in Dark Desire a honky?”

  Mark stared at the big man with the cigar, and their eyes met over a plume of smoke. Then they both began to laugh. Mark had never seen Ronald O’Hara laugh before; he gave himself over to it, his whole body shaking from the force of his deep bellows of mirth. For the first time since his arrival in Washington, Mark actually relaxed.

  “Lawsuits,” he explained when he had caught his breath. “My publisher’s legal department thought it was a good idea. They told me to keep everyone—especially you—as far from reality as possible. I had to make some changes in the manuscript, and that was one of them.”

  O’Hara’s deep laughter had diminished by now to a low chuckle. “I wouldn’t have sued you. Hell, you even let my character catch the guy, which was a damn sight more satisfying than—well, than anything that actually happened. Thank you for that, I guess.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mark said. “I wrote the book as a sort of catharsis, I suppose. You know, closure, to use the popular new term. I guess I wanted that fictional ending more than anybody—even you. But tell me, why did you say you thought Sarah Tennant was my next stop?”

  O’Hara put down his cigar and leaned back on the couch again, watching Mark across the coffee table. He frowned and licked his lips, as if trying to form words in his mind. His hands fidgeted in his lap.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said at last. “He
ll, I don’t believe it. I think—I think your friend Scavenger told me.”

  “What?” Mark’s coffee cup landed on the saucer with a clatter. O’Hara stood up and reached over to take them from his hands. He placed them on the table and went over to the front window, as he had done earlier. Mark got up from the armchair and followed him. He stood behind the big man, looking over his shoulder at the lights of Georgetown, waiting for him to explain his extraordinary statement.

  He did. Without turning from the view, he said, “It was about a week ago. I didn’t think twice about it until today, when you arrived here and explained your business. I—I got a phone call. I answered the phone, and I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Tell him to talk to Sarah.’ I said, ‘What?’ and he repeated it. Then he hung up. I thought it was a wrong number. I didn’t recognize the voice, and I don’t know anyone named Sarah. I never thought of Sarah Tennant. It was only when I remembered her today that I remembered the phone call. But I’ll bet the farm it was Scavenger.”

  “So will I,” Mark whispered.

  Now O’Hara turned around to face him. “Whoever this is, whatever they think they’re doing, they seem to have it all planned down to the last detail. What I don’t understand is, why didn’t they just go to the police or to the Bureau? Why the elaborate game?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark said.

  “Hmm. Neither do I. Well, we may be able to clear up some of it, at least. The telephone’s over there, next to the couch. You can call Sarah Tennant in New Orleans. Maybe she knows something.”

  Mark blinked. “No, I can’t call her. I—I have to go there. You saw the letter: that’s the way it works. Whatever he—she, it—whatever they have planned for me, I have to do it in person. I’ll have to retrieve the next object, whatever it is. Those are the rules.”

  O’Hara shook his head and looked back out the window. “So what are you going to do now, tonight?”

  Mark shrugged. “There’s a little hotel near the university—”

  “You can stay here tonight if you want,” O’Hara said.

  “No,” Mark said quickly. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ve already given me enough of your time. Besides, I have to assume that my actions are being monitored. If I stay here too long, Scavenger might not like it.”

  O’Hara turned back to him again. “You think someone’s following you?”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “I do.”

  The two men looked out the window again at the lights of the city. Then O’Hara reached up and quickly closed the curtains. Without a word, Mark went over to collect his jacket, and the former federal agent led him out of the living room and down the hallway to the front door. Only when they arrived there did Mark finally bring himself to ask the question he’d been wanting to ask all evening.

  “What do you do now, Ron? I mean, now that you don’t work for the FBI.”

  “I’m a consultant for a corporate security firm. I test security equipment and train others how to operate it. But I—I’m talking to another former agent about opening a private detective agency.”

  Mark nodded. “You’d be a good private eye. Good luck with it.”

  “Thanks.” O’Hara opened the door, and Mark stepped out into the surprisingly cool evening air. “Be careful, Mark. I don’t know if the people you’re dealing with are actually dangerous, but don’t count on them being nice. What they’re doing is definitely not nice. Do you have any protection?”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “I have a gun. It’s licensed, and I know how to use it.”

  “Okay,” O’Hara said. “Watch yourself. I wish I could help you more. Hell, I wish I could go with you. But I think you’re right about me scaring them off. I just want you to make me a promise. If you find out who The Family Man was, you let me know first thing.”

  “I promise,” Mark said.

  O’Hara pulled his wallet from his pants, rummaged in it, and handed Mark a card. “That’s my number, if you need me for anything. Don’t hesitate to ask. I’ve got a lot of spare time on my hands these days. And I’ve still got friends with the Bureau who may be able to help out, too.”

  They stood there in the doorway for a moment, regarding each other. Mark studied the man’s face for signs of what was going on behind it, but, as usual, it was an inscrutable, unreadable mask. He felt that he should say something, ask something that would somehow strengthen the link he thought they had forged together in the past few hours. He’d never have imagined this imposing, authoritative man as a possible friend before today. And now he was surprised and disconcerted by the prospect. He was surprised most of all by the sudden certainty that this man’s friendship might be invaluable, something to be desired.

  Yet he did not speak. He could not think of anything to say. As if sensing this, Ronald O’Hara was the one who broke the silence. He looked away down the dark street for a long moment, lost in thought. Then he put his arm on Mark’s elbow, drawing him back inside the house, and shut the door.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Before you leave, I want to show you something.”

  He led the way back through the living room and down a hallway beside the staircase. At the back of the house, across the hall from the kitchen, was another door. He opened it, switched on the light, and motioned Mark forward. He stood aside in the doorway as Mark walked past him into the room.

  Mark stared around him. This place was obviously Ron O’Hara’s private sanctum. It was his office, but it was more than that. There was a desk with a computer on it near the only window, and one wall was lined, floor to ceiling, with crowded bookshelves. But it was the other three white walls of the room that arrested Mark’s attention. Framed photos and newspaper clippings covered almost all of their surface. The houses in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Evanston, Green Hills, and Brooklyn. O’Hara, somewhat younger, surrounded by agents and technicians and medical personnel, in several of the places, including Mark’s own living room. The headlines of the clipped, framed articles were similar to each other in that every one of them included the same two words in various sizes of bold typeprint: FAMILY MAN. There must have been thirty or forty clippings, and nearly as many photos. In the center of one wall, dominating everything else, was a large map of the United States, with pins and labels clustered around the five crime areas. As Mark gazed at it all, drinking it in, he was aware of a rising sense of otherworldliness, of a passion, an obsession, the extent of which he would never had suspected had he not seen this place. And he was aware of something else: the silence behind him, and the sensation of eyes studying him as he studied the shrine. He felt a cold trickle of sweat break loose from his temple and course slowly down the side of his face.

  He stood there for a long time, staring, unable to will himself to turn around and face the man in the doorway. When Ron O’Hara finally broke the eerie silence in the room, his voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  “You know, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I lost my parents before that, and several friends—a couple in the line of duty. But none of those things compared to the loss of The Family Man. There wasn’t the embarrassment, the humiliation. The constant, never-ending frustration. They called it a resignation.” He laughed bitterly. “I didn’t resign; they fired me. Because I wouldn’t give it up, even after they told me to. I just knew I had to find him. Bring him in. Make him pay for what he did. Twenty-four people slaughtered like the animals that died with them—many of them young people, practically children. And those are just the people we knew about. My only consolation is the knowledge that the son of a bitch is dead. He must be dead.” Mark heard him draw in a long, deep breath. “He’d better be dead.”

  Now, at last, he came into the room and walked around to stand before Mark. “Someone—this Scavenger, whoever it is—says they know who he was. I want to know, too. I have to know. I lost my job, my wife, my stepsons. Everything. All I can do now is dance on his grave. At least give me that.”

  Mark
forced himself to look up at him. Ron O’Hara stood there, and at last the mask had fallen away. His face reflected all the pain of which he had just spoken. Mark put a hand out to rest on the man’s arm and nodded.

  “Okay,” Mark said.

  O’Hara motioned for Mark to leave the room. He switched off the light, closed the door, and led his guest back through the house to the entrance. Mark walked out into the cool evening and turned around on the doorstep. He looked at the big man, then at the big, empty house behind him. Before he moved, he said, “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Sure,” O’Hara said, smiling. “And so are you. We’re both going to be just fine. Good night, Mark.”

  “Good night.” Mark forced a smile, too, and then he went down the hill in the direction of his car. After a moment, he heard the heavy oak door close firmly behind him.

  16

  When Matthew Farmer came out of the house, he was waiting for him. He stood in the shadows of a doorway down the street, watching the exchange between the two men. The FBI agent looked sad, and Matthew Farmer looked concerned. He couldn’t make out their words, but he got the gist of it from watching the pantomime.

  O’Hara had obviously done his job, mentioned the phone call to the writer, and now he would be on his way.

  Good.

  He would follow the man now, back to his car. His own car was parked just up the street. When Matthew Farmer began to drive, he would be right behind him.

  And here he came now. He descended the front steps of O’Hara’s house and approached down the hill, while behind him O’Hara went inside and closed the door.

  The tall man in the black duster shrank back into the doorway, watching as Matthew Farmer passed within mere feet of him. He noted the look in the writer’s eyes: he was obviously preoccupied, thinking hard about something. “A million miles away,” as his wife, Anna, used to say.