The Lovers

For the dead travel fast. -BRAM STOKER (1847-1912), DRACULA (AFTER BURGER’S “LENORE”)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE DRUNKS WERE OUT in force. A hockey game had been played that night, and the bar was a magnet for fans because one of the owners, Ken Harbaruk, had enjoyed brief spells with both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Bruins before a motorcycle accident put an end to his career. He used to say that it was the best thing that could have happened to him, under the circumstances. He was good, but he wasn’t good enough. Eventually, he knew, he would have found himself in the minors, playing for nickels and trying to pick up women who were easily impressed in bars a lot like the one he now owned. Instead, he’d been compensated well for his injuries, and had plowed the money into a half share in a bar that seemed destined to guarantee him the kind of comfortable retirement that would have been denied him had he been able to continue playing. In addition, had he wished, he could still have picked up women who were easily impressed, or so he told himself, but more usually he found himself thinking about his quiet apartment and his soft bed as the long nights in the bar drew to a close. He had a comfortable yet casual relationship with a lawyer who was a well-preserved fifty-one. They each had homes of their own, and they alternated overnight stays from weekend to weekend, although he sometimes wished for something a little more defined. Secretly, he would have liked for her to move in with him, but he knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She valued her independence. At first, he thought that she was keeping him at a remove in order to ascertain how serious he was about her. Now, after three years, he realized he was being kept at a distance because that was exactly how she wanted it, and if he desired something more then he would have to look elsewhere. He figured he was too old to look elsewhere, and he should be thankful for what he had. He was, he felt, reasonably lucky, and reasonably content.

Yet, on nights like this, when the Bruins were playing and the bar was filled with men and women who were too young to remember her or him, or old enough to recall how inconsequential his career had been, Harbaruk experienced a nagging sense of regret at the path his life had taken, which he hid by being even louder and more boisterous than usual.

“But them’s the breaks,” he had told Emily Kindler after he’d interviewed her for the waitress job. In fact, she’d hardly been required to say a word. All she had to do was listen and nod occasionally as he retold the story of his life, altering her expression as required to look sympathetic, interested, angry, or happy, according to the dictates of the plot. She believed that she knew his type: genial; smarter than he appeared to be, but with no illusions about his intelligence; the kind of guy who might fantasize about making a pass at her but would never act on it, and would feel guilty for even thinking such a thing. He told her about the lawyer, and mentioned the fact that he had been married way back, but it hadn’t worked out. If he was surprised by how much he was willing to share with her, then she was not. She had found that men wanted to tell her things. They exposed their inner selves to her, and she did not know why.

“Never was able to talk much to women,” Harbaruk told her as the interview drew to a close. “Might not seem that way now, but it’s true.”

The girl was unusual, he thought. She looked like she could do with a little fattening up, and her arms were so thin that he was pretty sure he could entirely encircle the widest point of her biceps with one meaty hand, but she was undeniably pretty, and what he had first taken for fragility, to the extent that he had almost dismissed the possibility of hiring her as soon as he set eyes on her, was revealing itself to be something more complex and ineffable. There was strength there. Maybe not physical, although he was starting to believe that she was not as weak as she looked, because one thing Ken Harbaruk had always been good at was judging the strength of an opponent, but an inner steeliness. Harbaruk sensed that the girl had been through some hard times, but they hadn’t broken her.

“Well, you talked okay to me,” she said.

She smiled. She wanted the job.

Harbaruk shook his head, knowing that he was being played, but he still found that he was blushing slightly. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

“It’s nice of you to say,” he replied. “It’s just a shame that everything in life can’t be handled with an interview over a soda.”

He stood, and extended his hand. She took it, and they shook.

“You seem like a good kid. Talk to Shelley over there. She’s the bar manager. She’ll fix you up with some shifts and we’ll see how you get along.”

She thanked him, and that was how she came to be waitressing in KEN HARBARUK’S SPORTS BAR AND RESTAURANT-LOCAL HOME OF THE NHL, as the sign above the door announced in big black-on-white letters. Beside it, a neon hockey player shot a puck then raised his hands in the air in triumph. The hockey player was dressed in red and white, a nod to Ken’s Polish ancestry. He was always being asked if he was related to Nick Harbaruk, who had enjoyed a career spanning sixteen years, from 1961 to 1977, including four seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1970s. He wasn’t, but it didn’t bother him to be asked. He was proud of his fellow Poles who had succeeded on the ice: Nick, Pete Stemkowsk Z ate Stemkoi, John Miszuk, Eddie Leier among the old-timers, and Czerkawski, Oliwa, and Sidorkiewicz among the new boys. There were photographs of them on the wall below one of the TVs, part of a little shrine dedicated to Poland.

The shrine was close to where the girl was now working, picking up glasses and taking last orders. It had been a long night, and she had earned every lousy dollar in tips. Her shirt smelled of spilled beer and fried food, and the soles of her feet were aching. She just wanted to finish up, go home, and sleep. She had a day off tomorrow, the first day since she had arrived here that would not involve working at either the coffee shop, or the bar, or both. She intended to sleep late, and do her laundry. Chad, the young man who had been circling her, had asked her out on a date, and she had tentatively agreed to go to a movie with him, even though her thoughts were still filled with memories of Bobby Faraday and what had befallen him. Still, she was lonely, and she figured a movie couldn’t hurt too much.

Ken killed the postmatch commentary in an effort to move folks along a little more quickly, and replaced it with the news. The girl liked the fact that life didn’t begin and end with sports for Ken. He read some, and he knew about what was going on in the world. He had opinions on politics, history, art. According to Shelley, he had too many damn opinions, and he was too willing to share them with others. Shelley was in her fifties, and married to an amiable slob who thought that the sun rose when Shelley awoke and that nightfall was the world’s way of mourning the fact that soon it would be deprived of the sound of Shelley’s voice while she slept. He was already seated at the bar, sipping a light beer as he waited to drive her home. Shelley was fair and worked hard, but as a consequence she didn’t like to see any of her “girls” working less hard than she did. She worked three nights behind the bar, sometimes overlapping with Ken if there was a game on. The girl had so far worked for her five times, and after the first night she had been grateful for the comparative peace of the third night when Ken had taken charge and everything had been a little more relaxed, if also a little less efficient and a little less profitable.

There were only two men left in her section, and they had reached that point of near intoxication where, had the bar not been about to close, she would have been obliged to cut them off. She could tell that they were about to progress from melancholy to mean, and she would be relieved when they were gone. Now, as she cleared away the glasses and empty chicken wing baskets from the table to their right, she felt a pair of taps on her back.

“Hey,” said one of the men. “Hey, honey. Hit us again.”

She ignored him. She didn’t like men touching her like that.

The other one giggled, and sang a snatch of a Britney lyric.

“Hey.”

The tap was harder this time. She turned.

“We’re closing,” she said.

“No, you ain’t.” He ostentatiously examined his watch. “We got another five minutes yet. You can see us right for two more beers.”

“I’m sorry, guys. I can’t serve you any more.”

Above their heads, the news story on the TV changed. She glanced at it. There were flashbulbs and police cars. Photographs were superimposed upon the sce Z aupon the ne: a man, a woman, and a child. She wondered what had happened to them. She tried to figure out if it was someplace local, then saw NYPD on the side of one of the cars and knew that it was not. Still, it couldn’t be anything good, not if they were showing photographs. That woman and the little girl were either missing or dead, maybe the man too.

“What do you mean you can’t give us no more?”

It was the smaller yet more belligerent of the drunks. He wore a Patriots shirt smeared with ketchup and wing juice, and his eyes were glazed behind his cheap spectacles. He was in his midthirties, and there was no sign of a wedding ring. A sour smell rose from him. It had been there right from the moment he arrived. At first, she had thought it was because he didn’t wash, but now she suspected that it was a substance he secreted, a contaminant from within that mingled with his sweat.

“Let it go, Ronnie,” said his friend, who was taller and fatter and also far drunker than his buddy. “I got to hit the head.” He stumbled by her, mumbling an apology. He wore a black T-shirt with a white arrow that pointed toward his groin.

The picture on the screen changed again. She looked up. Another man, different from the first, was caught in the glare of the lights. He looked confused, as though he’d wandered out of his house expecting to find quiet, not chaos.

Wait, she thought. Wait. I know you. I know you. It was an old memory, one that she couldn’t quite place. She felt something stir inside her. There was a buzzing in her head. She tried to shake it away, but it grew louder. Her mouth filled with saliva, and there was a growing pain between her eyes, as though a pin were being inserted into her skull through the bridge of her nose. Her fingertips began to itch.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” said Ronnie, but she ignored him. She was experiencing flashes of memory, scenes from a series of old movies playing in her head, except in each one she was the star.

Killing Melody McReady in a pond in Idaho, holding her head beneath the water as her back bucked and the last bubbles of air broke the surface…

Telling Wade Pearce to close his eyes and open his mouth, promising him something nice, a big surprise, and then jamming the gun between his teeth and pulling the trigger, because she had been wrong about him. She thought he might have been the one-what one?-but he was not, and he had begun asking questions about Melody, his girlfriend, and she had smelled the suspicion upon him…

Bobby Faraday, kneeling in the dirt before her, weeping, pleading with her to come back to him, as she walked behind him, took the rope from his saddlebag, and slipped the cord lightly around his neck. Bobby wouldn’t leave her alone. He wouldn’t stop talking. He was weak. He had already tried to kiss her, to hold her, but his touch repelled her now because she knew that he wasn’t the one for her. She had to stop him from talking, from trying to act upon his desires. So the rope tightened and Bobby-strong, lean Bobby-struggled against her, but she was strong, so strong, stronger than anyone could have imagined…

A hand on a stove, and the soft hiss as the gas began to seep out, just as it had seeped out decades before in a house owned by a woman named Jackie Carr; the girl waiting for the Faradays to die, one window op Z ane windowen just enough so that she could take breaths of night air. And then noise from the bedroom, a body tumbling to the floor: Kathy Faraday, almost overcome by fumes, trying to crawl to the kitchen to turn off the gas, her husband already dead beside her. The girl had been forced to sit on Kathy’s back, her mouth covered to protect her from the fumes, until she was sure that the woman was no more…

Leaving signs; carving a name-her name, her real name-in places where others might find it. No, not others: the Other, the One she loved, and who loved her in return.

And dying: dying as the bullets ripped into her and she tumbled into cold water; dying while the Other bled upon her, as she slumped forward in the car seat and her head came to rest upon his lap. Dying, over and over again, yet always returning…

A hand tugged on her arm. “You fucking bitch, I said-”

But Emily wasn’t listening. These were not her memories. They belonged to another, one who was not her yet was in her, and at last she understood that the threat from which she had been fleeing for so long, the shadow that had haunted her life, had not been an external force, an outside agency. It had been inside her all along, waiting for its moment to emerge.

Emily raised her hands to her head, pressing her fists into the sides of her skull. She closed her eyes tightly and ground her teeth as she struggled against the gathering clouds, trying in vain to save herself, to hold on to her identity, but it was too late. The transformation was occurring. She was no longer the girl she had once believed herself to be, and soon she would cease to be forever. She had a vision of a young woman drowning, just as Melody McReady had drowned, fighting against the coming oblivion, and she was both that woman and the one who was holding her down, forcing her beneath the water. The dying girl broke the water for the last time and looked up, and in her eyes was reflected a being both old and terrible, a black, sexless thing with dark wings that unfurled from its back, blocking out all light, a creature that was so ugly it was almost beautiful, or so beautiful that it had no place in this world.

It.

And Emily died beneath its hand, drowning in black water, lost forever. She had always been lost, right from the moment of her birth when this strange, wandering spirit had chosen her body for its abode, hiding in the shadows of her consciousness, waiting for the truth of itself to be revealed.

Now the thing that she had become looked down at the little man who was holding on to her arm. She could no longer understand what he was saying. His words were merely a buzzing in her ear. It didn’t matter. Nothing that he said mattered. She smelled him, and sensed the foulness inside him that had forced the stench from his pores. A serial abuser of women. A man filled with hatred and strange, violent appetites.

Yet she did not judge him, just as she would no more have judged a spider for consuming a fly, or a dog for gnawing on its bone. It was in his nature, and she found its echo in her own.

His grip tightened. Spittle flew from his mouth, but she saw only the movements of his lips. He started to rise, then paused. He seemed to realize that something had changed, that what he thought was familiar had suddenly become desperately alien. She freed her arm and moved in closer to him. She placed the palms of her hands on his face, then leaned in to kiss Z ad in to k him, her open mouth closing on his, ignoring the bitterness of him, the stink of his breath, his decaying teeth and yellowed gums. He struggled against her for a moment, but she was too strong for him. She breathed into him, her eyes fixed on his, and she showed him what would become of him when he died.

Shelley did not see her go, nor Harbaruk, nor any of the others who had worked alongside her. Had their memories of that night been played back for them, displayed on a screen so that they could see all that had passed before their eyes, the girl’s departure would have appeared as a grayish mass moving through the bar, an excised form loosely resembling a human being.

The big man in the arrow T-shirt returned from the men’s room. His friend was sitting where he had left him, staring vacantly at the wall, his back to the bar.

“Time to go, Ronnie,” he said. He patted Ronnie on the back, but the smaller man did not move.

“Hey, Ronnie.” He stepped in front of him, and stopped speaking. Even in his drunken state, he knew that his friend was broken beyond salvation.

Ronnie was weeping tears of blood and water, and his mouth was moving, forming the same words over and over. Every capillary had burst in his eyes, and the whites had turned entirely red, twin black suns set against their skies. He was whispering, but his friend could still hear what he was saying.

“I’m sorry,” said Ronnie. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE WOMAN, AT A signal from Epstein, had brought more coffee, once again black for him, and a little milk for mine. Between us lay the two symbols.

“What do they mean?” I asked.

“They are letters of the Enochian, or Adamical, alphabet, supposedly communicated to the English magician John Dee and his associate over a period of decades during the sixteenth century.”

“Communicated?”

“Through occult workings, although it may be a constructed language. Whatever its origins, this first is the Enochian letter ‘Und,’ the equivalent of our letter ‘A.’ In this case, it represents a name: Anmael.”

Jimmy Gallagher, struggling to remember: “Animal-no, that’s not it…”

“And what is Anmael?”

“Anmael is a demon, one of the Grigori, or the ‘Sons of God,’” said Epstein. “The Grigori are also known as ‘Watchers,’ or ‘the ones who never sleep.’ According to elements of the apocrypha, and the Book of Enoch in particular, they are gigantic beings who, in one version, precipitated the great Fall of the angels through the sin of lust.”

He held up two hands before him, but kept the thumb of his right hand tucked into the palm.

“Nine orders of angels,” he said. “All sexless, and above reproach.” He moved his thumb, adding it to the rest. “The tenth is the Grigori, of a different essence from the rest, in form and sexual appetite similar to man, and it is this order that fell. In Genesis, it is the Grigori who lusted after flesh and ‘took themselves wives’ from among the children of men. Such theories have always been a matter of some dispute. The great rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, blessed be his name, forbade his disciples to speak of such matters, but I, as you can see, have no such qualms.

“So, Anmael was one of the Grigori. He, in turn, is linked to Semjaza, one of the leaders of the order. Some say that the angel Semjaza repented of its actions, but that, I suspect, had more to do with a desire in the early church for a figure of repentance than anything else.

“Now we have twin angels, Anmael and Semjaza, but here Christian and Jewish views diverge. In Christian orthodoxy, derived in part from Jewish sources, angels are traditionally viewed as sexless, or, in the case of the higher orders, exclusively male. The later Jewish view, by contrast, allows the possibility of male and female angels. The bibliographer Hayyim Azulal wrote in his Milbar Kedemot of 1792 that ‘the angels are called women, as it is written in Zechariah verse nine, “Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and behold, there came out two women.”’ The Yalkut Hadash says: ‘Of angels we can speak both in masculine and in feminine: the angels of a superior degree are called men, and the angels of an inferior degree are called women.’ At the very least, then, Judaism has a more fluid concept of the sexuality of such beings.

“The body of Ackerman, and the boy killed by your father at Pearl River, both bore the Enochian ‘A,’ or ‘Und,’ burned into their flesh. The women, by contrast, were marked with the letter ‘Uam,’ or ‘S,’ for Semjaza.”

He paused for a moment and seemed to consider something. “I have often thought,” he resumed, “that the children of men must have been a grave disappointment to such beings. It was our flesh and our bodies that they desired, yet our minds, and our life spans, must have been like those of insects by comparison. But what if two angels, one male, one female, could inhabit the bodies of a man and a woman, and enjoyed their union as equals? And as those bodies wear out, they move on, finding others to inhabit, and then begin to seek each other once again. Sometimes it may take years. It may even be that, on occasion, they fail to come together, and the search continues in another body, but they never stop looking, for they cannot be content without each other. Anmael and Semjaza: soul mates, if one could speak in such a way of beings without a soul; or lovers, of beings who cannot love.

“And the price they pay for their union is, I believe, to do the bidding of another: in this case, that bidding is to bring an end to your existence.”

“Another?”

“A controlling consciousness. It may be that some of those whom you have encountered in the past-Pudd, Brightwell, our friend Kittim, perhaps even the Traveling Man, among those whose human nature is not in dispute, for did the Traveling Man not reference the book of Enoch?-also did its bidding, but without even knowing it. Think of the human body: some of its processes are involuntary. The heart beats, the liver purifies, the kidneys process. The brain does not have to tell them to perform these Z qerform th tasks, but they serve the function of sustaining the body. But to lift up a book, to drive a car, to fire a gun in order to end a life, these are not involuntary functions. So, perhaps, there will be some who perform services for another without being aware of it, simply because their own acts of evil fulfill a larger purpose. There will be others, though, who are specifically charged with certain tasks, and hence their awareness will ultimately be greater.”

“And what is this controlling consciousness?”

“That we don’t yet know.”

“‘We,’” I said. “I take it you’re not talking about you and me.”

“Not entirely.”

“The Collector spoke of my ‘secret friends.’ Do you qualify?”

“I would be honored to think so.”

“And there are others.”

“Yes, although some might not be so willing to wear the mantle of friendship in the general sense of the word,” said Epstein, choosing his words with consummate diplomacy.

“No cards at Christmas.”

“No cards at any time.”

“And you won’t tell me who they are?”

“For now, it’s better that you don’t know.”

“Are you afraid that I’m going to make unwanted calls?”

“No, but if you don’t know their names then you can’t reveal their identities to others.”

“Like Anmael, if he chose to take his blade to me.”

“You’re not alone in this matter, Mr. Parker. Granted, you are an unusual man, and I have not yet figured out why you have always been such an object of hatred and, dare I say it, attraction for such foul things, but I have other people to think of too.”

“Is that what Unit Five is: code for what you call my secret friends?”

For a moment, Epstein seemed taken aback, but recovered himself.

“Unit Five is just a name.”

“For what?”

“Initially, for the investigation into the Traveling Man. Since then, its remit has broadened somewhat, I believe. You are part of that remit.”

Rain began to fall. I looked over my shoulder and saw it darken the sidewalk and fall from the dark red awning over the doorway.

“So what do I do?”

“About what?”

“About Anmael, or whoever thinks he’s Anmael.”

“He’s waiting.”

“For?”

“For his other half to join him. He must believe that she is close, otherwise he wouldn’t have revealed himself. She, in turn, is leaving traces fo Z qng tracesr him, perhaps even without realizing it. When she comes, they’ll make their move. It won’t be long, not if Anmael was prepared to kill Wallace and mark the wall with his name. He senses her approach, and it will not be long before they are drawn together. We could hide you away, I suppose, but that would be merely to delay the inevitable. To amuse themselves, and to draw you out, they might hurt those close to you.”

“So what would you do in my shoes?”

“I would choose the ground upon which to fight. You have your allies: Angel and the one who is, presumably, still lurking outside. I can spare a couple of young men who will maintain a discreet distance from you yet keep you in sight. Tether yourself lightly in the place of your choosing, and we will trap them when they come.”

Epstein stood. Our meeting was over.

“I have one more question,” I said.

What might have been irritation flitted across Epstein’s face, but he crushed it and assumed once more his habitual expression of benign amusement.

“Ask it.”

“Elaine Parker’s child, the one who died: was it a boy or a girl?”

“It was a girl. I believe she named it Sarah. It was taken from her and buried secretly. I do not know where. It was best that nobody knew.”

Sarah: my half sister, buried anonymously in an infants’ cemetery in order to protect me.

“But I may have a final problem for you to consider in turn,” said Epstein. “How did they find Caroline Carr? On two occasions, your father and Jimmy Gallagher hid her well: once uptown, before Ackerman died beneath the wheels of a truck, and then during her pregnancy. Still, the man and the woman managed to track her down. Then someone found out that Will Parker had lied about the circumstances of his son’s birth, and they came back to try again.”

“It could have been one of your people,” I said. “Jimmy told me about the meeting at the clinic. One of them could have let it slip, either deliberately or inadvertently.”

“No, they did not,” said Epstein, and he spoke with such conviction that I did not contradict him. “And even were I to doubt them, which I do not, none of them was made aware of the nature of the threat to Caroline Carr until she died. All they knew was that she was a young woman in trouble, and in need of protection. It is possible that the secret of your parentage might have leaked out. We excised the details of Elaine Parker’s dead child from her medical records, and she severed all contact with the hospital and the obstetrician concerned with monitoring the early stages of her pregnancy. Their files were subsequently purged. Your blood group was a problem, but that should have been a confidential matter between your family and their doctor, and he appears to have been above reproach in all respects. And then we warned your father to always be vigilant, and he rarely failed to heed our warnings.”

“Right up to the night that he fired his gun at Pearl River,” I said.

“Yes, until then.”

“You shouldn’t have let him go back there alone.”

“I didn’t Z qidn &rsquoknow what he was going to do,” said Epstein. “I wanted them taken alive. That way, we could have contained them, and ended this thing.”

He put on his hat and coat and prepared to slip by me.

“Remember what I said. I believe that someone who knew your father betrayed him. It may be that you are at risk of betrayal too. I commit you to the care of your colleague.”

And he and his bodyguards departed, leaving me with the dark-haired mute who smiled sadly at me before she began to extinguish the lights.

A bell rang somewhere in the back of the diner, causing a red bulb to flash above the counter for the woman to see. She put a finger to her lips, telling me that I should remain quiet, then disappeared behind a curtain. Seconds later, she gestured with a finger, asking me to join her.

A small video screen revealed a figure standing in the bay behind the store. It was Louis. I indicated to her that I knew him, and it was okay to let him in. She opened the door.

“There’s a car out front,” said Louis. “Looks like it followed Epstein here. Two men inside wearing suits. Figure feds more than cops.”

“They could have taken me while I was talking to Epstein.”

“Maybe they don’t want to take you. Maybe they just want to find out where you’re staying.”

“My landlord wouldn’t like that.”

“Which is why your landlord is standing here, freezing his ass off.”

I thanked the woman and joined Louis. She closed the door behind us.

“Doesn’t say much,” said Louis.

“She’s a deaf mute.”

“That would explain it. Good-looking woman, though, if you like the quiet type.”

“You ever think of taking sensitivity training?” I said.

“You think it would help?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, there you go.”

At the end of the street, Louis paused and glanced back at the next corner. A cab appeared. He hailed it, and we pulled away with no signs of pursuit. The cabdriver seemed more concerned with his Bluetooth conversation than with us, but to be certain, we switched cabs before we returned to the safety of the apartment.

CHAPTER THIRTY

WRONGLY, JIMMY GALLAGHER HAD never believed himself to be good at keeping secrets. He was garrulous. He liked to drink, to tell stories. When he drank, his tongue ran away with itself and his filters disintegrated. He would say things and wonder where they came from, as though he were standing outside himself and watching a stranger speak. But he knew the importance of keeping quiet about the origins of Will Parker &rsq [illô[1]‡uo;s son, and even in his cups parts of his own life had remained concealed. Still, he had kept his distance from the boy and his mother after Will killed himself. Better to stay away from them, he felt, than risk saying something in front of the boy that might cause him to suspect, or offend his mother by speaking of things that were better left hidden in cluttered, careworn hearts. And despite his many flaws, in all the years since Elaine Parker had left for Maine with her son he had never once spoken of what he knew.

But he had always suspected that Charlie Parker would come looking for him. It was in his nature to question, to seek out truths. He was a hunter, and there was a tenacity to him that would ultimately, Jimmy believed, cost him his life. Sometime in the future, he would overstep the mark and look into matters that were best left unexamined, and something would reach out and destroy him. Jimmy was certain of it. Perhaps the nature of his own identity, and the secret of his parentage, might well prove to be that mistake.

He sipped the last of his wine and toyed with the glass, causing candle-cast patterns to flicker upon the walls. There was still a half bottle left beside the sink. A week ago, he would have finished it off and maybe opened another one for good measure, but not now. Some of the urge to drink more than he should had fallen away. He understood that it was to do with the clearing of his conscience. He had told Charlie Parker all that he knew, and now he was absolved.

And yet he also felt that, in confessing, some connection between them had been severed. It was not a bond of trust, exactly, for he and Charlie had never been close, and never would be. He had sensed that, from an early age, the boy had been uneasy around him. But then Jimmy had never really figured out how to relate to kids. His sister was more than fifteen years older than he was, and he had grown up feeling like an only child. Then too his parents had been old when he was born. Old. He chuckled. What had they been: thirty-eight, thirty-nine? Still, there had always been a lack of understanding between his parents and their son, even though he had loved them both dearly, and the chasm between them had only widened as he had grown older. They had never discussed his sexuality, although he had always understood that his mother, and perhaps his father too, realized that their son was never going to marry any of the girls who occasionally accompanied him to dance halls or to the movies.

And while he himself recognized his urges, he had never acted upon them. It was partly out of fear, he thought. He did not want his fellow officers to know that he was gay. They were his family, his true family. He did not want to do anything to alienate them. Now, in retirement, he remained a virgin. Funny, but he found it hard to equate that word with a man who was now in his late sixties. It was a description that should be applied to young men and women on the brink of new experiences, not older ones. Oh, he was still energetic, and he still sometimes thought that it might be-nice? interesting?-to start a relationship, but that was the problem: he wasn’t sure where to start. He wasn’t some blushing bride waiting to be deflowered. He was a man with a certain knowledge of life, both good and bad. It was too late, he thought, to surrender himself now to someone with a greater degree of experience in matters of sex and love.

He carefully vacuum-sealed the bottle of red wine and placed it in the refrigerator. It was a hint that he’d picked up from the local liquor store, and it worked fine as long as he remembered to let the wine warm up for a time before he began drinking it again the next day. He turned off the lights, double-locked the front and back doors, a Zhtswornd went to bed.

He managed to incorporate the noise into his dream at first, the way he sometimes did when the alarm went off and he was so deep in sleep that bells began ringing in his dreams in turn. In the dream, a wineglass fell from the table and shattered on the floor. It wasn’t his wineglass, though, and it wasn’t quite his kitchen, although it resembled it in ways. It was now bigger, the dark corners stretching away into infinity. The tiles on the floor were the tiles from the house in which he had grown up, and his mother was nearby. He could hear her singing, even though he could not see her.

He woke. There was silence for a time, then the faintest disturbance: a sliver of glass caught underfoot, scraping against a tile. He climbed silently from his bed and opened his bedside cabinet. The.38 lay on the shelf, cleaned and loaded. He padded across the room in his underwear, and the boards did not creak beneath his feet. He knew this place intimately, every crack and join of it. Even though it was an old house, he could move through it without making a sound.

He stood at the top of the stairs and waited. All was silent again, but still he sensed the presence of another. The darkness became oppressive to him, and suddenly he was frightened. He debated calling out a warning, and by doing so cause whoever was below to flee, but he knew that if he did so his voice would tremble and he would reveal his fear. Better to keep going. He had a gun. He was an ex-cop. If he was forced to shoot, then his own people would look after him. Screw the other guy.

He made his way down the stairs. The kitchen door was open. A single shard of glass shone in the moonlight. Jimmy’s hand was shaking, and he tried to still it by assuming a double-handed grip on the gun. There were only two rooms on the lower level: the living room and the kitchen, linked by a pair of interconnecting doors. He could see that those doors were still closed. He swallowed, and thought that he could taste some of that evening’s wine in his mouth. It had gone sour, like vinegar.

His bare feet felt cold, and he realized that the basement door was open. That was how the intruder had entered, and maybe that was how he had left after the wineglass broke. Jimmy winced. He knew that was wishful thinking. Someone was there. He could feel him. The living room was closest. He should search it first, so that whoever was there could not come from behind him when he searched the kitchen.

He glanced through the crack in the door. The drapes were not drawn, but the streetlight outside was broken and only a thin stream of moonlight filtered through the drapes, so it was hard to make out anything at all. He stepped inside quickly, and immediately knew that he had made a mistake. The shadows altered, and then the door struck him hard, knocking him off balance. As he tried to adjust the position of his gun and fire, there was a burning at his wrists. Skin was opened, tendons severed. The gun fell to the floor, blood from his wound sprinkling it. Something hit him once on the crown of the head, then again, and as he lost consciousness he thought that he glimpsed a long, flat blade.

When he came to he was lying on his belly in the kitchen, his hands tied behind his back, his feet bound and drawn up to his buttocks, then linked to the ropes on his hands so that he could not move. He felt cold air on his bare skin, but not as badly as before. The basement door had been closed again, and now only a slight draft came from the gap between the kitchen d Z drcouoor and the floor. The tiles were freezing, though. He felt weak. His hands and face were slick with blood, and his head ached. He tried to cry for help until a blade touched his cheek. The figure beside him had been so quiet and still that he had not even sensed its presence until it moved.

“No,” said a man’s voice, one that he did not recognize.

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“Charlie Parker. His father. His mother.”

Jimmy’s movement had caused the blood to flow once again from the wound on his head. It trickled into his eyes, stinging them.

“Talk to him yourself, you want to know anything. I haven’t seen Charlie Parker in years, not since-”

An apple was forced into his mouth, pushed in so hard and so far that he could not expel it or even sever it by biting down on it. He stared at his attacker’s face, and thought that he had never seen eyes so dark and so merciless. A piece of broken wineglass was held before his eyes. Jimmy’s gaze drifted from it to the symbol that seemed to be burned into the skin of the man’s forearm, then back to the glass again. He had seen that mark before, and he knew now what he was facing.

Animal. Amale.

Anmael.

“You’re lying. I’m going to show you what happens to faggot cops who tell lies.”

With one hand, Anmael gripped the back of Jimmy’s neck, holding his head down, while the other hand pushed the broken stem of the wineglass into the skin between his shoulder blades.

Against the apple, Jimmy began to scream.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

JIMMY GALLAGHER WAS DISCOVERED by Esmerelda, the El Salvadoran woman who came to his house twice every week to clean. When the police arrived, they found her weeping, but otherwise calm. It turned out that she’d seen a lot of dead men back home, and her capacity for shock was limited. Nevertheless, she could not stop crying for Jimmy, who had always been gentle and kind and funny with her, and had paid her more than was necessary, with a bonus at Christmas.

It was Louis who told me. He came to the apartment shortly after 9 A.M. The story had already made the news shows on radio and TV, although the victim’s name had not been confirmed, but it hadn’t taken Louis long to find out that it was Jimmy Gallagher. I didn’t say anything for a time. I couldn’t. He had kept his secrets out of love for my father and mother and, I believe, out of a misplaced concern for me. Of all my father’s friends, it was Jimmy who had been the most loyal to him.

I contacted Santos, the detective who had taken me to Hobart Street on the night that Mickey Wallace’s body had been discovered.

“It wa ["> &„[1]‡s bad,” he replied. “Someone took his time in killing him. I tried to call you, but your phone was out of service.”

He told me that Jimmy’s body had been brought to the Brooklyn office of the chief medical examiner at Kings County Hospital on Clarkson Avenue, and I offered to meet him there.

Santos was smoking a cigarette outside when the cab pulled up to the mortuary.

“You’re a hard man to find,” he said. “You lose your cell phone?”

“Something like that.”

“We need to talk when this is done.”

He tossed the butt, and I followed him inside. He and a second detective named Travis stood at either side of the body while the attendant pulled back the sheet. I was beside Santos. He was watching the attendant. Travis was watching me.

Jimmy had been cleaned up, but there were multiple cuts to his face and upper body. One of the incisions to his left cheek was so deep that I could see his teeth through the wound.

“Turn him over,” Travis said.

“You want to help me?” said the attendant. “He’s a heavy guy.”

Travis was wearing blue plastic gloves, as was Santos. I was bare-handed. I watched as all three of them shifted Jimmy’s body, turning him first on his side and then onto his chest.

The word “FAG” had been carved into Jimmy’s back. Some of the cuts were more jagged than the rest, but all were deep. There must have been a lot of blood, and a lot of pain.

“What was used?”

It was Santos who replied. “The stem of a broken wineglass for the letters, and a blade of some kind for the rest. We didn’t find the weapon, but there were unusual wounds to the skull.”

Gently, he moved Jimmy’s head, then parted the hair at the crown of his head to reveal a pair of overlapping, square-shaped contusions to the scalp. Santos made his right hand into a fist and brought it down twice through the air.

“I’m guessing a big knife of some kind, maybe a machete or something similar. We figure the killer hit Jimmy a couple of times with the hilt to knock him out, then tied him up and went to work with the sharp edge. There were apples beside his head, with bite marks in them. That was why nobody heard him screaming.”

He did not speak casually, or with a hint of callousness. Instead, he looked tired and sad. This was an ex-cop, and one who was remembered fondly by many. The details of the killing, the word cut into his back, would have circulated by now. The sadness and anger at his death would be tempered slightly by the circumstances. A fag killing: that was how some would speak of it. Who knew that Jimmy Gallagher was queer? they would ask. After all, they’d been drunk alongside him. They’d shared comments with him about passing women. Hell, he’d even dated some. And all that time, he was hiding the truth. And some would say that they had suspected all along, and wonder what he had done to bring this upon himself. There would be whispers: he made an advance to the wrong guy; he touched a kid…

Ah, a kid.

“Are you treating this as a hate crime?” I asked.

Travis shrugged and spoke for the first time. “It might come down to that. Either way, we have to ask questions that Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted asked. We’ll need to find out if there were lovers, or casual flings, or if he was into anything extreme.”

“There won’t be any lovers,” I said.

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“I am. Jimmy was always kind of ashamed, and always frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Of someone finding out. Of his friends knowing. They were all cops, and old school. I don’t think he trusted most of them to stand by him. He thought they’d laugh, or turn their backs on him. He didn’t want to be a joke. He preferred being alone to that.”

“Well, if it’s not down to his lifestyle, then what is it?”

I thought for a moment.

“Apples,” I said.

“What?” said Travis.

“You said you found apples-more than one-beside him?”

“Three. Maybe the killer thought that Jimmy might bite through after a while.”

“Or maybe he stopped after each letter.”

“Why?”

“To ask questions.”

“About what?”

It was Santos who answered. “About him,” he said, pointing at me. “He thinks this is connected to the Wallace thing.”

“Don’t you?”

“Wallace didn’t have ‘fag’ cut into his flesh,” said Santos, but I could tell that he was playing devil’s advocate.

“They were both tortured to make them talk,” I said.

“And you knew them both,” said Santos. “Why don’t you tell us again what you’re doing down here?”

“I’m trying to find out why my father killed two teenagers in a car in 1982,” I said.

“And did Jimmy Gallagher have the answer?”

I didn’t reply. I just shook my head.

“What do you think he told his killer?” asked Travis.

I looked at the wounds that had been inflicted on him. I would have talked. It’s a myth that men can stand up to torture. Eventually, everybody breaks.

“Whatever he could to make it stop,” I said. “How did he die?”

“He choked. A wine bottle was forced into his mouth, neck first. That’s going to hang weight on the hate crime side. It was, whatchacallit, phallic, or that’s how it will play.”

It was vindictive, humiliating. An honorable man had been left, naked and bound, with a brand upon his back that would mark him among his fellow cops, casting shadows upon the memory of the individual they had known. I believed then that it wasn’t about what Jimmy Gallagher knew or did not know. He had been punished for remaining silent, and nothing that he could have said would have spared him from what was to come.

Santos nodded at the attendant. Together, they moved Jimmy onto his back and covered his face once again, then restored him to his place among the numbered dead. The door was closed on him, and we left.

Outside, Santos lit another cigarette. He offered one to Travis, who accepted.

“You know,” he said, “if you’re right, and this isn’t a hate deal, then he died because of you. What are you keeping back from us?”

What did it matter now? It was all coming to a close.

“Go back and look at the files on the Pearl River killings,” I said. “The boy who died had a mark on his forearm. It looked like it had been burned into the skin. That mark is the same one that was found on the wall at Hobart Street, drawn in Wallace’s blood. My guess is that, somewhere in Jimmy’s house, you’ll find a similar mark.”

Travis and Santos exchanged a look.

“Where was it?” I said.

“On his chest,” said Santos. “Written in blood. We’ve been warned to keep quiet about it. I guess I’m telling you because…” He thought about it. “Well, I don’t know why I’m telling you.”

“So what was all that about in there? You don’t believe this was a hate crime. You know this is connected to Wallace’s death.”

“We just wanted to hear your side of the story first,” said Travis. “It’s called ‘detecting.’ We ask you questions, you don’t answer them, we get frustrated. I hear it’s an established pattern with you.”

“We know what the symbol means,” said Santos, ignoring Travis. “We found a guy at the Institute of Advanced Theology who explained it for us.”

“It’s the Enochian ‘A,’” I said.

“How long have you known?”

“Not long. I didn’t know when you showed it to me.”

“What are we looking at?” asked Travis, calming down some now that he realized that neither Santos nor I was going to be drawn by his baiting. “A cult? Ritual killings?”

“And what’s the connection to you, beyond the fact that you knew both of the victims?” asked Santos.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Why not just torture you?” said Travis. “I mean, I could understand the impulse.”

I ignored him.

“There’s a man named Asa Durand. He lives out in Pearl Riv Zou diver.” I gave them the address. “He says a guy was casing his property a while back, and asking about what happened there. Asa Durand lives in the house where I lived before my father killed himself. Might be worth sending out a sketch artist to test Durand’s memory.”

Santos took a long drag on his cigarette, and expelled some of the smoke in my direction.

“Those things will kill you,” I said.

“I was you, I’d worry about my own mortality,” said Santos. “I assume that you’re lying low, but turn your damn cell phone back on. Don’t make us haul you in and lock you up for your own protection.”

“We’re letting him walk?” asked Travis incredulously.

“I think he’s told us all that he’s going to for now,” said Santos. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Parker? And it’s more than we could get from our own people.”

“Unit Five,” I said.

Santos looked surprised. “You know what it is?”

“Do you?”

“Some kind of security clearance that a regular wage earner like me doesn’t have, I guess.”

“That’s about the size of it. I don’t know much more about it than you do.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe that’s true, but I suppose that all we can do now is wait, because my guess is that your name is on the same list that Jimmy Gallagher and Mickey Wallace were on. When whoever killed them gets around to you, either someone will be tagging your toe, or theirs. Come on, we’ll give you a ride to the subway. The sooner you’re out of Brooklyn, the happier I’ll be.”

They dropped me at the subway station.

“Be seeing you,” said Santos.

“Dead or alive,” said Travis.

I watched them drive away. They hadn’t spoken to me in the car, and I hadn’t cared. I was too busy thinking about the word that had been carved into Jimmy Gallagher’s back. How had his killer come to the conclusion that Jimmy was gay? He had kept his secrets close all his life; his own, and those of others. I only became aware of his sexuality from things my mother said after my father’s death, when I was a little older and a little more mature, and she had assured me that few of Jimmy’s colleagues had known about it. In fact, she said, only two people knew for certain that Jimmy was gay.

One of them was my father.

The other was Eddie Grace.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

AMANDA GRACE ANSWERED THE door. Her hair was tied loosely with a red band, and her face bore no trace of cosmetics. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and an old shirt, and she was bathed in perspiration [n p”[1]‡. In her right hand, she held a kitchen plunger.

“Great,” she said when she saw me. “Just great.”

“I take it this isn’t a good time.”

“You could have called ahead first. I might even have had time to put the plunger away.”

“I’d like to talk to your father again.”

She stepped back, inviting me inside.

“He was real tired after your last visit,” she said. “Is it important?”

“I think it is.”

“It’s about Jimmy Gallagher, isn’t it?”

“In a way.”

I followed her into the kitchen. There was a pungent smell coming from the sink, and I could see dirty water that wasn’t draining.

“Something’s backed up down there,” she said. She handed over the plunger. I slipped off my jacket and went to work on the sink, while she rested a hip against the sideboard and watched.

“What’s going on, Charlie?”

“What do you mean?”

“We watch the news. We saw what happened at your old home, and we heard about Jimmy. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

I could feel the water starting to move. I stepped back and watched it disappear down the sink.

“Did your father have anything to say about it?”

“He seemed sad about Jimmy. They used to be friends.”

“Any idea why they fell out?”

She looked away. “I don’t think my father liked the way Jimmy lived his life.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“No, I guessed it for myself. You still haven’t answered my question. What’s going on?”

I turned to her, and held her gaze until she looked away.

“Damn you,” she said.

“Like I told you, I’d appreciate a few minutes with Eddie.”

She wiped a hand across her brow, her frustration palpable. “He’s awake, but he’s still in bed. It’ll take him a while to get dressed.”

“There’s no need to go to that trouble. I can talk to him in his room. It won’t take long.”

She still seemed to be debating the wisdom of allowing me to see him. I could sense her unease.

“You’re different today,” she said.

“From?”

“From the last time you were here. I don’t think I like it.”

“I need to talk to him, Amanda. Then I’ll be gone, and it won’t matter Z> &l heif you ever liked me.”

She nodded. “Upstairs. Second door on the right. Knock before you go in.”

My tapping on Eddie Grace’s door was answered by a hoarse croak. The drapes were closed in the room, and it stank of illness and decay. Eddie Grace’s head was supported by a pair of large white pillows. He wore blue-striped pajamas, and the dim light somehow accentuated the pallor of his skin, so that he seemed almost to glow where he lay. I closed the door behind me and looked down on him.

“You came back,” he said. There was a hint of what might have been a smile on his face, but there was no joy to it. Instead, it was a knowing, unpleasant thing, an expression of malevolence. “I figured you would.”

“Why?”

He didn’t even try to lie.

“Because they’re coming for you, and you’re scared.”

“Do you know what was done to Jimmy?”

“I can guess.”

“He was carved up. He was tortured and then killed, all because he kept his secrets, all because he was a friend to my father and to me.”

“He should have picked his friends more carefully.”

“I guess so. You were his friend.”

Eddie laughed softly. It sounded like air being forced from a corpse, and smelled just as bad. It brought on a fit of coughing, and he gestured for the covered plastic cup on the bedside locker, the kind that little children used with a raised, perforated lip from which to drink. I held it for him as he sucked from it. One of his hands touched mine, and I was surprised by how cold it was.

“I was his friend,” said Eddie. “Then he had to tell your father and me about himself, and after that I cut him loose. He was a faggot, barely a man. He disgusted me.”

“So you cut him off?”

“I’d have cut his balls off if I could. I’d have told everyone what he was. He shouldn’t have been allowed to wear that uniform.”

“So why didn’t you?” I asked.

“Because they didn’t want me to.”

“Who didn’t?”

“Anmael, and Semjaza, although that wasn’t what they called themselves, not the first time they came to me. I never found out the woman’s name. She never said much. The man was called Peter, but later I found out his true name. He did most of the talking.”

“How did they find you?”

“I had weaknesses. Not like Jimmy’s. I had a man’s weaknesses. I liked them young.”

He smiled again. His lips were cracked, and his remaining teeth were rotting in their gums.

“Girls, not boys,” he continued. “Never boys. They found out. That’s what they do: they find your weaknesses, and they use them against you. A carrot and a stick: they threatened Zp>

“Anmael wanted to know where she was. I didn’t ask why. I found out where Will had stashed her on the Upper East Side. Then Anmael died, and the woman disappeared. They kept moving Caroline Carr around after that, your father and Jimmy, but they did it quietly. I told Semjaza to follow Jimmy, because your father trusted him more than anyone else. I thought that they just wanted to follow her, maybe steal the child. I was as surprised as anyone when they killed her.”

It was strange, but I believed him. He had no reason to lie, not now, and he was not seeking absolution. He spoke of it as if it were an event that he had witnessed, but in which he had played no direct part.

“When Will came back from Maine with a baby boy, I was suspicious. I knew all about his wife’s medical history, about the problems she’d had conceiving, and carrying, a child. It was all too neat. But by then I’d fallen out with Jimmy. I was still on good terms with your old man, or I thought I was, but something changed between us. I suppose Jimmy must have spoken to him, and he chose Jimmy over me. I didn’t care. Fuck him. Fuck ’em both.

“I heard nothing for maybe fifteen years. I didn’t expect anything else. After all, they were dead, Anmael and the woman, and I’d found ways to keep myself satisfied without them.

“Then a boy and a girl showed up at my place. They sat outside in a car, watching the house. I was bowling, and my wife called me, told me she was worried. I came home, and I swear I knew it was them. I knew before they even showed me the marks on their arms, before they started talking about things that must have happened before they were born, conversations that I’d had with Anmael and the woman before they died. I mean, it was them, in another form. I didn’t doubt it. I could see it in their eyes. I told them what I believed about the boy Will and his wife were raising, but they already seemed to have their own suspicions. That was what had brought them back. They knew that the boy was still alive, that you were still alive.

“So I helped them again, and still you wouldn’t die.”

His eyes closed. I thought he might have drifted off to sleep, but then he spoke, his eyes still shut.

“I cried when your old man killed himself,” he said. “I liked him, even if he did cut me loose. Why couldn’t you just have died back in that clinic? If you had, then it would all have ended there and then. You just won’t die.”

His eyes opened again.

“But this time it’s different. They’re not kids hunting you, and they’ve learned from their mistakes. That’s the thing about them: they remember. Each time, they’ve come a little bit closer to succeeding, but it’s urgent now. They want you dead.”

“Why?”

He stared at me, his eyebrows raised. He looked amused. “I don’t think they know Zloshei,” he said. “You might as well ask why a white blood cell attacks an infection. It’s what it’s programmed to do: to fight a threat, and neutralize it. Not mine, though. Mine are screwed.”

“Where are they?”

“I’ve only seen him. The other, the woman, she wasn’t there. He was waiting for her, willing her to come to him. That’s the way they are. They live for each other.”

“Who is he? What’s he calling himself?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“He came here?”

“No, it was while I was still in the hospital, but not so long ago. He brought me candy. It was like meeting an old friend.”

“Did you feed Jimmy to him?”

“No, I didn’t have to. They knew all about Jimmy from way back.”

“Because of you.”

“What does it matter now?”

“It mattered to Jimmy. Do you know how much he suffered before he died?”

Eddie waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal, but he would not meet my eyes.

“Describe him to me.”

He indicated once again that he needed water, and I gave it to him. His voice had grown hoarser and hoarser as he spoke. Now it was barely a whisper.

“No,” he said. “I won’t tell you. And, anyway, do you really think any of this will help you? I wouldn’t tell you anything if I thought it would. I don’t care about you, or about what happened to Jimmy. I’m almost done with this life. I’ve been promised my reward for what I’ve done.”

He lifted his head from the pillow, as though to confide some great secret. “Their master is good and kind,” he said, almost to himself, then sank back on the bed, exhausted. His breathing grew shallower, and he drifted off to sleep.

Amanda was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Her lips were set so firmly that there were wrinkles around her mouth.

“Did you get what you wanted from him?”

“Yes. Confirmation.”

“He’s an old man. Whatever he did in the past, he’s paid more than enough for it in suffering.”

“You know, Amanda, I don’t believe that’s true.”

Her face flushed red.

“Get out of here. The best thing you ever did was leave this town.”

And that much, at least, was true.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE WOMAN WH [2">¤[1]‡O WAS now Emily Kindler in name only arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal two days after Jimmy Gallagher was killed. After leaving the bar, she had spent an entire day alone in her little apartment, ignoring the ringing of the telephone, her date with Chad now forgotten, Chad himself reduced to nothing more than a fleeting memory from another life. Once, the doorbell rang downstairs, but she did not answer it. Instead, she reconstructed past lives, and thought about the man whom she had seen on the TV screen in the bar, and she knew that when she found him, then so too would she find her beloved.

Using a poker, she carefully burned her flesh. She knew the exact place upon which to work, for she could almost see the pattern hiding beneath her skin. When she was done, she bore the old mark.

In time, she left for the city.

At the bus station, it took her almost an hour of looking lost before she was approached. While she was freshening up for the third time in the women’s restroom, a young woman not much older than she was approached her and asked if she was okay. The woman’s name was Carole Coemer, but everyone called her Cassie. She was blond and pretty and clean, and looked nineteen even though she was actually twenty-seven. Her job was to scout the bus station for new female arrivals, particularly those who looked lost or alone, and befriend them. She would tell them that she was new in town herself, and offer to buy them a cup of coffee, or something to eat. Cassie always carried a backpack, even though it was filled with newspapers topped off with a pair of jeans and some underwear and T-shirts, just in case she had to open it to convince the more skeptical of the waifs and strays.

If they didn’t have somewhere to stay, or if nobody was really expecting them in town, she would propose that they spend the night with a friend of Cassie’s and then try to find somewhere more long term the next day. Cassie’s friend was called Earle Yiu, and he maintained a number of cheap apartments across the city, but the principal one was on Thirty-eighth and Ninth, above a grimy bar called the Yellow Pearl, which was also owned by Earle Yiu. This was a little joke on Earle’s part, as he was part Japanese and “Yellow Pearl” wasn’t a million miles removed from “Yellow Peril.” Earle was very good at assessing the vulnerabilities of young women, although not quite as good as Cassie Coemer who, even Earle had to admit, was a predator of the first degree.

So Cassie would take the girl-or girls, if her day had been particularly productive-to meet Earle, and Earle would welcome them and arrange to have food delivered or, if he was in the mood, he sometimes cooked for the girls himself. It would usually be something simple and tasty, like teriyaki with rice. Beers would be offered, and a little pot, maybe even something stronger. Then Earle, if he thought the new arrival was suitable and sufficiently vulnerable, would offer to let her and Cassie stay in the apartment for a couple of days, telling them to take it easy, that he knew someone who might be looking for waitresses. The next day, Cassie would drift away, isolating the new arrival.

After two or three days, Earle’s disposition would alter. He would arrive early in the morning, or late at night, and wake the girl. He would demand payment for his hospitality, and when the girl couldn’t pay-and they could never pay enough to satisfy Earle-he would make his move. Most ended up turning tricks, once Earle and his buddies had broken them in first, if that was necessary, usually in one of Earle’s other apartments. Particularly promising can Z anovedidates would be sold off elsewhere, or escorted to other cities and towns where new blood was scarce. The most unfortunate simply disappeared off the face of the earth, for Earle knew men (and some women) with very particular needs.

Earle was careful in how he used Cassie. He didn’t want her to draw any attention to herself, or to become overly familiar to the Port Authority cops at the bus station or the Amtrak station. Often he would let months go by without putting her into the field, contenting himself with the plentiful supply of Chinese and Korean women who were easily available to him, and harder for the authorities to track once they became part of his operation, but there was always a need for Caucasians and Negroes too, and Earle liked to provide a little variety.

And so it was that Cassie approached Emily and asked if she was okay, then said:

“You new in town?”

Emily stared at her, and Cassie squirmed. For a moment, she was sure that she’d made a mistake. This girl looked young but, like Cassie’s, her looks were deceptive, and she was older than she at first appeared. The problem for Cassie was that, for an instant, she experienced a kind of atavistic rush, a sense that this girl was not just old, but very old. It was there in her eyes, which were very, very dark, and in a musty odor that seemed to hang about her. Cassie was ready to back away, cutting her losses, when the girl’s demeanor subtly changed. She smiled, and Cassie was captivated by her. She stared deep into the girl’s eyes and felt that she had never seen anyone quite so beautiful. Earle would be pleased with this one, and Cassie’s reward would be commensurately greater as a consequence.

“Yes,” said Emily. “I’m new. Very new. I’m looking for a place to stay. Do you think you can help me?”

“Sure, I can help you,” said Cassie. I’d love to, she thought. I’d do anything for you, anything. “What’s your name?”

The girl thought about the question. “Emily,” she said, at last.

Cassie knew that it was a lie, but it didn’t matter to her. Earle would give her a new name anyway, if she worked out.

“I’m Cassie.”

“Well, Cassie,” said Emily, “I guess I’m following you.”

Together, the girls walked to Earle Yiu’s apartment. Earle wasn’t there, which surprised Cassie, but she had a key and a prepared story about how she’d been there earlier in the day, and how Earle had given her a key and told her to come back because the apartment was being cleaned. Emily just smiled, and all was right in Cassie’s world.

When they were inside the apartment, Cassie offered to show Emily around. There wasn’t much to show, as the apartment was very small, consisting only of one modestly sized area that doubled as living room and kitchen, and a pair of tiny bedrooms, each barely large enough for a single mattress.

“And this is the bathroom,” said Cassie, opening the door onto a room that was so small the sink and toilet almost overlapped from opposite walls, with a shower stall that was little bigger than an upright coffin.

Emily gripped Cassie by the hair and struck her face hard against the edge of the sink. She did it again Zp higg and again until Cassie was dead, then left her lying against the wall before closing the bathroom door carefully behind her. She took a seat on the old, foul-smelling couch in the living area and turned on the TV, flicking through the channels until she found the local news. She turned up the volume when the anchorman returned to the story of Jimmy Gallagher’s killing. Despite the best efforts of the cops and the FBI, someone had been speaking out of turn. A reporter came on-screen, and spoke of a possible connection between the death of Gallagher and the killing of one Mickey Wallace at Hobart Street. Emily knelt down and touched the screen with her fingertips. She was still in that position when Earle Yiu entered. He was in his forties, carrying a little extra weight that he hid with well-cut suits.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Emily smiled at him. “I’m a friend of Cassie’s,” she said.

Earle smiled in return. “Well, any friend of Cassie’s is a friend of mine,” he said. “Where is she?”

“In the bathroom.”

Instinctively, Earle glanced in the direction of the bathroom, which was just to his left. His brow furrowed. There was a dark, spreading stain on the carpet where it met the door.

“Cassie?”

He knocked once.

“Cassie, you in there?”

He tried the handle, and the door opened. He was still taking in the sight of Cassie Coemer’s ruined face when a kitchen knife entered his back and pierced his heart.

When she was sure that Earle Yiu was dead, Emily searched him and found a.22 with a taped butt and nearly seven hundred dollars in cash. She took Yiu’s cell phone and made a call. When she ended it, she knew where Jimmy Gallagher was to be buried, and when.

There were strong locks on the apartment door, as much to prevent anyone from leaving as from entering without permission. Emily secured them all, then turned off the television and sat, still and silent, upon the couch as day became night and night, at last, gave way to morning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHOOSE YOUR GROUND: THAT was what Epstein had told me. Choose the place where you will confront them. I could have run. I could have hidden myself away, and hoped that they would not find me, but they had always found me before. I could have chosen to return to Maine and face them there, but how could I have slept, fearing at any time that they might come for me? How could I have worked at the Bear, knowing that my presence there might put others at risk?

So I spoke to Epstein, and I talked with Angel and Louis, and I chose the ground upon which I would fight.

I would draw them to me, and we would end it at last.

They gave Jimmy the inspector’s funeral: the full NYPD works, even better than that which they had given my father. Six white-gloved patrolmen carried his flag-draped coffin on their shoulders from S [oul´[1]‡t. Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church, their shields masked by black ribbons. As the coffin passed by, cops old and new, some in street uniform, some in dress blues, others in the old-man coats and hats of retirement, saluted as one. Nobody smiled, nobody spoke. All were quiet. A couple of years before, a Westchester DA had been seen laughing and chatting with a state senator while the body of a slain cop was being carried from a church in the Bronx, until a cop told her to shut up. She had done so, instantly, but the slight had not been forgotten. There was a way these things were done, and you screwed with it at your peril.

Jimmy was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery on Tilden, in a plot alongside his mother and father. His older sister, who now lived in Colorado, was his closest surviving relative. She was divorced, so she stood by the graveside with her three children, one of them Jimmy’s nephew Francis who had come to our home on the night of the Pearl River killings, and she wept for the brother she had not seen in five years. The Emerald Society Pipes and Drums played “Steal Away,” and nobody spoke ill of him, even though the news of what had been carved into his body had by then leaked out. Some might whisper later (and let them whisper: such men were worth little) but not now, not on that day. Today he would be remembered as a cop, and a well-liked one.

And I was there too, in plain sight, because I knew they would be watching in the hope that I might appear. I mingled. I spoke with those whom I recognized. After the burial, I went to a bar named Donaghy’s with men who had served alongside Jimmy and my father, and we exchanged stories about both men, and they told me things about Will Parker that made me love him even more, because they had loved him in turn. All the time, I stayed close to groups. I didn’t even go to the restroom alone, and I watched what I was drinking, even though I gave the impression that I was matching the others beer for beer, shot for shot. It was easy enough to disguise, for they were more concerned with one another than with me, even though I was welcome in their company. One of them, a former sergeant named Griesdorf, did ask me about the rumored connection between Mickey Wallace’s death and what had happened to Jimmy, and for a time there was an awkward silence until a red-faced cop with dyed-black hair said: “Jesus, Stevie, this isn’t the time or the place! Let’s drink to remember, then drink to forget.”

And the moment passed.

I spotted the girl shortly after 5 P.M. She was slim and pretty, with long black hair. In the dim light of Donaghy’s, she looked younger than she was, and the bartender might have been forced to card her had she asked for a beer. I had seen her at the cemetery, laying flowers on a grave not far from where Jimmy was being buried. I had seen her again walking down Tilden after the funeral, but so were many other people, and I had noticed her more because of her looks than because of any suspicion I might have had of her. Now here she was in Donaghy’s, nibbling at a salad, a book on the bar before her, a mirror facing her so that she could see all that was happening behind her. A couple of times, I thought I saw her glancing at me. It might have been nothing, but then she smiled at me when I caught her looking. It was a come-on, or the appearance of one. Her eyes were very dark.

Griesdorf had spotted her too.

“Girl likes you, Charlie,” he said. “Go on. We’re old men. We need to live vicariously through the young. We’ll look after your coat. Hell, you must be dying under there. Take it off, son.”

I stood, and swayed. “No, I’m done,” I said. “I wouldn’t be good for much anyway.” I shook hands with them all and dropped fifty bucks on the table. “A round of the best,” I said, “for my old man, and for Jimmy.”

There was a cheer, and as I left them I staggered. Griesdorf reached out a hand to help me.

“You okay there?”

“I didn’t eat much today,” I said. “Dumb of me. Think you could get the bartender to call me a cab?”

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“Bay Ridge,” I said. “ Hobart Street.”

Griesdorf looked at me oddly. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I handed him the fifty dollars. “Call those whiskeys while you’re there.”

“You want one for the road?”

“No, thanks. If I have one more, I’ll be lying on the road.”

He took the money. I leaned back against a pillar and watched him go. I saw him call over the bartender, and could hear a little of what passed between them from where I stood. There was no music playing in Donaghy’s, and the after-work crowd had not yet begun to arrive. If I could hear what was being said at the bar, so could anyone else.

The cab arrived ten minutes later. By then, the girl was gone.

The cab dropped me outside my former home. The cabdriver looked at the fluttering crime scene tape and asked if I wanted him to wait. He looked relieved when I said no.

There were no cops watching the house. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been at least one officer on duty to secure the scene, but these were not ordinary circumstances.

I walked around to the side of the house. The gate to the backyard had been secured loosely with a chain and some tape, but the chain lacked a lock: it was there purely for show. The kitchen door, though, had been secured with a new lock and hasp, but it was the work of a moment to open it with the little electric rake that Angel had given me. It sounded very loud in the stillness of the late evening, and as I entered the house I saw a light go on somewhere nearby. I closed the door and waited until the light was extinguished and the darkness grew deeper.

I flicked on my little Maglite, its beam hooded with masking tape so that it would not attract attention if someone happened to look at the back of the house. Anmael’s mark had been removed from the wall, probably in case reporters or the terminally curious took it upon themselves to take surreptitious photographs of the kitchen. The position in which Mickey Wallace had been found was still marked, and the cheap linoleum was stained with his dried blood. My beam picked up the kitchen cabinets, more modern than those that had been in the house when I lived there, yet also cheaper and flimsier, and the gas stove, now disconnected. There was no other furniture, apart from a single wooden chair, painted a sickly green, that stood against the far wall. Three people had died in this room. Nobody would ever live here again. The best thing for everyone would be to tear the house down an Z Aouse downd start afresh, but in the current climate that was unlikely to happen. And so it would fall further and further into decay, and children would dare one another to run into the yard and taunt its ghosts at Halloween.

But sometimes it is not places that are haunted, but people. I knew then why they had returned, those remnants of my wife and daughter. I think I had understood from the moment that Wallace’s body was discovered here, and I sensed that he might not have been alone and uncomforted in his final moments, that whatever he had seen, or thought he had seen, while prowling around my property at Scarborough had come to him here in a different form. There was a sense of expectation about the house as I passed through the kitchen, and when I touched the handle on the door my fingertips tingled, as though a small electrical charge had just run through them.

The front door had been taped from the outside, but only the door lock and the security dead bolt held it closed from the inside. I opened them both and left the door slightly ajar. There was no wind, so it stayed as it was. I climbed the stairs and wandered through the empty rooms, a ghost among ghosts, and wherever I stopped I re-created our home in my mind, adding beds and closets, mirrors and pictures, transforming it from what it now was to what it once had been.

There was the shadow of a dressing table against the wall of the bedroom that Susan and I had once shared, and I brought it back, filling its surface with bottles and cosmetics, and a hairbrush with blond strands still caught in its bristles. Our bed returned, two pillows hard against the wall, an imprint of a woman’s back upon them, as though Susan had only just absented herself. A book lay with its cover exposed on the bedsheet: lectures by the poet e. e. cummings. It was Susan’s comfort book, Cummings’s descriptions of his life and work interspersed with a selection of poems, only some of them written by the poet himself. I could almost smell her perfume on the air.

Across the hallway was another, smaller bedroom, and as I watched, the vibrancy of its colors was restored, the dull, scarred walls becoming a clean vista of yellow and cream, like a summer meadow ringed with white flowers. The walls were covered mostly with hand-drawn pictures, although there was one large painting of a circus above the small single bed, and another smaller painting of a girl with a dog that was bigger than she was. The girl’s arms were curled around the dog’s neck, her face buried in its fur, and the dog stared out from the frame as if daring anyone to interfere with its charge. The bright blue sheets on the bed were pulled back, and I could see the outline of a small body against the mattress, and the dent in the pillow where, until seemingly only moments before, a child’s head had rested. The carpet beneath my feet was a deep blue.

This was my home on the night that Susan and Jennifer died, restored to me now as I felt them return, as they all drew closer, the dead and the living.

I heard a sound from downstairs and stepped into the hallway. The light in our bedroom flickered and then went out. Something shifted inside. I did not stop to see what it was, but I thought I saw, in the shadows, a figure moving, and a hint of scent came to me. I stopped at the top of the stairs, and I heard a sound from behind me, as of small, bare feet running across carpeted floors, a child moving from her room to be with her mother, but it might simply have been the boards settling beneath my feet, or a rat disturbed from its lair beneath the floor.

I descended.

At the bottom of Z Ahe bottom the stairs, a poinsettia stood upon a small mahogany table, sheltered from drafts by the coatrack. It was the only houseplant that Susan had been able to keep alive, and she was immensely proud of it, checking it daily and being careful to keep it watered just enough so as not to drown it. On the night that they had died, it had been knocked from its stand, and the first thing that I saw when I entered the house was its roots lying amid scattered earth. Now it was as it had always been, cared for and loved. I reached out for it and my fingers passed through its leaves.

There was a man standing in the kitchen, close to the back door. As I watched, he moved forward a step and the moonlight filtering through the window caught his face.

Hansen. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his overcoat.

“You’re a long way from home, Detective,” I said.

“And you couldn’t stay away from yours,” he replied. “Must have changed a lot since then.”

“No,” I said. “It hasn’t changed at all.”

He looked puzzled.

“You’re a strange man. I never understood you.”

“Well, I know now why you never liked me.”

But even as I said the words, I felt that something was wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Hansen didn’t belong here.

A puzzled look came across his face, as if he had just realized the same thing. His body stretched, as though he were feeling a twinge at his back. He opened his mouth and a trickle of blood spilled from one corner. He coughed wetly, and more blood came, a cloud of it that sprayed the wall as he was pushed forward, collapsing to his knees. His right hand fumbled at his pocket as he tried to withdraw his gun, but his strength failed him and he fell flat on his stomach, his eyes half closed, his breathing growing shallower and shallower.

The man who had attacked him stepped over his body. He was in his midtwenties: twenty-six years old, to be exact about it. I knew, because I had hired him. I had worked alongside him in the Great Lost Bear. I had seen his kindness to customers, witnessed his easy way with the line chefs and the waitstaff.

And for all that time, he had kept his true nature hidden.

“Hello, Gary,” I said. “Or do you prefer your other name?”

Gary Maser held the sharpened machete in one hand. In the other was a gun.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re just names. I’ve had more of them than you could imagine.”

“You’re deluded,” I said. “Somebody has been whispering lies to you. You’re a nobody. You cut up Jimmy, and you killed Mickey Wallace in that kitchen back there, but that doesn’t make you special. You’re barely human, but that doesn’t mean you’re an angel.”

“Believe that if you like,” he said. “It’s of no consequence.”

But my words sounded hollow to me. I had chosen this place in which to confront what had been hunting me, transforming it in my mind to what it once was, but something in Gary M Z Ang in Garaser seemed to sense that, and respond to it. For an instant, I saw what my father had seen on that night in Pearl River before he pulled the trigger. I saw what had concealed itself within Maser, eating away at him until, at last, there was nothing left of him but an empty shell. His face became a mask, transparent and temporary: behind it, a dark mass moved, old and withered and filled with rage. Shadows curled around it like black smoke, polluting the room, fouling the moonlight, and I knew in my heart that more than my life was at risk here. Whatever torments Maser might inflict upon me in this house, they would be nothing compared with what was to come when my life was ended.

He took another step forward. Even in the moonlight, I could see that his eyes were blacker than I remembered, pupil and iris forming what appeared to be a single dark mass.

“Why me?” I asked. “What have I done?”

“It is not only what you have done, but what you may do.”

“And what is that? How can you know what’s to come?”

“We sensed the threat that you posed. He sensed it.”

“Who? Who sent you?”

Maser shook his head. “No more,” he said, and then, almost tenderly, “Time to stop running. Close your eyes, and I will bring all of your grief to an end.”

I tried to laugh. “I’m touched by your concern.” I needed time. We all needed time. “You’ve been patient,” I said. “How long have you worked with me? Five months?”

“I was waiting,” he said.

“For what?”

He smiled, and his face changed. There was a radiance to it that had not been there before.

“For her,” he said.

I turned slowly as I felt a draft at my back. In the fully open doorway stood the dark-haired woman from the bar. Like Gary ’s, her eyes now seemed entirely black. She too held a gun, a silver.22. The shadows that formed around her were like dark wings against the night.

“So long,” she whispered, but her eyes were fixed on the man across from her, not on me. “So very long…”

I understood then that they had come to this place separately, drawn by me and the promise of seeing each other again, but this was the first time they had met, the first time, if Epstein was to be believed, since my father had pulled the trigger on them at a patch of waste ground in Pearl River.

But suddenly the woman broke from her reverie and spun. The gun barked softly twice as she fired into the darkness. Maser, startled, seemed uncertain of what to do, and I knew then that he wanted me to die slowly. He wanted to use his blade on me. But as I moved, he fired the gun, and I felt the ferocious impact as the bullet hit my chest. I stumbled back, striking the door as I fell, and it struck the woman in the back but did not close. A second bullet hit me, and this time there was a searing pain at my neck. I raised my left hand to the wound, and blood pumped through my fingers.

I staggered up the stairs, but Maser’s attention was no longer focused on me. There were voices at the back of the house, Z A the housand he had turned to face the threat. I heard the front door slam shut and the woman screamed something as I reached the top of the stairs and threw myself flat on the floor as more shots came, carving a path through the dusty air above my head. My vision was blurring, and now that I was lying down I found myself unable to rise again. I crawled along the floor, using my right hand like a claw, pushing myself with my feet, my left hand still trying to stem the flow of blood from my neck. I drifted from past to present, so that at times I was moving along a carpeted hallway through clean, brightly lit rooms, and at others there were only bare boards and dust and decay.

There were footsteps coming up the stairs. I heard firing from the kitchen below, but there was no gunfire in response. It was as though Maser were shooting at shadows.

I slipped into our old bedroom and managed to get to my feet using the wall as support, then stumbled through the ghost of a bed and slumped in a corner.

Bed. No bed.

The sound of water dripping from a faucet. No sound.

There were footsteps on the stairs. The woman appeared in the doorway. Her face was clearly visible in the light from the window behind me. She looked troubled.

“What are you doing?” she said.

I tried to answer, but I could not.

Bed. No bed. Water. Footsteps, but the woman had not moved.

She looked around, and I knew that she was seeing what I was seeing: worlds upon worlds.

“It won’t save you,” she said. “Nothing will.”

She advanced. As she did so, she ejected the spent clip and prepared to insert another, then stopped. She looked down to her left.

Bed. No bed. Water.

A little girl was beside her, and then another figure emerged from the shadows behind her: a woman with blond hair, her face now visible for the first time since I had found her in the kitchen, and where once there had been only blood and bone, there was now the wife I had loved as she was before the blade had finished its work upon her.

Light. No light.

An empty hallway. A hallway empty no longer.

“No,” whispered the dark-haired woman. She slammed the full clip home and tried to fire at me, but she seemed to be struggling to maintain her aim, as though she were being hampered by figures I could only half glimpse. A bullet struck the wall two feet to my left. I could barely keep my eyes open as I reached into my pocket and felt my palm close around the compact device. I withdrew it and pointed it at the woman as she wrenched her own weapon free at last, striking out with her left hand to repel what was behind her.

Bed. No bed. A woman falling. Susan. A little girl at Semjaza’s side, tugging at her pants leg, clawing at her belly.

And Semjaza herself as she truly was, a thing hunched and dark, pink skulled and winged: ugliness with a terrible remnant of beauty.

I raised my weapon. It looked like a flashlight to her.

“You can’t kill me,” she said. “Not with that.”

She smiled and raised her gun.

“Don’t. Want. To,” I said, and fired.

The little Taser C2 couldn’t miss from that range. The barbed electrodes caught her in the chest and she went down jerking as fifty thousand volts shot through her, the gun falling from her hand, her body twisting on the floor.

Bed. No bed.

Woman.

Wife.

Daughter.

Darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I REMEMBER VOICES. I can recall the Kevlar vest being pulled from me, and someone pressing a gauze pad against the wound in my neck. I saw Semjaza struggling against her captors, and thought that I recognized one of the young men who had been with Epstein when we met earlier in the week. Someone asked me if I was okay. I showed them the blood on my hand, but did not speak.

“It didn’t hit any arteries, or else you’d be dead by now,” said the same voice. “It tore a hell of a furrow, but you’ll live.”

They offered me a stretcher, but I refused. I wanted to stay on my feet. If I lay down, I was sure that I would lose consciousness again. As they helped me downstairs, I saw Epstein himself, kneeling beside the fallen Hansen as a pair of medics worked on him.

And I saw Maser, his arms behind his back, four Taser electrodes dangling from his body, Angel standing above him and Louis beside him. Epstein rose as I was brought down, and came to me. He touched my face with his hand, but said nothing.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” said one of the men who was holding me up. There were sirens in the distance.

Epstein nodded, looked past me to the top of the stairs, then said, “Just one moment. He’ll want to see this.”

Two more men brought the woman down. Her hands were bound behind her with plastic restraints, and her legs were tied at the ankles. She was so light that they had lifted her off her feet, although she continued to try to fight them. While she did so, her lips moved and she whispered what sounded like an incantation. As she drew closer, I heard it clearly. What she said was:

“Dominus meus bonus et benignitas est.”

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, someone else took her legs, so that she was stretched horizontally between her captors. She looked to her right and saw Maser, but before she could speak, Epstein stepped between them.

“Foul,” he said as he gazed down upon her. She spit at him, and the sputum stained his coat. Epstein moved to one side, so that she could see Maser once again. He tried to rise, but Louis walked over to where he sat and placed a foot against his throat, forcing h [oatÄ[1]‡is head back against the wall.

“Go on, look at each other,” said Epstein. “It will be the last time you ever meet.”

And as Semjaza realized what was about to happen, she began to scream the word “No!” over and over, until Epstein forced a gag into her mouth as she was laid on a stretcher and secured. A blanket was placed over her, and she was carried from the house into a waiting ambulance that sped away without sirens or lights. I looked at Maser, and I saw desolation in his eyes. His lips moved, and I heard him whispering something repeatedly. I couldn’t catch what he was saying, but I was sure that they were the same words spoken by his lover.

Dominus meus bonus et benignitas est.

Then one of Epstein’s men appeared and jammed a hypodermic needle into Maser’s neck, and within seconds his chin slumped to his chest, and his eyes closed.

“It’s done,” said Epstein.

“Done,” I said, and at last I let them lay me down, and the light faded from my eyes.

Three days later, I met Epstein once again in the little diner. The deaf mute woman served us the same meal as before, then disappeared into the rear of the place and left us alone. Only then did we talk in earnest. We spoke of the events of that night, and of all that had transpired in the days preceding it, including my conversation with Eddie Grace.

“There is nothing that can be done about him,” said Epstein. “Even if it could be proved that he had been involved, he would die before they could even get him out of the house.”

A cover story had been invented for the events at Hobart Street. Hansen was a hero. While shadowing me as part of an ongoing investigation, he had encountered an armed man who had attacked him with a blade. Although seriously injured, Hansen managed to fatally wound in turn his as-yet-unidentified assailant, who died on the way to the hospital. The blade was the same one that had been used to kill Mickey Wallace and Jimmy Gallagher. Blood traces on the hilt matched theirs. A photograph of the man in question had appeared in the newspapers as part of the police investigation. It bore no resemblance to Gary Maser. It bore no resemblance to any person, living or dead.

No mention was made of the woman. I didn’t ask what had become of her, or her lover. I didn’t want to know, but I could guess. They had been hidden away somewhere deep and dark, far from each other, and there they would rot.

“Hansen was one of us,” said Epstein. “He’d been keeping tabs on you ever since you left Maine. He shouldn’t have entered the house. I don’t know why he did. Perhaps he saw Maser and decided to try to intercept him before he got to you. He’s being kept in a medically induced coma for now. It’s unlikely that he’ll ever be able to return to his duties.”

“My secret friends,” I said, remembering the words that the Collector had spoken to me. “I never figured Hansen for one of them. I must be lonelier than I thought.”

Epstein sipped his water. “He was, perhaps, overzealous in ensuring that your activities were restricted. The decision to rescind your licenses was not his, but he was willing to enforce a Z Qto enforcny decisions that were made. It was felt that you were drawing too much attention, and that you needed to be protected from yourself.”

“It helped that he didn’t like me anyway.”

Epstein shrugged. “He believed in the law. That was why we chose him.”

“And there are others?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Not enough.”

“And now?”

“We wait. You’ll get your investigator’s license back, and your firearms permit will be restored to you. If we can’t protect you from yourself, then I suppose that we have to give you the ability simply to protect yourself. There may be a price, though.”

“There always is.”

“An occasional favor, nothing more. You’re good at what you do. The way will be smoothed with state police, local law enforcement, in the event that your involvement might prove useful. Consider yourself an adviser, an occasional consultant on certain matters.”

“And who is going to smooth the way? You, or another of my ‘friends’?”

I heard the door open behind me. I turned. SAC Ross entered, but he did not remove his coat or join us at the table. Instead, he simply leaned against the counter of the deli, his hands entwined before him, and looked at me like a social worker forced to engage with a repeat offender of whom he is starting to despair.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Ross and I had history. Him?”

“Him,” said Epstein.

“Unit Five.”

“Unit Five.”

“With friends like that…”

“…one needs enemies to match,” finished Epstein.

Ross nodded. “This doesn’t mean that I’m your go-to guy every time you mislay your keys,” he said. “You need to keep your distance.”

“That won’t be hard.”

Epstein raised a placatory hand. “Gentlemen, please.”

“I have another question,” I said.

“Absolutely,” said Epstein. “Go ahead.”

“That woman was whispering something as she was carried away. Before I went out cold, I thought I saw Maser saying the same thing. It sounded like Latin.”

“Dominus meus bonus et benignitas est,” said Epstein. “My master is good and kind.”

“Eddie Grace used almost those same words,” I said, “except he said them in English. What does it mean? Some kind of prayer?”

“That, and perhaps more,” said Epstein. “It’s a play on words. A name has recurred over the course of many years. I Z Qany yearst’s appeared in documents, records. At first we thought it was a coincidence, or a code of some kind, but now we believe that it’s something else.”

“Like what?”

“We think that it’s the name of the Entity, the controlling force,” said Epstein. “‘My master is good and kind.’ ‘Good’ and ‘kind.’ That’s what they call the one whom they serve. They call him ‘Goodkind.’

“Mister Goodkind.”

It would be a long time before I learned of what passed between Ross and Epstein once I was gone, and only the silent woman kept them company in the dim light of the diner.

“Are you sure it’s wise to let him roam?” asked Ross as Epstein struggled to find the sleeve of his coat.

“We are not letting him roam,” replied Epstein. “He’s a tethered goat, even if he doesn’t realize it. We simply have to wait, and see what comes to feed.”

“Goodkind?” asked Ross.

“Eventually, perhaps, if he truly exists,” said Epstein, finding at last his sleeve. “Or if our friend lives long enough…”

I left New York that evening after performing one more service for the dead, this one long delayed. Beneath a simple marker in the corner of Bayside Cemetery, I laid flowers on the grave of a young woman and an unknown child, the final resting place of Caroline Carr.

My mother.