The Wrath of Angels

39

Eldritch woke in a hospital bed and thought, I have dreamed this dream before: a bed; a small, clean room; the pinging of a machine nearby; the sharp chemical odor of antiseptic and, beneath it, all that it was meant to hide; and the clawed fingers pulled at him, trying to keep him forever in the darkness. He lifted his arm and felt a tug as the intravenous drip caught on the sheet. He reached for it, and a hand closed gently but firmly upon his arm.

‘No, let me,’ said the voice, and he smelled that familiar scent of fire and nicotine, and he knew that his son had come to him; not the Collector but his son, for the Collector was never so gentle. His voice sounded slightly muffled: Eldritch’s hearing had been damaged in the blast.

‘I dreamed,’ said Eldritch. ‘I dreamed that she was gone, and then I dreamed that it was but a dream.’

His face hurt. He touched his fingers to it and explored the dressings on the worst of his wounds.

‘I’m sorry,’ said his son. ‘I know what she meant to you.’

Eldritch looked to his left. They had brought his possessions from the scene: his wallet, his keys, his watch. Little things.

But the woman was gone.

‘What do you remember?’ asked his son.

‘The power. We lost power: twice, I think. I went down to the basement, but I could see nothing wrong.’

‘And after that?’

‘A man. He passed me on the street, and I was concerned, but then he walked on, and I let him go. Seconds before it happened, I thought that he called to me. I think he was trying to warn me of something, but then there was an explosion, and I did not see him again.’

‘Do you recall anything about him?’

‘He was in his late forties or early fifties, I think. Unshaven, but not bearded. Perhaps six feet tall. Carrying some weight.’

‘In which direction did he walk?’

‘South.’

‘South. On the far side of the street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell the police this?’

‘No. I don’t think I have spoken to anyone until now. I held her in my arms, but she was gone, and I don’t remember anything else.’

‘The police will want to talk with you. Don’t mention the man to them.’

‘No.’

The son took a cloth and wiped his father’s brow, cooling it while avoiding the wounds.

‘How badly am I hurt?’ asked Eldritch.

‘Cuts and bruises, for the most part. Some concussion. They want to keep you under observation for a few days, though. They’re concerned.’

‘I have trouble hearing. Your voice, my voice, they don’t sound right to me.’

‘I’ll tell the doctors.’

Eldritch twisted on the bed. There was a pain in his groin. He looked beneath the sheet, saw the catheter, and groaned.

‘I know,’ said his son.

‘It hurts.’

‘I’ll tell them about that as well.’

‘My mouth is dry.’

His son took a plastic beaker of water from the bedside locker and held his father’s head while he drank. The old man’s skull felt fragile in his hand, like an egg that could be broken with just a tensing of the fingers. It was a miracle that he had survived. Minutes earlier, and he would have been gone too.

‘I’ll come back later,’ said the son. ‘Do you need anything?’

Now it was his father’s hand that gripped his arm, and his upper body rose from the bed. So strong, this old man . . .

‘Parker came. Parker came, and she died. She was getting his file, and then she died.’ Eldritch was tiring now, and tears of grief squeezed themselves from the corners of his eyes. ‘He warned me, warned you, to back off. He was afraid of the list. He knew that his name was on it.’

‘I had doubts. So did you. The woman, Phipps, she told me something—’

But his father was no longer listening.

‘The list,’ he whispered. ‘The list.’

‘I still have it,’ said his son, and in the soft dawn light filtering through the drapes he was altering in spirit and form, and he was both son and other. ‘And I know where I can find the rest of it.’

‘Kill them,’ said Eldritch, as he fell back on the bed. ‘Kill them all.’

He closed his eyes as his son’s transformation was completed, and it was the Collector who left the room.

Jeff and Rachel came to pick up Sam shortly after nine a.m. She had been with Angel and Louis in the kitchen since before eight, buttering toast and scrambling eggs, and as a result I had to make her change her sweater before her mother saw her and blew a gasket.

Jeff was driving a Jaguar now. From my office window, Angel and Louis watched him pull up outside, step from the car, and take in the view of the Scarborough marshes with the winter sun shining coldly upon them while Rachel walked to the front door.

‘He acts like he owns them,’ said Angel.

‘Or he made them himself,’ said Louis.

‘Transference,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t like him, so you don’t like him either.’

‘No, I just don’t like him,’ said Angel.

‘He got so much money, why’s he driving a Jaguar?’ asked Louis. ‘Jaguar depreciates faster than dollars from Zimbabwe.’

‘He drives it because he has so much money,’ said Angel. ‘How old is he?’

‘Old,’ said Louis.

‘Very old,’ said I.

‘Ancient,’ said Angel. ‘It’s a wonder the man can stand without a stick.’

The front door opened, and Rachel stepped into the hall and called ‘Hello!’

‘We’re in here,’ I said.

She came into the office and raised an eyebrow at the sight of the three of us standing there.

‘The welcoming committee?’

‘Just taking in the view,’ said Louis.

She saw where we were looking, and at whom.

‘Ha-ha,’ she said.

‘He’s younger than I expected,’ said Angel.

‘Really?’

‘No. He’s real old.’

Rachel scowled at Angel.

‘You keep saying things like that and you won’t live to be his age.’

‘I don’t want to live to be his age,’ said Angel. ‘He’s, like, Methuselah in pastels. Who dresses like that anyway?’

Rachel, to her credit, seemed determined to fight Jeff’s corner.

‘He’s playing golf later,’ she said.

‘Golf?’ said Louis. It might have been possible to inject more contempt into four letters and one syllable, but I couldn’t see how.

‘Yeah, golf,’ said Rachel. ‘Regular people play it. It’s a sport.’

‘Golf’s a sport?’

He looked at Angel. Angel shrugged. ‘Maybe we didn’t get the memo.’

‘You guys are jerks, you know that?’ said Rachel. ‘Where’s my daughter? I need to get her away from here before she contracts jerkdom.’

‘Too late,’ said Louis. ‘She got her father’s genes.’

‘You guys are jerks, you know,’ I told him, as I followed Rachel.

‘The cool kids are being mean to us,’ Louis said to Angel.

‘It’s homophobia,’ said Angel. ‘We ought to complain, or write a show tune about it.’

I left them to it.

‘Hey,’ called Angel to my back, ‘does that mean we can’t go to the prom?’

In the hallway, Rachel was helping Sam with her bag.

‘What happened to your nice new sweater?’ asked Rachel, noting that Sam was wearing the old one with holes that I kept in the house for her to use when we worked in the garden.

‘It got eggded,’ said Sam.

‘That figures,’ said Rachel. ‘Did mean Uncle Louis and Uncle Angel throw them at you and call you names?’ She glowered at me.

‘I didn’t put them up to it,’ I said. ‘They can be mean without my help.’

‘Uncle Angel said a bad word,’ said Sam. ‘The one beginning with “f”.’

There was a cry of shock from my office. ‘You promised she wouldn’t tell!’

‘That doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ said Rachel. She raised her voice and directed it to the office. ‘But I’m very disappointed in Uncle Angel.’

‘Sorry.’

Rachel checked that Sam had both socks on, that her underwear was the right way round, and she had her toothbrush and her dolls.

‘Okay, say goodbye to your daddy, and then go to the car,’ she told Sam.

Sam hugged me, and I held her tight. ‘Bye, Daddy.’

‘Bye, honey. I’ll see you soon, okay? I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

She pulled away, and I felt my heart break a little. ‘Bye, Uncle Angel who said a bad word,’ she called.

‘Bye,’ said an embarrassed voice.

‘Bye, Uncle Louis who promised to shoot that man.’

There was a long, awkward pause before Louis said ‘Bye,’ and Sam trotted out the door.

Rachel gave me the hard eye. ‘What?’

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t really have shot him.’

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Can I ask why they’re here?’

‘Just a thing,’ I said.

‘You’re not going to tell me?’

‘Like I said,’ and it was my turn to give her the hard eye, ‘it’s just a thing.’

Her temper was rising now: Angel and Louis’s ribbing of her, Sam’s sweater, Angel’s swearing, and whatever the hell she thought Louis had said, all of it combined to work on her like heat on a pressure cooker. Then again, she hadn’t looked too happy when she’d arrived. An evening spent listening to Jeff tell a crowd of wealthy folk that the banking collapse was all the fault of poor people for wanting a roof over their heads probably hadn’t helped. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked beautiful, but telling her that wouldn’t have helped the situation.

‘I hope you get shot in the fucking ass!’ she said. She opened the office door wide – ‘That goes for all of you!’ – then slammed the door shut behind her.

‘Come out and say hi to Jeff,’ she ordered. ‘Be polite and act like a normal guy.’

I followed her outside. Sam was already sitting in the child seat in the back of the car. She waved at me. I waved back.

‘Hey, big guy,’ said Jeff. He smiled whitely.

Big guy. What an asshole.

‘Hey . . . Jeff,’ I said.

We shook hands. He did that thing he always did where he held on to my right hand for too long with his right hand while gripping my upper arm with his left hand, and examined my face the way a surgeon will check out a patient who is seriously ill and doesn’t appear to be getting any better, and is thus an affront to his caregiver.

‘How you doing, fella?’ he asked.

Fella: it just got better and better. Rachel grinned maliciously. It was revenge for earlier.

‘I’m good, Jeff. And you?’

‘Fantastic,’ he replied. ‘Just fine.’

‘Speech went well last night?’

‘It went down a storm. There were people asking me to run for office.’

‘Wow. Somewhere in Africa would be good. I hear Sudan needs ironing out, or maybe Somalia.’

He looked puzzled, and the smile faltered for a moment, then recovered.

‘No, here,’ he said.

‘Right. Of course.’

‘There was a reporter who came along from the Maine Sunday Telegram. They’re going to report the details of my speech on the weekend.’

‘That’s great,’ I said. If they did, the Telegram wouldn’t be getting my dollar seventy-five that Sunday. ‘Any other reporters there?’

‘Some guy from the Phoenix, but he was just hanging around to cause trouble.’

‘Asking awkward questions? Not accepting the party line?’

‘Ordinary people just don’t understand deregulation,’ said Jeff. ‘They think it involves a state of lawlessness, but it simply means allowing market forces to determine outcomes. Once government begins to interfere, those outcomes start to become unpredictable, and that’s when the trouble starts. Even light-touch regulation interferes with the natural running of the system. We just want to make sure that it runs right so everyone can benefit.’

‘So you’re the good guys?’

‘We’re the wealth generators.’

‘You’re certainly generating something, Jeff.’

Rachel intervened. ‘It’s time to go, Jeff. I think you’ve been baited long enough.’ She hugged me and kissed my cheek. ‘You’ll come see Sam in a week or two?’

‘Yes. Thanks for letting her spend the night. I appreciate it.’

‘I didn’t mean that part about you getting shot,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘The other two maybe, but not you.’

She looked to the office window. Angel and Louis were dimly visible through the blinds. Angel raised an arm, as if thinking about waving, then thought better of it.

‘Jerks,’ Rachel said again, as she got into the car, but she was smiling as she said it. Jeff wasn’t joining her, though, not yet. Instead he was looking to the road, where a black Cadillac CTS coupe was slowing down before turning into my drive.

‘Hey, just in time,’ he said.

‘In time for what?’ I asked. Clearly, someone wasn’t being hit too hard by the recession, but it was nobody I knew.

‘There’s a man I’d like you to meet,’ said Jeff. ‘He drove up to hear my speech, and he said he might take a look at some new development up on Prouts Neck while he was in town. I told him I’d keep him company, and he should look out for my car.’

The Cadillac pulled to a gentle halt behind Jeff’s car. The man who climbed out looked a couple of years younger than Jeff and glowed with good health, and he couldn’t have smelled more of money if he was printing off bills in the back of his car. He had opted for a smart casual wardrobe: tan pants, a black roll-neck sweater, and a black mohair jacket. He was balding, but he hid it well by keeping his hair short, and he wasn’t carrying more than a couple of pounds of excess baggage around the waist. He also had the decency to apologize for driving up to my home uninvited, pointing out that the road took a sharp bend and he was concerned about causing an obstruction by leaving his car there. I told him that it was okay, even if I didn’t think it was. This guy made my skin prickle.

‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he said. He waved at Rachel, and she waved back, but she was careful not to look at me.

‘I’d like to introduce you to someone,’ said Jeff, but he didn’t make it clear to whom he was speaking until his next statement. ‘Garrison Pryor, this is Charlie Parker.’

Pryor stretched out a hand, and after only a slight hesitation I shook it.

‘Garrison Pryor, as in Pryor Investments?’ I said.

‘I’m surprised that you’ve heard of us,’ he replied, although he didn’t sound surprised. ‘We’re not one of the big houses.’

‘I get the Wall Street Journal,’ I lied.

‘Really?’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Know thy enemy, perhaps.’

‘Excuse me?’ It was an odd thing for him to have said.

‘It’s just that Jeff has told me a little about you,’ he continued. ‘From what I could gather, you didn’t strike me as a Journal reader. Jeff thinks you may be a closet socialist.’

‘Compared to Jeff, most people are socialists.’

Pryor laughed, displaying white teeth with slightly elongated canines and sharp incisors. It was like being snarled at by a domesticated wolf.

‘How true. I’ve been very interested to make your acquaintance for some time,’ said Pryor. He maintained steady eye contact, and his smile never wavered.

‘Really?’ I said.

‘I’d read a lot about you, even before Jeff entered your realm of acquaintance. The men and women who you’ve hunted down, well, it’s just frightening that such people could have roamed free for so long. It’s quite the service that you’re doing for society.’

From where I stood, I could see Rachel. She still wasn’t looking at me, but she was biting her lower lip hard. I’d seen that expression before: it was as close as Rachel got to a display of concern in public.

I didn’t reply, so Pryor went on talking.

‘Do you know what I find most interesting about you, Mr Parker?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

‘If I’m correct, when a policeman uses his gun there are committees of inquiry, and paperwork, and sometimes even court cases. But you, a private operator, seem to skate around such obstacles with ease. How do you do that?’

‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘And I only shoot the right people.’

‘Oh, I think it’s more than that. Somebody must be looking out for you.’

‘God?’

‘Perhaps, although I was thinking along more terrestrial lines.’

‘I try to keep the law on my side.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Pryor. ‘So do I, and yet I don’t believe we’re at all alike.’

Jeff, who had been smiling at the start of our conversation, wasn’t smiling any longer. He seemed to realize that this wasn’t going the way he might have hoped, whatever that was.

‘We’d better be going, Garrison,’ he said. ‘Rachel and I have to get Sam home, so if you’d like me to take a look at that development with you . . .’

‘You know, Jeff, I don’t think that will be necessary. Maybe this part of the world isn’t for me after all.’

Jeff’s face fell faster than a busted elevator. I guessed that he’d been hoping to cut himself in on the deal by acting as a go-between if Pryor started throwing money around in Maine.

‘If you’re sure,’ said Jeff.

‘I’m very sure. Goodbye, Mr Parker. I’m sorry again for the intrusion, but I’m happy to have made your acquaintance at last. I look forward to reading more about you in the future.’

‘Likewise,’ I said.

Pryor said his goodbyes to Jeff, waved again to Rachel but not to Sam, and reversed his car onto the road before heading west toward the Interstate.

‘See you, big guy,’ said Jeff to me.

As he prepared to get into his car, I leaned in close to him.

‘Jeff,’ I said softly, ‘don’t ever bring any of your friends onto my property again, not without asking me first. You understand?’

He smiled thinly, and nodded. Only Sam waved at me again as they drove away.

Angel and Louis joined me on the driveway.

‘Who was that?’ asked Angel.

‘His name’s Garrison Pryor,’ I replied, ‘and I don’t think he’s one of the good guys.’

Within the hour, I received two messages arising out of that encounter. The first was a text from Rachel. It read only ‘Sorry.’ The second was an email notifying me of a gift subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

It came courtesy of Pryor Investments.