“No mistake,” she said. “I see him.”
Todd gave Harmon a look that was more resigned than concerned.
“We’re not going to find out anything in here,” I said.
“Bring up all of the lights,” Harmon told Todd. Todd went to a box of switches on the kitchen wall and flicked a line of them. Instantly the grounds were illuminated. Todd led the way out. I followed, picking up a flashlight from a rack on the wall along the way. Harmon hung back. After all, he didn’t have a gun. Regrettably, I didn’t have a gun either. It seemed rude to bring one to a stranger’s dinner party.
The lights took out most of the shadows in the garden, but there were still patches of dark under the trees by the walls. I used the flashlight to probe them, but there was nothing there. The ground was soft, but there was no sign of footprints. The surrounding wall was eight or nine feet high, and covered in ivy. Anyone climbing the wall would have damaged the ivy, but it appeared to be intact. We made a cursory search of the rest of the grounds, but it was obvious that Todd believed Maria had been mistaken.
“She’s kinda jittery at the best of times,” he said, as we walked back to where Harmon waited for us. “Everything is ‘Jesus’ and ‘Madre de Dios’. She’s a looker, though, I’ll give her that, but you got a better chance of getting laid by a busload of nuns.”
Harmon raised his hands in a “What’s happening?” gesture.
“Nada,” said Todd. “Not a sign.”
“A lot of fuss over nothing,” said Harmon. He headed back into the kitchen, shot Maria a disapproving glance, then went to release his guests. Todd followed. I stayed behind. Maria was putting plates into a big dishwasher. Her chin was trembling slightly.
“Can you tell me what you saw?” I said.
She shrugged.
“Maybe Mr. Harmon is right. Maybe I no see,” she said, although I could tell from the expression on her face that she didn’t believe her own words.
“Try me,” I said.
She stopped what she was doing. A tear caught in her eyelash, and she brushed it away.
“It was a man. He dress in clothes. Brown, I think. Muy sucio. His face? White. Pálido, si?”
“Pale?”
“Sí, pale. Also—”
Now she looked frightened again. She touched her hands to her face and mouth.
“Here and here, nada. Empty. Hueco.”
“Hueco? I don’t understand.”
Maria glanced over my shoulder. I turned to find the cook watching us.
“Della,” said Maria, “ayudame explicarle lo que quiere decir ‘hueco’.”
“You speak Spanish?” I asked her.
“Some,” she said.
“So, any idea what hueco might mean?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. I can try to find out.”
Della exchanged some words with Maria, who made gestures and signs to help her along. Eventually, she picked up a decorated ostrich egg that was used to hold pens and tapped her fingers lightly on the shell.
“Hueco,” said Maria, and the cook’s face briefly brightened before she too looked troubled, as though she had somehow misunderstood what was being said.
“Hueco means ‘hollow,’” she said. “Maria says he was a hollow man.”
Back in the hallway, June was waiting for me. Harmon hovered nearby, seemingly anxious to be rid of us all. Todd was on the phone. I heard him thank someone before he hung up. He clearly wanted to tell Harmon something, but wasn’t sure if he should wait until we were gone. I decided to nudge him.
“Anything wrong?”
He glanced at Harmon for permission to speak in the company of others.
“Well?” said his boss. “What did they say?”
“I called the Falmouth P.D.,” said Todd, directing the explanation to me as well as his employer. “Just seemed like it was worth checking to see if they’d spotted anything out of the ordinary. They usually keep a close eye on the houses along here.” By that, I presumed that he meant they kept a close on Joel Harmon’s house. He could have bought and sold most of his neighbors ten times over. “Someone reported a car cruising the area, maybe even parked for a while over by the eastern wall of the property, and got suspicious. By the time the cops came, the car was gone, but could be that it was connected to what Maria saw.”
“They get a make, a number?” I asked him.
Todd shook his head. “Just a medium-sized red car,” he said.
Harmon must have seen something in my face.
“Does that ring a bell with you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Frank Merrick, the man who was bothering Rebecca Clay, drives a red car. If I found the connection between you and Clay, then so could he.”
“Friendship,” Harmon corrected me, “not connection. Daniel Clay was my friend. And if this man Merrick wants to talk to me about him, then I’ll tell him just what I told you.”
I walked to the door and looked out at the pebbled driveway, illuminated by the lights of the house and the lamps that stood along the verge. It was Merrick, it had to be. But Merrick’s description did not match that given by Maria of the man whom she had glimpsed in the garden. Merrick had come here, but he had not been alone.
Hollow.
“I’d be careful for the next few days, Mr. Harmon,” I said. “If you go out, keep Todd with you. I’d have your security system checked too.”
“All because of this one man?” asked Harmon. He sounded slightly incredulous.
“He’s dangerous, and he may not be just one man. As you said yourself, better to be safe.”
With that, June and I departed. I drove, the electronic gates opening silently before us as we left the Harmon house behind.
“My,” said June, “you do lead an interesting life.”
I looked at her. “You think that was my doing?”
“You told Joel that the man in the car might have made the same connection that you did—or, rather, that I made for you—but there is another possibility.”
There was only the slightest hint of a rebuke in her voice. I didn’t need her to tell me why. I had figured it out for myself, even though I was reluctant to say it aloud in front of Harmon and had instead forced it back like bile in my throat. Just as I had tracked Merrick, so, too, perhaps Merrick was now tracking me, and I had led him straight to Joel Harmon.
But I was also troubled by the appearance of the man in Harmon’s garden. It appeared that Merrick’s inquiries about Daniel Clay had drawn something else, a man—no, men, I corrected myself, remembering a feeling like foul breezes separating before me, and letters scrawled in dust by a childlike hand—shadowing his movements. Was he aware of them, or was their presence something to do with Eldritch’s client? Yet it was hard to see half-glimpsed men climbing the rickety stairs to an ancient lawyer’s office, or dealing with the harridan who guarded the gateway to the upper levels of Eldritch’s business. What had seemed at first like a simple case of stalking had become infinitely stranger and more complex, and I was glad that Angel and Louis would soon be with me. Merrick’s deadline was about to expire, and while I had set in motion a plan for dealing with him, I was aware that he was, in a sense, the least of my worries. Merrick I could deal with. He was dangerous, but he was a known quantity. The Hollow Men were not.
13
Early the next morning, I was standing by the Portland Public Market’s parking lot. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the weathermen were saying that it was likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, which, in Maine terms, meant that it might begin to improve sometime around April. It was a damp cold, the kind that left clothing moist to the touch, and the windows of coffeeshops, diners, even passing cars were steamed up as the heat caused the moisture to evaporate, lending an uncomfortably claustrophobic atmosphere to anywhere but the least crowded of places.
While most people had the option of seeking shelter indoors, there were some who were not so fortunate. Already a queue had formed outsid
e the Preble Street Resource Center, where the city’s poorest gathered each day to be served breakfast by volunteers. Some would be hoping to take a shower or do their laundry while they were there, or to pick up some fresh clothing and use a telephone. The working poor who couldn’t make it back for midday would be served a bag lunch so they wouldn’t go hungry later. In this way the center and its partners, the Wayside and Saint Luke’s soup kitchens, served over three hundred thousand meals every year to those who might otherwise have starved or have been forced to redirect money from rent or essential medicines just to keep body and soul together.
I watched them from where I stood, the line made up mostly of men, a few of them obviously veterans of the street, their layers of clothing filthy, their hair unkempt, while others were still a couple of steps away from homelessness. Some of the women scattered among them were hard-faced and large, their features distorted by alcohol and difficult lives, their bodies swollen by cheap, fatty foods and cheaper booze. It was possible too to pick out the new arrivals, the ones who had yet to grow accustomed to supporting themselves and their families with handouts. They did not talk or mix with the rest, and kept their heads down or faced the wall, fearful of making eye contact with those around them, like new prisoners on a cell block. Perhaps, too, they were afraid to look up and lock eyes with a friend or neighbor, maybe even an employer who might decide that it wasn’t good for business to give work to someone who had to beg for breakfast. Nearly all of those in the line were in their thirties or older. It gave a false impression of the nature of the poor in a city where one in five of those under the age of eighteen lived below the poverty line.
Nearby were the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center, the Midtown Community Policing Center, and the city’s department of probation and parole. This area was a narrow channel through which most of those with a history of legal problems inevitably flowed. So I stood drinking a coffee from the market to keep me warm and waited to see if a familiar face might appear. Nobody paid me much attention. After all, it was too cold to worry about anyone but oneself.
After twenty minutes, I saw the man I was looking for. His name was Abraham Shockley, but on the street he was known only as “Mr. In-Between,” or “Tween” for short. He was, by any definition, a career criminal. The fact that he wasn’t very good at his chosen career hardly mattered to the courts. He had been charged in his time with possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply, theft by deception, larceny, operating under the influence, and night hunting, among other offenses. Tween had been fortunate that violence had never played a part in his crimes, so that he had, on more than one occasion, benefited from the fact that the offense in question fell into the category of “wobblers,” or crimes that were not statutorily defined as either felonies or misdemeanors, so that some offenses prosecuted as felonies were later reduced to misdemeanors by the trial court. The local cops had also put in a good word for Tween, when required, because Tween was everybody’s friend. He knew people. He listened. He remembered. Tween wasn’t a snitch. He had his own standards of behavior, his own principles, and he adhered to them as best he could. Tween wouldn’t rat anyone out, but he was the man to ask if you wanted a message passed on to someone who was keeping a low profile, or if you wanted to find an individual of ill repute for purposes other than putting him behind bars. In his turn, Tween acted as a go-between for those who were in trouble and wanted to cut a deal with a cop or a parole officer. He was a small but useful cog in the machinery of the unofficial justice system, the shadow courts in which deals were struck and blind eyes turned so that valuable time could be spent on more pressing matters.
He saw me as he took his place in the queue. I nodded to him, then walked slowly down Portland Street. After a few minutes, I heard footsteps approaching from behind, and Tween fell into step beside me. He was in his late forties and dressed cleanly, if shabbily, in yellow sneakers, jeans, two sweaters, and an overcoat with a vent that had split neatly halfway up his back. His reddish brown hair was unevenly cut; people in Tween’s position didn’t waste their money on barbers. He lived rent-free in a one-room basement off Forest Avenue thanks to an absentee landlord who relied on Tween to keep an eye on his more unruly tenants, and to feed the building’s resident cat.
“Breakfast?” I said.
“Only if it’s Bintliff’s,” he replied. “I hear they do a wicked good lobster eggs Benedict.”
“You do have a taste for the finer things in life,” I said.
“I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
“Yeah, but you stole it from the kid in the next cradle.”
To their credit, nobody in Bintliff’s gave us a second glance. We were seated in a booth upstairs, and Tween ordered enough food to fill him up for a day at least: fruit and OJ to begin, followed by toast, the lobster eggs Benedict of which he’d heard so much, extra home fries, then some muffins to finish, three of which were squirreled away in the pockets of his overcoat “for my buddies,” as he explained. While we ate, we spoke about books and local news and just about anything else that came to mind, except the reason why I had brought Tween here. It was the gentlemanly way to conduct business and Tween was always a gentleman, even when he was trying to steal the sole from somebody’s shoe.
“So,” he said, as he finished a fifth coffee, “you just bring me here to enjoy the pleasure of my company?” The coffee didn’t appear to have made him jittery, or at least no more jittery than he had been to begin with. If you handed Tween a bowl of cream to hold, it would turn to butter in the time it took to wind your wristwatch. He had so much nervous energy that it was tiring to be in his immediate vicinity for too long.
“Not just that,” I replied. “I’d like you to ask around, see if you can find anyone who might have known a guy called Frank Merrick, either in Thomaston or in Supermax. He did ten years, the final two or three in the Max, then got released and sent for trial in Virginia.”
“He anything special?”
“He’s not the kind of guy you’re going to forget easily. He had a reputation as a button man.”
“Rumor or solid?”
“I’m inclined to believe what I’ve heard.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s here.”
“Renewing old acquaintances?”
“Could be. If he is, I’d like to know the names.”
“I’ll ask around. Shouldn’t take me too long. You got some quarters so I can call you?”
I gave him my business card, the change from my pocket, and fifty dollars in tens, fives, and ones so he could buy beer and sandwiches to oil the wheels. I knew how Tween worked. He’d helped me in the past. When he found someone who could cast some light on Merrick, as I was sure he would, he would hand me back my change and a handful of receipts, and only then would he look for payment. That was the way Tween worked in his “official” capacity, operating by one simple rule: you didn’t rip off anyone who looked like they might be on your side.
Merrick called me at midday. I’d been checking for signs of him all morning, but I didn’t see him or his red car. If he was smart, he’d have changed the car, but that assumed that Eldritch and his client were still prepared to bankroll him. I’d taken all of the precautions I could in case Merrick, or someone else, was keeping an eye on my movements. I was satisfied that no one was, not that day. In addition, Jackie Garner confirmed that all was still quiet where Rebecca Clay was concerned. Now Merrick was on the phone, threatening to shatter that silence.
“Time’s up,” he said.
“You ever consider that you might get further with honey than vinegar?”
“Feed a man honey, and you get his love. Feed him vinegar, and you get his attention. Helps if you grab him by the balls too, and squeeze him some.”
“That’s very profound. You learn that in jail?”
“Hope you didn’t waste all that time finding out about me, else we’re going to have us a problem.”
“I
didn’t come up with much, not on you and not on Daniel Clay either. His daughter doesn’t know any more than you do, but then she told you that already. You just didn’t want to listen.”
Merrick forced air through his nose in an imitation of amusement.
“Well, that’s unfortunate. You tell missy I’m disappointed in her. Better yet, I’ll tell her myself.”
“Wait. I didn’t say that I’d found nothing.” I needed leverage, something to draw him in. “I have a copy of the police file on Daniel Clay,” I lied.
“So?”
“It mentions your daughter.”
Now Merrick was silent.
“There’s some material in it that I don’t understand. I don’t think the cops did either.”
“What is it?” His voice sounded husky, as though something had suddenly caught in his throat.
I should have felt bad about lying. I was playing on Merrick’s feelings for his missing child. There would be consequences when he found out the truth.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Not over the phone.”
“So what do you suggest?” he asked.
“We meet. I give you a look at the file. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. Then you go and do what you have to do, as long as it doesn’t involve Rebecca Clay.”
“I don’t trust you. I seen those cavemen you got guarding the woman. What’s to stop you from trying to turn them loose on me? I got no problem killing them if it comes down to it, but it would kind of hinder my investigations, you might say.”
“I don’t want their blood on my hands either. We meet in a public place, you read the file, and we go our separate ways. I’m warning you, though: I’m giving you a break because of your daughter. You show up again around Rebecca Clay and this is all going to step up a notch. I guarantee that you won’t like what happens then.”
Merrick gave a theatrical sigh. “Now that you got the pissing competition out of the way, maybe you’d like to name a place.”
I told him to meet me at the Big 20 Bowling Center on Route 1. I even gave him directions. Then I started making my calls.
The Charlie Parker Collection 2 Page 67