“We were looking for Merrick.” It sounded like I was trying to justify the trespass. Perhaps I was.
“But you did not find him. From what I hear, he found you. You are fortunate to be alive after crossing such a man.”
“Did you set him on me, like you set him on Daniel Clay and on his daughter? Like you set him on Ricky Demarcian?”
“Did I set him on Daniel Clay?” The Collector touched an index finger to his lower lip, a simulation of thoughtfulness. His lips parted slightly, and I glimpsed his crooked teeth, blackening at the roots. “Perhaps I have no interest in Daniel Clay, or his daughter. As for Demarcian, well, the loss of a life is always regrettable, but in some cases it is less regrettable than in others. I suspect few will mourn his absence from the world. His employers will find another to take his place, and the deviants will congregate around him like flies on a wound.
“But we were talking about your intrusion upon my privacy. At first, I must confess that I was aggrieved. You forced me to move part of my collection. But when I considered the situation, I was grateful. I knew that we were destined to meet again. You could say that we move in the same circles.”
“I owe you for the last time we met in one of those circles.”
“You would not give me what I wanted—no, what I needed. You left me no choice. Nevertheless, I apologize for any hurt I inflicted. It appears to have caused no lasting damage.”
It was strange. I should have taken him there and then. I should have rained blows upon him in retribution. I wanted to break his nose and his teeth. I wanted to force him to the floor and shatter his skull with the heel of my boot. I wanted to see him burn, his ashes scattering to the four winds. I wanted his blood on my hands and my face. I wanted to lick it from my lips with the tip of my tongue. I—
I stopped. The voice in my head was mine, yet it was echoed by another. Silken tones goaded me.
“You see?” said the Collector, even though his lips did not move. “You see how easy it could be? Do you want to try? Do you want to punish me? Come, do it. I am alone.”
But that was a lie. It was not only the Collector that those in the bar had chosen to ignore, if they were aware of the others at all. There was now movement in the shadows, dark on light. Faces formed at the edges of perception, then were gone, their black eyes unblinking, their ruined mouths gaping, the lines on their skin speaking of decay and absence within. In the mirror, I saw some of the businessmen push their food away half finished. One of the afternoon drunks at the bar brushed at a presence beside his ear, swatting it away like the whine of a mosquito. I saw his lips move, repeating something that only he could hear. His hand trembled as he reached for the shot glass before him, his fingers failing to grasp it, so that it slipped away from him, falling on its side and spilling amber liquid across the wood.
They were here. The Hollow Men were here.
And even if he were alone, which he was not, even if there was no sense that half-glimpsed presences trailed behind him like fragments of himself, only a fool would try to tackle the Collector. He exuded menace. He was a killer, of that I was certain. A killer just like Merrick, except Merrick took lives for money and, now, for revenge, never deluding himself into thinking that what he did was right or justified, while the Collector ended lives because he thought he had been given permission to do so. All that the two men had in common was a shared belief in the utter inconsequentiality of those whom they dispatched.
I took a deep breath. I found that I had moved forward in my seat. I sat back and tried to release some of the tension from my shoulders and arms. The Collector seemed almost disappointed.
“You think that you are a good man?” he said. “How can one tell the good from the bad when their methods are just the same?”
I didn’t answer. “What do you want?” I asked instead.
“I want what you want: to find the abusers of Andrew Kellog and the others.”
“Did they kill Lucy Merrick?”
“Yes.”
“You know that for certain.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“The living leave one mark on the world, the dead another. It is a matter of learning to read the signs, like”—he searched for the right comparison, and clicked his fingers as he found it—”like writing on glass, like fingerprints in dust.”
He waited for me to react, but he was disappointed.
And around us, the shadows moved.
“And you thought you’d use Frank Merrick to flush out the men responsible,” I said, as if he had not spoken those words, as if he did not seem to know things of which he could not possibly be aware.
“I thought he might be useful. Mr. Eldritch, needless to say, was not convinced, but like a good attorney he does as his client wishes.”
“Looks like Eldritch was right. Merrick is out of control.”
The Collector conceded the point with a click of his tongue.
“It would appear so. Still, he may yet lead me to them. For the present, though, we are no longer aiding him in his searches. Eldritch has already had some awkward questions from the police. That bothers him. He has been forced to open a new file, and despite his love of paper he has files enough as matters stand. Eldritch likes . . . old things.”
He rolled the words around in his mouth, savoring them.
“Are you looking for Daniel Clay?”
The Collector grinned slyly. “Why would I be looking for Daniel Clay?”
“Because children in his care were abused. Because the information that led to that abuse could have come from him.”
“And you believe that if I am looking for him, then he must be guilty, is that not right? Despite your distaste for me, it seems that perhaps you trust my judgment.”
He was right. The realization troubled me, but there was no denying the truth of what he had said. For some reason, I believed that if Clay was guilty, then the Collector would be seeking him out.
“The question remains: are you looking for him?”
“No,” said the Collector. “I am not.”
“Because he wasn’t involved, or because you already know where he is?”
“That would be telling. Would you have me do all your work for you?”
“So what now?”
“I want you to leave Eldritch be. He knows nothing that would be useful to you, and would not tell you even if he did. I wanted to express my regret at what passed between Merrick and you. It was not my doing. Finally, I wanted to tell you that, in this instance, we are working toward the same end. I want those men identified. I want to know who they are.”
“Why?”
“So they can be dealt with.”
“The courts will take care of them.”
“I answer to a higher court.”
“I won’t hand them over to you.”
He shrugged. “I am patient. I can wait. Their souls are forfeit. That is all that matters.”
“What did you say?”
He traced patterns upon the table. They looked like letters, but of some alphabet that was unknown to me. “Some sins are so terrible that there can be no forgiveness for them. The soul is lost. It returns to the One who created it, to be disposed of as He sees fit. All that is left behind is an empty shell, consciousness without grace.”
“Hollow,” I said, and I thought that something in the darkness responded to the word, like a dog hearing its name called by a stranger.
“Yes,” said the Collector. “That is an apt word.”
He looked around, seeming to take in the bar and its denizens, yet he focused not on people and objects but on the spaces between them, finding movement where there should have been only stillness, shapes without true form. When he spoke again, his tone was altered. He sounded thoughtful, almost regretful.
“And who would see such things, if they existed?” he said. “Sensitive children, perhaps, abandoned by their fathers and fearful for their mothers. Holy fools who are attuned to such things
. But you are neither.” His eyes flicked toward me, regarding me slyly. “Why do you see what others do not? Were I in your shoes, I might be troubled by such matters.”
He licked at his lips, but his tongue was dry and gave them no moisture. They were cracked deeply in places, the partly healed cuts a darker red against the pink. “Hollow.” He repeated the word, drawing out the final syllable. “Are you a hollow man, Mr. Parker? After all, misery loves company. A place might be found in the ranks for a suitable candidate.” He smiled, and one of the cracks on his lower lip opened. A red pearl of blood rose briefly before flowing back into his mouth. “But no, you lack . . . spirit, and it may be that there are others more adaptable to the role. By their actions shall they be known.”
He stood to leave, depositing $20 on the table to cover his drink. It smelled like Jim Beam, although it had remained untouched throughout.
“A generous tip for our waitress,” he said. “After all, you seem to feel that she has earned it.”
“Are these men the only ones you’re looking for?” I asked. I wanted to know if there were others, and if, perhaps, I was among them.
He crooked his head, like a magpie distracted by an object shining in the sunlight.
“I am always searching,” he said. “There are so many to be dealt with. So many.”
He began to drift away. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, for better or worse. It is almost time to be moving on, and I find the thought that you might choose to snap at my heels slightly troubling. It will be for the best if we find a way to coexist in this world. I’m sure that an accommodation can be reached, a bargain struck.”
He walked toward the door, and shadows followed him along the walls. I saw them in the mirror, smears of white on black, just as I had seen the face of John Grady in a mirror once, howling against his own damnation. It was only when the door opened, and sunlight briefly invaded once again, that I saw the envelope that the Collector had left on the seat across from me. I reached for it. It was thin and unsealed. I opened the tab and looked inside. It contained a black-and-white photograph. I took it out and laid it on the table as the door closed behind me, so that there was only the flickering lamplight to illuminate the picture of my house, the clouds gathering above it, and the men standing beside the car in my drive, one tall, black, and severe, the other smaller, smiling in his dishevelment.
I stared at the picture for a time, then put it back in the envelope and tucked it into my jacket pocket. From the kitchen door, the waitress emerged. Her eyes were red. She glanced at me, and I felt the sting of her blame. I left the bar, left Eldritch and his secretary and his office filled with old paper and the names of the dead. I left them all, and I did not return.
As I drove north, Merrick was engaged in his own work. He approached Rebecca Clay’s home. Later, when everything ended in blood and gunfire, a neighbor would recall his presence, but for now he went unnoticed. It was a gift that he had, the ability to blend in when necessary, to avoid attracting attention. He saw the two big men in their enormous truck, and the car owned by the third man parked at the rear of the house. The car was empty, which meant that the man was probably inside. Merrick was sure that he could take him, but there would be noise, and it would draw the others to him. He might be able to kill them as well, but the risk was too great.
Instead, he retreated. He had acquired a new car, boosted from the garage of a summer home at Higgins Beach, and drove it to a warehouse on a decrepit industrial park near Westbrook, and there he found Jerry Legere working alone. He put my gun in Legere’s mouth and informed him that when it was removed, Legere would tell him all that his wife had shared with him about her father, and all that he knew or suspected about the events leading up to Daniel Clay’s disappearance, or he would blow the back of his head off. Legere was certain that he was going to die. He told Merrick about his wife, the whore. He peddled fantasies to him: lies and half lies, untruths half believed and truths that were worth less than the lies.
But Merrick learned nothing useful from him, and he did not kill Rebecca Clay’s ex-husband, because Legere gave him no cause to do so. Merrick drove away, leaving Legere lying in the dirt, crying with shame and relief.
And the man who was watching from the woods took in everything, and began making his calls.
28
I was heading north on I-95 when the call came through. It was Louis. When he had returned to Scarborough, there was an unknown car waiting in my driveway. A couple of phone calls later, and it was not unknown any longer.
“You got company up here,” he said.
“Anyone we know?”
“Not unless you planning on invading Russia.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Where?”
“Sitting slap bang in your yard. Seems like there ain’t no Russian word for ‘subtle.’”
“Keep an eye on them. I’ll let you know when I’m coming off Route 1.”
I guessed they’d be around asking questions eventually. They couldn’t let Demarcian’s death pass without mention or investigation. I had just hoped that I’d already be gone when they arrived.
I didn’t know much about the Russians, except for the little I’d learned from Louis in the past, and what I’d read in the papers. I knew that they were big in California and New York, and that the main groups in each of those places maintained contact with their peers in Massachusetts, Chicago, Miami, New Jersey, and a dozen or more other states, as well as their peers back in Russia, to form what was, in effect, a huge criminal syndicate. Like the individual mobs themselves, it appeared to be loosely structured with little apparent organization, but it was believed that this was a ruse to throw investigators off the scent and make it difficult for them to infiltrate the syndicate. The soldiers were separated from the bosses by layers of buffers, so that those involved in drugs and prostitution at street level had little idea where the money they earned ultimately went. Demarcian had probably not been able to tell Merrick very much about the men with whom he dealt beyond first names, and those were unlikely to have been real anyway.
The Russians also seemed content to leave large-scale narcotics dealing to others, although they were said to have formed links with the Colombians. Mostly, they preferred insurance scams, identity theft, money laundering, and fuel tax fraud, the kind of complex ripoff operations that were hard for the authorities to track and prosecute. I wondered how many of the clients for Demarcian’s porn sites realized the kind of individuals to whom they were revealing their credit card details.
I figured they were here only to ask questions. If they’d come for something more serious, they wouldn’t have been dumb enough to park in my driveway and wait for me to arrive. Then again, that presupposed they gave a damn about their car being noticed, or even about potential witnesses. The Russians were bad news. It was said that when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Italians sent a few guys over to Moscow to assess the potential for muscling in on the emerging market. They took one look at what was happening on the streets and went straight back home. Unfortunately, the Russians followed them back, joining the Odessa Mafia that had been operating in Brighton Beach since the mid-seventies, and now the Italians sometimes seemed almost quaint by comparison with the new arrivals. It was kind of ironic, I thought, that what ultimately brought the Russians to our door was not communism but a belief in capitalism. Joe McCarthy must have been turning in his grave.
I reached Scarborough forty minutes later, and I called Louis when I was at Oak Hill. He asked me to give him five minutes, then head down at a steady thirty. I saw the car as soon as I rounded the bend. It was a big black Chevy 4X4, the kind of vehicle usually driven by people who would cry if they got real dirt on it. As if to confirm the stereotype, the Chevy was scrupulously clean. I did a U-turn as I passed my house, and pulled up behind the Chevy with the passenger door closest to it, effectively blocking it from leaving the drive. It was bigger than the Mustang, and if they got enough power b
ehind it they might manage to knock my car out of their way, but in the process they’d probably wipe out the back of their vehicle. Apparently, nobody had yet thought of putting bull bars on the rear of 4X4s, although I was sure that it could only be a matter of time. Both front doors of the Chevy opened and two men emerged. They were dressed in standard hood chic: black leather jackets, black jeans, and black sweaters. One of them, a bald man built like a piece of Eastern Bloc architecture, was reaching inside his jacket for his gun when a voice behind him said only a single word: “Don’t.”
The Russian’s hand froze. Louis stood in the shadows of my house, his Glock in his gloved hand. They were trapped between us. I stayed where I was, my .38 now drawn and trained on them.
“Take your hand out of your jacket,” I told the bald Russian. “Slowly. When I see it, fingernails had better be the only thing on the end of it.”
The Russian did as he was told. His partner had already raised his hands. I came out from behind the car and advanced on them.
“Flat on the ground,” said Louis.
They did as they were told. Louis then frisked them both while I kept the gun on them. They were each armed with matching Colt nine-millimeter semiautomatics. Louis ejected the clips from the guns, then checked for any in the chute. When he was sure that they were empty, he tossed the clips into the undergrowth and retreated five feet from the two men.
“Up and kneel,” I told them. “Keep your hands behind your heads.”
They struggled to a kneeling position, then glared at me.
“Who are you?” I said.
They didn’t reply.
“Shestyorki,” said Louis. “Ain’t that what you are? Messenger boys.”
“Niet,” said the bald one. “Boyeviki.”
“Boyeviki my ass,” said Louis. “He says they’re soldiers. Guess it’s hard to get good staff these days. This one can’t even answer a question in English. What happened, you fall off the boat and get left behind?”
“I speak English,” said the Russian. “I speak English good.”
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