‘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 Maser 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 pose. 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.’
I turned slowly as I felt a draft at my back. In the now 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 .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, and 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.
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.
35
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 lift
ed 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 his 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 any 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,’ I said. ‘Him?’ Ross and I had history.
‘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. It’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.
Epilogue
My heart asks for peace—
Day after day flies by, and every hour takes away
A little piece of life; but you and I, we two,
We contemplate living . . .
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837), ‘It’s time, my friend, it’s time’
I spent the rest of t
he week alone. I saw no one. I spoke to no one. I lived with my thoughts, and in the silence I tried to come to terms with all that I had learned.
On Friday night, I went to the Bear. Dave Evans was working the bar. I had already told him by phone that I was done with the job, and he had taken it well. I guess he knew that it would only be a matter of time. I had already received unofficial confirmation that my PI’s license would be restored to me within days, just as Epstein had told me, and all objections to my license to carry had been withdrawn.
But that night, it was clear that Dave was swamped. The main bar area was jammed, so it was standing room only. I stepped aside to let Sarah pass by with a tray of beer orders in one hand, a stack of food orders in the other. She looked frazzled, which was unusual, but then I noticed that everybody else who was working did too.
‘Gary Maser gave me twenty-four hours’ notice, then left,’ said Dave, as he juggled mixing a brandy Alexander with keeping an eye on three pints that were pouring simultaneously. ‘Pity. I liked him. I figured he might stay on. Any idea what happened there?’
‘None,’ I said.
‘Well, you hired him.’
‘My mistake.’
‘What the hell. It wasn’t fatal.’ He gestured at the dressing on my neck. ‘Although that looks like it could have been. I guess I shouldn’t ask.’
‘You could ask, but I’d have to lie to you.’
One of the taps began to splutter and froth.
‘Damn it all,’ said Dave. He looked at me. ‘Do a favor for an old friend?’
‘I’m on it,’ I said. I went in back and changed the keg. While I was there, two more ran down, so I changed those too. When I came back out, Dave was taking care of the service bar, which dealt with orders from the restaurant, and there were at least ten people waiting for drinks, and only one bartender to deal with them.
So, for one more night, I slipped back into my old role. I didn’t mind. I knew now that I would be returning to what I did best, so I enjoyed working one last time for Dave, and quickly fell into all the old routines. Customers came in, and I remembered them by their orders even if I couldn’t recall their names: Tanqueray Guy; Margarita Girl; five guys in their thirties who came in every Friday and always ordered five of the same beer, never once experimenting with some of the more exotic brews, so that their arrival was always known as the Charge of the Coors Light Brigade. The Fulci brothers arrived with Jackie Garner in tow, and Dave contrived to look pleased to see them. He owed them for keeping reporters away from the bar after Mickey Wallace died, even if he suspected that their presence had scared off regular customers too. Now, though, they were sitting in a corner, eating burgers and knocking back Belfast Bay Lobster Red like men who were about to be returned to prison the next day, an experience with which the Fulcis were not unfamiliar.
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