The Charlie Parker Collection 1

by John Connolly

  ‘A little tender. Hope I didn’t hurt your foot too badly.’

  ‘I get the soles specially made to absorb impact. I didn’t feel a thing.’ He was close to me, maybe only six or seven feet away. I didn’t know where he had come from; maybe he had been waiting in the shadows behind One India all along, or had followed me to the meeting place, although I couldn’t figure out how he might have known about it. Behind me, the rain made cracking noises as it hit the water.

  Mifflin nodded in the direction of the lot. ‘See you got your Mustang fixed.’

  ‘Accidents will happen. That’s why I have insurance.’

  ‘You should have saved your money, spent it on dames. You ain’t gonna need a car no more, unless they have demolition derbies in hell.’

  He raised the gun and his finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Bet your insurance doesn’t cover you for this.’

  ‘Bet it does,’ I said, as Louis appeared from behind the red office building, his dark hand gripping Mifflin’s gun arm tightly as I moved quickly to my left. Louis’s right hand pressed the barrel of a SIG into the soft jowl of the would-be assassin.

  ‘Gently,’ said Louis. ‘Wouldn’t want that thing to go off and scare somebody, make them loose off a shot into someone else’s fat jaw.’

  Miffiin carefully removed his finger from within the guard and slowly eased the hammer down. Angel joined Louis and took the Ruger from the gunman’s hand.

  ‘Hi, gorgeous,’ he said, pointing it at Mifflin’s head. ‘That’s a big gun for a little guy.’

  Miffiin said nothing as Louis eased the SIG away from his mouth and slipped it into the side pocket of his dark overcoat, his hand still gripping the gunman’s arm. Louis made a sudden, swift movement and there was a hard, sharp crack as he broke Mifflin’s right arm at the elbow, then struck the smaller man’s head twice against the side of the building. The gunman folded to the ground. Angel disappeared and returned a minute later driving the Mercury. He flipped the trunk and Louis dumped Mifflin’s prone form inside. Then we followed the car as Angel drove to the end of the Island parking lot, close by a gap in the fencing that led to the edge of the dock. When we had stopped, Louis took Mifflin’s body from the trunk, dragged him to the edge, and threw him into the sea. There was a loud splash as he hit the water, the noise quickly drowned by the steady sound of the rain.

  Louis would have regarded me as weak, I think, if I had said it, but I regretted the death of Miffiin. Certainly, the fact that he had been about to kill me indicated that Tony Celli felt my limited usefulness was now at an end. If we had let him live, he would have come back and tried again, probably with more guns to back him up. But the finality of that soft splash made me weary.

  ‘His car’s parked a block away,’ said Angel. ‘We found this on the floor.’ In his hand was a mobile VHF three-channel receiver, maybe five inches wide and an inch and a half in width, designed to draw power from the car battery. If there was a receiver, then there had to be a transmitter.

  ‘They bugged the house,’ I said. ‘Probably while I was in Celli’s room. I should have known, when they didn’t kill me.’

  Angel shrugged, and tossed the receiver into the sea. ‘If he was here, then his friends are already on their way to the complex,’ he said. To my left, Fore Street wound north, parallel to the harbour, and I could see the silhouettes of the Portland Company buildings in the distance.

  ‘We’ll follow the railway line, come in from the harbour side,’ I said. I drew my gun and clicked off the safety, but Louis tapped me on the shoulder as I did so and withdrew a Colt Government Model .380 from his right coat pocket. From his inside pocket, he produced and fitted a suppressor. ‘You use your Smith & Wesson and anything goes down, they can trace it back to you,’ he said. ‘Use this, and we can dump it later. Plus, it’ll be a whole lot quieter.’ Not surprisingly, Louis knew his guns: semi-automatics chambered for subsonic ammunition are about the only pistols that function effectively with a suppressor. If the Hertz people knew the kind of luggage Louis was keeping in their car, they’d have suffered a collective seizure.

  Louis handed his SIG to Angel, took a matching .380 from his left pocket and once again fitted a suppressor. His actions should have alerted me to what would happen later – not even Louis just ‘happened’ to be carrying a pair of silenced weapons – but I was too concerned about Billy Purdue to give it much thought.

  Louis and I walked down the line, Angel behind us. Rust-red railroad tracks lay in forgotten piles, beside ties that were pitted and knotted, the wood almost black in places. Beyond the storage yards, where old wrecking balls lay side by side and concrete supports bled rust from their innards, wooden pilings moved in the tide like the remains of a primeval forest.

  The Portland Company complex stood across from the marina, its entrance marked by the Sandy River Railroad car used to carry the tourists, its red guard’s car and green carriages now standing silent. The complex had served the railroads once, when the Portland Company had built engines and steam locomotives, but it closed in the seventies and the buildings had now been redeveloped as a business park. Inside the yard, an old black steel tractor with a restored chimney stood at the entrance to the Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum. The building, like all those in the complex, was red brick, and three stories at its highest point, with a machine tool company housed in a similar, though larger, structure behind it, the two connected by a closed walkway. To the left of the museum was a long building that housed some kind of yacht service, I seemed to remember, and a second, similar building used by a fibreglass company.

  At the southern end of the yard was a larger, three-storey building, the windows on the ground floor boarded up, the windows on the other levels obscured by wire screens, where Billy Purdue had said he was hiding. There was no doorway on the harbour side but the northern end had a wooden, shedlike structure that housed the main door. A roadway wound past the doorway and sloped upwards to the visitor entrance to the complex on Fore Street. The whole place appeared deserted and the rain fell hard and unforgiving upon it. The drops sounded like stones beating on the roof of the museum, where a side door stood open. Silently, I indicated it and Louis, Angel and I made our way into the building.

  Inside, beneath a vaulted ceiling, deserted railroad cars stood in rows: green Wicasset and Quebec cars, green and red Sandy River cars from Franklin County, a green and yellow Bridgton and Saco, and, to our right, an old Railbus with an REO Speedwagon chassis from the Sandy River line.

  Beside the Railbus, a body lay curled, its long dark coat gathered around it like a shroud. I turned it over, steeling myself for the sight of Billy Purdue. It was not him. Instead, the contorted features of Berendt, Mifflin’s square-headed sidekick, stared back at me, a dark, ragged exit wound in his forehead. I could smell singed hair. On the floor of the museum, blood and dust congealed.

  Louis’s shadow fell across me. ‘You think Billy Purdue did this?’

  I swallowed, and the sound was huge in my ears. I shook my head and he nodded silently to himself.

  We made our way left, passing between two Edaville cars on our way to the museum office. There was no one else in the building, but the steel door at the front entrance banged noisily against the frame as the wind blew and the rain continued to fall.

  In the darkness beneath the walkway connecting the tool works and the museum building, a black Ford sedan was parked, its windows obscured by the falling rain. I recognised it from the crime scene outside Rita Ferris’s apartment.

  ‘It’s the feds,’ I said. ‘They must have found Celli’s guys.’

  ‘That, or they were listening in on you as well,’ muttered Louis.

  ‘Great,’ said Angel. ‘Is there anybody who isn’t here? Billy Purdue’s so fucking popular, he should have his own holiday.’

  The rear door of the car opened and a figure in a dark coat stepped out, head down, closing the door softly behind him. He walked quickly in our direction, one hand deep in his pocket, the ot
her holding a black umbrella above his head. A light from the tool works briefly illuminated him as he passed through its beam.

  ‘And this would be . . . ?’ said Angel wearily.

  ‘Eldritch, the Canadian cop. Stay here.’

  I stepped from the shadows and Eldritch stopped, a puzzled look on his face as he tried to recognise me.

  ‘Parker?’ he said at last. ‘You want to bring your friends out of the shadows too?’

  From behind me, Louis and Angel appeared and stood beside me, Louis regarding Eldritch with relaxed interest.

  ‘Well, you going to get out of this rain?’ asked the Canadian.

  ‘After you, officer,’ I replied. Something had caught my eye over by the Ford when Eldritch stepped from the car, the interior light casting a faint glow on the ground below. There was a small pool of red beneath the driver’s door, which was not fully closed, and, as I watched, something dripped steadily from the crack.

  Eldritch stepped by me, one hand still holding the umbrella, exposing a gold cuff-link and a white shirtsleeve. There was a dark spot spreading on the cuff as he turned to watch my progress towards the car.

  I glanced back at Louis but something else had caught his eye.

  ‘You got something on your collar, officer,’ he said quietly, as Eldritch stood beneath the light.

  Eldritch’s shirt collar showed above the lapel of his coat. At its edge, and just above the knot of his tie, there were spots of black, like soot. But as Louis spoke, Eldritch lowered his umbrella, trying to block my view as he made his move, the gun visible to me only briefly as he removed his right hand from his pocket. I could see Louis already raising his own gun as Eldritch began to turn, the umbrella now tumbling in mid air, Angel to one side looking on. But I fired first, the bullet tearing a hole in the umbrella and hitting Eldritch low on the thigh, the gunshot masked by the suppressor and the driving rain. I fired again, this time hitting him in the side. The gun fell from his hand and he tumbled against the wall of the museum, sliding down with his back against it until he sat on the ground, his teeth gritted in pain and his hand clutching at the red stain, spreading across the front of his coat. Beside him, Louis picked up his gun by slipping a pen through the trigger guard and examined the weapon with professional detachment.

  ‘Taurus,’ he said. ‘Brazilian. Looks like our friend might have vacationed in South America.’

  I walked to the car. There were two star-shaped bullet holes in the windshield surrounded by twin sunbursts of blood. I opened the driver’s door with a gloved hand and stepped back as Agent Samson fell sideways onto the ground, a dark hole at the bridge of his ruined nose where the bullet had exited. Beside him, Agent Doyle’s forehead rested against the dashboard, blood pooling at his feet. Both were still warm.

  Carefully, I lifted Samson into the car, closed the door and walked back to where Angel and Louis stood over the bleeding man.

  ‘Abel,’ said Louis. Despite his pain, the man on the ground regarded us with dark, hateful eyes, but didn’t speak.

  ‘He’s not going anywhere,’ I said. ‘We put him in the trunk of the Ford, call the cops, let them take care of him after we’re done.’

  But neither Angel nor Louis appeared to be listening to me. Instead, Angel shook his head and tut-tutted: ‘A man your age dyeing his hair,’ he said to Abel. ‘That’s just vanity.’

  ‘And you know what they say about vanity,’ said Louis softly. Abel looked up at him, his eyes widening.

  ‘Vanity kills,’ concluded Louis. Then he shot him once, the Colt jumping in his hand. Abel’s head bumped against the wall behind him, his eyes closed tightly, and then his chin slumped forwards onto his chest.

  For the first time in my life, I touched Louis in anger. Reaching out, I pushed him hard on the chest. He took a step back, his expression unchanged.

  ‘Why?’ I shouted. ‘Why did you kill him? Jesus, Louis, do we have to kill everybody?’

  ‘No,’ said Louis. ‘Just Abel and Stritch.’

  And then I understood why Louis and Angel had come here, and the realisation was like a punch in the stomach.

  ‘It’s a contract,’ I said. ‘You took on the hit.’ I knew now why Leo Voss had been killed, why Abel and Stritch had chosen this time to recede into the shadows, and it was only partly to do with the opportunity offered by Billy Purdue and the money he had stolen. Abel and Stritch were running, and they were running from Louis.

  He nodded once. Beside him, Angel looked at me with a kind of sorrow, but also determination. I knew whose side he was on.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘A dollar,’ said Louis simply. ‘I’d have taken fifty cents, but the man didn’t have no change.’

  ‘A dollar ?’ It was strange, but I almost smiled despite myself. He had taken a dollar, yet their lives were worth even less than that. I looked back at Abel’s body and thought of the two agents in the car and the real Eldritch, who had probably never made it as far as Maine.

  ‘They’re that bad, Bird,’ said Angel. ‘These guys are the fucking worst. Don’t let them come between us.’

  I shook my head. ‘You should have told me, that’s all. You should have trusted me.’

  Now Louis spoke. ‘You’re right. It was my call. I called wrong.’

  He stood before me, waiting for me to respond, and I knew why he had kept it from me. After all, I was an ex-cop, with cop friends. Maybe Louis still had doubts. I had saved Angel’s life while he was in prison and, in return, they had stood by me when Jennifer and Susan were killed, had put their own lives on the line in the hunt for their killer and the killers of others, and asked nothing in return. I had no reason to doubt them; they, on the other hand, a burglar and an assassin, could be forgiven for having concerns about me.

  ‘I understand,’ I said at last.

  Louis nodded his head once in response, but in that gesture and the look in his eyes he said all that he needed to say.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Time to find Billy Purdue.’ And as we walked to the vacant building, the rain falling heavily now, I took a last look at Abel’s body and shivered slightly. His huddled form, and the remains of Berendt in the railroad museum, were mute testament to the fact that the squat, grotesque figure of Stritch could not be far away.

  There were two cars parked farther up on Fore Street, across from a new development of grey wood houses half clad in red brick. It was too dark to see if anyone remained inside the vehicles. When we reached the main door to the unoccupied building, the lock had already been broken open and the door stood slightly ajar. Staying close to the wall, I peered round the corner to the front of the building. There, the windows on the top floor were boarded up, while a wooden walkway led from the grass border to a locked door on the second storey. Because of the gradient of the slope, the ground floor was actually below the grass, its windows masked with more screens.

  I came back to where Angel and Louis were waiting by the door, where we agreed that Angel should leave us and return in the Mercury, so that if we came out with Billy Purdue we could leave quickly.

  Inside the door was a flight of stairs, dusty and littered with old newspaper. They led up to the second floor, to a kind of storage bay supported by steel columns. Behind the stairs was a series of empty offices and work areas, all quiet and unlit. The warehouse still smelt faintly of wood, although now the pervading odour was one of dampness and decay. Louis had a flashlight but didn’t light it for fear of drawing attention to us.

  From where we stood, I could see that mounds of rotted wood still lay in one corner near the stairs. Water dripped from the ceiling as the rain fell through the warehouse roof and gradually leaked through to the floors below. We moved behind the stairway and into the first of the series of workshops, empty apart from some wooden benches and a broken plastic chair. Through the sound of the pouring rain and dripping water I could hear a noise from the other side of the wall as we neared a doorway. I motioned Louis to the left and took up a position at
the right wall until I could partially see into the room beyond. Then, slowly, I inched my way forwards, peering in quickly and then carefully progressing when nobody tried to blow my head off.

  I was in one of a pair of what were once adjoining offices. There was a faint smell of smoke from the room, which came from a pile of smouldering wood and trash in the far corner. In the corner opposite, something moved.

  I spun quickly and tightened my finger on the trigger.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ said a raw, cracked voice, and a figure gradually emerged from where it had been crouching in the darkness. It wore plastic bags over its feet, its legs were encased in dirt-encrusted denims and a coat with no elbows was tied around its waist with a length of string. Its hair was long and unkempt, its beard grey but streaked with nicotine yellow. ‘Please, don’t shoot. I didn’t mean no harm by starting the fire.’

  ‘Move to your right. Quickly.’ Through a crack in one of the wooden panels on the windows, a weak glow shone from a streetlight. The old man moved until he was caught in its beam. His eyes were small and dull. Even from twelve feet away I could smell the booze, and other things too.

  I held him in my sights for a moment longer, then gestured to my right with the gun as Louis appeared in the doorway. ‘Get out of here,’ I said. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘Can I collect my stuff?’ He pointed at a heap of meagre possessions stacked in a shopping cart.

  ‘Take what you can carry, then go.’ The old guy nodded his thanks and began to pick up items from the cart: a pair of boots, some soda cans, a pile of copper wire. Some he put back again, others he seemed to want to think about. As he considered a single Reebok sneaker, a deep voice behind me said: ‘Old man, you got five seconds to get your shit out of here, else the coroner be sorting it for you.’ Louis’s comment seemed to focus the old guy’s mind; seconds later he was running past us with a tangled collection of wire, boots and cans in his arms.

  ‘You won’t steal anything, will you?’ he asked Louis as he prepared to go.