The Charlie Parker Collection 1

by John Connolly

  The boy’s bones lay semiexposed, the skull clearly visible, the mandible detached and lying to one side. There was a small hole where the occipital and parietal bones met at the back of his head but no corresponding exit wound in the frontal bone, although a small fragment appeared to have been dislodged from the supraorbital foramen, the ridge of bone above the right eye, by the emerging bullet.

  The indentation on the block of wood by his skull, hacked into the grain with a child’s hand, read:

  James Jessop

  Sinner

  The Search for Sanctuary

  Extract from the postgraduate thesis of Grace Peltier

  It is unclear when the first signs of difficulty began to appear in the new settlement.

  Each day, the community rose and prayed at first light, then assisted in the completion of the houses and farm structures for the settlement, some of which were built of clapboard from old Sears, Roebuck mail-order kits originating from the 1930s. Faulkner retained control of the finances, and food was limited, since the Preacher believed in the benefits of fasting. Prayers were said four times daily, with Faulkner preaching one sermon at breakfast and a second following the main meal in the evening.

  Details of day-to-day life for the Aroostook Baptists were obtained by talking to local people who had some limited contact with the community, and from occasional letters sent by Elizabeth Jessop, Frank Jessop’s wife, to her sister, Lena, in Portland. These letters were, in effect, smuggled out of the settlement. Elizabeth reached an agreement with the landowner whereby, for a small fee, he would check the hollow of an oak tree at the verge of the settlement every Tuesday and ensure that whatever mail found there was posted. He also agreed to collect and deliver any responses received.

  Elizabeth paints a picture of a harsh but joyful first three months, filled with a sense that the Aroostook Baptists were like the pioneers of another age, creating a new world where there had once been wilderness. The houses, although basic and somewhat drafty, were built quickly, and the families had brought some simple furnishings with them in trailers. They raised pigs and chickens and had five cows, one of which was with calf. They grew potatoes – this area of Aroostook was prime potato-growing country – broccoli, and peas, and harvested apples from the trees on the property. They used rotting fish to fertilize the land and stored the produce they had brought with them in underground caverns dug beneath the banks, where the springwater kept the air at the same low temperature all year round, acting as a natural refrigerator.

  The first signs of tension arose in July, when it became apparent that the Faulkners and their children were keeping themselves apart from the other families. Faulkner took a larger share of the produce as the leader of the community and he refused to release any of the funds that the families had brought with them, a sum amounting to at least $20,000. Even when Laurie Perrson, the daughter of Billy and Olive Perrson, took seriously ill with influenza, Faulkner insisted that she be treated within the community. It was left to Katherine Cornish, who had some rudimentary medical skills, to treat the girl. According to Elizabeth’s letters, Laurie barely survived.

  Animosity grew toward the Faulkners. Their children, whom Faulkner insisted should be called only Adam and Eve, bullied the younger members of the community; Elizabeth refers darkly to random acts of cruelty perpetrated on both animals and humans by the Faulkner children. Clearly, her reports caused her sister concern, for in a letter dated August 7,1963, Elizabeth attempts to reassure Lena, arguing that their difficulties ‘are as nothing compared to the sufferings endured by the Mayflower pilgrims, or those hardy souls who journeyed west in the face of hostility from the Indians. We trust in God, who is our savior, and in the Reverend Faulkner, who is our guiding light.’

  But the letter also contains the first reference to Lyall Kellog, with whom it appears that Elizabeth was becoming infatuated. It seems that the relationship between Frank Jessop and his wife was predominantly nonsexual, although whether as a result of marital strife or some physical incapacity is not known. In fact, the affair between Lyall and Elizabeth may already have begun by the time of the August letter, and had certainly progressed enough by November for Elizabeth to describe him to her sister as ‘this wonderful man.’

  It is my view that this affair, and its repercussions once it became known within the community, contributed greatly to the disintegration of the settlement. What is also clear, from the subsequent letters of Elizabeth Jessop, is that Louise Faulkner played a major role in this disintegration, a role that appears to have surprised Elizabeth and may, in the end, have brought Louise into bitter conflict with her own husband.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The passenger elevator at the 190th Street subway station was decorated with pictures of kittens and puppies. Two potted plants with Stars and Stripes sprouting from the soil hung from the ceiling and a small stereo unit played relaxing music. The elevator operator, Anthony Washington, who was responsible for the unusual ambience of the 190th Street elevator, sat at a small desk in a comfortable chair and greeted many of the passengers by name. The MTA once tried to make Anthony strip his elevator of its decorations, but a campaign by the press and the public forced the Transit Authority to back down. The paint flaked from the ceiling of the 190th Street station, it smelled of urine, and there was a steady stream of dirty water running between the tracks. All things considered, those who used the subway were pretty grateful for Anthony’s efforts and felt that the MTA should be pretty damn grateful too.

  It was just after 9:15 A.M. when Anthony Washington’s elevator reached ground level and I emerged at the entrance to Fort Tryon Park. The weather had broken. The thunder had commenced shortly after dawn, the rains following within the hour. It had now been falling continuously for almost four hours, warm, hard rain that had caused umbrellas to sprout up like mushrooms across the city.

  There was no bus waiting at the curb to take visitors to the Cloisters, although it hardly mattered, since I seemed to be the only person heading in that direction. I wrapped my coat around me and began to walk up Margaret Corbin Drive. Outside the small café on the left of the road, a group of sanitation men huddled together, sheltering from the rain while drinking cups of coffee. Above them loomed the remains of Fort Tryon, which defended itself against Hessian troops during the War of Independence with the aid of Margaret Corbin herself, the first American woman to take a soldier’s part in the battle for liberty. I wondered if Margaret Corbin was tough enough to stand against the troops of junkies and muggers who now roamed the scene of her triumph, and figured that she probably was.

  Seconds later, the bulk of the Cloisters was before me, the New Jersey shoreline to my left, traffic streaming across the George Washington Bridge. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had given this land to the city and reserved the hilltop for the construction of a museum of medieval art, which was eventually opened in 1938. Portions of five medieval cloisters were integrated into a single modern building, itself reminiscent of medieval European structures. My father had first taken me there as a child, and it had never ceased to amaze me since. Surrounded by its high central tower and battlements, its arches and pillars, you could briefly feel like a knight-errant, as long as you ignored the fact that you were looking out at the woods of New Jersey, where the only damsels in distress were likely to be robbery victims or unwed mothers.

  I walked up the stairs to the admissions area, paid my $10, and stepped through the entrance door into the Romanesque Hall. There were no other visitors in the rooms; the comparatively early hour and the bad weather had kept most of them away, and I guessed that I was one of only a dozen or so people in the whole museum. I passed slowly through the Fuentidueña Chapel, pausing to admire the apse and the huge crucifix hanging from the ceiling, then made my way through the St.-Guilhem and Cuxa Cloisters toward the Gothic Chapel and the stairs to the lower level.

  I had about ten minutes before I was due to meet Mickey Shine, so I headed for the Treasury, where the museum sto
red its manuscripts. I entered through the modern glass doors and stood in a room ringed by panels from the choir stalls at Jumièges Abbey. The manuscripts were stored in glass cases and opened at particularly fine examples of the illuminator’s art. I stopped for a time at a beautiful book of hours, but most of my attention was reserved for the visiting exhibits.

  The book of Revelation had been the subject of manuscript illumination since the ninth century, and while Apocalypse cycles had originally been produced for monasteries, they were also being made for wealthy secular patrons by the thirteenth century. Some of the finest examples had been gathered together for this exhibition, and images of judgment and punishment filled the room. I spent some time looking at various medieval sinners being devoured, torn apart, or tormented on spikes – or in the case of the Winchester Psalter depiction of Hell Mouth, all three at once, while a dutiful angel locked the doors from the outside – before passing on to examples of Dürer’s woodcuts, Cranach’s work for Martin Luther’s German translation of the New Testament, and Blake’s visions of red dragons, until I eventually reached the item at the center of the display.

  It was the Cloisters Apocalypse, dating from the early part of the fourteenth century, and the illustration on the opened page was almost identical to that which I had found on the Fellowship’s literature. It depicted a multi-eyed beast with long, vaguely arachnid legs slaughtering sinners with a spear while Christ and the saints looked on impassively from the right-hand corner of the page. According to the explanatory note in the case, the beast was killing those whose names did not appear in the Lamb of God’s Book of Life. Below it was a translation of an illustrator’s note added in Latin in the margins: ‘For if the names of the saved are to be recorded in the Book of Life, shall not also the names of the damned be written, and in what place may they be found?’

  I heard the echo of the threat made by Mr. Pudd against Mickey Shine and his family: their names would be written. The question, as the illuminator had posed, was, written where?

  It was now ten, but I could see no sign of Mickey Shine. I left the Treasury, walked through the Glass Gallery, and opened a small unmarked door that led out into the Trie Cloister. The only sound, apart from the fall of the rain, came from the trickling of water in the fountain at the center of the marble arcades, dominated in turn by a limestone cross. To my right, an opening led out to the exposed Bonnefont Cloister. When I stepped through it, I found myself in a garden, the Hudson River and the New Jersey shoreline in front of me, the tower of the Gothic Chapel to my far right. To my left was the main wall of the Cloisters itself, a drop of maybe twenty feet leading to the grass below. The other two sides of the square consisted of pillared arcades.

  The garden had been planted with shrubs and trees common in medieval times. A quartet of quince trees stood in the middle, the first signs of its golden fruit now appearing. Valerian was overshadowed by the huge leaves of black mustard; nearby grew caraway and leek, chive and lovage, madder and Our-Lady’s-bedstraw, the last two constituent ingredients in the dyes used by artists for the manuscripts on display in the main body of the museum.

  It took me seconds to notice the new addition to the garden. Against the far wall, beside the entrance to the tower, grew an espaliered pear tree, its shape resembling a menorah. The bare branches were like hooks, six of them growing out from the main artery of the tree. Mickey Shine’s head had been impaled on the very tip of that central artery, turning him to a creature of both flesh and wood. Tendril-like trails of coagulating blood hung from the neck, and the rain damped the pallor of his features as water pooled in the sunken sockets of his eyes. Tattered skin blew softly in the wind, and there was blood around his mouth and ears. His ponytail had been severed during the removal of his head and the loose hair now stuck lankly to his gray-blue skin.

  I was already reaching for my gun when the thin, spiderlike shape of Mr. Pudd emerged from the shadow of the arcade to my right. In his hand he held a Beretta fitted with a suppressor. My hand froze. He told me to raise my hands, slowly. I did.

  ‘So here we are, Mr. Parker,’ he said, and the eyes behind their dark hoods gleamed with a hostile intensity. ‘I hope you like what I’ve done with the place.’

  His gun hand gestured to the tree. Blood and rain pooled at its base, creating a dark reflection of what lay above. I could see Mickey Shine’s face shimmer as the raindrops fell, seeming to add life and expression to his still features.

  ‘I found Mr. Sheinberg in a nickel-and-dime Bowery hotel,’ he continued. ‘When they discover what’s left of him in his bathtub, I fear it will be merely a nickel hotel.’

  And still the rain fell. It would keep the tourists away, and that was what Mr. Pudd wanted.

  ‘The idea was mine,’ he said. ‘I thought it was appropriately medieval. The execution – and it was an execution – was the work of my . . . associate.’

  Farther to my right, still sheltered by the arcade, the woman with the mutilated throat stood against a pillar, an open rucksack on the stone before her. She was watching us impassively, like Judith after disposing of the head of Holofernes.

  ‘He struggled a great deal,’ elaborated Mr. Pudd, almost distractedly. ‘But then, we did start from the back. It took us some time to hit the vertebral artery. After that, he didn’t struggle quite so much.’

  The weight of the Smith & Wesson beneath my coat pressed against my skin, like a promise that would never be fulfilled. Mr. Pudd returned his attention fully to me, raising the Beretta slightly as he did so.

  ‘The Peltier woman stole something from us, Mr. Parker. We want it back.’

  I spoke at last. ‘You were in my house. You took everything that I had.’

  ‘You’re lying. The old man didn’t have it, but I think you might. And even if you don’t, I suspect you know who does.’

  ‘The Apocalypse?’ It was a guess, but a good one. Mr. Pudd’s lips twitched once, and then he nodded. ‘Tell me where it is, and you won’t feel a thing when I kill you.’

  ‘And if I don’t tell you?’ From the corner of my eye I saw the woman produce a gun and aim it at me. As she moved, so too did Mr. Pudd. His left hand, which had been concealed in the pocket of his coat until then, appeared from the folds. In it, he held a syringe.

  ‘I’ll shoot you. I won’t kill you, but I will disable you, and then . . .’ He raised the syringe and a stream of clear liquid issued from the needle.

  ‘Is that what you used to kill Epstein?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Compared to what you will endure, the unfortunate Rabbi Epstein passed comfortably into the next world. You’re about to experience a great deal of pain, Mr. Parker.’

  He angled the gun so that it was pointing at my belly, but I wasn’t looking at the gun. Instead, I watched as a tiny red dot appeared on Mr. Pudd’s groin and slowly began to work its way upward. Pudd’s eyes dropped to follow my gaze and his mouth opened in surprise as the dot continued its progress over his chest and neck before stopping in the center of his forehead.

  ‘You first,’ I said, but he was already moving. The first bullet blew away a chunk of his right ear as he loosed off a shot in my direction, the rain hissing beside my face as the heat of the slug warmed the air. Then three more shots came, tearing black holes in his chest. The bullets should have ripped through him, but instead he lurched backward as if he had been punched hard, the impact of the shots sending him tumbling over the wall.

  Shards of stone sprang up close to my left leg and I heard the dull sound of the suppressed shots echoing around the arcade. I drew out my gun, dove for the cover of the chapel tower and fired at the pillar where the woman had been standing, but she had stooped low and was scuttling toward the door to the Glass Gallery, her gun bucking as gunfire came at her from two directions: from the wall where I stood and from the arcade, where Louis’s dark form was moving through the shadows to intercept her. The door to the gallery opened behind her and she disappeared inside. I was about to follow wh
en a bullet whistled past my ear and I dove to the ground, my face buried in the clump of Our-Lady’s-bedstraw. Across from me, Louis leaped over the wall of the arcade as I raised myself up and crawled behind the main wall. I took a deep breath and peered over.

  There was nobody there. Pudd was already gone, a smear of blood on some flattened grass the only indicator of his former presence.

  ‘Follow the woman,’ I said. Louis nodded and ran to the gallery, his gun held discreetly by his side. I climbed onto the wall and then jumped, landing heavily on the grass and rolling down the slope. I sprang up quickly when I came to a stop, the gun outstretched, but Pudd was nowhere to be seen. I moved west, following the trail of blood along the main wall of the Cloisters, until somewhere at the far side of the building I heard a shot fired, then another, followed by the squealing of tires. Seconds later, a blue Voyager sped down Margaret Corbin Drive. I ran to the road, hoping for a clear shot, but an MTA bus turned the corner at the same time and I held my fire for fear of hitting the bus or its passengers. The last thing I saw as the Voyager disappeared was a figure slumped forward on the dashboard. I wasn’t certain, but I thought it was Pudd.

  Brushing the grass from my pants and coat, I put my gun away and walked swiftly around to the main entrance. A gray-suited museum guard lay slumped against the wall, surrounded by a crowd of newly arrived French tourists. There was blood on his right arm and leg, but he was conscious. I heard the sound of footsteps on the grass behind me and turned to see Louis standing in the shade of the wall. He had obviously made a full circuit of the complex after pursuing the woman in order to avoid passing through the museum again.