The Wrath of Angels (33 page)

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Parker,’ said Eldritch. ‘I do hope that you’re not implying some knowledge of wrongdoing on our part.’

‘Do you want to search me for a wire?’

‘I doubt that you would be so crude in your methods. I suspect that it simply amuses you to make accusations you can’t possibly prove about suspicions on which you lack the courage to act. If you have questions to ask about the behavior of this “client”, then you should put them to him yourself.’

‘We’ve had words about it, but infrequently,’ I said. ‘He’s a difficult man to find. He tends to hide under rocks, waiting to pounce on the unwary and the unarmed.’

‘Oh, Mr Kushiel usually hides
much
deeper than that,’ said Eldritch, and any pretense of goodwill vanished. The office was very cold, much cooler than the morning outside, but I could find no sign of an air-conditioner. There wasn’t even a window to be opened, and yet, as Eldritch spoke, his words found form in plumes of condensation.

And just as my use of the singular about his client had been carefully chosen, so too was his use of his client’s name at that particular point in our discussion. I was aware of the derivation of that particular identity.

In demonology, Kushiel was Hell’s jailer.

The first time I had approached Eldritch, his client had been waiting for me outside when I left. If that was going to be the case again, I wanted to know. There was an
entente
between us, but it was delicate, and far from
cordiale
. The existence of the list was likely to complicate that relationship further, especially if the Collector had begun to target those on it.

‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

‘Abroad in the world,’ came the reply. ‘There is work to be done.’

‘Is he a fan of talk radio?’

‘Somehow, I doubt it.’

‘Did you hear that Davis Tate died?’

‘I didn’t know the man.’

‘He was a minor cheese on right-wing radio. Someone shot him in the head.’

‘Everyone is a critic nowadays.’

‘Some more than others. Usually a bad review on the Internet suffices.’

‘I don’t see how this concerns me.’

‘I believe that you and, by extension, your client, might have been in contact with a woman named Barbara Kelly. She provided you with a document, a list of names.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

I ignored him, and continued. ‘Your client may be tempted to act upon that information. In fact, I think he may already have started with Davis Tate. You need to tell him to keep his distance from the people on the list.’

‘I don’t “tell” him anything,’ replied Eldritch acidly. ‘You should not presume to do so either. He will do as he sees fit, within, obviously, the limits of the law.’

‘And what law would that be, exactly? I’d like to see where serial killing has been enshrined as a legal act.’

‘You’re baiting me, Mr Parker,’ said Eldritch. ‘It’s uncouth.’

‘Your client is more than uncouth: your client is insane. If he is beginning to take action against the individuals on that list, he’ll alert others on it, and those who control them, to the fact of its existence. We’ll lose them all just to satisfy your client’s bloodlust.’

Eldritch’s limbs stiffened in anger. It brought out the excessive politeness that was his lawyer’s training.

‘I would contest your use of the word “bloodlust”,’ he said, enunciating each syllable slowly and clearly.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It implies an emotional capacity to which he can’t even aspire, but we can have a semantic discussion about the best definition of his mania on another occasion. For now, all he has to know is that there are larger interests at stake here, and other parties involved.’

Eldritch’s hands gripped his desk as he leaned forward, the scrawny tendons in his neck extending so that he looked like a turtle deprived of its shell.

‘Do you think he cares about some old Jew squatting in New York, fingering his tassels as he prays for his lost son? My client
acts
. He is an agent of the Divine. There is no sin in his work, for those whom he chooses to confront have forfeited their souls through their own depravity. He is engaged in the great harvest, and he will not, cannot, stop. Files must be closed, Mr Parker. Files must be
closed
!’

Spittle flecked his lips, and his usually bloodless features had bloomed with an unexpected rush of sanguinity. He seemed to realize that he had overstepped his usual boundaries of decorum, for the tension eased out of his body, and he sank back into his chair, releasing his grip upon his desk. He took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, patted it against his mouth, and looked with distaste at the marks on the material. It was spotted with red. He caught me staring at it, so he folded it quickly and put it away.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘That was uncalled for. I will pass on your message, although I can’t promise that it will do any good. He seeks and finds, seeks and finds.’

‘There’s another risk involved in his actions,’ I said.

‘Which is?’

‘He will force them to act against him, but he’s hard to pin down. You’re much easier to find.’

‘That could almost be interpreted as a threat.’

‘It’s a warning.’

‘To borrow your expression, that’s a matter of semantics. Will there be anything else?’

‘I do have one last question,’ I asked.

‘Go on.’ He did not look at me, but began writing on a yellow legal pad in that elegant copperplate. Already he had dismissed me in his mind. I had forced him to shout. I had seen the blood on the handkerchief. He wanted me gone from his presence.

‘It concerns the list that you were sent.’

‘List, list.’ A drop of blood fell from his lips and exploded upon the paper. He continued writing, so that blood and ink combined. ‘Again, I know of no such list.’

I ignored him.

‘I was wondering if my name was on it.’

The nib of the pen stopped moving, and Eldritch peered up at me like some old, malicious imp.

‘Worried, Mr Parker?’

‘Interested, Mr Eldritch.’

Eldritch pursed his lips.

‘Let us speculate, then, since you seem so convinced of its existence, and my knowledge of it. If my name were on such a list, I might well be worried, for what could one have done to justify one’s place upon it?’

He wagged the bloodied nib of his pen at me.

‘I think that perhaps you will be meeting my client sooner than you anticipate. I’m sure that the two of you will have a great deal to discuss. If I were you, I would begin preparing my defense now.

‘And perhaps,’ he added, as I rose to go, ‘you might like to think again about that will.’

Eldritch’s secretary was standing at her door when I left her boss’s office, looking anxiously up the stairs, alerted by the earlier shouting. Despite her concern, a cigarette still dangled securely from her lips.

‘What did you do to him?’ she asked.

‘I endangered his blood pressure a little, although I was surprised he had enough blood in him to manage it.’

‘He’s an old man.’

‘But not a nice one.’

She waited for me to come down before she started up the stairs to check on her employer.

‘You’ll get what’s coming to you,’ she said, and she practically hissed the threat. ‘You’ll vanish from the face of the earth, and when they search your home for clues, they’ll find something is missing if they look hard enough: a photograph in a frame, or a pair of cufflinks inherited from your father. It will be an item that had meaning for you, a cherished heirloom, a memory enshrined in a possession, and it will never be found again, because
he
will have added it to his collection, and we will close and burn the file with your name written on it, just as you too will burn.’

‘You first,’ I said. ‘Your dress is smoldering.’

One of her feet was on a higher step than the other, and her dress had formed a neat basket for the cigarette ash that was burning a hole through the fabric. She brushed at it with her hand, but the damage was already done. It was all relative, as the dress had been horrible to begin with.

‘Let’s talk again soon,’ I said. ‘You take care now.’

She whispered some obscenity, but by then I was already heading for the door. The night before, I had taken the precaution of removing my gun from the locked box under the spare tire in my car, and I was now armed. Before I left Eldritch’s building I took off my jacket, and used it to conceal the gun in my right hand. I kept it there as I walked back to my car, making a slow turn in the middle of the street to make sure that there was nobody at my back. Only when I was driving out of Lynn did I begin to feel even remotely secure, but it was a temporary, compromised thing. My meeting with the old lawyer had unnerved me, but the certainty and venom with which his secretary had spoken had given me the confirmation that I was seeking.

The Collector was in possession of the same list as Epstein.

And my name was on it.

G
rady Vetters lay unconscious on the floor of Teddy Gattle’s living room. The boy had given him a second, stronger dose of sedative after they had finished questioning him, and he would remain out cold for many hours. Darina had closed the drapes and pulled the blinds, and she and the boy had fed themselves from the contents of the refrigerator. Eventually the boy had drifted off to sleep, curled up on the couch with his mouth open and one small fist curled against his chest. One might almost have mistaken him for an innocent.

Darina did not sleep, not yet. Her face hurt, but she made do with swallowing Advil at regular intervals, and watched television with the volume turned down low. Daylight came, but she was not afraid of being discovered. Both Vetters and his friend had confirmed that the house received few visitors during the day, and Vetters’ recent argument with his sister meant that even she would be unlikely to trouble her brother until he framed some apology for his actions.

Darina now knew the story of the airplane in the woods, or as much of it as Harlan Vetters had chosen to share with his son, but she was certain that he had told his daughter more. It was clear from what Vetters had said that his father regarded him as untrustworthy, a disappointment. The old man had placed his faith in the sister, Marielle. She had looked after him in his last illness, and who knows what they had spoken of together over those final weeks and months? Darina had been tempted to confront Marielle Vetters immediately, but she and the boy needed to rest. The pain of her burns had debilitated her, and anyway, it would be easier for them to move around once darkness fell. Her ravaged face would attract attention in daylight, and there were those in this town who might remember her from before, when she was still beautiful.

Careful not to wake the boy, she walked to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. Her wounds glistened beneath their layer of ointment, and her damaged eye resembled a drop of milk in a pool of blood. She had loved being beautiful because it was a reminder of her true nature, but she would never be beautiful again, not in this form. She would be scarred forever, even if she consented to grafts. Perhaps she would shed this skin, just as the boy had done, and wander for years before cocooning herself in another body, there to await her emergence.

In time, though, in time. The plane was important. The list had to be secured.

Grady Vetters stirred, and moaned from where he lay beside the cold fireplace. They had only been forced to injure him a little. The sodium thiopental had made him more malleable, but he had still instinctively tried to protect his sister. The boy had been forced to crush the tips of two of Vetters’ fingers with a pair of pliers, and after that he had told them everything.

What he could not tell them, though, was whether his sister had spoken to anyone else about the plane. Grady Vetters had been foolish enough to share the story with Teddy Gattle, and Gattle, believing that he was doing his friend a favor, had made the call to Darina. Apparently, Vetters had been reluctant to contact Darina himself. He had been smart enough to realize that it might draw unwanted attention to himself and his sister. Teddy Gattle, unfortunately, had not been quite so smart, which was why he was now dead. Marielle Vetters, according to both her brother and his late friend, was smarter than both of them, but Grady Vetters admitted to Darina that his sister had recently raised the possibility of seeking some professional advice on their situation. Her brother had been less than supportive, and his sister had not brought up the subject again, but she was strong willed, and Grady Vetters knew that she was more than capable of going behind his back if she believed it was the right thing to do. If she had sought counsel, that made finding the plane all the more urgent.

And there was also the matter of the passenger. If what Harlan Vetters had told his children was true, the passenger had survived the impact, as otherwise his body would have been found handcuffed to his seat. Darina wondered if he had caused the crash by escaping from his cuffs while the plane was in flight. He was certainly capable of it, and strong enough to survive anything but the worst of impacts. She believed that he was still alive. She would have known if he was not, would have sensed his pain as he was wrenched from the world, but there had been no communication with him, no contact. She could not understand why. That mystery, too, could be investigated once the plane was found.

Tonight they would speak with Marielle Vetters, and find out all that she knew. They would bring her brother with them, for Darina had learned that the threat of harm to another was often more effective than the threat of harm to oneself, particularly if the individuals in question were linked by bonds of love and blood. Grady Vetters had made it clear to them that he loved his sister. He had even begun painting a picture for her, a picture that neither of them would see completed.

She went back to the living room, glancing down at Teddy Gattle’s body as she passed it. He was starting to smell. She dragged him into the main bedroom, and closed the door when she was done. There was no point in making their surroundings any more unpleasant than they had to be while they recovered their strength.