A Time of Torment (22 page)

‘Least we know who’s in charge,’ said Louis, and he leaned back against the wall, content to have stirred the pot to his liking.

Harpur Griffin was gnawing at his lower lip. He pointed a finger at Louis.

‘You take that back, what you called me,’ he blustered, but Louis didn’t even bother giving Griffin the oxygen of his attention. Instead he remained focused on the Fox, the hint of a smile on his lips, his head bobbing slightly to music that only he could hear, a private soundtrack to the possibility of violence. To Parker’s right, Angel stood with his hands clasped before him and his jacket open, ready to go for the gun.

‘I said—’ Griffin began to say, until Parker interrupted.

‘He heard you,’ said Parker. ‘He just doesn’t care.’

‘He’s all biggity with his buddies close by.’

Biggity
. Interesting.

‘He’s kind of biggity even without them.’

‘He called me a rapist.’

As Griffin grew more annoyed, his Southern accent grew more pronounced. Parker was sorry that Louis hadn’t goaded the others into speech so that they might reveal themselves too. Southern, Louis had guessed, but there was a lot of the South to go around.

‘That’s right,’ said Parker. ‘He called you a jailhouse rapist because you sexually assaulted Jerome Burnel in Warren – more than once, from what I hear.’

‘I told you: I don’t know that name.’

‘You raped a man and didn’t even have the good manners to ask him his name?’ said Parker. ‘That’s uncouth. Let’s try again: Jerome Burnel.’

‘Get the fuck out of here. We’re done.’

‘You know, he was released from prison not long ago,’ said Parker, as if Griffin had not even spoken. ‘Unfortunately, he seems to have gone missing. That troubles me because he’s my client.’

‘You hiring on for pedophiles?’ said Griffin. He pronounced it ‘pee-doe-fills’.

‘So you do know him.’

‘Maybe I heard the name.’

‘Have you seen him since he got out?’

‘No. Unlike you, I don’t consort with men of that stripe. I’d rather watch two dogs screwing.’

He picked up his bottle of Bud, drained what was left, then shifted his grip to the neck and made a little feint at Parker. Parker didn’t react, but Angel’s hand inched closer to his gun, and the Fox glared at Griffin in the manner of one dumbstruck by such foolishness.

Griffin laughed. ‘I was only fucking with you,’ he said.

He threw the bottle at the bar’s back wall and watched it shatter.

‘You made Burnel’s life a misery while he was in prison,’ said Parker.

‘If he’s the same man I’m thinking of, then he had no cause to complain,’ said Griffin. ‘He was a deviant. There was a line to make him pay for his ways.’

‘What about you?’ said Parker. ‘Did you get ten years for robbing from the rich to give to the poor?’

‘I didn’t fuck no children.’

‘Neither did he.’

‘Might as well have.’

‘Doesn’t answer my question.’

‘The hell with your question.’

‘You got ten years for aggravated assault on a pair of old women in the course of a home invasion. One of them died six months later.’

‘That wasn’t on me. Old people die. It happens. And I am done answering your questions. Go talk to the cops. Send them here if the mood takes you. I won’t be hard to find. I’ll tell them what I told you: maybe I remember this Burnel, and maybe I gave him a lick or two, but that’s all I know. I’m done with Warren. That’s another life to me now.’

Parker took in the three men. The Fox was now staring at the table, and the Gunpowdered Man had returned to tearing his beer label into even smaller strips.

‘Well, thank you all for your time,’ said Parker.

He headed for the door, not quite giving them his back, even though Angel and Louis remained close. He paused with his fingers on the handle, the door now open, the bar ahead dim after the daylight.

‘I did have one more question,’ he said. ‘Who is the Dead King?’

Ah, there it was. The Gunpowdered Man scattered his strips of paper to the breeze, and the Fox’s eyes were not on Parker, or Angel and Louis, but on Griffin.

‘I don’t know what that is,’ said Griffin, but he was speaking to the Fox, and each word was a lie.

‘I heard you were shouting the Dead King’s name all over Warren,’ said Parker, ‘like he was the Lord and you were testifying, but maybe I was mistaken. In the meantime, though, I’ll keep asking around, just in case.’ He nodded at Griffin’s companions. ‘I hope you boys enjoy your stay in the city.’

He stepped into the bar, Angel and Louis following behind, never taking their eyes from the men at the table.

‘I’ll see you again,’ said Louis to the feral man, who did not reply, and then was lost as the door closed upon the trio.

‘I heard glass break,’ said the bartender.

‘And you came running, right?’ said Angel.

‘I’m not that dumb. But nobody got hurt, did they?’

‘Not yet.’

They moved quickly to the exit, Angel and Louis making no effort to hide the fact that their hands were on their guns, staring back at the closed door, waiting for it to spring open, waiting for the men to come. The Fulci brothers were already ahead of them, and they confirmed that the street outside was clear. Only when both their vehicles were safely away, and the Porterhouse was fading into the distance, did Parker breathe more easily.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

It was Louis who answered.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that maybe Harpur Griffin ain’t long for this world.’

T
hey met back at the Great Lost Bear. The Fulcis parked in the lot across the street so they could watch the door, while Parker, Angel, and Louis took a booth at the back – the same booth, in fact, in which they’d recently listened to Jerome Burnel’s tale. Parker and Louis drank wine, while Angel had a beer. All felt in need of a drink, because the presence of the two men at the Porterhouse had been profoundly unsettling to them. Parker experienced a sense of weight and oppression, as though he had passed through a storm and his clothing was heavier than before, and the clouds above yet threatened to spill more rain.

‘Three possibilities,’ he said. ‘One: assuming Burnel hasn’t simply run, taking only the clothes on his back, then those men had nothing to do with his disappearance, and the fact that they were keeping company with Griffin was purely coincidental.

‘Two: they took Burnel, but they didn’t leave town, which means Burnel is still somewhere in Maine, or even Portland. Anyone else want to guess Three?’

‘They’re the rearguard,’ said Angel. ‘Someone else took Burnel, and they were left behind to make sure that nobody beyond the probation service cared much if he was gone.’

‘And then we showed up,’ said Louis.

‘And baited them. You even found a way to insult their moms.’

‘I don’t think I want to meet either of their moms. The redhead looked like one side of his family made a habit of having sex with animals.’

‘And then you threw Harpur Griffin to them,’ said Angel.

‘Yeah, they didn’t like that,’ said Louis. ‘Old Harpur didn’t care much for it either, judging by the way the blood left his face. It means they now have a choice to make: they can cut and run, and leave Griffin here to clean up the mess; or, more likely, they put Griffin in a hole, then go back to wherever they came from.’

‘Unless Griffin’s dumb, then right now he’s pleading his case to be left alive,’ said Angel. ‘Maybe he’ll offer to try and take care of us for them.’

‘He didn’t look that good,’ said Louis.

‘Few people do,’ said Parker. ‘If he can’t keep his mouth shut, and he can’t come after us, then what good is he to them?’

‘No good at all,’ said Louis. ‘Which is why you put his blood in the water to begin with by talking about this Dead King. You think Griffin might break, and if he does he’ll turn to us.’

‘It’s what I’m hoping. You think it’ll work?’

‘No. Like I said in the car, I think they’ll kill him.’

Parker sipped his wine. He realized that he didn’t really care either way what happened to Griffin, beyond his potential usefulness as a possible lead to the whereabouts of Jerome Burnel. But Griffin wouldn’t have shared what he knew willingly – Parker had understood that the moment he’d set eyes on him – and needed to be forced into a situation where information was the only currency he had to spend, and all that might save him. Other than that, Griffin was a minor blight on the human race, a stain that would fade with his passing. The men with him, though, were harbingers of a greater evil, outriders for whoever it was that called himself the Dead King.

‘Worst case,’ said Louis. ‘They kill Griffin, then take a run at us, too.’

‘They won’t try to hit us,’ said Parker.

‘You sound very certain of that.’

‘We don’t know their names, or where they came from, and they didn’t strike me as the kind of men who like to make a fuss. If they come after us, they’re guaranteed to bring heat down. No, they’ll deal with Griffin, for good or bad, and then they’ll be out on the breeze.’

Parker’s cell phone rang. He checked the number, then answered.

‘Shakey,’ he said, putting the phone on speaker so the others could listen in.

Shakey was one of the city’s homeless. In a way, Shakey was the reason Parker had ended up pierced by bullets and shotgun pellets, and in possession of one kidney less than he’d started with, after Parker had agreed to look into the death of one of Shakey’s friends. Sometimes, Parker thought, saying no to certain cases might have been a good skill to learn.

But he owed Shakey, too: without Shakey, Parker wouldn’t have died and come back transformed. Without Shakey, the truth about Parker’s daughter might not have been revealed to him. Shakey had been the catalyst.

And Shakey himself acknowledged that Parker had paid a heavy price for intervening, although the detective had never once suggested that a debt was owed. He was paying it off in his own way by being available when, or if, Parker needed him, which was why he was currently in the doorway of a former used car lot in South Portland, watching the Porterhouse.

‘They’re coming out,’ he said.

‘All three?’

‘Yes.’

‘How does Griffin look?’

Parker had supplied Shakey with a description.

‘Het up. Smoking. He’s speaking to the men with him – not arguing, exactly, but he’s pretty animated. Looks like he’s trying to convince them of something. Now he’s getting into his car. They’re watching him go. One of them is taking out a phone. He’s making a call. He’s – Shit!’

‘What?’

‘I think they’ve seen me. Sorry about this, but—’

The next thing Parker heard was Shakey screaming a string of obscenities into the phone, accusing an unnamed other of stiffing him for seven bucks, of screwing someone named Little Petty behind his back, and, unless Parker had misheard, of shitting on his dog. By the time Shakey was done, even Parker was entertaining serious doubts about his sanity, and considering getting a new number. Finally, the connection was cut, and Parker was left staring at his silent phone.

‘Did he say someone shit on his dog?’ asked Angel.

‘I think so.’

‘Does he even have a dog?’

‘If he does, it’s not one you’d want to meet.’

After a couple of minutes had passed, the phone rang again, and Shakey was back on the line.

‘You okay?’ asked Parker.

‘Yeah. They’re gone. They think I’m a fruit loop.’

‘They’re not the only ones.’

‘Nobody wants to mess with a crazy person, not even other crazy people,’ said Shakey. ‘Griffin went his way alone, and the others stayed in their car for a while, then left. I got plate numbers for both.’

He read them out, along with a description of the vehicles, and Parker made a note of the details.

‘What do you want me to do now?’

‘Go home, Shakey – and thanks. You’ve done good.’

Parker told him he’d be in touch. He’d drop some cash off for him in the morning. Shakey would try to refuse it, because he always did, but Parker would make him take it in the end.

He didn’t think that the two men who’d been with Griffin would make a decision on his fate immediately, but he couldn’t be sure. Using his smartphone, he ran the plate on the car they’d been driving, and came up with a dealer’s reference, which meant that the car had probably only recently been purchased, and the paperwork remained unprocessed. The information found an echo in his memory, but he was tired and couldn’t recall the source, so he set it aside.

He was using Griffin, forcing him into a position where he might have to give up what he knew to save his life. And if Louis was right, he’d done more than that: he’d potentially condemned Griffin to death. It troubled him, but less than it might have, and certainly less than it should.

He was not the same man he once was. His grandfather used to say that there were angels whom devils would greet on the street. If that were true, thought Parker, then let the devils raise their hats to him.

It would just make them easier to identify and destroy.

H
arpur Griffin tried to recall the first time he’d heard of Charlie Parker. Griffin didn’t read the papers much, the occasional big game coverage apart, or watch news bulletins on TV. He wasn’t a complete moron, but he was intellectually lazy and incurious, as well as the eternally fixed center of his own universe. Every individual spends a lifetime trying to disprove Copernicus by placing him- or herself at the heart of existence, but a small core of diehards manages to turn it into an art. Harpur Griffin was just such a man, spurred on by a suspicion, although he could never have expressed it in so many words, that he was just an emptiness with a name.

Although he had no intention of ever doing so, he might have been surprised, had he sat down in a conciliatory atmosphere with Parker, to discover that the detective’s diagnosis of his character flaws was pretty much on the money. High school had been the high point in Griffin’s life, allowing him to disguise his dearth of character by trying on various identities, each of which ultimately sat uneasily on him, while keeping himself surrounded by others who were at least as insecure as he was, but who would grow into themselves in a way he never would.