The Unquiet-CP-6 (7 page)

I turned back toward Willard Haven Road, following the slatted path across the sand, then stopped. Halfway up Willard Street, a red car sat idling by the curb. The windshield was almost reflective, so that when I looked at it I saw only the sky. As I began to approach, the driver put it into reverse, backing slowly up Willard, keeping the distance between us constant, then found space to turn and headed for Preble. The car was a Ford Contour, probably a midnineties model. I didn’t get the number of the plate. I couldn’t even be sure that inside was the man who was stalking Rebecca Clay, but I had a feeling it was he. I guessed that it had been too much to hope that he might not have connected me to her yet, but it wasn’t a disaster. My presence might be enough to rattle his cage. It wouldn’t frighten him off, but it might make him try to frighten me off instead. I wanted to meet him face-to-face. I wanted to hear what he had to say. Until then, I couldn’t begin to solve Rebecca Clay’s problem.

I walked back up Willard Street to where my car was parked. If the guy had made me, then at least I wouldn’t have to drive the Saturn any longer, so that was some cause for celebration. I called Rebecca and told her that I thought the man who was bothering her might be nearby. I gave her the color and the make of the car and told her not to leave the office, even for a short time. If her plans changed suddenly, she was to call me, and I would come and get her. She informed me that she planned to eat lunch at her desk, and she had called Jenna’s principal and asked that Jenna be allowed to wait with his secretary until she came to pick her up. The fact that Rebecca was staying at her office for a while gave me an hour or so to play around with. While she had told me a little about her father, I wanted to find out more, and I thought I knew someone who might be able to help.

I headed into Portland and parked across from the Public Market. I picked up two coffees and some scones from the Big Sky Bakery, on the grounds that it always paid to arrive somewhere with a bribe in hand, and headed over to the Maine College of Art on Congress. June Fitzpatrick owned a pair of galleries in Portland, and a black dog that took a dim view of anyone who wasn’t June. I found June in her gallery space in the college, setting up an exhibition of new work against its pristine white walls. She was a small, enthusiastic woman with a voice that had lost only a little of its English accent during her years in Maine, and a good memory for faces and names in the art world. Her dog barked at me from a corner, then contented itself with keeping a close eye on me in case I decided to snatch a canvas.

“Daniel Clay,” she said, as she sipped her coffee. “I remember him, although I’ve only ever seen a couple of examples of his work. He fell into the category of the gifted amateur. It was all very…tortured initially, I suppose you’d say: intermingled bodies, pale with eruptions of reds and blacks and blues, and all sorts of Catholic iconography going on in the background. Then he stopped doing those and moved on to landscapes. Misty trees, ruins in the foreground, that kind of thing.”

Rebecca had shown me some slides of her father’s work earlier that day, along with the single canvas she had retained. It was a painting of Rebecca as a child, although it was a little dark for my liking, the child a pale blur amid gathering shadows. I confessed to June that I hadn’t been very impressed with the rest of his work either.

“They’re not to my taste, it must be said. I always thought his later work was one step above paintings of moose and yachts, but then it wasn’t really an issue. He sold privately and didn’t exhibit, so I never had to find a polite way of saying ‘No.’ There are one or two people in Portland who were quite serious collectors of his work, though, and I know he gave away some of his paintings to friends. His daughter occasionally sells some of those that are still in her possession, and a couple of potential buyers usually come out of the woodwork. I think most of those who collect him probably knew him personally, or are attracted by the mystery surrounding him, for want of a better term. I heard that he stopped painting entirely sometime before he went missing, so I suppose they have a certain rarity value.”

“You remember anything about his disappearance?”

“Oh, there were rumors. There wasn’t much in the newspapers about the circumstances—the local press tends to be circumspect about such things at the best of times—but most of us knew that some of the children he’d been trying to help were subsequently abused again. There were people who wanted to blame him, I suppose, even among those who were prepared to believe that he wasn’t directly involved.”

“You have an opinion on it?”

“There can be only two views: Either he was involved or he wasn’t. If he was, then there’s nothing more to say. If he wasn’t, well, I’m no expert, but it can’t have been easy getting some of those kids to talk about what happened to them to begin with. Perhaps the additional abuse just pushed them further and further into their shells. I really can’t say.”

“Did you ever meet Clay?”

“Here and there. I tried to speak with him at a dinner we both attended, but he didn’t say very much. He was quiet and distant, very soft-spoken. He appeared overburdened by life. That would have been very shortly before his disappearance, so in this case appearances may not have been deceptive.”

She broke off to give instructions to a young woman who was hanging up a canvas by the window.

“No, no, that’s upside down!”

I looked at the canvas, which appeared to be a painting of mud, and not pretty mud either. The young woman looked at the canvas. The young woman then looked at me.

“How can you tell?” I said, and heard my words echoed. The young woman and I had both spoken at precisely the same moment. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. I then did a rough calculation of the difference in our ages and decided that I should limit myself to smiling at people who were born before 1980.

“Philistines,” said June.

“What’s it supposed to be?” I asked her.

“It’s an untitled abstract.”

“Does that mean the artist doesn’t know what it is either?”

“Possibly,” June conceded.

“Back to Daniel Clay. You said that the people who collected his work probably knew him. Any idea who some of those people might be?”

She walked over to the corner and absentmindedly scratched her dog behind the ear. The dog barked at me again, just to disabuse me of any notions I might have had about joining in.

“Joel Harmon is one.”

“The banker?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“I know of him,” I said.

Joel Harmon was the retired president of IBP, the Investment Bank of Portland. He was one of those credited with rejuvenating the Old Port during the eighties, and his picture still appeared in newspapers whenever the city threw a celebration of something or other, usually with his wife on one arm and a crowd of slavering admirers surrounding them, all aroused by the lingering smell of fresh dollar bills. His popularity could fairly be ascribed to his wealth, his power, and the attraction those two elements generally arouse in those with significantly less of either. It was whispered that he had an “eye for the ladies,” even though his looks came pretty far down on the list of his attributes, probably somewhere between “can carry a tune” and “cooks spaghetti.” I’d seen him around, but we’d never been introduced.

“He and Daniel Clay were friends. I believe they might have met at college. I know that Joel bought a couple of Clay’s paintings after he died, and was given others as gifts during his lifetime. I suppose he passed Clay’s test of suitability. Clay was very particular about those to whom he sold or gave his work. I can’t imagine why.”

“You really didn’t like his paintings, did you?”

“Or him, I guess. He made me uneasy. There was something peculiarly joyless about him. Joel Harmon is having a dinner party in his house later this week, by the way. They’re a pretty regular occurrence, and I have a standing invitation anytime I wish to attend. I’ve put some interesting artists his way. He’s a good customer.”

“Are you asking me to be your date?”

“No, I’m offering to be yours.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be. Perhaps you’ll get to see some of Clay’s paintings. Just try not to offend Joel too grievously, there’s a dear. I have bills to pay.”

I assured June that I would be on my best behavior. She didn’t look impressed.
Chapter IV

I drove back to Scarborough and dumped the Saturn, instantly feeling ten years younger in the Mustang, or at least ten years less mature, which wasn’t the same thing at all. I called Rebecca Clay to confirm that she was still planning to leave at the agreed time, then asked her to get someone to walk her to her car. She was due to look at a vacant storefront on Longfellow Square, so I waited for her in the parking lot behind Joe’s Smoke Shop. There were fifteen or sixteen cars parked there, none of them occupied. I found a space that allowed me a view of Congress and the square, bought a grilled chicken sandwich with green peppers at Joe’s sandwich counter, then ate in the car while I waited for Rebecca Clay to arrive. A couple of homeless guys with shopping carts stood smoking in the alley beside the lot. Neither of them matched the description of the man who was following Rebecca.

She called me when she was passing the bus depot at St. John, and I told her to park in front of the building she was visiting. The woman who was trying to rent the first-floor space was waiting outside for her when she arrived. The two of them entered together, and the door closed safely behind them. The windows were large and clean, and I could see both of them clearly from where I sat.

I didn’t notice the squat man until he went through an odd routine while lighting a cigarette. He seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere to take up a spot on one of the metal crash barriers outside the lot. He was holding a cigarette vertically between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and rotating it gently, probably to get a smoother draw, and his attention was entirely fixed on the women across the street. Still, there was something sensual about the motion of his fingers, a product, perhaps, of the way he was staring so intently at Rebecca Clay through the window of the store. After a time he slid the cigarette slowly into his mouth, wetting it against his lips for a moment before applying a match to the tip. Then, instead of simply throwing the match away, or blowing it out, he held it between the same thumb and forefinger as before and allowed the flame to burn down toward the tips of his fingers. I waited for him to discard it as the pain increased, but he did not. When the end of the match was no longer visible, he released his grip upon it and allowed it to fall into the palm of his hand, where it burned into blackness against his skin. He turned his hand, allowing the charred wood to fall upon the ground. I clicked off a picture of him on the little digital camera that I kept in the car. As I did so, he looked around, seemingly aware now that the attention of another was fixed upon him in turn. I slid down farther in my seat, but I had caught a glimpse of his face, and had seen the three parallel scars on his forehead of which Rebecca had spoken. When I looked back he appeared to be gone, but I sensed that he had merely retreated into the shade offered by Joe’s building, for I saw a wisp of smoke carried out upon the street by a stray breeze.

Rebecca emerged from the store, carrying some papers. The other woman was beside her, talking and smiling. I called Rebecca on her cell and told her to keep smiling as she listened.

“Turn your back to Joe’s Smoke Shop,” I said. I didn’t want the watcher to see her reaction when I told her that I had spotted him. “Your fan is over at Joe’s. Don’t look in that direction. I want you to cross the street and go into Cunningham Books. Just act casual, like you have some time to kill. Stay there until I come and get you, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She sounded only a little frightened. To her credit, she did not pause or even betray any emotion by a change of expression. She shook hands with her client, glanced left, then right, and proceeded to cross casually to the bookstore. She walked straight inside, as though that had been her intention all along. I got out of my car and headed quickly to the front of Joe’s. There was nobody outside. Only the butt of a cigarette and the fragmented remains of a match indicated that the squat man had ever been there. The tip had been squeezed flat. Something told me that it might well have been glowing redly when the fingers were applied to it. I could almost smell the scorching of skin.

I looked around and saw him. He had crossed Congress and was walking toward the center of town. He turned right onto Park, and I lost sight of him. I figured that his car was probably there, and he would wait for Rebecca to leave the bookstore before either following her or approaching her again.

I walked to the corner of Park and risked a glance down the street. The squat man was at the door of the red Ford, his head down. I stayed low and used the parked cars to approach him from the opposite side of the street. I had my .38 in a holster at my belt—it was a little more discreet than my big Smith 10 for work like this—but I was reluctant to show it. If I was forced to confront the watcher with a gun in my hand, then whatever chance I had of reasoning with him would evaporate, and the situation would deteriorate before I had even begun to understand its nature. I had an image of this man burning himself, and the apparent ease with which he had done it. It suggested an individual who had a considerable tolerance for pain, and such tolerance was usually hard-earned. A face-to-face with him would have to be delicately handled. A Grand Cherokee turned down Park, an archetypal soccer mom at the wheel, and as it passed I slipped behind it and approached the Ford from the driver’s side. I could make out the outline of his quiff and the folds of muscle at the back of his neck as he sat at the wheel, fumes already emerging from the exhaust. His hands rested on the steering wheel, the fingers of the left tapping a rhythm upon the plastic. The right hand was roughly bandaged. Bloodstains showed through the fabric. At last, I let him see me approach. I kept my arms out and my fingers splayed slightly, but I was ready to scuttle for cover if his hands left the wheel. The problem for me was that once I got close enough to talk to him, there would be nowhere for me to run. I was relying on the fact that there were people around and the hope that he would see no percentage in reacting with hostility until he heard what I had to say.