The Wrath of Angels (21 page)

‘There is no “why”’, said Lambton, slowly and deliberately. ‘There can never be. Even if he came up with some answer for me, it would have no meaning, no weight in this world or the next, so I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t even want to look at him again after this day. I just didn’t want to add to his suffering, or to mine. I didn’t want to add to the suffering of the world itself. I figure it has enough to be getting along with. It’s never going to run out.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Everett,’ said Clarence Douglas. ‘I wish there was something more that I could do for you.’

So Lambton Everett returned to the courtroom, and the jury read their verdict, and Judge Clarence Douglas passed sentence, and some time later Harman Truelove took the long drop.

And Lambton Everett eventually traveled northeast, making for the sea, and he came to rest at last in Wells. Although he said nothing of his past, still he brought it with him in his heart, and in his mind, and in an album of old photographs and yellowed newspaper clippings.

My grandfather turned back to the picture of Lambton with his family. Yes, he was still recognizably a younger version of the man that my grandfather had known, but the years had exacerbated his awkwardness, and the flawed dimensions of his limbs. It struck my grandfather that people sometimes spoke of men and women being broken by grief and loss, and they meant by that a psychological or emotional fracturing, but Lambton Everett resembled a man who had been physically broken, one who had been torn apart and then imperfectly reassembled, and he had spent the remainder of his life struggling with the physical legacy of what had been visited upon him.

My grandfather closed the album, and he shut his eyes, and he registered Lambton Everett’s presence nearby, could almost smell the scent of pipe tobacco and Old Spice that had been so much a part of him.

‘Go on, now,’ said my grandfather. ‘Go to them. They’ve waited for you long enough.’

He thought that he heard the drapes flutter once more behind him, and there was a sound that might have been an exhalation, like a second dying, and then the scent faded, and he felt the emptiness of the room, and he opened his eyes again as his ears discerned a soft ticking.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ah.’

On the table before him was Lambton Everett’s pocket watch, the one that he had bequeathed to my grandfather in his will. But my grandfather had not taken it from the closet in which he had found it alongside the album. He had left it on Lambton’s bed. He was certain of it, as certain as he was of anything in this world.

He slipped the watch into his pocket, and put the album under his arm, and that night, while I watched, he burned the record of Lambton Everett’s pain on a pyre behind his house. When I asked him what he was doing he shared with me Lambton Everett’s story, and it came to be a foretelling of what was to pass in my own life. For, like Lambton, I would see my wife and child torn apart, and I would travel to this northern state, and there my pain would find its form.

Now, seated at that small, dark table on the Lower East Side, the paper Epstein had given to me held tightly in my hand, I thought again of Lambton Everett, and that bond I had imagined as linking our experiences was severed. What kind of man pleads for the life of one who has taken his wife and child from him, Judge Douglas had asked himself: a good man, was the answer, a man worthy of salvation.

But what kind of man takes the life of one who has murdered his wife and child? A vengeful one? A man driven by wrath, twisted by grief? Lambton Everett had appeared broken in form, but the best of him had remained intact within. It was as if his body had been forced to absorb entirely the impact of the blow in order for his spirit, his soul, to remain unsullied.

I was not Lambton Everett. I had taken many lives. I had killed, over and over, in the hope that it might ease my pain, but instead I had fueled it. Had I damned myself by my actions, or had I always been damned? Was that why my name was on this list?

‘Liat, pour Mr Parker a glass of wine,’ said Epstein. ‘I will take one as well.’

The list contained eight names. Unlike the document given to me by Marielle Vetters it was printed, not typewritten. Davis Tate’s name was on this list too but, his apart, my own name was the only one that I recognized. There were no other letters or symbols beside it, no numbers that might be dates or figures. It stood alone, and was printed not in black ink, but in red.

Liat placed two glasses on the table, and filled them both with red wine, not white. She left the bottle.

‘Where did you get this list?’ I asked Epstein.

‘A woman contacted us through an intermediary, a lawyer in our employ,’ said Epstein. ‘She told him that she had been engaged for decades in a process of blackmail, bribery and solicitation. She had hundreds of names, of which this list was just a taster. She said that she had been responsible for the destruction of families, careers, even lives.’

‘On whose behalf?’

‘On behalf of an organization with no true name, although some of those like her termed it the “Army of Night”.’

‘Do we know anything about it?’

‘“We?”’

I realized that there were still guns surrounding me, and my life might well be in the balance here, but I would not give them the satisfaction of yielding to their doubts about me.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, are “we” still playing that game?’

‘You still haven’t explained why your name is on that list,’ said the blond man.

‘And I didn’t catch your name,’ I said.

‘Yonathan,’ he replied.

‘Well, Yonathan, I don’t know you well enough to submit to your questions. Neither do I know you well enough to care if something happens to you when this is all done, so why don’t you just keep quiet and let the grown-ups talk?’

I thought that I caught Liat’s smile, but it was gone before I could be sure. Yonathan bristled, and his face went red. Had Epstein not been present, he might have lunged for me. Even with Epstein’s presence to hold him in check, he still looked like he might take his chances. I was glad Liat had left the wine bottle. I hadn’t touched my glass, but the bottle was close by my right hand. If Yonathan or anyone else tried to lay a hand on me, I planned to shred some skulls before I went down.

‘Enough,’ said Epstein. He scowled at Yonathan before returning his attention to me. ‘The question remains pertinent: why is your name on that list?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘He’s lying,’ said Yonathan. ‘Even if he knew, he would not tell us.’

Yonathan clearly had testosterone issues. The hormones were clouding his brain.

‘Get out,’ said Epstein.

‘But—’ Yonathan began.

‘I told you once to keep quiet, and you did not listen. Go outside and keep Adiv company. You can brood together.’

Yonathan looked like he might be about to start objecting again, but it took only a scowl from Liat to convince him otherwise. He left with as much bad grace as he could muster, even going so far as to nudge me with his shoulder as he passed.

‘You need to organize one of those staff training weekends,’ I said to Epstein. ‘Take them out into the wilderness, then lose them and start all over again.’

‘He is young,’ Epstein replied. ‘They all are. And they’re concerned, as am I. You’ve managed to get too close to us, Mr Parker, and now your very nature is in doubt.’

There was too much tension in the air. I felt like I was taking it in with every breath. I paused for a moment and tried to let myself relax. It was difficult under the circumstances, but somehow I managed.

‘Tate apart, who are the others on this list?’ I asked.

‘Some have been definitely identified: two are members of the Kansas and Texas Houses of Representatives respectively – one liberal, one conservative. Both are tipped for greater things. Another is a corporate lawyer. The rest we’re still working on but they appear to be, for want of a better term, regular people.’

‘Did this woman give any indication as to why she had chosen to provide these particular names?’

‘Our lawyers received a follow-up email from a temporary Yahoo account. It claimed that substantial bribes had been paid to three of those on the list. Two more had been blackmailed: one over hidden homosexual tendencies, the other over a series of affairs with much younger women. Documentary evidence sent as attachments to the email appeared to support her claims.’

‘So that accounts for five of the names. Did she say anything about me?’

I saw the possibility of a lie flicker on Epstein’s face. He tried to hide it, but he couldn’t.

‘She didn’t mention me, did she?’

‘No,’ said Epstein. ‘Not initially.’

‘But when your lawyer passed the list on to you, you instructed him to ask her, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She could not confirm if any approaches had been made to you. She said that she had not put your name on the list, and you had not been her responsibility.’

‘So who added my name to the list?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It does to me, because it’s left me under the gun. You know. Who was responsible?’

‘Brightwell,’ said Epstein. ‘She said Brightwell insisted that it should be added.’

‘When?’

‘Shortly before you killed him.’

We were coming close to it now, the point of all this, the nexus of Epstein’s doubts about me.

‘Do you think I killed Brightwell because I knew he put my name on this list?’

‘Well, did you?’

‘No. I killed him because he was a monster, and because he would have killed me otherwise.’

Epstein shook his head. ‘I don’t think that Brightwell wanted to kill you. I suspect he was convinced that you were like him. Brightwell believed you were a fallen angel, a rebel against the Divine. You had forgotten your own nature, or had turned against it, but you might still be convinced to turn again. He saw in you a potential ally.’

‘Or an enemy.’

‘That’s what we’re trying to establish.’

‘Really? It feels like a kangaroo court. All that’s missing is the noose.’

‘You’re being overdramatic.’

‘I don’t think so. There are a lot of guns on show, and none of them belongs to me.’

‘Just a few more questions, Mr Parker. We’re almost done.’

I nodded. What more could I do?

‘The woman said something else about you. She said that your name had recently come up again, that there were those within her organization who considered you to be important. It was why she chose to send that particular list of names to us.’

Epstein reached out and took my hands in his. The pads of his index fingers pressed against the pulses on my wrists. To my right, I felt the intensity of Liat’s regard. It was like being hooked up to some kind of human lie detector, except this one would not be fooled.

‘Did they ever approach you with an offer, or a bribe?’

‘No.’

‘Did they ever threaten you?’

‘People have been threatening me for a decade, Brightwell and his kind among them.’

‘And how have you responded?’

‘You know how I’ve responded. I have their blood on my hands. In some cases, so do you.’

‘Do you belong to this Army of Night?’

‘No.’

I heard a buzzing to my left. A wasp was bouncing against the mirror above my head. From the sluggishness of its movements, it looked like it was dying. The sight of it recalled another meeting with Epstein, one in which he spoke of parasitic wasps that laid their eggs in spiders. The spider carried the larvae as they developed, and they in turn altered its behavior, causing it to change the webs that it spun so that, when the larvae finally erupted from its body, they would have a cushioned web upon which to rest while they fed upon the remains of the arachnid in which they had gestated. Epstein had told me that there were entities who did the same to men, dark passengers on the human soul, carried unawares for years, even decades, until it came time to reveal their true natures, and then they consumed the consciousness of their hosts.

I watched Epstein follow the progress of the dying insect, and I knew that he was remembering the same conversation.

‘I’d know,’ I said. ‘By now, I would know if I carried one of them inside me.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘There have been too many opportunities for it to emerge, too many times when it could have changed the course of events by doing so. If it dwelled within me, it could have shown itself and saved some of its own, but nothing came to save them. Nothing.’

Again, Epstein’s eyes flicked to Liat, and I understood it was her response that would determine what happened next. The gunmen watched her too, and I saw them ease their fingers beneath the trigger guards in anticipation. A tiny bead of sweat leaked from Epstein’s scalp, like a tear from some hidden eye.

Liat nodded, and I felt myself tense to receive the bullets.

Instead, Epstein released his hold upon my wrists and sat back. The guns vanished, and so did the remaining gunman. Only Liat, Epstein, and I stayed.

‘Let us drink, Mr Parker,’ said Epstein. ‘We are done.’

I stared down at my hands. They were trembling slightly. I stilled them with an effort of will.

‘Go to hell,’ I said, and I left them to their wine.

D
arina Flores sat in an armchair, the boy sitting, unmoving, at her feet. She stroked his thinning hair, the scalp damp yet curiously cold against her fingertips. It was the first time she had left her bed since what she now thought of as the ‘incident’. She had insisted that the dosages of pain medication should be decreased, for she hated the wooziness and the loss of control it brought. Instead she was striving for a balance between tolerable pain and a degree of clarity.

The doctor had come again that morning. He had removed the dressings from her face and she had watched him closely as he did so, seeking some clue in his eyes to the damage that had been inflicted upon her, but his expression remained disinterested throughout. He was a slight man in his early fifties, his fingers long and tapering, the nails professionally manicured. He struck her as mildly effeminate, although she knew that he was straight. She knew everything about him: it was the main reason why he had been chosen to treat her. One of the great benefits of having detailed personal knowledge of an individual was the way in which it deprived that person of the ability to decline an invitation.