Somebody at the bar called an order from the stool nearest the entrance – ‘Hey, Hector, I’m dying of thirst over here!’ – and the bartender ambled toward him, keeping pace with Becky and Tate. Tate felt Hector staring at him. He tried to face him down, and Hector blew him a kiss.
‘One for all your listeners,’ said Hector. ‘You come back, I got something special for you too.’
Tate didn’t wait around to hear what it might be, although the way Hector grabbed his crotch and shook it left him with a limited number of possibilities. As they reached the door, his eye happened upon the newspaper rack. All of the papers were already tattered and stained from use, but the stranger’s copy of the Post stood out as it was cleaner than the rest, and appeared unread. Something had been written across the top of the front page with a black felt-tip. It read:
Hello, Davis
Tate grabbed the paper and showed it to the bartender.
‘Did you write this?’ he asked. He was shouting, but he didn’t care.
‘What?’ Hector appeared genuinely puzzled.
‘I asked you if you wrote these words on the newspaper.’
Hector looked at the paper. He considered it for a time.
‘No,’ he said. ‘If that had been my message, it would have read “Hello, Davis, you homophobic asshole.” And I’d have added a smiley face.’
Tate tossed the paper on the bar. He felt very, very tired.
‘I don’t hate gays,’ he said softly.
‘You don’t?’ said Hector.
‘No,’ said Tate.
He turned to leave.
‘I hate everyone.’
He and Becky parted at the corner. He tried to discuss the writing on the newspaper, but she didn’t want to listen. She was done with him for the day. Tate watched her go, her tight black skirt clinging to her buttocks and thighs, her breasts high and round under her navy shirt. She was good-looking, Tate would give her that, but he no longer felt any attraction towards her because she scared him so much.
That was the other thing: she might nominally have been his producer, but he had always suspected that she was so much more. She had seemed to defer to Barbara Kelly on the occasion of their first meeting, but in the years that followed he had seen others defer to her, even Kelly herself. Becky had three cell phones, and even when she was in the producer’s chair, ostensibly keeping the wheels of the show oiled, one of those phones would be pressed to her ear. Out of curiosity he had followed her once from the hired studio after they had finished recording a show, keeping his distance, trying to blend in with the crowd. Two blocks from the studio he had watched as a black limousine pulled up at the curb beside her, and Becky got in. He had seen nobody else in back, and the driver had not emerged to open the door for her, instead choosing to remain invisible behind smoked glass.
Three times he had followed her, and on each occasion the same car had arrived to pick her up once she was out of sight of the studio. Producer, my ass, thought Tate, but in a way it had been strangely reassuring. It had confirmed that he was involved with serious people, and the wealth that had helped him to rise was not about to vanish any time soon.
Eventually he might even have a limo pickup of his own.
Now here he was, back in the safety of his apartment building but still feeling contaminated by the stink of the bar, both the taint of nicotine and the musky stench of debased sexuality, and tormented by his knowledge of what might be about to happen to Penny Moss. Maybe he could Google her name, or search for her on Facebook. He could send her a message. There had to be a way to do that kind of thing without revealing his identity. He could set up a temporary account under a false name, but wouldn’t he have to wait for her to friend him first? And how many Penny Mosses were out there?
It was the same problem with making a telephone call: where could he start? He could notify the police anonymously and tell them what he knew: that a girl named Penny Moss was going to be abducted and killed, except he couldn’t say where she lived, or who was going to do the abducting and killing, not without mentioning Becky and, by doing so, giving himself away. He would also lose everything for which he’d worked so hard: his money, his power, his nice apartment, even his life, because there was the small matter of Darina Flores. They’d send her after him, and that wouldn’t be good.
He got in the elevator and stared at his reflection in the glass as he ascended. The evening played itself out before him. He would sit in the dark and argue back and forth about the girl while knowing that, in the end, he wouldn’t do anything at all. Eventually he’d pour a drink and pretend to himself that nothing was going to happen, not really. No girl named Penny Moss would be abducted the next day, and no butcher’s knife with her blood on it would be found on the property of some halal-muncher, some religious fifth columnist who had cloaked himself in suburban normality while secretly hating everything that this country stood for. This would be no innocent, Becky had told him. They had selected a man who was a danger to all, and once attention was drawn to him there would be ample evidence of his involvement in all kinds of viciousness. They were doing the right thing here. And as for Penny Moss, well, it might be possible to achieve their ends without killing her. She didn’t have to shed blood, not really.
Or not much.
But Tate had seen the truth in Becky’s eyes, and he knew that this was just the latest step on the road to his own damnation, perhaps the final one. His progress along it had been gradual, slow at first, but he’d felt his feet starting to slide as soon as the vitriol he was spewing became directed at specific targets, as soon as he stopped caring about whether what he said was even partly true or not but simply served the purpose of setting Americans against Americans and rendering reasoned debate impossible, as soon as lives were ruined, and careers and marriages were forced into collapse.
As soon as George Keys killed himself, because that’s what the dumb bastard went and did. His mother died the week after the union cut him loose, and the combination of the two events broke him. He hanged himself in his mother’s bedroom, surrounded by her possessions. And here was the funny thing: George Keys was gay, but he was so tormented by his homosexuality that he’d been afraid to use the fact of it to defend himself against allegations that he’d slept with the Mexican whore-waitress. There were those who blamed Tate for what had happened, but mostly they did so quietly. Davis Tate was by then well on the way to becoming untouchable.
And damned.
Little steps, little increments of evil.
He put his key in the lock and opened his apartment door. He registered the nicotine stench just an instant too late, his reactions slowed by the beers he’d drunk and his senses dulled by the smell and taste of tobacco that he had carried back with him from the bar. He tried to retreat into the hallway, but a blow caught him on the side of the head, knocking him against the door jamb, and a blade pressed itself against his neck, its edge so sharp that he only realized he had been cut when he felt the blood flow, and with it came the pain.
‘Time to talk,’ said a stinking voice in his ear. ‘Time, even, to die.’
27
Walter Cole drove me to the airport to catch the Delta shuttle flight to Boston. He’d been relatively quiet since we left Nicola’s. Walter was good at brooding.
‘You have something that you want to share?’ I asked.
‘I’d just forgotten what an interesting life you lead,’ he said, as LaGuardia came into view.
‘In a good way, or the Chinese way?’
‘Both, I guess. I like being retired, but sometimes I get twitchy, you know? I’ll read about a case in the newspaper, or see it on the news, and I’ll remember what it was like to be part of that, the rush of it, the sense of, I don’t know . . .’
‘Purpose?’
‘Yeah, purpose. But then Lee will come into the room, and she’ll have a beer in her hand for me, and a glass of wine for herself. We’ll talk, or I’ll help her to cook dinner—’
; ‘You cook now?’
‘God, no. I tried making stew once and even the dog got ill, and that dog eats deer shit and doesn’t blink. I help Lee by not trying to cook, and just making sure her glass is full. Sometimes one of the kids will join us, and the evening stretches into night, and it will be good. Just good. You know how many dinners I missed by being a cop? Too many; too many, and more. Now I get to make up for lost time. Contentment is a very underrated feeling, but you only learn that as you get older, and with it comes regret that it took you so long to realize what you’d been missing.’
‘So you’re telling me that you don’t want to trade your life for mine? You’ll forgive me if I’m not shocked.’
‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it. I listened to what was said in back of Nicola’s today and I felt the twitch again, but I also felt the fear. I’m too old, too weak, too slow. I’m better off where I am. I can’t do what you do. I wouldn’t want to. But I’m afraid for you, Charlie, and I get more afraid as the years go by. I used to think that maybe you could stop this, that you’d go to Maine and just be a normal guy doing normal stuff, but now I know that it isn’t in the stars for you. I just wonder how it’s going to end, that’s all, because you’re getting older, and so are those two lunatics who walk at your heels. And the people you go up against, they just seem to get worse and worse. You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Yes.’ And I did.
We were coming to the Delta terminal. Taxis crowded, and farewells were made. Now the time was for leaving, I wanted to stay. Walter pulled up to the curb, and placed a hand on my shoulder.
‘They’ll take you in the end, Charlie. Eventually there’ll be one who’s stronger than you, and faster, and more ruthless, or there’ll just be too many of them for even Angel and Louis to help you fight. Then you’ll die, Charlie: you’ll die, and you’ll leave your daughter with only the memory of a father. And the thing of it is, you just can’t do anything about it, can you? It’s like I can see it written already.’
In turn, I placed my hand on his left shoulder.
‘Can I tell you something?’ I said.
‘Sure.’
‘You may not want to hear it.’
‘It’s okay. Whatever it is, I’ll listen.’
‘You’re turning into a miserable old man.’
‘Get out of my city,’ he replied. ‘I hope they kill you slow . . .’
28
Grady Vetters opened his eyes and watched clouds scud across the moon. He had only intended to nap for thirty minutes, but somehow the day had slipped through his fingers. Not that it mattered: it wasn’t like he had a job driving an ambulance, or putting out fires. It wasn’t like he had any kind of job at all.
He sat up and lit a cigarette, and the paperback book that he had been reading fell to the floor. It was an old Tarzan novel with yellow page edges and a cover illustration that promised more than the book had so far delivered. He’d found it on the shelf in Teddy Gattle’s living room, along with a whole lot of other books that wouldn’t have chimed with the perceptions of those who didn’t know Teddy as well as Grady did. Teddy’s place was also a lot neater and cleaner than his yard might have led one to expect, and the bed in the spare room was comfortable enough. It had been good of Teddy to offer Grady a place to stay after Grady and his sister had argued. Grady wasn’t sure that, if the circumstances had been reversed, he would have done the same.
Grady’s head ached, although he had not been drinking. His head had been aching a lot lately. He put it down to stress, and the fact that he had already stayed too long in Falls End. The town had always had this effect on him, ever since he’d first returned after his initial semester at Maine College of Art in Portland. His mom had already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s by then, although at that stage it was manifesting itself only as a mild disengagement from the world around her, but he knew he had an obligation to return home and see her. There was even a faint nostalgia for Falls End, having been away from it for the first significant period in his life, but then he’d arrived back, and he’d fought with his dad, and he’d felt the town begin to oppress him with its insularity and lack of ambition, the sheer mediocrity of it like a weight upon his chest. Just as with the misleading cover of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, the cheerful ‘Welcome to Falls End – Gateway to the Great North Woods!’ sign at the entrance to the town was the best thing about the place. On his last day in Falls End before returning to MeCA, he and Teddy had vandalized the sign by adding the word ‘You’re’, as in ‘You’re Welcome to Falls End’. They thought it was funny, or at least Grady did. Teddy had seemed ambivalent about the act, but he went along with it because he wanted to please Grady. Later he told Grady that the sign had been restored to its original state the next day, and the finger of suspicion for defacing it had continued to point at Grady and, by extension, Teddy for many years after. Small towns had long memories.
Facing Grady’s bed was a shelf of pictures, medals and trophies, relics of Teddy’s time in middle and high school. Teddy had been a pretty good wrestler back then, and there had been talk of scholarships being offered by a couple of colleges further south, but Teddy didn’t want to leave Falls End. Truth was, Teddy didn’t even want to leave high school. He liked being part of a group, being surrounded by people who, regardless of differences in looks, or academic ability, or physical prowess, shared a common bond, which was the town of Falls End itself. For Teddy, school days really had been the happiest days of his life, and nothing since could compare with them. Grady stared at the photographs. He was in a lot of them alongside Teddy, but he was smiling in fifty percent of them at most. Teddy was smiling in every one.
Teddy Gattle, always orbiting around the sun that was Grady Vetters; or looked at another way, Teddy was Grady’s squat shadow. He was the reality that dogged Grady’s dreams.
Grady wondered if he should try calling Marielle again. He’d left one vaguely conciliatory message on her machine, but she hadn’t replied, and he figured that she was still pissed at him. He’d woken up dazed and hungover after the latest party at Darryl Shiff’s place, Darryl being the kind of guy who felt that a week was wasted if it included only one party at his house. The hangover was bad enough. Worse was the fact that he hadn’t woken up alone: there was a girl sleeping next to him, and Grady couldn’t remember who she was, or how she got there, or what they’d done together. The girl didn’t quite have ‘skank’ written all over her, but that was mostly because there wasn’t much room on her skin to fit it in, what with all of the other stuff that adorned it. There seemed to be a disturbing number of men’s names – Grady counted two Franks, and wondered if they commemorated the same guy or two different ones – and when he pulled down the sheet he saw a devil’s tail tattooed across the girl’s ass, a tail whose origins were lost somewhere between her slim buttocks. Just below the nape of her neck was a wreath of green leaves with berries bright and red. Holly: that was her name. She’d even cracked a joke about the tattoo, he now recalled, something about guys remembering her name from behind.
He suddenly wanted to shower.
He rose to take a leak, hoping that when he returned the girl might have disappeared, but when he emerged from the bathroom Marielle was standing at the bedroom door while a naked, overly tattooed woman asked her for a cigarette, and then followed up by inquiring if Marielle was ‘the wife’, which suggested she had her priorities all wrong when it came to the possibility that she had just slept with a married man. It was about then that the shouting started, with the result that Grady moved out later in the morning and turned up on Teddy’s doorstep carrying his battered suitcase in one hand, his easel in the other, and his paints and brushes stored wherever he could fit them. He had no idea where Holly had disappeared to once she got dressed, but she had seemed pretty mellow about the whole business. Maybe she’d add his name to her list of conquests: possibly in her armpit, or between her toes.
Grady finished the cigarette and stubbed it out on an ash
tray stolen from a bar in Bangor, back when bars still had their own ashtrays. He padded to the kitchen, found fresh bread on the table, and ham and cheese in the refrigerator. He made himself a sandwich and ate it standing up, along with a glass of milk. There was cold beer if he wanted it, but he’d fallen out of the habit of drinking beer in recent years, and the amount of it that he’d been putting through his system since he returned to Falls End was playing havoc with his digestion. He preferred wine, but Teddy only had one bottle, and that was the size of a mailbox and smelled like it had been made from a base of cheap perfume and dead flowers.
Once again Grady was feeling trapped in a way that reminded him of his youth, when all he lived for was to head south and leave his parents and his sister and every evolutionary dead-end cell of Falls End far behind. He’d wanted to go to art school in Boston or New York, but settled instead for Portland, where one of his aunts lived. She was his mother’s younger sister, regarded as dangerously bohemian by the rest of her family. She provided Grady with a room, and he got a summer job down at one of the tourist places on Commercial, serving up lobster rolls and fries, and beer in plastic glasses. He ate whatever the restaurant gave him, and apart from a few bucks a week to his aunt as a token gesture toward rent, and the occasional beer party in someone’s basement, he saved everything that he earned, and he was a good enough employee to be offered additional hours at another bar in town owned by the same guy, and so his first year at MeCA had passed comfortably.
MeCA had been the right choice for him, in the end. The college entrusted its students with a key to the premises so he could work any time that he liked, even sleeping there when he had projects due. He was marked as a student to watch right from the start, a young man with real potential. He’d even realized some of it. Perhaps he’d realized it all, and that was the problem. He was good, but he was never going to be great, and Grady Vetters had always wanted to be great, if only to prove to his family and the doubters up in Falls End how wrong they’d been about him. But the disparity between his desire and his ability, between his reach and his grasp, had quickly become apparent to him when he left the comforting embrace of MeCA and tried to make his way in the big, bad art world. That was when the trouble had started, and now having his picture on the wall of Lester’s looked likely to be the best independent testimony to his value as an artist that he was ever going to see.