"The Killing Kind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Connolly John)

7

I LEFT MY GUN BENEATH THE SPARE TIRE in the trunk of the Mustang before walking to the granite masonry bulk of the Edward T. Gignoux Courthouse at Newbury and Market. I passed through the metal detector, then climbed the marble stairs to courtroom 1, taking a seat in one of the chairs at the back of the court.

The last of the five rows of benches was filled with what, in less enlightened times, might have been referred to as the cast of a freak show. There were five or six people of extremely diminished stature, two or three obese women, and a quartet of very elderly females dressed like hookers. Beside them was a huge, muscular man with a bald head who must have been six-five and weighed in at three hundred pounds. All of them seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to what was going on at the front of the courtroom.

The court was already in session and a man I took to be Arthur Franklin was arguing some point of law with the judge. His client, it appeared, was wanted in California for a range of offenses, including copyright theft, animal cruelty, and tax evasion, and was about as likely to avoid a jail term as mayflies were to see Christmas. He was released on $50,000 bail and was scheduled to appear later that month before the same judge, when a final decision would be made on his extradition. Then everybody stood and the judge departed through a door behind his brown leather chair.

I walked up the center aisle, the muscular man close behind me, and introduced myself to Franklin. He was in his early forties, dressed in a blue suit, under which he was sweating slightly. His hair was startlingly black and the eyes beneath his bushy brows had the panic-stricken look of a deer faced with the lights of an approaching truck.

Meanwhile Harvey Ragle, who was seated beside Franklin, wasn't what I had expected. He was about forty and wore a neatly pressed tan suit, a clean, white, open-necked shirt, and oxblood loafers. His hair was brown and curly, cut close to his skull, and the only jewelry he wore was a gold Raymond Weil watch with a brown leather strap. He was freshly shaven and had splashed on Armani aftershave like it was being given away free. He rose from his seat and extended a well-manicured hand.

“Harvey Ragle,” he said. “CEO, Crushem Productions.” He smiled warmly, revealing startlingly white teeth.

“A pleasure, I'm sure,” I replied. “I'm sorry, I can't shake hands. I seem to have picked up something unpleasant.”

I lifted my blistered fingers and Ragle blanched. For a man who made his living by squashing small creatures, he was a surprisingly sensitive soul. I followed them both out of the courtroom, pausing briefly while the old ladies, the obese women, and the little people took turns hugging him and wishing him well, before we crossed into attorney conference room 223 beside courtroom 2. The huge man, whose name was Mikey, waited outside, his hands crossed before him.

“Protection,” explained Franklin as he closed the door behind us. We sat down at the conference table and it was Ragle who spoke first.

“You've seen my work, Mr. Parker?” he said.

“The crush video, Mr. Ragle? Yes, I've seen it.”

Ragle recoiled a little, like I'd just breathed garlic on him.

“I don't like that term. I make erotic films, of every kind, and I am a father to my actors. Those people in court today are stars, Mr. Parker, stars.”

“The midgets?” I asked.

Ragle smiled wistfully. “They're little people, but they have a lot of love to give.”

“And the old ladies?”

“Very energetic. Their appetites have increased rather than diminished with age.”

Good grief.

“And now you make films like the one your attorney sent me?”

“Yes.”

“In which people step on bugs.”

“Yes.”

“And mice.”

“Yes.”

“Do you enjoy your work, Mr. Ragle?”

“Very much,” he said. “I take it that you disapprove.”

“Call me a prude, but it seems kind of sick, besides being cruel and illegal.”

Ragle leaned forward and tapped me on the knee with his index finger. I resisted breaking it, but only just.

“But people kill insects and rodents every day, Mr. Parker,” he began. “Some of them may even derive a great deal of pleasure from doing so. Unfortunately, as soon as they admit to that pleasure and attempt to replicate it in some form, our absurdly censorious law enforcement agencies step in and penalize them. Don't forget, Mr. Parker, we put Reich in jail to die for selling his sex boxes from Rangeley, in this very state. We have a record of penalizing those who seek sexual gratification by unorthodox means.”

He sat back and smiled his bright smile.

I smiled back at him. “I believe it's not only the state of California that has strong feelings about the legitimacy of what you do.”

Ragle's veneer began to crumble and he seemed to grow pale beneath his tan.

“Er, yes,” he said. He coughed, then reached for a glass of water that was resting on the table before him. “One gentleman in particular seems to have serious objections to some of my more, um, specialized productions.”

“Who might that be?”

“He calls himself Mr. Pudd,” interjected Franklin.

I tried to keep my expression neutral.

“He didn't like the spider movies,” he added.

I could guess why.

Ragle's façade finally shattered completely, as if the mention of Pudd's name had finally brought home the reality of the threat he was facing. “He wants to kill me,” he whined. “I don't want to die for my art.”

So Al Z knew something about the Fellowship, and Pudd, and had seen fit to point me in Ragle's direction. It seemed that I had another good reason for going to Boston besides Rachel and the elusive Ali Wynn.

“How did he find out about you?”

Ragle shook his head angrily. “I have a new supplier, a man who provides me with rodents and insects and, when necessary, arachnids. It's my belief that he told this individual, this Mr. Pudd, about me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To divert attention away from himself. I think Mr. Pudd would be just as angry with whoever sold me the creatures as he is with me.”

“So your supplier gave Pudd your name, then claimed not to know what you were planning to do with the bugs?”

“That is correct, yes.”

“What's the supplier's name?”

“Bargus. Lester Bargus. He owns a store in Gorham, specializing in exotic insects and reptiles.”

I stopped taking notes.

“You know the name, Mr. Parker?” asked Franklin.

I nodded. Lester Bargus was what people liked to call “two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.” He was the kind of guy who thought it was patriotic to be stupid and took his mother to Denny's to celebrate Hitler's birthday. I recalled him from my time in Scarborough High, when I used to stand at the fence that marked the boundary of the football field, the big Redskins logo dominating the board, and get ready to face a beating. Those early months were the hardest. I was only fourteen and my father had been dead for two months. The rumors had followed us north: that my father had been a policeman in New York; that he had killed two people, a boy and a girl-shot them down dead, and they weren't even armed; that he had subsequently put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They were made worse by the fact that they were true; there was no way of avoiding what my father had done, just as there was no way of explaining it. He had killed them, that was all. I don't know what he saw when he pulled the trigger on them. They were taunting him, trying to make him lose his temper with them, but they couldn't have known what they would cause him to do. Afterward my mother and I had run north, back to Scarborough, back to her father, who had once been a policeman himself, and the rumors had snapped at our heels like black dogs.

It took me a while to learn how to defend myself, but I did. My grandfather showed me how to block a punch and how to throw one back in a single controlled movement that would draw blood every time. But when I think back on those first months, I think of that fence, and a circle of young men closing in on me, and Lester Bargus with his freckles and his brown, square-cut hair, sucking spit back into his mouth after he had begun to drool with the joy of striking out at another human being from the security of the pack. Had he been a coyote, Lester Bargus would have been the runt that hangs at the margins of the group, lying down on its back when the stronger ones turned on it yet always ready to fall on the weak and the wounded when the frenzy struck. He tortured and bullied and came close to rape in his senior year. He didn't even bother to take his SATs; a new scale would have been needed to assess the depths of Bargus's ignorance.

I had heard that Bargus now ran a bug store in Gorham but it was believed to be merely a front for his other interest, which was the illegal sale of weapons. If you needed a clean gun quickly, then Lester Bargus was your man, particularly if your political and social views were so right wing they made the Klan look like the ACLU.

“Are there a lot of stores that supply bugs, Mr. Ragle?”

“Not in this state, no, but Bargus is also regarded as a considerable authority nationally. Collectors consult with him on a regular basis.” Ragle shuddered. “Although not, I should add, in person. Mr. Bargus is a particularly unpleasant individual.”

“And you're telling me all this because…?”

Franklin intervened. “Because my client is certain that Mr. Pudd will kill him if someone doesn't stop him first. The gentleman in Boston, who has acted as a conduit for some of my client's more mainstream products, believes that a case with which you are currently involved may impinge upon my client's interests. He suggested that any assistance we might be able to provide could only help our cause.”

“And all you have is Lester Bargus?”

Franklin shrugged unhappily.

“Has Pudd tried to contact you?”

“In a way. My client had been sequestered in a safe house in Standish. The house burned down; somebody threw an incendiary device through the bedroom window. Fortunately, Mr. Ragle was able to escape without injury. It was after that incident that we took Mikey on as security.”

I closed my notebook and stood up to leave. “I can't promise anything,” I said.

Ragle leaned toward me and gripped my arm. “If you find this man, Mr. Parker, squash him,” he hissed. “Squash him like a bug.”

I gently removed my arm from his grasp. “I don't think stiletto heels come that big, Mr. Ragle, but I'll bear it in mind.”

I drove over to Gorham that afternoon. It was only a couple of miles but it was still a wasted trip, as I knew it would be. Bargus was aging badly, his hair and teeth almost gone and his fingers stained yellow with nicotine. He wore a No New World Order T-shirt, depicting a blue United Nations helmet caught in the crosshairs of a sniper's sight. In his dimly lit store, spiders crouched in dirt-filled cases, snakes curled around branches, and the hard exoskeletons of cockroaches clicked as they crawled against one another. On the counter beside him a four-inch-long mantid squatted in a glass case, its spiked front legs raised before it. Bargus fed it a cricket, which skipped across the dirt at the bottom of the case as it tried vainly to evade destruction. The mantid turned its head to watch it, seemingly amused by its presumption, then set off in pursuit.

It took Bargus a few moments to recognize me as I approached the counter.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look what just rose to the lip of the bowl.”

“You're looking well, Lester,” I answered. “How do you stay so young and pretty?”

He scowled at me and picked at something jammed between two of his remaining teeth. “You a fag, Parker? I always thought you was queer.”

“Now, Lester, don't think I'm not flattered, but you're not really my type.”

“Huh.” He didn't sound convinced. “You here to buy something?”

“I'm looking for some information.”

“Out the door, turn right, and keep going till you hit the asshole of hell. Tell 'em I sent you.”

He went back to reading a book, which, judging from the illustrations, appeared to be a guide to making a mortar out of beer cans.

“That's no way to talk to an old high school buddy.”

“You ain't my buddy, and I don't like you being in my store,” he said without looking up from his book.

“Can I ask why?”

“People have a habit of dying around you.”

“You look hard enough, people have a habit of dying around everybody.”

“Maybe, 'cept around you they die a whole lot quicker and a whole lot more regular.”

“Then the sooner I leave, the safer you'll be.”

“I ain't holdin' you.”

I tapped lightly at the glass of the mantid case, directly in the insect's line of vision, and the triangular head drew back as it flinched. A mantid is the most humanlike of insects; it has its eyes arranged so that it can see forward, allowing it depth perception. It can see a certain amount of color, and it can turn its head to look over its “shoulder.” Also, like humans, it will eat just about anything it can subdue, from a hornet to a mouse. As I moved my finger, the mantid's head carefully followed the motion while its jaws chomped at the cricket. The top half of the cricket's body was already gone.

“Quit botherin' it,” said Bargus.

“That's quite a predator.”

“That bitch would eat you, she thought you'd stay still long enough.” He grinned, revealing his rotting teeth.

“I hear they can take a black widow.”

The beer can mortar book now lay forgotten before him. “I seen her do it.” Bargus nodded.

“Maybe she's not so bad after all.”

“You don't like spiders, you just walked into the wrong store.”

I shrugged. “I don't like them as much as some. I don't like them as much as Mr. Pudd.”

Lester's eyes suddenly returned to the page before him, but his attention remained focused on me.

“Never heard of him.”

“Ah, but he's heard of you.”

Lester looked up at me and swallowed. “The fuck you saying?”

“You gave him Harvey Ragle. You think that's going to be enough?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” In the warm, dank-smelling store, Lester Bargus began to sweat.

“My guess is that he'll take care of Ragle, then come back for you.”

“Get out of my store,” hissed Lester. He tried to make it sound menacing, but the tremor in his voice gave him away.

“Are spiders the only things you sold him, Lester? Maybe you helped him with some of his other needs, too. Is he a gun-lovin' man?”

His hands scrambled beneath the counter and I knew he was reaching for a weapon. I tossed my card on the counter and watched as he grabbed it with his left hand, crushed it in his palm, and threw it into the trash can. His right hand came up holding a shotgun sawed off at the stock. I didn't move.

“I've seen him, Lester,” I said. “He's a scary guy.”

Lester's thumb cocked the shotgun. “Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about.”

I sighed and backed away. “Your call, Lester, but I get the feeling that sooner or later, it's going to come back to haunt you.”

I turned my back on him and headed for the door. I had already opened it when he called my name.

“I don't want no trouble. Not from you, not from him, you understand?” he said.

I waited in silence. The struggle between his fear of saying nothing and the consequences of giving too much away was clear on his face.

“I never had no address for him,” he continued, hesitantly. “He'd contact me when he needed something, then pick it up his-self and pay in cash. Last time he came he was asking about Ragle, and I told him what I knew. You see him again, you tell him he's got no call to come bothering me.”

Confessing seemed to have restored some of his confidence, because his habitual ugly sneer returned. “And, I was you, I'd find me another line of work. The kind of fella you're asking about don't like being asked about, you get my meaning. The kind of fella you're asking about, he kills people get involved in his business.”

That evening I felt no desire to be in the house or to cook for myself. I secured all of the windows, placed a chain on the back door, and put a broken matchstick above the front door. If anyone tried to gain entry, I would know.

I drove into Portland and parked at the junction of Cotton and Forest in the Old Port, then walked down to Sapporo on Commercial Street, the sound of the sea in my ears. I ate some good teriyaki, sipped green tea, and tried to get my thoughts straight. My reasons for going to Boston were rapidly multiplying: Rachel, Ali Wynn, and now Al Z. But I still hadn't managed to corner Carter Paragon, I was still concerned about Marcy Becker, and I was sweating under my jacket since I couldn't take it off without exposing my gun.

I paid the check and left the restaurant. Across Commercial, crowds of kids lined up to get into Three Dollar Dewey's, the doorman checking IDs with the skepticism of a seasoned pro. The Old Port was buzzing, and noisy crowds congregated at the corner of Forest and Union, the edge of the main drag. I walked among them for a while, not wanting to be alone, not wanting to return to the house in Scarborough. I passed the Calabash Cigar Café and Gritty McDuff's, glancing down the pedestrian strip of Moulton Street as I passed.

The woman in the shadows was wearing only a pale summer dress patterned with pink flowers. Her back was to me, and her blond hair hung in a ponytail against the whiteness of her back, held in place by an aquamarine bow. Around me, traffic stopped and footsteps hung suspended, passersby frozen briefly in their lives. The only sound I heard was my own breath; the only movement I saw came from Moulton.

Beside the woman stood a small boy, and the woman's left hand was clasped gently over his right. He wore the same check shirt and short pants as he had on the day when I had first seen him on Exchange Street. As I watched, the woman leaned over and whispered something to him. He nodded and his head turned as he looked back at me, the single clear lens gleaming in the darkness. Then the woman straightened, released his hand, and began to walk away from us, turning right at the corner onto Wharf Street. When she left my sight it was as if the world around me released its breath, and movement resumed. I sprinted down Moulton, past the shape of the little boy. When I reached the corner the woman was just passing Dana Street, the street lamps creating pools of illumination through which she moved soundlessly.

“Susan.”

I heard myself call her name, and for a moment it seemed to me that she paused as if to listen. Then she passed from light into shade and was gone.

The boy was now sitting at the corner of Moulton, staring at the cobblestones. As I approached him he looked up, and his left eye peered curiously at me from behind his black-rimmed glasses. Dark tape had been wrapped inexpertly around the lens, obscuring the right eye. He was probably no more than eight years old, with light brown hair parted at one side and flicked loosely across his forehead. His pants were almost stiff with mud in places and his shirt was filthy. Most of it was obscured by the block of wood-maybe eighteen inches by five inches, and an inch thick-that hung from the rope around his neck. Something had been hacked into the wood in jagged, childish letters, probably with a nail, but the grooves were filled with dirt in places, conspiring with the darkness to make it almost impossible to read.

I squatted down in front of him. “Hi,” I said.

He didn't seem scared. He didn't look hungry or ill. He was just… there.

“Hi,” he replied.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“James,” he said.

“Are you lost, James?”

He shook his head.

“Then what are you doing out here?”

“Waiting,” he said simply.

“Waiting for what?”

He didn't reply. I got the feeling that I was supposed to know, and that he was a little surprised I didn't.

“Who was the lady you were with, James?” I asked.

“The Summer Lady,” he answered.

“Does she have a name?”

He waited for a moment or two before replying. When he did, all the breath seemed to leave my body and I felt light-headed, and afraid.

“She said you'd know her name.” Again he seemed puzzled, almost disappointed.

My eyes closed for an instant and I rocked back on my heels. I felt his hand on my wrist, steadying me, and the hand was cold. When I opened my eyes, he was leaning close to me. There was dirt caught between his teeth.

“What happened to your eye, James?” I asked.

“I don't remember,” he said.

I reached toward him and he released his grip on my wrist as I rubbed at the dirt and filth encrusted on the board. It fell to the ground in little clumps, revealing the words:

JAMES JESSOP

SINNER

“Who made you wear this, James?”

A small tear trickled from his left eye, then a second. “I was bad,” he whispered. “We were all bad.”

But the tears fell only from one eye, and only the dirt on his left cheek was streaked with moisture. My hands were trembling as I reached for his glasses. I took the frames gently in each hand and slowly removed them. He didn't try to stop me, his single visible eye regarding me with absolute trust.

And when I took the glasses away, a hole was revealed where his right eye had been, the flesh torn and burned and the wound dry as if it were an old, old injury that had long since stopped bleeding, or even hurting.

“I've been waiting for you,” said James Jessop. “We've all been waiting for you.”

I rose and backed away from him, the glasses dropping to the ground as I turned.

And I saw them all.

They stood watching me, men and women, young boys and girls, all with wooden boards around their necks. There were a dozen at least, maybe more. They stood in the shadows of Wharf Street and at the entrance to Commercial, wearing simple clothes, clothes designed to be worn on the land: pants that wouldn't tear at the first misstep in the dirt, and boots that would not let in the rain or be pierced by a stone.

KATHERINE CORNISH

SINNER

VYRNA KELLOG

SINNER

FRANK JESSOP

SINNER

BILLY PERRSON

SINNER

The others were farther back, their names on the boards harder to read. Some of them had wounds to their heads. Vyrna Kellog's skull had been split open, and the open wound extended almost to the bridge of her nose; Billy Perrson had been shot through the forehead; a flap of Katherine Cornish's skin hung forward from the back of her head, obscuring her left ear. They stood and regarded me, and the air around them seemed to crackle with a hidden energy.

I swallowed, but my throat was dry and the effort made it ache.

“Who are you?” I asked, but even as they faded away, I knew.

I stumbled backward, the bricks behind me cold against my body, and I saw tall trees and men wading through mud and bone. Water lapped against a sandbag levee, and animals howled. And as I stood there trembling, I closed my eyes tight and heard my own voice start to pray.

Please Lord, it said.

Please don't let this begin again.