"I know."
"You want to tell me what happened on the top floor?"
"I felt him waiting, Louis. I felt him waiting and I knew for sure that if I went in after him, I'd die. Despite evidence to the contrary, I don't have a death wish. I wasn't going to die at his hands, not there, not anywhere."
Louis remained at the door, considering what I had told him. "If you felt it, then that's the way it was," he said at last. "Sometimes, that's all the difference there is between living and dying. But if I see him again, I'm taking him down."
"Not if I see him first." I meant it, regardless of all that had taken place and the fear that I had felt.
His mouth twitched in one of his trademark semismiles.
"Bet you a dollar you don't."
"Fifty cents," I replied. "You've already earned half your fee."
"I guess I have," he said. "I guess I have."
Louis and Angel left early the next morning, Louis for the airport and Angel to scout around Billy Purdue's trailer to see if he could find anything that the cops might have missed. I was about to lock up the house when Ellis Howard's car bumped into my drive and then Ellis himself stepped heavily from the car. He took a look at my bag and gestured at it with a thumb.
"Going somewhere?"
"Yep."
"You mind telling me where?"
"Yep."
He slapped his hand gently on the hood of my Mustang, as if to transfer his frustration into the metal of the car. "Where were you yesterday evening?"
"On my way back from Greenville."
"What time'd you get back into town?"
"About seven. Should I call a lawyer?"
"You come straight home?"
"No, I parked up and met someone in Java Joe's. Like I said: should I call a lawyer?"
"Not unless you want to confess to something. I was going to tell you what happened out at the Portland Company complex last night, but maybe you already know, seeing as how your Mustang was down by the harbor last night."
So that was it. Ellis was fishing. He had nothing, and I wasn't about to break down and beg for mercy.
"I told you: I was meeting someone."
"This person still in town?"
"No."
"And you don't know anything about what happened at the complex last night?"
"I try to avoid the news. It affects my karma."
"If I thought it would help, your karma would be kicking its heels in a cell. We found four bodies in that complex, all of them associates of Tony Celli, plus two dead feds and a mystery caller."
"Mystery caller?" I asked, but I was thinking of something else. By my count, there should have been five bodies in the complex. One of Tony's men had survived and escaped, which meant there was a good chance that Tony Celli knew Louis and I had been in the building.
Ellis looked closely at me, trying to assess how much I knew. As he spoke, he waited for a reaction. He was disappointed.
"We found the Toronto cop, Eldritch, dead. Three bullets, two different guns. The one to the head was an execution shot."
"I'm waiting for the but."
"The but is that this guy wasn't Eldritch. His ID says he was, his prints and his face say he wasn't. Now I've got the Toronto PD howling at me to find their missing man, I've got a bunch of feds who are very interested in the John Doe who killed two of their agents, and I have four members of Boston's finest crew using up morgue space that the morgue can't afford to give them. The ME is considering relocating here permanently, seeing as how we're such good customers and all. Plus Tony Celli hasn't been seen since his night at the Regency."
"He stiff on the bill?"
"Don't, Bird. I'm not in the mood. Don't forget that Willeford is still missing and, until you came along, he knew as much about Billy Purdue as anyone."
I let it pass without comment. I didn't want to think of what I might have brought down on Willeford. Instead, I said: "Bangor turn up anything on Cheryl Lansing?"
"No, and we're no further on the killing of Rita Ferris and her son. Which brings me to my second reason for calling. You want to tell me again what you were doing in Bangor? And then Greenville?"
"Like I told Bangor, Billy Purdue hired someone to trace his parents. I thought that maybe he might try to follow that trail now that he's in trouble."
"And is he following that trail?"
"Someone is."
Ellis moved toward me, his bulk menacing, his eyes more so. "You tell me where you're going, Bird, or I swear to God I'll arrest you here and now and let ballistics take a look at that gun of yours."
I knew that Ellis wasn't kidding. Even though the silenced guns now lay at the bottom of Casco Bay beside Mifflin, I couldn't afford to delay the search for Ellen Cole. "I'm heading north to a place called Dark Hollow. The daughter of a friend of mine has gone missing. I'm going to try to find her. Her mother was the person I met at Java Joe's last night."
Some of the anger went out of his face. "Is it a coincidence that Dark Hollow is Billy Purdue's country?"
"I don't believe in coincidences."
He patted the hood one more time, and seemed to reach a decision. "Neither do I. You stay in touch now, Bird, y'hear?"
He turned and walked back to his car.
"Is that it?" I said. I was surprised to see him let it go so easily.
"No, I guess it isn't, but I don't see what more I can do." He stood at the open door of the car, and watched me. "Frankly, Bird, I'm balancing the benefits of hauling you in and grilling you, assuming you'd tell us anything, against the benefits of having you wandering around and looking under rocks. So far, the scales are tipping in favor of the second option, but only just. You remember that."
I waited a heartbeat.
"Does this mean you've decided against recruiting me, Ellis?"
He didn't reply. Instead, he shook his head and drove away, leaving me to think about Tony Celli and Stritch and an old man in a harbor bar, drinking beers and waiting for the new world to sweep him away.
I had told Ellis some of the truth, but not all. I was going to Dark Hollow, and would be there by nightfall, but first Louis and I would pay a visit to Boston. There was a slight possibility that Tony Celli might have taken Ellen Cole, perhaps in the hope of using her as leverage if I found Billy Purdue before he did. Even if that was not the case, there were some things to be clarified before we went up against Celli again. Unlike the members of his crew, Tony was a made guy. It was important that everybody understood the potential repercussions if we were forced to confront him.
Before I left to meet Louis at the airport, I stopped off at the Kraft Mini-Storage at Gorham. There, in three adjoining units, was what I had retained of my grandfather's possessions: some furniture; a small library of books; some silver plates; a brass screen for a fireplace; and a series of boxes filled with old paperwork and files. It took me fifteen minutes to locate what I was looking for and take it back to the car: a manila expanding file, held closed by a piece of red ribbon. On the index tab, written in my grandfather's ornate script, were the words Caleb Kyle.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Al Z operated out of an office above a comic book store on Newbury Street. It was an odd location, but it suited him to be in a place where tourists browsed among chichi clothes stores, sipped exotic teas or browsed in galleries. It was busy, there were too many people around for anyone to cause trouble, and he could send out for flavored coffees or scented candles anytime he wanted.
Louis and I sat outside a Ben & Jerry's ice cream parlor across from Al Z's brownstone office, eating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and drinking large coffees. We were the only people sitting outside, mainly because it was so cold that my ice cream hadn't even begun to melt yet.
"You think he's noticed us?" I asked, as my fingers gave up their efforts to hold the spoon without shaking.
Louis sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "Tall, handsome black male and his white boy sittin' outside eatin' ice cream in the fuckin' winter? I think someone must have noticed us by now."