“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.