Durand pulled at his lip. “No, I guess not. So, is this the beginning, or the end?”
“The beginning.”
“You got a long road ahead of you, then.”
“I think so.”
I heard the front door open. A small, slightly overweight woman with permed silver hair stepped into the hallway.
“It’s me,” she said. She didn’t look toward the kitchen. Instead, she first removed her coat, gloves, and scarf, and checked her hair and face in the mirror on the coatrack. “Smells fine,” she said. She turned to the kitchen and saw me.
“Goodness!”
“We got company, Elizabeth,” said Durand, and I stood as his wife entered the room.
“This is Mr. Parker,” said Durand. “He used to live here, when he was a boy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Durand,” I said.
“Well, you’re-”
She paused as she made the connection, and I watched the emotions play upon her face. Eventually, her features settled into what Iu c‘ into wha suspected was their default mode: kindness, tinged with just the hint of sadness that comes with a lifetime of experience, and the knowledge that it was all coming to an end.
“You’re welcome,” she settled upon. “Sit, sit. You’ll stay for dinner?”
“No, I can’t. I have to get going. I’ve taken up too much of your husband’s time as it is.”
Despite her inherent decency and good nature, I could see that she was relieved.
“If you’re sure.”
“I am. Thank you.”
I stayed on my feet to put on my coat, and Durand showed me to the door.
“I ought to tell you,” he said, “that when I first saw you, I thought you were someone else, and I don’t mean one of the Harrington boys. Just for a second, mind.”
“Who did you think I was?”
“There was a man came here, couple of months back. It was evening, darker than it is now. He did what you did: stared at the house for a time, even went as far as to come onto the lawn so he could take a look at the back of the house, out where the garage used to be. I didn’t like it. I ventured out to ask him what he thought he was doing. Haven’t seen him since.”
“You think he was casing the house for a robbery?”
“At first, except that when I challenged him, that’s not what he said. Not that a burglar would tell you he was casing a place, not unless he was dumb as dirt.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Hunting.’ That’s what he said. Just that one word: ‘Hunting.’ Now, what do you think that means?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Durand,” I said, and his eyes narrowed as he wondered if he was being lied to.
“Then he asked me if I knew what had happened here, and I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he said that he thought I did. I didn’t care for his tone, and told him to be on his way.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
“Not so well. He was wearing a wool hat, pulled down over his hair, and he had a scarf around his neck and chin. It was a cold night, but not that cold. Younger than you. Late twenties, maybe older. A little taller too. I’m nearsighted, and I didn’t have my spectacles. Keep leaving them places. I should buy a chain.” He realized that he was drifting from the subject at hand, and returned to it. “Apart from that, I don’t recall much about him, except-”
“What?”
“I was glad to see him leave, that’s all. He made me uneasy, and not just because he was on my lawn, snooping around on my property. There was a thing about him.” Durand shook his head. “I can’t explain it right. I could say to you that he wasn’t from around here, and that would be as close as I could get. He wasn’t from anywhere like here, anywhere at all.”
He looked out over the town, taking in the carsuo;‘ in the c moving on the streets, the lights of the bars and stores near the train station, the dim shapes of people heading home to their families. It was normality, and the man who had stood on his lawn did not belong in it.
Night had now come. The streetlights caught the patches of frozen snow, making them shine in the gloom. Durand shivered.
“You be careful, Mr. Parker,” he said. We shook hands. He stayed on the step until I reached the sidewalk, then he waved once and closed the door. I looked up at the window with the broken pane, but there was nobody there. That room was empty. Whatever remained there had no form; the ghost of the boy was inside me, where he had always been.
CHAPTER FOUR
I MET ANGEL AND Louis for dinner that night at the Wildwood BBQ on Park Avenue South, not far from Union Square. It was tough to make the call between Wildwood and Blue Smoke up on Twenty-seventh, but novelty won out; novelty, and, for Louis, the prospect of beans that had pieces of steak added to them. When it came to rib joints, Louis liked extra meat with everything, probably including the Jell-O. If he was going to die of a coronary, he was going to do it in style.
These two men, both of whom had killed, yet only one of whom, Louis, could truly be called a natural killer, were now my closest friends. I hadn’t seen them since late the previous year, when they had managed to get themselves into some trouble in upstate New York and I’d followed their tracks to see if I could help. It hadn’t ended well, and we’d kept some distance from one another since then; not due to any ill will, but because Louis was concerned about the possible fallout from what had occurred, and didn’t want to see me contaminated by association. Now, though, he appeared content, or as content as Louis ever seemed to be, figuring that the worst was over. In truth, it was hard to tell. After all, it wasn’t that when Louis laughed, the world laughed with him. Instead, when Louis laughed, the world tended to look around to see who had fallen over and impaled himself on a spike.
It was always an entertaining spectacle, seeing Angel and Louis eat ribs, in part because some kind of role reversal seemed to occur. Louis-tall, black, and dressed like a showroom dummy that has suddenly decided to take flight and seek better accommodations elsewhere-ate ribs in the manner of a man who fears that his plate could be whisked away at any second, and he should therefore consume as much as possible as quickly as possible. Angel, on the other hand, who was small and white (or, as he liked to put it, “whiteish”), and who not only always looked like he’d slept in his clothes but looked like other people might have slept in them too, nibbled his food in an almost delicate manner, the way a small bird might if it could hold a short rib in its claws. They were drinking ale. I was sipping a glass of red wine.