“He whispered it to me, Jimmy.” The tears were being held back, but only barely. “It was one of the last things he said to me. He said it was them.”
“He was frightened, Elaine, frightened for you and the boy.”
“But he killed them, Jimmy. He killed them, and they weren’t even armed.”
“I don’t know why-”
“I know why: he wanted to stop them. He knew that they would come back in the end. They wouldn’t need guns. They’d use their bare hands if they had to. Maybe-”
“What?”
“Maybe they’d even have preferred it that way,” she concluded.
Now she began to cry. I heard Jimmy stand, and I knew that he was putting his arms around her, consoling her.
“We’ll never know for sure. This I do know: he loved you. He loved you both, and he was sorry for all that he did to hurt you. I think he spent those years trying to make it up to you, but he never could. It wasn’t your fault. He couldn’t forgive himself, that’s all. He just couldn’t do it…”
My mother’s sobbing increased in intensity, and I turned away and went as quietly as I could to my room, where I watched the moon from my window and stared out at Franklin Avenue, and the paths that my father would never walk again.
The server came to take away our plates. He seemed impressed with Angel and Louis’s demolition of their food, and commensurately disappointed in me. We ordered coffee, and watched the place begin to empty.
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Angel.
“No. I think this one is mine.”
He must have spotted something playing on my mind, its movements replicated on my face.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
“The old man, Durand, he said that a young man-late twenties, according to him, maybe a little older-had come to his place a couple of months ago. He was snooping around. Durand called him on it, and the guy said he was ‘hunting.’”
“In Pearl River?” said Angel. “What was he hunting: leprechauns?”
Louis spoke. “Might be nothing to do with you.”
“Might not,” I agreed. “But he asked if Durand knew what had happened there.”
“Thrill seeker. Murder tourist. You’ve had them before.”
“Durand said that the guy made him uneasy, that’s all. He couldn’t put his finger on why.”
“Not much you can do, then, unless he shows up again.”
“Yeah, a late twenty-something guy in New York who makes people uneasy. Shouldn’t be hard to spot. Hell, that description even covers half of the Mets’ starting lineup.”
We paid the tab, then headed out into the night.
“You call us, anytime,” said Angel. “We’re around.”
They hailed a cab, and I watched them head uptown. When they were gone from sight, I went back into the restaurant and sat at the bar, sipping another glass of wine. I thought about the hunter and wondered if it was me he was hunting.
And part of me willed him to come.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE GREAT LOST BEAR was a Portland institution. It occupied a space on Forrest Avenue, away from the main tourist drag of the Old Port, that had once housed a bar called Bottom’s Up. Semibig bands used to play there, groups that were either on their way up, or on their way down, or had just reached a plateau where all that mattered was a paying gig in front of a decent-size crowd, preferably one that wasn’t about to start hurling bottles when they departed from the hits to play a new song.
The stage lighting was still in place in the restaurant area, which always gave the impression that either the diners were only a prelude to the main act, or they were the main act. Half of the building also used to be a bakery, and at 11:30 P.M., as the bar was serving last rounds, the place would fill with the smell of baking bread, driving the customers into paroxysms of the munchies just after the kitchens had closed.
When the bar changed hands in 1979, it became known as the Grizzly Bear, until a pizza chain on the West Coast objected and the name was changed to the Great Lost Bear, which was more evocative anyway. The Bear’s main claim to fame, apart from its general conviviality and the fact that it served food until late, was its beer selection: fifty-six draft beers at any one time, sometimes even sixty. Despite its location in a quiet part of the city not far from the University of Southern Maine ’s campus, it had built up a considerable reputation over the years, and now the summer, which used to be slow, was its busiest time.
As well as locals, the Bear attracted the beer aficionados, most of whom were men, and men of a certain age. They didn’t cause trouble, they didn’t overindulge, and mostly they were content to talk about hops and casks and obscure microbreweries of which even some of the bartenders had never heard. In fact, the more obscure they were, the better, for there was a kind of competitiveness among a certain group of drinkers at the Bear. Occasionally, the sight of a woman might distract them from the task at hand for a time, but there would be other women. There wouldn’t always be a guy sitting next to them who had tried every microbrew in Portland, Oregon, but knew squat about Portland, Maine.
I had been working as the bar manager in the Bear for a little over four months. I wasn’t hurting for money, not yet, but it made sense to find some kind of work while Aimee Price fought my case. I had a daughter to support, even if her mother wasn’t pressing me for payments. I sometimes wondered if Rachel might have preferred it if I wasn’t part of Sam’s life at all, although she had never uttered anything that might have led me to that conclusion. I was allowed to visit Sam over in Vermont any time that I chose, as long as I gave Rachel some notice. Even then, I had sometimes felt the urge to see Sam (and, truth be told, Rachel, for there was unfinished business between us) and had traveled to Burlington on a whim. Apart from the occasional disapproving look from Rachel’s father, for she and Sam lived in the adjoining cottage on her parents’ property, such unscheduled visits had so far caused no friction between us.
Rachel and I had slept together a couple of times since the separation, but neither of us had raised the possibility of a reconciliation. I didn’t think that one was possible, not now, but it didn’t prevent me from loving her. Still, it was a situation that couldn’t last. We were drifting further and further apart. It was over, but neither of us had spoken the words yet.