No, the thing that worried him most was the possibility of letting Angel and Louis down, or the Detective. He didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to do the right thing. He prayed for the courage to step up to the plate if the call came.
Willie reckoned it was six, maybe six and a half hours from Queens to where he was due to meet the Detective. At least it was highway most of the way, so he maintained a steady eighty for most of the journey, and it wasn’t until he turned off 87 that the landscape and the road began to change in earnest and he was forced to slow down. Not that he could see any of it, but he didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the change in atmosphere from the interstate to the county roads. The highway kept nature at bay: it was six lanes of fast-moving traffic, and Willie had only a limited degree of sympathy for any of the roadkill that he passed along the way. But when he left the interstate for the smaller roads, his mood and perspective changed. Here, nature was much closer. The trees crowded in upon him, and the only light that he had to guide him came from his own headlights and the warning reflectors occasionally embedded in the tarmac. It rained for a time, and the drops looked like starbursts exploding in his high beams. Something flew across his line of sight, so big and close that he was certain for an instant that it was going to crash through his windshield. At first, he thought it was a bat, until he realized that bats didn’t grow that large, not outside of B movies, and that it was in fact an owl on the hunt for prey. He felt strangely elated by the sight: the only owls he had ever seen before were on TV, or in the zoo. Even then, he could not have guessed how big and heavy they appeared to be when in flight. He was relieved that he hadn’t hit it at speed: the bird would have taken his head off.
Willie was a creature of the city, and of New York in particular. It wasn’t that he considered green fields merely to be suburbs waiting to happen. He wasn’t entirely without sensitive feelings. No, it was just that New York wasn’t like other states: it was a place defined by its largest city in a way that nowhere else in the country was. When you mentioned New York to most people, either American or foreign, they didn’t think of the Adirondacks, or the Saint Lawrence, or of forests and trees and waterfalls. They thought of a city, of skyscrapers and yellow cabs and concrete and glass. That, too, was Willie’s New York. He could not equate it with its rural obverse.
He realized that Angel and Louis had probably come this way. He was shadowing them, driving in their tracks. The thought seemed to renew his sense of purpose. He checked his mileage and calculated that he had only an hour or so to go before he reached the place where he was supposed to meet the Detective. He felt his stomach tighten again. The gun was heavy in his pocket.
He drove on.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JUST AS ANGEL AND Louis had hours before, Willie emerged from small towns and forests into a cluster of motels and casinos close to the Canadian border.
He’d only been this far upstate once before, and that was farther west, over at Niagara. He and his ex-wife had gone there for their honeymoon. In January. He must have been crazy but, then again, he had been in love, and neither of them was exactly a summer person. He’d had enough of heat and sweat in Vietnam, and she had simply wanted to see the falls. She told him they would be even more spectacular in winter, surrounded by ice and snow. He supposed they had been pretty impressive, although the chill that had entered his bones should have served as a warning for what was to come later in their married life. All things considered, he ought to have stuck her in a barrel right there and then and pushed her over the edge.
He spotted the Detective’s Mustang parked outside the Bear’s Den, a big truck stop and diner about ten miles from Massena, and experienced a sense of pride at the sight of the vehicle. He had sourced that car for the Detective, beating the dealer down on price until he thought the guy was going to start weeping on the lot. Willie had then brought the Mustang back to the shop and taken it to pieces, checking every moving part, substituting those that were worn or threatened to give up the ghost in a year or two. Seeing it here, far to the north, he felt the way a school principal might feel upon encountering a former student who had done particularly well for himself. He half expected the car to beep softly in recognition as he approached. After he had parked, he walked around the Mustang twice, giving both the interior and exterior a brief examination. When he was done, he sighed contentedly. There were one or two little nicks to the paintwork, and the treads on the right front tire were wearing thin, but otherwise she seemed to be in good condition. Still, he wanted to take a lengthy look under the hood soon. He was sure there were halfway-decent mechanics up in Maine, but they couldn’t love his babies the way that he did. He patted the hood affectionately and entered the diner, passing some tattered stuffed bears in a glass case beside the main door, their fur rubbed bare in places. They made him depressed, and he quickened his step to put them from his sight.
It was shortly after 6:00 A.M., and the sky was only just beginning to lighten. The rain had stopped falling for a while, but the sky was gray and brooding, and Willie knew that there would be more to come. The Bear’s Den was a big place, and it was already half filled with people eating breakfast in the booths. They were smoking, too. It reminded Willie, once again, that NYC rules didn’t apply up here. You tried lighting up over breakfast in the city and there would be a cop kneeling on your back before you could get to the funny pages, assuming your fellow diners didn’t beat you to death first.
The Detective was seated in a red vinyl booth at the back of the room, a little fake hay bale made from wood shavings on the windowsill beside him, topped with a miniature scarecrow and plastic pumpkins. He was wearing dark-blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black military jacket. He hadn’t removed the jacket, despite the warmth of the diner. Willie could guess why. There was a gun under there somewhere. The Detective was supposed to have surrendered all of his weapons after his permit and license were revoked, but Willie figured that only counted for the ones the cops knew about. Like Louis, the Detective wasn’t the kind to go around advertising all of his possessions.
There was a cup of coffee before him, and the remains of bacon and poached eggs. Willie took the seat across from him and a waitress appeared. He ordered coffee and toast. He wasn’t very hungry. He wasn’t tired either, or not as tired as he had expected to be. That surprised him. Then again, he wasn’t a big sleeper at the best of times. Four, maybe five hours a night was usually enough for him.
“I see you couldn’t resist giving the Mustang a once-over,” said the Detective. He was smiling.
“You send them out into the world, and all you can hope is that the world treats them the way it should,” said Willie. “Like children.”
He saw the Detective’s smile flicker slightly, and wished that he hadn’t mentioned children. You lose a child, especially the way this man had lost his, and it will always be a red, raw wound to you.