“Listen, Crystal, you’ve really got to stop this… untie me… I’ve got a pain in my chest… I mean it!”
“Pussy is the best cure for whatever ails you, son. Hang on, Mama’s gonna ride this bucking bronco all the way to the buzzer…”
“Damn it, get off! I’ve got a cardiac condition! Doc says I’m supposed to take it easy… Goddamnit, I’m serious! Now my arm really hurts… call the doctor, Crystal. Now. They must have a house doctor on call and.… oh, Christ almighty, it hurts… do something!”
“Like what?”
“My pills! My nitro pills! They’re over there in my trouser pocket…”
“Hold on a sec…”
She reached over and picked up the bedside phone, never breaking her stride, and asked for the hotel operator.
CHAPTER 8
HE MUST HAVE passed out from the pain. Everything was foggy, out of focus. The room was dark, the rain beating hard against the windowpanes. Just a single lamplight from a table over in the corner.
Crystal, still naked, was sitting with her back to him at the foot of the bed, smoking a cigarette and talking to the doctor in hushed tones. Her head was resting on the doctor’s shoulder. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat and the pain had spread from behind his breastbone into and out along his left arm. Fucking hell. His wrists were still tied to the bedposts? Was she insane?
He heard a sob escape his own lips, and then a cry of pain caused by the elephant sitting atop his chest.
“Sshh,” the doctor said, getting to his feet and coming to the head of the bed to stand beside him. He was naked, too. He put his finger to his lips and said “Sshh” again.
“You’ve gotta do CPR or something, Doc,” Harding croaked. “My pills! They’re in the right pocket of my trousers. Please. I feel like I’m going to die…”
“That’s because you are going to die, Harding,” the man said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Wait. Who are you?” He squinted his eyes but couldn’t make out the physician’s features.
“Vengeance, sayeth the Lord, Harding. That’s who I am. Vengeance.”
“You’re not a doctor… you’re…”
“Dr. Death will do for now.”
“Who… no, you’re not… you’re somebody else. You’re…”
“Don’t you recognize me anymore, Harding? I’ve had a little surgery recently. A bit of Botox. But, still, the eyes are always a dead giveaway. Look close.”
“Spider?”
“Bingo.”
“No, can’t be… You’re fucking Spider, f’crissakes,” the dying man croaked.
“Right. Spider Payne. Your old buddy. Come rain or come shine. Tonight, it’s rain. Look out the window, Harding. It’s goddamn pouring out there. Ever see it rain so hard?”
“Gimme a break here, Spider. What are you doing …”
“It’s called poetic justice. A little twist of fate shall we say?”
Pain scorched Torrance’s body and he arched upward, straining against his bonds, coming almost completely off the bed. He didn’t think anything could hurt this much.
His old nemesis knelt on the floor by the bed and started gently stroking his hair. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper.
“You fucked me royally, Harding. Remember that? When I needed you most? When the French government, whom you always claimed to have in your pocket, nailed my balls to the wall? Kidnapping and suspicion of murder. Thirty years to life? Ring a bell?”
“That wasn’t my fault, f’crissakes! Please! You gotta help me!”
“That’s my line. Help me. You don’t get to use it. Way too late for that, I’m afraid, old soldier. You’re catching the next train, partner.”
“I can’t… I can’t breathe… I can’t catch my …”
“This is how it works, Harding.”
“What—”
“It’s so simple, isn’t it? Judgment Day. How it all works out in the end? In that dark hour when no bad deed goes unpunished.”
“I can’t… can’t…”
Harding Torrance opened his eyes wide in fear and pain. And as the blackness closed in around him he heard Spider Payne utter the last words his addled brain would ever register:
“You fuck me, right? But, in the end, Crystal and the Spider, they fuck you.”
CHAPTER 9
A perfect day for a funeral.
It was raining steadily, but softly. Dripping from the leaves, dripping from the eaves of the old Maine cottage on the hill. Tendrils of misty gray fog curled up from the sea, only to disappear into the steaming pine forests. Thin, ragged clouds scudded by low overhead.
Hook’s burial service was in the overgrown family plot. A hallowed patch of small worn gravestones dotting a hilltop clearing overlooking the misty harbor. There were rows and rows of folding white chairs arranged on the grass surrounding the gravesite, filled with mourners hidden beneath rows and rows of gleaming black umbrellas.
There was even a piper in full regalia standing by the freshly opened wound in the rich earth. A white-bearded fellow wearing tartans, an old friend of Hook’s who’d rowed over from Vinalhaven for the three o’clock service.
At the center of it all, a yawning grave.
Alex Hawke was seated in the very last row beside his old American friend Brick Kelly. Hawke let his eyes wander where they would, taking it all in, the simple beauty of the rainy day and the still and perfect sadness all around him.
Down at the dock, Hook’s black ketch was flying signal flags from stem to masthead to stern, thanks to the young man whom Hawke had just met up at the house. A good-looking college kid Cam Hooker had hired to look after his boat that summer. The boy was sitting a few rows ahead of him with the grandchildren now, trying to keep them still.
Hawke had first seen the boy up at the house, trying to catch his eye all morning. Finally, Hawke had said, “Can I help you?”
“You’re Lord Hawke, is that correct, sir?” the boy had asked him as they stood together. They were both holding plates, everyone inching forward in the buffet line circling through the living and dining rooms. Both rooms were full of musty old furniture, cracked marine paintings, and frayed rugs made all the more beautiful by age and deliberate lack of care.
“I am, indeed,” Hawke said, puzzled. Why should anyone here know who he was? He stood out, he supposed, in his uniform. Royal Navy Blue, No. 1 Dress, no sword. Bit of a spectacle, but nothing for it, it was regulation.
“Ben Sparhawk, sir. I worked for Director Hooker this past summer. Helping out with Maracaya and around the dock. I wonder if we might have a word, sir?”
“Of course. What about?”
The fellow looked around and lowered his voice.
“I’d really rather not discuss it here if you don’t mind, sir.”
Hawke looked at the long line of people slowly snaking toward the buffet tables set up in the dining room. “Let’s go out onto the porch and get some air,” the Englishman said. “I’m not really hungry anyway.”
“Thank you,” Ben Sparhawk replied, somewhat shakily. He followed the older man outside into the damp air, misty rain blowing about under the eaves. “I really appreciate your taking the time.”
“Something’s bothering you, Ben,” Hawke said, his hands on the railing, admiring Camden harbor across the bay and the beautiful Maine coastline visible from the hilltop. “Just relax and tell me what it is.”
“I don’t really know quite where to start and…”
It occurred to Hawke that he’d always loved this part of the world. That someday he would very much like to own an old house up here. The late summer air full of white clouds and diving white seabirds, the endlessly waving tops of green forests, the deep rolling swells of the blue sea. Bermuda was lovely; but it wasn’t this. For the first time he understood viscerally what his old friend Hook had known and cherished all his life. Down East Maine was closer to Heaven than most places you could name. And you probably couldn’t even name one.