John Connolly - Nocturnes

He was driving. I could hear the purr of his engine in the background.

“I guess you didn’t hear,” said Clem. “I took up pimping to make ends meet. Got me some girls in a trailer off 295. I’m thinking about franchising, you got some money to spare.”

“I’m sorry, my money’s all tied up in monkey porn. It’s a growing market. You got time to talk?”

As it turned out, Clem was on his way down to Portland to meet with his lawyer. Sometimes things work out that way. I arranged to meet him for a hamburger lunch in Rosie’s down in the Old Port. He told me I was cheap. I told him that he was paying, so I was even cheaper than that. After all, I wasn’t the one with two homes, and a bar in Florida.

Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through a magazine and nibbling on a bagel. Walter was waiting midway between his basket and Rachel, clearly keen to try his luck at scamming some food from her plate but reluctant to risk being shouted at for his trouble. When I came in, he seemed to decide that the balance had suddenly tipped in his favor, and used sniffing my hand as a pretext to close in on the table.

“You’ve been feeding him scraps again,” said Rachel, without looking up.

“What did you do, shine a light on him until he broke down and confessed?”

“We’re sending out mixed signals. It’s confusing him.”

“He’s just confused by why you don’t love him as much as I do,” I said.

“Oooh, that’s low. Is that how you plan to earn the love of your child, with bribery and treats?”

“Start as you mean to continue. It worked with the dog. And with you.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the lips.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll be back for dinner, and I’ll keep the cell on.”

Her eyes drifted toward the inside of my jacket. The butt of the gun was just visible to her, but she made no comment.

“Just be careful,” she said, and returned to her magazine. As I left the house, I looked back and saw her slip a piece of bagel into Walter’s mouth. He rested his head on her lap in return and she stroked him gently, her eyes no longer on her reading but staring through the kitchen window at the marshes and the trees beyond, as though the glass had turned to water and she could see once again the face of the drowning man beneath its surface.

The Collector was looking for Ray Czabo. The name had come up in the course of The Collector’s own investigation into the Grady house, and he was anxious to talk to the man in question. He made no moral judgments on Voodoo Ray’s gruesome hobby: in his experience, human beings were capable of far worse than stealing mementos from crime scenes. What interested him was the possibility that Ray had found a way into the house, and that perhaps he had managed to secure a trinket for himself in the process. If it was the right kind of souvenir, then The Collector’s work would be done.

But Ray Czabo was proving difficult to find, and there was now a stranger in his house. The Collector usually believed in adopting the direct approach, but the young man who appeared to be servicing Mrs. Czabo in her husband’s absence looked troublesome. More to the point, The Collector had discovered that this was a case of “like father, like son,” and that Mrs. Czabo’s lover enjoyed the protection of a small but efficient criminal operation.

The Collector had been careless, assuming that his old car and his run-down appearance would allow him to pass unnoticed unless he chose otherwise. He was beginning to wonder if Mrs. Czabo might have conspired with her boyfriend to remove her husband from the scene, whether through threats or actual violence. He was thinking this over as he returned to his car, having followed the lover back to his father’s base, when a man emerged from behind a Dumpster and blocked his progress.

“You want to tell me what you’re doin’?” said the man. He was slightly overweight, and wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans. His face bulged in all the wrong places, as though every bone had been broken and then badly reset. His name was Chris Tierney, and he had a reputation as a hard man, an enforcer. The Collector had no time for this. He tried to slip by but Tierney pushed him back, advancing a step as he did so.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

The Collector remained silent.

“Fuck you,” said the man, finally. “You’re coming with me.”

He moved in on the slim, greasy-looking individual with the yellowed fingers, this stick figure dressed in rags who had tried to bulldoze his way past him, but instead of backing away, the raggedy man moved forward to meet him. Tierney felt an impact at his chest and his body was raised up until only the tips of his toes remained on the ground. He curled over his attacker’s hand as the shock of the blow began to dissipate, only to be replaced by a sharp pain. Tierney tried to speak, and blood ran from his mouth and flowed over his lips and chin. His fingers clutched at The Collector’s hand and found the hilt of the knife. He tried to say something, although there was nothing to be said.

The Collector touched his left hand to the dying man’s lips.

“Shhh,” he said. “Hush. It’s all right. Nearly there, now. Nearly there.”

The knife thrust hard once more, and the life left Tierney in a rush of air and blood.

Clem hadn’t changed since last I saw him. His hair had turned white while he was in his thirties, so he appeared not to have aged much apart from the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. He still had the remnant of a tan from his most recent trip south, and he’d lost a little weight.

“You look good,” I said.

“I eat healthy, when I have no other option,” he said, then ordered a cheeseburger with extra fries, hold the mayo. “It’s the mayo that kills you,” he added.

Clem was one of a network of cops who had remained friends with my grandfather after he left the force and who had extended their goodwill to his grandson. Back in Manhattan, there were cops who would cross the street to avoid me, even if that street was mined. Up here, there were other, older loyalties to be considered.

We spoke about nothing in particular until after we had eaten, then sat back in our chairs by the window and watched the cars and people passing by. Nobody seemed in too much of a hurry to get anywhere, and it was still early enough in December for the prospect of Christmas to seem more welcome than stressful.

“You remember John Grady?” I said at last.

It struck me that I hated saying his name. It seemed to pollute the very air, seeping out through the window frame to poison the festive atmosphere outside.

“John Grady,” said Clem.

He took a mouthful of beer, then held it for a time, as though using it to wash the mention of Grady from his mouth.

“You have a habit of resurrecting old ghosts,” he said. “I think you have a morbid interest in dead killers.”

“Well, some of them didn’t turn out to be quite as dead as people believed.”

“You do seem to enjoy a gift for waking them, that’s for sure. John Grady, though, he’s not coming back. I watched him die.”

“You were there?”

I knew Clem had been involved in the investigation, but not that he’d witnessed Grady’s final moments.

“When the little Matheson girl was taken, we got the first half-decent lead in months. It was a foolish thing for him to have done, pulling her like that, but I guess by then he couldn’t control his appetites anymore. We got to the house, but it was too late for her.”

He took another sip of beer and looked beyond me to where his own reflection lay suspended in the window.

“That one stays with me. I can’t remember more than a handful of cases in twenty-five years that make me want to break my fist against a wall, but that’s one of them. Too many ‘if onlys.’ If only we’d been quicker to make the connection with Grady’s car. If only we’d been able to break that door down. If only…