‘Bet he wishes he’d gone with diesel now,’ Parker said.
‘He can consider it a lesson learned.’
Parker indicated the flag. ‘You keeping that as a souvenir?’
‘I made a note of his license plate number. I may find out where he lives and return it to him.’
‘By mail?’
Louis examined the flag thoughtfully.
‘If he’s lucky.’
5
Carlos returned to the diner to find all the lights out, even the one in the back office. He drove to the staff lot and detected a warm glow from inside Dobey’s double-wide trailer, followed by the sight of Dobey himself in the doorway.
‘What are you doing back here?’ Dobey asked.
‘Miss Leila ask me,’ said Carlos. ‘Inquieta. She worry for you.’
‘They both get home safely?’
‘Sí.’
‘Then you should be home too.’
Carlos lingered, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. He had cooked at Dobey’s for more than a decade, and owed the older man a lot. Dobey paid him well, and had offered to provide collateral when Carlos wanted to buy a place of his own for his family. Dobey was perhaps the best man Carlos had ever met, and they had spent so long working together that he was now able to second-guess Dobey’s wishes to an almost telepathic degree, and gauge his moods in a manner even Esther Bachmeier could not match. Right now, Carlos wouldn’t have said Dobey was frightened, exactly; yes, there was fear in him, but it was edged with fury.
‘Carlos, I swear, if I don’t see you and your truck heading into the night in the next thirty seconds, I’ll set you to scrubbing so many pans for the next week that you’ll be wiping your ass with a stump by the end of it, you hear?’
‘Entiendo.’
‘And Carlos, no foolishness. There’s nothing to be concerned about.’
‘Entiendo,’ Carlos repeated. He didn’t want any police trouble. He and his immediate family had their green cards, but two cousins living with them did not. He told himself that Dobey knew what he was doing, because Dobey always knew what he was doing, even as the lie seemed to take physical form and fill Carlos’s tongue and throat so he could no longer speak, not even to say goodbye.
Dobey waited until he was certain Carlos was gone before pulling the door closed behind him. He turned to face the man seated in Dobey’s favorite armchair, flicking idly through a copy of Marcus Aurelius he had taken from a shelf, his navy overcoat once again folded carefully beside him, his brogues reflecting the lamplight. Behind Dobey another figure moved, this one shorter than the other, almost petite, yet with the sour milk smell of old spilled sperm on her.
‘Very good,’ said the man in the chair. ‘Now, if you’ll take a seat, we can begin.’
6
Parker dropped Louis off at the latter’s apartment on Portland’s Eastern Promenade, although he took the scenic route to it via South Portland, and his stomach tightened every time they passed a patrol car. He approached his own house in Scarborough with similar caution, anticipating the presence of police, but it seemed that nobody had witnessed what was, by any measure, a quite spectacular act of criminal damage.
He was due to meet Moxie Castin for breakfast the following morning. Parker wasn’t hurting for money, but he was bored. Recent weeks had been quiet, and he’d resorted to process serving and employee background checks to pass the time. He was worried that if some more engrossing pursuits did not engage him soon, he might be forced to make a habit of driving Louis around so he could set stuff on fire.
Parker was concerned for Louis. For as long as Parker had known him, Louis had been with Angel, and each man rarely left the other’s side. They might have bickered, sometimes even fought, but their love and loyalty were never in doubt. Louis gave strength to Angel, and Angel tempered Louis’s hardness, but Parker had always secretly believed that while Angel could survive without Louis – not undamaged, and not unburdened by great sorrow, but survival nonetheless – Louis would not live long without Angel. Louis was a man of extremes, and it was Angel who gently tethered him to normality and domesticity, albeit in a form largely unrecognizable to most other human beings. While the operation to remove Angel’s tumor seemed to have been successful, albeit with some complications, worry and uncertainty were clearly taking their toll on his partner.
Were Louis to lose Angel, Parker believed that Louis would in turn lose himself, and die visiting his pain on the world. Parker felt this because, although he was closer to Angel than to Louis, he had as much in common with the latter as with the former. Parker knew all about pain, and the price to be paid for indulging it.
So he said a prayer for these two men, sending it forth to a God whose existence – if not the benignity of His nature – he no longer doubted. He prayed, too, for his living daughter and the one who had predeceased her, the child who still haunted the marshes, who moved between worlds.
He checked the weather before going to sleep. The temperature was definitely on the rise for the coming week. The state was done with winter. Good, Parker thought. Although he was a northern creature, more comfortable with dark and cold than light and heat, he had long since passed the annual point of weariness with the elements, and yearned to see expanses of earth and grass unsullied by patches of grim ice.
He slept, blessed by an absence of dreams.
7
Dobey sat on the edge of his bed, his knees almost touching those of the man opposite. They were so close that Dobey could inhale his scent. It was subtle, clean, and expensive, even to Dobey’s unpracticed nose. It reminded him of pipe tobacco, and the High Church services of childhood.
Dobey figured that he, on the other hand, smelled only of grease and sweat. He had ceased to notice the diner’s particular aroma on his clothes and skin, but he suddenly found himself ashamed of it, as though, despite being the victim of intrusion, even invasion, he was guilty of some failure of manners and hygiene.
If the visitor felt uncomfortable at their enforced intimacy, he gave no sign of it. Instead, despite his earlier indication of a desire to commence, he continued to turn the pages of the Commentaries with concentration. Finally, he raised the book in triumph.
‘It is remarkable,’ he began, ‘how much we are haunted by faint recall. It has been many years since I opened a copy of Aurelius, but the echo of his wisdom has lingered. Let me share this with you, in part because its relevance is inescapable under the present circumstances.’
He took a breath, and began to read.
‘“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any time.” Isn’t that wonderful? From it we may infer that we amplify pain by our responses to it. Rather than obsessing over the nature of the suffering, and blaming oneself or others for it, it is better to establish the cause and then work to eliminate it. Does that raise any questions in your mind?’
‘What do you want?’ Dobey asked.
‘I meant questions about Aurelius. Incidentally, this is a very fine copy: London, Parker, 1747. My, my.’ He ran his fingers over the binding. ‘Calfskin?’
Dobey nodded.
‘Beautiful. For someone who spends his days serving slop to hicks, you appear to possess remarkably cultured literary tastes. Unfortunately, they’re partly responsible for bringing us to your door.’
‘You still haven’t told me your name,’ said Dobey, ‘or why you’re here.’
‘Oh, the “why” you can probably guess. We’re here to establish the current whereabouts of one of the many mongrel bitches to have passed through here over the years, but we’ll come to her in a moment. As for who I am, I go by the name of Quayle. I am a lawyer – or I was, once.’