Prayers For Rain Part 81

He'd have a single-malt scotch every night with his fellow postmen at the Celtic Arms on Otis Street. He always left after one drink, no matter how many men tried to pull him back down to his seat, always dropped ten bucks on the table to cover the Laphroaig and the tip.

Then he'd walk down Summer Street and follow Atlantic north until he reached Congress, where he'd turn right. Five minutes later, he'd be up in his Sleeper Street loft, and he'd stay there until lights-out at eleven-thirty.

I had to work at it to begin thinking of him as Scott and not Wesley. The name Wesley had fit him-patrician and haughty and cold. Scott seemed too bland and middle cla.s.s. Wesley was the name of the guy you knew in college who was captain of the golf team and didn't like blacks at his parties. Scott was the guy who wore tank tops and loud baggy shorts, organized pickup games, and puked in the back of your car.

But after some time spent watching him in which he acted far more like a Scott than a Wesley-watching TV alone, reading in a slim leather recliner under a gooseneck lamp in the center of his loft, pulling Fit-N-Easy meals from his freezer and nuking them in his microwave, eating them at the bar that curled around the edge of his kitchen-I eventually came around to the idea of Scott. Scott the Sinister. Scott the a.s.shole. Scott the Marked Man.

The first night I followed him, I found a fire escape with roof access behind the building across the street from his. His loft was four stories off the ground and two below my rooftop perch, and Scott Pea.r.s.e hadn't bothered with curtains over his floor-to-ceiling dormers except in the bedroom and bathroom. So I had an un.o.bstructed, well-lit view of his s.p.a.cious living room, kitchen, and dining area, the framed black-and-white photographs that hung from his walls. They were chilly photos of stripped trees and frozen rivers that snaked under mills, a ma.s.sive garbage dump in the foreground with the Eiffel Tower miles off in the backround, Venice in December, Prague on a black night awash in rain.

As I moved my binoculars from one to the next, I became certain that Scott Pea.r.s.e, himself, had taken them. They were all exquisitely composed, all had a detached, clinical beauty, and all were as cold as death.

In all the nights I watched him, he never did anything out of the ordinary, and that in itself began to seem bizarre. Maybe in his bedroom, he made the calls to Diane Bourne or other confederates, picked his next victim, or planned for the next stage of his a.s.sault on Vanessa Moore or someone else I cared about. Maybe he had someone chained to the bedpost in there. Maybe after I thought he'd gone to bed, he sat up reading private psychiatric files and stolen mail. Maybe. But not while I was watching.

Angie reported the same thing regarding his days. Pea.r.s.e never dawdled long enough in his truck to have the opportunity to look through any of the mail he picked up during the second half of his s.h.i.+ft.

"He's strictly by-the-numbers," Angie reported.

Fortunately, we weren't, and in the only joyful irony of that week, Angie obtained Pea.r.s.e's phone number by breaking into his his mailbox on Sleeper Street and peeking at his phone bill. mailbox on Sleeper Street and peeking at his phone bill.

But otherwise, nothing. His facade began to seem impenetrable.

Access to the loft was out of the question. There was no way to bug the place. Each night when he entered, Scott Pea.r.s.e disengaged an alarm inside the front door. Video cameras were positioned in the upper corners of the loft and triggered, I suspected, by motion detectors. Even if we could get past all that, Scott Pea.r.s.e, I was pretty sure, had defenses I couldn't see, backup plans to his backup plans.

I was beginning to wonder, as I sat up on the roof every night and fought off sleep while I watched him do nothing upon nothing, if maybe he was on to us. Knew we'd discovered who he was. It seemed unlikely, but still, all it would have taken was a casual anecdote from the postman I'd run into on the street. Hey, Scott, some guy thought you were his old college roommate, but I set him straight Hey, Scott, some guy thought you were his old college roommate, but I set him straight.

One night, Scott Pea.r.s.e walked to his window. He sipped some scotch. He stared down at the street. He raised his head and looked directly at me. But it wasn't me he was looking at. In a room bathed in track lighting, with the dark night outside his window forming a slate wall before him, all he'd be able to see would be his own reflection.

He must have been fascinated with it, though, because he stared in my direction for a long time. Then he raised his gla.s.s, as if in a toast. And smiled.

We moved Vanessa at night, took her out via the service elevator and along a maintenance corridor, out through a back door into the alley behind her building, and drove her away in Bubba's van. Vanessa, unlike most women if they'd just climbed into a van and found Bubba in back with them, didn't blink several times or gasp or move as far away as possible. She sat on the bench that ran from behind the driver's seat to the rear doors and lit a cigarette.

"Ruprecht Rogowski," she said. "Right?"

Bubba stifled a yawn with his fist. "No one calls me Ruprecht."

She held up a hand as Angie pulled the van out of the alley. "My mistake. It's Bubba, then?"

Bubba nodded.

"What's your stake in all this, Bubba?"

"Guy killed a dog. I like dogs." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Let me ask you-you got a problem spending time with a mental defective who's got what they call 'antisocial tendencies'?"

She smiled. "You are aware what it is I do for a living?"

"Sure," Bubba said. "You got my buddy Nelson Ferrare off."

"How is Mr. Ferrare?"

"Same old," Bubba said.

Nelson, as they spoke, was in fact taking my place on the rooftop across from Scott Pea.r.s.e's place. He'd just returned from Atlantic City, where he'd fallen in love with a c.o.c.ktail waitress who'd loved him back until he ran out of money. Now he was back in town, willing to do anything for a little cash and a chance to go back to his c.o.c.ktail waitress and run out of money again.

"Does he still fall in love with every woman he sees?" Vanessa asked.

"Pretty much." Bubba rubbed his chin. "So we're clear, sister, here's the deal: I'm going to stick to you like crabs."

"Like crabs," Vanessa said. "How appealing."

"You'll sleep at my place," Bubba said, "eat with me, drink with me, and I'll be with you in court. Till the mailman goes down, you're never out of my sight. Get used to it."

"Can't wait," Vanessa said, then s.h.i.+fted on the bench. "Patrick?"

I turned fully in the captain's chair, looked over at her. "Yeah?"

"You've decided not to guard my body?"

"We have a past relations.h.i.+p. That means I'm compromised emotionally. Makes me the worst choice for the job."

She looked at the back of Angie's head as Angie turned onto Storrow Drive. "Compromised," she said. "Sure."

"Scott Pea.r.s.e," Devin said the next night at Nash's Pub on Dorchester Avenue, "was born in the Philippines to military parents stationed in Subic Bay. Grew up all over the globe." He opened his notebook, leafed through it until he found the correct page. "West Germany, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, Alaska, Georgia, and finally, Kansas."

"Kansas?" Angie said. "Not Missouri."

"Kansas," Devin repeated.

Devin's partner, Oscar Lee, said, "Surrender, Dorothy. Surrender."

Angie narrowed her eyes at him, shook her head.

Oscar shrugged, picked his dead cigar out of the ashtray and relit it.

"Father was a colonel," Devin said. "Colonel Ryan Pea.r.s.e of Army Intelligence, designation cla.s.sified." He looked at Oscar. "But we got friends."

Oscar looked at me and jerked his cigar back at his partner. "Notice White Boy always says 'we' when he talks about me and my sources?"

"It's a race thing," Devin a.s.sured us.

Oscar tapped some ash off his cigar. "Colonel Pea.r.s.e was Psych Ops."

"Which?" Angie said.

"Psychological Operations," Oscar said. "Kind of guy gets paid to think up new ways to torture the enemy, spread disinformation, generally f.u.c.k with your head."

"Was Scott his only son?"