A Song Of Shadows Part 18

'Nothing,' said Walsh. 'He's entirely hairless, though. Alopecia universalis: I just learned that today, and I like saying it. Oh, and his bowels were riddled with tumors. The ME thinks he must have been in constant pain. He probably had less than a year to live.'

Louis stepped back and removed the gloves, careful to ensure that his bare hands did not touch any part of the material that had been in contact with the dead man's skin.

'What did you say his name was?'

'We found a Georgia driver's license in the name of Earl Steiger when we pulled him out of the sand. It was the only ID he was carrying, but it wasn't the only one that he had.'

'Earl Steiger,' said Louis. 'No, I don't recall it.'

'He had to be staying somewhere local,' Walsh continued, 'so we canva.s.sed the area and found a motel outside Belfast called the Come Awn Inn. He'd been staying there for a couple of days, cash on the nail.'

'The Come Awn Inn?' said Angel. 'You're kidding.'

'No, for real. You don't want to stay there. We hit the room with UV light. Let me tell you, it looked like you could come on anything in the Come Awn Inn, and a lot of folk started with the sheets and the comforter. I wanted to burn my shoes by the time we were done.'

'And?' said Louis.

'We picked up four other licenses, none of them in the name of Earl Steiger. All were from southern states, and all were legit, at least in the sense that they weren't forgeries. So far, we've traced three of them back to dead children, including Earl Steiger. He was killed in an automobile accident with the rest of his family in 1975 in Wilkinson County, Georgia, aged fifteen.'

For the first time, Louis evinced some kind of real interest.

'Dead children?'

'Ghosting,' said Angel. 'Old school.'

Ghosting was the product of a different time, one before computers and the routine exchange of information whether in theory or actual practice by government agencies. Before the advent of the income tax in 1913, and later the introduction of the Social Security system in 1935, it was possible for a man or woman in the United States to live openly without any formal doc.u.mentation from the government. Even after 1935, it was difficult to check if an individual's claimed ident.i.ty was his or her own. Only the invention of databases, and the increasingly long reach of the government, rendered such imposture harder to achieve although, ironically, the Internet, with its proliferation of intimate personal details, now made ident.i.ty theft easier than ever before.

The practice of ghosting involved finding a dead person whose age roughly matched one's own, discovering the person's date of birth often from the gravestone itself and then using the information to obtain a birth certificate in that name. Once the birth certificate was in hand, it was a relatively simple process to begin obtaining government-issued identification, thereby cementing the a.s.sumed ident.i.ty.

'What about the other children?' asked Louis.

Walsh consulted his notebook.

'n.o.ble C. Griffis, Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Drowned in 1962 at the age of three while in the care of a Methodist benevolent inst.i.tution. And William H. Pruett, Tarboro, South Carolina: nine years old when he died in a fire with his mother, two sisters, and three brothers in 1971. Father predeceased them.'

Louis didn't speak for a time. He was a.s.similating the information from Walsh, sifting it in his mind. The dead man Earl Steiger, for want of a better name or someone acting on his behalf, had been clever in his choice of a.s.sumed ident.i.ties. First of all, poorer areas in the South were targeted, possibly on the grounds that records might be more haphazard, and the spelling of names open to more than one interpretation: 'Griffis', for example, sounded like a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of 'Griffin' or 'Griffiths'. Some risks were attached to this approach, due to the close interrelations.h.i.+ps between families in small rural communities, and the long memories of those responsible for guarding their records, but they were outweighed by the benefits.

Secondly, the names a.s.sumed were from boys who were either orphans or whose immediate families had died alongside them, which decreased the likelihood of anyone poking around in their family history and discovering that little Earl or n.o.ble or William appeared to be enjoying an existence beyond the grave. Finally, all of the children had been born within one three-year period between 1959 and 1962, which probably corresponded to the age of the man lying on the gurney before them.

'I take it you're trying to find out when copies of the birth certificates were issued,' said Louis.

'Old men and women are trawling through records as we speak,' said Walsh.

'Concentrate on Earl Steiger.'

'Why?'

'It was the one he was using when he came here, but I'll also bet you a dollar that he relied on the Steiger ident.i.ty more than any other. No matter how many false ident.i.ties a man has, he'll be drawn to one in particular, because even a ghost needs some kind of anchor. Also, if you keep alternating ident.i.ties you get confused, and you're likely to make a mistake. Finally, it leaves you with nothing to fall back on if you need to disappear.'

'You strike me as worryingly well-informed,' said Walsh.

'You didn't ask me here because I'm pretty.'

'I didn't ask you here at all.'

The suggestion that Angel and Louis should be contacted about Ruth Winter's killer had come from Special Agent Ross of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ross was a man who took a special interest in matters relating to Charlie Parker, for reasons that even Ross himself might not have been in a position to explain fully.

'You'll find that the replacement birth certificate for Earl Steiger was issued within a year of his death two years at most.'

'And why do you figure that?'

'Because Earl Steiger was the oldest when he died, which means that his was probably the first ident.i.ty acquired for our friend here. His potential would have been spotted early, but not before he was fifteen or sixteen.'

'You know who he really is,' said Walsh.

'No, and by the time he died I don't think even he knew who he really was either,' said Louis. 'But the southern children, the ages that is familiar to me.'

He gripped the edge of the plastic sheet and pulled it over the face of the dead man.

'You need to call your friend Agent Ross,' he said. 'Tell him that it might be one of Cambion's people who died out here.'

40.

The woman stank of cats and cookies, of p.i.s.s and mothb.a.l.l.s, but Cambion, whose sensory abilities his disease had long ruined, and who had grown used to the reek of his own decay, barely noticed it. It was enough that she cooked for him and helped him to get in and out of chairs, and beds, and baths. Edmund could do all that too, of course, but he lacked her delicacy. He was compa.s.sionate, but not gentle, and as Cambion entered the last stages of his life he appreciated tenderness, even that which was offered out of instinct, not inclination.

Cambion was once a torturer and killer, a s.a.d.i.s.t and despoiler of flesh, until Hansen's Disease took hold of him, and he became known as Cambion the Leper, Cambion the Outcast. As the illness destroyed his body, rendering him unable to function in his preferred role, he became a middleman, a point of contact between the most vicious of clients and those men and women base enough to do their bidding. It had made Cambion wealthy, but now most of that money was gone. He had squandered it in his early years for his tastes were no less depraved than those of whom he represented, and such vices are expensive to maintain and then, following his diagnosis, doled it out as carefully as he could, in an effort to counter the disease. Cambion was a hunted man one does not spend one's life arranging torments and tortures without question and not build up an impressive roster of enemies and so conventional medical intervention was not open to him: he would not have survived for an hour once news of his presence in a hospital became known. He was also cursed early in the leprosy's progress by treatment with incorrect medicines, a consequence of his need to use backroom doctors. He spent years punis.h.i.+ng the pract.i.tioner responsible by holding him captive and carving pieces from his body on a regular basis, but it provided small consolation.

Only a handful of Cambion's old a.s.sociates had remained willing to work with him, and see that he got his cut. The rest had abandoned him long ago, which was why Cambion, in turn, had fed their names to his hunters in the hope that, by betraying others, he might be allowed to die in peace. It had not worked; they still circled him. He was reduced to living in near squalor, tended by a woman who had once occupied his bed but was now little more than a walking corpse herself, but whose need for money was even greater than his own.

He rang the bell over his bed by tugging on a length of rope. The bedpan was out of reach, and he needed it. He could not feel the rope against his skin, for he no longer had sensation in his hands or feet. His muscles had grown weaker, even in the last few months, and the extent of his disfigurement caused him to shun all reflective surfaces. His kidney functions were also becoming impaired due to renal amyloidosis, for which hemodialysis was the standard recommended treatment, but Cambion could not show himself to receive it. It was possible that the treatment might be arranged privately, but it would require funds to pay for both the surgery and the silence after, funds he did not possess. His sight was failing: he could still see the television screen close by his bed, and read words as long as they were magnified for him on a screen, but everything at a distance was a blur. It was fortunate in the case of the room in which he lay. It meant that he could no longer see the filthy carpet, or the paper peeling from the walls, or the damp stains on the ceiling which, at his worst moments, had a.s.sumed the patterns of demonic faces, or seemed to spread like blood from a recent wound, the Rorschach blots of his own guilt.

The woman did not answer his summons, and instead Edmund appeared. The giant owned only two suits, both of them a vile yellow. While one was being cleaned at some cut-price laundry, he would wear the other. The color on both had faded over the years, although not enough to render their appearance any less painful to the eye, and they had acc.u.mulated stains that even the most a.s.siduous of attention could not remove, including food, wine, and various bodily fluids, Cambion's own among them.

'Where have you been?' asked Cambion, for the giant had been gone since early that afternoon, and night had since fallen.

Edmund handed Cambion a number of newspapers, all open at the same story. Cambion could only read the headlines, but they were enough to reveal to him the murder of Ruth Winter, and the death, in turn, of the man responsible for killing her. Cambion let out a small moan of grief. Cambion had found Steiger, nurtured him, molded him since boyhood. He was the last of them, and one of the few Cambion had not betrayed in an effort to save himself. At least, thought Cambion, they had banked a portion of the fee before Steiger died, and he had completed his a.s.signed task before succ.u.mbing to the sands, so further funds would be forthcoming.

Edmund accessed the stories on a laptop so that the print could be magnified. While he worked, Cambion recalled his final conversation with Steiger, the one in which Steiger had notified him of the presence of the private investigator Charlie Parker near the Winter woman's house. How peculiar it was that Cambion's fate and Parker's should once again intersect. Steiger had wanted to know if there was a price on Parker's head, if there were those in the shadows who might be willing to pay to have it served to them on a platter, but Cambion had dissuaded him from moving against the detective. Those who had come closest to killing him barely months before were now all dead, and a town had been put to the torch as a further act of retribution. If the whispers were true, those who might have wanted Parker dead had chosen not to act against him for reasons to which Cambion was not privy, and they were the only ones he could think of who might reasonably have been expected to pay for his murder by another.

Yet it appeared from reading between the lines of the newspaper reports that some confrontation had occurred between Parker and Steiger in the moments before the latter's death. The result was that Steiger had been buried alive. An accident, the newspapers said. Dune collapses were not uncommon, although n.o.body could recall any previous such incident at Green Heron Bay. If Cambion had believed in G.o.d which, for many years, he had not, although his position on that subject was modifying rapidly he might have a.s.sumed that the deity was watching over Charlie Parker.

Cambion was a foul man, and a hateful one, but he was not entirely without humanity, even if it was tied up almost entirely with his own sufferings. As his death inexorably approached, he found himself persecuted by memories of his own wickedness. He wondered sometimes if G.o.d had punished him by visiting his disease upon him. If so, G.o.d was then partly to blame for its consequences, for Cambion's pain had only fed his natural sadism. G.o.d had created Cambion, just as Cambion had created Steiger. Each, it could be said, was an instrument of a superior being's will.

But now Cambion found himself turning to Pascal and his infamous wager: all humans bet with their lives that G.o.d either exists or does not. The wager is not a matter of choice. By the act of living, we place the bet. A rational person, according to Pascal, lives as though G.o.d exists, for if He does exist then the rewards are infinite, and if He does not exist then the sacrifices made in life based on erroneous belief are finite. While Cambion had read extensively of the arguments against Pascal, he had, as death cast its shadow upon him, become more and more convinced of the reality of a world beyond this one, and of a Supreme Being beyond his understanding. He felt it as a corollary of his own evil and corruption, as an awareness of cold might bring with it an acknowledgement of the existence of that which was not cold.

Yes, had Cambion inquired more deeply, there might possibly have been someone else willing to pay for Parker's death although the private detective's surviving enemies were few but what would the money have bought him? Just painful surgery, catheters, and a few extra months, or a year, added to an already cursed life. No, he had no need for any of it. He should have refused even to accept the contract on the Winter woman, but once the instruction had been given, and payment made, Steiger could not be recalled. That was the rule, and the money was welcome.

Perhaps, too, he was afraid: Steiger was only part of the equation, and there were others involved who were beyond Cambion's control, and for whom the death of Ruth Winter was of hugely personal concern. Cambion had provided Steiger for them in the past, and he had no illusions about the source of the cash that paid for his services. Even as a creator of monsters, Cambion was wary of those who had hired Steiger.

Cambion finished reading the reports in silence. He gestured for the bedpan, and Edmund a.s.sisted him by placing it in position. Cambion thought that the big man was more careful than usual, and appeared troubled by the obvious pain that the act of urination caused his employer. The bedpan was removed, the sheets rearranged, the pillows adjusted to make him comfortable.

'We are almost done,' he told Edmund, but he did not know if he was understood or not.

Edmund departed, and in the darkness of his death room Cambion's lips moved in something like prayer.

41.

Angel and Louis followed Walsh to the Gin Mill on Water Street when they were done at the ME's office. While he drove, Walsh called Ross in New York and told him what Louis had said about Cambion.

'That guy just won't die,' said Ross. 'He's like some kind of virus.'

'You know the name?'

'Oh yeah: Cambion the Leper. He's a middleman for murderers, now that he can't torture and kill for himself because of his ailment.'

'You telling me he's a real leper?'

'Full-blown. He gives the disease a bad name. He didn't contract it it contracted him. Are they still with you?'

'I'm taking them to dinner.'

There was a noticeable pause.

'Are you that lonely?' said Ross.

'Hey, I figured I might learn something more.'

'You'll learn not to do it again.'

'Can I bill you for it?' asked Walsh.

Ross was still laughing as he hung up the phone.

Both Angel and Louis went to the men's room to freshen up. For all of their experience in unpleasant matters and Walsh was under no illusion about what these men were capable of the smell of the autopsy room had gotten to them. It didn't bother Walsh, though, which worried him only slightly.

He was shown to a table, from which he ordered an Allagash Black. He leaned back against the cool brick wall and called his wife. Both she and his younger son were nursing colds, and she'd kept the boy home from school that morning. They seemed to be on the mend, though. His son was apparently curled up on the couch with hot chocolate, one of those G.o.d awful Transformers movies on the TV, which Walsh thought were like watching someone moving around the contents of a silverware drawer, and his wife certainly sounded better than she had earlier. When he'd first heard her in the morning dark, he felt like he'd woken up next to that kid from The Exorcist. He listened to her b.i.t.c.h about the neighbors for a while, then said goodnight. He wasn't sure what time he'd be home, he told her. He just knew that he would be.

Walsh loved his wife a lot. He loved his kids. He was happy with his life. He wasn't particularly troubled or haunted by his work, not like those cops in movies or mystery novels. You couldn't do the job if you took it home with you the way they did. You couldn't have a family and a normal life. Walsh had learned that early on from Miro, his first sergeant. Get yourself a wife, Miro told him. Have kids. When you're done with your day, go home to them. There will be times when you'll want a drink after what you've gone through, but maybe those are the times, more than any other, when you should just head back to your family. If you need to, take a walk alone before dinner, or bring your dog along for company. It'll help. Then again, Miro didn't drink. He didn't begrudge anyone else a drink, and when he did go out he'd buy his round without complaint, but he still had a point. Walsh figured that if he couldn't talk about stuff with his wife, then with whom could he talk? He didn't tell her everything, but he told her enough. The rest he kept inside, because some sights and sounds just had to stay there.

Walsh did enjoy the occasional beer, though. It wasn't a way of escaping or drowning his pain. He just liked beer.

And with that, his beer came. He looked at the menu. Although, as has been established, he loved his wife, he also enjoyed dining without her sometimes, especially at places like the Gin Mill. If she'd been with him, she'd have given him the cool eye until he announced that he was skipping the appetizers and, hey, the house salad with grilled chicken looked real good! Now he was free to order smoked sausage, or Cajun fried shrimp, or Lord have mercy the nachos, followed by a burger or the BBQ sandwich platter. He wouldn't lie if she asked him what he'd eaten, but he hoped she might give him a pa.s.s and acknowledge that, as in the case of the ME's a.s.sistant earlier that night, ignorance was sometimes the best defense.

Angel and Louis emerged from the bathroom. Walsh saw women glance at Louis and do that thing where they adjusted their hair fractionally, or sipped from a straw in a manner somewhere between flirtatious and downright lewd. For a gay man, he sure managed to stir the ladies. Women also gave Angel a look, but they usually followed it by checking that their purses were close by, and they hadn't left any money on the bar.

Man, thought Walsh, my life has taken some strange turns if this is where I've ended up: in a fine Augusta drinking establishment, accompanied by one man who used to kill for a living and, who knew, maybe still did when the price was right and another who had been a pretty good thief, by all accounts and who knew, etc. but also wasn't above using a gun when circ.u.mstances required it. How the h.e.l.l Parker had become involved with them, Walsh couldn't say, but there was a part of him that envied the detective the loyalty and friends.h.i.+p of these men. They might have been criminals, but they were the right kind of criminals.

They slipped into the booth across from him. He wondered if they were carrying guns. He a.s.sumed that they were. He wondered if the guns were licensed. He a.s.sumed that they weren't. Once again, better not to ask.

The waitress returned. She wasn't immune to Louis's charms either, stopping just short of rolling on her back and asking to have her tummy tickled. At least, thought Walsh, we'll get good service. Louis asked Walsh for advice on beer, and ended up trying an Andrew's English Ale out of Lincolnville, with a bottle of white wine to follow. Angel opted for a Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale.

'I don't approve of fruit in beer,' said Walsh.

'Really?' said Angel. 'You don't approve of it. What are you, some weird branch of the Women's Temperance League? I like it. Not pumpkin, though. f.u.c.kin' pumpkin,' he added, with venom.

The waitress brought their beers, and they ordered food. Angel and Louis stuck with fish, and Walsh went for the smoked sausage and, in a break from tradition, a full rack of St Louis pork ribs.

'A full rack?' asked Angel. 'You expecting someone else?'

'I hope not,' said Walsh.

'Jesus, your arteries must be like the Holland Tunnel at rush hour.'

Walsh let it pa.s.s. He was pretty sure that his arteries weren't like the Holland Tunnel, or not all of them anyway.

'So,' he asked Louis, 'any other thoughts on Steiger spring to mind on the way over here?'

'I got a question for you first,' said Louis. 'What are you to Ross?'

Louis didn't like the FBI man. He believed in keeping his distance from most federal agencies, especially ones that might have a file on him.

Walsh didn't even blink. He'd been expecting this, and he had nothing to hide. Ross had briefed him well. They needed these two men, because no two people in the world were closer to Parker, his daughter and her mother possibly only possibly excepted.

And Ross wanted to know all that there was to know about the detective.

'I work with him,' said Walsh.

'Officially? Unofficially?'

'The distinction is moot in Ross's case. If there was ever a line between the two, it's disappeared over the years.'

'And you watch Parker for him.'

'Actually, "watching" may be too strong a word for what I do. Mostly I just clean up the mess afterward, and help make sure that he keeps his license and stays out of jail. You might have noticed that Parker's actions occasionally exceed the bounds of legality by some considerable degree. Not that you'd condone such behavior.'

'Heaven forbid,' said Angel.