The Unquiet

“Anything wrong?”

He glanced at Harmon for permission to speak in the company of others.

“Well?” said his boss. “What did they say?”

“I called the Falmouth P.D.,” said Todd, directing the explanation to me as well as his employer. “Just seemed like it was worth checking to see if they’d spotted anything out of the ordinary. They usually keep a close eye on the houses along here.” By that, I presumed that he meant they kept a close eye on Joel Harmon’s house. He could have bought and sold most of his neighbors ten times over. “Someone reported a car cruising the area, maybe even parked for a while over by the eastern wall of the property, and got suspicious. By the time the cops came, the car was gone, but could be that it was co

“They get a make, a number?” I asked him.

Todd shook his head. “Just a medium-sized red car,” he said.

Harmon must have seen something in my face.

“Does that ring a bell with you?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Frank Merrick, the man who was bothering Rebecca Clay, drives a red car. If I found the co

“Friendship,” Harmon corrected me, “not co

I walked to the door and looked out at the pebbled driveway, illuminated by the lights of the house and the lamps that stood along the verge. It was Merrick, it had to be. But Merrick ’s description did not match that given by Maria of the man whom she had glimpsed in the garden. Merrick had come here, but he had not been alone.

Hollow.

“I’d be careful for the next few days, Mr. Harmon,” I said. “If you go out, keep Todd with you. I’d have your security system checked too.”

“All because of this one man?” asked Harmon. He sounded slightly incredulous.

“He’s dangerous, and he may not be just one man. As you said yourself, better to be safe.”

With that, June and I left. I drove, the electronic gates opening silently before us as we left the Harmon house behind.

“My,” said June, “you do lead an interesting life.”

I looked at her. “You think that was my doing?”

“You told Joel that the man in the car might have made the same co

There was only the slightest hint of a rebuke in her voice. I didn’t need her to tell me why. I had figured it out for myself, even though I was reluctant to say it aloud in front of Harmon and had instead forced it back like bile in my throat. Just as I had tracked Merrick, so, too, perhaps Merrick was tracking me, and I had led him straight to Joel Harmon.

But I was also troubled by the appearance of the man in Harmon’s garden. It appeared that Merrick ’s inquiries about Daniel Clay had drawn something else, a man-no, men, I corrected myself, remembering a feeling like foul breezes separating before me, and letters scrawled in dust by a childlike hand-shadowing his movements. Was he aware of them, or was their presence something to do with Eldritch’s client? Yet it was hard to see half-glimpsed men climbing the rickety stairs to an ancient lawyer’s office, or dealing with the harridan who guarded the gateway to the upper levels of Eldritch’s business. What had seemed at first like a simple case of stalking had become infinitely stranger and more complex, and I was glad that Angel and Louis would soon be with me. Merrick’s deadline was about to expire and, while I had set in motion a plan for dealing with him, I was aware that he was, in a sense, the least of my worries. Merrick I could deal with. He was dangerous, but he was a known quantity. The Hollow Men were not.

Chapter XIII

Early the next morning, I was standing by the Portland Public Market’s parking lot. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the weathermen were saying that it was likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, which, in Maine terms, meant that it might begin to improve sometime around April. It was a damp cold, the kind that left clothing moist to the touch, and the windows of coffee shops, diners, even passing cars, were steamed up as the heat caused the moisture to evaporate, lending an uncomfortably claustrophobic atmosphere to anywhere but the least crowded of places.

While most people had the option of seeking shelter indoors, there were some who were not so fortunate. Already a queue had formed outside the Preble Street Resource Center, where the city’s poorest gathered each day to be served breakfast by volunteers. Some would be hoping to take a shower or do their laundry while they were there, or to pick up some fresh clothing and use a telephone. The working poor who couldn’t make it back for midday would be served a bag lunch so they wouldn’t go hungry later. In this way the center and its partners, the Wayside and Saint Luke’s soup kitchens, served over three hundred thousand meals every year to those who might otherwise have starved or have been forced to redirect money from rent or essential medicines just to keep body and soul together.

I watched them from where I stood, the line made up mostly of men, a few of them obviously veterans of the street, their layers of clothing filthy, their hair unkempt, while others were still a couple of steps away from homelessness. Some of the women scattered among them were hard-faced and large, their features distorted by alcohol and difficult lives, their bodies swollen by cheap, fatty foods and cheaper booze. It was also possible to pick out the new arrivals, the ones who had yet to grow accustomed to supporting themselves and their families with handouts. They did not talk or mix with the rest and kept their heads down or faced the wall, fearful of making eye contact with those around them, like new prisoners on a cell block. Perhaps, too, they were afraid to look up and lock eyes with a friend or neighbor, maybe even an employer who might decide that it wasn’t good for business to give work to someone who had to beg for breakfast. Nearly all of those in the line were in their thirties or older. It gave a false impression of the nature of the poor in a city where one in five of those under the age of eighteen lived below the poverty line.

Nearby were the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center, the Midtown Community Policing Center, and the city’s department of probation and parole. This area was a narrow cha

After twenty minutes, I saw the man I was looking for. His name was Abraham Shockley, but on the street he was known only as “Mr. In-Between,” or “Tween” for short. He was, by any definition, a career criminal. The fact that he wasn’t very good at his chosen career hardly mattered to the courts. He had been charged in his time with possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply, theft by deception, larceny, operating under the influence, and night hunting, among other offenses. Tween had been fortunate that violence had never played a part in his crimes, so that he had, on more than one occasion, benefited from the fact that the offense in question fell into the category of “wobblers,” or crimes that were not statutorily defined as either felonies or misdemeanors, so that some offenses prosecuted as felonies were later reduced to misdemeanors by the trial court. The local cops had also put in a good word for Tween, when required, because Tween was everybody’s friend. He knew people. He listened. He remembered. Tween wasn’t a snitch. He had his own standards of behavior, his own principles, and he adhered to them as best he could. Tween wouldn’t rat anyone out, but he was the man to ask if you wanted a message passed on to someone who was keeping a low profile, or if you wanted to find an individual of ill repute for purposes other than putting him behind bars. In his turn, Tween acted as a go-between for those who were in trouble and wanted to cut a deal with a cop or a parole officer. He was a small but useful cog in the machinery of the unofficial justice system, the shadow courts in which deals were struck and blind eyes turned so that valuable time could be spent on more pressing matters.