‘How long you got left?’ he asked Cambion.
‘Who knows?’
‘Seems like it might be a mercy to let the contract run its course,’ said Louis, as Edmund stepped aside so that the two visitors could leave, and prepared to escort them out.
‘You might think that,’ said Cambion, ‘but I’m not ready to die yet.’
‘Yeah,’ said Louis, as the drapes fell closed behind him. ‘That’s a damn shame.’
44
Ronald Straydeer was not unfamiliar with sleeping outdoors.
He’d bedded down in the jungles in Vietnam, in the Great North Woods of Maine and beside pot plantations in upstate New York during a period of misunderstanding with some rival growers, which came to an end when Ronald put one of them head-frst into a narrow hole and proceeded to fill it in.
Thus Ronald understood the necessity of good nutrition and proper clothing, particularly when it came to cold weather. He wore polypropylene, not cotton, next to his skin, because he knew that cotton trapped moisture, and the action of convection meant that cold air and damp drained the body’s heat. A hat with earflaps covered his head, because when the head got cold, the body began to shut off circulation to the extremities. He kept himself moving constantly, even if only through the gentle shuffling of his feet and minute stretches of his arms, fingers and toes, generating heat as a by-product. He had brought plenty of water, and an assortment of nuts, seeds, energy bars, jerky and salami, as well as a couple of MREs – because sometimes a man needed a hot meal, even one that tasted like it had been made for pets – and containers of self-heating soup and coffee. He didn’t know how long he might be out in the wild, but he had packed enough food for four days, or more if he had to be abstemious. He was armed with a licensed hunting rife, a Browning BAR Mark II Lightweight Stalker in .308. If it came down to it, he could claim to be hunting squirrel or hare, even coyotes, although the Browning wouldn’t leave much of a varmint behind other than bits of fur and memories.
He had been fortunate with this location. The woods around the ruined church were a mixture of deciduous and evergreen, but more of the latter. He bedded down in the thickest copse he could find, and covered his sleeping bag with branches. He made a careful recon of his surroundings but did not enter the church grounds – not out of superstition, but simply because, if Shaky was right, then the church was important, and people tended to protect places that were important. He checked the gate and the fence, and saw nothing to indicate that the grounds were guarded electronically, but he still didn’t want to risk setting off any kind of hidden motion sensor. Neither did he risk an exploration of the town itself. Ronald was a striking, imposing man, and he attracted attention. Perhaps he would be seeing more of the town soon enough.
To pass the time, he read. He had brought with him a copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens because he recalled the detective recommending it to him once. He had bought it but never got around to reading it. Now seemed like the appropriate time.
Shaky, like Jude before him, was convinced that Prosperous was rotten, and he had halfway managed to convince Ronald of the same thing, even before Ronald had ever come to the town. Shaky had accompanied Ronald around Portland and South Portland as he began quietly questioning the homeless about what they had seen in the days preceding Jude’s death. Shaky had a way of calming folk. He was unthreatening, and generally well liked. It was, thought Ronald, a little like having a good dog with him: an old Labrador, maybe, something friendly and tolerant. He didn’t share this with Shaky, though. He wasn’t sure how it might be taken.
Despite their efforts, they learned nothing of worth until the end of a long day of searching and questioning. It came from an unlikely source: the woman known as Frannie, with whom Shaky had witnessed Brightboy arguing on the morning that Brightboy had attacked him. Shaky usually did his best to avoid Frannie due to her intimidating nature, and the vision of a man having his nose gnawed off that she invariably conjured up, but Ronald Straydeer wasn’t troubled by her in the least. He told Shaky that he knew Frannie from way back, when she still had most of her teeth.
‘Is it true that she once bit a man’s nose off and spat it out in front of him?’ said Shaky. After all, it seemed like Ronald Straydeer might know.
‘No,’ said Ronald solemnly. ‘That’s not true.’
Shaky was relieved, but Ronald wasn’t done.
‘She didn’t spit it out,’ he continued. ‘She swallowed it.’
Shaky felt ill. During the subsequent conversation with Frannie, he found himself using Ronald’s body as a bulwark between him and the woman. If she’d developed a taste for male flesh, she’d have to go through Ronald to get to him.
Frannie was pleased to see Ronald, although she was less pleased when she learned that he was no longer dealing. Using mainly four-letter words, she expressed the view that Ronald was a grave disappointment to her. Ronald accepted the judgment without complaint, and gave her the name of someone who might be able to help find some pot, along with twenty bucks with which to treat herself.
In return, Frannie told them about the couple she had seen near Jude’s basement.
Frannie wasn’t a mixer. She avoided the shelters. She was always angry, or briefly coming down from being angry prior to getting angry all over again. She liked no one, not even Jude. She’d never asked him for anything, and he’d never offered, knowing better than to do so. Shaky couldn’t understand why she was opening up to Ronald Straydeer, even allowing for the money, and the pot connection. It was only later that it dawned on him: Frannie had been flattered by Ronald’s attention. Ronald spoke to her as he would to any woman. He was courteous. He smiled. He asked about a wound on her arm, and recommended something for it. None of this he did in a false manner: Frannie would have seen through that in an instant. Instead, Ronald talked to her as the woman that she once was, and perhaps, deep down, still believed herself to be. How long had it been since anyone had done that for her, thought Shaky. Decades, probably. She had not always been this way and, like all of those who ended up on the streets, never wanted it for herself. As she and Ronald spoke, Shaky saw her change. Her eyes softened. She was not beautiful – she would never again be that, if she had ever been – but for the first time Shaky saw her as something other than an individual to be feared. She let her guard down while talking to Ronald, and it struck Shaky that Frannie lived her life in a state of perpetual fear, for however bad it was to be a homeless man, it was infinitely worse to be a homeless woman. He had always understood that, but as an abstract concept, and generally applied it only to the younger girls, the teenagers, who were more obviously vulnerable. He had made the mistake of imagining that somehow, for Frannie, it might have become easier over the years, not harder, and now he knew himself to be wrong.
So Frannie told Ronald Straydeer of how she had walked past Jude’s place the night before he died, and saw a car parked across the street. And because she was always desperate, and asking was free, she tapped on the glass in the hope that a dollar might be forthcoming.
‘They gave me a five,’ she told Ronald. ‘Five bucks. Just like that.’
‘And did they ask for anything in return?’ said Ronald.
Frannie shook her head.
‘Nothing.’
‘They didn’t ask after Jude?’
‘No.’
Because they already knew, thought Shaky, and they were smarter than to draw attention to themselves by bribing a homeless woman for information. Instead they paid her – enough to be generous, but not too generous – and she went away, leaving them to wait for Jude to appear.
Ronald asked what Frannie remembered about them. She recalled a silver car, and Massachusetts plates, but she admitted that she might have mistaken about the plates. The woman was good-looking, but in that way of women who try too hard to keep themselves in condition as they get older, and end up with lines on their tanned faces that might have been avoided if they’d resigned themselves to a little flesh on their bones. The man was balding, and wore glasses. He had barely looked at Frannie. The woman gave her the money, and responded to Frannie’s word of thanks with the briefest of smiles.