Page 40 of The Children of Eve

Meanwhile, condos were rising all across Portland, and property prices with them, but few locals would be able to afford to buy. The new units would go to out-of-towners looking to rent them to the highest bidder, or with enough spare cash lying around that spending more than $2 million on a summer-use unit overlooking Becky’s Diner struck them as a good deal. Down on Commercial Street, more and more stores didn’t even bother putting prices on their window displays for fear that some passing Mainer with a delicate heart might collapse from shock, which would be bad for the city’s image. But along Congress, a person could still while away a happy hour buying used vinyl records in any number of outlets; Strange Maine endured, home to eight-track cartridges and used board games, with a sign in the window announcingNO PROUD BOYS SERVED; and Longfellow Books and the Green Hand both sold new as well as used books. There remainedreasons to be cheerful, even if they were increasingly compressed into a few city blocks.

Louis ordered a calvados cocktail for himself and a bottle of Portuguese wine for the table. Angel stuck with beer. He’d cut his alcohol consumption to weekends and nights out and looked better for it. He also continued to receive the all-clear from his doctors, with no recurrence of the cancer that at one point had threatened to take him from Louis. The latter was cropping his hair closer and closer to his scalp—mainly to hide the gray, even if he’d never have admitted it. His face, I suspected, was clean-shaven for the same reason, but like Angel’s bloom, the look suited him. Anyway, I didn’t like to be reminded of these men growing old and of what must inevitably follow. I’d miss them too much.

As though picking up on my mood, Angel spoke.

“Loney died,” he said, “out of Ditmars. We just heard this morning. He had a stroke.”

“Wow, that’s terrible,” I said. “Who’s Loney? Wait, was he the guy with the huge head?”

“That was his cousin,” said Angel, “Moonface Loney. If he went out at night, the tides changed. This is Lineup Loney.”

Now I remembered. Lionel Loney, better known as Lineup, was a reasonably honest guy with an unfeasibly dishonest face, his features combining to create an ur-criminal aspect that meant he couldn’t walk down the street without being stopped and searched by police. Loney spent so much of his life explaining himself to cops that he was forced to keep a diary so he could accurately respond when asked where he’d been on any particular date and at any specific time. If he visited a shopping mall or department store, he attracted the attention of security the way a magnet attracts iron filings. So untrustworthy were his features that the cops in the 114th Precinct in Queens took to asking him to participate in lineups at ten bucks a pop to add a degree ofverisimilitude to the usual collection of passing detectives, police clerks, and the unemployed. Loney became so popular in lineups that the 108th, the 110th, and the 115th also began to call on his services, and it wasn’t long before he was adding all the lineups to his diary as well while earning decent walking-around money along the way.

The difficulty was that due to his blighted countenance, some element of Loney’s face—his eyes, the shape of his nose, the curve of his mouth—seemingly inevitably corresponded to a suspect’s, which meant that witnesses who were on the fence defaulted to Loney on the basis that, if he looked like a criminal, he probably was. Various cops then began to wonder if maybe Loney might not be guilty of something after all, given the number of eyewitnesses who were prepared to finger him for anything from bag-snatching to criminal battery. Eventually, Loney twigged why detectives in four precincts were peering at him more closely than usual and he knocked his career in lineups on the head. He returned to keeping his regular diary, complete with movie stubs, bus tickets, and lunch receipts, but the nickname stuck. Forever after, he would be Lineup Loney. Now he was gone, another splash of color vanished from a world that could ill afford the loss.

Our food arrived, and over it I told Angel and Louis about Wyatt Riggins, his preacher stepbrother, BrightBlown, and Devin Vaughn. Louis, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of malfeasance, vaguely recalled Vaughn Senior but not the son. He was on surer ground with Devin Vaughn’s right-hand man, Aldo Bern.

“He’s solid,” said Louis.

“And that’s good, right?”

“As long as you don’t collide with him, which you may be about to.”

“Bern and his employer can use BrightBlown for whatever they like,” I said. “Zetta Nadeau just wants to know that Wyatt Riggins is okay.”

“If he was okay,” said Angel, “he wouldn’t have any reason to be running.”

Which was true.

“Does the Lawrence woman know who she’s working for?” asked Louis.

“Yes, despite her denials. I doubt much gets past her.”

“Then as soon as you left, she would have called Bern or someone close to him. If Riggins’s disappearance has anything to do with Devin Vaughn’s operation, there’s a chance you may be hearing from Vaughn’s people. But that was what you intended, right?”

“I’m hoping they’re reasonable men. They don’t want me nosing around in their affairs any more than I want to get that nose cut off. If Riggins was frightened of Vaughn, he wouldn’t have been working at BrightBlown. It may be that they’re as eager as Zetta to find out where he might have gone, or it could be they don’t care. Clarity would be welcome either way.”

“I’d suggest pursuing further diligence on Vaughn, now that you’re rattling his cage,” said Louis, “though it might have been wiser to do it before you started. I can make some calls.”

Louis maintained murky sources in shady places, and the more umbrous the spaces, the better those sources. Admittedly, his contacts had diminished in number as the years went by, sudden and violent mortality being an occupational hazard in the volatile circles through which Louis had once moved—and still moved, when the necessity arose, though he had grown selective in the autumn of his days. Death would welcome him in time, but Louis saw no reason to rush to greet it.

“Actually, Misstra Know-It-All, I have done some research,” I told him, “or at least I’ve read someone else’s.”

I shared with them the contents of the dossier put together by Moxie’s client while Louis tried to determine if throwing a Stevie Wonder reference at him counted as tacit racism.

“That’s great,” said Louis, when I was done. “Now, if Vaughn ever decides to float on the stock market, you won’t get screwed on the share price.”

I had to admit the report was light on insights into criminal behavior, and it would be wise to learn more about who Devin Vaughn’s friends and enemies might be. Basically, you couldn’t know too much about people who ran around with guns, especially if some of those guns might end up pointing in your direction.

“Fine,” I told Louis, “make your stupid calls. And while you’re at it, ask if anyone has heard of a guy named Seeley.”

CHAPTERXXXI

From the marshes, Jennifer Parker watched her father return home. With him were Angel and Louis, these men he loved and who loved him in turn. She was glad he was in their company. Sometimes, when they joined him on nights like this, they would sit around the kitchen table reminiscing, or discussing a case. Jennifer would listen by the window, less to the substance of the conversation than to the sound of their voices. The visitors would drink wine or beer from a store her father retained for their use, while he usually stuck to coffee. Often, Angel and Louis would stay the night, and when they did Jennifer would experience a sense of peace. With them, her father was safer. With them, he was no longer so alone.

Jennifer moved away—from the house, from that world. The children were calling again, demanding to be rescued and reunited. Whoever took them had decided to separate them, and they didn’t like it; they were frightened and angry. Jennifer also felt that one of the children—a girl, from her voice—might be drawing nearer. She was being brought to the Northeast, into the orbit of Jennifer’s father.

After crossing back between realms, Jennifer made her way to the lake. She was distracted by her concerns about Sharon Macy. Jennifer was convinced that her father had been unwise to share with Macy his belief that his dead daughter watched over him and communicated withhis living child. Jennifer trusted Angel and Louis to keep quiet about what they knew, but she could not say the same of Macy. To whom would Macy talk? If her father and Macy were to end their relationship, might she speak of his strangeness to others? Should she decide to do so, the story would spread, and others were listening, always listening.

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