Page 82 of The Nameless Ones
‘No, we need only the lawyer, Kauffmann. We know she is his contact. He told us so.’
‘She will not work with us directly,’ said Radovan. ‘We are too toxic.’
‘Or so Frend would have us believe.’
‘He is not lying about Kauffmann. This is Anton’s world, and he understands how it works. Clean hands: it is the Austrian way.’
‘It may be their way, but it is not ours,’ said Spiridon. ‘Even if Frend’s days are not numbered, do you really believe that Interpol and the Dutch police will fail to connect him to us? If Hendricksen could do it, so can they. And then Frend will talk, because he will not risk prison for our sakes.’
‘Brother, Frend and I have been very vigilant.’
‘Not vigilant enough to stop our money from being seized.’
‘Money can be replaced. The kind of relationship we have built with Frend cannot. His contacts are our contacts. Without him, we are entirely alone.’
‘And I tell you they will come for him,’ said Spiridon. ‘Even if the hunters miss the spoor at first, what is to prevent Matija Kiš from allying himself with them in order to harm us? He will feed Frend to them, and Frend will sacrifice us to save himself. As long as he is alive, we are at risk.’
Radovan did not know what pained him more: to hear his brother speak like this about a man for whom Radovan had much affection, or to know that he might well be correct. Frend was the weak link, but Radovan was not prepared to sacrifice him, not yet. And all this because Spiridon had insisted on marking his departure from the Netherlands with rape and murder.
‘Let me think on it,’ said Radovan. ‘Now I have news for you, and once more, it is not good.’
Radovan had advised against targeting the private detective in Maine. It was a chance they did not need to take, but Spiridon again had ignored his guidance, with Zorya whispering in his ear. Why she had urged Spiridon to strike at Parker, Radovan did not know. He was beginning to wonder if he was the only sane one left in their circle.
‘Well?’ said Spiridon.
‘The attempt on Parker’s life failed, and the men sent to take care of it are in police custody. Our friends in Ridgewood are very upset.’
‘Will they talk, these men?’
‘My information is that they were both seriously injured in the course of events. For now, they are incapable of saying anything at all.’
Spiridon stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. Radovan knew the uses to which Spiridon was putting those hands in his mind.
‘Perhaps they’ll die,’ said Spiridon.
Radovan stood to leave.
‘Death does not solve every problem,’ he said.
‘Actually,’ said his brother, ‘it does.’
Chapter LXIX
Detective Sharon Macy lounged at a table in the Great Lost Bear, sipping a diet soda. Seated around it with her were two detectives from the Portland PD’s Criminal Investigation Division, Tony and Paulie Fulci, Charlie Parker, and Dave Evans. The bomb technicians from the Hazardous Devices Unit had successfully dealt with the IED, the two injured men had been taken under escort to Maine Medical, and the Bear had reopened for business. A brief debate had taken place about whether the bear head used against one of the men should be seized as evidence before it was decided that it was probably just as easy to leave it at the bar. It was now back in its place on the wall, its fur damaged from the impact with either the ground or a Serbian skull. Macy had to concede that Paulie Fulci had quite the pair of throwing arms, because that bear head wasn’t light.
A couple of months had passed since last she’d visited the Great Lost Bear. Macy was trying to drink less as part of a new fitness regimen, which meant she was avoiding bars, most restaurants, and pretty much anywhere else she might have a little fun. It was playing hell with her socializing, not to mention her love life. She’d started going to bed earlier, too, because there wasn’t much else to do when one didn’t drink or go out. This, she decided, was how women ended up in nunneries.
While still a working detective for the Portland PD, Macy also functioned as the liaison between the department, the state police, federal agencies, and the governor’s office, particularly in matters relating to serious crimes. Trying to plant a bomb outside the Great Lost Bear counted as serious in anyone’s book, but it took on an added gravity when Charlie Parker was the target. Any number of people wouldn’t have minded seeing the private detective blown sky high, but even they would probably have preferred it not to happen in the parking lot of one of Portland’s best-loved drinking establishments. That Parker wasn’t already dead was a miracle, if not necessarily the kind that encouraged faith in divine judgment.
The investigation was complicated by the fact that Macy and Parker had dated briefly. They hadn’t managed to get it together – circumstances and timing as much as anything – but there were no hard feelings, so now, as well as being the official point of contact between various branches of law enforcement and state government, Macy was also the unofficial mediator between some of those same agencies and one of the most problematical private investigators in the state, if not the entire country.
Macy and the detectives asked the Fulcis and Dave Evans a few more questions about what they’d witnessed, and clarified the series of events that had led from Dave spotting the first of the Serbians entering the lot on the CCTV to Paulie lobbing a bear head, before telling them they could go. Parker, she asked to stay.
‘So you’re telling me you have no idea why a pair of Serbian hitmen would decide to place a bomb in the wheel well of your car?’ she said.
‘I haven’t annoyed any Serbians,’ said Parker, ‘not that I know of.’
He was a man of slightly above average height and build, with graying hair and eyes that veered between blue and green, depending on the light. He was easy to dismiss at first glance, Macy thought. If you looked harder, though, the lines of grief on his face became more pronounced, and his sense of coiled energy, even violence, grew more perceptible. He had killed; some were deaths of which the police were aware, but others, she felt sure, remained unknown to them. Macy had also taken lives, and the memory of it still troubled her. She did not know if Parker was tormented by a great deal of what he had done. She suspected that, as in the words of the Confiteor, he was haunted more by all he had failed to do.