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 channel through which most of those with a history of legal problems inevitably flowed. So I stood drinking a coffee from the market to keep me warm and waited to see if a familiar face might appear. Nobody paid me much attention. After all, it was too cold to worry about anyone but oneself.
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.
He saw me as he took his place in the queue. I nodded to him, then walked slowly down Portland Street. After a few minutes, I heard footsteps approaching from behind, and Tween fell into step beside me. He was in his late forties and dressed cleanly, if shabbily, in yellow sneakers, jeans, two sweaters, and an overcoat with a vent that had split halfway up his back. His reddish brown hair was unevenly cut; people in Tween’s position didn’t waste their money on barbers. He lived rent-free in a one-room basement off Forest Avenue thanks to an absentee landlord who relied on Tween to keep an eye on his more unruly tenants, and to feed the building’s resident cat.
“Breakfast?” I said.
“Only if it’s Bintliff’s,” he replied. “I hear they do a wicked good lobster eggs Benedict.”
“You do have a taste for the finer things in life,” I said.
“I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
“Yeah, but you stole it from the kid in the next cradle.”
To their credit, nobody in Bintliff’s gave us a second glance. We were seated in a booth upstairs, and Tween ordered enough food to fill him up for a day at least: fruit and OJ to begin, followed by toast, the lobster eggs Benedict of which he’d heard so much, extra home fries, then some muffins to finish, three of which were squirreled away in the pockets of his overcoat “for my buddies,” as he explained. While we ate, we spoke about books and local news and just about anything else that came to mind, except the reason why I had brought Tween here. It was the gentlemanly way to conduct business and Tween was always a gentleman, even when he was trying to steal the sole from somebody’s shoe.
“So,” he said, as he finished a fifth coffee, “you just bring me here to enjoy the pleasure of my company?” The coffee didn’t appear to have made him jittery, or at least no more jittery than he had been to begin with. If you handed Tween a bowl of cream to hold, it would turn to butter in the time it took to wind your wristwatch. He had so much nervous energy that it was tiring to be in his immediate vicinity for too long.
“Not just that,” I replied. “I’d like you to ask around, see if you can find anyone who might have known a guy called Frank Merrick, either in Thomaston or in Supermax. He did ten years, the final two or three in the Max, then got released and sent for trial in Virginia.”
“He anything special?”
“He’s not the kind of guy you’re going to forget easily. He had a reputation as a button man.”
“Rumor or solid?”
“I’m inclined to believe what I’ve heard.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s here.”
“Renewing old acquaintances?”
“Could be. If he is, I’d like to know the names.”
“I’ll ask around. Shouldn’t take me too long. You got some quarters so I can call you?”
I gave him my business card, the change from my pocket, and fifty dollars in tens, fives, and ones so he could buy beer and sandwiches to oil the wheels. I knew how Tween worked. He’d helped me in the past. When he found someone who could cast some light on Merrick, as I was sure he would, he would hand me back my change and a handful of receipts, and only then would he look for payment. That was the way Tween worked in his “official” capacity, operating by one simple rule: you didn’t rip off anyone who looked like they might be on your side.
• • •
Merrick called me at midday. I’d been checking for signs of him all morning, but I didn’t see him or his red car. If he was smart, he’d have changed the car, but that assumed that Eldritch and his client were still prepared to bankroll him. I’d taken all of the precautions I could in case Merrick, or someone else, was keeping an eye on my movements. I was satisfied that no one was, not that day. In addition, Jackie Garner confirmed that all was still quiet where Rebecca Clay was concerned. But Merrick was on the phone, threatening to shatter that silence.
“Time’s up,” he said.
“You ever consider that you might get further with honey than vinegar?”
“Feed a man honey, and you get his love. Feed him vinegar, and you get his attention. Helps if you grab him by the balls too, and squeeze him some.”
“That’s very profound. You learn that in jail?”
“Hope you didn’t waste all that time finding out about me, else we’re going to have us a problem.”
“I didn’t come up with much, not on you and not on Daniel Clay either. His daughter doesn’t know any more than you do, but then she told you that already. You just didn’t want to listen.”
Merrick forced air through his nose in an imitation of amusement.
“Well, that’s unfortunate. You tell missy I’m disappointed in her. Better yet, I’ll tell her myself.”
“Wait. I didn’t say that I’d found nothing.” I needed leverage, something to draw him in. “I have a copy of the police file on Daniel Clay,” I lied.
“So?”
“It mentions your daughter.”
Now Merrick was silent.
“There’s some material in it that I don’t understand. I don’t think the cops did either.”
“What is it?” His voice sounded husky, as though something had suddenly caught in his throat.
I should have felt bad about lying. I was playing on Merrick’s feelings for his missing child. There would be consequences when he found out the truth.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Not over the phone.”
“So what do you suggest?” he asked.
“We meet. I give you a look at the file. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. Then you go and do what you have to do, as long as it doesn’t involve Rebecca Clay.”
“I don’t trust you. I seen those cavemen you got guarding the woman. What’s to stop you from trying to turn them loose on me? I got no problem killing them if it comes down to it, but it would kind of hinder my investigations, you might say.”
“I don’t want their blood on my hands either. We meet in a public place, you read the file, and we go our separate ways. I’m warning you, though: I’m giving you a break because of your daughter. You show up again around Rebecca Clay, and this is all going to step up a notch. I guarantee that you won’t like what happens then.”
Merrick gave a theatrical sigh. “Now that you got the pissing competition out of the way, maybe you’d like to name a place.”
I told him to meet me at the Big 20 Bowling Center on Route 1. I even gave him directions. Then I started making my calls.
• • •
Tween got back to me at three o’clock that afternoon.
“I’ve found someone for you. He comes at a price.”
“Which is?”
“A ticket to tonight’s hockey game, and fifty bucks. He’ll meet you there.”
“Done.”
“Just leave his ticket for collection with my name on the envelope. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Hundred dollars sound fair?”
“It sounds fine.”
“I got some change for you too. I’ll give it to you when you pay me.”
“Has he got a name, this guy?”
“He has, but you can call him Bill.”
“Is he the nervous type?”
“He wasn’t until I mentioned Frank Merrick. I’ll see you around.”
• • •
Candlepin bowling is a New England tradition. The balls are smaller and lighter than in tenpin, and the pins are thinner: three inches in the middle and one and a half at the top and bottom. Getting a strike is more a matter of luck than skill, and it’s said that nobody has ever bowled a perfect ten-strike candlepin game. The best score recorded in Maine is 231 out of a possible 300. I’d never bowled over 100.
The Big 20 in Scarborough had been in existence since 1950, when Mike Anton, an Albanian by birth, founded it as Maine’s largest and most modern bowling house, and it didn’t seem to have changed much since then. I sat on a pink plastic chair, sipped a soda, and waited. It was four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, and every lane was already in use, the ages of the players ranging from teenagers to seniors. There was laughter and the smell of beer and fried food and the distinctive sound of the balls rolling along the wooden alleys. I watched two old guys who barely spoke ten words to each other close in on 200 each, and when they failed to break the double century one of them expressed his disappointment in a single “Ayuh.” I sat in silence, the only lone male among groups of men and women, knowing that I was about to cross a line with Merrick.
My cell phone rang shortly before five, and a voice said, “We got him.”
• • •
Outside there were two Scarborough police cruisers and a trio of unmarked cars, one each from the Portland P.D., the South Portland P.D., and the Scarborough cops. A handful of people had gathered to watch the show. Merrick was facedown in the parking lot, his hands cuffed behind his back. He looked up at me as I approached. He didn’t appear angry. He just seemed disappointed. I saw O’Rourke nearby, leaning against a car. I nodded to him and made a call. Rebecca Clay answered. She was at the courthouse, and the judge was about to issue the temporary protection order against Merrick. I told her that we had him and that I’d be at Scarborough P.D. headquarters if she needed to contact me when she was done.
“Any problems?” I asked O’Rourke.
He shook his head.
“He walked right into it. Didn’t even open his mouth to ask what was going on.”
As we watched, Merrick was hauled to his feet and put in the back of one of the unmarked cars. He stared straight ahead as it pulled out.
“He looks old,” said O’Rourke. “He’s got something, though. I wouldn’t like to cross him. And I hate to tell you this, but I think you just have.”
“It didn’t seem like I had a whole lot of choice.”
“Well, at least we can hold him for a while and see what we get out of him.”
The length of time for which Merrick could be held would depend on the charges brought against him, if any. Stalking, defined as engaging in conduct that would cause a person to suffer intimidation, annoyance, or alarm, or to fear bodily injury, either to that person or a member of that person’s immediate family, was defined as a Class D crime. Similarly, terrorizing was a Class D, and harassment was a Class E. There was always the possibility of adding trespassing and criminal damage to the list, but taken altogether it meant that Merrick could be held only until the following Tuesday evening, assuming he didn’t get lawyered up, since D and E offenses allowed a suspect to be held for only forty-eight hours without charge, excluding weekends and holidays.
“You think your client will want to take this all the way?” asked O’Rourke.
“Do you want her to?”
“He’s a dangerous man. Seems kind of rude to lock him up for just sixty days, which is what he’ll get if the judge buys all the arguments in favor of putting him away. Might even be counterproductive, although if anyone asks, I didn’t say that.”
“You never struck me as the gambling type, you know that?”
“It’s not a gamble. It’s a calculated risk.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on Frankie’s reluctance to be jailed and your ability to protect your client.”
“So what’s the compromise?”
“We warn him off, make sure the order is ready to be served, and set him free. It’s a small city. He’s not going to disappear. We’ll arrange for someone to stick close to him for a while, and see what happens.”
It didn’t sound like the perfect plan. Nevertheless, it looked like I had just been given an extra ninety-six hours at most without Merrick to worry about. It was better than nothing.
“Let’s hear what he’s got to say for himself first,” I said. “You cleared it for me to watch?”
“Didn’t take much doing. Seems like you still have friends in Scarborough. You spot anything in what he says, then you let me know. You think he’ll call a lawyer?”
I thought about it. If he did decide to lawyer himself up, it would have to be through Eldritch, assuming the old man was licensed to practice in Maine, or had someone in the state who was prepared to do a little quid pro quo work when necessary. But I had a feeling that Eldritch’s support for Merrick had always been conditional, and Merrick’s recent actions might have forced the lawyer to reconsider his position.
“I don’t think he’s going to talk much anyway.”
O’Rourke shrugged. “We could hit him with a telephone book.”
“You could, but I’d have to report you to IA.”
“Yeah, there’s that. I’d have to lose the paperwork on myself. Still, it’s Scarborough’s turf. We can stand back and see how they handle it.”
He got in his car. The Scarborough cruisers were pulling away, the Portland cops close behind.
“You coming?” he asked.
“I’ll follow.”
He left, the crowd dispersed, and suddenly I was the only person in the parking lot. The cars rolled by on Route 1, and the neon Big 20 sign illuminated the lot, but behind me was the darkness of the marshes. I turned, gazing into it, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that, from its deepest reaches, something stared back at me. I walked to my car, started the engine, and tried to leave that sensation behind.
• • •
Merrick was seated in a small square room furnished with a white table bolted to the floor. There were three blue chairs around it, and Merrick sat in the one facing the door, the two empty chairs across from him. A wipe-clean board was attached to one wall, its surface covered with children’s doodles. There was a phone beside the door and, high in one corner, a video camera. The room was also wired for sound recording.
Merrick’s hands had been cuffed, and the cuffs had in turn been chained through a D-ring on the table. He had been given a soda to drink from the machine beside the evidence technician’s office, but he hadn’t touched it. While the room didn’t have a two-way mirror, we were able to watch him on the computer monitor in a partitioned office close by the interview room. We weren’t alone. Although the alcove was big enough for four people at best, almost three times that number were crowded around the screen, trying to catch a glimpse of their new guest.
Detective Sergeant Wallace MacArthur was one of them. I knew him from way back. Through Rachel, I’d introduced him to his wife, Mary. In a way, I had nearly been responsible for her death, too, but Wallace had never held that against me, which was pretty Christian of him, all things considered.
“Not often we get a living legend in here,” he said. “Even the Feds have joined us.”
He jerked a thumb in the direction of the door, where Pender, the new SAC of the small Portland field office, was talking with a man whom I didn’t recognize but whom I took to be another agent. I had been introduced to Pender once at some policeman’s benefit in Portland. As far as the Feds went, he seemed okay. Pender nodded to me. I nodded back. At least he hadn’t tried to have me thrown out, which was reason to be thankful.
MacArthur shook his head in something like admiration. “Merrick’s old school,” he said. “They don’t make ’em like him anymore.”
O’Rourke grinned emptily. “Yeah, what have we come to when we can look at someone like him and think, hell, he’s not so bad? He just popped them, neatly and cleanly. No torture. No women. No kids. Just men that somebody figured had it coming.”
Merrick kept his head down. He did not look up at the camera even though he must have known that we were watching him.
Two Scarborough detectives entered the room, a beefy guy named Conlough and a woman named Frederickson, who had made the formal arrest at the Big 20. As soon as they began to question him, Merrick, contrary to expectations, looked up and answered them in soft, civil tones. It was almost as though he felt the need to justify and defend himself. Perhaps he was right. He had lost his daughter. He had the right to ask where she might be.
• • •
Conlough: What’s your interest in Rebecca Clay?
Merrick: None, beyond who her daddy is.
C: What’s her father to you?
M: He treated my little girl. Now she’s gone. I want to find out where she is.
C: You think you can do that by threatening a woman? Real big guy, huh, stalking a defenseless woman?
M: I didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t stalk anyone. I just wanted to ask her some questions.
C: So you do that by trying to bust into her house, breaking her window?
M: I didn’t try to bust into her house, and the window was an accident. I’ll pay for the damage.
C: Who put you up to this?
M: Nobody. I don’t need no one to tell me that what happened ain’t right.
C: What’s not right?
M: That my daughter could disappear and nobody give a rat’s ass about finding her.
Frederickson: Maybe your daughter ran away. From what we hear, she was having problems.
M: I told her I’d look out for her. She had no cause to run away.
C: You were in jail. How were you going to look out for her from a cell?
M: (silent)
F: Who gave you the car?
M: A lawyer.
F: Which lawyer?
M: The lawyer Eldritch, down in Massachusetts.
F: Why?
M: He’s a good man. He thinks I got the right to ask questions. He got me out of trouble in Virginia, then helped me when I came back up here.
C: So he gives you a car out of the goodness of his heart. What is he, St. Vincent de Paul’s lawyer?
M: Maybe you should ask him.
C: Don’t worry, we will.
• • •
“We’ll talk to the lawyer,” said O’Rourke.
“You won’t get much from him,” I said.
“You’ve met him?”
“Oh yeah. He’s old-school too.”
“So old they built the school out of wattle and daub.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Pretty much what Merrick just said.”
“You believe him?”
“That he’s a good guy who gives away cars to deserving causes? No. Still, he said that Merrick had been one of his clients, and there’s no law against loaning a car to your client.”
I didn’t tell O’Rourke that Eldritch had another client, one who seemed to be covering Merrick’s tab. I figured he could find that out for himself.
A call came through from the evidence technician. Merrick’s car was clean. There were no weapons, no incriminating papers, nothing. Frederickson emerged from the interview room to consult with O’Rourke and the FBI man, Pender. The man who had been talking with Pender listened in, but said nothing. His eyes flicked to me, regarded me for a moment, then returned to Frederickson. I didn’t like what passed between us with that look. O’Rourke asked me if there was anything that I thought we should put to Merrick. I suggested asking him if he was working alone, or if he had brought other men with him. O’Rourke seemed puzzled, but agreed to suggest the question to Frederickson.
• • •
F: Ms. Clay has taken out a court order against you. Do you understand what that means?
M: I understand. It means I can’t go near her no more, else you put my ass back in jail.
F: That’s right. You going to abide by that order? You don’t plan to, and you can save us all some time right now.
M: I’ll abide by it.
C: Maybe you’ll think about leaving the state too. We’d like you to do that.
M: I can’t promise nothing on that front. I’m a free man. I done my time. Got a right to go where I choose.
C: That include hanging around houses up in Falmouth?
M: I ain’t never been to Falmouth. Hear it’s real nice, though. I like being by the water.
C: Car like yours was seen around there last night.
M: Lots of cars like mine. Red is a real popular color.
C: Nobody said it was a red car.
M: (silent)
C: You hear me? How come you knew it was a red car?
M: Car like mine, what else would it be? If’n it was a blue car, or a green car, then it wouldn’t be like mine. Have to be a red car to be like mine, just the way you said it.
F: You loan your car out to other people, Mr. Merrick?
M: No, I don’t.
F: So if we find out that it was your car—and we can do that, you know; we can take casts, canvass witnesses—then it would have to be you behind the wheel, right?
M: I guess so, but since I wasn’t there, it’s moot.
F: Moot?
M: Yeah, you know what “moot” means, Officer. Don’t need me to explain it to you.
F: Who are the other men with you?
M: (confused) Other men? The hell you talking about?
F: We know you’re not here alone. Who did you bring with you? Who’s helping you? You’re not doing all this without others.
M: I always work alone.
C: And what kind of work would that be?
M: (smiling) Problem solving. I’m a lateral thinker.
C: You know, I don’t think you’re being as cooperative as you should be.
M: I’m answering your questions, ain’t I?
F: Maybe you’ll answer them better after a couple of nights in jail.
M: You can’t do that.
C: Are you telling us what we can and can’t do? Listen, you may have been a big shot once upon a time, but that doesn’t count for anything up here.
M: You got no more cause to hold me. I told you I’d abide by that order.
F: We think you need some time to reflect on what you’ve been doing, to, uh, meditate on your sins.
M: I’m done talking to you. I want to call me a lawyer.
• • •
That was it. The interrogation was over. Merrick was given access to a phone. He called Eldritch who, it emerged, had taken the Maine bar exam, along with its equivalents in New Hampshire and Vermont. He told Merrick not to answer any more questions, and arrangements were made to transfer Merrick to the Cumberland County Jail, since Scarborough no longer had holding cells of its own.
“The lawyer won’t be able to get him out until Monday morning at the earliest,” said O’Rourke. “The judges do like to keep their weekends clear.”
Even if Merrick was charged, it was likely that Eldritch would arrange bail for him if it was still in the interests of Eldritch’s other client that Merrick should be free, just as it seemed to be in O’Rourke’s interests. The only person whose interests might not be well served by Merrick’s freedom was Rebecca Clay.
“I have some people keeping watch over Ms. Clay,” I told O’Rourke. “She wants to cut them loose, but I think she may need to reconsider, just until we get a sense of how Merrick reacts to all this.”
“Who are you using?”
I shifted awkwardly in my seat.
“The Fulcis, and Jackie Garner.”
O’Rourke laughed, attracting surprised glances from the men around him.
“No way! That’s like using a pair of undercover elephants, and their ringmaster.”
“Well, I kind of wanted him to see them. The object of the exercise was to keep him away.”
“Hell, they’d keep me away. Probably kept the birds away too. You really do pick entertaining friends.”
Yeah, I thought, but he didn’t know the half of it. The really entertaining ones had just arrived.